driving, which was okay because it left her more freedom to talk. Danny didn’t mind her yakking away, so it made for a happy patrol car, and if it wasn’t for the system of rotation she knew she and Danny would have been happy as a team on their tours of duty forever.
However, the system of rotation was, everybody agreed, all in all a good idea. Put two straight men who get along with each other into the confines of a patrol car for several hours a day and they’ll swap old stories, tell jokes, recommend movies and generally make the time go by. Make it one straight man and one straight woman and they’ll do all the same things, but after a while they’ll start to smile on each other a little differently, they’ll start to touch, start to kiss, and down that road lies marital unhappiness and inefficient policing. A three-month rotation is usually short enough to keep that sort of thing from happening, to almost everybody’s relief.
When Louise joined Danny and the other fourteen troopers in the shape-up room for the day’s assignments from Sgt. Jackson, she expected today’s tour to be more of the same: roadblocks. For over a week now, most of their on-duty time had been spent mounting roadblocks, the only variant being that the roadblocks were shifted to slightly different locations every day.
No one would say that the roadblocks had been completely unsuccessful. A number of expired licenses had been found, lack of insurance, faulty lights, the occasional drunk. But as to the
Except not. “This afternoon,” Sgt. Jackson told them, pacing back and forth in front of where they stood on the black linoleum floor in the big square empty room with tables and chairs stacked along the rear, “our orders are a little different.”
An anticipatory sigh of relief rose from the sixteen, and Sgt. Jackson gave a little shrug and said, “We’ll see. Ladies and gentlemen, our mission has changed. We’re not going to stand around any longer and wait for those fugitives to come to us. We are going to actively search for them by trying to find that stolen money.”
One of the troopers said, “How we supposed to do that, Sarge? Hang out in delis?”
“Those three did not manage to transport their loot away from this part of the world,” Jackson told him. “That’s the belief we’re operating from. Now, it’s a big untidy pile, that money, and the idea is, if we look for it, we’ll find it, and if we find it, the fugitives won’t be too far away from it.”
There was general agreement in the room on that point, and then Jackson said, “What our job is today, you are each getting a sector, and you are to physically eyeball every empty or abandoned building in that sector. Empty houses, barns, everything. On the table by the door there’s a packet for each patrol, with your sector laid out in it, and by the way, a new suspect sketch on one of the fugitives. This is supposed to be closer to the real man.”
“What’ll they think of next?” asked a wit.
* * *
Riding shotgun, Louise ran an eye down the printout of the roads and intersections in their sector, then unfolded the new suspect sketch and studied it. “Oh, that one,” she said.
Danny, driving, glanced once and away. “That one,” he agreed.
“He doesn’t look as mean this time,” she decided.
“He was always a good boy,” Danny said.
“Did somebody ever say that in a movie?” Louise wanted to know. “You hear it all the time.”
“Beats me.”
Putting away the sketch, Louise went back to the printout, studied it some more, and said, “We should start from Hurley.”
“Real backwoods stuff.”
“That’s what they gave us. Oh!” she said, surprised and delighted, “St. Dympna!”
“Say what?”
“That’s where I went to church, when I was a little girl. St. Dympna.”
“Never heard of it,” he said. “What kind of name is that?”
“She was supposed to be Irish. Most churches with saints’ names are Roman Catholic, but we weren’t. We were United Reformed.” Louise laughed and said, “The funny thing is, when they founded the church, they just wanted some unusual name to attract attention, so they picked St. Dympna, and then, too late, they found out she’s actually the patron saint of insanity.”
Danny looked at her. “You’re putting me on.”
“I am not. Turned out, there’s a mental hospital named for her in Belgium. When I was a kid, that was the coolest thing, our church was named for the patron saint of crazy people.”
“Is it still going?”
“The church? Oh, no, it got shut down, must be more than ten years ago.”
“Ran out of crazy people,” Danny suggested.
“Very funny. No, it’s really way out in the sticks. There weren’t so many small farms after a while, and people moved closer to town, until there was almost nobody left to go there, and nobody could afford to keep it up. It shut down when I was in high school. There was some hope an antiques shop would buy it, but it never happened.”
“So that’s got to be one of the places on our list.”
“It sure is.” Louise smiled in nostalgia, and looked at the road ahead. “I’m looking forward to seeing it again.”
8
Mrs. Bartlett was sorry to see Captain Robert Modale and Trooper Oskott leave Bosky Rounds. Not that the room would go begging; this time of year, she always had a waiting list, and would surely fill that room again no later than Monday. But she’d liked the captain, found him quiet and restful, and a happy surprise after the unexpected departure of Mr. and Mrs. Willis.
The Willises had also been quiet and restful, not like some. Her in particular. Claire Willis. Mrs. Bartlett never did get a good reading on her husband, some sort of humorless businessman who clearly didn’t really care about anything but his business and was taking this vacation solely to make his wife happy; which was of course a mark in his favor.
But the rest was all her. She did all the driving and all the talking, and even made the apologies when they unexpectedly had to depart because of some crisis back home with his business.
Mrs. Willis had been so apologetic and so understanding, even offering to pay the unused portion of their stay, that Mrs. Bartlett couldn’t even get irritated. Of course she refused the extra payment, and assured Mrs. Willis she’d fill the room in no time, and then, the Willises barely gone and before she’d even had time to turn to her waiting list, here came the call from the New York State Police, needing a room for just the one night.
It was a sign, Mrs. Bartlett felt. She and Mrs. Willis had behaved decently toward each other, and this was Mrs. Bartlett’s reward. She certainly hoped Mrs. Willis was rewarded, perhaps with something other than that cold-fish husband of hers.
Barely half an hour after the departure of Captain Modale, here came Gwen Reversa, looking as fresh and stylish
