‘They came in together last night, her and Pribilski?’
Dougie looked down at Ridl’s almost-intact sandwich. ‘Another? Cheese this time?’
‘I’m on a diet.’
Dougie nodded – too accepting.
‘They came in together?’ Ridl asked again.
‘He got here fifteen, twenty minutes before her shift was over at the phone company. She works part time, in the evenings.’
‘How did she act? Normal?’
‘A little nervous. Kept turning around to look at the door.’
‘New date jitters?’
Dougie shrugged. ‘All’s I know, she kept looking at the door.’
‘Like she was afraid of seeing someone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And him?’
‘Pauly? No way was he nervous. He used to be a Marine and then climbed poles for a living. Huge shoulders, big biceps. I don’t expect he was afraid of anybody.’
‘I’m confused about something you said earlier,’ Ridl said. ‘Luther said you could identify the body if you wanted?’
Dougie’s face reddened. ‘Actually, it was more like Luther saying I could have a look if I wanted.’
‘He was the only one in the room, other than you? He was doing you a favor, giving you a peek?’
Dougie’s face darkened even more. ‘That don’t have to get out, does it? Look, they didn’t need me to identify anything. They already knew who Pribilski was.’
‘Because your sheriff’s department was already keeping an eye on him, right?’
‘Clamp keeps the town safe that way,’ Dougie said.
‘Or did, before the killing.’
Dougie Peterson had stopped listening. His eyes had gone vague. ‘Poor bastard, all them shots,’ he said, half under his breath. ‘Think what you will, it was good they tried to clean him up before his folks got there.’
‘Yeah, you said…’ Ridl paused. ‘What do you mean, all those shots? One to the heart, one to the abdomen?’
‘Pribilski’s pants were off, and I saw, before Luther pulled the sheet all the way up… No way in hell Betty Jo could have done that,’ Dougie said, his eyes once again focused on Ridl.
‘Did what?’
Dougie looked away. ‘Shots down below.’
‘What are you telling me, Dougie?’
‘I’m telling you there’s no way Betty Jo could have done that.’
‘Shoot him?’
‘Shoot him like that. Bastard was shot in the nuts, four, five times. Someone blew his balls off.’
ELEVEN
He ran down the sheriff’s stairs and banged open the door, holding up his Sun-Times I.D.
‘Nothing’s new,’ one of the two duty deputies said. Both had their feet up on their desks.
‘How many times was Pauly Pribilski shot?’ He was wheezing, out of breath, sweating from running across the street.
‘You’re getting nothing tonight.’
‘Multiple gunshots to the groin? You know damned well that’s passion.’
Both deputies switched out their smirks for glares. ‘Beat it,’ the second one said.
‘If it wasn’t Betty Jo Dean who killed him, then it was someone emotionally involved with her, or with Pribilski. No one else would shoot him like that. Who’s jealous? Who’s enraged?’
‘We’re investigating.’
‘Looks like it’s going real slow, here and at the Hacienda.’
‘It’s nighttime.’
‘There’s a seventeen-year-old girl somewhere out in that night, running, hiding or dead. Why aren’t you looking for her?’
One of them got up and started moving toward the counter. ‘I can find a reason to arrest you, round boy.’
‘Thanks so much,’ Ridl said, and left.
His hands shook a little as he stood on the lawn and lit a cigarette. The night was more vivid than any he’d known in months. Though the air was heavy, it smelled purer, and despite the humid haze the stars seemed to shine a million watts brighter. He took a deep drag on the cigarette. There was no doubt: the night felt right because things felt so wrong in Grand Point.
A figure stepped out from the shadows along the building. ‘What do you know?’ Laurel Jessup, student journalist asked, trying to sound casual.
‘You’re watching the sheriff’s door to see who goes in?’
‘You’ve been it, so far.’
‘It’s too late to be walking around this town by yourself,’ he said, surely sounding like the girl’s mother. ‘How did that interview go, after I saw you?’
‘I told you: I’ve got a great source. Shared byline?’
‘That depends on what you’ve got.’
The sheriff’s door opened down below and two sets of footsteps began climbing the stairs. Ridl tugged the girl around the corner of the building and stubbed out his cigarette. Neither of them spoke.
Unseen cigarette lighters clicked faintly in the night. The two deputies had come out for a smoke.
‘Where’s your car?’ he whispered.
She pointed to a dented red Dodge Dart parked directly under a street lamp, in easy view of the cops. Two window decals were centered in its rear window. The first was a blue-and-orange graphic masterpiece of the University of Illinois mascot Indian holding a beer stein; the other a row of three identical gold Greek letters, triangles.
‘Sorority girl?’ he whispered.
‘Tri-Delt.’
She was so different than him, a kid who’d commuted to a second-rate Chicago city college from his ma’s two flat.
‘Walk your way around and come up to your car from across the street so they don’t think you’ve been hanging around the courthouse,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘I’m a reporter.’
‘So am I.’
He gave her a sigh. ‘They don’t like reporters here. I’ll tell you more tomorrow if you leave now.’
‘Damn,’ she said. But she left, of a fashion. She marched straight out from the shadows, crossing the lawn directly in front of the two cops. One whistled softly at her.
She threw a lot of flounce into her walk as she passed beneath the street light next to the phone booths, and took too long to get into her car. The only thing she hadn’t done was thumb her nose at the two cops.
He waited a full five minutes, then crossed Second Street far enough down so the two cops couldn’t see him. He drove back up on a parallel street, clear of the courthouse.
The ticket seller at the movie theater in the next block was lit brightly in her booth, a glassed-in exhibit of a gray-haired woman alone. She raised her head abruptly at the clattering sound of his car driving by. He almost waved. Grand Point, that night, was deserted.
He passed into a residential block, looking for the sign he’d spotted earlier. It was three blocks farther on. Hand-painted on thin plywood and faded by a dozen seasons, it was stuck on a stick in the lawn of a two story, clapboard Victorian. ‘ROOMS,’ it read, faint in the light from the street lamp at the corner. He parked and walked up to a porch lit low by a single small bare bulb. An elderly woman answered the bell.
‘How much are the rooms?’ Ridl asked.
‘How many nights?’ she said through a clicking pair of dentures.
‘Just tonight.’
‘Ten bucks. You a reporter?’
‘Sun-Times.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘It’s a scholarly journal, read mostly by Hollywood types.’
She nodded like that made sense, and said, ‘I’m expecting a bunch of reporters once they find Betty Jo Dean.’
‘You think she’s a victim, or the killer?’
She dodged the question, a persistent businesswoman. ‘There ain’t but one motel in Grand Point, and it’s got bugs. You want the room?’
‘Air-conditioning?’
‘Rooms rent fine without it. You want the room?’
He shifted his feet only slightly, reaching for his wallet, but it was enough to enlarge his shadow disproportionately against the pale clapboards of the house. He looked up at the sky. The moon was full. It would have been just as bright the night before.
He found a ten and handed it to her. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said, and hurried to his car. He had a need – no, an obsession – to see the murder scene in the full light of the moon, as it must have been.