Three stars for the Holiday Inn in Redford, Illinois. I signed the check and went to bed.
The next morning I went into town. Outside the airconditioned motel the air was hot with a strong river smell.
Cicadas hummed. The Holiday Inn and the Mississippi River were obviously Redford’s high spots. It was a very small town, barely more than a cluster of shabby frame houses along the river. The yards were mostly bare dirt with an occasional clump of coarse and ratty-looking grass. The town’s single main street contained a hardware and feed store, a Woolworth’s five-and-ten, Scooter’s Lunch, Bill and Betty’s Market with two Phillips 66 pumps out front, and, fronting on a small square of dandelion-spattered grass, the yellow clapboard two-story town hall. There were two Greek Revival columns holding up the overhanging second floor and a bell tower that extended up perhaps two more stories to a thin spire with a weathervane at the tip. In the small square were a nineteenth-century cannon and a pyramid of cannonballs.
Two kids were sitting astride the cannon as I pulled up in front of the town hall. In the parking area to the right of the town hall was a black and white Chevy with a whip antenna and POLICE lettered on the side. I went around to that side and down along the building. In the back was a screen door with a small blue light over it. I went in.
There was a head-high standing floor fan at the long end of a narrow room, and it blew a steady stream of hot air at me. To my right was a low mahogany dividing rail, and behind it a gray steel desk and matching swivel chair, a radio receiver-transmitter and a table mike on a maple table with claw and ball feet, a white round-edged refrigerator with gold trim, and some wanted posters fixed to the door with magnets. And a gray steel file cabinet.
A gray-haired man with rimless glasses and a screaming eagle emblem tattooed on his right forearm was sitting at the desk with his arms folded across his chest and his feet up.
He had on a khaki uniform, obviously starched, and his black engineer boots gleamed with polish. A buff-colored campaign hat lay on the desk beside an open can of Dr Pepper. On a wheel-around stand next to the radio equipment a portable black-and-white television was showing Hollywood Squares.
A nameplate on the desk said T. P. DONALDSON. A big silver star on his shirt said SHERIFF. A brown cardboard bakery box on the desk contained what looked like some lemon-filled doughnuts.
”My name’s Spenser,“ I said, and showed the photostat of my license in its clear plastic coating. Germ-free. ”I’m trying to backtrack a woman named Donna Burlington. According to the FBI records she was arrested here in nineteen sixty-six.“
”Sheriff Donaldson,“ the gray-haired man said, and stood up to shake hands. He was tall and in shape with healthy color to his tan face, and oversize hands with prominent knuckles. His shirt was ironed in a military press and had been tailored down so that it was skintight.
”Hundred and First?“ I said.
”The tattoo? Yeah. I was a kid then, you know. Fulla piss and vinegar, drunk in London, and three of us got it done. My wife’s always telling me to get rid of it but…“ He shrugged. ”You airborne?“
”Nope, infantry and a different war. But I remember the Hundred and First. Were you at Bastogne?“
”Yep. Had a bad case of boils on my back. The medics said I ought to eat better food and wash more often.“ His face was solemn. ”Krauts took care of it, though. I got a back full of shrapnel and the boils were gone.“
”Medical science,“ I said.
He shook his head. ”Christ, that was thirty years ago.“
”It’s one of the things you don’t forget,“ I said.
”You don’t for sure,“ he said. ”Who was that you were after?“
”Burlington, Donna Burlington. A.k.a. Linda Hawkins, about twenty-six years old, five feet four, black hair, FBI records show she was fingerprinted here in nineteen sixty-six, at which time she would have been about eighteen. You here then?“
He nodded. ”Yep, I been here since nineteen forty-six.“
He turned toward the file cabinet. A pair of handcuffs draped over his belt in the small of his back, and he wore an army.45
in a government-issue flap holster on his right hip. He rustled through the third file drawer down and came up with a manila folder. He opened it, his back still to me, and read through the contents, closed it, turned around, put the folder facedown on the desk, and sat down. ”You want a Dr Pepper?“
he said?
”No, thanks. You have Donna Burlington?“
”Could I see your license again, and maybe some other ID?“
I gave him the license and my driver’s license. He looked at them carefully and turned them back to me. ”Why do you want to know about Donna Burlington?“
”I don’t want to tell you. I’m looking into something that might hurt a lot of people, who could turn out to be innocent, if the word got out.“
”What’s Donna Burlington got to do with it?“
”She lied to me about her name, where she lived, how she got married. I want to know why.“
”You think she’s committed a crime?“
”Not that I know of. I don’t want her for anything. I just ran across a lie and I want to run it down. You know how it goes, people lie to you, you want to know why.“
Donaldson nodded. He took a swig from his Dr Pepper, swallowed it, and began to suck on his upper lip.
”I don’t want to stir up old troubles,“ I said. ”She was eighteen when you busted her. Everyone is entitled to screw up when they’re eighteen. I just want to know about her.“
Donaldson kept sucking on his upper lip and looking at me.
”It’ll be worse if I start asking around and get people wondering why some dick from the East is asking about Donna Burlington. I’ll find out anyway. This isn’t that big a place.“
”I might not let you ask around,“ Donaldson said.
”Aw come on, Hondo,“ I said. ”If you give me trouble, I’ll go get the state cops and a court order and come on back and ask around and more people will notice and a bigger puff of smoke will go up and you’ll be worse off than you are now.
I’m making what you call your legitimate inquiry.“
”Persistent sonovabitch, aren’t you? Okay, I’ll go along. I just don’t like telling people’s business to others without a pretty good reason.“
”Me either,“ I said.
”Okay.“ He opened the folder and looked at it. ”I arrested Donna Burlington for possession of three marijuana cigarettes. She was smoking with two boys from Buckston in a pickup truck back of Scooter’s Lunch. It was a first offense, but we were a little jumpier about reefers around here in ’sixty-six than we are now. I booked her; she went to court and got a suspended sentence and a year’s probation. Six weeks later she broke probation and went off to New York City with a local hellion. She never came back.“
”What was the hellion’s name?“
”Tony Reece. He was about seven or eight years older than Donna.“
”What kind of kid was she?“
”It was a while ago,“ Donaldson said. ”But kind of restless, not really happy, you know—nothing bad, but she had a reputation, hung out with the older hotshots. The first girl in class to smoke, the first to drink, the first one to try pot, the one the boys took out as soon as they dared while the other girls were still going to dancing school at the grange hall and blushing if someone talked dirty.“
”Family still live in town?“
”Yeah, but they don’t know where she is. After she took off, they were after me to locate her. But there’s only me and two deputies, and one of them’s part-time. When nothing came of that, they wrote her off. In a way they were probably glad she took off. They didn’t know what to do with her. She was a late baby, you know? The Burlingtons never had any kids, and then, when Mrs. Burlington was going through the change, there came Donna. That’s what my wife says anyway.