When Eugene’s mother stopped by, two evenings later, Daniel’s story was plain and unhelpful. Yes, they had camped out in the State Park, and no, he couldn’t imagine where Eugene could have gone to if he hadn’t come home. Daniel had ridden back to Amesville ahead of Eugene (for no very cogent reason) and that was the last he knew about him. She didn’t ask half the questions he’d been expecting, and she never called back. Two days later it became generally known that Eugene Mueller was missing. His bicycle was discovered in the culvert, where Daniel had left it. There were two schools of thought as to what had happened: one, that he was the victim of foul play; the other, that he’d run away. Both were common enough occurrences. Everyone wanted to know Daniel’s opinion, since he was the last person to have seen him. Daniel said that he hoped that he’d run away, violence being such a horrible alternative, though he couldn’t believe Eugene would have done something so momentous without dropping a hint. In a way his speculations were entirely sincere.
No one seemed at all suspicious, except possibly Milly, who gave him odd looks now and then and wouldn’t stop pestering him with questions that became increasingly personal and hard to answer, such as where, if Eugene had run away, would he have gone to? More and more Daniel felt as though he’d murdered his friend and concealed the body. He could understand what a convenience it was for Catholics to be able to go to confession.
Despite such feelings things soon went back to normal. Jerry Larsen took over Eugene’s paper route permanently, and Daniel developed an enthusiasm for baseball that gave him an exuse for being out of the house almost as much as his father.
In July there was a tornado that demolished a trailer court a mile outside of town. That same night, when the storm was over, the county sheriff appeared at the Weinreb’s front door with a warrant for Daniel’s arrest. Milly became hysterical and tried to phone Roy Mueller, but couldn’t get past his answering device. The sheriff insisted stonily that this had nothing to do with anyone but Daniel. He was being arrested for the sale and possession of obscene and seditious materials, which was a Class D felony. For misdemeanors there was a juvenile court, but for felonies Daniel was an adult in the eyes of the law.
He was taken to the police station, fingerprinted, photographed, and put in a cell. The whole process seemed quite natural and ordinary, as if all his life he’d been heading towards this moment. It was a large moment, certainly, and rather solemn, like graduating from high school, but it didn’t come as a surprise.
Daniel was as sure as his mother that Roy Mueller was behind his being arrested, but he also knew that he’d been caught dead to rights and that there’d be no wriggling out of it. He’d done what he’d been booked for. Of course, so had about ten other people, not even counting the customers. And what about Heinie Youngermann — were all his pay-offs down the drain? How could they try Daniel and not him?
He found out a week later when the trial was held. Every time the Weinreb’s lawyer would ask Daniel, on the witness stand, where his copies of the Star-Tribune had come from, or who else had delivered them, anything that would have involved naming other names, the opposing lawyer raised an objection, which the judge, Judge Cofflin, sustained. Simple as that. The jury found him guilty as charged and he was sentenced to eight months in the State Correction Facility at Spirit Lake. He could have got as much as five years, and their lawyer advised them against entering an appeal, since it was up to the same judge whether Daniel would be let off on probation when school started in the fall. They’d have been certain to lose the appeal in any case. Iowa and the rest of the Farm Belt weren’t called police states for nothing.
Sitting in the cell day after day and night after night with no one to talk to and nothing to read, Daniel had had a thousand imaginary conversations with Roy Mueller. So that by the time, late on the night before he was to be sent off to Spirit Lake, that Roy Mueller finally did get around to seeing him, he’d been through every possible combination of anger, anguish, dread, and mutual mistrust, and the actual confrontation was a little like the trial, something he had to go through and get over with.
Mueller stayed outside the locked cell. He was a substantial-looking man with a paunch, thick muscles and a friendly manner, even when he was being mean. With his own children he liked to think of himself as a kind of Solomon, stern but munificent, but his children (Daniel knew from Eugene) all lived in terror of him, even as they acted out their roles as his spoiled darlings.
“Well, Daniel, you’ve got yourself in a fair fix, haven’t you?”
Daniel nodded.
“It’s too bad, your being sent away like this, but maybe it will do you good. Build some moral fiber. Eh?”
Their eyes met. Mueller’s were beaming with pleasure, which he passed off as benevolence.
“I thought there might be something you’d want to tell me before you go. Your mother has been on the phone with me at least once a day since you got in trouble. I thought the least I could do for the poor woman was to come and talk to you.”
Daniel said what he’d made his mind up to, that he was guilty of selling the Star-Tribune and very sorry for it.
“I’m glad to hear you’re taking your medicine in the right spirit, Daniel, but that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for us to talk about. I want to know where my son is, and you’re the one who can tell me. Right, Daniel?”
“Honestly, Mr. Mueller, I don’t know where he is. If I knew I’d tell you. Believe me.”
“No hunches or theories?”
“He might—” Daniel had to clear his throat, which was dry and sticky with fear. “He might have gone to Minneapolis.”
“Why Minneapolis?”
“We… used to read about it. When we were delivering the Star-Tribune.”
Mueller brushed aside the implications of this — that his son had shared Daniel’s so-called crime, and that he’d known about it all along — with another toothy smile and a lifting and settling of his paunch.
“And it seemed like an exciting place to go, is that it?”
“Yes. But not… I mean, we never talked about leaving Amesville permanently. We just wanted to see it.”
“Well, what did you think when you saw it. Did it live up to your expectations?”
“I didn’t say—”
But there seemed no point in sparring just for the sake of delaying the inevitable. Daniel could see it went beyond suspicions: Mueller knew.
“We did go there, Mr. Mueller, but believe me, I didn’t have any idea that Eugene didn’t mean to come back with me. We went there to see Roberta Donnelly. She was giving a speech at Gopher Stadium. After he saw her we were heading right back here. Both of us.”
“You admit going there, that’s some progress. But I didn’t need you to tell me that, Daniel. I knew the night you set off, from Lloyd Wagner, who let the two of you across the border, which is a mistake that Lloyd has had reason to regret. But that’s another story. When there was no sight of you coming back after the Star-Lite’s last show, Lloyd realized he’d made a mistake and called me. It was a simple thing, from there, to have the Albert Lea police check out the bus station and the drivers. So you see, my lad, I need a little more information than just—” He parodied Daniel, making his eyes wide with false candor, and whispering: “—Minneapolis.”
“Truly, Mr. Mueller, I’ve told you all I know. We went to a movie together and at the end of it Eugene said he had to go to the bathroom. That was the last I saw of him.”
“What movie?”
“Gold-Diggers of 1984. At the World Theater. The tickets cost four dollars.”