Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

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.