‘How sure do you have to be?’ she asked, tugging him from the crowd when they got to the top.
‘What do you mean?’
‘How much should you know before you ask a question?’
‘At a press briefing?’ Ridl said. ‘They’re questions, for Pete’s sake. You’re not expected to know the answers.’ Then: ‘What do you suspect?’
‘It’s OK to fire away, no matter what?’ she pressed, ignoring his question.
‘You can ask anything.’ He’d leaned closer, he told himself, only because he was tired of getting jostled by the crush of people pushing into the courtroom.
‘And the shared byline? It’s still on?’
He nodded.
‘I’ll see you later,’ she said. And then she was gone.
They packed into a small courtroom, full of news people and townspeople – several of whom, standing stiffly together, were dressed so identically in short-sleeved white shirts and dark ties that he wondered if they were the town council – and plenty of cops, though Milner was not there. It was a stately room with massive ceiling beams, white-plastered walls and oak wainscoting made black by a hundred years of waxing.
It was a proper room for dispensing justice and, as Chief Deputy Reems must have hoped, formal enough to discourage shouting. He had not presumed to sit up on the judge’s dais. He stood below the raised bench, separated by a thick wood railing from the television crews and print reporters and, behind them, as many locals as could squeeze in. Reems wore his tan and green uniform, but he’d ditched the corncob pipe and genial air of country folksiness he’d laid on Ridl by the river.
‘Good morning,’ he began. ‘I am Chief Deputy Wilbur Reems. Let me explain what’s happened here before I answer questions.’
Ridl looked around. He didn’t see Laurel.
‘This morning,’ Reems went on, ‘we recovered the body of Betty Jo Dean, age seventeen, of this town. She’d been shot once in the back of the head. She was found lying on her stomach, fully dressed except for her slacks, which were neatly folded and placed upon her. Now, let me put this unfortunate development into the context of what we believe.’
He raised a pointer to the top of an L-shaped map he’d chalked on a wheeled blackboard. ‘At approximately one o’clock on Tuesday morning, Paulus Pribilski, age twenty-two, of Rockford, was killed on Poor Farm Road. He was shot five times with a.38 revolver as he stood next to his car, a Buick GSX, while a second assailant held Betty Jo Dean helpless in that car. After Pribilski’s killer had dragged him to the edge of the cornfield, he drove his own vehicle to the Wren House parking lot. The second assailant followed in Pribilski’s car, with Betty Jo in it.’ He moved the tip of the pointer straight down, to the left corner of the L’s base.
‘Abandoning Pribilski’s Buick in the Wren House parking lot, the two assailants drove Betty Jo to the Devil’s Backbone Road,’ he said, moving the pointer to the right, along the base of the L, ‘where she was shot once in the back of the head and left in the tall weeds by the side of the road.’
Hands shot up. ‘Not yet,’ Reems said. ‘I want you to be clear why we’re sure two individuals perpetrated this crime. First of all, when a gunman approached Mr Pribilski’s Buick, jerked open the door and pulled him out to shoot him, Betty Jo’s reaction would have been to run. A second person had to be there to restrain her from taking off into the cornfields.
‘Second, two people had to be involved because one was needed to drive Pribilski’s Buick to the Wren House while the other drove their own car.
‘Third, our most promising leads involve eyewitness accounts of several pairs of individuals behaving in hostile fashions. Coming out of the Rustic Hacienda, Mr Pribilski and Miss Dean got into an altercation with a woman and a man. The woman was quite angry with Betty Jo about something. Also in that parking lot were two young men loafing next to an older car. This pair was looking for trouble, threatening another couple, owners of a red Pontiac convertible, but they might well have turned their attentions to Pribilski and Betty Jo.
‘There’s also a report of a third duo, one of which may have once had local ties, hanging around the Hacienda’s parking lot that night, though there’s confusion about that.
‘Finally, we have reports that Pribilski might have won a substantial amount of money from gambling with several men after leaving the Hacienda. Two or more of those men might have taken offense at Pribilski leaving before they had a chance to win their money back. There’s also an unsubstantiated report that Pribilski owed large debts to gamblers down at the Wren House, debts he neglected to pay.
‘Add to all this, we’ve learned Pribilski was very active on the social scene up in Rockford. Betty Jo Dean, of course, was known to have a number of male admirers not just here, but in surrounding communities. Jealousy might well have been the motive for these killings.’
He set the pointer on the tray beneath the blackboard. ‘We have a tremendous number of leads. We’re casting a wide net, using every resource available, but this is going to take some time. Now I will take your questions.’
‘A local woman said she heard from Betty Jo the day after Pribilski was killed,’ a man with a print reporter’s narrow notebook said.
Reems patted his pocket, like he missed his pipe. ‘Your source is Miss Abigail Beech?’
The reporter said nothing.
‘Never mind.’ Reems looked around the room. ‘For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, Miss Beech is our local psychic, or whatever. She’s been prowling the ground along Poor Farm Road hoping for signals, I guess.’
Reems was referring to the woman in the long dress and veil that Ridl had seen in the moonlight.
‘It’s cruel, her saying such nonsense,’ Reems said. ‘Next question.’
‘What about the older man seen driving southbound, struggling with a girl in a car?’
‘That tip was a hoax. For those of you who haven’t heard, Sheriff Milner got an anonymous phone call about some trucker seeing such an incident. A hundred searchers combed the cabins and the river bank south of Poor Farm Road, but nothing came of it.’
‘Was she raped?’ an older woman in a blue dress asked.
Reems’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘She most certainly was not,’ he shot back. ‘Doc Farmont conducted a thorough examination this morning. Betty Jo’s body was unfortunately decomposed, having been out in the heat for over two days, but he is certain she was not sexually molested.’
‘Were she and Pribilski having consensual sex at the time they were attacked?’ the same woman asked.
Reems stepped forward to the edge of the rail. ‘Where the hell are you from?’
‘Des Moines Sentinal Register.’
‘Let me tell you something, Miss Sentinal Register. What Betty Jo Dean was doing out on Poor Farm Road is none of our damned business, beyond it being a date. Her family lives in this town. We’re respectful of our neighbors here. And of their memories.’ Reems pointed to someone else. ‘Next question.’
‘She was shot once, in the back of the neck?’
‘And fell forward, yes.’
‘Does the bullet match the ones recovered from Pribilski?’
‘It’s the same.38 caliber. I’ll be taking that bullet with the five we recovered from Mr Pribilski to the Illinois State Police lab, but I expect they’re from the same gun.’
‘Wasn’t that excessive, removing all five from Pribilski?’
‘I insisted every one be extracted, in case there were two shooters.’
‘.38 is a common caliber, correct?’
‘Unfortunately, yes. We’re not going to bother checking ammunition suppliers, since there are a million of them around.’