The man had taken off his seed cap and was twisting it in his hands. ‘You a reporter?’ he asked when Ridl walked up.
‘Chicago Sun-Times.’
‘We just saw Sheriff Milner go in. Is there news?’
‘Your sheriff doesn’t like to say much.’
‘Usually you can’t shut him up,’ the woman said.
‘We only came to the courthouse for a copy of a quit claim,’ the man said quickly.
It was strange, the denial, and unnecessarily defensive. ‘Terrible thing,’ Ridl said to the woman, hoping for more words from her.
She looked down.
‘Do you know Betty Jo Dean?’ he asked her.
‘She’s dead,’ the woman said to the ground. ‘If she didn’t come home, she’s dead.’
‘Martha, you don’t know any such thing.’
Martha raised her head, looked her husband in the eye and shook her index finger at the sheriff’s door. ‘I do. And they damned well know it.’
‘Hush now,’ the man said to his wife. He turned to Ridl, his face anxious to explain. ‘Martha’s a friend of Betty Jo’s mama.’ He grabbed his wife’s elbow and steered her away.
Ridl looked across the street, searching for the bar Jimmy Bales had mentioned. The Constellation was narrow, jammed between an insurance agency and a one-man law office. Though the sun still beat bright on the town its sign was lit, alive with little stars winking on and off. Jimmy Bales had said it was one of the places Betty Jo Dean and Pauly Pribilski had gone to drink, before Pribilski’s own life winked off for good. The Constellation could wait. He wanted to take pictures of Poor Farm Road while there was still good light.
He drove slowly through several blocks of century-old, pale-painted wood houses before speeding up past a McDonalds, a Shell station and sparser blocks of fragments of prairies. He didn’t come to a stop sign until he got to the southern outskirts of town, where Second Street intersected with Big Pine Road and became Route 4.
A windowless, long brown barn-like structure loomed dark on the northeast corner. A white, backlit sign on wheels advertised a Friday night fish fry special for $2.99, and Harvey Wallbangers for a dollar. He’d tried the drink once on a date several years before. It was the yellowish green of anti-freeze and tasted sickly sweet. He hadn’t liked it, or his date. Her name was Nancy, and she was obviously embarrassed at being fixed up with a man substantially shorter and wider than she was. She covered that by accusing him of being egocentric when, making conversation, he’d said news-papers were all that protected the world from chaos. He’d never had another Wallbanger, nor had he ever called her again.
Attached to the wheeled sign was a pole, on top of which the clever restaurateur had mounted an oversized red plywood birdhouse, which had become splattered with white drips. The restaurant was the Wren House. It was the last place Paulus Pribilski had been seen alive. Except by his killer.
He raised his camera. Nothing was more bucolic than a birdhouse, even strafed white by bombardier birds. He took a picture, and another of the restaurant hulking dark behind it.
Jimmy Bales had said Poor Farm Road was only a half-mile ahead. He drove up a concrete overpass that spanned a pair of railroad tracks and stopped at the top. Down below, a police car blocked the entrance to a gravel road that ran off to the left from Route 4. A hundred yards in, people milled about in clusters, talking. A news van was parked alongside the road. A woman in yellow and a cameraman in black jeans and a black T-shirt stood at the edge of a large patch of flattened corn. Behind them, ragged rows of searchers moved slowly through the field toward the west, flattening more corn.
He snapped three photos, drove down and parked across from the Peering County sheriff’s car blocking Poor Farm Road. Two deputies leaned against the hood. He wondered if they were embarrassed to be guarding a crime scene that people were trampling.
An image of such a loosely managed crime scene might matter. He pointed his camera dead at the two officers, making sure to center the news crew and one of the trampling search teams in the background between them. Both cops frowned as he snapped their picture.
‘How’s the hunt for Betty Jo Dean?’ he asked, walking up.
‘Progressing,’ the taller of the two said.
‘I’m with them.’ Ridl pointed at the news van.
Neither cop had more words. Ridl walked around them.
The news van belonged to the NBC affiliate in Rockford. The woman in yellow, studying notes on a clipboard, was in her mid-twenties, and dressed television perfect in a soft skirt and blouse that matched her sunny blonde hair – and, Ridl supposed, the faded, sunny yellow paint on his car, except where it was rusted. Certainly there was no rust eating at her, and might never be – at least, not the kind that had been corroding his insides for the past six months.
Her cameraman was even younger, about twenty-one. His black T-shirt, ripped under one arm, advertised an Allman Brothers concert from a dozen years earlier. He stood behind a camera on a tripod, where clothing didn’t matter, waiting for the reporter to memorize her lines. They were recording a segment for later broadcast.
She raised her microphone and nodded at the cameraman. ‘After leaving the Constellation,’ she said, ‘the couple went to Al’s Rustic Hacienda, a local bar, where they were seen having a drink and attempting to cash Pauly Pribilski’s check. Local sheriff’s deputies received reports that the pair got into an altercation with a man and a woman in the parking lot before heading to the Wren House, where Pribilski might have won money gambling. Presumably, the couple then drove here, to Poor Farm Road.’
She lowered the microphone, consulted the clipboard and gave the cameraman a new nod. ‘A fisherman found Pribilski, a former Marine, at six-thirty this morning, lying here.’ She pointed to a spot five feet to her left. ‘According to Coroner Ruskin, one shot entered his left side and penetrated his heart, causing instant death. Another struck him in the abdomen. His 1970 Buick was found in the parking lot across from the Wren House, a half-mile north of here. The sheriff’s department confirmed that they were familiar with the car, a distinctive GSX model, from times when Pribilski, a lineman for the DeKalb-Peering Telephone Company, stayed after work to enjoy a beer before returning to his home in Rockford. It’s routine, sheriff’s sources said, to notice strangers in their small community.’
As she stopped to check her notes, Ridl again mulled the aberrant thought: sunny yellows were everywhere in Grand Point. The news reporter’s hair and clothes, the dead man’s car, even the backdrop of the cornfields, though those yellows were only inferred, shrouded as they were in green husks. Still, nothing would make Eddings’s eyes glisten more than to work all those yellows into his piece.
The reporter continued, ‘Pribilski’s wallet is missing. Police believe it contained a fair amount of cash from gambling winnings, along with the paycheck he wanted to get cashed. Found on the ground, near where sheriff’s personnel believe Pribilski’s car was parked, was a fresh cigarette butt with lipstick on it. It was a Tareyton, the brand Betty Jo Dean, the young Grand Point woman seen in Pribilski’s company last night, is known to smoke. She is missing. Sheriff’s department personnel declined our request to speak on camera, citing their need to devote all their manpower to locating Miss Dean.’
She said sign-off words and lowered her microphone. Ridl stepped forward.
‘The sheriff’s department declined to speak, instead devoting all their manpower to locating the young woman?’ He cocked his head toward the two deputies idling at the entrance to Poor Farm Road.
She grinned. ‘Those two?’
‘They’re not bothering to protect the crime scene.’ He gestured toward a team of searchers.