him and keeping my ears flapping and my eyes open for anything concerned with Andy Lewis. That's why I was onto him so fast when he finally stepped out of line. Only once did he just let fly without planning, and that was the end of him in this town. Tell me, have you met him?'
'I said I didn't know if I had or not and explained about the pictures.
' 'Well,' he said, 'Andy Lewis was a charmer. He'd have made a great con man. He was a con man, come to think of it, only not for money, not directly. He wanted power over other people, always moved with a group of worshippers to admire him. When he was sixteen the local preacher's daughter caught his eye, a pretty, overly protected little thing, very bright.
' 'He got her pregnant. She was fourteen, almost fifteen. She wanted him to marry her, some dream she had, but when he pushed her off she started talking about turning him in for statutory rape. He blew up, beat her so badly she nearly died, lost the baby of course and half her teeth, ruptured her insides so she couldn't have any more children. And, you know, damned if she didn't refuse to press charges against him. Partly she was scared to, but she was more than half convinced that he really loved her and hadn't meant to do it.
' 'I did something then I've never done before or since and I'll only admit to it now because I'm an old man and my deputy's dead. I took my deputy out, and we picked up the Lewis kid, and we took him out to the quarry and beat the shit out of him. Still makes me sick to think about it, the two of us and this sixteen-year-old kid, but I knew it was the only way he'd listen to me. I didn't hurt him, nowhere near what he'd done to the girl, but when I finished I told him I wanted him gone, never to set foot in my county again, or next time I wouldn't stop. The next morning he was gone. A few months later his mother moved to the town you're in now to be with her sister. The next I heard of Lewis was three, four years later, when his name came up in connection with the Adams girl. I have no idea where he was during those years. He was supposed to have been in the army, but I find it hard to imagine.
' 'Anyway, the other thing you should know is that he always had to be in control of any situation, any group. The only time he faded into the background was when something was about to happen. Now, as I understand it, the Adams girl was a brilliant artist. The whole school knew her, knew that she was going somewhere, a very large and exotic fish plunked down temporarily in their little pond. She doesn't seem to have been aware of how others looked at her, but when Lewis walked into that school—God knows why or how he did—he saw immediately that she was one of the power points of the school and he set out to take her over. And, as I said, he was a charmer.
' 'For a few months he rode around on her shoulders, making everybody think that he was dangling her, rather than she carrying him. And then she wised up. From what she said at the trial, she decided he was getting in the way of her painting, so she told him to leave and went back to her brushes. He couldn't have that—not only the rejection, but the public humiliation. She didn't bother to hide it, and apparently some of the other students saw what had happened and laughed at him.
' 'A month later the child given into her care was found dead. Strangled. With no sign of a break-in. Apparently by a girl who had just made Andy Lewis angry. And I knew that Andy Lewis was a kid with a thirst for revenge, the ability to be patient and quiet,' and bright enough to keep his temper under control, most of the time.
' 'I did what I could. I went to the police there. I put it all in front of them, and they tried, but none of us could find the smallest chink in his armor. A week or two after the trial ended I went to talk with him. I guess I thought that I could threaten him into not doing anything else by letting him know that we were all watching him. He laughed at me. Laughed right in my face, and turned his back on me and walked away. I went home and I thought about it, and I realized that I had two choices: I could shoot him like I would a dog with rabies, or I could sit tight and wait until he stepped into someone else's hands and see what I could do.
' There was really no choice in the matter. I couldn't shoot him. I never even seriously considered it, although I knew that I might very well save innocent lives if I did. So I sat and waited, and I've been waiting eighteen years. I know who you are, and I know why you're calling, and all I can say is, if there's anything an old, retired sheriff with a bad conscience can do to help, I'm yours.'
'I told him that he'd been more help than I could have dreamed of and that the only thing we were missing was the photograph. He said that he'd try to think of someone who might have one, and if we had no luck he'd be more than happy to come down and try to make an ID. I thanked him and said we'd be in touch.'
Hawkin had sat and listened quietly to her narration, his face growing more strained with every sentence. He now took a cigarette out of its soft package, tapped the end of it squarely on the principal's desk, twice, put it to his mouth, lit it precisely with one match, shook the match out and put it carefully into the ashtray he'd found in a drawer, his movements those of a technician defusing a bomb.
'Classic,' he commented, then, 'damn, damn, damn. How many other people have made Andy Lewis angry over the last eighteen years? Get a hold of Trujillo—'
'I talked with him again after the sheriff's news and told him to increase the guard on the road as much as he could and stop every male of about thirty-five to forty who wanted to leave.'
'Good.'
'I take it the coach didn't have a photo?'
'If he does, it'll take days to unearth. Eighteen years ago Lewis was a bit over five ten, one seventy-five, brown hair and eyes, no marks but a tattoo on his upper left arm, something snaky.'
'Except for the tattoo it'd fit half the men on Tyler's Road. Maybe more than half.'
'Christ, what I'd give for a fingerprint or a fuzzy picture.'
'I just may be able to oblige you,' she said with ill-concealed glee. 'Andy Lewis had a driver's license.'
'Hot damn, you don't mean we're going to get a break with this?'
'Trujillo tracked it down. They'll send the photo to the office. I wouldn't count on much, though. DMV photos aren't exactly the greatest.'
'I won't cancel the search through the Shapiro archives, then.'
'The what?'
'Never mind. Anything else?'
'Not much. There's nothing of interest about Ned Jameson. Average grades, some trouble as a kid but nothing nasty, just paint on walls and a shoplifting charge when he was fifteen. I was just going to try the co-op again when you came in.'
'Your ear must be falling off,' he said by way of praise. 'Do you have their address? Let's go by and play nasty cops. I need to growl at somebody. Call Trujillo once more and let him know where we're going. Tell him I'll call him from home tonight, and have him start inquiries on the Road for a man with a tattoo.'
Hawkin did not growl at the blushing Mrs. Piggott, nor at Mr. Zawalski, who fluttered them to the car. He did not even growl when the trio of hippie farmers at the co-op produced a hand-scribbled list of drivers that seemed to put Ned in the clear for at least two of the killings. It was not until the new-age farmers responded to his query about restaurants with the name of a vegetarian health-food place that he finally exploded, cursed tofu, beans, and goat's milk violently, and only subsided when, cowering, they threw him the name of an Italian place that they vowed had no tofu, ferns, or posters of Venice on the walls and was responsible in its choice of veal calves.
It wasn't a bad dinner. They parked immediately outside the windows so as to keep an eye and ear on the car. Hawkin talked about his childhood in the San Fernando Valley and about his kids, and asked nothing in return. Neither of them drank wine; both of them ate meat. The zabaglione was followed by thick demitasse cups of espresso romano.
Outside the restaurant it was almost dark, the air cool. Hawkin stood and lit a cigarette.
'Look, Al, I don't mind if you smoke in the car.'
'It's a filthy habit,' he said.
Kate was anxious to go while the coffee still surged in her veins, but Hawkin seemed in no hurry. He took his time and snuffed the end out thoroughly in the planter box.
'You look tired, Casey. Do you want me to drive?'
'It's all right. I don't mind driving.'
'I'm quite competent behind the wheel. I got in the habit of letting my partner drive some years ago, and as you know I catch up on my sleep, but I am perfectly able to get us home in one piece.'
'Really, Al, I'm fine.'
He looked at her, then shrugged and walked toward the car. She unlocked the passenger door, and held the
