Show of Evil

Targis gave St Claire a sucker look. 'No, and I don't know the engine number either.'

'Know where she lives?'

'Sure. Fairway Apartments, over near the golf course. Straight down 84 two miles. Can't miss it. This is about the Darby thing, right?'

'Do you know anything about it?' Stenner asked.

'Only what I read in the papers, if you can believe that.'

'You don't?'

'What, that Calamity Jane-Wild Bill Hickok shootout?

Shit.'

'That's just a guess, right?'

'Oh, yeah, man.'

 'Did Poppy talk about it at all?'

 'You kiddin'?' He leaned across the bar and lowered his voice even though they were the only people in the room. 'She was scared shitless.'

 'Of what?'

'Everything. The cops. You guys. Big Jim.'

 'That's what you called Darby, Big Jim?'

'That's what Poppy called him. Everybody else picked up on it. A guy leaves a dollar tip after drinkin' for four hours? Big Jim, my ass. But who can figger women, y'know? Poppy's smart, got a figger'd give a statue a stiff, looks like Michelle… What's her name?'

 'Pfeiffer?' said Stenner.

 'No, the other one. Used to be a canary.'

 'Phillips,' St Claire said.

Targis jabbed a forefinger at him. 'That's the one.'

 'Did she ever mention this sister of hers before?' Stenner asked.

'Uh, maybe once'r twice.'

 'So you didn't get the idea they were real close?'

'I didn't get any idea at all. I don't give a shit about her sister. I got enough trouble with my own family.'

'Thanks, Mr Targis,' Stenner said, handing him a card. 'If you think of something, give us a call.'

'Is she on the lam or sompin'?'

'We just want to talk to her.'

'I thought you already did.'

'We forgot a coupla things. She happens to call in, give her that name and number, okay?'

'She ain't gonna call in. I been in this business almost twenty years, I know a goodbye call when I hear one and that call from her was definitely a goodbye call.'

'Maybe she'll call about the three hundred you owe her.'

He shook his head as he took out a towel, held it under the spigot, then twisted it damp and started cleaning the bar.

'It mattered, she'd a come by and got it. Had to drive right past the front door on her way to the interstate.'

'That's what she told you, she was driving out to Texarkana?'

'Didn't say. I just figgered she drove down to O'Hare.'

'Thanks.'

'Sure. Come back later and have a drink. On the house.'

'Thanks, Mike, you're a real gent.'

On the way out the door, St Claire said, 'Targis is an ex-con.'

'How do you know?'

'He's about ten years behind in his vernacular. Besides, I know everything. I even know who Michelle Phillips is.'

'Mamas and the Papas,' Stenner said, opening the car door. St Claire stared at him with disbelief. 'I wasn't always fifty, Harve.' They got in the car and headed back to Darby's farm to see how the search was going.

The chopper swerved off the main highway and swept down over the town of Daisyland. From the air, it was a modest village surrounded by old Victorian houses hidden among oak and elm trees. As the chopper headed north of town, the residential area became sparse and then quite suddenly the trees ended and the Stevenson Mental Health Institute appeared below them, a group of incompatible though pleasant-looking buildings separated from the town by tall, thick hedges and the brick wall that surrounded the place. Two new wings adjoined the older, rambling main structure of the hospital. Together they formed a quadrangle. Vail could see people moving about, like aphids on a large green leaf. Vail remembered one of the structures from his visits a decade earlier - a three-storey building with a peaked atrium, its slanted sides constructed of large glass squares. Maximum security - Stampler's home for the past ten years.

Down below, in one of the buildings facing the quadrangle, a man watched the chopper chunk-chunk-chunk overhead. He was pleasant-looking, verging on handsome, and husky, his body tooled and hardened in the workout room, and he was dressed in the khaki pants and