“Most.”
“I’ll be glad to sign a statement,” Mason said. “Any cooperation I can give.”
“I’m Sheriff Garrity.” The muscular man stuck out his hand. “This is Deputy Lem Norten.”
Mason shook the hand. “Larry Mason.”
“Drivin’ through, Mr. Mason?” the sheriff asked.
“I was, and I saw the carnival. Came over to investigate and I was walking around and just happened to glance up.”
A drab looking tan ambulance arrived on the scene then, and Mason watched the two attendants begin the task of transferring the small body.
“You better come along back to my office,” the sheriff said.
“Sure, anything.”
Mason began to walk alongside the sheriff, noticing that the deputy walked a few feet behind and to the left, his hand resting casually on the butt of his holstered revolver. As they neared the amusement park exit, Mason turned his head and saw the white bearded old man leaning on the fence again watching the children on the carrousel.
Mason sat in the front of the patrol car with the sheriff, while the deputy sat in back, directly behind Mason. There was an unseen intensity about the man that made the back of Mason’s neck itch.
“On vacation?” the sheriff asked, as the car turned onto the main street.
“Right,” Mason said. “Decided just to drive around and see this part of the country.”
“Where’s the family?”
“No family,” Mason said. “Not much time for one. I’m a reporter, and I guess you’d have to say I’m married to my work.”
Sheriff Garrity turned off the main road, down a narrow alley between two tall frame buildings. He turned the smoothly running patrol car to drive down a gravel road parallel to the backs of Grayville’s main street establishments. Then the Sheriff wheeled abruptly into a space in the rear of a freshly painted two story building and cut the car’s engine.
Mason walked between Garrity and his deputy up some concrete steps and through a rear door. “Do you know the boy?” he asked.
“Yep,” the sheriff said, “young Will Cooper. Twelve years old.”
“It’s a damn shame,” Mason said. “I hate to see a thing like that happen.”
The other two men were silent as they ushered Mason into a large room off the hall. There was a gigantic old-fashioned roll top desk along one wall, cluttered with papers. On the opposite wall were filing cabinets and a row of bookshelves. An electric typewriter, the only modern thing in the room, sat on a stand next to the desk in a dusty, swirling shaft of sunlight that angled down through curtained windows.
The deputy walked past the bookshelves and held another door open for Garrity and Mason. Down some wooden steps then, directly into a small office with a bare metal desk. Behind the desk was a gleaming cell door, open.
“You’ll want me to sign a statement, I suppose,” Mason said.
“I suppose we’ll want you to place the contents of your pockets on the desk,” the sheriff said.
Mason was frozen in surprise for a moment, before the indignation set in.
“What is this?” he asked, moving closer to Sheriff Garrity. “Are you telling me you intend to hold me in jail?”
“Remove your belt, too, Mr. Mason.”
Mason stiffened in anger, sensed the deputy moving up to stand behind him. Sheriff Garrity leaned with both hairy-knuckled fists on the bare desk and stared at him with the impassiveness of the professional law officer, waiting for his command to be obeyed.
Mason sighed and complied. He placed his wallet, keys and loose change on the desk, then removed his belt and laid it coiled beside them. “Wrist watch too?” he asked.
Sheriff Garrity nodded.
“I’d like to call my lawyer now,” Mason said, slipping off his watch and dropping it on top of his closed wallet.
“This way, Mr. Mason,” the sheriff said.
Mason didn’t even have time to struggle. Sheriff Garrity suddenly had him by one arm, the deputy by the other, and he was moved the few feet that placed him on the other side of the jail cell’s threshold. The iron bars closed on him with the customary clang.
“Now just a minute!” Mason yelled, gripping the cold bars.
Ignoring him, the sheriff and his deputy jogged up the wooden stairs, through the door to the old-fashioned office and were gone.
Mason turned to see that he was in a cell about ten feet square, with a cot, toilet facilities, and a small plastic chair and table. That was all. Mason bowed his head, walked over and sat down on the firm cot to stare at the smooth cement floor, his thoughts circling like the carrousel.
Little more than an hour passed before Sheriff Garrity reappeared at the top of the wooden steps, looked placidly at Mason and walked down jingling a ring of keys.
“Here to release me?” Mason asked.
“Not here to beat you with a rubber hose,” the sheriff said, fitting a long metal key in the door. He swung the door wide. “C’mon upstairs.”
Mason walked ahead of the sheriff, up the wooden steps and into the large old-fashioned office. Sheriff Garrity waved a hand toward a small chair near the big roll top desk, and Mason sat down. He wondered at the possibilities. Had someone in authority realized they’d seriously violated his rights and decided to try to make it up to him in some way that would keep things quiet? Or was he going to be interrogated? Or formally booked on some fantastic charge?
“I’ll be outside by the door,” Sheriff Garrity said, and left Mason alone.
The office was quiet, restful, warm and thick with the golden sunlight that poured through the wide windows. Probably the windows were nailed shut, but Mason could pick up a piece of furniture, smash the glass. And have Garrity hear the noise and shoot him down before he could make another move? Was that what they wanted? Mason sat where he was and only looked out at the green of the treetops outside the windows.
The office door opened and a small, wiry man in his late sixties wearing a rumpled dark suit and vest entered. He had a graying mustache that matched thick eyebrows, and there was an angular shrewdness about his lined features and alert gray eyes. He nodded at Mason and smiled a faint, rather wise smile that narrowed one eye.
“I’m Ben Burdell, Mr. Mason, owner and editor of The Clarion Call.”
Mason stood, shook the extended dry, strong hand and sat back down. Burdell sat in the big, comfortable looking leather swivel chair at the roll top desk and turned it so he was facing Mason across the corner of a small wooden table that had a stack of yellowed file folders piled at the other end.
Mason remembered the front of the building then; large, overly ornate, with the newspaper’s name lettered on a darkened brass plaque over the entrance. He was sure he was in that building; a sheriff’s office and hold-over cells in the basement of a newspaper office didn’t seem all that unusual for a small town, and the location, from what he could tell as they’d approached from the rear, seemed about right.
“That’s where you are,” Bur-dell said, looking speculatively at him from beneath a cocked eyebrow, “in the offices of The Clarion Call.”
“And you’re going to explain this?” Mason asked.
Burdell nodded. “What you haven’t figured out by now. You’ve been thinking down in that cell, haven’t you?”
“Some.”
Burdell gave a crooked smile. “One old newspaperman can’t fool another. You’re a trained journalist. You saw what happened, and the deputy tells me you heard what Al Cooper said over the body of his boy.”
“ ‘Six hundred to one’,” Mason said, “is a curious thing to remark when you’re looking down at your dead son.”
Burdell leaned back in the leather chair. “I’m glad you’re leveling with me, Mason.” He sighed and rubbed tan knuckles across his chin. “Times are kind of hard right now in this country. Then, too, there’s the power of tradition. Humans can be bound tightly by tradition; we need tradition.”