Heat

Chapter 9

Pat Casey strolled into the police station, walked over to the desk where a young, uniformed man sat and gingerly handed him the orange juice glass. “Pull the prints on this and run ’em, Rick,” he said. “Nora’s are on there, too, but it’s the other ones I want.”

“Right, Chief,” Rick replied. He took the glass, one finger at the top and one at the bottom, and went into a back room.

Casey went into his office, sat down at his desk and picked up the phone. He looked up the area code for Georgia, dialed information and asked for the number of the sheriff’s office in Toccoa, Georgia. He wrote down the number, then dialed it.

“Hello, this is Chief of Police Pat Casey in St. Clair, Idaho. I’d like to speak to the sheriff.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll connect you.”

There was a click. “This is Tom Calley, Chief Casey. Was that Idaho you said?”

“Yessir. I just want a little information, if you can help me.”

“Do my best.”

“You know a fellow named Jesse Barron?”

“Sure do. Where’d you run across him?”

“Right here in St. Clair. He’s down the street at the café drinking coffee.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it. Tell you the truth, I thought Jesse was dead.”

Casey’s grip tightened on the phone. “Oh? Why’s that?”

“He didn’t tell you what happened to him?”

“Said something about a car wreck.”

“That’s right. A bad one.”

“Would you tell me about it?”

“Well, Jesse and his wife and three little girls were coming home from a movie out at the shopping center, and a drunk, a colored fellow, ran head on into their car. Jesse—”

“Can you hang on a minute, Sheriff?” Casey interrupted. One of his officers had just entered the station, and Casey waved him into his office. He punched the hold button. “Jim, you see if our man is out of the way, and if he is, go down to the motel and turn over his room and his truck — and do it neat, you hear?”

“Yessir, Chief.”

Casey punched another button on the phone. “Sorry, Sheriff, you were saying?”

“I was about to tell you that Sally and the girls were killed in the wreck, and Jesse was busted up pretty good. When he was able to get out of the hospital, he went out to the cemetery and looked at the graves, then he went downtown and got on a bus to Atlanta, and that was the last anybody saw of him around here. Tell you the truth, I thought he’d gone out and put a bullet in his head. I’m glad he’s all right, though; I always liked him.”

“Can you describe him for me?” Casey asked.

“Sure, I guess he’s six-one or six-two, about two hundred pounds, brown hair, going gray and receding, blue eyes. He had some injuries around his head and face; I’m not sure just what he’d look like after those heal.”

“That’s our man,” Casey said.

“Has he broken the law up there?”

“No, sir; I just wanted to be sure he’s who he says he is. How long you known him?”

“Most of his life, I guess; his family moved here from Young Harris when he was in grammar school.”

“Was he ever in any kind of trouble?”

“Nothing serious. The summer after he got out of high school I had to pull him and a couple of other young fellows in.”

“What was the charge?”

“Well, a colored family moved into a house down the road, and a lot of folks around here didn’t take kindly to it. The boys broke a few windows, that sort of thing. Justice of the Peace gave ’em three days and expunged the record, because of their youth. I never had any more trouble with Jesse.”

“When would that have been?”

“Oh, early seventies, I guess; around there.”

“What sort of a fellow is Jesse?”

“Solid, hardworking. Wasn’t his fault his construction business went under; just wasn’t enough work around here. I’d have made Jesse a deputy, if I’d had an opening. He’s on the quiet side, but he’s real smart.”

“Do you think you might be able to get hold of a photograph of Jesse for me?”

“I might be able to. Chamber of Commerce might have one.”

Casey gave the sheriff his fax number. “I’d appreciate it if you’d fax it to me, if you can find one.”

“Glad to; I’ll send somebody down there right now.”

“Sheriff, I appreciate your help.”

“You see Jesse again, you tell him I said we miss him around here.”

“I’ll do that.” Casey hung up and swung around to the computer terminal next to his desk and began typing. Early seventies; the closest newspaper with a computerized database was probably Atlanta. He found a listing for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and dialed the number. Shortly he was connected and called up the index. A few more keystrokes and he had a list of stories containing the name Barron between 1970 and ’75. He got the right one on the second try: TOCCOA YOUTHS ARRESTED IN RACIAL ATTACK. It was brief and as the sheriff had described the incident. Jesse Barron was one of the boys named.

Rick stuck his head in the door. “Chief, I’ve got the record on screen two.”

Casey cleared the screen and typed more keystrokes; the record came up. The photograph wasn’t great, but it was nearly two decades old. Jesse Adam Barron had no known criminal record. He had been fingerprinted when he had tried to enlist in the marines; rejected because of a knee injury resulting from high school football.

He typed more keystrokes, and the printer at his side disgorged the record and the photograph. Casey looked at the picture more closely. He was younger, skinnier, had more hair, hadn’t been in a car crash. Casey thought he’d have had a hard time putting together the face he had just met at Nora’s with the face in the photograph if he hadn’t known the man, but it was a match. The prints matched; that was the important thing. Casey sat back and waited for Jim to return from the motel.

“I did it like you said, Chief,” the officer said, easing into a chair opposite Casey.

“What did you find?”

“A couple of old suitcases, some clothes, the usual toiletries, some books, mostly old novels, and what looked like a family picture.”

“Tell me about the picture.”

“Just a snapshot in a frame; a woman and three children, girls.”

“Any ID documents?”

“Nossir, I guess he must have ’em on him.”

“Any weapons?”

“Nossir.”

“What about the truck?”

“Some tapes and a bill of sale in the glove compartment. He bought the pickup in Atlanta ten days ago.”

Casey sat back and thought about this. The man seemed what he said he was, but two things bothered him: his driver’s license was new, and so was the truck, both acquired about the same time. Still, Barron had said he had the license renewed, and the sheriff had said that he had left Toccoa on a bus. It made sense that in a wreck that had killed three people, Barron’s car would have been totaled. “Hang on a minute,” Casey said.

He turned back to the computer and spent a minute and a half getting connected to the Georgia Motor Vehicles Bureau in Atlanta. In another moment, he had the driver’s license he had just seen up on his screen. He printed that out, then moved down a couple of screens to the historical record. It showed that Barron’s old license would have expired before the month was out. He went into vehicle registration and found that two pickup trucks were currently registered to Barron, the one at the motel and another, larger truck, the kind with a back seat. That would have been the one in the wreck, he thought. Nobody had canceled the registration yet. He printed out the record.

“Jim, anything strike you as odd about this man’s stuff? Anything at all?”

Jim shook his head. “Looked real ordinary to me, Chief. Except—”

“Except what?”

“Well, it’s a little thing, but the tapes in his glove compartment—”

“What about them?”

“They were classical stuff. You know, symphonies, and like that?”

Casey nodded. “You’d think a guy in a pickup would be listening to country music, wouldn’t you?”

“Yessir, I guess I would.”

“Well,” Casey said, “it takes all kinds, I guess.”

“I guess.”

“Thanks, Jim, that’ll be all for now.”

The officer left, and Casey sat and thought about what he had on Jesse Barron. He had been expecting another undercover man from the ATF for weeks and, after what had happened to the last two, he expected one with a good cover. Still, Barron’s background seemed too good to be just cover. It was the sheriff who had made the difference. He’d gotten the information, one cop to another, and that made it right.

Casey heard the fax machine ring in the outer office. He got up and walked to the machine and waited. A moment later it disgorged a sheet of paper. Casey picked it up and looked at the photograph. He was four or five years younger, dressed in a business suit, hair neatly cropped and combed; the hairline hadn’t yet started to recede. He looked a lot less beat up than the man Casey had just met, but he was the same man, no doubt about it. The picture was clipped from some sort of business directory. Underneath it, set in type, were a few lines of copy:

Casey walked back to his desk, picked up the phone and dialed a number.

“Yes?”

“Hi, it’s Pat. I don’t think he’s who we’re expecting.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“He checks out to a tee — background, paperwork, everything.” Casey told him about Barron’s history.

“Wouldn’t you expect him to check out?”

“Yeah, but it’s more than that. First of all, I talked to a local sheriff in Georgia who’s known him since he was a boy. It was all good, and get this — as a kid he got arrested for trying to run some niggers out of his neighborhood. I checked the back newspaper editions and found a confirming story.”

“How do you know this guy is the guy the sheriff is talking about?”

“He faxed me a photograph. It’s the same man.”

“I don’t know...”

“One more thing: I’ve known a lot of cops, and I can usually spot ’em a mile away. This guy is less like a cop than anybody I ever knew. If I’d had to guess I’d have said he was an ex-con, but I guess that’s because the injuries make him so rough looking. St. Clair didn’t seem to be his destination, either; said he was on his way to Oregon.”

“Well, if he decides to stay don’t hassle him; make it easy for him, but keep tabs on everything he does.”

“Of course. If he’s real, he sounds like he might be our kind of guy.”

“We’ll see.” He hung up.

In Toccoa, Georgia, Sheriff Tom Calley dialed an 800 number.

“This is Fuller.”

“Mr. Fuller, this is Tom Calley, in Toccoa, Georgia.”

“Yes, Sheriff?”

“The call came, like you said it would.”

“Everything go okay?”

“Seemed like it. He asked for a picture, so I faxed the thing you fixed up.”

“That’s good, Sheriff; thanks for your help.”

“Not at all.”

“And you’ll let me know if the real Barron turns up?”

“Yessir, I will.”

“And I’d like to hear about it if anybody else calls about Barron — anybody at all.”

“Sure thing.”

Jesse closed the door to his motel room and looked around. His things were, if anything, more neatly arranged than when he had left. So far, so good.