Stevenson and Inman came in behind him, both officers looking as tired as he felt. “You boys sign in your hours and then head on home. Get some sleep,” Harry said.
Ralph McPhair, spiffed up with fresh-shined shoes and his gloves on, descended the stairs, heading out for morning traffic duty. “You three look like you got dragged through the bush backward. I hope the rumrunners came off the worse.”
Roll Stevenson rubbed his face. “We thought we had one of ’em leaving that old barn behind McAlistair’s place. Chased him almost to the gee-dee county line. Turns out it was Roscoe Yarter’s kid, up all night sparking McAlistair’s girl.”
Pete Inman laughed, a short, sharp gasp of a sound. “We could have plugged the kid, and he woulda thanked us, just so long as we didn’t turn him in to MacAlistair.”
“You going out again tonight, Chief?” McPhair asked.
“Maybe. I’ll get on the phone to Glens Falls, see if they had more luck than we did last night.” Harry tried not to let the complete lack of hope show in his voice. Attempting to plug the constant flow of illegal liquor running from Canada down to New York City was a mug’s game. The bootleggers had as many men and more money than any of the police departments coming up against them, and appeals to citizens’ civic virtue couldn’t compete with hard cash in your pocket for leaving your barn unlocked and looking the other way. Harry knew, like he knew his kids’ names, that within ten miles of where he was standing there were at least two or three delivery vans stashed out of sight in some farmers’ hay barns, their drivers and gunmen snoring safely in the lofts. He knew, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. He forced a smile, grinned at his men. “You see any bootleggers passing through town, Ralph, you be sure to stop ’em, you hear?”
McPhair threw them a jaunty salute as he tossed open the doors, and Harry, Stevenson, and Inman trudged up the marble stairs to the accompaniment of the unseen woman’s voice, now demanding to see the police chief. Which was usually how it worked out when anyone with a problem came through the doors and encountered Sergeant Tibbet.
The long reception hall stretched away from Harry, with doors along both sides. The hall was guarded by Sergeant Tibbet, who seemed as oaken and massive as the desk he sat behind. A slim brown-haired woman stood there, taut as fishing line snagged on a snapping turtle. When she caught sight of him, she said, “Chief McNeil?” and in her voice he could hear she was right on the edge of breaking down.
He gestured the two officers to continue on to the patrol room before taking the woman’s hand. “I’m Harry McNeil,” he said. “How can I help you?” He hoped she was here to complain about a neighbor leaving her panties out on the line or kids stuffing her mailbox with fire crackers. He was tired to the bone.
“It’s my husband. He’s missing.”
He sighed. That could mean something as simple as a broken-down automobile or as messy as a raided bank account and another woman. “To tell the truth, I was on my way home, Mrs…?”
“Ketchem. Mrs. Jonathon Ketchem. Please, you’ve got to listen to me. He’s never done this before. I don’t know who to turn to.”
He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Where do you live, Mrs. Ketchem?”
“Number 14, Ferry Street.”
Not a bad neighborhood. Hardworking, churchgoing folks who paid their bills and went to bed early. “How’d you get here this morning?”
“I walked.”
He nodded. “Well, Mrs. Ketchem, Ferry Street is on my way home.” Sergeant Tibbet raised his shaggy eyebrows at that whopper. “How ’bout I drop you off on my way, and you can fill me in on all the details.”
“How will you be able to start the search for Jon if you’re at home?”
There’s not likely to be a search, he thought, but said, “I can telephone the station and get someone working on it right away.”
Mrs. Ketchem glanced at Sergeant Tibbet, who yawned. “All right,” she said. “You can drive me home.”
In his car, she perched on the edge of the seat, twitchy, as if she were ready to bolt as soon as he slowed down. Maybe she was more used to a buggy. She had a country look to her. “You and your husband have an automobile?” he asked.
She stilled. “Yes,” she said. “Jonathon took it. He always drove it, not me.” Her skittishness reminded him of the last carriage horse he had had before buying the Studebaker. Half-Thoroughbred mare, wide-eyed and spooky as all get-out. Good wind, though, once you got her in harness. He wanted to settle her some before he got her story.
“Are you folks related to the Ketchems up to Lick Spring?”
“They’re my in-laws.”
He turned down Elm Street. “They’ve got a pretty good-sized farm,” he said.
“Yes.” She was pale, visibly controlling herself. He swung down Burgoyne Street and turned onto Ferry. “This is us,” she said. The Ketchem house was small, but neat, with a barn big enough to house a stall and a buggy attached to the rear of the house by a breezeway. He parked by the curb, got out, and opened the door for his passenger. She walked stiffly up the front steps. It looked to Harry as if she were bracing herself to reenter her home, and for a moment he wondered if her missing husband had been in the habit of knocking her around.
He wiped his boots on the mat before stepping inside. The tiny entry hall opened straight onto the parlor. A heap of painted blocks were tumbled next to the radio. “You have kids?” he said.
She paused in the middle of taking off her coat. “A little girl.”
“She in school?”
“She’s playing at a neighbor’s.” He followed her into the parlor. “She’s been asking where her father is. I just don’t know what to tell her.”
She paused in the middle of the parlor, her glance darting from davenport to easy chair to rocker, as if she had never seen the place before. He had seen other folks acting the same way when calamity had visited their houses. People came unstuck, got lost in the familiar. He made it easier for her by sitting in the rocker and gesturing for her to take the other one.
“So what is it your husband does?”
She looked at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “He’s… been trying out this and that…”
Drink, Harry thought. Or he’s lost his job and is bluffing out finding a new one.
“We used to farm in the Sacandaga Valley until the Conklingville Dam project bought us out the year before last. My husband put some of the money into his parents’ farm and some into his brother’s business. David has a gasoline and service station in Lake George.”
“David’s your brother-in-law?” Speaking of her relations made him realize what seemed out of kilter in the room. There were no family photographs. Not one.
“Yes.”
Harry nodded. “There wasn’t enough for your husband to buy himself a new farm?” He knew some of the folks who had owned property in the way of the dam got pretty well rooked by land speculators before the official condemnation notices went out.
“I don’t know. I suppose there was.” She cut her eyes away. “Jonathon didn’t know if he wanted to go back to being a farmer. It’s a hard life, you know. He thought maybe things would be better if we stayed in town.”
“Things?”
A faint suggestion of color came over her high cheekbones. “He did some work for the electrical company, but he was last hired and first fired when they started cutting jobs. Since then, he’s picked up work here and there, but nothing permanent. He also helps out at Father Ketchem’s farm.”
He decided to ignore the fact that she had skipped over his question. He was forming a picture of a man cut loose from his familiar roles as farmer, and landowner, and provider, relying on make-do work from his old man to keep him and his pride afloat. “Tell me about the last time you saw him,” he said.
She squared her shoulders beneath the blocky cardigan she wore and frowned, distantly, as if looking backward for the exact moment when it all started. “He had been home all day. His stomach was bothering him-it’s been bothering him a lot lately. He was feeling right irritable… I remember trying to keep our girl out of his way.” Her eyes dropped to the blocks on the rug, and the strained look on her face eased for a moment. “Anyways, after she was in bed, we got into a fight. It was one of those silly things, you know, first you say something, and then he says something, and next thing you’re going at it hammer and tongs without really seeing how you got there.” She let out a breath. “He went off in the car that night and I haven’t seen him since.”