"I remember seeing the sign. How many people ignore it? In most motels you leave the key in the room."
"Lots of people ignore it, sure. Not Lindy. I think somebody checked her out. I think somebody put her and her luggage in that rental car and drove away. The maid found the key in the room and the luggage was gone. Lindy just wouldn't have done it that way."
"It's not a hell of a lot to go on."
"There never has been a hell of a lot to go on."
"Because it was a cold trail by the time we got the word on it."
"What about Moses?"
"He's not bothering anybody and he didn't bother her."
"He isn't exactly an ordinary person, Sheriff."
Sheriff Dockerty got up and went over to the metal table and fumbled through the file folders, dug one out from underneath a stack, slapped the dust from it and came back to his chair.
He opened it and recited, "Born July 20, 1943, William McVay Davisson, only child of James and Ethel Davisson."
"He said he committed a crime and he can't remember what it was."
"He was a brilliant and erratic kid. He was through high school when he was fourteen and they didn't let him go away to school because they thought he was too young. I don't think the parents were too stable either. The mother died after a minor operation. A blood clot in the lung. The father went into deep depression and shot himself in the head. There was a lot of money involved. This was not a likable kid. And very strange. So the aunt and uncle, the mother's relatives, got themselves appointed guardians and they had the kid committed to a private mental institution. After he found he couldn't get out, he went into a' he checked the folder again and said the word carefully 'cat-a-tonic state and didn't come out of it until years later. Then he was violent and they kept him sedated. And finally he was well enough for release, three years ago. The money was gone. After he showed up here I was able to check back because he could remember the name of the place, and they had a fingerprint record. If there was any crime, it was something he imagined he did. He said he couldn't remember it, but I got the idea he thought he had killed his folks, and that's why he was put away. They said he'd been a good patient for a long time, quiet and cooperative. When the money stopped coming in, they let him go. They notified the relatives, and got no answer."
"You don't consider him at all dangerous?"
"They didn't, and they're experts. He keeps to himself and works hard. He does a cash business. He's in demand for all kinds of chores nobody else wants to do. And he helps Mrs. Holroyd. I've always felt that just because somebody looks and acts different than the rest of us, there's no need to hassle them."
Thanks for telling me all this, Sheriff."
The Sheriff smiled.
"If you'd come in here pounding on my desk and demanding action, I wouldn't have told you a thing.
Look, I've given the disappearance of your missus a lot of thought and a lot of legwork. What it comes down to, there are a lot of pretty women between eighteen and thirty-five disappear in this country every month of the year. With too many of them it's a case of being stupid and going alone to a bar and having a couple of drinks and letting somebody' drive them home. Only they don't make it home. They make it into a shallow grave thirty feet off the road, or they make it into the middle of a vacant lot. There's a lot of brush and woods and fields around here. There's drifters and there's some homegrown men capable of rape and murder. I don't want to upset you, Mr. Owen."
"Go right ahead, please."
The thing about that kind of crime, it's usually sloppy. Even if the rape is intentional, often the murder isn't. Ditch the body and get the hell out. But somebody had to go to a lot of trouble to clean this up. She had to be checked out of the motel. They had to dispose of a body and two suitcases and a train case and a purse and a little typewriter. They had to put that rental car right where the rental people would find it and think their customer hadn't left enough time to stop at the rental desk.
There's one thing I wanted to know about Linda Owen and didn't have any way to check it out. The magazine people couldn't answer my question, but you probably can. Was she a strong woman, physically? I mean in the sense she would put up a fight?"
"Oh yes. She was only five foot one and weighed a hundred and five pounds, but she was a diet and exercise nut. She jogged whenever she could, and she had a rowing machine she used to keep her waist slim and her stomach flat. And she was very quick, very coordinated. She was good at games."
The Sheriff leaned back, closed his eyes, placed his folded hands on his broad stomach.
"Sheriff?"
"Just give me a couple minutes here, Mr. Owen."
Roy Owen composed himself, wondering if Dockerty had some kind of sleep disorder.
The Sheriff straightened up, sighing heavily.
"Now let's try this. This was a northern woman down here, blonde wavy hair, gold jewelry, makeup, fancy clothes and a rental car. She was a woman working for a magazine that prints a lot of sexy garbage. She was using a false name. She was under cover, if that's the right word. Now we're all country down here, pretty much. You go show her to the average working man here in this county and tell him what she was doing for a living, and he'd figure her for a part-time hooker."
"Now just a..."
"Hold it! You know she wasn't. And from what you say, I know she wasn't. We've got enough tourists coming here these days, the lines get kind of blurred, and it wouldn't be as obvious as it used to be, but somebody could have made some kind of bad judgment about her and tried to follow it up, and used some muscle and all of a sudden found out he'd used more than he'd wanted to, and there he is with a dead woman on his hands. But I kind of think that whole idea would depend on his knowing why she was here and who she was working for. He would have had to think she was playing it cute."
"What if she did find out something that could hurt the Church?"
"Like what? There's a little diddling going on here and there like there is in any big organization you can name. As far as the money part is concerned, I was raised up with Charley and Clyde Winchester and those two are good old boys. They make sure everything runs fair and honest. Anyway, as near as I could find out, she didn't even get close to anybody who could tell her much of anything. That Friday Moses drove her to the Administration Building, she got in to see Walter Macy, he's the assistant pastor at the Tabernacle and he handles a lot of scut work. And she acted so kind of strange Eliot Erskine followed her on into Walter's office. She wasn't there more than three minutes. She said she had some kind of Russian religious items she wanted to donate to the Church, and Reverend Walter told her he'd see what he could do, and Erskine marched her right on back out, and she got in the old red pickup and that was that."
"Erskine?"
"Used to be a cop in Atlanta. Good man, they say. Second in command of security at the Meadows Center. Rick Liddy is in charge. He was with the FBI. They keep it pretty tight. They buy good equipment. On the other hand, we just don't know where she was all day Saturday. Peggy Moon says-she saw Mrs. Owen drive in and back out a couple of times, but she didn't pay much attention. Weekends there is one hell of a lot of traffic in the area of the Meadows Center, guided tours and indoctrination, and movies about the Eternal Church and all that, to say nothing of the services and the panel shows and those little carnival things they put on for the kids. I couldn't find anybody who noticed her anywhere at all that Saturday."
"Thanks for giving me so much time."
The Sheriff smiled and yawned.
"Come the end of this month, that's all I'm going to have. Time. And I can't hardly wait to stop doing any damn thing at all, except eat and sleep and walk my dogs and work on my 1938 Rolls-Royce. Any luck at all and I can get that sucker back on the road again."
They said goodbye and as Roy was leaving Dockerty called him back and said, "I could have given you the wrong impression about how I give Moses a lot of leeway. I want to be honest with you. If the people in charge of Meadows Center come to me, or to the fellow who takes my job next month, and says Moses is a thorn in their side, then we roust him out of the county and maybe out of the state. It is a practical world, Mr. Owen, and we have to do practical things."
"I understand. Thanks."
Eleven.
The Reverend Joseph Deets had dressed very carefully for what might become a disastrous confrontation. After he had donned what he called his God Suit, backward collar and all, and examined his image in the mirror, he decided it might be better to wear a more casual outfit. He knew he would be more comfortable, and that might make the difference. Gray polyester slacks, white moccasins and a blue denim shirt with four pockets and short sleeves, worn outside the slacks. He was annoyed and amused to discover that every few minutes he would inadvertently take a very deep breath.
He bicycled over to Henrietta Boulevard and turned west, past the Meadows Mall, over to the first motel that had been built at the Center. Now it was the least expensive. It was a three-story rectangle without elevators, with the cheapest accommodations on the third floor, and in front, near the boulevard traffic. He stopped at the desk and learned that she was in While he climbed the stairs to the third floor he tried to plan some way of handling it. But he knew it could not be planned.
He would have to adjust to her reaction to him, playing his tunes by ear.
The voice on the phone had sounded so frail, uncertain and so young that he had thought it might be one of Patsy Knox's friends playing a wicked trick on him.
"I'm Doreen's mother," she said.
"I came on the bus. I've got to talk to you."
"Where are you now?"
"I'm at the Econo Way Motor House. I want to come to your office. I asked and they told me you have an office in the Communications Building, but they wouldn't let me come in without permission from you. The policeman said you could arrange it."
"You wait there, Mrs. Purves, and I'll take care of it."