the fog had come back again, heavy and wet, and it made the pavement slick and visibility poor; it was forty-five minutes before I crossed the bridge spanning the Russian River and approached Jenner.
The hamlet-what there was of it-was located at the mouth of the river, where it widened out and joined the ocean. To the west, between the road and the water, were a lot of tide flats and a few houses. The last house south of Jenner matched Ingles’ description: a ramshackle twenties-style structure that seemed to list inland, as if the constant wind off the sea had been too much for it. A lone cypress tree grew in the muddy front yard, wind-bent and leaning companionably in the same direction; parked near it was a 1940s vintage Chevvy pick-up. Lights glowed behind chintz curtains in one front window.
I took my car into the yard and put it next to the pick-up. When I got out a fat lazy-looking dog came around from behind the house, barked once in an indifferent way, and then waddled off again. I climbed sagging steps onto the front porch and rapped on the door.
Nobody answered. Ingles had said Zach Judson was all but deaf, I remembered; I tried again, using my fist this time, pounding hard enough to rattle the wood in its frame. That got results. The door creaked open pretty soon and a guy about seventy peered out at me through wire-framed spectacles. He had a gnarly face, a mop of unkempt white hair, and one of those big old-fashioned plastic hearing aids hooked over one ear.
He said, “Yep?” in a tone that wondered if I was going to try to sell him something.
“Mr. Judson?”
“Yep?”
I told him my name. “I’m a detective, and I-”
“You say detective?”
“Yes, sir. Investigating the disappearance of Jerry Carding.”
“Who?”
“Jerry Carding.”
“Never heard of any Jerry Carling.”
“Carding, Mr. Judson. Jerry Carding.”
“Never heard of any Jerry Carding.”
“The story’s been in all the papers and on TV-”
“Don’t read the papers. Don’t own a TV.”
“He vanished from Bodega last Sunday night, between nine and ten o’clock,” I said. “A young fellow about twenty, dark hair, Fu Manchu mustache. I understand you were in Bodega around that time and I thought you might have seen him.”
“Yep,” Judson said.
“Sir?”
“Yep. Did see him.”
Well now. “Where was this, Mr. Judson?”
“On the highway. Near Ingles’ cafe.”
“Was he alone?”
“Yep. Hitchhiking.”
“He thumbed you, then?”
“Yep.”
“But you didn’t stop for him?”
“ Did stop for him. Used to hitch rides myself, back when. Decent young fella. Polite, good manners. Missing, you say?”
“Yes.” There was a tenseness inside me now; this was the kind of break I had been looking for. “You took him where, Mr. Judson?”
“What?”
“Where did you take him?”
“Not far. Just up the road a ways.”
“How far up the road?”
“To the Kellenbeck Fish Company,” he said.
SEVENTEEN
I did some hard thinking on the way back to Bodega Bay.
Jerry Carding had hitchhiked to the Kellenbeck Fish Company last Sunday night. All right. Zach Judson had not seen him approach the plant, but it was a safe assumption that it had been Jerry’s destination; there was nothing else in the vicinity, no other businesses or private homes. Meeting someone there? Could be. But then why not meet in Bodega instead? As it was, Jerry had had to walk partway and hitch a ride the rest of the way.
The other possibility was that he had gone to the fish company to look for something, either inside the building or somewhere around it. Something connected with the article he’d written; that seemed likely. Ten o’clock on a Sunday night-a nocturnal prowl. It was the kind of thing an adventurous kid, a kid who wanted to be an investigative reporter, might do.
But what had happened then? Had Jerry completed his search, with or without finding what he’d come after, and later hitchhiked away from Bodega Bay? Or had somebody found him there and been responsible for his disappearance?
And the big question-why? What was there about the Kellenbeck Fish Company that would inspire a “career-making” article and a secret late-evening visit? Yes, and why go there after he had finished the article?
I focused my thoughts on Gus Kellenbeck. According to Mrs. Darden, the past couple of years had not been a boon for anyone in the fishing business; yet Kellenbeck had managed to keep his plant operating at a profit. It was possible that he was mixed up in some sort of illegal enterprise, such as price-fixing or substituting and selling one kind of processed fish for another. But that sort of thing had little news value; it happened all the time, in one form or another. Even a novice like Jerry would have known that.
What else could it be?
What else…
There was an itching sensation at the back of my mind, the kind I seem always to have when there’s something caught and trying to struggle out of my subconscious. Something significant I had seen or heard. It gave me a vague feeling of excitement, as if I were poised on the edge of breakthrough knowledge: remember what it was, take that one right turn, and I would be on my way into all the other right turns that led out of the labyrinth.
Only it would not come, not yet; the harder I tried to get hold of it, the tighter it seemed to wedge back. Let it alone, then. It would pop through sooner or later, the way nagging bits of information you can’t quite remember- names, dates, titles of books or movies-come popping through once you stop thinking about them.
It was four-thirty and just starting to get dark when I neared the Kellenbeck Fish Company. On impulse I swung the car onto the deserted gravel area in front. The building had a dark abandoned look in the fog and the late-afternoon gloom; closed on Sundays, I thought, nobody here. But I got out anyway and went around onto the rear dock.
The corrugated iron doors were closed and padlocked; I could see that without going over there. Instead I wandered to the foot of the rickety pier. There was nothing on it, no boats tied up at its end. Beyond, the gray water was scummed with mist. And on the opposite shore, Bodega Head was just a lumpish outline dotted here and there with ghostly lights from the houses above the marina.
I turned to look at the building again. The itching sensation came back, but with the same nonresults. Maybe if I had another talk with Kellenbeck, I thought; maybe that would help me remember. At the least I could see how he reacted when I mentioned Jerry Carding’s visit here last Sunday evening.
So I returned to the car and drove to The Tides and hunted up a public telephone. There was a listing for Kellenbeck in the Sonoma County directory with an address in Carmet-by-the-Sea. Carmet was an older development of homes a few miles back to the north, right on the ocean: I had passed by it twice on the trip to and
