“It’s Alison,” she said. “She’s gone!”
It was a quarter to six when the four-year-old was found. She had, simply, wandered off while her mother was shopping downtown in the City Market, which happened to be across the street from the police department.
* * * * *
Powder went home. He felt like a change of clothes and while he was there he made a sandwich.
He also looked in Ricky’s room. From the doorway it was clear that his son had moved out.
Powder left for Mrs. Woods’s.
“Horrible angry,” she said to Powder in the front room. He could hear the sister sobbing elsewhere in the house.
“I’m beginning to wish I had the chance of a few words with this Leon,” Powder said.
“Big angry man. Always like that. No good, her. I always know.”
“And he says Marianna is in St. Paul?”
“Not seen. But seen John Langston. He say looks know-it-all.”
Powder rubbed his face. He was attracted by the simplicity of this way to fill in the missing part of what happened to Marianna Gilkis. If she disappeared between bus and taxi, with her baggage, it was far easier to think she left the station area with someone she knew than with a stranger. And if she had been sent away to separate her from this man, then maybe he had driven down, beating the bus, and was waiting for her when she arrived. Ready to drive back to St. Paul to live happily ever after.
“You were with your sister when she looked at the body in County Hospital,” Powder said.
“Yes.”
“Do you think she was really sure?”
Mrs. Woods shrugged. “I do my best,” she said.
Powder looked at the woman, who seemed, for the moment, hewn from the stuff on which stable civilization is built.
“OK,” he said. “Thank you.”
Powder drove to the home of William G. Weaver, Jr. He went quickly to the front door, to avoid losing his resolve.
He rang the bell several times, without response.
Powder walked to the garage and looked in. Weaver’s car was there. Powder walked around the side to the backyard.
Weaver was watering in a pair of newly planted rosebushes.
“Quite an outdoor man,” Powder said as he approached.
Weaver turned quickly as he heard the voice, startled. “Oh,” he said. “You scared me.”
“Guilty conscience, eh?” Powder said. He gestured to the roses. “New stock?”
“Transplanting.”
Carefully, Weaver laid his hose on the ground. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant Powder?”
“Heard from Annie?”
“No.”
“Thought of some reason she might he about going out?”
Weaver shook his head.
Powder took a breath, bit the bullet. “I want to apologize to you.”
“What for?”
“I’ve been hounding you about your wife’s disappearance,” Powder said easily.
“Oh,” Weaver said.
“It’s just that I’ve been working on the presumption that you killed her, but last night when I got back from McCormick’s Creek, I decided I was wrong.”
“Oh,” Weaver said.
Powder held his head, as if in distress. “Damn it. It’s been your lack of reaction that’s been churning my guts all along. Making me think your wife running around getting tickets was something you asked her to do.”
Powder looked at the man.
“Nope,” Powder said. “I don’t buy it again. I take the apology back.”
He turned and stomped to his car. Angry, uncertain.
He drove to the boarding house that was the listed address of the taxi driver who’d been trying to sell video sets.
The man was in a second-floor room at the front of the house.
He seemed to be thin, about thirty-five, with receding red hair. But Powder didn’t have much chance to confirm the impression or talk to him because when Powder identified himself as a policeman, the man opened his room door, showed his gun, and shot Powder twice.
Chapter Twenty Eight
“What are you doing here?”
“I was going to ask you the same question,” Fleetwood said.
“Who’s manning the office?”
“Agnes is there,” Fleetwood said. “Thought she was gobbled up by special-task-force projects.”
“You’ll have to hurry back and straighten it all out. How do you feel?”
“Groovy,” Powder said.
Fleetwood looked around the room.
“Nice as the one you were in?” Powder asked.
“Mine was much better,” she said. “How did it happen, then?”
“Knocked on the door. The guy answered shooting. Simple as that. There I was, all alone. No partner to shove in the way.”
Fleetwood said, “They say one broke a rib and the other is still in there, near the spine.”
“That’s more than they’ve told me,” Powder said.
“And if they hadn’t been twenty-twos . . .”
“At least I got feeling in seven of my toes.”
“You didn’t think you were in danger?”
“A guy about a television? Did you think you were in danger when you went to his place and looked up from the bottom of the stairs?”
Fleetwood said, “They say he’s skipped.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Powder said.
A nurse knocked and then entered the room.
“Time to wipe my nose again already?” Powder asked.
“There’s a man out here. Says he’s your boss and wants to have a word.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Fleetwood turned to go.
“Hang on.”
“Why?”
“Just get out your notebook.”
After a moment, a bear of a man in the dress uniform of a deputy chief entered the room.
Powder said, “And finally I was supposed to have a report from the assistant principal of Harrison High School with home details of a couple of their teachers. Check my desk for it. That’s enough for now. I’ll get the rest to you by phone in an hour.”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” Fleetwood said. “Good morning, Chief Snyder.”
“Not such a good morning. Sergeant Fleetwood. Shocking news about Powder here, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Snyder looked at her. “Going out the front?”
“I intended to, yes.”
“Policy to the press is no comment, except from me.”
“Yes, sir,” Fleetwood left.
“I don’t know how many other officials from the department have conveyed their shock and horror at these events, Lieutenant Powder, but believe me, when I heard about it I was disturbed, very disturbed indeed.”
“Your disturbance is gratefully received,” Powder said.
“And I want you to know that no effort is being spared in bringing the perpetrator of this deed to justice.”
“Thank you. Chief.”
The man seemed uncertain whether to sit. He decided to stand.
“I’m pleased to see you so alert.”
“I’ve got to be,” Powder said.
“Oh?”
“So undermanned at the office,” Powder said. “I’ve got to help out no matter what.”
The deputy chief said, “You’ve been in the force a long tune now.”
“Longer than you have,” Powder said.
“Really?”
“Though it looks as if I am losing my touch when I let myself be taken out by one guy in a situation like this. I have to ask myself if I am still up to the job.”
Snyder looked earnestly at the man in the hospital bed. “I’m sorry to hear you talking like that. A man with your experience, record, and . . . enthusiasm would be a sad loss to the department at any time. But to go out in circumstances like this rather than at a tune of your own choosing . . . Well, I never like to see that.”
“I rate a full pens
ion, and I’m not spending the money I make now. Be a pity not to have the chance to enjoy the fruit and vegetables of my labors.”
Half an hour later Powder called the Missing Persons office.
“I am an idiot,” he told Fleetwood. “A scatterbrained idiot. There’s no two ways about it, I’m losing my grip.”
“What do you want. Lieutenant?”
“Nothing. Got that report from Harrison High?”
“You know you’re off duty, don’t you? You know they’ve sent someone down here to fill for you?”
“Oh yeah? Who?”
“Detective Sergeant Lorimer.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“A probationer.”
“And you are giving him orders?”
“Yes.”
“Nine days on the job and you’re in charge. Jesus.”
“Mother always said that I fall on my feet.”
Powder laughed. Then coughed.
“Guy’s a loser, right?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Fleetwood said.
“Because he’s listening, right?”
“It’s not appropriate to make snap decisions.”
“That bad, eh?” Powder cackled to himself, but laughing hurt.
“The new man will be just fine when he gets the hang of your system,” Fleetwood said. “Did you want something else?”
“I already asked for the news on Harrison High that you didn’t give me.”
Powder heard her saying, “Lorimer, take a look on that desk and bring me any telephone messages or reports.” There was a pause. “No, that desk.There.” Pause. “That is not a phone message.” Pause. “Nothing?” She returned to Powder. “Nothing, Powder.”
Powder laughed painfully. “The halt leading the blind,” he said.
“You ought to rest,” Fleetwood said.
“Got a hypothetical question for you.”
He waited, but she was silent.
“Suppose I look into a guy’s garage and see he’s got bags of sand and cement.”
“Yes ...?”
“And then I look in and they’re not there.”
“So?”
“What did he use them for?”
Fleetwood sighed.
“Well?”
“Concreting something,” she said.
“Good work,” he said genuinely.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Powder said. “And it means I am an idiot.”
Powder browbeat a novice nurse into getting the note-book from his jacket, which was hanging in the room’s closet. It had phone numbers and notes in it.
He called Ramey Fry, the manager of McCormick’s Creek State Park’s campsite.
Fry was markedly less interested in Powder’s call than he had been on occasions before the dig.
Powder wanted to know if there was anybody on the site that William Weaver had occupied the previous weekend.
“Coming in this afternoon,” Fry said.
“No, they’re not,” Powder said.
“What?”
“Keep them off. Give them another site.”
“I couldn’t do that,” Fry said, sounding offended.
“I’m confiscating it. You’ll get site rent payment for the trouble you go to relocating the new people, but they’re not to use it.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re digging again.”
From Information, Powder got the number of the Owen County sheriff’s office in Spencer. He expected more resistance than he encountered. But the sheriff was up for reelection in the fall. A speculative dig, if there was a chance for an interesting outcome, “as the result of information received,” was welcomed.
“You’ll need a crane,” Powder told him.
“A what?”
“About two and a half feet down you’re going to find cement. And if it is cement, instead of just rock, then I want it dug around and the whole thing lifted out. Can you supervise that for me?”
“Could take a couple of days,” the sheriff said, but it wasn’t by way of complaint.
Powder lay back on his bed. He started to rub his face. But didn’t. Too much effort.
Instead he got up. Gritting his teeth at a certain amount of pain, he walked around the room. Then he found his pants in the closet and took some change out of the pocket.
He walked to the end of the hall where there was a coffee machine.
He was on his way back with a cup of coffee when he recognized a face. It was the head nurse on Jane Doe’s ward.
They stopped and glared at each other.
The nurse said, “Just what do we think we are doing walking around the halls?” She took the coffee from him.
He didn’t resist. He said, “I know how overworked you all are. I was just fending for myself for a minute or two.”
“On my ward,” the woman said, “you will fend for yourself if and when I say so. You got that?” She poked him on the bandages.
When he recovered, Powder said, “I got that.”
After a rest he called the main branch of the public library, on St. Clair Street.
He found them very helpful. Yes, they would try to find whether a William G. Weaver, Jr., had borrowed books on geological strata.
Then Powder called the Harrison High School assistant principal.
“Yes,” he told her. “I am the cop you read about. I’m calling from my hospital bed. And my healing process is delayed because you didn’t call me back yesterday with the information I wanted.”
“I didn’t get a chance to get into school until late in the afternoon,” she said. “And then this morning I recognized the name . . .”
The assistant principal gave Powder an Indianapolis address for Sarah Crismore and also a “home” address, in Aurora, Indiana. With the qualification that a relationship was only rumor, she also provided the name and address of a male science teacher at the school.
Powder wrote them down in silence. And then asked, “Have you filled Crismore’s job yet?”
“Well, no.”
“If Sarah Crismore came to you soon, say by the end of the week, and asked to withdraw her resignation, would there be a chance of your reinstating her?”
“Lieutenant,” the assistant principal said, “I don’t quite understand where you fit in this.”
“I asked you a pretty simple question,” Powder said. “If you are assured that there is no question of outstanding police problems, what would your reaction be?”
“Of course,” she began, “it’s not by any means entirely my decision, but we would be likely to treat a request to withdraw an intemperate resignation sympathetically. Especially if there was some explanation about what had prompted it in the first place.”
“I see. All right. Thank you.”
* * * * *
Powder dozed before lunch, and awoke to find that his chest hurt more than it had in the morning.
When his lunch came, so did Ricky.
Ricky was aggrieved.
“I only found out what happened because I turned on the radio,” he said.
“I don’t think I have your new address on my next-of-kin card,” Powder said.
“Hey, are you all right?”
“Great,” Powder said.
“Come on,” he insisted. “How are you?”
“Great. How’s business?”
Ricky became immediately evasive. “Business?”
“It is a serious question,” Powder said.
“Come on. Dad,” Ricky said, irritated now. “Get off my back, will you?”
Powder inhaled, closing his eyes. “All right,” he said.
Ricky said nothing.
“Go away now, will you? Let me eat in peace.”
Ricky went away.
A doctor visited Powder’s bedside shortly after the lunch dishes were cleared away.
“And how’s the brave officer today?” the doctor asked.
“Irritable,” Powder said.
“I want to know why I am being allowed to eat,” Powder said.
“Oh?”
“General anesthesia requires fasting beforehand. If you’re letting me eat, it seems to mean that you’re not going in after the second slug yet. Why not?”
The doctor put down his clipboard.
“And spare me any posturing, will you. Just answer the question.”
“The second bullet is awkwardly placed near your spine. We are hoping that leaving it for a while will see the bullet working itself back through the damaged tissue of the entry wound.”
“A little bit is important, huh?”
“It could reduce the danger from operating very significantly.”
“We’re not talking about life-death danger, for the most part, are we?”
Looking Powder in the eyes, the doctor said, “Not for the most part, no.”
“OK. When do you go in?”
“We won’t wait for long. Probably you will be starved tonight against the chance of doing it tomorrow. We’ll take another X ray in the morning. At most, we’re likely to wait until day after tomorrow.”
“I went for a little walk a couple of hours ago,” Powder said.
“So I gather,” the doctor said.
“Hurt a bit.”
“I am sure it did,” the doctor said.
When the doctor left. Powder rested. But he left his telephone on and within a quarter of an hour, it rang.
The librarian from the main branch reported that William Weaver had borrowed four books about general geology and Indiana geology. They had been taken out over a period from June to November of the previous year.
Powder thanked the librarian effusively and lay smiling at the ceiling.
The smile lasted several minutes. Then he made two calls.
The first was to Albert Samson. He got an answering machine. He told it, “I don’t like these goddamn machines.”
The second was to the Missing Persons office.
A sluggish male voice asked if he could help.
Powder resisted abuse. He asked for Fleetwood.
She was in.
“That was Lorimer?”
“Yes,” she said.
“He sounds like he is underwater. Has he got a snorkel in his mouth?”
“What do you want. Powder? We’re undermanned and there’s a lot of work to do.”
He said, “I had intended to tell you to sign off for tomorrow morning, but if you’re so busy you better come around tonight, after work.”
Hard Line Page 17