29

“RAY,  DON’T  COUNT  on too much,” Jonathan warned.

Ray ignored him. Through the streaked windowpane, he could see the station house. The glow from the gas lamps gave it the look of another century. Quickly parking the car, Ray threw open the door and darted across the macadam into the station. From behind he could hear Jonathan puffing as he tried to keep pace.

The desk sergeant looked surprised. “Didn’t expect to see you here tonight, Mr. Eldredge. I’m sure sorry about the kids. . . .”

Ray nodded impatiently. “Where are they questioning Rob Legler?”

The sergeant looked alarmed. “You can’t have anything to do with that, Mr. Eldredge.”

“The hell I can’t,” Ray said evenly. “Go in and tell the Chief that I have to see him now.”

The sergeant’s protest died on his lips. He turned to a policeman who was coming down the corridor. “Tell the Chief that Ray Eldredge wants to see him,” he snapped.

Ray turned to Jonathan. With the trace of a wan smile, he said, “Suddenly this seems like a farfetched, crazy idea.”

“It isn’t,” Jonathan replied quietly.

Ray glanced around the room and realized for the first time that two people were sitting on a small bench near the door. They were just about as old as he and Nancy—a nicelooking couple. He wondered abstractedly what they were doing here. The guy looked embarrassed, the woman determined. What would bring anyone out on a night like this? Was it possible they had had a fight and she was pressing charges? The idea was wildly funny. Somewhere outside this room, outside this whole incredible day, people were home with their families; cooking dinner in candlelight, telling kids not to be scared of the dark, making love . . . having fights. . . .

He realized that the woman was staring at him. She started to get up, but the husband pulled her down. Quickly, Ray turned his back to her. The last thing in the world he wanted or needed was sympathy.

Footsteps hurried down the corridor. Chief Coffin rushed into the room. “What is it, Ray? Have you heard anything?”

Jonathan answered. “You have Rob Legler here?”

“Yes. We’re questioning him. Dr. Miles is with me. Legler’s asking for a lawyer. Won’t answer any questions.”

“I thought as much. That’s why we’re here.” In a low voice, Jonathan outlined his plan.

Chief Coffin shook his head. “Won’t work. This guy’s a cool one. There’s no way you’ll get him to place himself at the Eldredge house this morning.”

“Well, let us try. Can’t you see how important time is? If he had an accomplice who has the children now, that person may panic. God knows what he might do.”

“Well . . . come in here. Talk to him. But don’t count on anything.” With a jerk of his head, the Chief nodded to a room halfway down the corridor. As Ray and Jonathan started to follow him, the woman got up from the bench.

“Chief Coffin.” Her voice was hesitant. “Could I speak to you for just a minute?”

The Chief looked at her appraisingly. “Is it important?”

“Well, probably not. It’s just that I felt I wouldn’t have any peace unless . . . It’s something my little boy . . .”

The Chief visibly lost interest. “Just sit down please, ma’am. I’ll be back with you as soon as I can.”

Ellen Keeney sank down on the bench as she watched the three men leave. The sergeant at the desk sensed her disappointment. “Are you sure I can’t help you, ma’am?” he asked.

But Ellen didn’t trust the sergeant. When she and Pat had first come in, they had tried to tell him that they thought their little boy might know something about the Eldredge case. The sergeant had looked pained. “Lady, do you know how many calls we’ve had today? Since the wire services got hold of this, we’ve had nothing but calls. Some jerk from Tucson phoned to say he thought he saw the kids in a playground across the street from his apartment this morning. No way they could have gotten there, even in a supersonic plane. So just take a seat. The Chief’ll talk to you when he can.”

Pat said, “Ellen, I think we should go home. We’re only in the way here.”

Ellen shook her head. She opened her pocketbook and took out the note the stranger had given Neil when he had sent him in for the mail. She had attached the note to her own scribblings about everything Neil had told her. She knew the exact time he had gone in for the letter. She had carefully written down his description of the man; his exact words when he’d said the man looked like the picture on television of Nancy Harmon’s first husband; the kind of car the man was driving—“a real old station wagon just like Gramp’s”—that sounded like a Ford. Last, Neil had said that the man had a fishing permit for Adams Port on his windshield.

Ellen was determined to sit here until she got a chance to tell her story. Pat looked so tired. Reaching over, she patted his hand. “Bear with me, dear,” she whispered. “I suppose it doesn’t mean anything, but something is making me wait. The Chief did say he’d talk to me soon.”

The door to the station house opened. A middle-aged couple came in. The man looked thoroughly annoyed; the woman was visibly nervous. The desk sergeant greeted them. “Hi, Mr. Wiggins . . . Miz Wiggins. Anything wrong?”

“You won’t believe it,” Wiggins snapped. “On a night like this, my wife wants to report that somebody pilfered a can of baby powder from the store this morning.”

“Baby powder?” The sergeant’s voice ranged upward in astonishment.

Mrs. Wiggins looked more upset. “I don’t care how stupid it sounds. I want to see Chief Coffin.”

“He’ll be coming out soon. These people are waiting for him too. Just sit down, won’t you?” He pointed to the bench at a right angle to the one where the Keeneys were waiting.

They came over, and as they sat down, the husband muttered angrily, “I still don’t know why we’re here.”

Ellen’s ready sympathy made her turn to the couple. She thought that maybe just talking to someone would help the other woman to get over her nervousness. “We don’t really know why we’re here either,” she said. “But isn’t it an awful thing about those missing children. . . .”

Fifty feet away in the office down the corridor, Rob Legler stared through narrowed, hostile eyes at Ray Eldredge. The guy had class, he decided. Nancy had certainly done a lot better this time. That Carl Harmon had been some creep. Fear knotted Rob’s stomach. The Eldredge kids hadn’t been found. If anything had happened to them, they might try to pin something on him. But nobody had seen him near the Eldredge house . . . nobody except that fat slob who’d been in the old station wagon. Suppose that guy had been a deliveryman or something and called the cops? Suppose he could identify Rob as being around the Eldredge house this morning? What excuse did he have for being there? No one would believe that he had sneaked into the country just to say hello to Nancy.

Mentally, Rob darted around for a story. There was none that made sense. He’d just keep his mouth shut until he got a lawyer—and maybe after that too. The older guy was talking to him.

“You are in a very serious situation,” Jonathan was saying. “You are a deserter who has been taken into custody. Shall I remind you of the penalty the law holds for deserters? Your situation is far more serious than that of a man who left the country to avoid conscription. You were a member of the armed forces. No matter what has happened to the Eldredge children or how guilty or innocent you are in their disappearance, you stand right now to spend the better part of the next ten or twenty years in prison.”

“We’ll see about that,” Rob muttered. But he knew Jonathan was right. Christ!

“But, of course, even the desertion charge isn’t nearly so serious as a murder charge. . . .”

“I never murdered anyone,” Rob snarled, jumping up from his chair.

“Sit down,” Chief Coffin ordered.

Ray stood up and leaned across the table until his eyes were on a level with Rob’s. “I’m going to lay it out for you,” he said evenly. “I think you’re a bastard. For two cents, I’d kill you myself. Your testimony almost put my wife in a gas chamber seven years ago, and right now you may know something that could save my children’s lives if it isn’t already too late. Now, listen, bum, and listen hard. My wife doesn’t believe that you could or would harm our children. I happen to respect that belief. But she saw you there this morning. So that means you’ve got to know something about what went on. Trying to stall and say you never got to our house won’t help. We’ll prove you were there. But if you level with us now, and we get our kids back, we won’t prosecute a kidnapping charge. And Mr. Knowles, who happens to be one of the top lawyers in the country, will be your lawyer, to get you off with as light a sentence as possible on the desertion charges. He has pull—plenty of it. . . . Now, which is it, punk? Do you take the deal?” The veins bulged out in Ray’s forehead. He moved forward until his eyes were inches away from Rob’s. “Because if you don’t . . . and if you know something . . . and if I find out that you could have helped us get our kids back and didn’t . . . I don’t care what jail they throw you in . . . I’ll get to you and I’ll kill you. Just remember that, you stinking bastard.”

“Ray.” Jonathan pulled him back forcibly.

Rob stared from face to face: The Chief . . . the doctor . . . Ray Eldredge . . . that Knowles guy, the lawyer. If he admitted being at the Eldredge house . . . but what good not to admit it? There was a witness. His instinct told him to take the offer that had been made. Rob knew when he had no cards left to play. At least by taking the offer, he had some leverage on the desertion business.

He shrugged and looked at Jonathan. “You’ll defend me.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want any bum kidnapping rap.”

“No one’s trying to pin one on you,” Jonathan said. “We want the truth—the simple truth, as you know it. And the deal’s off unless we get it now.”

Rob leaned back. He avoided looking at Ray. “Okay,” he said. “This is how it started. My buddy up in Canada . . .”

They listened intently as he talked. Only occasionally did the Chief or Jonathan ask a question. Rob chose his words carefully when he said he was coming to ask Nancy for money. “See, I never believed she touched a hair on the head of those Harmon kids. She wasn’t the type. But I got the word that they were trying to pin the rap on me out there and I’d better just answer questions and keep my opinions out of it. I felt kind of sorry for her; she was a scared kid in a big frame-up as far as I was concerned.”

“A frame-up that was your direct responsibility,” Ray said.

“Shut up, Ray,” Chief Coffin said. “Get to this morning,” he ordered Rob. “When did you arrive at the Eldredge home?”

“It was like a couple of minutes before ten,” Rob said. “I had been driving real slow, looking for that dirt road my friend drew a picture of . . . and then I realized I’d missed it.”

“How did you realize you missed it?”

“Well, this other car . . . I had to slow down for . . . Then I realized that the other car had come off that road, so I backed up.”

“The other car?” Ray repeated. He jumped up. “What other car?”

The door of the interrogation room burst open. The sergeant hurried in. “Chief, I think it’s real important you talk to the Wigginses and that other couple. I think they have something real important to tell you.”