Tim Gautreaux - The Missing

He glanced out the door after the boy. “I’ve been told that.”

“Lucky we found him on shift, and lucky the dispatcher handled the relay up to Greenville. Have you found the baby?”

“I have. But I need a good lawman to help me.”

“Well, you know how the law is.” The agent sucked a tooth and studied him. “I’d suggest you go talk to Sheriff Tabors. I don’t know him that well, but I think he’s all right.” He bobbed his head. “You don’t believe me?”

“Why’d he hire that drunk down at Zeneau?”

“What? Nelson Watty? Oh, he’s all right. Just sick is all. He don’t make thirty dollars a month but he stays in that little box of an office and collects taxes and signs permits for folks. It’s not like they’s a lot to choose from in Zeneau.”

Sam looked up at the Seth Thomas clock. “What time does the passenger train come in?”

“The tri-weekly you rode in on yourself comes in at two-thirty more or less. It goes back about three. Took off a few minutes early today.”

He looked out into the dusty street and saw August stop a gray-bearded gentleman, who pointed down a side lane. “You see that boy with me?”

“Yes.”

“When he comes back, will you keep an eye on him?”

“As much as I can.”

“Well, here I go.”

HE HAD TO WAIT for the sheriff. He stood in the hall and watched the lawyers clop in from the broiling street onto the hardwood and take the stairs to the courtroom. A policeman hauled in a handcuffed vagrant and brought him past Sam to a heavy door and shoved him through it. In the rear of the building he heard the clang of cell doors and drunken hollering. He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake, that Tabors wasn’t a fat rummy who liked the taste of Skadlock whiskey. Or just a mean local who hated outlanders, or Catholics, or people from Louisiana, or Cajuns, or anybody not born inside the county.

The sheriff came in at four o’clock, and Sam stood up. He was in his early forties and wearing a suit and vest of no mean quality, a big star pinned under his right lapel. His blond hair was freshly trimmed, as was the mustache that ran straight across his face, as straight as his teeth.

“You look like you’re waiting for me.”

“I am.”

“Been rabbit hunting, have you?”

Sam looked down at his pants. “It’s a long story.”

“Well, come in, then, and have a seat.”

The walls of the office were cream-painted beaded board that ran floor to ceiling. A photograph of a woman unconscious of her good looks rested on the oak desk next to a box of pistol ammunition.

There are important starting points in serious conversations, and he paused a long moment to figure out the best way to begin. “Do you know Ralph Skadlock?”

The sheriff didn’t blink. “Who are you?”

He patiently explained who he was, where he was raised, why he’d lost his job as floorwalker in New Orleans, how he’d been looking for a child named Lily while working on an excursion boat.

When he finished, the sheriff nodded. “All right, Mr. Simoneaux. As for Skadlock, I know of him, but I can’t do a thing about him.”

“You say that as though five people a week ask you to.”

“That’s about right. Including my mother-in-law. That place he lives on is probably in Louisiana. We are presently, as you realize, in Mississippi.”

Sam looked down at his dusty shoes and then up at the sheriff, who’d gotten up to take off his coat. He wore a tooled gunbelt and holstered on it was a Colt New Service revolver with pearl grips. “Nice gun.”

He sat down again. “Me and all the deputies switched to forty-fives last year. Our old thirty-eights wouldn’t shoot through car doors. Times are changing.”

Sam looked at Tabors’ eyes, wondering if he could trust him. Ultimately, he had no other choice, and had to take a leap of faith. “Well, that ought to solve that problem for you. Let’s see if you can do something about mine.”

“Let’s have it.” Then the sheriff did something that convinced Sam that he’d made the right decision. He pulled a pad in front of him and held a sharpened pencil at the ready.

It took ten minutes to explain the history between the Skadlocks and Acy White, the death of Ted Weller, and why he believed the child would be exchanged in Woodgulch.

The sheriff took notes all along, and after Sam finished, he sat back. “Son, you probably realize this already, but one crime was committed in Louisiana and the other in Kentucky. My jurisdiction is only this poor little Mississipppi county. Do you think they’ll trade money for the child at the station?”

“I don’t know.”

“If they did, I’d have reason to arrest everybody and wire for warrants from the other places. That is, if the child recognizes you.”

“She’ll know her brother.”

The sheriff put down his pencil. “She better. I can’t turn her over otherwise.”

“You’re telling me a four-year-old has to convince you of who she belongs to?”

The sheriff pulled the box of pistol shells toward him and placed it in a desk drawer. “Seems like she’s the one with the most to lose.”

Sam smiled. “Well, I guess that’s fair.”

The sheriff leaned back and pulled a folder from a different drawer, his body movement suggesting that the meeting was over. “What do you do on the excursion boat?”

“I play piano and bang around the rowdies when I’m not.”

“I like piano music and have a player piano at home. I took music appreciation, two courses worth, in college.”

“College? Where at?”

“Rutgers. On weekends I went into New York for the revues and plays. There’s a lot of music in that town.”

“Why’d you come back? Family?”

“Not really. I just came back because it’s so bad around here.” He gave Sam a smile and motioned to the door. “Come Friday we’ll help you out.”

HE FOUND THE BOY at the station and together they walked to a two-dollar-a-night hotel on Batson Street, a mildew-smelling place with tall windows covered with storm-belled screens, bathroom down the hall, and an old man somewhere on the third floor coughing deep and long. They cleaned up and walked downtown to a café, counted their money, and ordered ham sandwiches and tap water. The train would next rattle into town on Friday afternoon, and it was Wednesday.

The hotel room held two small iron beds and that night they lay in the hot, breathless room and tried to sleep.

August turned repeatedly, went down the hall to the bathroom, came back and began tossing again. “Lucky, you awake?” His voice was young again in the dark room.

“Yeah, I’m one hot dog.”

“I’m glad you made me put down that gun.”

He rolled on his back and tried to see the ceiling, which he knew was cracked like a map of desert rivers where the electric wire had been nailed to the plaster. His sore shoulder throbbed with his heartbeat. “Count sheep, and maybe you’ll drop off.”

“I’ve got to say it.”

“Go on, then.”

“If I hadn’t backed off, I’d have killed her.”

“All right.”

“No, I need you to know how I feel right now. I mean, I want to get her, but I’m mostly glad she’s alive. It’s like it’s okay if we don’t even find her, just so she’s, you know, still somewhere.”

Sam thought about that last phrase, “still somewhere.” “Aw, we’ll get her back when that old train rumbles in day after tomorrow. The sheriff said he’d sit in the waiting room with three of his deputies and hash it out with all concerned.”

“You sure they’ll bring her here?”

“I can’t imagine where else. I’d bet a month of piano playing that Billsy was coming back from setting up the meeting somehow. It makes sense they bring her in Friday, since the train won’t run again till Monday.”