you could count on that and work with it. You ran into a murder and you could figure lust or profit as a starter. Now you gotta wonder if it’s political, religious, or merely idiosyncratic.
You know, for the hell of it. Because it’s there.”
“And you yearn for the simple crimes like Leopold-Loeb?”
“Yeah,” I grinned. “Or Ruth Judd, the ax murderess.
Okay, so maybe there was always freaky crime. It just seems more prevalent. Or maybe I grow old.”
“Maybe we all do,” she said.
“Yeah, but I’d like to find Kevin Bartlett before I get senile. You know about the kidnapping note and the hearse and the dummy?”
“Some. The story was all over the school system when they found the hearse behind the junior high. But I don’t know details.”
“Okay,” I said, “here they are.” I told her. “Now,” I said, and gestured with the wine bottle toward her glass.
“Half a glass,” she said. I poured. “That’s good.”
“Now,” I said again, “do you think he was kidnapped?
And if he was kidnapped, was it just for money?”
“In order,” she said, “I don’t know, and no.”
“Yeah, that’s about where I am,” I said. “Tell me about this group he ran with.”
“As I said when you saw me the other day in my office, I really know very little about them. I’ve heard that there is a group of disaffected young people who have formed a commune of some sort. Commune may be too strong a word. There is a group, and I only know this from gossip in the high school, which chooses to live together. I don’t want to stereotype them. They are mostly, I’ve heard, school-and college-age people who do not go to school or work in the traditional sense. I’ve heard that they have a house somewhere around Smithfield.”
“Who owns the house?”
“I don’t know, but there is a kind of leader, an older man, maybe thirty or so, this Vic Harroway. I would think he’d be the owner.”
“And Kevin was hanging around with this group?”
“With some of them. Or at least with some kids who were said to be associated with this group. I’d see him now and then sitting on the cemetery wall across from the common with several kids from the group. Or maybe from the group. I’m making this sound a good deal more positive than it is. I’m not sure of any of this or of even the existence of such a group. Although I’m inclined to think there is a group like that.”
“Who would know?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. Chief Trask, I suppose.”
“How bizarre is this group?”
“Bizarre? I don’t know. I hadn’t heard anything very bizarre about them. I imagine there’s grass smoked there, although not many of us find that bizarre anymore. Other than that I can’t think of anything particularly bizarre. What kind of bizarre do you mean?”
The wine was gone, and I was looking a little wistfully at the empty bottle. It was hard concentrating on business. I was also looking a little wistfully at Susan Silverman.
Neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor dark of night maybe, but red wine and a handsome woman that was something else.
She said, “What kind of bizarre are you looking for?”
“Any kind at all. The kind of bizarre that would be capable of that dummy trick in the coffin, the kind of bizarre that would make a singing commercial out of the telephone call. The kind of bizarre that would do the ransom note in a comic strip. Would you like some brandy?”
“One small glass.”
“Let’s take it to the living room.”
She sat where she had before, at one end of the couch. I gave her some Calvados and sat on the coffee table near her.
“I don’t know anything bizarre about the group. I have the impression that there is something unusual about Vic Harroway, but I don’t know quite what it is.”
“Think about it. Who said he was odd? What context was his oddness in?”
She frowned again. “No, just an idea that he’s unusual.”
“Is he unusual in appearance?”
“I don’t know.”
“Size?”
“Really, I can’t recall.”
“Is he unusual in his sex habits?”
She shrugged and spread her hands, palms up.
“Religious zealot?”
