I guess they started shouting at each other on Mainwaring’s front lawn and he came out and told Neil to go home. Apparently he’d liked Neil up to that point, but you see somebody shouting at your daughter, you’re going to defend her.”
“How long after that was she murdered?”
“Two nights.”
I asked the question she didn’t want to hear. “Do you know where he is right now?”
“No.”
“If you knew, would you tell me?”
“No. And please don’t give me any speeches. I don’t want to be the one responsible for the police finding him. I know he didn’t kill her.”
“Does that mean that you have proof?”
“It means I know my brother.”
I said it again. “If he’s on the run and they catch him and he won’t give up, he might get himself killed.”
“You think I haven’t thought of that?”
Harry Renwick knocked softly twice, then opened the door. “Time’s up, Sam.” He walked over to where Sarah sat. “We’ll get you out of those cuffs.”
The smile was unexpected. “He means once he gets me back to my cell.”
“Best I can do, Miss.”
“Tell Sykes that I’m officially her lawyer, will you, Harry?”
“Sure. He figured you would be. Oh-he’s pretty mad about you saying John Wayne was a draft dodger.”
“It’s true.”
“Yeah, I read that in the newspaper a long time ago. I decided I’d better not bring that up to the chief. You know how he feels about John Wayne.”
Sarah Powers seemed lost. She glanced around the room. A man told me once that the only time he’d been in jail the whole experience was like a nightmare. This was county, not even hard time, and he only did thirty days for a drunk driving charge. He said all those prison movies were fake. They never dealt with how oppressive it was to be forced to live with men who had spent their lives cheating, stealing, beating people. And enjoying it. That was what scared him the most. The way they bragged about it. Then, he said, there were the smells. He said there were even men who laughed about the smells. I wondered if Sarah was having a similar experience here. Yes, the jail was new, and yes, she obviously considered herself worldly and tough. But she was really just a middle-class woman terrified for her brother. And now, I suspected, terrified for herself.
Sarah Powers said, “I’m sorry about knocking you out.”
I just nodded.
Harry Renwick had good radar. “I’ll keep an eye on her for you, Sam.”
I think she would have hugged him if she hadn’t had the cuffs on. Now she had at least one friend here. My first cigarette was long gone. I lighted a second and let her take a deep drag. Then I handed Harry my nearly new pack. “These are hers.”
“They sure are,” he said, taking the Luckies from me.
6
Sunlight blasted me into temporary blindness as I walked from the station to my car. Only when I was halfway there did I see the three people standing two cars from mine: Paul Mainwaring, his daughter Nicole, and Tommy Delaney. Delaney was a local high school football hero and former boyfriend of Vanessa.
He had a little kid’s face-all red hair and freckles and pug nose-set atop an NFL body. In his black Hawkeye T-shirt you could see why he was so feared on the field. He started toward me, but Paul Mainwaring himself put a halting hand on his shoulder.
The car I referred to happened to be a new white four-door Jaguar.
I usually found myself defending Paul Mainwaring. For all his work with the military and inventing things vital to war-he was a prominent military engineer-he had a true interest in helping the poor and had given thousands of dollars to the local soup kitchen and church relief funds. The irony wasn’t lost on me; I’d always wondered if it was lost on him.
The face he showed now, as he broke from the group and walked toward me, stunned me. The white button-down shirt, the chinos, and the white tennis shoes spoke of the preppy he would always be. The silver hair was disheveled for once. The sunken, bruised eye sockets and the unshaven cheeks and jaws revealed a man lost in not only despair but confusion. Even his walk was uncertain.
Tommy Delaney broke in front of him, aiming himself directly at me.
“Tommy, get back there where you belong.”
Tommy gave me the practiced look that probably made even the toughest kids in high school run when he turned it on them. I just watched him as he fell into sulking. Behind him, Mainwaring’s daughter Nicole started sobbing and put her hands to her face. I was embarrassed to be in Mainwaring’s presence. I’d had the young man thought to be the killer of his daughter and I’d lost him because I wasn’t clever enough to outthink a twenty-two- year-old girl. I wanted to say something but I wasn’t sure what that would be.
“Paul, I owe you an apology.”
He brushed it away. “It wasn’t your fault, Sam. Don’t listen to all this. I was in the army for four years. Things just go wrong sometimes. The girl admitted that she struck you on the back of the head with a steel rod and knocked you out. I don’t know anybody who could stand up to that.”
I wanted him to repeat what he’d just said. I couldn’t quite believe it after just one hearing. I was already known as the man who’d been outsmarted by a young girl. It was absurd-as Paul said, anybody can be felled by a steel rod smashing into your skull-but when you have enemies they work with what they’re given. And yet the one who should despise me the most for my stupidity was telling me that getting smacked in the head was the reason I wasn’t able to arrest Neil Cameron. Not because I was incompetent.
“I let myself down, Paul.”
He extended his hand and we shook. I wasn’t sure why we shook.
Then he offered his second surprise. “I want to hire you, Sam.”
I allowed myself the luxury of a smile. “Right. I can see that. I come highly recommended.”
“As I said, things happen. You’ve done some good work as a private investigator. And you know all the kids out at that commune. If anybody knows where Cameron might have gone, they do.”
“I’m not sure they trust me.”
“They trust you more than they do Cliffie. I’ve asked him a number of times to stop harassing them but all I get are those speeches Reverend Cartwright gives. All the marijuana and sex. By now Cliffie must’ve run every one of them in at least once. They certainly won’t cooperate with him.”
“I’m representing Sarah Powers, Paul. You should know that up front.”
He blinked only once. “I didn’t know that.”
“That’s why I think you should look for somebody else.”
“She of course says Neil didn’t kill Van.”
“That’s what she says.”
“And you believe her?”
“In a case like this I only represent people I think are innocent. I want to find Neil and have him turn himself in.”
“What if he’s guilty?”
“Then he’s guilty. If he’s not, then I want to find the person who really killed Van.”
“Then there’s no conflict. I still want to hire you.”
“I wish you’d think it over. I can recommend a few people in Cedar Rapids or even Des Moines. It might be better to let them handle it instead of me.”
For the first time I saw resentment-anger-in the long, angular face. “You have a stake in this now, too, Sam. You need to prove to people you’re not the fool they say you are.”
