by Ed Gorman
The Sheriff looked as tired as Carnes did.
Signaling that he’d like more coffee himself, Wayman took the stool next to Carnes and said, “You think you’d take a piece of advice?”
Carnes smiled bleakly. “I suppose that would depend on if I thought it was good advice.”
“Get yourself some sleep.”
“I don’t think I could sleep.”
“You might surprise yourself. You might be able to sleep for half a day. You’re exhausted.”
“You look pretty shot yourself.”
“Mine’s just physical. I don’t have the stake you do in this.”
“Yeah,” Carnes said, “I see what you mean.”
Misery, like a disease, began working its way through his body again.
“Maybe I don’t know her as well as I think I do,” Carnes said. He sounded well beyond mere exhaustion—he was functioning on some plane that few people survive for long.
“What do you mean?” Wayman asked.
“Well, maybe she is into drugs, or has some secret that I didn’t know about.”
“Could be,” Wayman said. He didn’t sound convinced.
Carnes tried to recognize the dimensions of his nightmare. It didn’t belong in this context, in a nice, clean little diner with glazed donuts inside a glass display case, a coffee pot spreading a friendly aroma through the air, and a very pleasant man working the counter.
When you sat in a place like this you shouldn’t have the thoughts he was having—of her dead in a ditch somewhere or in the clutches of a slavering lunatic.
He shook his head, trying to push all the terrible thoughts away before he snapped and spoiled the beautiful morning for the other people along the counter.
When he looked up he saw the door to the diner open and a pretty, dark-haired woman enter, nod to the sheriff, and come over.
She put out her hand and Wayman took it. “How are you, Beth?” he said.
Under any other circumstances, the woman’s clean-cut good looks would be the sort that got Carnes very interested. Not today. He went back to staring at his coffee.
He scarcely listened as Wayman and the woman exchanged pleasantries.
Only when he heard the word “newspaper” did Carnes take real notice again.
Now he knew why she was here.
And if she was here, then others in the press would inevitably follow.
He hadn’t thought of that before—how the media would turn his missing daughter into an event.
He started to stand up.
The woman put a lovely, slender hand on his elbow.
“May I speak to you for a moment?” she asked.
He glared at her, obviously letting his eyes speak his answer, then threw a few one dollar bills on the counter and walked outside.
Behind him he heard the woman mutter a few words of surprise but he kept on walking, out into the morning air of cow manure and diesel fuel, sunshine, and apple blossoms.
He walked across the macadam to his car and leaned against it and surveyed the blue-green hills hidden partially behind a veil of morning fog. As an urban person, he’d never much considered living in the country, but there were moments when life out here seemed so much easier—
Guilt stabbed through his bucolic thoughts as he realized that he still had to call Janet, Deirdre’s mother, and tell her what happened.
A terrible phone call to make ...
“I’m sorry if I made you angry.”
The voice was as gentle as the breeze.
Carnes turned to find the dark-haired woman who had introduced herself as a newspaperwoman.
“I don’t have anything to say,” he said. “Talk to the sheriff. He can tell you what’s going on.”
She looked at him levelly. “I came to apologize.”
“For what? I don’t blame you for doing your job. Just don’t blame me for not wanting to talk to you.”
“Well, I’ve had personal losses of my own. I should have been more sensitive about just showing up and walking into the diner. I could’ve gotten ahold of the sheriff first and talked to him, I guess. My husband was the real reporter. I just kind of followed him around and picked up what I could.”
When she spoke about her husband a kind of injury came into her voice. He liked her better after this, a kind of kinship being established.
“I’m just kind of crazy, I guess,” he said. “She just vanished.”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“I’ve tried. I’m just not hungry.”
He stared out at the interstate beyond the swell of a close-by hill.
She was out there.
Somewhere.
“She could turn up, you know, safe and sound.”
“Yeah, I know,” Carnes said.
She put a hand on his arm again. Despite himself, despite his preoccupations of the moment, the touch was exactly the right tender feeling he needed.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” she said. “I’ll leave you alone.”
But as she turned to go, Carnes found himself reaching out, touching her on the arm.
She turned around.
“How about you?” Carnes said. “Have you had breakfast?”
She smiled. “As a matter of fact, no, I haven’t.”
“Do you know anyplace in town where we could get something good?”
Suddenly he needed to be away from here, from the motel where Deirdre had disappeared. If he didn’t give his mind and body a rest, he was afraid of the consequences.
“Sure,” she smiled. “The best place in town.”
“Where would that be?”
“The kitchen in my apartment. I was about to go over there and make some eggs and ham slices. How does that sound?”
It sounded wonderful, though immediately Carnes hated himself for the pleasure he felt. There should be no pleasure with his daughter gone.
He had still not given her his answer when she put out her hand and said. “I’m Beth Daye, by the way.”
He introduced himself.
Sheriff Wayman left the diner, walked across the macadam. He studied their faces, saw that they were getting along much better than when he’d last seen them, and smiled.
“I see you’re in good company,” Wayman said. “Beth’s actually a real nice lady, even if she is a member of the press.” Wayman nodded to his patrol car. “I’ve got to be heading into town, Mr. Carnes. If you need anything, just call my office. They’ll put us in touch in no time.”
“Anything more we can do?”
“I’ve put an APB out along with her description. The Highway Patrol is stopping at truck stops and asking the drivers if they saw anybody meeting her description on the interstate last night.” Wayman shrugged. “Right now, I’m afraid that’s about the best we can do.”
He put out a big hand.
Carnes shook it.
Nodding, the sheriff turned back to his car, got in, drove off.
“Shall we?” Beth Daye said.
Carnes stared a long moment at his car and at the memory of his daughter who’d been riding in it.
Beth’s gentle touch on his arm urged him away. He gave in to her.
The ride into Burton was pleasant. The blooming sights of spring reassured Carnes that maybe things would turn out to be all right, after all. From half a mile before the city limits sign he could see two different church steeples plus a handful of taller brick buildings that looked clean against the blue sky. A farmer on a big John Deere tractor honked at them and waved, friendly as a man in a travel film. A yellow school bus loaded with kids also waved at them. Beth waved back.
On their right, just inside the welcome sign erected by the Kiwanis club, sprawled a two-story factory that seemed to be a quarter of a mile long. Over its wide front doors appeared the name Foster Meats.
“There you have it,” Beth noted sardonically. “Burton’s largest industry. Correct that: Burton’s only industry.” She laughed. “Actually, I guess I should tak
e some pride in it. Foster Meats are shipped all over the world, right from here in little old Burton.”
“It looks like a huge place.”
“It is.” Beth shook her head. “The only thing I’ve got against it, I guess, is the squeals of the dying animals you hear sometimes. I like meat too much to be a vegetarian, but once in a while it crosses my mind that that would probably be a decent thing to be.” She frowned. “The only other thing I don’t like about it is that it has a free run of everything. Nearly three-fourths of the town council work there, and so any time the plant wants to create a new road, even if it will inconvenience other townspeople, well, the road is built. Foster Meats is actually the town government here.”
Carnes took the devil’s advocate role. “Yeah, but imagine what would happen if they ever decided to pull out.”
“That’s a kind of blackmail, isn’t it?” Beth said. Then, “Actually, they did threaten to pull out once. I’m not sure when—around 1950, I guess—because we had an upstart mayor then who thought that Foster Meats should pay more taxes. Apparently the executive people were all packed and ready to go, and at the last moment, the mayor gave in and they stayed.”
Beth knew that the town’s civic pride went back far beyond the crisis at the meat plant, of course. Burton had been born in adversity, in the 1850s, when the land had been timber, where buffalo and deer roamed the same pastures, where Indians more curious than hostile had noted the white man’s progress. Floods had come shortly after the town, in the 1880s, had erected false fronts like towns did farther west. Then there had been two killer bouts of influenza, which had claimed many, many citizens. During WWI the town had lost more than twenty-five young men, terrible for a place this size. In WWII, the figure had doubled, though the population had not. But whatever fate or the gods pushed the town’s way, Burton had its pride. Natural disasters could not move it. Wars could not move it. And crimes could not move it.
Along with other citizens, Beth took pleasure in the way the town had remained solid and strong, despite everything. The people, if not sophisticated, were generally honest and hardworking.
They couldn’t tell you about Andy Warhol, but they could tell you about midwifing a baby or what sweet corn tasted like on an August afternoon or what last night’s episode of Maverick had been about.
This was the kind of life Beth preferred, no doubt about it.
They had passed the factory now and were driving down a narrow avenue lined with small homes that looked well cared for. An old brick schoolhouse stood on one corner, a church on another. At a Texaco station several men stood around a pickup truck talking. A bit further down the road a supermarket bustled with a dozen or so housewives toting groceries out to their cars. In all, an ideal little place, Burton was, and Carnes would have been charmed if Deirdre’s fate weren’t so heavily on his mind.
The downtown area was built around a town square that came complete with a bandstand and a Civil War statue. Beth turned right, away from the loop area, and headed down another narrow street. Here were bungalows of colorful yellows and whites and blues, bright in the warm morning sun. She pulled up next to a two-story white house with a staircase running up the side.
Her apartment on the second floor was a model of neatness. The furniture was chunky and modern, not at all what Carnes had expected, for some reason, and on the walls were some expensive Chagall prints. He felt sure there would be no other Chagall prints to be found anywhere in Burton.
In the bathroom, while she started breakfast, Carnes gave himself what his mother always referred to as a “sponge bath.” He had brought a shirt, trousers, and underwear from his car and was glad he had.
He returned to the kitchen to find Beth Daye wearing a frilly apron and working with speed and efficiency at the stove.
“Would it be a very chauvinistic thing to say that you look good in an apron?”
“Probably.”
“Then I’d better not say it.”
“No,” she said, “you’d better not.”
Carnes rubbed at his forehead. “Maybe I’ll sit down in your recliner in the living room.”
She smiled. “That sounds like a good idea. Then I’ll call you when breakfast is ready.”
He started to leave the kitchen, then paused. “I should tell you how much I appreciate this.”
She smiled again. “No need. Really.”
“Well, at least let me say thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She nodded toward the living room. “Now why don’t you go in there and sit down. Rest.”
He had been maybe three minutes in the chair, a copy of Time magazine on his lap, when he let his head fall back, and sleep overtook him like a form of death.
He had no idea how long he’d been out when the scream penetrated his consciousness and he came awake thinking only that his daughter was in terrible danger and that it was up to him to save her.
When his eyes came open he found instead Beth Daye standing in the entranceway to her apartment, a strange-looking, crazed man putting his hands out to her as if he wanted to choke her.
The scream still echoed on the air.
3
“Maybe it was a bat,” Ruth Foster said to Minerva Smythe, her black maid, in the morning.
“Wasn’t a bat, Ruth. Wasn’t a bat.”
They were at the breakfast table in the white and yellow breakfast nook and the sunlight was pure gold. Minerva had just finished telling Ruth how, hearing a noise, she’d come downstairs last night and something had knocked her off balance. She’d banged her head and hadn’t awakened until nearly dawn. For her troubles, she’d received a goose egg that was purple against her delicate brown skin.
Ruth smiled and touched her friend’s hand. “I sure do appreciate your bravery, checking things out for us.”
Minerva returned the smile, yet there was an aloofness in her eyes. Over the years she’d heard the sound in the basement so many times ... yet Ruth didn’t seem to think anything of it. Minerva had gone exploring a few times—despite the way that her heart had threatened to drive through her chest wall, despite the way that she could scarcely catch her breath the more she walked around the ill-lit, gloomy basement—but she’d found exactly nothing. Just water-swollen walls and little alcoves left over from the days when coal had been stored down there. In all, nothing to be suspicious about, not even a place where anybody could hide especially well.
Minerva looked back at her friend. Ruth looked so pale this morning. Minerva worried about her. Ruth was a frail woman, anyway, and always there seemed to be some kind of burden on her....
A knock sounded on the back door. The two women glanced at each other. Ruth started to get up to answer it but Minerva held out a hand. “Even with a goose egg on the side of my head, I feel better than you do.”
Within three feet of the door, she could see that their caller was Jake Darcy, their handyman. He was dressed as usual in his blue work shirt, khaki work trousers, and brown twill jacket. A plump little man, he did everything around the house that the two women could not do for themselves. He smiled his curiously vacant smile at Minerva and came inside the house. He was maybe fifty, Minerva wasn’t sure.
“Just wonderin’,” Jake said in his slow drawl, “if you wanted me to get anything when I run into town this morning.” He smiled over to Ruth Foster, seeming to have a special fondness for the woman.
She smiled back at him. “Nothing for me, Jake. You might ask Minerva.”
Minerva shook her head and laughed. “Unless you can find a big strong man who wants to look around in the basement.”
Jake glanced first at Ruth Foster then back at Minerva. “What about the basement?” he said.
“Heard some strange noises in it last night.” Minerva pointed to her goose egg. “Somebody or something hit me.”
Jake smiled. His smile was very uncomfortable. “Maybe you just fell down.”
Minerva laughed and waved her hand at Ruth. “She’s trying to tell me that it was
a bat. Now you’re trying to tell me that I just fell down.” There was some genuine irritation in her voice.
Sensing her friend’s dismay, Ruth took on a defensive tone. “I’m not doubting your word.”
“Neither am I,” Jake said.
Minerva checked out each one, appeared to be weighing whether or not she believed them. Finally she shrugged and said, “Well, I suppose we’ll never know what it was, I guess.” She glanced at Ruth. “No matter how many times it happens.”
Ruth shook her head. “The times before, it was the wind. That I’m sure of, Minerva.”
“The wind,” Minerva said, tired of the whole discussion. “Maybe it was.”
Jake pawed at his shirtfront with a pudgy hand. “You sure neither of you ladies wants anything from town?”
Ruth thought a moment. “A cake from the bakery would be nice.”
“For you, maybe,” Minerva smiled. She pinched more than an inch around her waist. “Not for me.”
“Oh, Minerva, you haven’t gained five pounds since I met you thirty years ago.”
“Thanks for the flattery, but if you don’t mind I’ll pass on the cake.”
Ruth smiled fondly at her friend. “Well, we’ll see tonight when I set it on the dining room table.”
Jake laughed. “Maybe I’ll stop by myself, just to see how things are going.”
“A white cake with chocolate frosting sounds good,” Ruth said.
“Just watch me resist,” Minerva said, touching the goose egg, wondering fleetingly about the noises she’d heard last night.
Already she knew she was going to give in tonight.
Not only have a piece of cake but also eat the ice cream Ruth inevitably served along with it.
“Well, ladies,” Jake said. “See you presently.”
4
Dave Evans leaned his head back, savoring the marijuana that was doing wonderful things to his seventeen-year-old brain.
Near the door his friend Bobby Coughlin stood guard. Never knew when one of the pisshead teachers from Burton High was going to walk in and grab you.
Dave, a handsome blond kid who could easily have made first-team quarterback if he weren’t more interested in girls and fun, was generally in enough trouble that any more would get him kicked out of school.
