Bindlestiff

Chapter 8

I stopped for a sandwich and a cup of coffee at a cafe on Myers Street, and it was after three o’clock when I drove into the gravel lot fronting the Guiding Light Rescue Mission. A white van with the name of the mission printed on its side was parked next to the pickup now. And the front door of the building stood open.

I pulled in next to the van, got out, and entered a big common room, with benches along one side and some folding chairs and a dais on the other. No religious trappings except for a cross and a bronze sculpture of the Virgin Mary on the wall behind the dais. The room was deserted, but after a couple of seconds a giant of a guy materialized through a door at the far end and approached me.

He was at least six-five and three hundred pounds, and he had a dark red beard and enormous hands; his size, the plaid shirt and corduroy trousers he wore, and the beard gave him the appearance of a lumberjack. But when he got up close you could see the missionary look-the mixture of compassion and piousness-in his eyes.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “May I help you?”

“I hope so. Are you the proprietor?”

“I am. J.L. Baxter. The J.L. stands for Jerome Leon; my parents were fine people, but…” He shrugged and smiled quizzically at me.

I explained who I was and why I was there, then pointed out Bradford in the newspaper photo. “Have you ever seen this man before?”

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I have. I spoke to him a couple of days ago.”

“Do you remember what time that was?”

“Late afternoon. Around four.”

“Did he come here to the mission?”

“Not exactly. I was out working in my vegetable garden and he was walking across the field from the freight yards. When he saw me he detoured over.” Baxter smiled again, a little sadly this time. “I thought he might want shelter or a hot meal, but he only wanted to ask me a question.”

“Do you mind telling me what that question was?”

“Not at all. He wanted to know where the library was.”

“The library?”

“It surprised me, too,” Baxter said. “A library is not the sort of institution hoboes are generally interested in.”

“Did he say why he wanted to go to the library?”

“No. And I didn’t ask.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“No, nothing,” Baxter said. “He seemed a bit preoccupied and in a hurry, and he went off again as soon as I gave him directions.”

“How do you mean, preoccupied?”

“Oh, very much self-involved at the moment. As if he was excited about something.”

“You haven’t seen him since then, by any chance?”

“Not.”

I described Stanley McGhan, but Baxter had never set eyes on anyone who looked like the streamliner; he’d only been working in his vegetable garden a few minutes when Bradford came by, he said. So he’d probably been inside when the kid passed with his stolen goods.

I asked Baxter how to get to the library, thanked him for his time; listened to him wish me luck, and then went back out to my car. Now what the hell? I was thinking. Up to this point, everything had added up: Bradford’s fight with McGhan, the kid’s theft of the lantern and tool box, Bradford and a couple of retired tramps seeing Stanley make his getaway, Bradford deciding to be public-spirited and report the theft and then going off into the yards-all a logical sequence of events. But then it all seemed to go haywire. Bradford hadn’t talked to the yardmaster or any of the yard bulls; instead, he’d come hurrying back past the mission a little while later, excited about something and apparently on his way to the public library. Something must have happened in the yards to shift gears for him. But what? And what could a hobo possibly want at the library?

Well, maybe somebody there could give me some answers. I started the car and went to find out.

The library wasn’t far away, less than a mile from the mission on Lincoln two blocks east of Oro Dam Boulevard. It was a low, newish, beige-and-brown building with the words BUTTE COUNTY LIBRARY in big raised letters on the front wall. There were only three other cars in the parking lot; Oroville’s hall of learning, it seemed, wasn’t exactly a popular hangout for the residents.

The checkout desk, L-shaped and made of blond wood, was just inside the front door. Behind it, a thin young guy with a nose like a boat hook was pasting card pockets into a stack of recent acquisitions. The only patrons I saw were an old guy sitting at one of the tables, shuffling through a stack of magazines, and a studious-looking kid browsing in the section marked NEW ARRIVALS-7-DAY