Summitt

Chapter Ten

Sergeant Wilger called the following morning and told Selby he’d like to see him as soon as possible. Selby asked if there was a development in the investigation, but Wilger said, “No, it’s not that. It’s something Captain Slocum wants to check out.”

East Chester’s City Hall housed courtrooms, various municipal agencies, District Attorney Jonathan Lamb’s offices, police headquarters and Captain Walter Slocum’s detective division.

Under fluorescent lighting the division’s main squad room looked to Selby like a huge marine tank with shining green walls, smoke-blue air and weak sunlight filtered through dust-grimed windows. Computers, calculators and a bank of closed circuit TV monitors stood on wall shelving beside double doors, with Slocum’s name printed across them in black letters.

Half a dozen detectives sat at metal desks. A bald-headed man in a leather jacket was taking a statement from an elderly couple. Another detective listened with a bored but courteous expression to a young woman speaking rapidly in Spanish.

At a counter that separated the squad room from a small reception area a black woman in uniform turned the pages of a loose-leaf folder and pounded them with a rubber stamp.

“Help you, sir?” she asked without looking up.

“My name is Selby. Sergeant Wilger asked—”

“Yellow form, Mr. Selby. End of the counter.” She pointed her elbow at a metal box filled with Xeroxed sheets. “Print your name, address and don’t forget the zip code.”

Several of the detectives looked up when they heard Selby’s name. The deputy DA he had met earlier stood at a desk making notes on a legal pad. A phone was cocked between her chin and shoulder. She held a cigarette in her free hand.

Sergeant Wilger walked to the counter. “Come in, Mr. Selby. It’s an open file, Elbe,” he added as the black lady looked at him. “You can skip signing in, Mr. Selby.”

The sergeant raised a hinged section of the counter and Selby followed him to his desk, which was at the end of the room.

The deputy DA gave Selby an impersonal smile. She wore a gray denim suit. Her shoulder-length hair was dark.

Brett, he recalled, Dorcas Brett or Kelly Brett. She hadn’t recognized him; her smile was a quick reflex, but Selby nodded to her as Wilger waved him to a chair. Traffic noises sounded from the street, faint and remote in the brightly lit, overheated office. It had been clear and sunny when Selby left home, but erratic bursts of rain now streaked the dusty windows.

Wilger leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. The armpits of his beige sports shirt were dark with sweat. “The captain will be with us in a couple of minutes, Mr. Selby. So far there’s nothing to tell you about your daughter’s case. We need the kind of lead the computers just don’t cough up. Somebody in a bar hears something, we get an anonymous phone call, that’s the break we’re waiting for.”

Wilger removed a bulky file from his desk drawer. Nodding at the typed reports and handwritten notes, he said, “See, we’ve already logged better than a hundred man-hours on it. Checked the weirdo files in a dozen counties, but so far we got zilch.”

The sergeant removed his glasses and began polishing them with a square of felt he picked out of a paper clip receptacle. He said, “You talk to your daughter about what happened when she left Muhlenburg that night, Mr. Selby? Remember... I asked you about that gap in her story?”

“I talked to her, sergeant, yes. She stopped to rest for a while, that’s all she remembers.”

Wilger’s expression was politely quizzical. “That’s all? Three hours, and she draws a blank?”

His phone rang. The sergeant answered it, picked up a sheaf of papers, and began reading off pawnbroker numbers.

Selby glanced about. The view through the windows was bleak, yellow lights from office buildings across the street gleaming dully on the wet panes.

The deputy DA was gone. The young woman was still chattering to the detective who, Selby noticed, wasn’t writing any of it down; his ballpoint pen was motionless on the note pad. Except for the lady’s outbursts the big room was silent.

His presence had created a strain, Selby realized.

The door to the private office opened and Slocum walked into the squad room. Tall, heavily built, the captain was turned out in a three-piece gray mohair suit, polished black loafers with metal clasps shining on the insteps and a crimson tie flecked with tiny blue dots. His blond-gray hair was thinning, and he wore it in loose but carefully arched waves.

The captain fixed a good-humored but challenging smile on Selby. “I’m Walter Slocum, Mr. Selby, Captain Walter Slocum. Now let’s start without any bullshitting,” he said pleasantly enough, and pulled a chair up and straddled it, his prominent jaw tilted back, his eyes measuring Selby. “We know you’ve been looking for something this last week or so, driving all over the country around Buck Run and The Lakes. A farmer spotted you parked for an hour or more on a road near his place. He called the sheriff and gave him a description of your car and the plate number. It doesn’t take too many smarts to figure out what you were looking for. You’re trying to find a lead to that psycho who grabbed your daughter. But that tells us something else, Selby, which is that you don’t trust us, or you’re trying to find something before we do.”

“Captain, I think you’ve been misinformed—”

“How’s that?”

“Somebody must have told you I’m pretty damned patient. I’ve taken two shots since I came in to find out what you wanted. That’s my limit, captain. The sergeant is more interested in where my daughter was that night than where the bastard who raped her was.”

Wilger said, “We’re checking every angle, Mr. Selby. You can’t get touchy because—”

Slocum raised his hand. “Let him finish, Burt. Go on, Selby, speak up. I told you we don’t want any bullshit.”

He was good, Selby thought, the captain was good.

“Then you tell me,” Selby said, “that I’m trying to cover something up. Let’s get rid of that bullshit, all right?”

“Fair enough. But you missed my meaning. I was telling you how things look to us, as plain old ordinary cops. That’s not necessarily the way they are, but I was giving you credit for understanding that.” The captain’s tone was pleasant; he seemed to be enjoying the conversation. “Let me just make a couple of general points now,” he said. “Times are we lose a witness, somebody like you who can help us, lose his confidence, his cooperation. A cop says something that pisses him off, or he gets tired of telling his story over and over to a dozen detectives and clerks. Or maybe he figures we’re incompetent or stupid or crooked, but whatever the reason, we lose him. I don’t want that to happen with you, Selby, because frankly we need your help to find the scumbag who worked your daughter over. But I know something’s bothering you. That’s why I asked you to come in. Let’s start with your daughter’s bike. Your boy thought he saw some red paint on it. Maybe that’s what’s bothering you. You figure we screwed up from the start. But I’ve got the lab report in my office, and you’re welcome to look at it. There wasn’t any red paint on her bike, Selby, not a speck. I’ll grant you this much, it would have been better if Lieutenant Eberle told you he was bringing it in for a lab check, but damn it, even so, I’ve got to back him, Selby. I’ve got to because time was the most important thing going for us then.” He tapped a finger sharply for emphasis on Wilger’s desk. “Getting a lead to that psycho took the top priority. Be honest, for Christ’s sake, Selby. You got to realize that.”

“I can see your point.”

“Well, goddammit then,” Slocum said, “we got that cleared up at least. Is anything else bothering you?”

“No, not exactly.” He managed a smile; he understood the tension now. It was a feeling he’d known in locker rooms after games when key blocks had been missed, passes dropped, punts fumbled...

“Well, what’s the rest of it then?” Slocum asked him.

“It’s... well, I’m sort of curious why that farmer didn’t ask me what my business was. I might have been a county surveyor, a salesman on a lunch break — or else” — Selby was still smiling — “just some character with a full bladder.”

“Who knows, Mr. Selby? But I can give you a good guess. There’s been a lot of timber cut illegally around that area, and...”

In a more expansive mood now Slocum told Selby of logging poachers up from the south in flatbed rigs, hillbillies, pineys, rough-as-a-cob woodsmen who used winches and powersaws in nighttime forays to take down poplar and button-wood and even oak, working by flashlight, someone standing on guard with a shotgun...

“Naturally,” Slocum concluded, “with that kind of trouble around his farm, he wasn’t about to investigate anything on his own. Now if we’re going to work together, Selby, supposing you begin by telling us what you were looking for out around Buck Run.”

“I didn’t have anything solid to go on.”

“Let us be the judge of that. We’re the pros, we got the equipment, the manpower, plus that’s what we’re paid for.” Slocum laughed. “You amateurs wouldn’t want to put us on welfare, I hope.” There was a general laugh at that; everyone was relaxing now.

Selby said, “Dr. Kerr told me to humor my daughter and pay attention to anything she told me.”

“Good advice, damn good advice.” Slocum nodded. “So she told you something and you decided to check it out?”

“That’s right. She mentioned something about seeing reflections of light in the sky. I wasn’t sure what it meant. That’s why I didn’t bother reporting it. I thought it might have been a glare from a farm pond that caught her eye.”

Slocum watched Selby thoughtfully. “Did you get a bearing on these reflections... or whatever they were?”

“No, I didn’t. But the fact that I’d looked for them calmed her down a bit.”

“Well, Mr. Selby,” Slocum said, relaxing, “kids your daughter’s age never make very reliable witnesses. They’re restless and fidgety with the business of growing up, and you try to catch ’em, pin ’em down” — he closed his big hand suddenly — “they slip through your fingers like quicksilver.”

He placed a glossy loafer against Wilger’s desk, and took his time about removing the wrapper from a slim, gold-flecked cigar and lighting it from a match the sergeant held for him.

“I’m talking from experience,” Slocum said then. “I’ve got a daughter of my own, she’s a grown-up young lady now but when she was about eight or nine, I guess it was, she was always begging me to buy her a ballet outfit, the little dress, the slippers, the whole works. That was all she wanted in life, she told me, cute as could be then, so damned if I ^didn’t do just that one weekend when I was in New York at a police convention. Found an old Jewish lady on Eighth Avenue and got her to make me up a costume, and you better believe she wanted an arm and a leg for it, but within a month my little girl quit ballet school and entered a pony class and she was out of her mind for me to buy her...”

The Bluebonnet Bar was tucked into a shopping mall on the Mercer Pike between a men’s store and a Radio Shack, jay Mooney was waiting for Selby in a rear booth with a double whiskey sour in front of him. A plump man with ruddy cheeks and wisps of gray hair, Mooney greeted Selby with a nervous smile.

“I ordered for both of us,” he said, as Selby settled into the booth. “What’re you drinking, Harry?”

Selby declined but Mooney finished his whiskey sour in one long gulp and signaled their waitress for another. “Slocum’s a mean sonofabitch,” he said, and leaned closer to Selby. “If I was a real friend, Harry, I’d tell you to fuck off. That would be smart for both of us.”

“Did Slocum get rich fixing parking tickets?”

The waitress brought Mooney’s drink and their lunch, soft-shelled crabs, french fries and coleslaw, and returned later with a pitcher of beer and tall frosted glasses.

“Shit no, it’s not parking tickets.” Mooney glanced at the crowded tables near them. “Slocum has a part-time job, you could say, with Harlequin Chemicals. He reports to a man name of Dom Lorso. Lorso’s close to the president of Harlequin, George Thomson, a.k.a. Giorgio Tomaso, so close in fact that when Thomson unzips his fly Lorso pisses. A big company like Harlequin needs a friendly face at the local lock-up. A cop with a white cane, that’s what they’re called. Someone who doesn’t see certain things, or if he does, he looks at them with — let’s say — a charitable eye. A hit-run becomes a speeding ticket, an executive in a motel room with a Moroccan sailor off a tanker, that’s part of some company exchange-training. You name it. Things have to be taken care of, Harry, that’s the way it is. You understand what I’m telling you?”

“I understand,” Selby said. “And a rape could be viewed with, what was your phrase — ‘a charitable eye’ — and a sports car could disappear into the blue with an assist from a cop with a white cane. That’s what you’re telling me, Jay. But I want to know why. What’s the connection between the psycho who raped Shana and Harlequin Chemicals?”

Mooney pushed his coleslaw around his plate and finished off his drink. He looked around for the waitress, holding up his empty glass. There were dark, wrinkled pouches under his eyes. “I’m not sure, Harry.” With obvious difficulty he looked at Selby. “How’s Shana? How is she, Harry? That’s why I called the other day.”

“About as you’d expect, but you didn’t answer my question.”

Mooney drummed his fingers on the table. “I’m afraid of those people, I’ll admit it.” He laughed nervously. “Big deal, I admit it. What the hell else can I do? Deny it?”

“Did Slocum give you the speech about buying the ballet outfit for his kid, the flounced pink dress, and the cute little slippers? It figures,” he went on, “he enjoys that number. Before Miranda, Slocum used to tell that story to suspects in the basement of the division and when they were blinking back their tears at how sweet it was, Slocum would slip behind them and bust their heads wide open with a nightstick.”

The waitress put his fresh drink on the table, and Mooney took a long pull from it. “Don’t bother counseling moderation, Harry. Stouter hearts than yours have never prevailed.”

His speech was becoming drunkenly straitjacketed, overly controlled and precise. “Of course you got to realize the captain has come a long way. He talks about coddling criminals to Rotary and Kiwanis, he’s a big draw at police conventions and” — Mooney drank and smacked his lips — “and wouldn’t be offended if the party offered him a run at the State Assembly in a year or two.”

“The voters are lucky,” Selby said. “They’re to be congratulated.” He took out his wallet and dropped a bill on the table.

“Harry, I’d like to help, but there’s not a goddamn thing I can do.”

“I understand, jay.”

“The hell you do. You think I’m a gutless lush. Which isn’t too wide of the mark, my boy.”

“Don’t put yourself down. You kept this lunch date, you told me Slocum’s a thief, and Lorso pisses when Thomson runs his zipper down. And you made the courtesy call to ask about Shana.”

“Ah, shit.” Mooney rubbed his mouth. “There is something else, Harry, but it’s just gossip, might not mean a thing. A good while back, six maybe seven years ago, Thomson’s son got his ass in a crack over in Jersey. It was near his school, and a girl was mixed up in it. She was hurt bad. It took some heavy pressure to clean it up. According to the talk, Slocum was involved.”

“What was the name of the school?”

“It’s a military college, Rockland Military. Near Jefferson.”

“You know who the girl was?”

“I never heard her name, as God is my witness and my judge. Now will you sit there a minute and finish that beer with me?”

“All right, Jay.” Selby picked up his glass. “To better days.”

When Selby got home Mrs. Cranston told him that there was no call from his brother, Jarrell, and that Shana had gone out for a ride with Normie Bride.

“He came by about an hour ago in that funny truck of his, and I said it was all right. She’s been moping around and I thought it would do her good. She wore that sweater she likes, the gray one with the red trim at the wrists. She even asked me to press a hair ribbon for her. It was good seeing her looking pretty again.”

Selby turned on the early news. A live interview was in progress with Senator Dixon Lester from his Washington office. The senator faced a group of reporters and TV cameramen. Middle-aged and of medium height, the senator’s face was long and narrow with eyes set back in shadowed hollows beneath thick eyebrows. A wave of black hair fell in a practiced manner over his forehead, adding a mildly raffish touch to his conservative dark-suited-and-vested appearance.

Flat midwestern accents... “Our responsibility is to the American people, period. No one else, within our borders or outside them, commands my loyalty. We are investigating the Harlequin Chemical Corporation and certain divisions of the Correll Group, along with diverse suppliers to our military forces — not, not, I repeat, because we are attacking conglomerates per se, but only that aspect of conglomerate philosophy which holds that they can’t be restrained by national interest or anything at all like old-fashioned patriotism.”

“Senator Lester,” a reporter asked, “would you say that Senator Rowan and his committee have been protecting the Correll Group?”

Senator Lester replied, “To that I can only say de mortui nil nisi bonum.”

Standing beside the senator was a tall Oriental woman with black hair and wide, startlingly made-up eyes. The network director cued back to the local anchorman, who looked into the camera and said solemnly, “Senator Mark Rowan, dead today at sixty-eight.”

Selby turned off the set. The interview raised the same kind of questions he had put to Jay Mooney, and which Mooney wouldn’t or couldn’t answer. There was no help anywhere, especially not from a cop who wore shining loafers and owned high-rises on the Jersey shore.

Coming to a decision, Selby called Casper Gideen. His wife, Lori, told him Casper was out back but to hold on, she’d get him. Lori Gideen reminded Selby of dust bowls and crop failures, faded photographs from Depression days. Actually Casper’s wife was just a few years into her thirties, although she had teenaged sons. Too gaunt to be considered pretty, Lori usually had a smile for everyone, and managed a dogged sort of serenity in spite of money worries and the emotional upset stirred by Casper’s tempers.

When Gideen answered, Selby told him he’d like to come by as soon as possible. Whenever you want, Gideen said...

The rain had eased off, but drops still fell in sudden, noisy rattles from the trees whenever a wind came up. Gideen was seated in the shelter of an open shed he had built alongside his kennel run.

Selby joined him, ducking to clear the low roof. The red-bone hounds raced about in their narrow run, howling at Selby because they associated him with guns and open woods. Gideen spoke a command and the hounds loped away and settled down in their shelter.

“I may need some dogs, Casper.”

Gideen grunted with surprise. “You want to go coon hunting, them redbones is ready.”

“I don’t need redbones for what Fm after.”

Gideen was silent a moment, then said, “You got some notion where she was taken that night?”

“I think so. A stretch of country on Dade Road past the Rakestraw Bridge.”

“How big a stretch?”

“I’m not sure. Six, eight miles.”

“More we narrow it down, the better. You planning to ask anybody else to help out?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Good. I don’t think you ought. I ain’t got no bloodhounds and there’s nary one in the county. Cousin of mine in Lancaster has a pack. Keeps ’em for old times. Still calls ’em buck hounds, like my granddaddy did.”

Gideen took out a big silver watch. After studying it he said, “I can be back a couple of hours after supper. You and me, we’ll meet at the bridge, Harry, one or two in the morning.” He was thoughtful for a moment, then went on, “My granddaddy taught me houndin’. He was a prison guard. Told us how they used to watch the stores of turpentine and black pepper. If the cons stole ’em they was planning to run. Put black pepper in their boots and turpentine all over themselves, no hound this side of hell-fire could nose out their stink.” Gideen was still staring at his watch. “We got to meet late, Harry, and work fast. They’ll be singing, them hounds.”

“You got to do what you’re thinking, Harry, because something ain’t right. First Goldie Boy and the Kane woman. Then I saw a black car the other day cruising slow past Tenn and Pyle’s Corners. Saw it twice. A Lincoln car, a Connie. Strangers in it. Fella with some red in his sideburns, I seen that much.”

He put his watch away and pointed to a twisted pear tree. “See that fruit tree, Harry? It’s dead now, dead as a hammer nail. Last spring it had a death crop — know about that? One last suck at the earth, a million white blossoms, and more fruit all summer than Lori could put up. Then it died, said goodbye like, plain died. Well, that’s how I look at Ollie Jessup and the cops and strangers nosing around here, Harry, like a death crop, things busy and green and blooming, but something’s coming to an end.”

Gideen threw a stick into the run and watched the redbones scramble to fight for it. “Don’t know why I’m talking about a dead tree this way. Let’s get to business, Harry. We need two points tonight, one to stir the hounds up, the second to make ’em hunt. We push the second point into their noses and hit ’em around the ears with it, and that tells ’em what we’re hunting for. So you get two things of your daughter’s, gloves, boots, a sweater, a skirt. Okay, Harry?”

“How about a pillow she sleeps on?”

Casper looked at him and nodded. “Do fine, Harry. Do fine.”

A few minutes after midnight Selby went down the hallway to his daughter’s room. He wore a windbreaker and leather boots. Shana’s room was dark, with only a faint spread of moonlight glowing on surfaces.

She was sleeping on her side, the bandaged hand touching her swollen cheek. Her breathing was soft, shallow. He picked up the sweater she had worn that day, the gray pullover with red trim.

Slowly and gently he pulled the warm pillow from beneath her head and replaced it with its mate. She murmured something, pushing at her hair, but didn’t wake.

Crossing the Rakestraw Bridge, Selby parked near the cemetery. He waited in the silence and darkness until he saw the light of Gideen’s pickup coming toward him on the road from Buck Run. As he stepped from his car he could already hear the eager bugling of the buck hounds.