You're getting old.
Yuh, he could have been old.
"So what now?"
I shrugged glumly. "I'm going to have to talk to Rand Jennings."
"You want us to come along?"
"No, I have other plans for you two. Take a ride out to the Payne place, see what's going on."
"See if Billy Purdue's turned up, you mean," said Angel.
"Whatever."
"And if he has?"
"Then we go and get him."
"And if he hasn't?"
"We wait, until I'm certain that Ellen Cole isn't in some kind of trouble here. Then…" I shrugged.
"We wait some more," finished Angel.
"I guess," I replied.
"That's good to know," he said. "At least I can plan what to wear."
The Dark Hollow Police Department lay about half a mile beyond the northern end of the town. It was a single-story brick building with its own generator in a concrete bunker at its eastern side. The building itself was quite new, a consequence of a fire a couple of years back that had destroyed the original structure just off the main street.
Inside it was warm and brightly lit, and a sergeant in long sleeves stood behind a wooden desk filling in some forms. His shiny name badge said "Ressler," so I figured he was the same Ressler who had watched Emily Watts die. I introduced myself and asked to see the chief.
"Can I ask what it's in connection with, sir?"
"Ellen Cole," I replied.
His brow furrowed a little as he picked up the phone and dialed an extension number. "There's a guy here wants to talk to you about Ellen Cole, chief," he said, then put his hand over the receiver and turned back to me. "What did you say your name was again?"
I hadn't said it the first time, but I gave it to him and he repeated it into the phone. "That's right, chief. Parker. Charlie Parker." He listened for a moment, then looked at me again, sizing me up. "Yeah, that sounds about right. Sure, sure." He put the phone down then reappraised me without saying anything.
"So, does he remember me?" I asked.
Ressler didn't reply, but I got the feeling that the sergeant knew his chief well and had detected something in his voice that put him on his guard. "Follow me," he said, unlocking a dividing door to the left of the desk and holding it to one side to let me pass. I waited while he relocked it, then followed him between a pair of desks and into a small, glass-walled cubicle. Behind a metal desk, on which lay trays of papers and a computer, sat Randall Jennings.
He hadn't changed too much. True, he was grayer and had put on a little weight, his face now slightly puffy and the beginnings of a double chin hanging down below his jawline, but he was still a good-looking man, with sharp brown eyes and wide, strong shoulders. It must have hurt his ego, I thought, when his wife had commenced an affair with me.
He waited for Ressler to leave and close the door of the office before he spoke. He didn't ask me to sit down and didn't seem troubled by the fact that, standing, I could look down on him.
"I never thought I'd see your face again," he said at last.
"I guessed by the way you said good-bye," I replied.
He didn't respond, just rearranged some papers on his desk. I wasn't sure if the gesture was meant to distract him, or me. "You're here about Ellen Cole?"
"That's right."
"We don't know anything about it. She came, she left." He raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
"That's not what her mother thinks."
"I don't care what her mother thinks. What I'm telling you is what we know, same thing I told her father when he was up here."
It struck me that I must just have missed Walter Cole, that we might even have been in town at the same time. I felt a twinge of sorrow that he had been forced to come up here alone, fearing for his daughter's safety. I would have helped him, had I known.
"The family's filed a missing person's report."
"I'm aware of that. I had a federal agent chewing my ear over a nonexistent NCIC filing." He looked hard at me. "I told him it was a long way from New York to Dark Hollow. We do things our own way up here."
I didn't respond to his bout of territorial spraying. "Are you going to act on the report?" I persisted.
Jennings stood up, the knuckles of his large hands resting on his desk. I had almost forgotten what a big man he was. There was a gun in a holster at his belt, a Coonan.357 Magnum out of St. Paul, Minnesota. It looked shiny and new. I guessed that Rand Jennings didn't have much cause to use it way up here, unless he sat on his porch and took potshots at rabbits.
"Am I having trouble making myself understood?" he said softly, but with a hint of suppressed anger. "We've done what we can. We have responded to the missing person report. Our view is that the girl and her boyfriend may have run away together and, so far, we have no reason to suspect otherwise."
"The manager of the motel said they were heading north."
"Maybe they were."
"All that's north is Baxter and Katahdin. They never made it there."
"Then they went someplace else."
"There may have been someone else with them."
"Maybe there was. All I know is that they left town. If they were still here, I'd know about it."
"I can see now why you never made detective."
He flinched, and his face flushed red. "You don't know the first damn thing about me," he said. The anger was distinct now as he pronounced his next words slowly and with deliberate emphasis. "If you'll excuse me, we have some real crimes to deal with."
"Really. Someone stealing Christmas trees? Maybe trying to screw a moose?"
He walked around the desk and came close to me as he passed by to open the door of his office. I think he half expected me to take a step back from him, but I didn't.
"I hope you're not planning on looking for trouble here," he said. He could have been talking about Ellen Cole, but his eyes said he was talking about someone else.
"I don't have to look for trouble," I replied. "I stay still long enough, trouble finds me."
"That's because you're dumb," he said, still holding the door open. "You don't pay attention to the lessons life teaches you."
"You'd be surprised how much I've learned."
I prepared to leave his office, but his left hand shot out to block me. "Remember one thing, Parker: this is my town and you're a guest. Don't abuse the privilege."
"So it's not a case of 'what's mine is yours?'"
"No," he said, with menace. "No, it isn't."
I left the building and walked to my car, the wind now howling through the trees and biting at my bare fingers. Above me, the sky was dark. As I reached the Mustang, an old green Nissan Sunny pulled into the lot and Lorna Jennings stepped from the car. She was wearing a black leather jacket with a big fur collar and blue jeans tucked into the same boots she had been wearing the last time we met. She didn't see me until she had begun to walk toward the main entrance. When she did spot me, she stopped short for a moment before coming over, casting an anxious glance at the illuminated doorway as she did so.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"Talking to your husband. He wasn't very helpful."
She raised an eyebrow at me. "Are you surprised?"
"No, not really, but it's not about me. A girl and a young man are missing and I think somebody here may know what happened to them. Until I find out who that might be, I'm going to be around for a while."
"Who are they?"
"The daughter of a friend, and the girl's boyfriend. Her name is Ellen Cole. You ever hear Rand mention her?"