dirt on the top edges. As would be expected if it had been inverted for use as a step.
All this was very positive, and I was pleased. The icing on the cake, however, was provided by one Rosalind O'Banion, a sixty-eight-year-old white female, who lived across the street from the funeral home, and who had shuffled over to watch the excitement. She was wearing a blue and white checked bathrobe, with a raincoat over it, and a gray stocking cap on her head.
“What's going on, Bingo?” she said, addressing Byng.
“Never mind, Rosy.” He was pretty short, I thought. I didn't think that she'd come all the way across the street, dressed like that, just to stare. Her house offered a fine view, and she could have sat down with her coffee and watched from there in comfort.
“We've had a little incident here, ma'am,” I said. Like I say, burglaries are my thing, sort of, and I knew from much experience that witnesses were worth their weight in gold. Rosy might have a bit of potential. “Can you tell me anything about it?”
“No,” said Rosy.
Well, so much for that.
“If you do remember anything, or hear anything, would you let us know?” Not quite a brush-off, and it left the door open.
Rosy looked at me closely, and I figured that since I wasn't in uniform, it really hadn't sunk in that I was a law enforcement officer. “Aren't you the cop who busted Quentin Pascoe a while back?”
The worst sexual abuse case I'd ever worked. “Yep, that was me.”
“The son of a bitch,” she said, “is my brother-in-law.” She thought for a moment, and then said, “Well, it probably don't mean shit, but… ” Music to my ears.
Rosy was the cleaning lady for one of the local taverns, and had just been leaving her house last night to clean the place when she'd seen somebody in the alley. He'd been coming toward her, from the funeral home direction, and just stopped cold when he saw her. He'd apparently stood stock-still, and didn't utter a sound. She walked about fifteen feet from him, following her usual path to the tavern, and he still hadn't moved a muscle, nor said a word.
“I didn't speak nothin' either,” she said. “Just walked by him like he wasn't there.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“I think so. I can't put his name on my tongue, but you know him, too. The short one.”
I'd need a bit more than that. “Uh… ”
“The short one, the one from up at the Mansion. Oh, you know… ”
“Male or female, Rosy?”
She snorted. “He's a male, I think,” she said disparagingly. “Comes into the tavern once in a while, I think for no good. You know the one, with the thing in his nose,” she said, and pointed to the bridge of her own nose. “Right here.”
I looked at Hester, who was grinning widely.
“Kid named Toby?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure. Toby. Toby, uh, Chalk or something, oh, it'll come to me… ”
“Gottschalk?”
“No, that's not right. Is it? Maybe it is,” she said, reflecting. “Maybe so.”
“But you know him to live up at the big house on the bluff, south of here, right?” I had to make sure, but there was no doubt in my mind who she meant.
“Hangs about with that Huck girl, and the other, smaller one, a lot. Him.”
“Did you see anything else?” interjected Byng, trying to be helpful.
“You're the one with the shiny badge, Bingo,” she said. “How much help you need?”
“Thanks, Rosy. Thanks a whole lot,” I said. “Big help, but now, don't tell anybody you talked to us, okay?”
“Quiet as a mouse,” she said.
“Promise?” I smiled.
“On a stack of Bibles,” she answered.
I figured that ought to buy us about ten minutes. But I was happy.
But Toby, for God's sake. I would have bet heavily on William Chester. Well, maybe Toby was just the lookout for somebody. Sure.
Hester and I rode up to the Mansion together, leaving the funeral home just as one of the area TV vans pulled up to get set to cover the funeral. Close.
I used her cell phone to call Lamar. I told him what had happened, sort of. He sounded angry and sad, but I think it helped when I told him we were on our way to bag a suspect.
“Let me know when you get him in custody,” he said.
“You got it.” I handed the cell phone back to Hester. “He wants us to let him know when we've got Toby.”
“My pleasure,” said Hester. “Hey, go slow through here. I want to see if there's any sign of the old lift track from the top of the hill to the landing.”
I slowed, just past the silica mine, and we looked as closely as possible at the cliff faces and the ravines between them. There wasn't much to see, except a possible segment of a pathway up on the side of the bluff, just barely discernible among the trees. It seemed to disappear about fifty feet up the slope, among some boulders and old fallen timber.
“We should wait for winter,” I said. When all the leaves have fallen, and the first light snow comes, tracks in the hills stand out like white lines on a dark field.
“If we haven't found what we're looking for before the first snowfall, Houseman,” said Hester, “we're in real trouble.”
“Yeah.” I looked back, over my shoulder, toward the possible path. “I sure as hell wouldn't want to try that in the dark,” I said.
“Me, either. You could fall a good fifty feet onto those boulders. Especially if you were in a hurry.”
It was food for thought, though. There had been a clear way down there once, according to Old Knockle. There could be, still.
Hester used her cell phone to call Harry, over in Conception County, as I drove. She told him about the staking, and asked where the body of the late Randy Baumhagen was being kept. It was apparently in Harry's jurisdiction, because she cautioned him to keep an eye out on a funeral home.
Calling Harry had completely slipped my mind. That sort of thing bothers me, because it means that I'm not getting enough time between events to process information correctly.
“I'm about a hundred percent certain that he's up here,” I said, as we turned off the paving and onto the gravel that led to the Mansion. “He's pretty predictable.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Where else can he go? Just remember how predictable he is, when he runs into the woods on us again.”
“Good point.” I turned onto the long drive, heading up the hill. I slowed way down, so that the occupants of the Mansion wouldn't be alerted by the roar and rush of the car. “I just hope he's got the right tread pattern on his shoes, and that he's got a cut somewhere we can see,” I said, remembering the blood on the screen. Please, God. Please.
It's always amazed me how thieves and burglars tend to go home. I've never had one take off for parts unknown to me, at least not one who lived in Nation County. Itinerants didn't count, nor did the traveling pros. I was pretty certain we'd find Toby at home.
When we pulled up, Huck and Melissa were standing over a bonfire of burning leaves a little distance from the house. From the absence of the numerous piles Melissa'd raked when we'd been there before, it looked like they were just finishing up the yard work.
We got out of the car, and I waved. They didn't wave back, but Huck started over toward us, pulling off her gloves and stuffing them in the pockets of her hooded gray sweatshirt.
“Surprised to see you two,” she said.
“Surprised to be here,” I answered. “Where's Toby?”
“Toby? Uh, inside, I think. He was in the kitchen a minute ago. Eating.”
