says, “That was a good trick, what you said about George Rathbun. Sent them away happy.”
“It wasn’t a trick.”
So startled that he jostles back into the station house side by side with Jack, Bobby says, “George Rathbun is a friend of yours?”
“Yep,” Jack says. “And sometimes, he can be a real pain in the ass.”
Dale and Fred Marshall look up as Jack enters the office, Dale with a cautious expectancy, Fred Marshall with what Jack sees, heartbreakingly, as hope.
“Well?” Dale says.
“You were right, they were hiding something, but it isn’t much.”
Fred Marshall slumps against the back of his chair, letting some of his belief in a future hope leak out of him like air from a punctured tire.
“Not long after they got to the 7-Eleven, the Wexler boy sent T.J. down the street to look for your son,” Jack says. “When T.J. got to Queen Street, he saw the bike and the sneaker lying on the sidewalk. Of course, they all thought of the Fisherman. Ebbie Wexler figured they might get blamed for leaving him behind, and he came up with the story you heard—that Tyler left them, instead of the other way around.”
“If you saw all four boys around ten past eight, that means Tyler disappeared only a few minutes later. What does this guy do, lurk in hedges?”
“Maybe he does exactly that,” Jack says. “Did you have people check out that hedge?”
“The staties went over it, through it, and under it. Leaves and dirt, that’s what they came up with.”
As if driving a spike with his hand, Fred Marshall bangs his fist down onto the desk. “My son was gone for four hours before anyone noticed his bike. Now it’s almost seven-thirty! He’s been missing for most of the day! I shouldn’t be sitting here, I should be driving around, looking for him.”
“Everybody is looking for your son, Fred,” Dale says. “My guys, the staties, even the FBI.”
“I have no faith in them,” Fred says. “They haven’t found Irma Freneau, have they? Why should they find my son? As far as I can see, I’ve got one chance here.” When he looks at Jack, emotion turns his eyes into lamps. “That chance is you, Lieutenant. Will you help me?”
Jack’s third and most troubling thought, withheld until now and purely that of an experienced policeman, causes him to say, “I’d like to talk to your wife. If you’re planning on visiting her tomorrow, would you mind if I came along?”
Dale blinks and says, “Maybe we should talk about this.”
“Do you think it would do some good?”
“It might,” Jack says.
“Seeing you might do
“Jack,” Dale says.
“See you at nine,” Jack says, ignoring the signals of mingled distress and anger emanating from his friend, also the little voice that whispers (
“Amazing,” says Henry Leyden. “I don’t know whether to thank you or congratulate you. Both, I suppose. It’s too late in the game to make ‘bitchrod,’ like me, but I think you could have a shot at ‘dope.’ ”
“Don’t lose your head. The only reason I went down there was to keep the boy’s father from coming to my house.”
“That wasn’t the only reason.”
“You’re right. I was feeling sort of edgy and hemmed in. I felt like getting out, changing the scenery.”
“But there was also
“Henry, you are hip-deep in pigshit, do you know that? You want to think I acted out of civic duty, or honor, or compassion, or altruism, or something, but I didn’t. I don’t like having to say this, but I’m a lot less good-hearted and responsible than you think I am.”
“ ‘Hip-deep in pigshit’? Man, you are absolutely on the money. I have been hip-deep in pigshit, not to mention chest-deep and even
“Nice of you to admit it.”
“However, you misunderstand me. You’re right, I do think you are a good, decent person. I don’t just think it, I know it. You’re modest, you’re compassionate, you’re honorable, you’re responsible—no matter what you think of yourself right now. But that wasn’t what I was talking about.”
“What
“The other reason you decided to go to the police station is connected to this problem, this concern, whatever it is, that’s been bugging you for the past couple of weeks. It’s like you’ve been walking around under a shadow.”
“Huh,” Jack said.
“This problem, this
