`Where is it?'
`Under my mattress. You're welcome to it. I don't want any part of it.'
I followed him into the bedroom. The room was in disarray, with bureau drawers pulled out, hangers scattered on the floor.
'Lila took off in a hurry,' he said, `soon as she saw the paper. She probably filed suit for divorce already. It wouldn't be the first time she got a divorce.'
`From you?'
`From the other ones.'
Lila's picture stood on top of the bureau. Her face was dark and plump and stubborn-looking, and it supported an insubstantial dome of upswept black hair.
Harold stood disconsolately by the unmade bed. I helped him to lift up the mattress. Flattened under it was an oilskin tobacco pouch containing paper money visible through the oilskin. He handed it to me.
`Did you see where this came from, Harold?'
`He got it out of the car. I heard him unwrapping some paper.'
I put the pouch in my pocket without opening it. `And you honestly didn't know it was hot?'
He sat on the bed. `I guess I knew there was something the matter with it. He couldn't win that much in a poker game, I mean and keep it. He always keeps trying for the one more pot until he loses his wad. But I didn't think about kidnapping, for gosh sake.'
He struck himself rather feebly on the knee. `Or murder.'
`Do you think he murdered the boy?'
`I meant poor little Carol.'
`I meant the boy.'
`He wouldn't do that to a young kid,' Harold said in a small hushed voice. He seemed not to want the statement to be heard, for fear it would be denied.
`Have you searched the car?'
`No sir. Why would I do that?'
`For blood or money. You haven't opened the trunk?'
`No. I never went near the lousy car.'
He looked sick, as if its mere presence in his garage had infected him with criminality.
`Give me the keys to it.'
He picked up his limp trousers, groped in the pockets, and handed me an old leather holder containing the keys to the car. I advised him to put on his clothes while I went out to the garage.
I found the garage light and turned it on, unlocked the trunk, and with some trepidation, lifted the turtleback. The space inside was empty, except for a rusty jack and a balding spare tire. No body.
But before I closed the trunk I found something in it that I didn't like. A raveled piece of black yarn was caught in the lock. I remembered Sam Jackman telling me that Tom had been wearing a black sweater on Sunday. I jerked the yarn loose, angrily, and put it away in an envelope in my pocket. I slammed the turtleback down on the possibility which the black yarn suggested to my mind.
13
I WENT BACK into the house. The bedroom door was closed. I knocked and got no answer and flung it open. Harold was sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear and socks. He was holding a .22 rifle upright between his knees. He didn't point it at me. I took it away from him and unloaded the single shell.
`I don't have the nerve to kill myself,' he said.
`You're lucky.'
`Yeah, very lucky.'
`I mean it, Harold. When I was a kid I knew a man who lost his undertaking business in the depression. He decided to blow out his brains with a twenty-two. But all it did was blind him. He's been sitting around in the dark for the last thirty years. And his sons have the biggest mortuary in town.'
`So I should be in the mortuary business.'
He sighed. `Or anything but the brother business. I know what I have to go through.'
`It's like a sickness. It'll pass.'
`My brother,' he said, `is a sickness that never passes.'
`He's going to, this time, Harold. He'll be taken care of for the rest of his life.'
`If you catch him.'
`We'll catch him. Where did he head from here?'
`He didn't tell me.'
`Where do you think?'
