forward into his knee.
“You look different,” he said.
“It’s this case. It’s aged me a lot.”
“Case?”
“Yeah, you know. Your missing daughter.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “These are hard days,” he said after a while.
“I’m sure they are. Maybe it’s almost over now. You could help…answer a few questions maybe?”
“Sure,” he said, but he was instantly uneasy. He was not a great talker, I remembered. He was private and sensitive and reluctant to let a stranger see into his heart.
He smiled kindly through his beard and gave it a try. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Grayson.”
His smile faded, replaced by that shadow of distress I had seen in him that first night. “That’s a long time ago. I don’t know what I could tell you that would make any difference today.”
I waited, sensing him groping for words. Let him grope it out, I thought.
“I have a hard time with that.”
“What about Nola Jean Ryder?”
His eyes narrowed to slits. I never found out what he might have said, because at that moment the outer door slammed open and Crystal screamed, “Gaston!” and I heard her charging through the dark front room.
She threw open the door and vaulted into the back shop.
“Don’t say another word!” she yelled at Rigby.
“What’s—”
“Shut up!…Just…
She came toward me. I moved to one side.
“I told you to get out of here.”
We circled each other like gladiators. By the time I reached the door, she and Rigby were side by side.
“Don’t you come back,” Crystal said. “Don’t ever come back here.”
“I’ll be back, Crystal. You can count on it.”
I went through the shop with that chill on my neck. The chill stayed with me as I doubled back toward Snoqualmie. I thought it was probably there for the duration.
52
Headlights cut the night as Archie Moon turned out of Railroad Avenue and came to a squeaking stop on the street outside his printshop. For a time he sat there as if lost in thought: then, wearily showing his age, he pulled himself out of the truck’s cab and slowly made his way to the front of the building. A key ring dangled from his left hand: with the other hand he fished a pair of glasses out of his shirt pocket, putting them on long enough to fit the key in the lock, turn the knob, and push the door open. He took off the glasses and flipped on the inner light, stepping into the little reception room at the front of the shop. He stopped, bent down, and picked up the mail dropped through the slot by the mailman earlier in the day.
He rifled through his letters with absentminded detachment. Seeing nothing of immediate interest, he tossed the pile on the receptionist’s desk and moved on into the back shop.
I got out of the car across the street, where I’d been waiting for more than an hour. I crossed over, opened the door without a noise, and came into the office.
I could hear him moving around beyond the open door. The back shop was dark with only a single light, somewhere, reflecting off black machinery. Shadows leaped up in every direction, like the figures in an antiquarian children’s book where everything is drawn in silhouette.
I heard the beep of a telephone machine, then the whir of a tape being rewound. He was playing back his messages, just around the corner, a foot or two from where I stood.
“Archie, it’s Ginny. Don’t be such a stranger, stranger.”
Another beep, another voice. “Bobbie, sweetheart. Call me.”
And again. “Mr. Moon, this is Jewell Bledsoe. I’ve been thinking about that job we discussed. Let’s do go ahead. And, yes, I would like to have dinner sometime. Very much. So call me. Tomorrow.”
