‘And…?’ Ridl asked, when the deputy stopped.
‘That’s it.’
Ridl took out his narrow spiral notebook. ‘The girl with him that’s now missing? What’s her name?’
The kid took a step backward. ‘Have to check with Clamp on that.’
‘Who’s Clamp?’
‘Chief Deputy Wilbur Reems. Sheriff Milner assigned him to head up the investigation.’
‘Where is he?
‘Out investigating, of course.’
Ridl made a show of flipping to a fresh page. ‘Bales, is it? Give me the correct spelling so I can report how little you, as the press what-cha-ma-call-it, know about what’s going on.’ Hearing himself, he had the sudden thought that he sounded exactly like he used to: steady, confident, focused.
Jimmy Bales’s face reddened. He looked around the office, then spoke in a low voice. ‘Betty Jo Dean’s her name. She’s a good girl, built a little too mature for her own good, maybe, but a good girl.’
‘She’s the killer…?’
Bales dropped his voice even further, to a whisper. ‘Clamp told the sheriff that if the Polish was packing, and he got too fast with her, she coulda got hold of his gun to stop him. That would explain her hiding out, scared nobody will believe her.’
It was ordinary, just as he’d told Eddings. He’d do some interviews and shoot some photos that evening, chat up two-dozen shopkeepers the next morning and be gone from Grand Point by noon.
‘How well do you know her?’
Jimmy Bales inhaled deeply, as though trying to inflate himself to fit his too-large uniform. ‘Spoke to her myself, last night. I keep a close eye on things after dark, and was on patrol outside Dougie’s. I talked to both her and that Polish guy. As I’ll probably write in an official report, they were getting along amenably.’
‘No problem between them?’
Bales shook his head.
‘Dougie’s?’ Ridl asked.
‘The Constellation. It’s a bar right across the street from here. I also observed them later at the Hacienda, out on the highway. The Polish was trying to get his paycheck cashed. We heard they went to the Wren House after that. According to witnesses, the Polish won a large amount of money gambling in their basement.’
‘The money’s missing?’
‘I don’t know what’s missing.’
‘Other than Betty Jo.’
‘Yeah. She’s missing, all right.’
‘Where’s the Wren House?’
‘Follow Second Street down to the very south end of town, just before it becomes Route Four.’
‘Poor Farm Road is the local lovers’ lane?’
His face flushed. ‘A half-mile past the Wren House.’
‘Easy enough for someone to follow Pribilski?’
The deputy’s eyes brightened at the inference. ‘See, that’s what the sheriff told Clamp could have happened. Best you shouldn’t jump to conclusions about Betty Jo being a killer.’
‘Pribilski’s car wasn’t found near his body?’
‘No. It was found in the parking lot across from the Wren House. Clamp thinks there were two of them – one to drive Pribilski’s car, the other to drive their own. All the more reason to think it was gamblers, since Betty Jo wouldn’t have driven Pribilski’s car back to the Wren House then left it. She has no car of her own.’
‘Who found Pribilski?’
‘A fisherman from here in Grand Point. He was driving east down Poor Farm Road, fixing to drop a couple lines in the Royal like he does every morning. A hundred yards in he saw a shoe lying in the middle of the road. No big deal, one shoe, except that, getting closer, he saw a dark red stain next to it, looking exactly like dried blood. He got out and saw drag marks on the gravel that could have been made by feet being dragged off the road. It didn’t take more than a few steps to see a man lying face up alongside the cornfield, and he wasn’t breathing. Well, he got right back in his car and hightailed it here to report directly to Sheriff Milner because, as the sheriff likes to remind folks, everybody knows he’s always at work early. The sheriff called Ruskin, the coroner, told him to get out to Poor Farm Road, and headed out there himself with two deputies. They saw the shoe. They saw the blood. And at the edge of the corn, just past the ditch, they saw a man dead from gunshot.
‘Coroner Ruskin arrived within thirty minutes, him being an early riser too, and the sheriff radioed Bud Wiley at the funeral home. After a brief examination of the deceased – there was no doubt he was dead, being as he was already stiffening – Coroner Ruskin authorized Bud to remove the body to Wiley’s funeral home.’
Bales’s head jerked up as the outside door opened. A sixty-year old man walked in. He wore a tan and green uniform just like Jimmy Bales’s, except that his was tight across the belly and had a star on it that said sheriff. He was red-faced and sweating.
‘Sheriff Milner? I’m from the Chicago-’ Ridl said.
‘Not now,’ Milner wheezed, banging open the gate in the counter. Jimmy Bales spun around and followed him through the empty office.
‘Did you find Betty Jo Dean?’ Ridl shouted.
‘Beat it!’ Milner yelled, charging through the open door at the back wall. Jimmy Bales slammed it closed behind them.
Ridl touched the back of his neck. It was prickling, like back in Metro when he tumbled onto something significant. This time it was telling him that cops almost always talked to the press, even when they had nothing new to report, because they wanted to come across smart. They never wanted to look rattled, or like they didn’t know what was going on.
Not so, the sheriff of Peering County. He’d been too upset to care what a reporter thought.
Ridl rubbed hard at the back of his neck until the tingling stopped, and went out the door.
EIGHT
Laurel Jessup, college girl, was waiting at the top of the stairs. ‘Jonah Ridl,’ she said.
He gave her no nod of acknowledgement, no forced smile. They’d probably studied his case in one of her journalism classes last semester. He’d been national news.
He jammed his hands in his pockets in case they got nervous. ‘The Daily Illini?’
‘It’s a real paper. Fifty thousand students are down at the U of I. How’s this killing so special that it summons someone so famous?’
‘Not famous.’
She failed at suppressing a grin. ‘Infamous, then?’
‘The story looked interesting.’ He’d never admit he was sent to snag advertisers.
‘You’ve got a good nose. From what I hear, Betty Jo Dean is not the type to be cowering somewhere, scared to come home.’
‘You don’t know her?’ Laurel Jessup looked to be almost the same age as the missing girl.
Her eyes flashed, but for only an instant. ‘I’m twenty-one, a senior. Besides, I live miles away, in DeKalb. I came here hoping to see reporters in action. So far, it’s just been a TV woman from Rockford and…’ She stepped back a foot and pretended to inspect him. ‘I figured you’d be older.’
At five-five and two hundred pounds, she probably figured he’d be taller and thinner, too. ‘What else have you heard?’
‘I’ve got a source.’
‘Then what’s your source telling you?’ he asked, not believing her.
‘Chief Deputy Reems is scattering his deputies too far and wide.’
‘A small town cop, panicked, lost his focus?’
‘I don’t know. How old are you anyway?’
Her directness was enchanting. ‘Twenty-nine,’ he said, ‘but some days I’m a hundred.’
She checked her watch. ‘I’ve got an interview.’
‘Your source?’
‘I might get you in, but it would have to be later…’ She left the proposal unstated.
‘If we share the byline?’
She gave him a huge smile and walked away, all long strides and energy.
The farm couple he’d seen earlier had moved to the shade of a tree. They stood together, not speaking. They were waiting for something.