walk that path in his sleep, feeling that draw and pull to a shadowed little grove of walnut trees blooming with nuts wrapped in green.
You wouldn’t know it to see it. The headstone simply read J. HARVEY BAILEY / SEPTEMBER, 5 1920-JULY, 12 1923. Bailey felt a shooting pain as he got to his knees and pulled away the weeds and vines and straightened the small stone lamb, storm-beaten, and now resembling more rock than animal. He stayed there, smoothing away the moss with his hand-painted tie, until he heard Miller calling for him, and, using the solid trunk of the tree for balance, he got back on his feet.
“You think Harry Sawyer’s back up there?” Verne Miller asked as he walked close, toting a shovel.
“Where else would he go?” Harvey asked, rolling the sleeves of his white shirt to the elbow and lighting another cigarette. “We’ll head to the Green Lantern first thing. I sure wouldn’t mind one of his pork chop sandwiches.”
“And maybe Nina’s?”
“How can a man go to Saint Paul and not stop by and say hello to the girls?”
“Right here?”
“Right here,” Harvey said. “Hand it to me.”
Harvey Bailey felt the hot wind push a cloud over the sun, sliding a cool shadow over his face. He slid the tip of the shovel to the known spot and began to dig.
“How much is buried?” Miller asked.
“Just enough.”
JONES THUMBED SOME TOBACCO INTO HIS PIPE AND EYED Mr. Charles Urschel. Urschel’s face was gaunt and hollow, the flesh around his eyes reddened and blistered. He had changed into fresh clothes that morning- lightweight navy trousers and a white short-sleeved linen shirt. Jones could tell he’d showered and shaved, had his breakfast and coffee. But despite the morning routine, Urschel hadn’t stopped tapping his foot and checking his timepiece since he’d sat down.
Jones struck a match and got the bowl going, the cavernous study empty besides Jones and SAC Colvin. The young boy displaying his talents as notetaker, keeping quiet and letting Jones take the lead, the interview continuing from where they stopped late last night, when Berenice Urschel begged Jones to let her husband get some rest. Jones had complied, but then had shown up at six that morning, and had waited damn-near two hours until Urschel said he was ready.
“I hope this won’t take long.”
“Could take a while, sir.”
“I haven’t set foot at my company.”
“You’ll have some time this afternoon.”
“But I didn’t see anything,” Urschel said. “Everything I could know I told you last night. I even told you about the well and how bad that water tasted. You seemed to take great interest in the mineral quality of it last night. Perhaps that will lead to something.”
“Yes, sir,” Jones said, walking and smoking and moving about in the room, lined from bottom to top with leather-bound volumes of old stories and old tales of murder and adventure, and very serious men taking things very seriously. “Tell me about the boy.”
“He was a boy.”
“You said he went by ‘Potatoes.’ ”
“I doubt that was his real name. Probably something those crooks made up.”
“You never know,” Jones said. “I knew a boy in El Paso that everyone called ‘Turd Head.’ ”
“Well, I doubt the moniker.”
“But he watched you most?”
“He did.”
“And read to you?”
“He did. Yes.”
“What sorts of material?”
“Magazines.”
“What sort?”
Urschel was quiet for a moment and then said, “
“Wasn’t your kind of reading?”
“It passed the time,” Urschel said. “The boy also had some kind of brochure on the World’s Fair and read from that quite often. In fact, I would say he was obsessed with it. Liked to read a portion about native dancers who dance in the nude.”
“Did he offer anything personal from the Fair?”
“Just that he planned on going.”
“Isn’t everybody?”
The more he smoked, the more Jones paced. A flurry of questions came to mind as he paced, smoke breaking and scattering with his steps.
“What about the old man?” Jones said. “You conversed with him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“About?”
“Nothing of consequence. We had some bad weather the night before they released me. There was wind and rain, and I asked them if they had tornadoes.”
“What did they say?”
“Said they had a lot more tornadoes down in Oklahoma and Texas.”
“That was a plant,” Jones said with certainty. He strolled behind Urschel’s desk and pulled back a thin layer of drapes, seeing the newsmen gather around E. E. Kirkpatrick, who read a statement from the family that he’d typed out over breakfast. The statement basically read that Mr. Urschel didn’t recall a goddamn thing about his kidnappers, which was a view that old Charlie kept on sharing with Jones.
“Could you even sneak a peak? Of something? Anything?”
“A few days after they took me, I got the bandages loose. I was able to peer around a bit. They kept me in a shack, like I said. The outhouse was nearby.”
“Hold on,” Jones said. He sat at Urschel’s desk and pulled a small notebook from his satchel. “How many rooms in this shack?”
“Three?”
“Which way did the boards run in the house?”
“The boards?”
“Floorboards.”
“Judging on the heat from the sun,” Urschel said. “East and west.”
Jones nodded. “What about the outhouse? Which direction?”
“West,” Urschel said. “I’m sure of it. But, sir, I really don’t see the point in…”
Jones kept the pipe in his teeth and held up his left hand as he sketched a bit, adding the three rooms to a modest shack, an outhouse, the road Urschel had mentioned last night. That old well where they drew the mineral water. “Did you see animals?”
“Heard them,” Urschel said. “Pigs, chickens. The old man and the boy spoke of a prize white-faced bull, and I saw the animal’s face when I ran. It was about all I saw when I was running.”
“Sun blind?” Jones asked.
Urschel nodded. “I think I lost control of my mind a bit, too.”
“Happens with heat.”
“The boy spoke of a woman of loose character who lived nearby,” Urschel said. “He joked about it often.”
“What did he say?”
“Only that there was a teenage whore in the vicinity. I guess she only charged a quarter for intercourse.”
Jones nodded. He sketched some more, adding arrows and asking a bit more about where Urschel had heard the farm animals. The man had forgotten about an old cornfield and something he’d heard about a melon patch with fruit just turning ripe. Jones asked about the direction cars arrived from and how they departed, and then he came
