The hall went to the right, then left, then right again, then opened on three sides to show the lobby down there, a moose head on the wall-from thirty, forty years ago, no doubt; the thing looked shabby enough for that-gray tile floor, discolored wooden check-in counter, a bald wrinkled man in denim clothes behind the counter. Dunlap took a breath and instantly regretted it: the must was even worse up here. He asked himself again what he had ever done to deserve being sent to Potter's Field, then trudged down the stairs, crossing the lobby toward the street.
The sun was like a knife jabbed into his eyes. Eight o'clock, and how hot would the day be with the sun so fierce this early? He didn't want to think about it. Eight o'clock, but he'd been awake since well before dawn, and that was something else his drinking had affected. Now he hardly slept at all, and when he did, not deeply, waking often, drifting back and forth from grotesque dreams. He didn't want to think about that either. Not the image that had constantly been coming to him. He walked toward the corner, concentrating on the coffee he was going to taste. Sure, you could buy a drink back at the hotel, but there wasn't any place to get some coffee. "Try the Grub-steak at the corner," he'd been told, and hell, they either didn't know the way to spell it, or they maybe were more clever than he thought. The one thing he at least was getting was a mess of local color. You don't talk like that, he told himself. You're here one day, and they're infecting you. You'd better keep your mind on what you're doing. Which was fine with him because he didn't want to think about a lot of things, but work was hardly one of them. He sensed that he was on to something.
Dunlap entered the diner. The counter was a horseshoe, the curved end in the middle of the room, and sure, what else did you expect? he thought. He looked at all the men in cowboy hats who in turn were looking at him, and he passed them to sit in a far corner booth where, quicker than he had expected, a waitress-her hair pinned up beneath a net-came over to him. Haifa minute later, he was sipping coffee, but although he'd been eager for it, he had to drink it slowly lest he throw up. Yes, he was on to something. "Christ, he's dead, all right," the voice had blurted through the static on the two-way radio. "Lord, he doesn't have a-" The only thing that Dunlap had been able to discover was that two kids had been playing in a field where they had stumbled upon the body of a man named Clifford whose face had been so mutilated that policemen couldn't tell at first exactly who he was. The woman who had sat behind the radio had tried to avoid Dunlap's questions and had finally suggested that he leave-the chief would see him in the morning. Dunlap had lingered even so, but when policemen from the day shift had begun to come in for debriefing, they had made it clear that he should leave, and he'd had no choice but to go out on the street. He had hoped to talk to Rettig and a new recruit named Hammel whom Dunlap gathered were the men assigned to this investigation, but they hadn't come in yet, and he had quickly gotten the picture that unless he had the chief's permission, no one would be talking to him.
Nonetheless, the symmetry appealed to him. A murder twenty-three years ago, and now another as he arrived to do the retrospective. The contrast would be worth reporting, how the separate murders had been handled, if this second killing were indeed a murder. Well, a dead man with no face, that surely wasn't ordinary, and as far as Dunlap cared, the difference was the same. That first murder had been something he hadn't counted on. There hadn't been a mention of it in the files that he had looked through in New York. When Parsons mentioned it in passing-yesterday in Parsons' office-Dunlap had required all his discipline not to show his interest. He had just kept sitting there and nodding as if vaguely bored by all this ancient news, but really he had felt his heartbeat quicken, felt that tug inside him as he guessed that there was more here than he had anticipated. He had kept his guard up all the time he and Parsons made their bargain. He had still looked bored when he had gone down to the paper's morgue and asked the man in charge to bring the microfilm. But when he was alone, he'd squinted in suspense for it, and in an issue twenty-three years ago, the first week in October, he had found it.
It was pretty much the way that Parsons had described it. The town had evidently feared another rush of hippies coming through, especially if reporters showed up, publicizing what had happened. Once the town had adjusted to its shock, it must have worked to keep the news from going farther. And the tactic was successful. As much as Dunlap knew, the story had been strictly local, a headline the first day, a third-page feature the next day, then a few paragraphs buried near the sports section. A rancher had wakened to find that his eighteen-year-old son was missing. At first the rancher wasn't bothered, thinking that his son had gone out with some friends and simply stayed the night. He'd made some calls but couldn't find him, waiting through the afternoon until at suppertime the boy was still not home, and he got worried. On a chance he phoned the state police, fearing that there'd been an accident or maybe the boy had gotten in trouble and was too afraid to call. The police hadn't heard a thing about him, doing what the father had already done, however, checking with the young man's friends. The friends, though, didn't know a thing about him either, hadn't seen him in a couple of days. He'd been moody, staying to himself. He'd even broken up with his girlfriend. Someone thought of suicide, and then they really did get worried. This was sure-no vehicle was missing from the ranch. The son had either walked off or had gotten a ride. Had he run away? The father spoke of arguments that they'd been having, and as Dun-lap had gone through the story, he had sensed that the arguments were severe. Small town rancher's son who wanted something more. Father who repressed him. Reading through the microfilm, Dunlap had been puzzled why it took them so long understanding. But it did. Indeed it took them several days. But then a friend remembered how the boy had hung out with those hippies when they'd caused that trouble in the town. The friend had even seen him smoking marijuana. The son had talked about the hippies often after they had left. The father and the state police considered this for a while, and then they finally had it figured out. The father wanted to go up and get him, but the state police insisted that they go alone. They evidently saw how furious the father was and concluded that they'd save some trouble if they went up on their own. Besides, there wasn't any guarantee that the boy was up there. This was just a chance. No point in making judgments until they knew.
The next few details Dunlap had to guess because, while there was plenty of space devoted to the missing son to start with, once the murder occurred the lid came over the story. Dunlap was impressed by someone's thoroughness. That was Parsons, he suspected, working to protect the town. There wasn't any way to know exactly what went on. The rationale was obvious. To guarantee that the trial was fair. To keep the jurors free from bias. After all, a small town, if the trial took place here, news about the murder had to be subdued and dignified. Oh, it was dignified all right. Hell, it was almost non-existent, and back in 1970, a small town in the boonies could get away with that. There hadn't been those recent major court decisions about freedom for reporters at a trial. Not that any local newsman would have worked against the blackout. No, the point was to keep outside newsmen ignorant of what had happened here. Conspiracy is what some people call it, Dunlap thought and sipped his coffee. Now you're thinking like a Woodward or a Bernstein. Let's not make too much of this. Well, make too much or not, he sure as hell was going to find out what went on up in that compound.