Bo spent the rest of the weekend sleeping at his house. Monday noon he stumbled into the office. As he walked across the briefing room, Daisy smiled at him. “You’ve got a visitor, boss. She nodded toward the glassed-in wall of his office. A gray-haired lady sat in one of his chairs. She had very good posture, her back straight as an arrow, all business. Jan Whittle! Principal of the Delmore Blight Grade School and Middle School. With the downturn in the economy, the middle school had been added to her duties as principal. He and Jan had been boyfriend and girlfriend in sixth grade. As far as he could recall, they had never spoken even once in sixth grade, but that was the way of sixth-grade romance back then. She had grown into a stern but interesting woman. Too bad she was still married to Darrel Whittle, the oaf of a district attorney, because he wouldn’t mind dating her. This time they might even talk. He had no trouble guessing what had brought her to his office.
Opening the door he growled, “No, Jan, absolutely not!”
She turned to glare at him. “You most certainly will, Bo! You’re sheriff of Blight County!”
He slid into his chair. “Every fall Glenn Cliff runs off to the mountains, and I have to hunt him down. Last fall I found him holed up in an abandoned logging camp. He’ll know better than to go there again. “He’s probably built himself a wickiup somewhere even deeper in the mountains this time.”
“Bo, he’s just a kid. He’ll die up there. The snow will trap him on some mountain and he won’t be able to get out.”
“What’s your point, Jan?” he said, earning himself another glare. He studied her, pretending to think about the Cliff boy. She was very nice looking, in a fit and serious sort of way. On the other hand, he was a year older. So was Glen, about thirteen now. The kid spent summers stashing away food and gear up in the mountains, preparing for his yearly getaway in the fall, his escape from school, which bored him nearly to death. This would be Tully’s third year of tracking him down. The thought made him shudder.
Jan took a handkerchief out of her purse and dabbed at her eyes.
“Don’t cry, Jan. I’ll go find the little . . .”
“I wasn’t crying, Bo! I just had something in my eye!”
Ah, the old something-in-my-eye ploy. “I only happen to have a bank robbery and five murders to tend with at the moment, so I’ll drop everything and go hunt Glen Cliff. But this is absolutely the last time, Jan!”
She smiled. “You say that every year, Bo.”
“I guess I do. This year though, you have to buy me dinner at Crabbs. That’s if I find Glen, of course.”
“Bo, I would love to buy you dinner anywhere you name! And any time!”
“How about the Space Needle in Seattle?”
She thought for a moment. “That sounds more like a proposition.”
“I meant it to. How are you and old Darrel getting along these days?”
“Fine, now that we’ve decided to get a divorce.”
Tully tugged on the corner of his mustache. “That usually helps. You still living together?”
“You’re awfully inquisitive.”
“That’s part of a sheriff’s job.”
Jan laughed, then turned serious. “Do you have any idea where Glen might be?”
“Not the foggiest. We have about ten thousand square miles of mountains in Blight County and he could be hiding out on any of them. But it so happens I ran into him this summer fishing up on Boulder Creek, which as you probably know comes tumbling down out of the mountains north of town. It levels off a couple of miles up the creek and there’s a nice meadow there. If I were to run away to the mountains, I think I’d head for the meadow on Boulder Creek.”
“You thought about doing this when you were Glen’s age?”
“Then and now.”
Jan smoothed her skirt over her rather nice thighs. “So if you were to take off this minute, Bo, you would head for that meadow?”
He was silent for a few moments. Jan said, “Bo?”
“Sorry. I was just building my self a nice little wickiup on the edge of the meadow. I’d fish the creek and hunt game for food. There’s gold in the creek, too. If I had time I might even find the mother lode. It would be a lovely way to live, Jan? You interested?”
“I’ll have to think about that, Bo. No!” Jan smiled. “So when do you think you will head off to look for Glen.”
Tully stared at her, then laughed. “As soon as I can catch the next flight to Boulder Creek.”
“You’re hopeless, Bo!”
“I know, but I mean it about the flight.”
After Jan left, he walked to the door. “Daisy, see if you can find the number for the Diamond W loggingtruck dispatcher and ask him to patch me through to Pete Reynolds.”
Daisy smiled and shook her head. “I guess Pete can’t escape you even when he’s out driving loads of logs down a mountain.”
“No one escapes me, Daisy, any time or any place. You know that.”
He walked over to Lurch’s corner. “You get any matches on the bullets that did Beeker and Dance.”
“Yeah. They match the forty-five we picked up from Shanks. Susan sent me the bullets recovered from the old couple, too, boss.”
“Great, Lurch! I figured she would.”
“Yeah, but they don’t match either pistol found with Beeker and Dance. Maybe they dumped that gun somewhere. The rifle that killed Vergil Stone belonged to Beeker. He was the shooter on Chimney Rock Mountain. At least the rifle that has his prints on it is the same one that shot Vergil. The test slug matches the bullet recovered from the vic’s body.”
Tully nodded and pulled up a chair next to the Unit. “Shut down your computer a minute, and I’ll give you benefit of my profound thought processes.”
Lurch shut off his computer.
Tully clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “First of all, the old lady in the double-wide was either a Beeker or a descendent of Beekers. She might have known Horace Beeker as some kind of family relation. I suspect most of the Beekers had fallen on hard times since losing the ranch or whatever happened that Beekers no longer own it. The old lady might have suspected that Horace Beeker was hiding out from something or someone. I’ve got Daisy checking with the corporation that owns the ranch. Somebody will know what the old people were doing there, watching over the mansion or whatever. Maybe Beeker didn’t want the woman to identify him and give him up to whoever might be looking for him. So he killed her and the old man just to be on the safe side. Beeker and Dance, of course, didn’t want Harold or Alma giving away their hideout, so that, too, could be the motive for killing them. If they needed a motive.”
Lurch nodded. “Sounds about right. I guess if you get started killing, another one more or less doesn’t bother you all that much.”
Tully stared at him. “That’s why you don’t get to carry a gun, Lurch.”
“I thought it was because of my eyes.”
“That too. My opinion is that the main reason Beeker or Dance shot them, hardly anyone knew about the lookout tower on Round Top, and he wanted to keep it that way. The tower made the perfect hideout. They could hang out there until the search for them let up.”
Lurch frowned. “If it was so perfect, how come Beeker and Dance ended up dead?”
“Details, Lurch, details. I’m pretty sure I know who shot them. All we need is some proof.”
“I think we have the proof, boss. The bullets that killed Beeker and Dance match the test bullets I got from one of the pistols you picked up from Shanks.”
Tully nodded. “That’s great, Lurch! So we can nail him for two murders, even though he’ll probably plead self-defense.”
“I thought so. You going to let me carry a gun now?”
“No.” Tully stared off into space.
“What are you thinking, boss?”
“I’m starting to think converging incidentals aren’t merely incidentals. As a matter of fact, I’m headed out to Shanks’s place right now.”
Lurch got up to leave. “You going to arrest him?”
“Yeah, I’m going to arrest him.”
“On what charge? Murder?”
“Yes, murder. A double murder. And a convergence.”
Lurch gave him a puzzled look. “A convergence of what, boss?”
“Beats the heck out of me. Just a convergence, Lurch. Maybe a convergence of fingers, all of them are pointing at Gridley Shanks. This all started with the partial fingerprint you turned up on a piece of flagging tape. To explain the flagging tape, Grid said he used it to mark his property so two men could hunt elk there. One of them was Beeker, who said he saw a herd of deer that came through hours before he claimed to be on the mountain. Then the Beeker name led us to the Beeker Ranch and four murdered people, including Beeker and Dance. Then . . .”
“Stop, boss! I get the idea! What did you call it?”
“A convergence. Lines of suspicion that all converge on Gridley Shanks.”
Lurch shook his head. “Too complicated for me, boss.”
“Well, I’m headed out to Shanks place right now to arrest him on suspicion of murdering Beeker and Dance.”