two slow steps and turned back. 'One thing I don't want, Nudger, is for Melissa to be hurt. Can you guarantee that she won't be?'
'I can guarantee I'll do everything to prevent it. I consider it the most important part of my job.'
He stood still for a moment, then nodded, as if he'd decided I was a thorough enough professional. Then he walked toward his car.
I felt sorry for him just then. He hadn't anticipated any of this when he'd walked down the aisle and uttered his vows.
After a few more deep knee bends, I gathered up everything Clark had left with me and went inside. I phoned the airline reservation desk for space on a morning flight to Orlando. From there I would have to rent a car and drive the rest of the way to Layton.
All that remained for me to do except pack was to drive over to the post office and use their pay copier to make duplicates of the court order and the photographs Clark had given me. The original court order I would return to Clark; one copy I would place in my safe-deposit box; one copy I would take to Florida, along with Clark's signature on a copy of my contract.
In a way I was glad Clark had refused to accompany me. The father's presence didn't always make it easier on the child. Sometimes the mother put up a fuss, and the husband, out of habit or rekindled responsibility, sided with her. When that happened, I sometimes got my lumps from both of them; and usually I was re-hired to accomplish the same task, now made more difficult, a few days later. Or the woman might physically resist both of us, and she and the man would fight over the child, yanking it back and forth like so much merchandise. I had seen a few children injured seriously that way. Physically and otherwise.
The trailer's air conditioner clicked on and began to hum. The sun was asserting itself outside. I got up from where I'd been sitting, by the phone, walked into the kitchen and mixed myself a bourbon and water. My stomach didn't suit my profession. It was fluttering again with precase jitters.
I wasn't in my business because I had the nerves for it. After four years as a civilian employee of the city police department and three years as a patrolman, my superiors had come to that same unflattering conclusion. Thus began my three-year reign as local TV's Mister Happy-we dropped the 'Officer' so the children would realize that policemen were much like everyone else when they weren't working-and I was the smiling cop who projected the image of Good Guy to the kids. I had always got on with the kids; just the duty for me, the higher-ups had decided. And they were right. It wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind when I joined the force, but even after three years I wasn't about to leave before I had to.
Police work was what I was trained in, and I had my contacts; so when I left the department, my choice of occupation seemed logical. At the time, anyway.
But maybe I had no right to bitch. My much maligned and misunderstood profession kept the food and liquor coming in and a tin roof over my head.
Just as the diluted bourbon was achieving its soothing influence on my nerves, the girl at the airline reservation desk phoned back and said that she'd made a mistake and asked whether I would consider a later flight that laid over in Atlanta for an hour.
I agreed to that and took an antacid tablet.
3
My flight to Orlando, via Atlanta, took off on time into a sky resembling lovingly polished fine crystal. The ground that fell away lost movement, then detail, and became a well defined, multicolored quiltwork of neat, if sometimes unsymmetrical, patterns. It was all simple from up there, where I sat behind the wing. Too bad everything didn't fall into such simple, neat patterns. Or maybe everything did, from a distance.
I settled back in the comfortable padded seat and semislept, my scant knowledge of aerodynamics balancing out my natural queasiness at flying.
Two drinks and a sampling of Southern dialect was it for the Atlanta layover, then back on the 747 and it was Georgia's red clay falling away beneath the wing. They seemed always to be constructing something in Georgia, as if only for an excuse to lay bare acres of red earth.
The plane rolled slightly to the left, altering the stark pattern of sunlight on the wing, and we headed south, proceeding toward Orlando at what seemed to be a much higher altitude.
After landing at Orlando's sun-drenched airport, I collected my baggage and made my way to a Hertz desk, where I rented a shiny new green compact. The little car was good of its kind, but there was just enough room for me and my luggage, and I had to be on the alert for pebbles and bottlecaps on the road.
I took Interstate Four out of Orlando, turned south on Twenty-seven, then drove for a while and angled west on Thirty-two, toward the Gulf Coast. Layton was twenty-five or thirty miles inland, southeast of Tampa Bay. I made the ENTERING LAYTON-POP. 3,605 sign a few minutes before five o'clock.
There was a good fishing and boating lake nearby, and Layton was close enough to the coast to have some tourist appeal. The main street was lined with motels. Bat off to the left I could see what had to be Layton's main industry-a huge complex of low, dark buildings set near the crest of a hill, with half a dozen tall smokestacks looming over the town like guard towers.
Disregarding the garish signs near the street, I decided one motel looked about in a league with the other, so I pulled into the lot of one called the Clover Inn, which advertised fifteen dollars and up in sun-paled flashing neon.
'Up' turned out to be twenty-two dollars, but I stretched cramped muscles and signed the register anyway. The Clover Inn had several little flat-roofed cabins spaced far enough apart to guarantee quiet at night, and it featured a clean-looking, if plain, restaurant, the Clover Grill. Besides, I couldn't face the idea of climbing back into the little green compact with the big name.
I told the man at the desk, an old guy named Eddie, that I'd be staying a few days and paid in advance. He handed me a key chained to a plastic clover engraved with a numeral. Leaving the car where it was parked, I got my luggage and carried it to Number 5.
Cool air hit me when I opened the door to the boxy stucco cabin, and it felt good. I stepped inside, kicked the door shut behind me and my three-suiter, and looked around.
Nice. Restful. Light green walls, dark furniture and a bed with a thick mattress. I was satisfied with my choice.
After tossing the suitcase onto the bed, I began to unpack what I wanted to hang the wrinkles out of-a pair of slacks, pale blue shirt and a tan sport coat. I glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand by the bed. Still plenty of daylight left, enough to take a quick shower, get something to eat at the Clover Grill and look into things. I was tired but I was working.
As I was walking across the parking lot, toward the motel restaurant, I decided to drop into the office and talk to Eddie. I could see through the window that he was alone, slouched in a leather chair near the desk, reading a magazine.
'Evening,' I said as I entered the tiny paneled office.
Eddie looked up from his magazine and nodded, waiting for me to get to what I really wanted to say. He was a dehydrated old bird with a narrow face, wispy gray hair and blue eyes containing a quiet humor that life hadn't broken.
'Layton's a bigger town than I imagined,' I said.
'You must not have much of an imagination. Thought you might want towels.'
'Nope. Plenty of towels. How's the food in the restaurant?'
'Make you deathly ill. Don't tell 'em I said so.'
'Sure.' I saw that he was reading one of those factual detective magazines, with a cover featuring a bound girl in panties and bra, begging to be spared while the determined type who stood over her with a ripsaw seemed to be listening to distant sirens.
''Bout the Michigan Mutilator,' he said, noticing that I'd scanned the cover. 'You remember him?'
'Vaguely.'
'Killed six.'
