They continued to question him, but at eleven. Lanigan called a halt, the three men retired to a far corner of the room and discussed the story in low voices. "It seems pretty straight-forward." said Lanigan. "but, of course, he may be lying."
"He's had plenty of time to work up a story and get it down pat." was McLure's comment.
"We could question the driver of the Boston bus." Jennings suggested.
"Oh sure," said Lanigan. "We'll get a picture of him, and if the bus driver doesn't remember him, he may know some of the people who take that bus regularly, and they might remember him, also, the driver of the New York bus, and the ticket clerk."
"It's even more important to check the drivers of the later buses," said McLure. "I'm betting he took the ten o'clock bus to New York, or even eleven. I’ve seen it again and again, a guy does something that won't bear thinking about. So he blanks it out of his mind, but he adjusts his story just enough so as to make it impossible. Get it? By saying he took the nine o'clock, it means he couldn't have killed the old man at half past eight, and he keeps the rest of the storv the same, so he doesn't have any trouble remembering any lies."
Lanigan looked at him curiously. "You're pretty sure he did it?"
"Cummon. You can see he's a jerky sort of kid that everybody steps on. Take this business of being sent to his room. Is that the way you discipline the average eighteen-year-old? Would any other kid stand for it? Or, for that matter, what kid that age would consent to being shifted off to the country to live with an old man so his ma can be free to go gallivanting around Europe? Okay. His boss feels sorry for him and invites him to go in town with him, that kind of kid is crazy about guns. It gives him a sense of power. Now the old man shames him in front of the boss by sending him to his room. So when Gore leaves and the old man dozes off, he climbs out of the window. But he doesn't go down to get a bus. Oh no, he sneaks around to the front of the house and comes in, and there's the gun on the table, he has this urge just to hold it. My guess is he picks it up and just kind of fondles it, and it goes off, maybe he shoots out the light, and the place goes dark, then the kid knows he's in trouble, and he panics and just goes on shooting, and when he comes out of it, the old man is dead. So he runs—to Boston and then to New York."
"And why does he come back then?" asked Lanigan.
"Like I said, because he's wiped it clean out of his mind. You might have to get a psychiatrist to hypnotize him and bring it back."
"What are you going to do with him tonight, Hugh?" asked Jennings. "He can't sleep here."
"Well, for tonight I figured we'd put him up at the station house in one of the cells. If we get him a place at a hotel. I'm not sure the town would stand for the expense, and he'll be pestered by all kinds of people as soon as the news is out."
"He will anyway when he goes back to work at the bank on Monday," Jennings pointed out.
"Yeah, unless—unless—say, is Tom Hegerty on the island now. Eban?" "Ever since Labor Day." "Think he might like a boarder?" "I know he'd like a helper."
"That's even better. Let's see what we can arrange." He approached the young man and said. "Look. Billy, you can't sleep here because we're still working here. It's pretty late to get you a hotel room, so how would you like to sleep down at the stationhouse?"
"Oh sure. I don't want to put you to any trouble."
"Fine. So that's settled. Now. I'd like you to stay around town for the next few days, but I don't think you ought to go back to the bank just yet."
"Gosh, no. I bet people would be coming up to my window just to look at me like I was some kind of freak."
"That's what bothers me, too." said Lanigan. "So I got an idea. Do you know Children's Island in the harbor?"
"Where they have the YMCA camp in the summer for the kids? I've never been there."
"Well, Tom Hegerty lives out there, getting the place ready for the winter. How would you like to work there with him as a helper, painting, rough carpentry—"
"Gee. I've never done anything like that."
"You don't have to know anything." Lanigan assured him. "Most of the time you just hand him things or hold them while he works on them or fetch them for him."
"If I can do it. I wouldn't mind. It might be kind of fun living on an island."
"Fine, then it's settled. I'll arrange it."
He rejoined the other two and nodded to indicate his satisfaction.
"How about Miranda now?" sneered McLure.
Lanigan looked at him in surprise. "What's Miranda got to do with it? All I did was arrange for a job for the young man."
30
WHEN HERB MANDELL RETURNED FROM HIS AFTER-DINNER constitutional to the drugstore for the Sunday papers, he found Henry Maltzman sitting on the sofa in the living room. Molly beside him, their heads close together as they pored over a sheet of paper spread out on the coffee table in front of them. His entrance momentarily startled them, and they sprang apart.
"Oh, hi there, herb." Maltzman waved to him. "I thought since it's your first board meeting, we'd drive down together, your car or mine, and I could fill you in." He gestured to the paper on the coffee table. "I’ve been going over the list with Molly, we've got five I'm sure of, three probables and a couple or three possibles."
"I think Mrs. Melnick is another possible." said Molly, "and I think you can list Mrs. Kaufman as a probable."
"It's still not enough to take a chance on." said Maltzman. "I want a straight up-and-down vote without discussion, the only thing to do is to put it over for a week, that'll give us time to contact the probables—"
Til talk to Anne Kaufman." Molly volunteered. "I'm sure I can get her to go along."
"Swell, and I'll sound out Joe Krasker and Harvey Gorin. If we get all three, that will give us eight, and we're in like Flynn." He had risen, and taking Herb by the arm, he said. "Now, here's what I want you to do, herb—."
Maltzman drove—and talked, herb wanted to make his own position clear on the matter of the rabbi's ouster, but each time he made the attempt. Maltzman said. "Listen, will you." The tone was not peremptory; it was even kindly, but Herb was restive, feeling that he was being treated like a youngster.
Once they had arrived at the temple, however, Maltzman's manner changed, with his arm around Herb's shoulder, he led him up to the other members, who were standing in the basement corridor, and introducing him to those whom he did not know jovially assured them, "Herb is a comer and he'll add some weight to this board."
The group moved down the corridor past the classrooms of the religious school to the directors' room at the end. It was a small room. Like the classrooms, it had beige plaster walls and a low ceiling, along one side, high up on the wall and hinged on top so that they could be swuna inward, was a row of small windows level with the ground outside, above the windows ran the asbestos-covered pipes for heating the building. It differed from the classrooms only in that, instead of pupils' desks, it had a long oblong mahogany table surrounded by small bridge chairs that took up most of the room, except for a small space at the end near the door, where there stood a blackboard on wooden uprights.