“I was trying hard not to get that close.”
“Simmer down, Miles. They’re not going to get you. You’re going to be safe in here, having a little talk. Just simmer down. Those boys will leave you alone.”
“Some others of your local boys threw rocks at me this noon when my back was turned.”
“Is that so? You get hurt any?”
“It’s so and no, I didn’t. Do you want me to forget about that too? Just because they didn’t dent my skull?”
“I don’t want you to go getting yourself worked up over a bunch of hotheads. I’d say that some of the good people decided that you’d be better off leaving town.”
“Why?”
“Because they don’t know you, Miles. It’s simple as that. You’re the only man in about a century and a half had a sermon preached about him. You weren’t thinking of being run off, were you?”
“No. I have to stay here. I’m involved in something.”
“Um hum. Real good. Any idea how long that might take you?”
“Until the twenty-first. After that I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s not far away. I want to ask you to consider staying up there at Duane’s until we get some things straightened out around here. Is that all right?”
“What the hell is this all about, Polar Bears? Don’t leave town until the police give me permission?”
“I wouldn’t put it like that. I’m asking you for a favor.”
“Am I being questioned?”
“Hell no, Miles. We’re having a talk. I want your help on something.”
I leaned back in the stiff chair. I couldn’t feel the alcohol any more. Galen Hovre was regarding me with a half-smile which held little warmth. My senses were confirming a theory of mine, that when a man’s nature changes his essential smell changes with it. Polar Bears once had carried a dense, pleasant odor of closely packed earth, strongest when he was racing a jalopy at seventy down the curves of Highway 93 or stuffing a mailbox with rocks; now, like Duane, he smelled of gunpowder.
“Can I count on your help?”
I looked at this large square-faced man who had been my friend, and didn’t trust a thing he said. “Sure.”
“You’ve heard about these girls who were killed. Gwen Olson and Jenny Strand. Your neighbor Red Sunderson found that Strand girl, and she wasn’t a pretty sight. My deputy, Dave Lokken out there, lost his cookies when he saw her.”
“He’s still upset,” I said.
“Any normal man would be,” Hovre said amiably. “Truth is, we’re all upset around here. This crazy son of a bitch is still walking around. He could be anybody, and that’s the one that gets them by the nuts, Miles. We pretty well know everybody, and folks don’t know what to think.”
“Don’t you have any ideas about who it might be?”
“Oh, we’re sort of keeping an eye on someone, but even he’s not very likely, according to the way I see it. Now I’d like to keep this local. I’ve been Chief here for four years, and I want to get reelected so I can keep my family in hamburgers. Now you’re new around here. You might see things we don’t notice. You had a good education, you’re observant. I wonder if you’ve seen or heard anything that might help me out?”
“Wait a second,” I said. “Do those people who chased me think I did those things? Those killings?”
“You’d have to ask them.”
“Christ,” I said. “I’ve scarcely even thought about them. I’ve been busy with my own problems. I didn’t come here for this.”
“Seems to me it might help you out too if you could think of anything.”
“I shouldn’t need that. I shouldn’t have to help myself that way.”
“Seems to me should doesn’t have much to do with it.”
He had a point. “Okay, I can see that. I don’t think I’ve noticed anything. Just a lot of people acting queer, afraid. Some of them hostile. I met one strange kid, but…” The “but” was that I did not want to say anything that would bring suspicion on Zack or Alison. Zack was just a nutty theorist. Polar Bears lifted his eyebrows in a gesture of uninvolved patient anticipation. “But he was just a kid. I don’t even want to name him. I don’t know what I could say that would help.”
“Not yet, maybe. But you might remember something. Just keep it in mind, will you, old buddy?”
I nodded.
“Yeah. We could have this all on a plate by the twenty-first, so don’t do any unnecessary worrying. Now I got a few other little points to bring up with you.” He put on a pair of thick black glasses, making himself look like a scholarly bald bull of melancholy temperament, and took a sheet of paper off a messy pile. “I guess you got into a little trouble over in Plainview a while ago. I got a report on it just yesterday. A fellow named Frank Drum took the number of your car.”
“Jesus,” I said, thinking of the slinking little clerk who had been dispatched out of the diner.
“This was after an incident in Grace’s Restaurant over there. Do you remember it?”
“Of course I remember. They were like your gang of happy hooligans who tried to beat in my head with bats.”
“Who chased you.” He looked sharply up from the paper.
“It’s the same thing. What happened was ridiculous. I saw these guys listening to a radio and they looked like some trouble had happened and I asked what it was. They didn’t like my face. They didn’t like my coming from New York. So they threw me out after they took my license number. That was all. It was around one of the day somebody found the first girl.”
“Just for the record, do you know where you spent the previous night?”
“Somewhere. In a motel somewhere. I don’t know.”
“You don’t have a receipt or a check stub?”
“It was in a crummy little dive off the freeway. I paid with cash. What the hell do you want to know for?”
“I don’t want to know. There’s a cop named Larabee over there who wanted me to ask, that’s all.”
“Well, tell Larabee to shove it up his ass. I was in a crummy motel in Ohio.”
“Just fine, Miles, that’s fine. Real good. No need to get lathered up all over again. How did you hurt that hand of yours?”
I looked in surprise down at my bandaged hand. The tape was filthy and beginning to unravel. Loose wispy trails of dirty gauze leaked from beneath the tape. I had nearly forgotten about Duane’s bandage. “I had an accident with my car. On my car. I cut myself.”
“Dave Lokken can fix you up with a new bandage before you leave. He’s real proud of his first aid skills. When did that accident happen?”
“That same day. After I left the diner.”
“According to another fellow in that restaurant, a fellow named Al Service — he’s the official weedcutter in that part of the county — you made a funny remark before you left. According to Service, you said you hoped another girl would be killed.”
“I didn’t mean that. I was angry. I didn’t even know anyone had been killed then. I just said something like, ‘Whatever it was, you deserve to have it happen again.’ Then I ran like hell.”
He took off the glasses. He rested one jowl in his meaty hand. “I guess that makes sense, Miles. They got you riled. It happens to everybody. Why, you even got old Margaret Kastad worked up, I hear.”
“Old who?”
“Andy’s wife. She gave me a call after you left the store. Said you were writing pornography and I should run you off.”
“I won’t waste time talking about that,” I said. “She holds a few ancient mistakes against me. I’m a different person now.”
“All of us are, I guess. Guess it doesn’t mean we can’t help each other out. You could do something for me right now, and write out what happened in that restaurant and date it and sign it so’s I can have a copy sent to Larabee. It’s for your own good.” He fished around on his desk and pushed a sheet of paper and a pen across the surface. “Just in general terms, Miles. It doesn’t have to be long.”