Eleventh Hour

  “Not bad time,” Dane said. “Considering.”

  “Considering what?” Sherlock said.

  “Considering that it’s LA and there are more cars per square foot here than any place in the country,” Dane said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stories Michael used to tell me when he was just out of the seminary, living in a parish in East LA. I’ll never forget how he’d say that—” Dane’s voice fell off. His jaw tightened and he seamed his mouth together. Control, Nick thought, looking at him, keeping control was very important to him.

  Savich said easily, “Gil Rainy was telling Sherlock and me that sometimes it takes him a good hour just to commute into the field office, and he only lives four miles away. Of course, Washington, D.C., ain’t no picnic either, is it, Dane?”

  Dane just nodded, not ready to speak yet.

  “How about where you’re from, Nick? Bad traffic?”

  “No,” Nick said. “Not bad at all.”

  “And you’re Dr. Nick, a Ph.D. in medieval history. Do you teach college?”

  Nick said, “Yes, I do.”

  “Ah. I thought college campuses were usually all jammed up with all sorts of gnarly traffic,” Sherlock said.

  “I guess it depends on the campus,” Nick said, then turned to look out the window. Dane saw that her hands were stiffly clasped in her lap.

  They parked in the small lot and walked to the entrance of the Lakeview Home for Retired Police Officers, founded in 1964.

  They were met by Delion, Flynn, and Gil Rainy, all wearing buttoned-up sport coats but still looking a bit chilly.

  Flynn said, “No sign of him. Gil’s got two agents posted out of sight at the turnoff. They’ll call when he shows so we can be ready.”

  Dane said, “Anyone speak to Captain DeLoach?”

  “No,” Gil said. “A heavy woman with a mustache named Velvet Weaver said that Nurse Carla told her that he wasn’t with it today, he was just sitting in his chair drumming his fingers on the wheels, humming to himself.”

  “I’d like to see him,” Dane said.

  “Go,” said Savich.

  As Dane and Nick walked down the long corridor, they heard laughter, lots of it. The laughter was coming from old voices, and sounded wonderful. They paused at the doorway to a big recreation room where there were several televisions, a quality Brunswick pool table, card tables, and a small library section with bookshelves loaded with paperbacks.

  There was a pool competition under way, and half a dozen people were seated around, taking sides, cheering or booing. Mainly they seemed to be laughing because both players—an elderly woman in a loose-fitting loud print dress, and an old codger in gray flannel slacks and a Harry Potter T-shirt, high-tops on his feet—were dead serious about the game, only they weren’t very good. Dane smiled and said to Nick, “You think maybe we’ll want to come here someday?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t play pool all that well.”

  They walked past the rec room and down another fifteen yards to Captain DeLoach’s room.

  She hadn’t laughed much in the past month, she thought.

  The door was closed. Dane tapped lightly and called out, “Captain DeLoach?”

  There was no answer from inside.

  Dane called out more loudly, “Captain DeLoach? It’s Agent Dane Carver here to speak to you again.”

  Dane opened the door, careful to keep Nick behind him, which was really stupid, she thought, what with his left arm in a sling.

  The room was empty.

  Dane breathed out real slow. “Right. Let’s go see if he’s one of the cheerleaders back in the rec room.”

  They found Captain DeLoach literally holding the eight ball, the old guy in the Harry Potter T-shirt trying to get it away from him.

  Captain DeLoach was yelling, “Come on, Mortie, you lost to Daisy. She beat you fair and square. You can’t throw the eight ball at her or I’ll have to arrest you!”

  “She deserves to eat it,” an old woman yelled, and thumped her cane on the floor.

  Dane realized then that at least a third of the old people were women. They were retired police officers? He didn’t think things were so enlightened in law enforcement forty years ago.

  Mortie wasn’t happy, but he fell back, obviously still fuming. At that moment, Captain DeLoach tossed him the black eight ball, laughed, and said, “Make her eat it if you want to.”

  “Just let him try it,” Daisy yelled, shaking her fist at Mortie.

  “Excellent,” Dane said. “Carla was wrong. Captain DeLoach isn’t out to lunch. Looks like he’s with us today, thank God.”

  In another minute, they had Captain DeLoach off to the side.

  “Do you remember me, sir?”

  Captain DeLoach looked Dane up and down, stared at his left arm in its blue sling, then very slowly raised his arm and saluted him.

  Dane saluted back. He smiled at the old man.

  “I’ve got a gun,” Captain DeLoach said.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, Special Agent, I do.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Don’t want anyone to know, might scare ’em. I bribed Velvet to buy it for me. I told her no one could prove that I wasn’t attacked, and as a senior law enforcement officer I should be armed. It’s even registered in her name. It’s a twenty-five-caliber Beretta. Eight rounds in the clip and one in the chamber. All I have to do is pull back the hammer and I can kill anyone in the blink of an eye.” He pulled his hand from his pocket and in his arthritic old palm was the elegant small black automatic pistol.

  “How long have you had the gun, sir?”

  “Velvet got it for me yesterday. I didn’t want my son coming back to try to kill me again.”

  “We heard that he called yesterday, said he was coming to see you in just a little while. We want to meet Weldon. Why don’t you let me deal with him, Captain? I doubt you’ll have to shoot him.”

  “Will you shoot the little cocksucker for me then?”

  “Maybe,” Dane said. “Just maybe I will. Why is it that he wants to kill you, sir?”

  The old man just shook his head, stared down at his arthritic fingers.

  “Captain DeLoach,” Nick said, “how old is your son?”

  Captain DeLoach looked over at the pool match, then down at his hands and said finally, looking up at Dane, “He’s so young he’s barely on this earth, but the thing is, Special Agent, he just won’t stop trying to keep me quiet. It pisses me off, you know?”

  Captain DeLoach looked toward Daisy, who was cheering because she’d just made the three ball in the corner pocket. “They’ve started another game. Old Mortie doesn’t have a chance. Do you know that he was once a police commissioner in Stockton? Daisy was married forty years to a desk sergeant from Seattle who died the day after their anniversary, fell over with a massive heart attack. She’s got spunk.” He thought a moment, then said, “You know, if Daisy weren’t so old, I just might be interested.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, sir,” Dane said. “I’d guess she’s all of seventy-five.”

  “More like seventy-seven,” Captain DeLoach said. He slipped the small Beretta into the pocket of his jacket. He was wearing the sports jacket over his blue pajama tops. “I’ll bet she was hot when she was younger.”

  “Maybe so,” Dane said, and thought of his own grandmother, who’d died some years before.

  Suddenly, Captain DeLoach said in a soft, singsong voice, “I can feel him. He’s near now. Yes, very close and coming closer. I always could tell when he was near. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “Your son Weldon, Captain DeLoach, when exactly was he born? What year?”

  “The year of the rat, yes, that was it. I really got a good laugh out of that. A rat.” The old man threw back his head and laughed out loud. The pool match stopped. Slowly, all the old folks began turning to look at Captain DeLoach laughing his head off. “Or maybe,” he said finally, wheezing deep in his chest, “it was the horse, yes, that was it. The year of the horse.”
br />   Daisy called out, “Hey, tell us the joke.”

  Captain DeLoach’s head fell forward and he gave a soft snore.

  Dane started to shake the old man, then drew back his hand. “I should take that gun,” he said to Nick. “I really should.”

  “I’ll bet you that Velvet would just buy him another one.”

  Dane nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go wait with Sherlock and Savich.”

  An hour later there was still no sign of Weldon DeLoach. Everyone stayed at their stations until it was dark. Then Detective Flynn and Gil Rainy called everyone in.

  Sherlock said, “All a hoax. A distraction, to get us all focused on Captain DeLoach and away from him.”

  Gil Rainy said, “You feeling okay, Dane? You look better today than you did yesterday.”

  Dane just nodded. “Arm feels better. All I am is depressed. Captain DeLoach seemed fine, then he was laughing so hard I thought he’d choke on his own breath, then he was just gone, asleep, making light little snores like women make.”

  “I don’t snore,” Nick said. “You’ve slept close enough to me to know I don’t snore.”

  Everyone turned to stare at her.

  “Bite me,” Nick said to everyone in general, and stalked off to the Taurus.

  The phone rang in Dane’s Holiday Inn room at ten o’clock that night.

  “Yeah?”

  “Dane, Savich here. Captain DeLoach—no, don’t worry, he isn’t dead, but he fired a gun at someone. Maybe it was Weldon, but nobody knows. When the staff got into Captain DeLoach’s room, he was on the floor, unconscious, the gun beside him, and there was a big hole in the wall just behind that small sofa. The glass sliding doors weren’t locked but they usually aren’t, so that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  “Is Captain DeLoach going to make it?” Dane asked.

  “I think so,” Savich said. “I couldn’t get exact information about his condition, only just what I told you. The people there are on top of it. We’ll go out there tomorrow.”

  “What about the two cops Detective Flynn had out there covering Captain DeLoach’s room?”

  “They didn’t see a thing. Didn’t hear a thing until the shot.”

  Dane cursed again, real low so Savich wouldn’t hear him. “He’s our only lead, Savich.”

  “Maybe not. Now, get a good night’s sleep. Sherlock says to tell you that tomorrow you’ll be ready to rock and roll again.”

  Dane grunted into his cell phone, laid it on the bedside table, looked over at Nick, and told her what had happened.

  “I’ve decided,” Nick said slowly as she handed Dane two pills and a glass of water, “that Weldon DeLoach doesn’t exist. Maybe he’s just a name Hollywood made up, someone they’ve all created for us like some huge Hollywood production, an epic that pits reality against art, and reality loses. You know, lots of money, all big stars, lots of hoopla, a cast of thousands, murder and mayhem.”

  “You know,” he said once he’d swallowed the pills, “that’s something to think about.”

  “No,” she said, “it isn’t. I’m just talking, all blah, blah. I guess I’m just really tired, Dane.”

  She turned off the overhead light in his room and went through the adjoining door into her own.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  BEAR LAKE

  “The doctor told me it wasn’t an accident,” Mr. Latterley said, looking distressed. His bald pointed head, Nick saw, was shiny with sweat. It was obvious he’d never had to deal with anything like this before.

  “Evidently Captain DeLoach was struck just above his left temple. The doctor said that the wound wasn’t consistent with his simply falling out of his chair. I’ve reported this to our local police and they’ve been interviewing everyone, but so far, we have very little. Every time they try to interview Captain DeLoach, he starts cackling like he’s some old crackpot, shouts that he’ll win and surprise everybody, but that’s it. Over and over, that’s all he says. I don’t think he wants to talk to them. He won’t give them the time of day.”

  Dane said, “We’ll have two round-the-clock guards on him now.”

  “That’s good. This is all very disturbing, Agent Carver. Violence at Lakeview. Not at all good for business.” He shook his head. “And your suspect is his own son. I must say, Weldon DeLoach has always appeared to be a very nice man. Every time I have spoken to him, he’s been solicitous of his father, very caring, always paid any and all charges on time. I’ve e-mailed him and spoken to him on the phone countless times over the years.”

  Dane handed Mr. Latterley a photo. “Is this Weldon DeLoach?”

  Mr. Latterley looked down at the grainy black-and-white photo that they’d had shot off the VCR reel. He didn’t say anything for a very long time. Finally, he raised his head, and he was frowning. “That’s Weldon. Bad photo, but yes, Agent Carver. You know, it’s entirely possible that it wasn’t Weldon who was here today. In fact, I simply can’t accept that it could have been him. He takes too good care of his father to want to hurt him.”

  “All right. If not Weldon, have you any idea who else it could be?” Dane asked.

  Mr. Latterley reluctantly shook his head. “No, no one else visits him, at least I’ve never seen anyone else. We do have security here, but I suppose some criminal from Captain DeLoach’s past could have gotten in.”

  “It would have to be a criminal with a very long memory,” Dane said. He rose. “I want to speak to Daisy.”

  They found Daisy in the rec room, this time reading a very old Time magazine, chortling about Monica’s semenstained blue dress and how the president was dancing around that blow. “A hoot, that’s what it was,” Daisy said. “He wanted history to judge him as a great president”—she laughed some more—“now he’ll be known as the moron who couldn’t keep his pants zipped.”

  Daisy was wearing a different loose housedress today, sandals, her toenails painted a bright coral that matched her lipstick.

  “I’m Special Agent Dane Carver and this is Ms. Jones.” Dane showed her his FBI shield.

  “I remember you two. You were here yesterday. I’m Daisy Griffith,” she said, and grinned up at the two of them, a full complement of white teeth in her mouth. Nick believed they were hers. “Now, you’re here because of poor old Ellison. Knocked himself out again, didn’t he? Never did have a good sense of balance, did Elly. Always hurling himself about in that chair of his whenever he gets excited. Of course, he’s old as dirt—hmmm, maybe even older.” Daisy paused a moment, tapped her fingertips on a photo of Clinton shaking his finger at the media, and said, “I heard some of the nurses talking; they claimed it wasn’t an accident, that his son tried to knock him off. Is that true?”

  “We don’t know,” Dane said. “Have you ever met Weldon DeLoach?”

  “Oh yes, nice boy. Polite and attentive, not just to Elly, but to all of us.” She paused a moment, sighed. “Elly talks about him a lot, says he’s real talented, with lots of imagination, a good writer. He’s a Hollywood type, you know.”

  “Yes, we know. Did Captain DeLoach ever speak to you about his son, other than what he did for a living?”

  “Well, sure. Elly said he was just too old when Weldon was born, that Weldon had been a big accident. The boy had needed a younger man to raise him, and then his mother up and died on the two of them. Here he was, an older cop, and he had a little kid to raise.

  “Just last week I think it was, he said his boy hadn’t turned out the way he would have liked, but what could he do? He said he was tempted, particularly now, to let everyone know what the real truth was. He said it would scare the hell out of me. I asked him what he meant by that, and he just threatened to throw a billiard ball at me. Mortie thought that was real funny, the old buzzard.”

  The old buzzard, Mortie, was scratching his forearms incessantly. He said, yes, of course he’d spoken to Weldon over the years. “Oh sure, Elly talked about him sometimes, but I got the idea there was no love lost between the two of them. Did you kno
w that Elly used to be a wicked pool player? Then his hands started shaking and the arthritis got him.” Mortie shook his head and scratched his forearms again.

  “Would you like a pool cue, sir?” Nick asked. She chalked a cue and then handed it to Mortie. Mortie grinned and walked over to the pool table. He was hitting balls at a fine clip when Dane and Nick left the rec room.

  “I thought it might keep him from scratching himself for a while,” Nick said. “What do we do now?”

  “Onward to Nurse Carla.”

  They found her at the nurses’ station, scanning a chart, whistling “Silent Night.” “Oh, yes,” she said, “all the staff know and like Weldon. He’s a very good son—considerate, kind, always visits his father. To think that he’d strike his father—nope, I just can’t believe that. It had to be an intruder.”

  “What does Weldon look like?” Dane asked.

  Carla Bender thought for a moment. “He’s real blond, practically white-haired, and he’s pale—like he doesn’t go outside enough. I joked with him about it once and he just laughed, said his skin was real sensitive and he didn’t want to get skin cancer. You know, Agent Carver, anything his father needed, Weldon always okayed it without hesitation. Good son. I just won’t believe that he struck his own father down.”

  “I don’t think so either,” Velvet Weaver said as she came out of a bathroom down the hall. “Weldon’s really nice, soft-spoken, and I’ve never seen him as being remotely capable of any violence. And what could the old man possibly do to him to make him go into a rage and strike him?”

  Dane showed her Weldon’s photo.

  “Yep, that’s Weldon.”

  Nurse Carla agreed.

  They spoke to orderlies, to two janitors, to a group of gardeners. Everyone knew Weldon DeLoach, but no one had seen him anywhere around the time his father was struck.

  “I really wish that just one person had seen Weldon,” Dane said as he steered Nick back to their new rental car, a Pontiac compact. “Within a mile of this place, that would be close enough.” He sighed.