Jim appeared within ten minutes. He was a thin man in his middle twenties, thoroughly Adam’s-appled, and with the usual suntan that ended abruptly at the hatline.
“My deputy,” the sheriff explained. He handed Jim a badge and then turned back to us. “I’d like to take your fingerprints along to Phoenix.”
Fred and I both protested, but our prints were taken.
After the sheriff left for Phoenix, Jim sat down at the desk and picked up a true detective magazine. He turned through it, found something interesting, and began reading, his lips moving slowly.
Fred went to the bars of his cell. “How long will it take the sheriff to get to Phoenix?”
“Two hours there and two hours back,” Jim said.
Fred watched him read for a while. “So you’re the deputy?”
Jim nodded. “Part-time — whenever I’m needed. Otherwise I work at Bud’s Garage.”
“How much does deputizing pay?”
“Three fifteen an hour. And when I get in six months’ time — that’s nine hundred and sixty hours — I become eligible for health insurance.”
“How many hours do you have in now?”
“Exactly six hundred twenty-three. Took me five years of part-time to accumulate that.”
Fred reached for his wallet and pulled out a number of bills. “There’s five hundred dollars in this roll.” He folded the bills and tossed them out of his cell. “Well, well, deputy, look what dropped out of your pocket.”
Jim frowned and shook his head. “No, sirree. We’ll have none of that hanky-panky while I’m on duty.”
He got a broom and pushed the money back to the cell bars. “It might be more polite to hand it back to you personally, but we’re not supposed to even touch the prisoners’ money.”
I lay down on my bunk. After a while I groaned slightly.
The deputy looked my way. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I have a terrible pain in my side,” I said. I groaned again.
The deputy scratched his ear. “If it’s appendicitis, there’s nothing much I can do except phone the doctor. Only we don’t have any here in town. I’d have to get Red Rock.”
“I’m positive it isn’t appendicitis,” I said. “But perhaps you could bring me a glass of water and a couple of aspirin?”
The deputy found some aspirin in the desk drawer and drew a paper cup of water from the water cooler.
He put the cup and the aspirin on the end of a narrow board and shoved it through the bars toward me.
“I’m not allowed to go in there,” he explained. “Especially when I’m alone. You can never tell what might happen.”
I swallowed the aspirin, drank the water, and lay down again.
In the next cell, Fred chuckled. “Nice try.”
I turned on him indignantly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I get this stitch in my side during moments of stress.” After a while, I dozed off.
The ring of the telephone woke me. The deputy reached for the phone and listened. Finally he hung up and smiled in our direction. “That was the sheriff calling from Phoenix. Seems as soon as he got there he found out that the real Hannibal Coggins was just picked up in Stafford. I guess we owe you two an apology.”
He rose, got the ring of keys, and released both Fred and me.
I was a bit embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Fred, but I could have sworn you were Coggins.”
Fred nodded. “I felt exactly the same way about you.” He sighed. “Well, I guess I’ll get my gas can filled.”
The deputy consulted his watch. “It’s eight thirty. Bud’s Garage stays open until nine.”
Fred and I went back to my car, still parked at the cafe, and he picked up his gas can. “Maybe I can get somebody at Bud’s Garage to drive me back to my car.”
I felt that possibly I owed Fred something. “I’ll drive you back. I really don’t have anything important to do at this time of the night anyway.”
We got gas at Bud’s Garage and then headed back in the direction we had come. It was a rather beautiful night, with a full moon and a clear sky.
I drove nearly ten miles before Fred directed me to turn off onto an ungraveled side road. I had to slow down considerably to negotiate the rough surface.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand, Fred,” I said. “If you aren’t Hannibal Coggins, why did you try to bribe your way out of jail? Wouldn’t it have been simpler — and cheaper — just to wait until the sheriff proved that you weren’t Coggins?”
Fred sighed. “I was afraid you’d think of that. And if you work on it a little more, you’ll probably come up with the answer.” He pressed open the glove compartment of my car and began rummaging around.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, “but almost anything will do.” He found a screwdriver. “If the sheriff had processed my fingerprints in Phoenix, he would have discovered that Hannibal Coggins isn’t the only person in the world who’s wanted by the police.” He regarded me severely. “Ever been stabbed by a screwdriver?”
“No,” I said uneasily. “I can’t say that I have.” I experienced the familiar tension stitch in my side and winced.
“Relax,” Fred said. “Killing isn’t my trade. That’s why I went through the trouble of turning in what I thought was Hannibal Coggins. I thought that way I might be saving some innocent people’s lives.”
I felt a certain amount of relief.
He hefted the screwdriver again. “Just the same, remember that this weapon puts me in charge of the situation.”
Some two hundred yards ahead of us I could make out the shadowy bulk of a car parked slightly to one side of the narrow road.
Fred gave an order. “Stop the car right here.”
I put my foot on the brake. The car swerved to the right as we came to an abrupt stop and Fred fell over me.
He quickly untangled himself. “Now, watch that! You could have gotten yourself killed if it were anybody else but me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but the car swerves when I step on the brakes. I think one of the front tires is soft.”
Fred took my car keys out of the ignition and pocketed them. “I’ll leave the keys in the road when I leave. Now just sit right there and don’t move until I’m gone.”
Obviously Fred didn’t want me to get close enough to his car to copy the license number.
He picked up the road map on the seat next to me and pocketed that too. “I wouldn’t want to get lost again.” He opened the car door and left with the two gallon can of gasoline, glancing back occasionally as he made his way to the shadows of his car. After a while his lights went on and the car pulled away.
I watched the taillights diminish in the distance and then got out of my car and walked down the road.
In the bright moonlight I had no trouble finding my car keys where Fred had said they would be.
I looked once more at the fading taillights and then made my way back to the car.
Poor Fred, I thought, he’s heading for Nelson’s Butte.
With the two gallons in his tank, he should be able to get there and a little beyond — or a little back — depending on his decision. That was all, however.
On the map there is an asterisk next to Nelson’s Butte. Yet so many people, it seems, cannot find the footnotes on a map, and evidently Fred was one of them. Nelson’s Butte is a ghost town and not a soul has lived there in over seventy years. Fred wouldn’t find any gas stations there, and the nearest live town was more than forty miles farther on.
I started my car, carefully negotiated a turn, and drove back to the highway.
If I’d been an honest citizen, I would have driven back to Everettville and told the deputy approximately where he could pick up Fred.
However, I wasn’t an honest citizen.