“Mr. Judson?”
“Yep?”
I told him my name. “I’m a detective, and I-”
“You say detective?”
“Yes, sir. Investigating the disappearance of Jerry Carding.”
“Who?”
“Jerry Carding.”
“Never heard of any Jerry Carling.”
“Carding, Mr. Judson. Jerry Carding.”
“Never heard of any Jerry Carding.”
“The story’s been in all the papers and on TV-”
“Don’t read the papers. Don’t own a TV.”
“He vanished from Bodega last Sunday night, between nine and ten o’clock,” I said. “A young fellow about twenty, dark hair, Fu Manchu mustache. I understand you were in Bodega around that time and I thought you might have seen him.”
“Yep,” Judson said.
“Sir?”
“Yep. Did see him.”
Well now. “Where was this, Mr. Judson?”
“On the highway. Near Ingles’ cafe.”
“Was he alone?”
“Yep. Hitchhiking.”
“He thumbed you, then?”
“Yep.”
“But you didn’t stop for him?”
“ Did stop for him. Used to hitch rides myself, back when. Decent young fella. Polite, good manners. Missing, you say?”
“Yes.” There was a tenseness inside me now; this was the kind of break I had been looking for. “You took him where, Mr. Judson?”
“What?”
“Where did you take him?”
“Not far. Just up the road a ways.”
“How far up the road?”
“To the Kellenbeck Fish Company,” he said.
SEVENTEEN
I did some hard thinking on the way back to Bodega Bay.
Jerry Carding had hitchhiked to the Kellenbeck Fish Company last Sunday night. All right. Zach Judson had not seen him approach the plant, but it was a safe assumption that it had been Jerry’s destination; there was nothing else in the vicinity, no other businesses or private homes. Meeting someone there? Could be. But then why not meet in Bodega instead? As it was, Jerry had had to walk partway and hitch a ride the rest of the way.
The other possibility was that he had gone to the fish company to look for something, either inside the building or somewhere around it. Something connected with the article he’d written; that seemed likely. Ten o’clock on a Sunday night-a nocturnal prowl. It was the kind of thing an adventurous kid, a kid who wanted to be an investigative reporter, might do.
But what had happened then? Had Jerry completed his search, with or without finding what he’d come after, and later hitchhiked away from Bodega Bay? Or had somebody found him there and been responsible for his disappearance?
And the big question-why? What was there about the Kellenbeck Fish Company that would inspire a “career-making” article and a secret late-evening visit? Yes, and why go there after he had finished the article?
I focused my thoughts on Gus Kellenbeck. According to Mrs. Darden, the past couple of years had not been a boon for anyone in the fishing business; yet Kellenbeck had managed to keep his plant operating at a profit. It was possible that he was mixed up in some sort of illegal enterprise, such as price-fixing or substituting and selling one kind of processed fish for another. But that sort of thing had little news value; it happened all the time, in one form or another. Even a novice like Jerry would have known that.
What else could it be?
What else…
There was an itching sensation at the back of my mind, the kind I seem always to have when there’s something caught and trying to struggle out of my subconscious. Something significant I had seen or heard. It gave me a vague feeling of excitement, as if I were poised on the edge of breakthrough knowledge: remember what it was, take that one right turn, and I would be on my way into all the other right turns that led out of the labyrinth.
Only it would not come, not yet; the harder I tried to get hold of it, the tighter it seemed to wedge back. Let it alone, then. It would pop through sooner or later, the way nagging bits of information you can’t quite remember-names, dates, titles of books or movies-come popping through once you stop thinking about them.
It was four-thirty and just starting to get dark when I neared the Kellenbeck Fish Company. On impulse I swung the car onto the deserted gravel area in front. The building had a dark abandoned look in the fog and the late-afternoon gloom; closed on Sundays, I thought, nobody here. But I got out anyway and went around onto the rear dock.
The corrugated iron doors were closed and padlocked; I could see that without going over there. Instead I wandered to the foot of the rickety pier. There was nothing on it, no boats tied up at its end. Beyond, the gray water was scummed with mist. And on the opposite shore, Bodega Head was just a lumpish outline dotted here and there with ghostly lights from the houses above the marina.
I turned to look at the building again. The itching sensation came back, but with the same nonresults. Maybe if I had another talk with Kellenbeck, I thought; maybe that would help me remember. At the least I could see how he reacted when I mentioned Jerry Carding’s visit here last Sunday evening.
So I returned to the car and drove to The Tides and hunted up a public telephone. There was a listing for Kellenbeck in the Sonoma County directory with an address in Carmet-by-the-Sea. Carmet was an older development of homes a few miles back to the north, right on the ocean: I had passed by it twice on the trip to and from Jenner.
I got there inside of twenty minutes, but it was another ten before I located Kellenbeck’s place; the homes were well spread out along the east side of the highway and the fog made it difficult to read the street signs. The house turned out to be a big knottypine A-frame with a lot of glass facing out toward the Pacific. Even for Carmet, where homes would not come cheap because of the view, it looked to be worth a pretty good chunk of money. Kellenbeck was doing well for himself, all right-maybe too well for the owner of a minor fish-processing plant. You did not buy or build a house like this with just a small-businessman’s profits.
The trip here seemed to be a wasted effort, though. All the windows were dark, and so were those in the adjacent garage. Just to be sure I went up onto the porch and rang the bell. No answer.
A pair of mist-smeared headlights poked toward me as I was coming back to the car. Kellenbeck? But it wasn’t; the headlights belonged to a low-slung sports job, not the Cadillac I had seen yesterday at the fish company, and it drifted on by.
I got into the car and sat there and tried to decide what to do next. Take another room for the night at The Tides Motel and then brace Kellenbeck tomorrow-that seemed like the best idea. The other alternative, hanging around here and hoping that he did show up before long, had no appeal. For all I knew he was out somewhere for the evening, visiting friends or indulging his fondness for liquor; and I had no idea where to go looking for him The itching again.
Then, all at once, I remembered.
It came out of my subconscious clear and sharp-something I had seen, something odd-and right on its heels was another fragment. I put on the dome light, took out the torn corner I had found in Jerry Carding’s room at the Darden house, and looked at it. Then I began to construct a mental blueprint, testing it with some of the questions I had asked myself and other people the past few days. And I remembered something else then, one more fragment. And sketched in a few more connecting lines.
And there it was.
Not a complete blueprint; it didn’t explain all the twists and turns, did not show me all the way to the end. But the things it did show made sense: What it was Jerry had found out, the subject of his article. Why he might have gone to the fish company last Sunday night. Why he had disappeared.
Why his father had been murdered in Brisbane on Thursday.
Yet I had no proof of any of it. It was speculation, personal observation-just like my account of what had happened when Martin Talbot discovered Victor Carding’s body. Eberhardt and Donleavy would want to check it out if I took it to them cold, and so would the Federal authorities; but no search warrants could be obtained without some sort of evidential cause, and if Kellenbeck was alerted there might not be any evidence left to find. He could take steps to cover himself, bluff through even a Federal investigation, get off scot-free.