"I want to thank you, Ruth," I said and put my hand out. She put her hand in mine, warm and firm, and her eyes met mine and slid away and I thought she flushed a bit. I could not be certain.
"I'm glad to help you, Tal. You could—let me know if you think of more questions."
The opening was there, but it was too easy. I felt a compulsion to let her know how I felt. "I'd like to be with you again even if it's not about the book."
She pulled her hand away gently and faced me squarely, chin up. "I think I'd like that, too." She grinned again. "See? A complete lack of traditional female technique."
"I like that. I like it that way."
"We better not start sounding too intense, Tal."
"Intense? I don't know. I carried your picture a long time. It meant something. Now there's a transition. You mean something."
"Do you say things like that just so you can listen to yourself saying them?"
"Not this time."
"Call me," she said. She whirled and was gone. Just before she went in the door I remembered what I meant to ask her. I called to her and she stopped and I went up to her.
"Who should I talk to next about Timmy?"
She looked slightly disappointed. "Oh, try Mr. Leach. Head of the math department at the high school. He took quite an interest in Timmy. And he's a nice guy. Very sweet."
I drove back into town, full of the look of her, full of the impact of her. It was an impact that made the day, the trees, the city, all look more vivid. Her face was special and clear in my mind—the wide mouth, the one crooked tooth, the gray slant of her eyes. Her figure was good, shoulders just a bit too wide, hips just a shade too narrow to be classic. Her legs were long, with clean lines. Her flat back and the inswept lines of her waist were lovely. Her breasts were high and wide spaced, with a flavor of impertinence, almost arrogance. It was the coloring of her though that pleased me most. Dark red of the hair, gray of the eyes, golden skin tones.
It was nearly three when I left her place. I tried to put her out of my mind and think of the interview with Leach. Leach might be the link with Cindy.
I must have been a half mile from the Stamm place when I began to wonder if the Ford coupé behind me was the one I had seen beside Fitz's shed. I made two turns at random and it stayed behind me. There was no attempt at the traditional nuances of shadowing someone. He tagged along, a hundred feet behind me. I pulled over onto the shoulder and got out. I saw that it was Fitz in the car. He pulled beyond me and got out, too.
I marched up to him and said, "What the hell was the idea of going through my room."
He leaned on his car. "You have a nice gentle snore, Howard. Soothing."
"I could tell the police."
"Sure. Tell them all." He squinted in the afternoon sunlight. He looked lazy and amused.
"What good does it do you to follow me?"
"I don't know yet. Have a nice lunch with Ruthie? She's a nice little item. All the proper equipment. She didn't go for me at all. Maybe she likes the more helpless type. Maybe if you work it right you'll get a chance to take her to—"
He stopped abruptly, and his face changed. He looked beyond me. I turned just in time to see a dark blue sedan approaching at a high rate of speed. It sped by us and I caught a glimpse of a heavy balding man with a hard face behind the wheel, alone in the car. The car had out-of-state plates but it was gone before I could read the state.
I turned back to Fitz. "There's no point in following me around. I told you I don't know any more—" I stopped because there was no point in going on. He looked as though I had become invisible and inaudible. He brushed by me and got into his car and drove on. I watched it recede down the road. I got into my own car. The episode made no sense to me.
I shrugged it off my mind and began to think about Leach again.
Though the high-school kids had gone, the doors were unlocked and a janitor, sweeping green compound down the dark-red tiles of the corridor, told me I could probably find Mr. Leach in his office on the ground floor of the old building. The two buildings, new and old, were connected. Fire doors separated the frame building from the steel and concrete one. My steps echoed in the empty corridor with a metallic ring. A demure little girl came out of a classroom and closed the door behind her. She had a heavy armload of books. She looked as shy and gentle and timid as a puppy in a strange yard. She looked at me quickly and hurried on down the corridor ahead of me, moccasin soles slapping, meager horsetail bobbing, shoulders hunched.
I found the right door and tapped on it. A tired voice told me to come in. Leach was a smallish man with a harsh face, jet eyebrows, a gray brushcut. He sat at a table marking papers. His desk, behind him, was stacked with books and more papers.
"Something I can do for you?"
"My name is Tal Howard. I want to talk to you about a student you used to have."
He shook hands without enthusiasm. "An ex-student who is in trouble?"
"No. It's—"
"I'm refreshed. Not in trouble? Fancy that. The faculty has many callers. Federal narcotics people. Parole people. Prison officials. County police. Lawyers. Sometimes it seems that we turn out nothing but criminals of all dimensions. I interrupted you."
"I don't want to impose on you. I can see how busy you are. I'm gathering material about Timmy Warden. Ruth Stamm suggested I talk to you."
He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. "Timmy Warden. Gathering material. That has the sound of a book. Was he allowed to live long enough to give you enough material?"
"Timmy and some others. They all died there in the camp. I was there, too. I almost died, but not quite."
"Sit down. I'm perfectly willing to talk about him. I take it you're not a professional."
"No, sir."
"Then this, as a labor of love, should be treated with all respect. Ruth knows as much about Timmy as any person alive, I should say."
"She told me a lot. And I got a lot from Timmy. But I need more. She said you were interested in him."
"I was. Mr. Howard, you have probably heard of cretins who can multiply two five digit numbers mentally and give the answer almost instantaneously."
"Yes, but—"
"I know. I know. Timmy was no cretin. He was a very normal young man. Almost abnormally normal if you sense what I mean. Yet he had a spark. Creative mathematics. He could sense the—the rhythm behind numbers. He devised unique short cuts in the solution of traditional class problems. He had that rare talent, the ability to grasp intricate relationships and see them in pure simple form. But there was no drive, no dedication. Without dedication, Mr. Howard, such ability is merely facility, an empty cleverness. I hoped to be a mathematician. I teach mathematics in a high school. Merely because I did not have enough of what Timmy Warden was born with. I hoped that one day he would acquire the dedication. But he never had time."
"I guess he didn't."
"Even if he had the time I doubt if he would have gone any further. He was a very good, decent young man. Everything was too easy for him."
"It wasn't easy at the end."
"I don't imagine it was. Nor easy for hundreds of millions of his contemporaries anywhere in the world. This is a bad century, Mr. Howard. Bad for the young. Bad for most of us."
"What do you think would have become of him if he'd lived, Mr. Leach?"
The man shrugged. "Nothing exceptional. Marriage, work, children. And death. No contribution. His name gone as if it never existed. One of the faceless ones. Like us, Mr. Howard." He rubbed his eyes again, then smiled wanly. "I'm not usually so depressing, Mr. Howard. This has been a bad week. This is one of the weeks that add to my conviction that something is eating our young. This week the children have seemed more sullen, dangerous, dispirited, inane, vicious, foolish, and impossible than usual. This week a young sophomore in one of my classes went into the hospital with septicemia as the result of a self-inflicted abortion. And a rather pleasant boy was slashed. And last Monday two seniors died in a head-on collision while on their way back from Redding, full of liquor. The man in the other car is not expected to recover. When Timmy was here in school I was crying doom. But it was not like it is now. By comparison, those were the good old days, recent as they are."
"Was Timmy a disciplinary problem?"
"No. He was lazy. Sometimes he created disturbances. On the whole he was co-operative. I used to hope Ruth would be the one to wake him up. She's a solid person. Too good for him, perhaps."
"I guess he was pretty popular with the girls."
"Very. As with nearly everything else, things were too easy for him."
"He mentioned some of them in camp. Judy, Ruth, Cindy."
"I couldn't be expected to identify them. If I remember correctly, I once had eight Judys in one class. Now that name, thank God, is beginning to die out a little. There have never been too many Cindys. Yet there has been a small, constant supply."
"I want to have a chance to talk to the girls he mentioned. I've talked to Ruth. Judy has moved away. I can't remember Cindy's last name. I wonder if there is any way I could get a look at the list of students in hopes of identifying her."
"I guess you could," he said. "The administration office will be empty by now. You could ask them Monday. Let me see. Timmy graduated in forty-six. I keep old yearbooks here. They're over there on that bottom shelf. You could take the ones for that year and the next two years and look them over, there by the window if you like. I have to get on with these papers. And I really can't tell you much more about Timmy. I liked him and had hopes for him. But he lacked motivation. That seems to be the trouble with too many of the children lately. No motivation. They see no goal worth working for. They no longer have any dreams. They are content with the manufactured dreams of N.B.C. and Columbia."
I sat by the windows and went through the yearbooks. There was no Cindy in the yearbook for '46. There was one in the '47 yearbook. I knew when I saw her picture that she could not be the one. She was a great fat girl with small, pinched, discontented features, sullen, rebellious little eyes. There was a Cindy in the '48 yearbook. She had a narrow face, protruding teeth, weak eyes behind heavy lenses, an expression of overwhelming stupidity. Yet I marked down their names. It would be worth a try, I thought.
I went back to the '46 yearbook and went through page after page of graduates more thoroughly. I came to a girl named Cynthia Cooper. She was a reasonably attractive snub-nosed blonde. I wondered if Timmy could possibly have said Cynthy. It would be an awkward nickname for Cynthia. And even though his voice by that time had been weak and blurred, I was certain he had said Cindy. He had repeated the name. But I wrote her down, too.
Ruth Stamm's yearbook picture was not very good. But the promise of her, the clear hint of what she would become, was there in her face. Her activities, listed under the picture, made a long list. It was the same with Timmy. He grinned into the camera.
Mr. Leach looked up at me when I stood near his table. "Any luck?"
"I took down some names. They might help."
I thanked him for his help. He was bent over his papers again before I got to the door. Odd little guy, with his own strange brand of dedication and concern. Pompous little man, but with an under-current of kindness.
I got to the Hillston Inn at a little after five. I got some dimes from the cashier and went over to where four phone booths stood flanked against the lobby wall. I looked up the last name of the fat girl, Cindy Waskowitz. There were two Waskowitzes in the book. John W. and P. C. I tried John first. A woman with a nasal voice answered the phone.
"I'm trying to locate a girl named Cindy Waskowitz who graduated from Hillston High in nineteen forty-seven. Is this her home?"
"Hold it a minute," the woman said. I could hear her talking to someone else in the room. I couldn't make out what she was saying. She came back on the line. "You want to know about Cindy."
"That's right. Please."
"This wasn't her home. But I can tell you about her. I'm her aunt. You want to know about her?"
"Please."
"It was the glands. I couldn't remember the word. My daughter just told me. The glands. When she got out from high school she weighed two hundred. From there she went up like balloons. Two hundred, two fifty, three hundred. When she died in the hospital she was nearly four hundred. She'd been over four hundred once, just before she went in the hospital. Glands, it was."
I remembered the rebellious eyes. Girl trapped inside the prison of white, soft flesh. A dancing girl, a lithe, quick-moving girl forever lost inside that slow inevitable encroachment. Stilled finally, and buried inside her suet prison.
"Is your daughter about the same age Cindy would have been?"
"A year older. She's married and three kids already." The woman chuckled warmly.
"Could I talk to your daughter?"
"Sure. Just a minute."
The daughter's voice was colder, edged with thin suspicion. "What goes on anyhow? Why do you want to know about Cindy?"
"I was wondering if she was ever friendly in high school with a boy named Timmy Warden."
"Timmy is dead. It was in the papers."
"I know that. Were they friendly?"
"Timmy and Cindy? Geez, that's a tasty combination. He would have known who she was on account of her being such a tub. But I don't think he ever spoke to her. Why should he? He had all the glamour items hanging around his neck. Why are you asking all this?"
"I was in the camp with him. Before he died he gave me a message to deliver to a girl named Cindy. I wondered if Cindy was the one."
"Not a chance. Sorry. You just got the wrong one."
"Was there another Cindy in the class?"
"In one of the lower classes. A funny-looking one. That's the only one I can remember. All teeth. Glasses. A sandy sort of girl. I can't remember her last name, though."
"Cindy Kirschner?"
"That's the name. Gosh, I don't know where you'd find her. I think I saw her downtown once a year ago. Maybe it's in the book. But I don't think she'd fit any better than my cousin. I mean Timmy Warden ran around with his own group, kind of. Big shots in the school. That Kirschner wasn't in that class, any more than my cousin. Or me."
The bitterness was implicit in her tone. I thanked her again. She hung up.
I tried Kirschner. There was only one in the book. Ralph J. A woman answered the phone.
"I'm trying to locate a Cindy Kirschner who graduated from Hillston High in nineteen forty-eight."
"That's my daughter. Who is this calling, please?"
"Could you tell me how I could locate her?"
"She married, but she doesn't have a phone. They have to use the one at the corner store. She doesn't like to have people call her there because it's a nuisance to the people at the store. And she has small children she doesn't like to leave to go down there and answer the phone. If you want to see her, you could go out there. It's sixteen ten Blackman Street. It's near the corner of Butternut. A little blue house. Her name is Mrs. Rorick now. Mrs. Pat Rorick. What did you say your name is?"
I repeated the directions and said, "Thanks very much, Mrs. Kirschner. I appreciate your help. Good-by."
I hung up. I was tempted to try Cynthia Cooper, but decided I had better take one at a time, eliminate one before starting the next. I stepped out of the booth. Earl Fitzmartin stepped out of the adjoining booth. He smiled at me almost genially.
"So it's got something to do with somebody named Cindy."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"'I was in camp with Timmy. Before he died he gave me a message to deliver to a girl named Cindy.' So you try two Cindy's in a row. And you know when they graduated. Busy, aren't you?"
"Go to hell, Fitz."
He stood with his big hard fists on his hips, rocking back and forth from heel to toe, smiling placidly at me. "You're busy, Tal. Nice little lunch with Ruth. Trip to the high school. Tracking down Cindy. Does she know where the loot is?"
He was wearing a dark suit, well cut. It looked expensive. His shoes were shined, his shirt crisp. I wished I'd been more alert. It's no great trick to stand in one phone booth and listen to the conversation in the adjoining one. I hadn't even thought of secrecy, of making certain I couldn't be overheard. Now he had almost as much as I did.
"How did you get along with George, Howard?"
"I got along fine."
"Strange guy, isn't he?"
"He's a little odd."
"And he's damn near broke. That's a shame, isn't it?"
"It's too bad."
"The Stamm girl comes around and holds his hand. Maybe it makes him feel better. Poor guy. You know he even had to sell the cabin. Did Timmy ever talk about the cabin?"
He had talked about it when we were first imprisoned. I'd forgotten about it until that moment. I remembered Timmy saying that it was on a small lake, a rustic cabin their father had built. He and George had gone there to fish, many times.
"He mentioned it," I said.
"I heard about it after I got here. It seemed like a good place. So I went up there with my little shovel. No dice, Tal. I dug up most of the lake shore. I dug a hundred holes. See how nice I am to you? That's one more place where it isn't. Later on George let me use it for a while before he sold it. It's nice up there. You'd like it. But it's clean."
"Thanks for the information."
"I'm keeping an eye on you, Tal. I'm interested in your progress. I'll keep in touch."
"You do that."
"Blackman runs east off Delaware. It starts three blocks north of here. Butternut must be about fourteen blocks over. It's not hard to find."
"Thanks."
I turned on my heel and left him. It was dusk when I headed out Blackman. I found Butternut without difficulty. I found the blue house and parked in front.
As I went up the walk toward the front door the first light went on inside the house. I pushed the bell and she opened the door and looked out at me, the light behind her, child in her arms.
"Mrs. Rorick?"
"I'm Mrs. Rorick," she said. Her voice was soft and warm and pleasant.
"You were Cindy Kirschner then. I was a friend of Timmy Warden in prison camp."
She hesitated for a moment and then said, "Won't you come in a minute."
When I was inside and she had turned toward the light I could see her better. The teeth had been fixed. Her face was fuller. She was still a colorless woman with heavy glasses, but now there was a pride about her, a confidence that had been lacking in the picture I had seen. Another child sat on a small tricycle and gave me a wide-eyed stare. Both children looked very much like her. Mrs. Rorick did not ask me to sit down.
"How well did you know Timmy, Mrs. Rorick?"
"I don't think he ever knew I was alive."
"In camp, before he died, he mentioned a Cindy. Could you have been the one?"
"I certainly doubt that."
It confused me. I said, "When I mentioned him you asked me to come in. I thought—"
She smiled. "I guess I'll have to tell you. I had the most fantastic and awful crush on him. For years and years. It was pathetic. Whenever we were in the same class I used to stare at him all the time. I wrote letters to him and tore them up. I sent him unsigned cards at Easter and Valentine Day and Christmas and on his birthday. I knew when his birthday was because once a girl I knew went to a party at his house. It was really awful. It gave me a lot of miserable years. Now it seems funny. But it wasn't funny then. It started in the sixth or seventh grade. He was two grades ahead. It lasted until he graduated from high school. He had a red knit cap he wore in winter. I stole it from the cloakroom. I slept with it under my pillow for months and months. Isn't that ridiculous?"
She was very pleasant. I smiled back at her. "You got over it."
"Oh, yes. At last. And then I met Pat. I'm sorry about Timmy. That was a terrible thing. No, if he mentioned any Cindy it wasn't me. Maybe he would know me by sight. But I don't think he'd know my name."
"Could he have meant some other Cindy?"
"It would have to be some other Cindy. But I can't think who. There was a girl named Cindy Waskowitz but it couldn't have been her, either. She's dead now."
"Can you think of who it could be?"
She frowned and shook her head slowly. "N—No, I can't. There's something in the back of my mind, though. From a long time ago. Something I heard, or saw. I don't know. I shouldn't even try to guess. It's so vague. No, I can't help you."
"But the name Cindy means something?"
"For a moment I thought it did. It's gone now. I'm sorry."
"If you remember, could you get in touch with me?"
She smiled broadly. "You haven't told me who you are."
"I'm sorry. My name is Howard. Tal Howard. I'm staying at the Sunset Motel. You could leave a message there for me."
"Why are you so interested in finding this Cindy?"
I could at least be consistent. "I'm writing a book. I need all the information about Timmy that I can get."
"Put in the book that he was kind. Put that in."
"In what way, Mrs. Rorick?"
She shifted uneasily. "I used to have dreadful buck teeth. My people could never afford to have them fixed. One day—that's when I was in John L. Davis School, that's the grade school where Timmy went, too, and it was before they built the junior high, I was in the sixth grade and Timmy was in the eighth. A boy came with some funny teeth that stuck way out like mine. He put them in his mouth in assembly and he was making faces at me. I was trying not to cry. A lot of them were laughing. Timmy took the teeth away from the boy and dropped them on the floor and smashed them under his heel. I never forgot that. I started working while I was in high school and saving money. I had enough after I was out to go to get my teeth straightened. But it was too late to straighten them then. So I had them taken out. I wanted marriage and I wanted children, and the way I was no man would even take me out." She straightened her shoulders a little. "I guess it worked," she said.
"I guess it did."
"So put that in the book. It belongs in the book."
"I will."
"And if I can remember that other, I'll phone you, Mr. Howard."
I thanked her and left. I drove back toward the center of town. I began to think of Fitz again. Ruth was right when she used the word creepy. But it was more than that. You sensed that Fitz was a man who would not be restrained by the things that restrain the rest of us. He had proved in the camp that he didn't give a damn what people thought of him. He depended on himself to an almost psychopathic extent. It made you feel helpless in trying to deal with him. You could think of no appeal that would work. He couldn't be scared or reasoned with. He was as primitive and functional as the design of an ax. He could not even be anticipated, because his logic was not of normal pattern. And then, too, there was the startling physical strength.
In camp I had seen several minor exhibitions of that power, but only one that showed the true extent of it. Those of us who saw it talked about it a long time. The guards who saw it treated Fitz with uneasy respect after that. One of the supply trucks became mired inside the compound, rear duals down to the hubs. They broke a towline trying to snake it out. Then they rounded up a bunch of us to unload the supply truck. The cases aboard had obviously been loaded on with a winch. We got all the stuff off except one big wooden packing case. We never did learn what was in it. We only knew it was heavy. We were trying to get a crude dolly under it, but when we tilted it, we couldn't get the dolly far enough back. Every guard was yelling incomprehensible orders. I imagine Fitz lost patience. He jumped up into the bed of the truck, put his back against the case, squatted and got his fingers under the edge. Then he came up with it, his face a mask of effort, cords standing out on his throat. He lifted it high enough so the dolly could be put under it. He lowered it again and jumped down off the truck, oddly pale and perspiring heavily.
Once it was rolled to the tail gate on the dolly, enough men could get hold of it to ease it down. When it was on the ground one of the biggest of the guards swaggered up, grinning at his friends, and tried to do what Fitz had done. He couldn't budge it. He and one of his friends got it up a few inches, but not as high as Fitz had. They were humiliated and they took it out on the rest of us, but not on Fitz. He was left alone.
Back in town I decided I would have a drink at the Inn and a solitary meal and try to think of what the next step should be. I was picked up in front of the Inn, ten steps from my car.
There were two of them. One was a thin, sandy man in uniform and the other was a massive middle-aged man in a gray suit with a pouched, florid face.
"Your name Howard?"
"Yes, it is."
"Police. Come on along."
"What for?"
"Lieutenant wants to talk to you."
I went along. They put me in a police sedan and drove about eight blocks and turned into an enclosed courtyard through a gray stone arch. Other cars were parked there. They took me through a door that was one of several opening onto the courtyard. We went up wide wooden stairs that were badly worn to the second floor. It was an old building with an institutional smell of dust, carbolic, and urine. We went by open doors. One door opened onto a big file room with fluorescent lights and gray steel filing cases. Some men played cards in another room. I could hear the metallic gabbling voice of some sort of communication system.
We turned into a small office where a thin, bald man sat behind a desk that faced the door. His face was young, with a swarthy Indian harshness about it, black brows. His hands were large. He looked tall. A small wooden sign on his desk saidDet. Lt. Stephen D. Prine. The office had cracked buff plaster walls. Books and pamphlets were piled in disorder in a glass-front bookcase. A smallish man with white hair and a red whisky face sat half behind Lieutenant Prine, on the small gilded radiator in front of the single window.
One of the men behind me gave me an unnecessary push that made me thump my knee against the front of the desk and almost lose my balance. Prine looked at me with complete coldness.
"This is that Howard," one of the men behind me said.
"Okay." The door behind me closed. I glanced back and saw that the man in uniform had left. The big man in the gray suit leaned against the closed door. "Empty your pockets onto the desk," Prine said. "Everything."
"But—"
"Empty your pockets." There was no threat in the words. Cold, bored command.
I put everything on the desk. Wallet, change, pen and pencil, notebook, cigarettes, lighter, penknife, folder of traveler's checks. Prine reached a big hand over and separated the items into two piles, notebook, wallet, and checks in one pile that he pulled toward him.
"Put the rest of that stuff back in your pockets."
"Could I ask why—"
"Shut up."
I stood in uncomfortable silence while he went through my wallet. He looked carefully at every card and piece of paper, at the photograph of Charlotte, at the reduced Photostat of my discharge laminated in plastic. He went through the notebook and then examined the traveler's checks.
"Now answer some questions." He opened a desk drawer, flipped a switch, and said, "April 20, seven-ten p.m., interrogation by Lieutenant Prine of suspect picked up by Hillis and Brubaker in vicinity of Hillston Inn. What is your full name?"
"Talbert Owen Howard."
"Speak a little louder. Age and place of birth."
"Twenty-nine. Bakersfield, California."
"Home address."
"None at the present time."
"What was your last address?"
"Eighteen Norwalk Road, San Diego."
"Are you employed?"
"No."
"When were you last employed and by who?"
"Up until two and a half weeks ago. By the Guaranty Federated Insurance Company. I had a debit. Health and life. I was fired."
"For what reason?"
"I wasn't producing."
"How long did you work for them?"
"Four years all together. Three and a half before the Korean war. The rest of it since I got back."
"Are you married? Have you ever been married?"
"No."
"Parents living?"
"No."
"Brothers or sisters?"
"One sister. Older than I am. She lives in Perth, Australia. She was a Wave and she married an Aussie during the war."
"Do you have any criminal record?"
"N—No."
"You don't seem sure."
"I don't know if you'd call it a criminal record. It was when I was in school. One of those student riots. Disturbing the peace and resisting an officer."
"Were you booked and mugged and fingerprinted and found guilty?"
"Yes. I paid a fine and spent three days in jail."
"Then you have a criminal record. How long have you been in Hillston?"
"I arrived here—Wednesday night. Two days."
"What is your local address?"
"The Sunset Motel."
"On this vehicle registration, do you own the vehicle free and clear?"
"Yes."
"You have a little over a thousand dollars. Where did you get it?"
"I earned it. I saved it. I'm getting a little sick of all this. It's beginning to make me sore."
"Why did you come to Hillston?"
"Do I have to have a reason?"
"Yes. You need a reason."
"I knew Timmy Warden in prison camp. And I knew others there that didn't come back. I'm going to write a book about them. There's my notes. You have them there."
"Why didn't you tell George Warden that?"
"I didn't know how he'd take it."
"You didn't tell Fitzmartin, either?"
"He has no reason to know my business."
"But you went out there to see him. And you were both in the same camp with Timmy Warden. It would seem natural to tell him."
"I don't care how it seems. I didn't tell him."
"If a man came to town with a cooked-up story about writing a book, it would give him a chance to nose around, wouldn't it?"
"I guess it would."
"What else have you written?"
"Nothing else."
"Are you familiar with the state laws and local ordinances covering private investigators?"
I stared at him blankly. "No."
"Are you licensed in any state?"
"No. I don't know what—"
"If you were licensed, it would be necessary for you to find out whether this state has any reciprocal agreement. If so, you would merely have to make a courtesy call and announce your presence in this county and give the name of your employer."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Do you know a woman named Rose Fulton?"
"No. I've never heard of her."
"Were you employed by Rose Fulton to come to Hillston?"
"No. I told you I never heard of her."
"We were advised a month ago that Rose Fulton had hired an investigator to come here on an undercover assignment. We've been looking for the man. He would be the third one she's sent here. The first two made a botch of their job. There was no job here for them in the first place. Rose Fulton is a persistent and misguided woman. The case, if there was any case, was completely investigated by this department. Part of our job is to keep citizens of Hillston from being annoyed and persecuted by people who have no business here. Is that clear to you?"
"I don't understand what you're talking about. I really don't."
He looked at me for what seemed a long time. Then he said, "End of interrogation witnessed by Brubaker and Sparkman. Copies for file. Prine." He clicked the switch and closed the desk drawer. He leaned back in his chair and yawned, then pushed my wallet, checks, and notebook toward me. "It's just this, Howard. We get damned tired of characters nosing around here. The implication is that we didn't do our job. The hell we didn't. This Rose Fulton is the wife of the guy who ran off with George Warden's wife, Eloise."
"That name Fulton sounded familiar, but I didn't know why."
"It happened nearly two years ago. The first inquiry came from the company Fulton worked for. We did some hard work on it. Fulton was in town for three days. He was registered at the Hillston Inn. He stayed there every time he was in town. On the last night he was here, Friday night, he had dinner at the hotel with Eloise Warden. She waited in the lobby and he checked out. They got in his car. They drove to the Warden house. Eloise went in. Fulton waited out in the car. It was the evening of the eleventh of April. A neighbor saw him waiting and saw her come out to the car with a big suitcase. They drove off. George Warden hadn't reported it to us. He knew what the score was when he got back to town and saw the things she'd taken. It was an open and shut situation. It happens all the time. But Rose Fulton can't bring herself to believe that her dear husband would take off with another woman. So she keeps sicking these investigators on us. You could be the third. I don't think so. No proof. Just a hunch. She thinks something happened to him here. We know nothing happened to him here. I've lost patience, so this time we're making it tough. You can go. If I happen to be wrong, if you happen to be hired by that crazy dame, you better keep right on going, friend. We've got a small force here, but we know our business."
The big middle-aged man moved away from the door to let me out. There was no offer of a ride back to where they had picked me up. I walked. The walk wasn't long enough. By the time I got to the Inn I was still sore at Prine and company. I could grudgingly admit that maybe he thought he had cause to swing his weight around. But I didn't like being picked up like that. And it had irritated me to have to tell them I had no job, no permanent residence. I wasn't certain what legal right they had to take that sort of a statement from me.
I had a drink at the dark bar at the end of the cocktail lounge at the Inn. Business was light. I nursed my drink and wondered how they had picked me up so quickly. I guessed it was from the motel register. I'd had to write down the make of my car and the license number. They'd known who I'd talked to and what had been said. It was a small city and they acted like men who made a business of knowing what was going on.
Just as I ordered the second drink I saw a big man come in and stand at the other end of the bar. He looked like the man I had seen in the blue sedan. But I couldn't be certain. I had forgotten him and the effect he had had on Fitzmartin. He became aware of my interest. He turned and gave me a long look and turned back to the drink the bartender put in front of him. He had moved his head slowly when he turned to look at me. His eyes were in shadow. I had a sudden instinctive premonition of danger. Fitz was danger, but a known quantity. I did not know this man or where he fitted in. I did not want to attempt to ask him. He finished his drink quickly and left. I looked down into my drink and saw myself lying dead, sprawled, cold. It was a fantasy that had been with me in the prison camp and later. You think of your own death. You try to imagine how it will be—to just cease, abruptly, eternally. It is a chilling thought, and once you have started it, it is difficult to shake off.
The depression stayed with me the rest of the evening. Thoughts of Ruth, of the new emphasis she had brought into my life, did little to relieve the blackness and the hint of fear. My mission in Hillston seemed pointless. It was part of running away from myself. There was no chance of finding the money and even if there was and I did find it, I couldn't imagine it changing anything. Somehow I had become a misfit in my world, in my time. I had been jolted out of one comfortable rut, and there seemed to be no other place where I could fit. Other than Charlotte—and, too optimistically, Ruth—I could think of no one who gave a special damn whether I lived or died.
After the light was out I lay in darkness and surrendered myself to the great waves of bathos and self-pity. I wondered what would become of me. I wondered how soon I would be dead. I wondered how many other lonely beds there would be, and where they would be. Finally I fell asleep.
Saturday morning was dreary, with damp winds, low, scudding clouds, lights on in the stores. I couldn't get a better line on the Cooper girl until the administration office at the high school opened on Monday. The few leads had faded away into nothing. I wondered what I would do with the day.
After buying some blades and some tooth paste, I drove around for a while and finally faced the fact that I was trying to think of a good excuse to see Ruth Stamm. I went without an excuse. She was in the reception office at the animal hospital. She gave me a quick, warm smile as I walked in. A woman sat holding a small shivering dog, waiting her turn. There was a boy with a Siamese cat on a leash. The cat, dainty and arrogant, purposefully ignored the shivering dog.
Ruth, smiling, asked in a low voice, "More questions?"
"No questions. Just general depression."
"Wrong kind of hospital, Tal."
"But the right kind of personnel."
"Need some kind of therapy?"
"Something like that."
She looked at her watch. "Come back at twelve. We close at noon on Saturday. I'll feed you and we'll cook up something to do."
The day was not as dreary when I drove away. I returned at twelve. I went up to the house with her, and the three of us ate in the big kitchen. Dr. Buck Stamm was a skilled storyteller. Apparently every misfortune that could happen to a veterinary had happened to him. He reviled his profession, and his own stupidity in getting into it in the first place. After a cigar he went off to make farm calls. I helped Ruth with a few dishes.
"How about a plain old tour of the surrounding country," she suggested. "There are parts that are very nice."
"Then dinner tonight and a movie or something?"
"Sold. It's Saturday night."
She changed to slacks and a tweed jacket over a yellow sweater and we took my car. She gave me the directions. We took small back roads. It was pretty country, with rolling hills and spines of rock that stuck out of the hills. In the city the day had been gloomy. Out in the country it was no better, but the breeze seemed moist with spring. The new leaves were a pale green. She sat slouched in the seat with one knee up against the glove compartment and pointed out the farms, told me about the people, told me about the history of the area.
At her suggestion I took a back road that led to a place called Highland Lake. She told me when to slow down. When we came to a dirt road we turned right. A mile down the slippery, muddy road was a sign that saidB. Stamm. I went cautiously down an overgrown drive through the woods until we came to a small cabin with a big porch overlooking a small lake less than a mile long and half as wide. I could see other cabins in the trees along the lake shore.
We went onto the cabin porch and sat on the railing and smoked and talked and watched the quick winds furrow the lake surface.
"We don't get up here as much as we used to when Mother was alive. Dad talks about selling it, but I don't think he will. He hunts up here in the fall. It's only eighteen miles from town, the shortest way. It's pretty primitive, but you know, Tal, this would be a good place to write."
I felt again a quick, sharp pang of guilt.
Her enthusiasm grew. "Nobody is using it. There's no electricity, but there are oil lamps and a Coleman lantern. There's plenty of wood in the shed, and one of those little gasoline stoves. The bunks are comfortable and there's lots of blankets. It would save paying rent. I know Dad wouldn't mind a bit."
"Thanks, Ruth, but really I couldn't—"
"Why not? It's only a half hour to town."
"I don't think I'll be here long enough to make it worth while moving in."
"Well, then," she said, "okay." And I thought I detected some disappointment in her tone. "I'd like you to see it, anyhow." The key was hidden on one of the roof supports near the door. We went inside. It was bare, but it looked clean and comfortable. There were fish rods on a wall rack, and a big stone fireplace.
"It's nice," I said.
"I've always loved it. I'd make a wild row if Dad ever tried to sell it. The first time I came up here they had to bring play pen and high chair. I learned to swim here. I broke my collarbone falling out of one of those top bunks in there."
She smiled at me. We were standing quite close together. There was something both warm and wistful about her smile. There was a long silence in the room. I could hear birds and a far-off drone of an outboard motor. Our eyes locked once more and her smile faded as her mouth softened. There was a heaviness about her eyes, a look almost of drowsiness. We took a half step toward each other and she came neatly, graciously into my arms as though it were an act we had performed many times. The kiss was gentle at first and then fierce and hungry; as she strained upward against me my hands felt the long smoothness of her back, and her arm was crooked hard around my neck.
We wavered in dizzy balance and I side-stepped quickly to catch our balance and we parted awkwardly, shy as children.
"Tal," she said. "Tal, I—" Her voice was throaty and unfocused.
"I know," I said. "I know."
She turned away abruptly and walked slowly to the window and looked out across the lake. I followed her and put my hands lightly on her shoulders. I felt shamed by all this, shamed by my lies, and afraid of what would happen when she found out about me.
I felt new tension in her body and she leaned closer to the window and seemed to peer more intently.
"What's the matter?"
"Look. Isn't that some kind of animal over there? Directly across. That was the Warden camp before George sold it. The one with the green roof. Now look just to the right of the porch." I looked and saw something bulky, partially screened by brush. It looked as if it could be a bear. She brushed by me and came back with a pair of binoculars. She focused them and said, "It's a man. Here. You look."
I adjusted them to my eyes. The man was getting to his feet. He was a big man in a brown suit. He was hatless and his hair was thin on top and he had a wide, hard-looking face. It was the man who had driven by Fitz and me in the blue sedan, the man who had come into the bar at the Inn. He brushed the knees of his brown suit and dusted his hands together. He bent over and picked up what looked to be a long dowel or a piece of reinforcing rod.
"Let me look," she said and took the binoculars again. "I know the people who bought the camp from George. That isn't the man."
"Maybe he's a service man of some kind."
"I don't think so. I know most of them. Now he's going up on the porch. He's trying the door. Hey! He broke a window right next to the door. Now he's getting it up. Now he's stepping in over the sill." She turned to me, her eyes wide. "How about that? Tal, he's a thief! We better go over there."
"Anything you say. But how about the law?"
"Wait a minute." She hurried into the bedroom. She came back with a .22 target pistol and a box of shells. It was a long-barreled automatic. She thumbed the clip out and loaded it expertly, snapped the clip back in and handed me the gun. "You'll be more impressive with it than I would. Come on."
There was no road that led directly around the lake. We had to go about four miles out of our way to get to the road on the other side of the lake. A dark blue sedan was parked at the head of the driveway, facing out. There wasn't room to drive by. I parked and we went down the trail toward the camp. I turned and motioned her to stay back. I went ahead but I heard her right behind me. The man came walking around the corner of the camp, frowning. He stopped short when he saw me, his eyes flicking toward the gun and then toward Ruth.
"Why did you break into that camp?" Ruth demanded angrily.
"Take it easy, lady. Put the gun away, friend."
"Answer the question," I said, keeping the gun on him.
He acted so unimpressed that I felt ridiculous holding the gun.
"I'm a licensed private investigator, friend. Don't put any hole in me while I'm getting my wallet. I'll show you."
He took the wallet out. He took out a card encased in plastic and nipped it toward us. Ruth picked it up. It had his picture and a thumb print and two official looking countersignatures and it said he was licensed by the State of Illinois. His name was Milton D. Grassman. The card said he was forty-one years old, six foot one, and weighed two hundred and five.
"But what are you investigating?" Ruth asked.
He smiled. "Just investigating. And who are you, lady? Maybe you're trespassing." His smile was half good humor, half contempt.
"You're working for Rose Fulton, aren't you?" I asked.
The smile was gone instantly. He didn't seem to move or breathe. I had the impression that a very good mind behind that flat, tough face was working rapidly.
"I'm afraid I don't know the name," he said. But he had waited too long. "Who are you, friend?"
"We're going to report this to the police," Ruth said.
"Go ahead, lady. Be a good citizen. Give them the word."
"Come on, Tal," she said. We went back up the trail. When we got into the car I looked back and saw him standing by his car, watching us. He didn't take his eyes off us while he lit a cigarette and shook the match out.
Ruth was oddly silent as I drove back toward the Stamm camp. Finally I said, "What's the matter?"
"I don't know. At first I thought you lied to me. Then I believed you. Now I don't know."
"How come?"
"You know what I'm thinking. You asked him about a Rose Fulton. It shocked him when you asked him that. Anybody could see that. Eloise Warden ran away with a man named Fulton. What would make you think to ask that Mr. Grassman that question?" She turned to face me. "What are you doing in Hillston, Tal? If that's your name."
"I told you what I'm doing."
"Why did you ask that man that question?"
"The police picked me up last night. They had word that Rose Fulton had hired another man to come here. This will be the third. They thought I was that man. They interrogated me and then they let me go. So I guessed that maybe he was the man."
We got out of the car. She was still looking at me oddly. "Tal, if you're here to write up Timmy, I think you would have told me that before now. It's a cute and interesting little story if you were here just to write up Timmy. And I can't believe that you could have forgotten it."
"I just didn't—think of telling it."
"That's no good, Tal."
"I know it isn't."
"What's wrong? Is it something you can't tell me?"
"Look, Ruth. I—There is another reason why I came. I lied to you. I don't want to tell you why I came here. I'd rather not."
"But it has something to do with Timmy."
"That's right."
"He is dead, isn't he?"
"He's dead."
"But how can I know when you're lying and when you're not?"
"I guess you can't," I said helplessly.
She locked the camp and, on the way back, told me which turns to take. She had nothing else to say. I drove into her place. She opened the door quickly to get out.
"Wait a minute, Ruth."
Her right foot was on the ground. She sat on the corner of the seat and turned and looked back at me. "Yes?"
"I'm sorry about this."
"You've made me feel like a fool. I talked a lot to you. I believed you and so I told you things I've never told anybody. Just to help you when you had no intention of writing up Timmy."
"I tell you, I'm sorry."
"That doesn't do very much good. But I'll give you this much benefit of the doubt, Tal. Look right at me and tell me that you have no reason to be ashamed of why you came here."
I looked into the gray eyes and, like Grassman, I hesitated too long. She slammed the car door and went to the house without looking back. Saturday night was no longer a nice thing to think about. Somehow, through impulsiveness and through awkwardness, I had trapped myself. I felt as if I had lost a great deal more than a Saturday night date. She was not a girl you could lie to. She was not a girl you would want to lie to. My little cover story now seemed soiled and dingy. I drove into town. I started my drinking at the Hillston Inn.
Before I left the Inn I cashed two traveler's checks. I hit a great many bars. It was Saturday night. The city seemed alive. I can remember seeing the dwarf bartender. There was a woman I bought drinks for. At one time I was in a men's room and four of us were singing. The door was locked and somebody was pounding on it. We were making fine music. I was sick in a hedge and I couldn't find my car. I wandered a long time before I found it. I don't know what time it was. It was late. I had to keep one eye closed as I drove cautiously out to the motel. Otherwise the center line was double.
I parked the car in front of my motel room and went, unwashed, to bed. Sunday was a replica, a sodden day in town, a drunken day.
It was eleven when I got up on Monday morning. A half dozen glasses of water made me feel bloated but didn't quench my thirst. My head pounded in a dull, ragged rhythm. I shaved slowly, painfully. The shower made me feel a little better. I decided that it was time to go. Time to leave this place. I didn't know where I would head for. Any place. Any kind of a job. Some kind of manual labor. Get too bushed to think.
I packed my two bags. I left them inside the door and went out to unlock the trunk. All the transient cars were gone. A big dog stood with his feet against the side of my car, looking in the side window. The cold, thin, birdlike woman was carrying sheets and towels out of one of the other rooms and dumping them into a hamper on wheels.
The dog jumped back as I walked out. He stood twenty feet away and whined in a funny way. I made as though to throw gravel at him and he went farther back. I didn't know what attracted him to my car.
I happened to glance inside as I was heading to unlock the trunk. I stopped and looked for a long time. It seemed an effort to take my eyes away. A big body was on the floor in the back, legs bent, head tilted sideways. It was Milton Grassman. He still wore the brown suit. The knees showed traces of pale dried mud. The forehead, in the area where the thin hairline had started, was broken jelly, an ugly, sickening depression. No man could have lived more than a moment with a wound like that.
I realized the woman was calling to me in her thin voice.
I turned and said, "What?"
"I said are you staying another day?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm staying another day."
She went into another room. She was working her way toward mine. I hurried back in. I put one bag in the closet, opened the other one, put my toilet articles back in the bathroom. I slammed the door and went out. The dog was standing by the car again, whining. I got behind the wheel and drove out of there. I drove away from town. I didn't want to be stopped by a traffic light where anybody could look down into the back of the car. I remembered an old tarp in the back. I pulled off onto the shoulder and got the tarp. I waited while traffic went by and then spread the tarp over Grassman. I tried not to look at him while I did it. But I couldn't help seeing his face. The slackness of death had ironed everything out of it, all expression.
I drove on aimlessly and then stopped again on the shoulder of the highway. I wanted to be able to think. I could feel the dreadful presence of the body behind me. My brain felt frozen, numbed, useless. It did no good to wonder when the body had been put there. I couldn't even remember the places where I had parked.
Why had it been put in my car? Somebody wanted to get rid of it. Somebody wanted to divert suspicion from himself. From the look of the wound, murder had been violent and unplanned. One tremendous, skull-smashing blow. It was inevitable that I should begin to think of Fitz. Of the people I knew in Hillston, he was the one capable of murder, and both quick and brutal enough to have killed a man like Grassman. From what I had seen of him, Grassman looked tough and capable.
But why would Fitz want to implicate me? The answer was quick and chilling. It meant that he had traced the right Cindy, the Cindy who would know where Timmy had buried the money. He might already have the money.
The immediate problem was to get rid of the body. It should be a place where there would be no witness, no one to remember having seen my car. I couldn't go to the police. "I was here before. Unemployed. No permanent address. A criminal record, according to your definition. It so happens I have a body in my car. It got in there somehow last night. Was I drunk? Brother, you can find a dozen witnesses to how drunk I was. I was a slobbering mess, the worst I've ever been in my life. Worse even than the night before."
There would be no glimmer of understanding in the cold official eyes of Lieutenant Prine.
A state road patrol car passed me, going slowly. The trooper behind the wheel stared curiously at me as I sat there. He stopped and backed up. Maybe they were already looking for me.
He leaned across the empty seat and said, "What's the trouble?"
"Nothing. I mean I was overheating. I thought I'd let it cool off. Is it far to a gas station?"
"Mile or so. It'll cool off quicker if you open the hood."
"Will it? Thanks."
"And get it a little farther off the road, doc."
He went on. I moved the car farther off the road. I opened the hood. I wondered if he would be bothered by the way I had acted and come back to check my license and look the car over. I wondered if I should make a U-turn and get as far away from him as I could. But it made some sense to risk the outside chance of his coming back and stay right there until I could plan what to do with the body.
The noon sun was warm. There was a subtle, sour odor in the car that sickened me. A dark-red tractor moved back and forth across a distant hillside. Drainage water bubbled in the ditch beside the shoulder. A truck went by at high speed, the blast of its passage shaking my car.
I found that a two-day drunk gives your mind a flavor of unreliability. Memory is shaky and dreams become mixed with reality. I began to wonder if I had imagined the body. When there was no traffic I looked into the back seat again. The tarp was there. The body was covered. It was not covered very well. I saw a thick ankle, a dark green sock, a brown scuffed shoe, cracked across the instep, with laces tied in a double knot, the way my mother used to tie my shoelaces when I was very small to keep them from coming untied. It made Grassman more believable as a person, as the person who had sat on the edge of a bed and tied those laces and then had gone out and become a body, and the laces would eventually be untied by somebody else, somebody with a professional coolness and an unthinking competence. I whirled around when I heard traffic coming. When the road was clear again I pulled the tarp to cover the ankle and shoe, but it pulled clear of his head and my stomach spasmed and I could not look at him.
After a while I fixed the tarp properly. I got out of the car. I did not want to look in again. But I found myself staring in at the side window.
I had to get rid of it somewhere. I had to get rid of it soon. The very nearness of the body kept me from thinking clearly.
The lake? I could find it again. But I could be seen there as readily as Ruth saw Grassman. I could hunt for obscure roads at random and dump the body out when I came to what seemed to be a good place. But the body was going to be found and it was going to be identified and it was going to be in the paper with the right name. And Ruth was going to remember the odd question I had asked the man and remember his telltale response to that question.
The minutes were ticking by and I was getting nowhere. Fitzmartin's trap was wide and deep, lined with sharp stakes. I wished I could put the body back on his doorstep. Give it right back to him. Let him sweat.
At first glance the idea seemed absurd. But the more I thought about it the better it seemed. I would be seen driving into the yard. But if questioned I could say that I was going to see Fitzmartin. And I would see Fitzmartin. I would leave the body in the yard somewhere between the piles of stacked lumber.
No. That would do no good. No man would be so stupid as to kill another man and leave the body at the place where he worked. Yet if some attempt was made to conceal the body—Perhaps then they would assume it was a temporary hiding place until Fitzmartin could think of another.
On the other hand, would any man be so stupid as to kill another man and then drive the body to the police station in his car and claim he didn't do it? Maybe that was my best out. Maybe that was the best innocent reaction.
My hands were icy cold and sweaty. They left wet marks where I touched the steering wheel. I was trying to think of every alternative, every possible plan of action. I could go back and check out and head west and try to leave the body where it would never be found. Buy a shovel. Dig a desert grave. I could put the body in the seat beside me and run into something. My ideas were getting worse instead of better. The very presence of the body made thinking as laborious as trying to run through waist-deep water. I did not want to panic, but I knew I had to get rid of it as soon as possible. And I could not see myself going to Prine for tender mercy. There had been a reason why Grassman had been killed. Hiding the body would give me a grace period. I would have to assume it would be traced to me eventually. By the time they caught up with me, I would have to know why he had been killed. Knowing why would mean knowing who. I knew it was Fitz. Why did Fitz kill Grassman?
I shut the hood and started the car and drove. I was five miles from the court and about nine miles from town when I found a promising looking road that turned left. It was potholed asphalt, ravaged by winter, torn by tractor lugs. It climbed mild hills and dipped into forgotten valleys. It came out of a heavy wooded area, and ahead on the left, set well back from the road, I saw a tall stone chimney where a house had burned long ago. The weathered gray barn had half collapsed. It looked like a great gray animal with a broken back, its hind legs dragging. The road was empty. I turned in where the farm road had once been. Small trees bent over under my front bumper, dragged along the underside of the car, and half rose again behind me. I circled the foundation of the house and parked behind the barn near a wild tangle of berry bushes. I could not be seen from the road. I had to risk being seen from distant hillsides. It seemed very quiet with the motor off. A crow went over, hoarse and derisive.
I opened the rear door of the car. I made myself grasp his heavy ankles. Rigor had begun to set in. It took all my strength to pull the bulky body free of the cramped space between the back seat and the back of the front seat. It came free suddenly, thudding to the ground. I released the ankles and staggered back. There had been something under the body. Friction had pulled it toward me. It rested on the car floor, half in and half out of the car—a short, bright length of galvanized pipe with a dark brown smear at one end. I left the body there and went to see where I would put it. There was a great splintered hole in the back of the barn. I stepped up and through the hole. The floor felt solid. Daylight came brightly through the holes in the roof.
I went back to the body again. It was not hard to drag it to the hole. But getting it inside the barn was difficult. I had to lift it about three feet. I puzzled over how to do it. Finally I turned him around and propped him up in a sitting position, his back to the hole. I climbed up over him, then reached down and got his wrists. I pulled him up over the edge and then dragged him back into the darkness. There was some hay on the floor, musty and matted. I covered the body with it. I went out and got the piece of pipe, using a dry leaf to pick it up. I dropped it into the hay that covered the body. I went back out into the sunlight.
I wondered about Grassman. I wondered what compulsion had made him choose his line of work. Dirty, monotonous, and sometimes dangerous work. From the look of the man as he talked to us up at the lake, I guessed that he had no idea it would end like this. He had looked tough and confident. This body under the straw was a far cry from the fictional private eyes, the smart ones and the suave ones and the gamy ones. His story had ended. He would not sit up, brush the straw out of his eyes and reach for either blonde or bottle. Leaving him there had about it the faint flavor of burial, as though solemn words should be said.
I inspected the car. The floor rug was stained and spotted in four places. I couldn't see any on the seat, or on the insides of the doors. I took the floor rug out and rolled it up. I put it beside me in the front seat. I sat and listened to the quietness, straining to hear any sound of car motor laboring on the hills. I heard only the birds and the sound of wind.
I drove back out and I did not head back the way I had come. A car seen going and returning was more likely to be remembered on a country road than a car that went on through. In about three miles I came to a crossroads. I turned north. I thought the road was paralleling the main highway, but in five miles it joined the main highway, coming into it at a shallow angle. I took the next secondary road that turned right. I was closer to the city. Soon, as I had hoped and expected, I came to a place where a lot of trash had been dumped. I put the rolled rug in with the bed springs and broken scooters and kicked some cans over it.
By the time I passed the motel, heading toward the city, I was surprised to find that it was only quarter after one. I ate at a small restaurant on Delaware Street. When I left I met Mrs. Pat Rorick on the sidewalk. She had an armful of bundles. She smiled and said "Hello, Mr. Howard."
"Did you remember anything, Mrs. Rorick?"
"I don't know if this is any use to you, but I did remember one little thing. It was a skit the eighth grade did and Timmy was in it. It was based on Cinderella. I can't remember the girl who played the part, but I remember how funny it sounded the way it was written, with Timmy calling the girl Cindy. It probably doesn't mean anything."
"It might. Thanks."
"I'm glad I met you. I was wondering whether to call you about anything that sounds so stupid. I've got to run. There comes my bus."
"I'll drive you home."
"No. Don't bother."
I convinced her I had nothing to do. We got into the car. She had her packages piled on her lap. I wondered how she'd feel if she'd known about my last passenger.
"How should I go about finding out who that girl was?"
"Gee, I don't know. It was a long time ago. I don't know if anybody would remember. The eighth-grade home-room teacher was Miss Major. I had her too, later. She was real cute. I think she wrote that skit they did. I don't know what happened to her. I think she got married and moved away. They might know at the school. It's John L. Davis School. On Holly Street, near the bridge."