“You want to talk about the report? The woman you said went missing? The dogs? Anything?”
Dale sipped his coffee to gain time. Should he tell McKown about C.J. Congden’s visit?
No. Tell him nothing.
“I know how crazy the whole thing sounded,” Dale said at last. “It sounds crazy to me. I guess your deputy told you that I’ve been on some medication for depression. . .”
McKown nodded. “Did you get a chance to call the psychiatrist in Montana? What’s his name?”
Tell the truth.
“His name is Charles Hall. And no, I haven’t had time to call yet.”
McKown drank some coffee and set the mug down. “We called him, Professor Stewart. Just to check that you were a patient of his.”
Dale tried a smile, knowing how ghastly it must look. “Am I?”
“Not anymore,” said the sheriff. “I’ve got some bad news for you.”
Dale could only wait. He had no idea what the man was talking about.
“Dr. Charles Hall died on December nineteenth,” said McKown. “We talked to his answering service and then the doctor on call, Dr. Williams. That’s a woman, Dr. Williams.”
Dale stared. When he could speak, he said, “Was he murdered?”
McKown lifted his coffee mug but did not drink from it. “Why do you ask that, Professor Stewart?”
“I don’t know. The way things have been going. . . wait, you’re serious about this? Charles Hall is dead?”
“An auto accident on December nineteenth,” said Sheriff McKown. “Evidently he was on his way back from a long weekend skiing in Telluride, Colorado, when a drunk came across a center line.” McKown took a pink while-you-were-out slip from his stiffly ironed breast pocket and set the paper on the kitchen table. “This is Dr. Williams’s number. She wants you to call her as soon as you can so she can talk to you and make sure your prescription’s refillable—that sort of stuff.”
Dale lifted the slip and stared at the phone number. “Did you tell her. . . about Christmas? About me?”
“We confirmed that you’d been a patient of Dr. Hall’s and did ask her what you were being treated for. She didn’t want to talk about anything—it’s all confidential—but we told her that there was a possible missing person situation and that we just had to clarify that you weren’t delusional. She looked at Hall’s file on you—she’s taking half his patients, another doctor took another half—and she confirmed that you were just being treated for depression and anxiety.”
“‘Just,’ “said Dale.
“Yes,” said Sheriff McKown. “Well, she wants you to call her as soon as you can. I guess you can’t from this place, though.”
“No,” agreed Dale. Charles Hall dead. That prissy little office with the windows looking out on the tops of the trees. Who would use that office now?
“My deputy tells me that you seem to remember that you and I went to school together, Professor Stewart.”
“What?” Dale looked up from the pink piece of paper in his hand. “Sorry?”
McKown repeated the statement.
“Oh. . .” said Dale and stopped. He knew that he was coming across as a mental deficient as well as a lunatic, but his head was too full of conflicting information to process things right now.
“Might have been my uncle, Bobby McKown,” said the sheriff. “He graduated high school in ’66, so he would’ve been about your age.”
“I remember Bob McKown,” Dale said truthfully. “He used to play ball with us. Go hiking out at Gypsy Lane with us.”
The sheriff sipped coffee and then smiled thinly. “Uncle Bobby always told us little ones about that Bike Patrol you guys had going then. Bobby always wanted to be in it, but I guess you had enough members.”
“I don’t remember,” said Dale.
“Do you remember anything more about the other night, Professor Stewart? Anything about the dogs?”
Dale took a breath. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been seeing real dogs around here, Sheriff. There were paw prints the last few weeks. . .”
McKown’s expression was pleasant enough, but Dale saw that the man was watching and listening very carefully.
“I’ve never had hallucinations or delusions before, Sheriff,” Dale went on, “but I’m prepared to be convinced that I’m having them now. I’m still. . . depressed, I guess. I haven’t been sleeping too well. I’ve been trying to work on a novel, and that’s not going very well. . .”
“What kind of novel?”
“I’m not sure what kind it is,” said Dale with a self-deprecating chuckle. “A failed one, I guess. It was about kids—about growing up.”
“And about that summer of 1960?” asked McKown.
Dale’s heart rate accelerated. “I guess it was. Why do you say that, Sheriff?”
“Our uncle Bobby used to talk about that summer occasionally—very occasionally—but more often than not, he didn’t talk about it. It was like being a kid in Elm Haven back then was one long sunny day, except for that summer.”
Dale nodded, but as the silence stretched he realized that McKown wanted something more. “Bob McKown knew Duane McBride. . .” Dale gestured toward the old house around them. “Duane’s death that summer came as a real shock to a lot of us kids. We handled it in weird ways, if we handled it at all.”
“I’ve read the case files,” said McKown. “Mind if I have some more of this good coffee?”
Dale started to get to his feet, but McKown waved him back down, went to the counter, refilled his own mug, brought the pot over to top off Dale’s cup, and set the pot back in the coffeemaker burner. “Who do you think killed your friend Duane, Professor Stewart?”
“The sheriff then and the Justice of the Peace. . . J. P. Congden, C.J.’s father. . . determined that it was an accident,” said Dale, his voice unsteady.
“Yeah, I read that. Their report and the coroner’s report said that your friend Duane just started driving this combine in the middle of a July night—the combine didn’t even have its corn picker covers on—and they say that somehow this Duane, who everybody says was a genius, managed to fall out of the cab of that combine and then have the machine run over him, tearing him apart. You buy that, Professor Stewart? Did you buy that then?”
“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?”