Goodbye California - Alistair [84]
‘Where did the call come from?’
‘Bakersfield.’
‘Odd.’
‘What?’
‘Hard by the White Wolf Fault where the earthquake was supposed to originate.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Education.’ Courtesy of the CalTech library, he’d learnt the fact only ten minutes previously. ‘Coincidence. Coin box, of course.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thanks. Be down soon.’
He returned to the house, rang Jeff – he’d nothing to say to his son that a phone-tapper would find of any interest – and told him to call round but to wear different clothes from those he had been wearing the previous night. While he was waiting he himself went and changed.
Jeff arrived, looked at his father’s usual crumpled clothes, looked at his own well-creased blue suit and said: ‘Well, no one could accuse you of entering the sartorial stakes. We meant to be in disguise?’
‘Sort of. For the same reason I’m going to call up Sergeant Parker on the way in and have him meet us at the FBI office. Delage says they may have something for us, by the way. No, we’re going to have the pleasure of interviewing a lady tonight, although I doubt whether she’ll regard it as such. Bettina Ivanhoe or Ivanov or whatever. She’ll recognize the clothes we were wearing last night, which is more than we can say about her. She won’t recognize our faces, but she would our voices, which is why I’m having Sergeant Parker briefed and having him do the talking for us.’
‘What happens if something occurs to you – even me – and we want Sergeant Parker to ask a particular question?’
‘That’s why we are going along – just in case that possibility arises. We’ll arrange a signal then she’ll be told that we have to go out and check something with the station by the car radiophone. Never fails to panic the conscience-stricken. Might even panic her into making a distress call to someone. Her phone’s bugged.’
‘Coppers are a lousy lot.’
Ryder glanced at him briefly and said nothing. He didn’t have to.
‘Let’s start with Carlton,’ Leroy said. ‘The security chief at the reactor plant in Illinois never got to know him well. Neither did any of the staff there – the ones that are left, that is. That was two years or so ago and a good number have moved on elsewhere. Secretive kind of lad, it would appear.’
‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Ryder said. ‘Nothing I like better than minding my own business – in off-duty hours, that is. But in his case? Who knows? Any leads?’
‘One, but it sounds more than fair. The security chief – name of Daimler – had traced his old landlady. She says Carlton and her son used to be very close, used to go away weekends quite a bit. Says she doesn’t know where they went. Daimler says it’s more likely that she didn’t care where they went. She’s well off – or was: her husband left her a good annuity but she takes in boarders because most of her money goes in gin and cards. Most of her time and interest, too, it would appear.’
‘Sensible husband.’
‘Probably died in self-defence. Daimler offered – he wasn’t too enthusiastic about the offer – to go and see her. I said thanks, we’d send one of our boys – an NFI card carries more weight. He’s going there this evening – boy still lives at home.
‘That’s all. Except for his mother’s comment about him – says he’s a religious nut and should be put away somewhere.’
‘It’s the maternal instinct. What else?’
‘LeWinter’s fancy codes. We’ve traced nearly all the telephone numbers – I think you’ve been told they were mainly Californian or Texan. Seem a respectable enough bunch – at least, preliminary enquiries haven’t turned up anything about the ones investigated so far – but on the face of it they would seem an odd lot for a senior judge like LeWinter to be associated with.’
‘I’ve got a lot of friends – well, friends and acquaintances – who aren’t cops,’ Jeff said. ‘But none of them, as