polite instructions to wait inside.
Alone in the tiny room, I sat in a straight-backed wooden chair by a small varnished table and slipped an antacid tablet into my mouth. I chewed the tablet frantically, realized I was getting carried away and took a few deep breaths to relax.
I looked around. The room was practically unfurnished-bare floor, single dirty window with broken Venetian blinds, only the one small wooden table with three matching chairs and a dented and sloppily repainted file cabinet set against one pale green wall. I didn't like the room.
An hour passed. I knew they were making me wait on purpose, trying to wear down my nerve. They couldn't know there wasn't much need for that. An automobile horn sounded in the distance, and there were muffled voices as several people passed nearby; but all that was visible outside the streaked glass of the single window were the leafy branches of a large tree. The little room smelled of perspiration and fear, and some of it was mine.
Finally Dockard entered the room with Avery at his elbow. Both men appeared tired.
'Sorry to keep you waiting,' Dockard lied.
'That's all right,' I lied back. 'I had fun looking out the window.'
He nodded in admiration at the brave front and sat down across from me in one of the straight-backed chairs. Avery remained standing, a stoic figure.
'I'd like your complete story on tape, if you have no objections,' Dockard said.
'Am I being officially held for questioning in the girl's disappearance?'
Dockard raised his eyebrows. 'Of course not. We thought we had your cooperation. Aren't we in the same business?'
'The same,' I said. I knew how it would be if I failed to cooperate, with the missing girl's father owning the town and the police department. Not that I minded cooperating in a straight game, but this was hardly that.
Dockard smiled and rested his hands on the varnished tabletop in a passive gesture, and Avery walked to the dented file cabinet and took a recorder from the top drawer. I had the notion to request a lawyer, but wasn't that the request of a guilty man? And if Carlon owned the law, no doubt he owned the lawyers.
Avery set the recorder, a flat Japanese model, on the table in front of me, and Dockard switched it on, then sat back in his chair expectantly, as if he'd just done something wonderful. I cleared my throat and began to talk.
It took me close to half an hour to explain to the recorder how I'd reached my present predicament, starting with the arrival of Gordon Clark at my house trailer and ending with the arrival of the police at 355 Star Lane. Every so often Dockard would interrupt me with questions that didn't seem very pertinent, but even so, I could almost hear the clang of my cell door.
An elderly secretary came in with three large ceramic mugs of coffee on a tray, set the tray on the table next to the humming Japanese recorder and left. Dockard slid one of the mugs across the table to me and turned off the recorder. He spooned sugar and powdered cream into his steaming cup and held up the containers in an offering gesture to me. I declined and took a sip of the strong black coffee, almost hot enough to peel the skin from my lips.
'Does this story jell with the facts?' Dockard asked me confidentially.
'I wouldn't have been so cooperative if it didn't.'
He pursed his lips at that. We both knew I'd had no choice.
Avery shifted his weight to his heels and crossed his arms. I'd almost forgotten he was there.
'I'm telling you this because I feel duty bound,' Dockard said, 'while you still have a chance to change your story. I don't know if you're exactly aware of who Dale Carlon is, but he's the last man for miles around who you'd choose to cross.'
'I don't choose to cross anybody,' I said. 'All I was trying to do was my job, returning Melissa Clark to her father.'
'Maybe she belongs with her mother.'
'… Who happens to be Dale Carlon's daughter.'
There was a narrowing of his brown eyes without change of facial expression. 'It's not like anybody owns this department, Nudger.'
It's not like it, I thought, it is it.
Dockard waited patiently for me to answer, then gave up.
'You mind waiting around while this is transcribed?' he asked finally, slipping the cassette from the recorder.
'Not at all.'
He stood and thanked me; then he and Avery walked from the room, leaving half open the door to the hall. As a snub? A dare? I leaned back and sipped coffee that was cool enough now for human consumption.
It was easier to pass the time now that I could hear part of what was going on outside the room-the clatter of a teletype from across the hall, its rhythm broken by the occasional thumping of an electric typewriter; the voices of two men passing the time, talking shop, now and then getting into the subject of the eastern division pennant race. Neither of them knew much baseball.
'Here's something on Branly,' one of them suddenly said, interrupting the other's sermon on the virtues of a good defensive shortstop. 'According to neighbors, he and his wife and kid lived at the Star Lane address for a little over a month.'
'Is the wife the Carlon bitch?'
'So the neighbors say.'
'Think they were really married?'
'Who gives a damn anymore?'
'Marion of the Saint Louis Cardinals was the best ever.'
Wagner of Pittsburgh, I thought, sitting back in my chair, and he could hit… So Branly, whoever he may be, is the other man. I remembered now that Mick, of the saggy T-shirt, had mentioned something about seeing Melissa with her mother and father. This Branly complicated things.
I sat quietly, straining for more information, but all I got was baseball misinformation. Who wanted a shortstop who couldn't hit?
What was left of my coffee was cold when Dockard came back into the room as if he'd only stepped out a minute ago. I was surprised to see Gordon Clark behind the detective.
Clark stepped into the room and gave me a quick, humorless smile. 'Mr. Nudger.' He looked bedraggled, and there was slack flesh beneath his reddened eyes. His brown suit was rumpled, and his dark beard was slightly flattened on one side, as he he'd slept on it. I guessed he'd been airborne for the past several hours.
'This him, Mr. Clark?' Dockard asked.
'He's the man I hired,'
'Things took an unexpected turn,' I said. 'I'm sorry.'
'I should have come down here with you as you suggested,' Clark said.
'That wouldn't have changed anything.'
'Nudger's right about that, Mr. Clark,' Dockard said. He floated a hand to Clark's shoulder to lead him from the room.
'I'm at the Clover Inn, on Main Drive,' I said to Clark.
He nodded as he left the room. Dockard stayed behind.
'He verified your story,' Dockard said.
'Then if you don't mind, I've done enough cooperating for the day.'
Dockard grinned, opened the door. 'Come into my office, Nudger.'
It was more than a simple invitation. I got up wearily and followed him down the hall to let him hold open another door for me.
Dockard's office was large, or at least it seemed so to me after my confinement in the tiny interrogation room. There was a nice walnut desk, pictures on the walls and a soft vinyl chair for me to sit in. The chair was best of all.
'Tired?' Dockard asked, sitting behind his desk and lighting a cigarette.
I didn't think it was a question that deserved an answer.
'Things have gotten even muckier than you think,' Dockard said.
