My glass was empty.
“Come on. Keep me company. I gotta have a few drinks at night in order to get to sleep. If Lokken arrests you for drunken driving, I’ll tear up your ticket.” His big seamed face split into a smile.
I poured two inches into my glass and added a handful of ice cubes. The bourbon appeared to have as much effect on Polar Bears as Coca-Cola.
“You see,” he said, “I’m tryin’ my darnedest to keep you out of trouble. I like talking to you, Miles. We go back a long way. And I can’t allow one of our good citizens of Arden to come in and sit here and see his police chief get sloshed, can I? We’ve got a good little understanding going. You forgive me for the Larabee business, and I’ll listen to anything you have to tell me. I forgive you for boosting a book out of Zumgo’s. You probably had a lot of things on your mind.”
“Like getting anonymous blank letters.”
“Like that. Uh huh. Real good. And like your wife dying. And right now, we got another problem here. One that means you gotta keep a low profile, old buddy.”
“Another problem.”
He sipped at his drink, and slid his eyes toward mine over the rim like a card player. “It’s what I was tryin’ to talk to you about two nights ago, old buddy. A new wrinkle. Are you startin’ to shake, Miles? What for?”
“Just go on,” I said. I felt as cold as in the old Updahl kitchen. “This is what you’ve been leading up to all night.”
“That’s not entirely fair, Miles. I’m just a cop trying to see all around a case. Trouble is, it keeps on growing.”
“There’s another one,” I said. “Another girl.”
“Maybe. Now you’re mighty clever to get that out of me, because we’re trying to keep it quiet for the time being. It isn’t like the other ones. We don’t have a body.” He made a fist and coughed into it, stringing out the suspense. “We don’t even know there is a body. A girl named Candace Michalski, good looker, seventeen years old, just disappeared the other evening. Two-three hours after I dropped you off at the Nash a couple blocks from here. She told her parents she
was going bowling down at the Bowl-A-Rama — we passed it going out of town, remember — and she never came back. Never even made it to the Bowl-A-Rama..”
“Maybe she ran away.” My hands were shaking, and I sat on them.
“Out of character. She was an honors student. Member of the Future Teachers of America. Had a scholarship to River Falls next year. That’s part of the state university system now, you know. I took some extension courses in police science there some years back. A good girl, Miles, not the kind that lights out.”
“It’s funny,” I said. “It’s funny how the past keeps up with us. We were just talking about Alison Greening, who is still, ah… on my mind a lot, and you and Duane and I all knew her, and people are all remembering about her death—”
“You and Duane were a lot closer to her than I was.” He laughed. “But you gotta take your mind off her, Miles.”
My body gave a tremor. “And an Arden girl with a Polish name leaves town or disappears, like that girl of Duane’s…”
“And you make a museum out of your grand-maw’s house,” he said almost brutally. “Yeah, but I don’t exactly see where that gets us. Now here’s my thinking. I talked to the Michalskis, who are all shook up, naturally, and upset, and I said that they should keep quiet. They won’t tell anyone about Candy. They’ll say she went visiting her aunt in Sparta — or anything like that. I want to keep the lid on it for as long as possible. Maybe the girl will write them a postcard from a nudist colony in California. Huh? Maybe we’ll find her body. If she’s dead, maybe we can smoke out her killer before anybody gets the chance to get all hysterical. I’d like a nice clean arrest, and I guess the killer would prefer that too. With the sane part of his mind, anyhow.” He levered himself off the couch and put his hands in the small of his back and stretched. He looked like a tired old bear that had just missed a fish. “Why did you want to go and steal from Zumgo’s, anyhow? That was shit-stupid. Anyone would think you were asking to be put away.”
I shook my head. “Bertilsson is wrong. I didn’t steal anything.”
“I’ll confess to you, I wish that boy would come up to me and say, I did it, now get it over with. He wants to. He wants me to get him. He’d love to be sitting right where you are, Miles. He’s all screwed up inside. He’s about ready to snap. He can’t get me out of his mind. Maybe he killed that Michalski girl. Maybe he’s got her hid away someplace. Maybe he doesn’t know what to do now that he’s got her. He’s in a bad spot. I feel sorry for the bastard, Miles, honest I do. If we do get a suicide, I’ll say, that was him. I missed him, dammit. But he missed me too. What time is it?”
I looked at my watch. Polar Bears moved over to his front window and stood leaning against the glass, looking out into night. “Two.”
“I never get to sleep until four or five. I’m screwed up nearly as bad as him.” The gunpowder odor seemed particularly strong, along with the smell of unwashed skin. I wondered if Polar Bears ever changed his uniform. “How’s that project you mentioned? Comin’ along okay?”
“Sure. I guess so.”
“What is it, anyhow?”
“Historical research.”
“Real good. I still need your help, though. I hope you’ll stay with us until this is all cleared up.”
He was watching my reflection in the window glass. I glanced at his revolver hanging in its holster from the side wing of a chair.
I said, “What did you mean the other day when you said something about the killer’s not just being an ordinary rapist? That he might be impotent?”
“Well, you take rape, Miles,” Polar Bears said, moving heavily across the room to lean on the back of the couch. “I can understand rape. It’s always been with us. I’ll tell you what I couldn’t say to a woman. These cases didn’t have anything to do with rape. These things were done by somebody with a bad head problem. Rape isn’t perverted, the way I look at it — it’s almost a normal thing. A girl gets a fellow all heated up so he can’t control himself, and then she hollers rape. The way these girls dress is almost incitement to rape. Hell, the way some girls look is an incitement to rape. A fellow might misunderstand what some bottom-swinging little critter is all about, what she wants. He gets all steamed up and can’t help himself. Fault? Both parties! That’s not exactly a popular point of view these days, but it’s sure enough the truth. I’ve been a cop long enough to see a hundred cases of it. Power, they say. Of course it’s about power. All life is about power. But these cases now weren’t done by any normal man. See Miles, these girls didn’t have any form of intercourse at all — the examiner at the state hospital in Blundell, Dr. Hampton, didn’t find any traces of semen. They were violated by other means.”
“Other means?” I asked, not really sure I waned to hear any more.
“A bottle. A Coke bottle. We found one smashed up beside both Gwen Olson and Jenny Strand. On Strand, something else was used too. A broomhandle, something like that. We’re still looking for it in the field off 93. Then there was some knife work. And they were both beaten up pretty badly before the real fun started.”
“Christ,” I said.
“So it might even be a woman, but that’s pretty farfetched. It’s hard to see a woman being strong enough, for one thing, and it doesn’t really sound like a woman, does it? Well.” He smiled at me from his position behind the couch, leaning forward on his arms. “Now you know as much as we do.”
“You don’t really think Paul Kant did these things, do you? That’s impossible.”