Pity Him Afterwards

The summer residents were, to begin with, wealthy. Cartier Isle was no middle-class vacation spot. There were no cottages for rent anywhere around Black Lake, no tourist cabins, no boat-rental agencies. Black Lake had become fashionable as a summer resort in the early twenties, when the first of the big lake-front estates were built, and it had never lost either its popularity or its wealthy atmosphere. The lake was ringed by the estates, big country homes surrounded by parks and tamed woods, fronting on private beaches, enclosed by high fencing, protected by uniformed guards driving black Mercurys or Buicks.

And the whole thing was within Sondgard’s jurisdiction. As a result of political maneuvering in the twenties, the entire frontage all around the lake was included within the official Cartier Isle town boundaries. The early estate owners had urged the move, so the town could then zone the area to keep the rabble out, and the town fathers had approved the idea because they could then tax the estates. Because the town kept its tax bite modest, and because the estate owners usually refrained from interfering with local affairs, the arrangement worked out to the satisfaction of both sides.

But it still made life more complicated for Captain Eric Sondgard. This killing, now, out at the summer theater. If the town had a sensible perimeter, the killing would have taken place seven miles outside town, and would have been either a county or state affair. State most likely, since the county organization was a petrified political fossil, with a sheriff who lived thirty miles away down the mountain in Monetta, and who hadn’t left the town of Monetta in thirty years.

Even without this killing, there were complications enough. Circle South and Circle North, being the two halves of the road around the lake, had to be patrolled by the town police. The one or two drownings in the lake every summer were a town affair, though state dredging equipment was used to search for the bodies. Every bus into town was met either by Mike Tompkins or by Sondgard himself, and cheaper-looking cars with out-of-state license plates were watched carefully, and the town’s one motel was under constant surveillance, because all that money out around the lake inevitably drew thieves. Suspicious-looking types who could prove no legitimate reason for being in town were sent packing, with a warning not to come back.

And there was occasional trouble from the estates themselves. Four summers ago, a jumpy private guard with an itchy trigger finger had fired three shots into a car moving on one of the private roads, thinking it contained burglars. Later, he swore he’d called at the driver of the car to stop, and had fired only when the driver had ignored him. But the car had contained a pair of college kids, employed for the summer at Black Lake Lounge out by the summer theater, off looking for a secluded place to neck, and not realizing this was a private road. When a uniformed man had shouted at them, the boy had panicked and had kept going, trying to drive away from there. One of the bullets fired at the car struck the boy in the head, killing him instantly.

So there were complicated times in the job, and messy times. But all in all Sondgard was satisfied. The work was a pleasant contrast to the sedentary indoor life he spent the rest of the year, and it kept him busy, kept him from brooding about himself. If it weren’t for the nagging of Joyce Raven-field...

But that was another subject entirely. Shying away from it, Sondgard forced himself to concentrate on what the radio was saying. The radio said, “Extra margin because...” and while Captain Sondgard drove, Professor Sondgard winced.

The flame-red of the summer theater shone through the trees long before he’d come around the last curve and turned off on the gravel parking lot. Just ahead, across the road on the lake side, was the Black Lake Lounge, the only commercial property anywhere along the lake frontage. There was an extensive gambling setup on the second floor of the Lounge, and everyone knew it, but Sondgard also knew he wasn’t supposed to do anything about it. His conscience wasn’t particularly troubled, nor was his integrity very outraged; no paupers were cleaned of their last pfennigs upstairs in the Black Lake Lounge. It was a rich man’s game up there, and no credit was given any player, so it was essentially harmless. The only police business that ever came out of the Lounge was the occasional drunken driver.

Sondgard parked the Volvo in front of the theater, seeing the shiny blue-and-white prowl car already there. So Mike Tompkins already had arrived.

Sondgard went into the theater first, and saw Mary Ann McKendrick behind the ticket window. She looked frightened, and her eyes were puffy, as though she’d been crying. She said, “Next door, Mr. Sondgard. In the house.”

“Thanks.”