She took a long, quavering breath. “I think this Lockridge is the man my sister has been … seeing for the past few weeks.”
“Your sister?”
“Yes. She’s two years younger than I am, and a little … well, a little wild. We share an apartment, and one night this fellow came around to pick her up for a date and I think … it might have been Lockridge. I mean, I only saw him that one time but I think he’s the man.”
“Have you spoken to your sister about this?”
“No. But she’s very frightened about something, I can tell. She’s really very frightened. She’s been … away for several days, and when she finally came home this morning she was terribly nervous and upset.”
“Where had she been?” I asked.
“I don’t know that,” the librarian said. “I asked her, but she wouldn’t tell me.”
“Is your sister at your apartment now?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know you’re here with me?”
“No. I didn’t want her to know, not before I talked to you. There are some things I want to be sure of before I say anything to her.”
“And that’s why you called me,” I said.
“Yes.”
I looked off at the lake for a moment. The ducks were still floating on its surface, quietly motionless. A couple of gulls buzzed them like P-51’s after a ground target, and they sat there with the cool imperturbability of middle-aged spinsters at afternoon tea. The gulls flew off, screaming obscenities into the wind.
I looked again at the librarian and said, “What kind of things did you expect me to tell you?”
“She’s never been in trouble before, you know. Never. She’s a good girl, really. What … what would happen to her if she just made this one mistake and got involved with the wrong kind of man?”
“Not much, maybe,” I said. “It would depend on the extent of her involvement.”
“I think she was … in love with this man. Love is blind, isn’t that what they say?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what they say.”
“She couldn’t have known very much about the kidnapping,” the librarian said. “Not Lorraine … I mean, not my sister, no.”
“If she gives herself up, voluntarily, things could go fairly easy for her. She might even get off with nothing more than a probationary slap on the wrist.”
“Do you really think so?”
“It would be up to a judge, of course.”
“But the chances would be good, wouldn’t they?”
“They would be, yes,” I said, “assuming that nothing has happened to the boy. That he’s returned unharmed to his parents.”
A look of infinite horror blanched her already white face the color of bright snow. “Well, of course he’s all right! Lorraine would never … oh my God, no, no, he’s fine, he must be!”
“Look,” I said, “why don’t you take me to her? Maybe I can-”
“No, I don’t want you to see her! Not yet. Please, I have to do this my own way. I have to talk to her first, don’t you see?”
I just looked at her.
“She’s my sister,” the librarian said in this tiny, fierce voice. “I don’t want her hurt or frightened any more than she already has been. I want to help her.”
“Listen,” I said, “there’s a little boy missing. He may be sick or hurt, and he’s almost surely a hell of a lot more frightened than your sister. He’s got a family down in Hillsborough, torn apart by grief and tension, sitting by the telephone and waiting and not hearing anything. What do you think it’s like for them, for that boy, while you sit around making up your mind what to do?”
“Lorraine is my family! The only family I have!” There were tears in her colorless eyes now, glistening, but the steadfast determination was strong in them nonetheless. “I can’t … I can’t just turn her over to the police! Not without being absolutely sure. Don’t you think I’ve thought about that little boy? Don’t you think I’ve gone through hell since I first saw those pictures in the paper last night?”
“All right,” I said, and I made my voice softer, gentler. I was running the risk of alienating her completely, and the more I watched her, the more I listened to her, the more I felt that what she was telling me was the truth; she was not a crank, and she was not the type who saw menace under every lamppost and disaster in every ringing of the telephone. Her concern for her sister was consumingly and unshakably genuine; in spite of her earlier protestations, she was as positive as could be that Lockridge was the guy who had been dating Lorraine, and that Lorraine, by her actions, knew something about the kidnapping.
I said, “What is it you want to do now? Go back home alone and talk to your sister? Try to find out for certain if she’s involved?”
“Yes, that’s what I want.”
“And if she is, then what?”
“Why … why, we’ll come to you, Lorraine and I,” she said. “And the three of us will go to the police together.”
“That’s fine,” I said quietly, “but suppose she doesn’t want to go to the police? Suppose she runs away instead?”
“No!” the librarian said positively. “No, she wouldn’t do that.”
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yes!”
“If you’re wrong, and she does run away, you could be sent to prison for aiding and abetting a felon-as an accessory after the fact in the commission of a major crime. Have you thought about that?”
“I don’t care about myself! Lorraine won’t run away, so it doesn’t matter. I know my sister, she wouldn’t do that!” She jumped up onto her feet. “I made a mistake calling you! I shouldn’t have called anyone!”
“Take it easy,” I said. “Just take it easy now.”
“I’m not carrying any identification,” she said grimly. “If you think you can take me to the police and make me tell you who I am and where Lorraine is, I won’t say a word. I won’t, I mean that!”
“I’m not going to try to take you anywhere,” I said. “You can handle it however you want to. I’ll go along with your wishes.”
Some of the defiance went out of her eyes. “You will? You’ll let me do this my way?”
“Yes, however you want to do it.”
“It’s the best way, it really is.”
“If you think so, all right.”
“I’ll go to Lorraine right now. I’ll tell her what you said, and if … if she’s really involved she’ll listen to reason.”
“I hope she will.”
“Oh yes, yes, she will.”
“Okay, then.”
“I’ll call you after I’ve talked to her,” the librarian said. Her hands moved like thin white spiders along the front of her coat. She was not half as convinced of her sister’s reasonableness as she tried to make out, but she did not want me to know that. “I’ll call you at your office, and we’ll come there and meet you. Will that be all right?”
“Yes, that’s fine,” I said.
“It won’t be long, really it won’t.”
“I’ll be waiting for your call.”
“Thank you … thank you.” She smiled, tentatively, fleetingly, and it was ghastly in the ivory pallor of her face. “You’re very understanding. You are, you know.”
I said nothing.
She pivoted and started along the path, moving with that birdlike motion of her head and those quick little steps. She went twenty yards and stopped and whirled around, and I was still sitting there watching her. Her head jerked frontally again and she walked to the road and stopped and looked back at me with a surreptitious motion that might have been humorous in another situation. I had not moved. She turned to the right, west on Kennedy Drive, and disappeared from sight past the densely grown slope.
I kept on sitting there, trying to hold down the sense of urgency that was growing deep inside me and making the knife wound throb with a muted intensity. I thought: Foolish little girl, loyal little girl, goddamn naive little girl! I was sorry for her, and sad for her, and it did not help to know that I was going to betray her. But there were bigger evils, stronger motives and emotions, involved here; her problems, her fears, were going to be swallowed and absorbed the way life seemed to have swallowed and absorbed her-completely and mercilessly-from the very beginning. It was the cold, hard way of things.