CHAPTER 16
There were at least two carloads of police and they wanted to question everyone who had seen Shiu that day, so—with a detective listening—I called Liz at home. She was awake, and she said, getting ready to call the office to find out if they had heard from me, when I called.
She offered to come down to the office and a police car was sent to get her. Doralee, called by Grace, turned down a squad car ride. She said her boyfriend would drive her to the office as soon as they finished… ah, washing the dishes from their late dinner. A call was dispatched through the sheriff’s radio to look out for Diana and Kirk on the interstate and back roads and give them an escort to town.
I had the longest story to tell, and by the time the two detectives finished with me, the other cops had taken statements from Grace and Darlington and were talking to Liz and Doralee.
I told the ranking cop, a Lt. Bardanty, about Swift’s behavior earlier and suggested the man needed medical attention. To my surprise, rather than barging in and questioning Swift, he assigned one of the plainclothesmen to sit outside the managing editor’s office to watch him, but keep everyone away until a psychiatrist could be found to examine him. Swift had lapsed into some kind of trance, rocking in his chair, and mumbling what sounded like nursery rhymes.
The lieutenant was not happy, however, about my suggestion that he call Creston and Phlager.
“What the hell have they got to do with this?” he asked. “This isn’t a state case so far as I can see.”
He knew about the Sanders disappearance, but didn’t see, or didn’t want to see, any connection. To tell the truth, neither did I for sure, but I figured anything to do with either Shiu or Swift might be important.
It’s always amazing to see how the bureaucratic mind works. He finally agreed to put a call in to Creston when I asked him how it would go down with his chief if this did turn out to be material for the other case, and he had missed the chance to put the department in the position of supplying the key information.
It was nearly 2:00 a.m. when the resident shrink from the hospital emergency room showed up to look at Swift. Grace and Darlington had put the paper to bed and left; Doralee and her hunk had gone home to finish the dishes, and Liz and I were just waiting for a cab when Phlager, looking sleepy, but wearing his lawyer clothes, shirt, tie, and three-piece suit, came in with a state trooper.
He nodded to us and spoke briefly with Bardanty. They motioned to the pyschiatrist, who came out of Swift’s office shaking his head. He spoke to Bardanty, who picked up a telephone and made a brief call. The shrink went back to the office and, with the help of the detective who had been waiting outside the door, gently raised Swift out of his chair and began walking him toward the elevator.
Phlager came over. “The doctor says there’s no point in even trying to talk to him. He’s taking him to the hospital and says it may be days or even weeks before Swift is lucid enough to talk to anyone. He says the man appears to have had some sort of shock that regressed him to childhood, and if we put any more stress on him he might go even deeper.”
“Oh boy,” I said, “I hope I didn’t make it worse.”
Phlager asked what I meant, and I told him that Swift had appeared to recognize me when I first talked to him, but then started reciting the old rhyme about the monkey and the elephant when I asked about Shiu.
Phlager didn’t know what rhyme I meant, so I started, “I went to the animal fair…” If it had been a cartoon, the artist would have drawn a light bulb over Phlager’s head.
“Did that seem to be his answer when you asked where Shiu had gone?”
“Yeah. Some answer,” I said.
“Hell yes,” Phlager said. “He may have been telling you just where Shiu went.” He reached into his coat, consulted a fat address book and picked up a phone.
“I told you Dennis Touhy had complied a list of SNS property,” he said after punching in a number. “I think I remember something from that…”
“Dennis? Phlager. Yeah, I know it’s the middle of the night. Wake up and listen to me. Do you remember that property list you made in the Sanders case? Yeah, the professor. OK, did I see that one of the items on that list was a game farm or hunting resort up north? It was? Good, now where’s the file?”
Phlager hung up and turned to us. “I’m going over to the state office building to meet Touhy and get the property file. I’ll run you two home if you want.”
On the way home, I asked Phlager if he thought the file would provide anything important.
“Bob, I don’t have any idea. From what I was told, the helicopter was last seen heading north. It may be nothing… and it may be the break we’ve been looking for all week.”
“Wait a minute, Bill. Are you talking about Shiu or Frank Sanders?”
“Both, I hope,” Phlager said. “We probably should have made the connection and checked out the game farm days ago.”
“I don’t give a shit about Shiu, but if you think this might have something to do with Frank, I want to know,” I said. “Liz and I have gone along with you on this, and I think we’re entitled. Certainly she is.”
Phlager was quiet for a moment. “OK. You’ll know. But there may be no connection.”
We got to bed at 2:30 and enjoyed a fine four hours of sleep. Phlager sounded wide awake when I mumbled hello into the phone at 6:30.
“We may have something, Bob. The sheriff up in Coulee County reported to the FAA late last night that a couple of moonlight fishermen on one of the lakes reported seeing a huge, low-flying aircraft headed north… in a line for that SNS-owned game farm. They recognized it as a ’copter, but thought it might have been in trouble because it was flying so low.
“I just talked to the sheriff about the game farm. He said it had been out of operation for more than a year, but was used occasionally for hunting and fishing. He said one of his deputies had mentioned that someone apparently had moved into the place last week.
“So, Larry Creston and I are flying up as soon as the state plane can get here.”
Now I was wide awake. “Bill if there’s the least chance Frank is up there, Liz and I want to come.”
“I don’t know. We’re not supposed to give reporters rides in state aircraft.”
“Oh, come on, the governor does it all the time and so does the adjutant general in National Guard planes. Besides, both of us are material witnesses in a major case.”
“Oh, boy, another press table lawyer. All right, Bob, the plane is supposed to be here by eight. If you can be at the airport by then, you both can come.”
I rousted Liz out of bed and called a cab. We were on the way to the airport by 7:30 and even had time for coffee and doughnuts before the six-seat state propjet swooshed in.
Creston didn’t look too happy about taking civilians along, but Phlager soothed him by telling us that he was letting us come on the express condition that we accept any restrictions on our movement imposed by him or Creston. We hadn’t agreed to anything, but kept quiet to avoid queering the deal.
Coulee County was way up in the deep woods in the far northwest corner of the state. The only place that could be called a town was Winston Lakes, and after nearly an hour of flying, we spotted its one-runway airport carved out of the trees. An easy landing, provided the wind was blowing the right way, the pilot told us over his shoulder. He brought us in smoothly, although we got a very close look at the huge pines at the end of the runway.
The sheriff was Grover Reed, and he was decked out in full dress uniform when he greeted us at the tiny terminal. The gray and black tunic and gray pants pressed to a knife-edge crease weren’t his workaday clothes—if the cleaning tag he had missed on the coat sleeve was any clue. Reed was a short man gone to fat, but light on his small feet—probably was once a good dancer—maybe even a boxer when he was younger. He had a small oval face and almond-shaped eyes.