The captain paused, trying to think of a question that might help him move forward on this problem, and in the little silence the front doorbell rang, startling them all. The captain said, “Trooper Oskott can answer.”
The trooper turned, opened the door, and spoke briefly with somebody on the porch. Then he turned back to say, “To see you, Captain.”
“Thank you.” Rising, he told the others, “I think we’re just about finished. Let me see what this is.”
“I’d like to get home,” Hopwood said.
“I’m sure you would,” the captain said, and went out to the porch, where a plainclothes state police inspector named Harrison said, “How’s it going?”
“Confusing.”
“Well, this may help a little. Mrs. Thiemann gave us a statement.”
“Yes?”
“She says her husband was part of the group that went out looking for the fugitives yesterday.”
“I saw them there,” the captain said. “He was teamed up with the missing householder here, Lindahl, and this fella we’ve been calling Smith.”
“She says, her husband told her, they went up to Wolf Peak—”
“That’s right.”
“And up there her husband shot and killed a man.”
Now the captain could not hold his astonishment. “He did what?”
“Some old wino, bum, something like that.” Harrison shrugged. “He got excited, Thiemann, he thought it was one of the bank robbers, and shot him.”
“I swear I don’t understand this situation,” the captain said. “One of them’s a bank robber, another of them suddenly ups and kills a man—and a parrot—and the third, an ordinary fellow his entire life, goes missing.”
“The thing is,” Harrison said, “Thiemann would have turned himself in, but Smith talked him out of it, said it was to protect Thiemann.”
“It was to protect Smith.”
“Well, sure. But Thiemann couldn’t stand it. His wife said it drove him crazy.”
The captain looked across the road. “So he came down here to confront Smith. Nobody home.”
“Lucky for Lindahl,” Harrison said, and corrected himself. “Lucky for somebody.”
“This Smith,” the captain said, “robs a bank in Massachusetts, escapes, gets this far, hooks up with two other people, ordinary people, everybody starts going nuts.”
Harrison said, “You think he did it to them, somehow?”
“I truly don’t know,” the captain said, and looked out from the lighted porch at the dark road. “We are not going to know,” he said, “what this is really all about until Tom Lindahl tells us. I do wish I could lay my hands on him.” He nodded at the darkness. “Yes, Lindahl,” he said, “I would really like to know where you are.”
14
Around nine-thirty, Bill Henry yawned, stretched, pushed back from the desk where his latest Field & Stream had lain open and unread for some time now, and got to his feet. One more yawn and he said, “I think I’ll walk around a little.”
Max Evanson, his usual partner on the overnight shift, looked up from his People magazine in some surprise: “Walk around what?”
“The track. The building. Just around.”
Max still didn’t get it. A traditional kind of guy, who only believed in, as he’d said more than once, “meat and potatoes,” he wouldn’t see any reason for Bill or himself or anyone else on night guard duty at Gro-More to get up from his comfortable chair in security unless his shift was over. He said, “You’re gonna walk around the track? It’s, what, it’s two miles, mile and a half, something like that.”
“I’m not going to walk around the track,” Bill said. “That’s not what I mean at all. Look, Max, I’m outa here the middle of next month, just in time for Thanksgiving, I’m feeling a little different about the place, okay? You get it?”
“No,” Max said.
“I’ve been working here thirty-seven years,” Bill said, “the last five in this dumb security office, and pretty soon I’m not gonna be working here any more.”
“I’m fourteen months behind you,” Max said, as though it were a prayer.
“Well, fourteen months from now, you’ll feel the same way I do,” Bill assured him.
“And what’s that?” The skepticism twanged in Max’s voice.
“Not nostalgic exactly—”
“Nostalgic! For this place? The people running this outfit here—”
“No, not nostalgic,” Bill insisted. “It’s just— You spend so much of your life at a place, you know you’re gonna leave it, you won’t really miss it, but still you want to fix it in your mind before you go.”
“It’s fixed in my mind,” Max promised him.
“Well, I’m gonna take a little walk around,” Bill said. “Mind the store.”
“Huh,” Max said.
The way it was set up, because of insurance and getting people bonded and all that, security at Gro-More had been a special set-off company since just after World War Two. The track contracted for security arrangements from that company, everything from staff for crowd control to spy cameras, and the employees of the subcompany shared in the not-very-good health and pension benefits available to the rest of the track’s workforce.
For most of his thirty-seven years here, Bill Henry had been assigned crowd control out by the entrance gates, and he’d enjoyed it. It was pleasant out in the air, and more interesting than the occasional stint in front of the betting windows, showing the uniform and the holstered sidearm and looking stern, just as though there was a chance in hell one of these bettors would suddenly up and rob the place. Never happen.
So what they did with the security employees, as they got older, nearer retirement, less intimidating out in public regardless of the brown uniform and the holstered firearm, was move them to the overnight guard detail. A simple, easy life if you liked to read, which most of the guys did. A short workweek, reduced pay, but retirement was right out there at the end of it, so not really a problem.
Parts of the track were kept locked at night, like the money room downstairs and the tellers’ cages upstairs, but most of the rest of it inside the security wall was open, illuminated just enough to satisfy the fire code. Leaving the office now, Bill walked first down the corridor past more offices and then out to the rail near the finish line, down to his right. The main dirt course was a long oval under the dim lights, extending left and right, with the slightly smaller turf course a green river within, and then the interior lawn, a different green, with its ornamental fountain and some perennial flowers that were starting at this time of year to give up the ghost.
At night, empty, the track looked much bigger than in the daytime, as though it could probably be seen from the moon, though he knew that was impossible. Bill liked the size of it at night, and the emptiness of it, and the fact that, in all that big empty space, there was never even one echo. It was as though the track absorbed sound, making the place restful and eternal and also just a little spooky.
He made his way leftward along the rail to the far turn, where a lane would lead down to the paddocks if he felt like going there, but he thought he better not. There were always a few of the grooms and assistant trainers sleeping somewhere near their animals, on cots or in sleeping bags, because this horse or that was having some kind of problem, and those people didn’t like other humans around to spook their beasts.
Bill turned away, walking toward the end of the clubhouse and grandstand, all in one building, and as he walked, he saw the reflection of headlights sweep over the white wooden wall that enclosed the entire track area.