“No,” said Dale.
“I don’t either. A combine would have to drive in a full circle to run over someone who had been driving it. The corn pickers are in the front. A paraplegic would have time to get out of the way of a combine doing a full turn. I presume the coroner knew that about combines, don’t you?”
Dale said nothing.
“That particular coroner,” continued McKown, “was a good friend of Justice of the Peace J. P. Congden. Do you remember that Duane McBride’s uncle, Art, died that same summer? A car accident out on Jubilee College Road?”
“I remember that,” said Dale. His heart was pounding so hard that he had to set the cup of coffee down or spill it.
“The sheriff’s office then, all one of him, found some paint on this uncle Art’s Cadillac,” continued McKown. “Blue paint. Guess who drove a big old car those days that was blue?”
“J. P. Congden,” said Dale. His lips were dry.
“The Justice of the Peace,” agreed Sheriff McKown. “My uncle Bobby tells me that ol’ J. P. used to have the habit of racing people’s cars toward bridges like that one where Duane’s uncle got killed, and when folks hurried to cross the one-lane bridge ahead of him just to stay on the road, old man Congden used to pull them over and fine them a twenty-five-dollar ticket. Twenty-five dollars was real money back in 1960. You ever hear those stories, Professor Stewart?”
“Yes,” said Dale.
“You all right, Professor?”
“Sure. Why?”
“You look sort of pale.” McKown got up, found a clean glass, filled it with tap water, and brought it back to the table. “Here.” Dale drank.
“My uncle Bobby knew J. P. Congden and his kid, C.J., real well,” continued McKown when Dale had finished with the water. “He said they were both bullies and bastards. C.J., too.”
“You think that J. P. or C.J. ran Duane McBride’s uncle into that bridge abutment?” asked Dale, working to hold his voice steady.
“I think it would’ve been right up old J. P.’s alley, his sort of bullshit,” said McKown. “I doubt if he tried to kill Arthur McBride. Just shake him down, probably. Only the bridge ruined that plan.”
“Did anyone accuse him of it?”
“Your friend Duane did,” said the sheriff.
Dale shook his head. He did not understand.
“The report says that Duane McBride, age eleven, called the state police—you remember that the sheriff then, Barnaby Stiles, was a good ol’ boy friend of J. P. Congden—but the report says that one Duane McBride reported the paint match between his uncle Art’s Cadillac and the Justice of the Peace’s car.”
“And did they investigate?”
“Congden had a great alibi,” said McKown. “Over in Kickapoo drinking with about five of his pals.”
“So they dropped it.”
“Right.”
“After Sheriff Barney told J. P. Congden that Duane was on to him.”
McKown sipped his coffee, showing no sign of how bitter the brew was.
“And did J. P. Congden have an alibi for the night Duane was killed?” asked Dale. His voice was shaking now, but he did not care.
“Actually, he did,” said McKown.
“Same five cronies at the bar, I bet,” Dale said.
McKown shook his head. “Not this time. Congden—J. P. Congden—was in Peoria at a traffic court seminar thing. At least half a dozen officers of the law were with him that night. But how old was C.J. Congden that year, Professor Stewart?”
“Sixteen,” said Dale. He had to force the words out through still-dry lips. “Whatever happened to C.J. Congden, Sheriff McKown?”
McKown flashed a grin. “Oh, he ended up where most small-town bullies do . . . he was elected county sheriff here four times.”
“But he’s dead now?” said Dale.
“Oh, sure. C.J. stuck the barrel of his pearl-handled .45 Colt in his own mouth in ’97, no, the summer of ’96, and blew his brains all over the inside of his double-wide.” McKown stood. “Professor Stewart, you’re not under arrest or anything, and I’d sure love to talk to you some more, but I think it’s important that you call this Dr. Williams in Missoula. You look tired, sir. How about if you get showered and shaved, and I’ll drive you into Oak Hill? You can call from the station house. Then I’ll drive you back here myself. How does that sound?”
“Fine,” said Dale. He got to his feet like an old man.
“Would you mind if I just looked around this house for a minute, Professor Stewart?”
“Search it?” said Dale. “I don’t mind. Your deputies already went through it.”
McKown laughed. For a small man, he had a big man’s easy laugh. “No, not search it, Professor. Just look around. I’ve never been in here and . . . well, you know. We lived on a farm about four miles from here when I was growing up and between local legends and Uncle Bobby’s stories and with the crazy old lady who lived here after Mr. McBride died, this was our local haunted house.”
McKown walked into the dining room. “This looks empty, but not especially haunted.”
Dale went into the study to get some clean clothes to take down to the basement for after his shower. The computer screen had his question from the day before and another line under it.
>Am I cracking up?
>Absolutely.
The sheriff walked through the front parlor and into the hall just outside the study. Dale killed the power on the ThinkPad and closed the lid.
“I’ll just be a minute,” said Dale, heading down the stairs. “Help yourself to the last of the coffee.”
TWENTY-FOUR
* * *
FOR two weeks after Clare had left him, Dale would call her apartment number and hang up as soon as she answered. He had blocked his number so that she could not use *69 to know who had called. After a week of almost nightly calls like this, her phone suddenly refused to accept calls from any blocked phone. Dale removed the block from his phone and called the next evening. An answering machine picked up. He called again at half-hour intervals all that night. Only the answering machine responded. Dale listened intently to the silence behind the machine’s robotic tones, beeps, and hisses, but there was no hint of Clare there. The next evening, the same thing. Dale began calling every fifteen minutes all through the third night. The phone rang. The machine picked up. Dale became certain that she was not home any of those nights.
The next day, Friday, Dale had no classes. He made a point of telling several fellow faculty members that he was going on his annual autumn camping trip to Glacier National Park. He even called his old house when he knew that Anne would be away and left a message on that machine—Anne had recorded a new message to take the place of the old one with his voice on it—telling her where, roughly, he would be camping in Glacier in case he did not return for classes on Tuesday. Leaving this information had been his practice for years—the only year he had skipped it had been the first time he had driven Clare to the park and Blackfeet Reservation—and Anne would know that it was only old habit.
Dale flew to Philadelphia and drove across the river into New Jersey and on to Princeton, arriving just before dark. He had never been there before, and he found Clare’s apartment—she had given him the address way back in July when she first found it—with some difficulty. Her apartment was in a small duplex several miles from the university campus. Dale sat in the rented car for fifteen minutes before working up the nerve to cross the street and ring her bell. She was not home. She did not come home that night. Dale knew this because he sat in the car until 4:00 A.M. watching, slumping down out of sight when a police car drove by twice, urinating out the passenger side door into a lawn gone to weeds rather than drive away to find a rest room.
About ten-thirty the next morning—a beautiful, crisp, red-leafed autumn Saturday—Clare arrived in a Chevy Suburban that Dale knew was not hers. A young man in his late twenties, a blond young man with very long hair and a Nordic face, was driving the Suburban. He
and Clare went into her apartment. They did not hold hands or hug, nor did they touch in any way while Dale watched them, his car hidden only by leaf shadow, but Dale could sense the intimacy between them. They had obviously spent the night together.
He sat in his car and fiddled with his beautiful Dunhill cigarette lighter and tried to decide how to confront her, confront them, what he could say without appearing like the biggest loser and asshole in existence. He could think of nothing.
Five minutes later, Clare and the blond man came out of the duplex. She was carrying the same green nylon duffel she had brought to the ranch so often and the battered rucksack she had brought with her on their first trip to Glacier and the reservation. She and the man were laughing, deep in conversation as they threw her bags in the back of the Suburban, and neither looked across the street to where Dale sat as they clambered into the big vehicle and drove off.
Dale followed them, making no effort to avoid detection. Tailing someone was easier than it looked in the movies. They drove back the way he had come from Philadelphia, took the I-295 bypass around Trenton, then drove about twenty miles south on Highway 206, eventually turning east on Highway 70. By the time the big Suburban turned southeast onto Route 72, the traffic had thinned out considerably. Dale was vaguely aware that they had entered—or were about to enter—the relatively empty part of New Jersey known as the Pine Barrens.
Clare and her lover turned south again on Route 563 and drove eleven miles—Dale clocked it on his rental car’s odometer—before pulling left into a parking lot amidst a cluster of ramshackle buildings. The sign out front said PINE BARRENS CANOE RENTAL.
Dale drove on another mile before finding a good turnaround spot in the tiny crossroads town of Chatsworth and then drove back slowly. A river ran along the west side of the highway for this stretch, and he caught a glimpse of Clare and her lover in a canoe heading south, downriver, before they disappeared around a bend in the river. He turned into the canoe rental place and parked next to the empty Suburban. Dale walked past the main building, noted the high stack of firewood there and the chopping stump and the ax embedded in it and the pile of wood chips and unstacked wood, looking as if the owners were preparing for a hard winter, and then he was waiting for the teenaged boy in khaki pants and a green Pine Barrens Canoe Rental shirt to finish helping two women shove off into the easy current.
“Howdy,” said the boy, looking at Dale long enough to register the dress pants and street shoes and to dismiss him as a canoe rental client. “Can I help you?”
Dale studied the canoes and kayaks lined up on trailers and at the river’s edge. “How much to rent a canoe?”
“Thirty bucks,” said the teenager. “That includes life jackets and paddles. Cushions are fifty cents extra. Three bucks each for a third or fourth person. More than four people, you need a second canoe.”
“I’m alone,” said Dale, feeling for the first time how true those words were.
The boy shrugged. “Thirty bucks.”
“How far do the canoes go?”
The kid looked up from counting cash and smiled. “Well, they’d go to the ocean, but we like to retrieve them before that.”
“Well, how far is a normal trip, then? The two women who just left? How far are they going?”
“Evans Bridge takeout,” said the boy as if Dale should know where that was. “They’ll be lucky to get there before dark.”
“How about the couple before them?” said Dale. “They going to Evans Bridge?”
“Uh-uh. Those folks were camping. They’ll be at Godfrey Bridge Campsite in four and a half or five hours. Then they plan to go on down to Bodine Field tomorrow where we’ll take them out.”
“How do you know they’ll be camping at Godfrey Bridge?”
“You have to have a camping permit before you can do a two-day rental. They showed me the permit.” The boy looked at Dale. “You a cop?”
Dale tried to laugh casually. “Hardly. Just curious about canoe trips. My girlfriend and I have been thinking about taking one.”
“Well, you’d better make up your mind by next weekend if you’re planning to rent from us,” said the boy, sounding bored and disinterested again. He was lifting kayaks onto a trailer. “We close for the winter after then.”
“Do you have a map I could have of the distance to campsites and such?”
The boy took a wrinkled photocopy out of his back pocket and handed it to Dale without looking at him again.
Dale thanked him and walked back to the car.
The gravel turnoff from Route 563 to Godfrey Bridge Campsite was only about ten miles south of the put-in point. Dale had expected a developed campground, but at the end of the gravel road there was only the river, some metal fire pits set back under the trees, and two portable toilets. Thick forest pressed in on all sides. The camping area was empty. Dale glanced at his watch. It was a little after two. Clare and her boyfriend should be along between 6:00 and 7:00 P.M. The afternoon was clear and silent—no insect sounds and little animal or bird noise. A few squirrels scampered in the trees, but even their autumn play seemed hushed. Occasionally a cluster of canoes or a lone kayak would float by, the people either brazenly loud or as silent as the absent insects. None of the canoes carried Clare.
Dale walked back to his rental car, drove it a few hundred yards up the gravel road to an overgrown logging road he’d noticed, pulled it back out of sight, and popped the trunk open. For a while he stood staring into the trunk at the ax he had taken from the canoe rental place.
Professor Stewart? You get ahold of the psychiatrist in Montana?”
Dale looked up from the table where he was sitting drinking bad coffee out of a Styrofoam cup. The sheriff had shown him to a tiny room with a bare table and telephone and left him to make his call. There was no two-way mirror in the wall, but there was a tiny slit in the door and Dale guessed that this—sans telephone—was what passed for an interrogation room in the Oak Hill sheriff’s office.
“Yeah,” he said.
“No problems?”
“No problems,” said Dale. “Dr. Williams told me what you did about Dr. Hall’s accident and agreed to phone my prescription into the Oak Hill pharmacy. Actually, I’m pretty sure that I still have some medication left back at the farmhouse.”
“Good,” said McKown. The sheriff slipped into the only other chair and laid a manila folder on the table. There was a paperback book under the folder, but Dale could not see the title. “Are you willing to talk to me for a minute?” asked the sheriff.
“Do I have a choice?” Dale was very tired.
“Sure you do. You can even call a lawyer if you want.”
“Am I under arrest or suspicion for something other than being crazy?”
McKown smiled tightly. “Professor Stewart, I just wanted to ask your help on a little problem we have.”
“Go ahead.”
The sheriff removed five snapshot-sized glossy photos from the folder and set them out in front of Dale as if inviting him to play solitaire. “You know these boys, Professor?”
Dale sighed. “I don’t know them, but I’ve seen them. I recognize this kid as Sandy Whittaker’s nephew, Derek.” He tapped the photograph of the youngest boy.
“You want to know the names of the others?”
“Not especially,” said Dale.
“This one you should know about,” said McKown, sliding the photograph of the oldest skinhead out by itself on the tabletop. “His name is Lester Bonheur. Born in Peoria. He’s twenty-six. Dishonorable discharge from the army, six priors including felonious menacing, assault with a deadly weapon, and arson. Only convicted once for auto theft, served just eleven months. He discovered Hitler about four years ago the way most folks discover Jesus. These other punks are just . . . punks. Bonheur is dangerous.”
Dale said nothing.
“Where was the last place you saw these five men?” McKown’s pale blue eyes were too intense for a poker player.
“I do
n’t . . .” began Dale.
Tell him the truth. Tell him the whole truth.
The sheriff’s stare grew even more intense as Dale’s silence stretched.
“I don’t know what the place is called,” continued Dale, completely changing what he was going to say, “but it’s that muddy old quarry area a mile or so east of Calvary Cemetery. When we were kids, we called the little hills there Billy Goat Mountains.”
McKown grinned. “That’s what my uncle Bobby always called the old Seaton Quarry.” The grin disappeared. “What were you doing there with these troublemakers, Professor?”
“I wasn’t doing anything with them. The five of them were in two pickup trucks, chasing me. I was in my Land Cruiser.”
“Why were they chasing you?”
“Ask them,” said Dale.
The sheriff’s stare did not grow any friendlier.
Dale opened his hands above the tabletop. “Look, I don’t even know who these skinheads are except for him . . .” He tapped the photo of the youngest boy again. “Sandy Whittaker told me that her nephew was a member of this local neo-Nazi group. They threatened me when I first got here in October. Then the other day—“
The day before Michelle Staffney showed up on Christmas Eve.
“The day before Christmas Eve they jumped me at the KWIK’N’EZ. You can ask the fat girl who works there. I got in my Land Cruiser and drove away. They chased me in their pickup trucks. I took the back way from Jubilee College Road and lost them at the muddy old quarry area.”
“ ‘Back way’ is right,” said the sheriff. “That’s all private land. Why would you drive across country like that with these bad boys after you?”
Dale shrugged. “I remembered Gypsy Lane. It’s an old overgrown road that we used to . . .”
“I know,” interrupted McKown. “My uncle Bobby talked about it. What happened out there?”