'Where is Hardahee?' Gaffner asked softly.
'He's sitting down in the car, sir.'
'Well, Larry, suppose you go down and drive the poor sad silly son of a bitch home. Tell him we'll have a little talk someday soon. Tell him that in the absence of a complaint, there's no charge.'
As Lozier left, Gaffner turned to Stanger. 'Would it be asking entirely too much to have you go out and come back here with Broon, Lieutenant?'
'I swear to God, I have been hunting that man here and there and up and down the whole day long, and he is plain gone.'
He shifted his unwinking stare to me. 'And it is your thought, Mr. McGee, that Mr. Pike will suddenly crack under the strain and start bleating confessions at us all?'
'No, sir. I don't think he will ever confess to anything at all. I don't think he feels any guilt or remorse. But you see, if Maureen disappears, there is no proof of death. He can't bail out by marrying the younger sister. If he's in a tight spot, he'll have to make some kind of move.' It astonished me a little to hear myself call him 'sir.' It is not a word I use often or loosely.
'Don't you think, Mr. McGee, that you are assuming that a very intelligent man like Pike has committed some very violent and foolish acts?'
'Right now they seem violent and foolish because we all have a pretty good idea of the things he's done and why he's done them. But when things get more and more complex, Mr. Gaffner, it leaves more room for chance. For luck, good and bad. Where would we be with all this if I hadn't come into the picture? Not that I've been particularly bright about any part of this. I was something new added to the mix and I guess I've been a catalytic agent. His luck started to run the other way. The biggest piece of bad luck was when I decided not to park over by the other cars. When she hit the overhead, it was a hell of a sound. I didn't know what it was. I knew it was something right over my head. One hell of a smack to make the whole prestressed roof ring like a drum. Okay. No workmen around. Building empty except for the party on the top floor. So I had to find out what made that noise. Maybe I knew what it had to be. Maybe my subconscious fitting things together in a single flash of intuition. What if I hadn't found her?'
'He doesn't know you found the body.'
'And so he's handling it according to plan. She ran off again. Big search. Worry. Then in the morning the workmen find it, and it fits with her recent history of suicide attempts and her condition. He's going through the motions now. He thinks he's home free. Violent, yes. Foolish, however, is another word. I think he's legally sane, but I think he's a classic sociopath. Do you know the pattern? Superficially bright, evidently quite emotional, lots of charm, an impression of complete honesty and integrity.'
'I have done the necessary reading in that area, Mr. McGee,' Gaffner said.
'Then you know their willingness to take risks, their confidence they can get away with anything. They're sly and they're cruel. They never admit guilt. They are damned hard to convict.' He nodded agreement.
I told him about the couple who had worked for the Pikes. I told him of the golf club incident. Then I described Tom Pike's bedroom, the strange sterility and neatness of it, how impersonal it seemed, without any imprint of personality.
Gaffner asked Stanger if he could add anything. 'Not much on him,' Al said, examining the sodden end of a dead cigar. 'Florida born. Lived here and there around the center of the state, growing up. His folks worked the groves, owned little ones and lost them, took over some on lease, made out some years and crapped out other years. Don't know if there's any of them left or where they are now. Tom Pike went off to school up north someplace. Scholarship, I think. Came here a few years ago, just married, had money enough to build that house out there. I guess there must have been credit reports on him for the size loans he's got into and I guess if they turned up anything out of line, he wouldn't have got the loans. The people that don't like him, they really don't like him a damn bit, but they keep their mouths shut. The ones that do, they think he's the greatest thing ever walked on two legs.'
After a silence Ben Gaffner said softly, 'Ego. The inner conviction that everybody else in the world is soft and silly and gullible. Maybe we are, because we're weighted down with excess baggage the few Tom Pikes of this world don't have to bother with. Feelings. The capacity to feel human emotions, love, guilt, pity, anger, remorse, hate, despair. They can't feel such things but don't know they can't, so they think our insides are just like theirs, and they think the world is a con game and think we fake it all, just as they have learned to do.'
I said, 'You've done your reading, sir.'
'What have we got right now? Let's say we could open Broon up and make him the key witness for the prosecution. If he confirms what you think he can confirm, McGee, then I'd take a chance on going for an indictment. But Pike is going to be able to get top talent to defend him. The jury is going to have to either believe Broon or believe Pike. Circumstantial case. Pike is likable and persuasive. And I'm saddled with a story to present that sounds too fantastic and I'm saddled with medical experts who'll be contradicted by his medical experts. One long, long trial, a lot of the public monies spent on it, and I would say four to one against a conviction.'
'About that,' Stanger agreed unhappily.
'So what if there's no way to open Broon up? Or what if he's gone for good? Nothing to go on. I'd be a fool to go after an indictment.'
'Gone for good?' Stanger asked. 'Little cleanup job by Pike?'
'Only if Pike could be sure Broon wouldn't leave any-thing behind that might turn up in the wrong hands. Otherwise, on the run. Cash in the chips and leave for good, knowing that sooner or later Pike would want to get rid of the only link to all the rest of it.'
'So where does that leave us, Mr. Gaffner?' Stanger asked.
'I think you and Rico better start moving. What tune is it? Three fifteen. Best get a panel delivery. We'll have to make sure Pike isn't in that area anywhere. Get that body out of there at first light. Drive it back over to Lime City. Is that old phosphate pit on the Hurley ranch dry at the bottom?'
'Since he cut through, it runs off good.'
'About eighty-foot drop down that north wall. Get hold of that big matron with the white hair.'
'Mrs. Anderson.'
'She can keep her mouth shut. 1 want the fancy clothes off that body, tagged and marked and initialed by both of you and put away in my safe, Rico, and I want her dressed in something cheap and worn out. Put her at the bottom of that drop, then, soon as you can, you get her found. You could tell Hessling to go check a report of kids messing around there last night. Then I can come in on it through normal channels and we'll process an autopsy request, and I'll make sure I have somebody come in to backstop Doc Rause and run a complete series on the brain tissue.'
He turned toward me with the slow characteristic movement of his round head, moon face. 'It isn't all that big a risk, in case we get nowhere. She kept wandering off and had to be found. So she wandered off and hitched a ride maybe, and ended up dead in the bottom of a phosphate pit.'
Stanger said, 'Won't Pike make sure she's listed as missing, and won't she fit the description enough so that he might come over to make the identification?'
'We'd better make a positive on her. We can change our mind later on. Who do you think, Rico?'
The pale, mild investigator said, 'That drifter girl that jumped bond on that soliciting charge four, five months back? If the prints matched, it could be a screwup in the filing system that we could catch later on.'
'I like it,' Gaffner said. Lozier had returned. He said Hardahee had pulled himself together. Gaffner said they would decide later on if they wanted an affidavit from Hardahee.
Then Gaffner swiveled his head slowly and nailed us each in turn with the yellow appraisal. 'All of you listen carefully. We are engaged in foolishness. You do not have to be told to keep your mouths shut. I do not buy all of McGee's construction. I buy enough of it to continue the idiocy he started. We are all going to remember that our man won't get jumpy. He won't become superstitious and fearful. Psychos are notoriously pragmatic. If a body is gone, somebody took it. He'll wait to find out who and why, and while he is waiting he'll make the perfectly normal and understandable moves of the alarmed husband with a missing wife. Stanger, you and Rico better get going. And after Rico is loaded and gone, Stanger, your job is find Broon for me. Lozier, wait in the hall out there while I have a word with Mr. McGee.'
The table had been cleared of gear. All that remained were the overflowing ashtrays. Gaffner looked as fresh and rested as when the session had begun.
He stood at attention and looked up into my face. 'You're the bait, of course. When the woman is not found, Miss Pearson is going to feel more and more guilty. She is going to blame herself. And so she will confess to her brother-in-law that she knew Maureen was gone and didn't tell him. She will say that you saw Maureen leaving. Then you are the key, because you can supply the information about the body. No body, and the whole scheme is dead.'
'So he has to talk to me.'
'And he is still wondering what's in that letter Mrs. Trescott wrote you.'
'And what he says to me, that's what you have to know. That's what you need so you can move. What if he decides to accept his losses, write this one off, go on from
