Nice, peaceful place.
Until this morning, anyway.
Amy came over, slightly out of breath, and said, “I’m going with you.”
“All right.”
She looked at the men in military uniforms.
“I should’ve figured they’d want in on this,” she said. She’d had several run-ins with the local far right, many of them questioning the county government’s right to levy and collect taxes.
“They’ll be all right.”
“You going to guarantee that, Sam?”
Her anger narrowed her eyes, pinched her lovely mouth.
“It’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ll find him and bring him in.”
Her eyes scanned the posse.
“Somebody’s going to try and shoot him. Just look at them.”
No denying, Sam thought, some of these men were the sort who’d do just that.
“You think the Chief can control them?”
“He’s doing a good job of it now,” Sam said, and told her about the flask incident.
He was just about to say more — just about to praise a man he didn’t, in reality, have a whole lot of respect for — when they saw Bobby Sunshine running across the town square.
Bobby was one of the local disc jockeys. He worked the morning shift. He tried real hard to be a Howard Stern type of “shock jock,” but that was hard to do in a place like Crystal Falls, where people still believed in (and for the most part, practiced) civility. One morning, he’d made fun of the new “Buttermilk Queen,” a local community-college girl selected by a local dairy to be their spokesperson. He never made fun of anybody on the air again. Several merchants dropped their advertising and one of the Buttermilk Queen’s cousins punched Bobby out in the Pizza Hut parking lot.
God only knew what was making Bobby — with his punk haircut, his earring, his nose ring, and his lavender slacks — so excited at the moment.
Bobby went around Sam and ran over to where the vehicles were parked, and where Chief Hadley was still telling everybody to hand over his flask if he had one.
“I’ve got some news!” Bobby said. The name and the attire might lead you to believe that Bobby was just starting out in this business. But actually Bobby Sunshine had been at this business ever since the sixties, when he’d been known as Frank Flowerpower... and the seventies, when he’d been known as Disco Donny... and the eighties, when he’d been known as Gary Groovy. He looked young at first glance, but you didn’t get that kind of ring under the eye until you’d shot most of your body and all of your soul.
“Listen, everybody!” Bobby Sunshine shouted after climbing up in the bed of a truck.
“Hey, it’s that radio guy!” somebody said.
“Yeah, that queer!” somebody else said.
“He isn’t a queer!” said a third. “He damn near raped my niece on their first date!”
“Listen!” Bobby pleaded. “The station just got a call from Darcy Fuller’s dad. He’s offering a fifteen-thousand-dollar reward for anybody who brings in Richie McGuire!”
While all the men were cheering — and filling their heads with fantasies of what fifteen thousand dollars would do for them — Chief Hadley and Sam were exchanging worried glances.
The offer of the reward made the situation even more dangerous. Now the men would have to contend not only with their own normal macho impulses — who wouldn’t want to shoot and kill a man when you could get away with it? — but also their greed.
Who the hell couldn’t use fifteen thousand dollars, even if you did have to pay forty percent to Uncle Sammy?
That still left a guy with a nice piece of change.
“He wanted me to be sure you all understood this, about the reward and all,” Bobby Sunshine said to the crowd, his fancy yellow shirt billowing out from his slender body like a sail. “He said he’ll pay cash and he won’t ask any questions.”
“All right,” Chief Hadley said. “You’ve had your say, Bobby. Now get the hell down from there.”
Bobby said, “Start listening to KROC. We’re going to have bulletins about Richie McGuire every fifteen minutes!”
Then he jumped down from the truck before Hadley got up there and threw him off.
“God, that’s all we need,” Amy said.
Sam shook his head. “It sure doesn’t help any, I have to say that.”
“Now you know what I’ve told you men,” Chief Hadley was saying. “I expect responsible behavior out there. And I expect constant communication. If you get any leads, any kind of leads at all, I expect to be informed immediately. You understand me? Immediately. And I’m not going to listen to any bullshit excuses, either. I don’t want any cowboy crap out there. You got that?”
Only a few of them even gave him a perfunctory nod. They were too eager to get into their vehicles and head out.
This wasn’t only a manhunt now. This was also a treasure hunt, with fifteen thousand dollars as the prize.
“All right, you know the quadrants you’ve been assigned to,” Chief Hadley said. “Now let’s get out there and find him.”
Sam smiled to himself. Hadley sounded like a coach.
“I guess we may as well go, too,” Sam said.
Amy nodded.
They walked over to Sam’s police cruiser and got inside. Just as Sam was about to back out of his parking space, Chief Hadley leaned in the window and said, “I guess I don’t blame Fuller for offering that reward. But it sure as hell isn’t going to make our job any easier.”
“No, it sure isn’t,” Sam said.
Chief Hadley looked at Amy. “You got any ideas of where he might be, Amy, I’d sure appreciate you telling us.”
“I will, Chief.”
“I’d appreciate it. Sooner we get him behind bars, the safer everybody is.”
She nodded.
“Well, you’re headed east, Sam, and I’m headed west. Maybe I’ll see you around suppertime.”
With that, Chief Hadley stood erect, straightened his white Stetson on his white head, and then turned around and walked over to his police vehicle.
“You don’t, do you?” Sam said.
“I don’t what?”
“Have any idea where he might be.”
“None.” She looked at him. “I want to find him, Sam, even more than you and Chief Hadley do. I’m terrified that one of Arnette’s buddies will get to him first.” She shook her head. “Fifteen thousand dollars, no questions asked. That’s another way of saying dead or alive, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “That’s how I interpret it, anyway.”
He put his car in reverse and backed into the street.
2
As he parked his car on the long driveway, Officer Steve Arnette felt familiar anger. It always pissed him off when he had to come out here and see his second cousins David and Helen Cummings.
All the time he was growing up, Arnette had had to wear David’s hand-me-downs. All the time he was growing up, he had had to accept their charity... They were always bailing his old man out of jail and always bringing groceries over so that Arnette and his brothers would have something to eat. And these days... whenever Arnette got a little excessive in his law enforcement, and whenever Hadley wanted to fire his ass, he just asked cousin Helen to call the Chief and do a little politicking of her own.
But as useful as they were, as useful as they’d always been, Arnette resented them. All the time they were handing out their charity, their entire demeanor (especially Helen’s eyes) was saying that you were a lesser being for accepting it.
Arnette rang the bell and waited for someone to appear. He was eager to join the manhunt. Helen had called him right before the Chief started the searchers out of town. He wondered what the hell she wanted. She never called him unless there was a little “thing” he could do for her. Usually the little “thing” involved helping her get cousin David out of some jam he was in. Like the time he’d brought the black hooker home with him from Des Moines. This was a blackmail situation. The hooker, who had finally figured out who David was, could demand money for not going to the press. Cousin Helen asked Arnette to “scare her a little.” Which he’d gladly done. Arnette was a past master at inflicting pain that left no physical signs. Between his fist and the dildo he used, the black hooker was not about to say anything. Ever.