“No. He leave early that day.”
“How early? What time?”
“After lunch. One o’clock.”
“And he didn’t come back?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he went?”
Shrug. “?Quien sabe? He don’t tell me much.” Perez’s expression was more or less stoic, but he had sad, expressive eyes, and the impression they conveyed was that he didn’t much like his employer.
“Have you worked for Balfour long?”
“Six years.” Six years too long, the sad eyes said.
“So, you must know him pretty well?”
“No, senor. I work, he pays me, that’s all.” Then, “ Excuseme, por favor. I must be finish here when he come back.”
Jake had parked in the shade of a big oak; we went to sit in the car and wait. I said, “Some other business on Monday. Like maybe setting a gas-line boobytrap to murder the Verrikers.”
“Maybe. Let’s see what he has to say.”
The voice of reason. But I was tensed up again, fidgety; I couldn’t hold my hands still, kept running them back and forth across my thighs.
The wait lasted ten minutes. Then a dirty white Dodge pickup came rattling along the blacktop and angled to a stop near the shed. The driver hopped out, went around to take material out of the pickup’s bed. Balfour.
He was still unloading when Runyon and I approached him. Pear-shaped, stubby-legged, chinless; bullet head topped with a couple of tufts of colorless hair. And a dirty Band-Aid under one eye that gave him a faintly piratical look. He scowled when he spotted us, then seemed to make an effort to shift his expression into neutral. I don’t normally judge people by their appearance; I’ve spent a personal and professional lifetime letting actions and personalities dictate my opinions. But even though I warned myself to keep an open mind, I took an immediate dislike to the man.
“What you guys want?” Flat, with an undercurrent of irritation.
“Few minutes of your time,” Runyon said. “You’re Pete Balfour?”
“That’s right. Who’re you?”
Jake told him. Names, professions. The last deliberately, so we could gauge his reaction.
There wasn’t much. A couple of eyeblinks, a little twitch along one side of his mouth. He didn’t look particularly bright, but you sensed the kind of self-protective shrewdness that keeps some men from revealing much about themselves when you catch them by surprise.
“Detectives? Yeah? What the hell you want with me?”
I said, keeping my voice even, “We’re trying to find my wife. She’s been missing since Monday.”
“Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Hope you find her.” Sure he did. “But I didn’t know you was a detective.”
“Does it matter?”
“No. Hell, no. But I can’t help you none. Why come to me?”
“We’re talking to everybody we can,” Runyon said, “looking for someone who might’ve seen Mrs. Wade Monday afternoon. You didn’t happen to be anywhere near the old logging road off Skyview Drive that day, did you?”
“Me? No. I wasn’t nowhere near the valley that day.”
“Mind telling us where you were?”
“Right here, working.”
“All afternoon?”
“Sure. All day. We got to finish these repairs by tonight. Big holiday doings tomorrow, you probably heard about that.”
Lying through his stained-yellow teeth. I had an irrational impulse to grab him, shake him like a dog shakes a bone. I shoved my hands into my pockets to keep them still. Being a liar didn’t necessarily make him a kidnapper. Not necessarily. Not enough evidence yet. Innocent until proven guilty.
“Know of anyone else who might’ve been out that way on Monday?” Runyon asked him.
“No. Wish I did.”
“Well, if you hear of anyone who was, let the deputy sheriff, Broxmeyer, know, will you?”
“I sure will.”
I said as he started to turn away, “What happened to your face?”
“Huh?”
“Under your eye. The Band-Aid.”
His mouth twitched again. He lifted a hand, let it drop without touching the adhesive. “Oh, that. Splinter from a piece of wood I was cutting. Couple of inches higher and they’d be calling me One-Eye.”
Another lie. The hell he was innocent.
Back to the car. When we were inside, I said, “He’s the one, Jake. I can feel it in my gut.”
“He’s a damn liar, that’s for sure.”
“I’m thinking we ought to go back out to his place, climb the gate and look around, and to hell with the dog.”
“If we get caught, then what? If we don’t find Kerry, then what?”
I didn’t argue. Voice of reason again.
We were moving now, heading for the gates. In the sideview mirror, I could see Balfour standing alongside his pickup, pretending to rummage around in the bed while he watched us drive away.
Runyon said, “What we need is more information on Balfour. His life, his habits, if he owns any other property where he could be keeping a prisoner.”
“There’s one person who can tell us. Plenty.”
“Ned Verriker.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Ned Verriker.”
22
PETE BALFOUR
Detectives!
He hadn’t had any idea the woman was married to a damn private cop. How the hell could he? She hadn’t said nothing, nobody else’d said nothing. Probably all over the valley by now, everybody knew it but him. The last to know anything, that was how it’d always been for him, unless he pried it out of somebody like he’d pried Verriker’s whereabouts out of Jolene and Luke Penny. Asshole Valley didn’t want nothing to do with Pete Balfour, wouldn’t give him the time of day, just laughed at him and called him mayor and wouldn’t give him any peace.
Them two nosing around, asking where he was on Monday afternoon-one more threat to him and his plans. Just making the rounds, asking everybody, like they’d said? Or did they suspect him somehow? Come into the fairgrounds, private property, you couldn’t see the construction work from out on the road… maybe they did suspect him. But that didn’t make any sense. How could they? Unless somebody’d pointed them at him, said go talk to the mayor, he’s a schmuck nobody likes, he could be the one has the woman locked up somewhere.
No, hell, that didn’t make sense, neither. Everybody figured she was lost in the woods, they couldn’t have any idea she’d been grabbed. Sure. Sure. It was all right. Those city dicks didn’t suspect anything. Getting himself all worked up for no good reason.
But why the questions about the old logging road, Skyview Drive? They couldn’t of put it together that that was where he’d snatched the woman or what he was doing up there in the first place. They didn’t live in the valley, they didn’t know how much he hated the Verrikers. Guys like the Ramseys and Stivic and Lucchesi knew him and Verriker didn’t get along, sure, but that was all they knew. Couldn’t tie Pete Balfour to the explosion. Nobody could. Tragic accident, everybody thought so, everybody said so. Wasn’t no way to prove otherwise.
Yeah, but still… the way the old guy, the husband, had looked at him. Eyes boring into his like he was trying to see inside his head. Hard eyes. Suspicious eyes. Tight mouth, too, and it’d got tighter when he said he hadn’t been nowhere near that logging road, that he’d been right here working all day Monday Shit! They’d been waiting when he come back from Builders Supply, they could of been here long enough to ask the Mex or the half-wit the same questions they’d asked him.
He went quick to where Eladio was working in the beer concession. “Them two guys that was just here. You talk to them while I was gone?”
“Si.”
“What’d you tell them about Monday? You say I was here all day?”
“That would be a lie. I tell them the truth.”
“You stupid son of a bitch! That I left early, didn’t come back?”
Eladio nodded, looking at him with those big sad eyes of his. Then he shrugged, half smiled, and started banging away again at the countertop.
Balfour came close to jumping in there, smashing his face in. But it wouldn’t of done no good, the damage was already done. He jerked away, went around to lean against the wall of the men’s crapper. Sweat ran like grease on his face; he rubbed it off on the sleeve of his shirt.