Less than twenty feet from where he stood as he received his ticket a plainclothes officer of the Los Angeles Police Department was casually watching his actions; he had seen Johnny come in alone and in his judgment he was a year or two too young to be on his own. He knew, of course, about the shooting in Pasadena, but the only ID clue he had been given was a worn-out red jacket; he made no connection in his mind, therefore, between the boy he saw buying a ticket and the one for whom the Pasadena police were so frantically searching. Instead he was mildly interested in a boy who just possibly might be trying to run away from home.
Johnny turned and looked about the terminal to see where he might wait without being conspicuous. Then he caught sight of a considerable group of children of his own age and he knew at once what to do. He walked over to them, not too rapidly, and sat down at the end of one of the rows. “Hello,” he said to the boy next to him.
“Hello. You going to Disneyland too?”
“Sure.” Johnny wiggled back on the seat and tried to look as though he belonged there.
The police officer was satisfied. He had noted the brief interchange and took it for mutual recognition between kids who knew one another even though they weren’t pals. He turned his attention back to the station and continued his lookout for any signs of pickups, narcotics violations, or persons who absented themselves for too long an interval in the washrooms.
Johnny McGuire, his shoe box on his lap, sat quietly, content not to push his luck, until the bus was ready to load. Then he rose with all of the others and boarded the vehicle as routinely as possible. He completely fooled the police officer who had given him one more inspection while he had been in line. Instinctively Johnny played the role of a boy properly out for a holiday; the fact that he was apparently carrying his lunch added an authentic touch.
As the bus pulled out he felt a wonderful sense of freedom. He had passed through the most difficult part, all that he had to do now was to sit still until the vehicle he was on took him safely and securely to Anaheim.
In abrupt contrast, tensions were rising sharply in the McGuire home. Less than ten minutes after Maggie had received the call from her son, Mike had burst in the door, hoping for some news. In view of the circumstances, he had been excused from work. When he had been told about the telephone call, he had raged at the traffic delay which had prevented him from getting home in time to receive it himself.
The small apartment was hardly able to contain him as he tried desperately to think of something to do. Mounting worry over his son’s whereabouts, and the frustration of forced inaction, had whetted his nerves raw. Twice he picked up the phone to call the police and twice he slammed it back onto its cradle.
Maggie sat silently, afraid to move or utter a sound. She had repeated the phone conversation over and over, three or four times, to the best of her ability until Mike was satisfied that he had extracted every particle of information she had to give. Now he was a caged lion, torn between wanting to go out and search, and the desire to be at home to receive the first bit of additional news that came in.
When the doorbell sounded once briefly, Mike whipped open the only entrance to the apartment and found himself confronting Virgil Tibbs once more. “You found him?” he demanded.
Tibbs shook his head. “Not yet-but we will. I’m glad you’re home; I came to ask one or two more questions.”
“Come in, then.” Once more Mike despised his visitor for his black skin-he desperately wanted a white man to help him, someone he could rely on and trust.
Virgil knew that; he read the tension in the atmosphere as though it had been a newspaper headline. He did not blame the McGuires, they were under a fearful strain and to some degree he shared it with them.
“First of all, every man on the entire police force is helping to look for Johnny,” he began. “So are our policewomen. And the people of the city will help, I’ve already talked to the bus driver who carried him last night.”
“How was he?” Maggie asked.
“Just fine at that time. He’ll turn up, Mrs. McGuire, he’s got to. I’m almost certain we’ll have definite news before the day is over.”
In response Maggie held out her hand to him, something which for an instant astonished Mike and then, for some reason, made him angry.
“I wanted to ask you,” Tibbs said, “where you went to church.”
“What’s it to you?” Mike snapped.
Virgil turned toward him. “I asked a reasonable enough question, Mr. McGuire; you know that.”
“Maybe, but it’s none of your goddamned business.”
Tibbs tightened slightly, but he kept his own voice under control. “It’s very much my business, and you’d know that if you think about it for a minute. Sometimes when children are in trouble, and they’re afraid to go home, they’ll go instead to a trusted minister-I did.”
“Well we don’t go to church. Maggie here’s a Baptist, but we don’t know no ministers out here. Johnny, he wouldn’t do that.”
Tibbs accepted the answer, then he turned back to his hostess. “Mrs. McGuire, I know you must have gone over your phone conversation with Johnny a hundred times already in your head, and of course you’ve told Mr. McGuire all about it. Do you think you could repeat it once more for me? There might be some little point you didn’t mention when we talked about it.”
Wearily Maggie brushed her hair back without being aware of it, swallowed, and once more recited her account of the almost maddeningly limited talk she had had with her son. When she had finished she lowered her head a little, as though ashamed that she had no more to offer.
“And that’s all he said.”
Maggie nodded, her voice for the moment used up.
“Did you hear any sounds in the background that you might be able to identify? Anything at all?”
Maggie shook her head. “He was in a booth, he said that he was. I didn’t hear anything but him.”
“If he had only said something more-anything-I might have something to go on.”
“He might have said something, if the operator hadn’t cut in.”
“You said that the operator cut in?”
“Why, yes. The operator came on the line, like they do, and said that three minutes were up and to signal when we were through. So Johnny just said ‘good-bye’ and hung up.”
“There’s nothing to that,” Mike said.
“Maybe not,” Tibbs answered. “On the other hand, it’s just possible that it may tell me where to find your son.”
11
Fifteen minutes later Virgil Tibbs was in the office of Captain Lindholm, the chief of detectives for the Pasadena Police Department. The chief took one look at his face and waved him to a chair. “You’ve got something,” he said.
“I may have a lead on the McGuire boy, the one with the gun. I put it together out of bits and pieces, but it fits.”
“Good. Before you go any farther…no, you’d better give me your part first.”
“All right, sir, let me lay out the pieces for you. One, the boy has approximately sixteen dollars in his possession, at least he started out with that amount. He must have bought some food somewhere along the line, but it would be from hamburger stands and places like that. Almost impossible to check. Two, he was saving his money to buy a catcher’s outfit, for baseball, but in the frame of mind he must be in, I don’t think he’s buying sports equipment.”
“Neither do I,” Lindholm agreed.
“Continuing, he is a rabid fan of the California Angels, both because he loves baseball and because he once met Gene Autry. He has a double involvement there; his parents have made that very clear.”
“It’s a long way to Anaheim, for a boy his age at any rate.”