Die For Me Page 9

  “What is it, Auntie?” Bobbie asked quietly.

  “I don’t know. But something is wrong.”

  “To do with what?” Rachel asked her.

  Maribeth turned to me then. “I don’t know. But there’s something that’s wrong about my initial impressions, what I first told you on Saturday.”

  “Maybe that there were two burial sites, instead of just the one?” Rachel asked.

  “No, it’s not that,” Maribeth said, staring in at the ruins again. “It’s something about this place, right here. And I didn’t even know this was a part of it at first. I saw stone walls, but those could have been part of the old winery ruins. There is just some—connection—between this place right here and the bodies, and the danger…” She fell silent again, looking about her.

  A moment later, whatever she thought she had sensed was gone. She shook her head and looked a little sheepish.

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t tell you anything more.”

  ELEVEN

  On the walk back to the House of Happy Walls I told Maribeth about freelance news cameraman Clifford Welch’s request to visit and shoot some tape of her around the apartment. Bobbie turned to give me the same grin she had flashed when I told her I was going to ask Maribeth to go up in an airplane.

  “Peter, you’ve got to be kidding,” Maribeth told me.

  “Think it over,” I suggested. “Sooner or later the world’s going to learn you’re the one who put the sheriff onto the burial site. There’s going to be a great deal of interest in you. If Welch had tape ready to provide the others it could save you a lot of hassle.”

  “No, sir. I can’t do that. It’s completely contrary to the way I do my business.”

  “This isn’t business. This is mass murder. The whole country is beginning to follow what’s going on here. There is just no way you’ll be able to keep out of it.”

  “Well I’m certainly going to try to keep out of it.”

  We walked in silence for a few paces. I turned to Rachel. “What do you think of the suggestion?”

  The detective shrugged. “I think there’s something to say for both sides. It is getting a lot of attention. And I guess if I were one of your normal, self-professed psychics, I’d jump at the chance to get all the free publicity I could.”

  “And that’s exactly it,” Maribeth told us. “Peter, I have clients, not just one or two oddballs, but several very conservative, very pragmatic clients who are formidable figures in their respective professions, and they come to me only because I keep a very low profile.”

  “Almost nonexistent,” Bobbie said quietly.

  “That’s right,” said Maribeth, “and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know some of the practicing psychics you see on talk shows, or read about in the newspaper, crave the publicity and thrive on the kooks it brings out of the walls because of it. But I don’t. I have a very deliberate policy about who knows about me and who I try to help. These clients I mentioned, good Lord, if people connected them with the likes of me it could ruin their careers. There are just an awful lot of nonbelievers out there, Peter. I don’t even know that you’re convinced yourself, but that’s okay because I think we trust each other no matter what. But I’m just not going to jeopardize the reputations of my clients. And I think if I go public it would scare away some of the people I do my best work for.”

  “What sort of clients do you have?” Rachel asked her.

  Maribeth walked along in silence for a moment. “Two of them are physicians. One is an internist, the other a general practitioner. After I’d worked with one of them quite successfully, he recommended me to the other.”

  “What do you do for them?” Rachel persisted.

  “I make suggestions.”

  “To do with their work?”

  “Yes, to do with their work. I’ve never had any medical training, but I have a working knowledge of the human body. And sometimes, when there is a problem diagnosing what’s troubling a patient, we just talk about it. And sometimes I get a hunch about what maybe they should look for.” She smiled across at the woman detective. “You could call it woman’s intuition if you wish. In fact, you could attribute all my work to woman’s intuition.”

  “I’ve never had much of that,” Rachel complained.

  “Well, maybe you have but just haven’t come to recognize it for what it is yet. And when I’m working, I feel sometimes as if it’s just a very finely tuned extension of woman’s intuition at work. And it does seem to work. For the medical people. And for other people who run various sorts of business. And no, I don’t know any more about the corporate world or the stock market than I do about medicine. But when these people come to me with a problem, or a decision to make, I very often seem able to guide them in the right direction. Often enough so that these people feel I’m a worthwhile investment of their time and money.

  “But discretion,” she continued, looking up at me. “That is at the heart of things about these people.”

  “Okay, Maribeth. I’ll tell Mr. Welch you said no, and we’ll just take our chances with the rest of the news-gathering tribe.”

  At the end of the trail outside park headquarters a deputy at the doorway hailed Rachel. She excused herself and joined the deputy for a moment’s conversation. Partway through it the two of them turned to look down at Maribeth, Bobbie and myself. I didn’t like to see people do that. It usually meant trouble. And sure enough, when Rachel returned to drive us back over to our car in the other parking lot she had a sheepish expression on her face.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Somebody back at the office told Pershing about Maribeth. He’s anxious to meet her. He wants her over at the Hall of Justice in Santa Rosa.”

  “Who is Pershing?” Maribeth asked.

  “Somebody from Sacramento,” Rachel told her. “He’s sort of in charge of this investigation, as of this morning.”

  “Another policeman? Or sheriff’s person?”

  “Not exactly,” Rachel said, looking away.

  “He’s a politician out of the governor’s office,” I told her. “He hasn’t made himself too popular with Rachel here or the other people who’ve been doing the work. But they have to cooperate, or at least they have to appear to.”

  “Why do I have to talk to some stranger?” Maribeth asked Rachel. “I’ve told everything I know to Peter. And I trust he’s told it all to you people. I like you well enough, Rachel, but I just don’t want to have to talk to a lot of strangers about it.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Rachel with a shrug.

  “Does she have to, do you think?” I asked her. “Does she really have to?”

  Rachel made a little face and held her hands palms up. “I was told that when we were through here, I was to bring her in. Those were the words that were given me.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” said Bobbie.

  Maribeth had a pained look. “Peter?”

  “We’d better go see what the man wants. If we don’t it’ll only make things tougher for the people conducting the investigation.”

  Rachel cleared her throat. “I don’t know how much he’ll like the idea of having you with her, Bragg.”

  “Well it’s an idea he’ll have to get used to. Maribeth isn’t going in there on her own.”

  “Yea team,” Bobbie said quietly.

  Pershing had set himself up in an office across the big activities room from Sergeant Smith’s. He was a man of medium height and build who had a tendency to hunch his shoulders while talking across a desk. He had sandy hair combed straight back on his head and a whisper of a mustache.

  The deputy who had conducted us back there from the front counter poked her head into Pershing’s office and said something, then turned and gestured for Maribeth to enter. But I stepped ahead of her and went in first. Bobbie brought up the rear and Pershing popped to his feet.

  “Who are you people?” he demanded.

  “My name is Bragg. I’m a priv
ate investigator. This woman, Maribeth Robbins, is my client. The young woman is her niece, Bobbie.”

  “Well you and the niece clear out. It’s this woman I want to speak with.”

  “What about?”

  It took a few seconds for him to put his words together. “What about? I’m in charge of a multiple murder investigation. This woman, I understand, told us where to look to find the bodies. What in hell do you think I want to talk to her about? Now get out of here! You and the girl both.”

  “No way.”

  I’ll admit I have a streak of the theatrical in me. It’s something I had picked up covering the courts and attending press conferences and listening to police brass and lawyers and observing dozens of entertainers, politicians, bureaucrats and assorted puffballs during my newspaper career.

  So by now I had a way of moving and looking and talking when I chose to do so that could help put me in charge of a situation. This was one of those times. I moved a chair that was next to Pershing’s desk back away a comfortable distance and gestured for Maribeth to sit in it.

  “We’re sort of a team,” I told Pershing. “The three of us have been trying to get through this thing together since the beginning, almost.”

  I put a chair beside Maribeth for Bobbie to sit in, then dragged up a third to just in front of the desk and sat down in it, leaning forward.

  “I was the first person Mrs. Robbins got in touch with about all this. Acting in a responsible manner, I relayed the information she had been able to give me to Sergeant Smith. The sergeant was professional enough to not laugh me out of his office, but he asked if I could get a little more information about what everybody should be looking for. So I drove back down to the city to see Mrs. Robbins again, and she in turn endured a painful, solitary session of meditation trying to get a better sense of where these bodies might be buried. From what she told us after that, we ultimately were able to find them.”

  Pershing started to say something but I held up a hand that stopped him.

  “This has been a very trying experience for Mrs. Robbins. She wants to avoid publicity. She would prefer that nobody outside of Sergeant Smith and a couple of his detectives know anything about her role in all this. Part of my job is to try to make the ordeal less painful for her. She can’t give you any more information than she already has. She didn’t want to come here to see you. It was only in the spirit of cooperation with the sheriff’s office that she agreed to do it. So at this stage I don’t think it’s out of line for her niece and me to be with her while you say whatever it is you have to say.”

  Pershing thought about it briefly, staring at us over his steepled hands.

  “All right, Mr. Bragg. This is what I have to say. I have been given an enormous responsibility by the governor of this state to oversee the investigation of a heinous series of crimes. I am not a law enforcement officer, as such. I am more a technical administrator. The governor and I both have the utmost confidence in the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, but in this very special instance, the governor wanted somebody on the scene to make absolutely certain that nothing was overlooked that shouldn’t be overlooked.

  “And lo and behold,” he said softly, getting out of his chair and leaning forward. “Lo and behold. This morning, my first day on the job, I discovered there was something being overlooked. And that something was this woman sitting here in front of me who claims to be a psychic. Well, I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Bragg. It doesn’t wash with me. I don’t know if such a thing as a psychic even exists, and I don’t care. I happen to be one of the ones who feel they have no place in a criminal investigation. No psychics, no fortune tellers, no tarot cards or ESP or any of that. So I don’t see a psychic sitting here. I just see a woman who knew where a large number of murder victims were buried, and I want her to tell me how she knew it.”

  Maribeth’s head drooped.

  “Can you believe this shit?” Bobbie asked of nobody in particular.

  “Let’s back up a minute,” I suggested easily.

  “No, we’re not going to back up a minute, Mr. Bragg, and if you keep butting in where you aren’t wanted, I’ll begin proceedings to have your ticket pulled.”

  I laughed out loud. “There you’ve gone and done it, Pershing, put the fear of God in my heart. Maybe you’d better make the point you want to make, so we can get out of here.”

  Pershing just stared at me, then took a turn around the desk to regain his control before sitting down again. “Something you people had better understand. This could turn out to be the most serious thing any of you ever were involved in. This isn’t just a series of deliberate homicides any longer. This is a double-barreled death machine.”

  He waited until he was sure he had our attention. “That boy they dug up? Little Donald McGuire?”

  I nodded. “The fireman’s son.”

  “That’s right, the fireman’s son. And the fireman’s wife’s son. Well it seems that sometime in the middle of last night the fireman’s wife went out into a closed garage and started their car engine and sat in that car until she was found dead this morning by her husband. A note she left said she couldn’t endure what happened to Donald. Her precise words. Couldn’t endure.”

  He got up from behind the desk again and turned to stare at a blank wall. “That’s why I might seem a little angry and crude with you people. That’s why the governor wanted me on the scene to make sure there were no slip-ups. And that,” he said, turning back to us, “is why I want Mrs. Robbins to tell me how she knew where to find the bodies.”

  “Mrs. Robbins didn’t know where to find the bodies.”

  “What?”

  “Mrs. Robbins just gave us the best description she could provide of what the surrounding territory might look like. Sergeant Smith wanted her to take part in an aerial search but she couldn’t bring herself to do that.

  “So I volunteered to go in her place, with the information she provided me, but I wasn’t the one who found the bodies, either. A pilot friend of mine finally put together what Mrs. Robbins had told us, and thought to look in the general area of Jack London State Park. But Jack London State Park is sprawled out across eight hundred acres. So you couldn’t even say it was my pilot friend who found the bodies.

  “The person who spotted the exact site, or one of them, was another friend of the pilot who was along for the ride. His name is Harvey Draper. He’s a forensic anthropologist and a deputy coroner from San Francisco. He’s done a lot of this sort of work. He’s in charge of the body recovery operation going on over at the park right now. From up in the plane he spotted a likely place to look for them. Because of the contour of the land there, he said later that it would have been extremely unlikely a person at ground level could have recognized the site for what it was. Anyway, Harvey is the one who found your bodies.”

  Pershing gaped. Apparently nobody had gotten around yet to telling him about Harvey. He crossed the office and pulled open the door. “Wait here,” he told us.

  I got up and crossed to the open door. Pershing was headed for Smith’s office. I turned back in time to see Maribeth’s crouched figure begin to tremble. Her face was buried in her hands and she was crying.

  “This is barbaric,” Bobbie said. She was standing beside Maribeth. “Can’t we get out of here?”

  “I’d say it’s about time,” I agreed.

  Maribeth was getting to her feet when Rachel Goodwin came to the doorway. “I’m taking Maribeth back home,” I told her. “She’s ready to come apart.”

  Rachel nodded. “Okay, but you’ve got a bunch of newspeople waiting out front for you.”

  “What are they doing here?”

  “Somebody called them. Apparently somebody told them Maribeth was being brought in for questioning by Pershing. Maybe he called them himself.”

  “Is there another way out of here?”

  “Sure. I’ll show the women. Why don’t you go into Smitty’s office and tell Pershing you’re leaving. What was it like in there?
”

  “Pretty bad. He’s blowing a lot of smoke.”

  “Tell me about it.” She took Maribeth’s arm and led her and Bobbie to the back exit. I waited a few moments then crossed to Smith’s office. There was a sound of angry voices from in there. They stopped when I entered. Smith and Pershing were the only two in the office.

  “My client’s about an inch away from having a nervous breakdown. I’m getting her out of here. Does anybody know who summoned the newspeople out front?”

  Smith looked at me with a puzzled frown.

  “I’m holding a photo opportunity for them in a few minutes,” Pershing said.

  The sergeant was jiggling a pencil in his hand. Right then he threw it down on his desk so hard that it bounced across the room. He stalked past Pershing and me and went out of the office without another word. I turned and headed for the back door and parking lot.

  TWELVE

  I dropped off Bobbie and Maribeth in front of their apartment building. During the drive back from Sonoma County Maribeth had made a game effort to control her emotions, but she rambled on some about her field of endeavor.

  She said that if her extraordinary gift was going to lead her down these dark streets, the discovery of dead bodies and the resulting suicide of a young mother, she would rather toss it all up and get out of the business. She talked about canceling her schedule for the next week or so and maybe taking a trip somewhere to think about things. One thing she would have to determine, she said, more to herself than to us, was whether extrasensory perception was something one could just cast aside, like a coat that doesn’t fit any longer. Or was it something a person had to carry to the grave with them?

  Bobbie was sitting in back. She and I had exchanged more than one uneasy glance in the rearview mirror during all this.