'What's that big cluster of buildings east of town?' I asked.
'Used a chain saw, though. Black and Decker. That's Carlon Plastics you're talkin' about. Employs nearly half the town.'
It was what I'd been afraid of. And now that I knew for sure how big Carlon Plastics was in Layton, my stomach arranged itself into a knot that would have done a scoutmaster proud. If anything did go wrong, I knew how the authorities would deal with me. Roughly and on the edge of the rules.
'What do they make up there?' I asked.
'Different things, from plastic cups for vending machines to some kind of parts for the government. There's nine more Carlon plants spread around the country, but this one was the first. Worked for 'em myself up to six years ago, in the molding section. Then I inhaled enough fumes to mess up my lungs. Had to quit, take my disability pay.'
'Worth a lot to a town, an operation like that.'
'Wouldn't be no town without it.'
'Is there still a Carlon in the business?', 'Better believe it! Dale Carlon himself. Lives up near the plant in a ritzy place you wouldn't believe. He's the son. Father's dead.'
'Carlon live alone in a place like that?'
'Yeah. Wife died nearly five years ago. No live-in servants. Got two daughters somewhere, though.' He tilted his head slightly, much like the Michigan Mutilator on the magazine cover. 'You here for the fishin'?'
'I wish I was. Business.'
I headed the compact back toward the motel, my uneasy feeling growing claws. At a big drugstore with a flashing neon palm tree I stopped and bought some antacid stomach tablets, a spray can of dog repellent and a bottle of blended whiskey. Dog repellent is almost as effective as Mace, and the can doesn't attract nearly the attention.
The vending machine outside the office at the Clover Inn furnished me with ice, and I mixed myself a drink and sat in my cabin, thinking about Lornee, as I usually did at some point or other when I was on a job. We'd had some fine, if precarious, years, some fine children; but when Mr. Happy was found to be having an affair with the wife of a city alderman, politics entered the somewhat muddled picture. Politics and divorce.
No one would believe that the affair was one-sided and far less serious than the press had intimated. The alderman's wife was one of those bored, self-styled eccentrics with money who'd met me when I was taking part in a local charity-celebrity function, and she had talked too much and thrown herself at me more jokingly than anything else. But the press was controlled by the rival party, and when her husband had me removed from the department, he only fanned the flames-or rather, the smoke.
I didn't contest when Lornee filed for divorce, and I thought it right to give her custody of Danny and Lynn as long as I had visitation rights. Then, a year later, Lornee left the state with a man named Hogan-a close friend of mine, a tall, lonely man who drank not a lot but a bit too much-and on a Texas highway he drove into a parked car at high speed and killed himself and my ex-wife and my children.
Nobody to blame, really. Nobody deserving of blame for that much horror; nobody, dead or alive, to take it out on, to hate. And only one survivor to harbor the memory.
Now I was lonely, the way Hogan used to be, and I was drinking, not a lot but a bit too much, the way Hogan used to drink.
Some people are star-crossed.
4
In the morning I was thankful that I hadn't dreamed.
I reached out, slapped down the sharp button on the jangling alarm clock and lay for a moment in its vibrating aftermath of silence. There was a sour taste in my mouth and a numbness in my left arm where I'd lain on it in my sleep. I remembered then that I'd been on one of my alcohol-induced self-pitying binges the night before. I hated the sniveling, masochistic self-analysis to which I sometimes fell prey, hated the lethargic uselessness that often evolved from it. Every day I met people more mutilated by fate than myself. The most maudlin word in the English language is 'I'-at least for me, past a certain number of drinks.
The black arrow hands on the alarm clock indicated six forty-five, the minute hand pointing toward the door in a broad hint. No time for breakfast. Just as well. As my thoughts focused on the Melissa Clark case, the familiar knot tightened in my stomach and quashed what little desire I had for food.
I managed to get my feet on the floor and commanded them to propel me to the bathroom, where I showered, shaved without nicking myself, combed my hair, and brushed my teeth with toothpaste that tasted like chalk. Gazing at my lean, somewhat lopsided features in the mirror, I wondered if my hair had started to thin. I'd be the last to know.
As soon as I was dressed I drove from the motel, in the direction of Star Lane. Halfway there I stopped at a dingy little doughnut shop built like a castle and got a cup of black coffee to go. By the time I was parked near the end of Star Lane, I'd only burned my hand twice and still had a squishy paper cup half full of coffee.
At twenty minutes to eight the first child came out, a boy of about twelve carrying a ponderous armload of books. Within a few minutes two girls, younger than the boy, emerged from the white frame house nearest my car. The girls walked to where the boy was standing, and though he carefully avoided looking at them, they stood close to him on his left. More children, mostly very young, came out of the houses on each side of the street and stood in a cluster that seemed to center around the boy with all the books.
The school bus arrived promptly at seven forty-five, big and yellow and noisy; and when it had rumbled around the corner, with more noise than speed, Star Lane was again deserted. Melissa Clark hadn't come out of the yellow house fronted by the faded picket fence.
I waited until eight o'clock. Several tired types left to go to work, and the teen-age boy I'd seen yesterday passed in his old Buick. My coffee had long since got cold. I tossed the dark liquid out the window, crumpled the cup and stuck it above the sun visor. Then I drove down the street and parked across from Number 355.
The paper was still on the lawn, the folded magazine still protruding from the mailbox. In the brightening morning there was still a faint yellow glow behind the front curtains.
I decided to be an aluminum siding salesman and got out of the car and crossed the street. When I stepped up on the porch of Number 355 and knocked, I had the feeling I was rapping on the door of an empty house. It's an instinct anyone who's knocked on enough doors acquires.
I waited a few minutes before stepping down from the front porch and walking around to the back of the house. An old rusty swing-set frame in the far corner of the yard now supported only a bald tire suspended by a rope. The grass, where it wasn't worn away, stood about six inches high.
No one was home, I was ninety-nine percent sure, but I went up on the porch and knocked on the back door for the other one percent.
'Whad'ya want, mister?'
It was a boy of about eight, standing near the corner of the house, looking at me with the open expression of fearless curiosity possessed only by young boys and terriers.
'I'm looking for Melissa's mother. You know where she is?'
'No, sir.' He was wearing a blue T-shirt about five sizes too large, and he unconsciously gripped it and stretched it down on himself almost to his knees while he stared at me.
'What's your name?' I asked in a friendly voice.
'Mick.'
'How come no school today, Mick?'
'I felt bad when I woke up.'
'You don't look sick.'
'It's on the inside.'
'How come Melissa didn't go to school?'
Mick shrugged inside his T-shirt. 'Maybe she's sick, i '» too.
'How long's it been since you've seen her?'
