Powder’s first stop was the morgue in County Hospital. He went to look at the body of the heart attack woman. It was possible that he would be reminded of one of the pictures in his case file.
The body reminded him of no one. The flesh of the face was too badly mutilated.
As he looked at the woman’s mortal remains, Powder felt unaccustomedly agitated. Sick of the aggravation in the world.
Dissatisfied with his own life.
He left to go to the address Agnes had provided as a match for the telephone number on the insulation leaflet.
It was a small brick house with paint flaking off the window frames. There were no signs whatever of commercial activity.
Powder rang the bell.
A small woman with a cane answered the door and smiled at him. “Catalog?”
“No, ma’am,” Powder said. “I’m looking for the Cozy Hoosier Insulation Company. I understand that they operate somewhere close by, and I wondered if you could direct me.”
The woman asked him to repeat the name. She thought about it. Then said, “I’m sorry, young man. Never heard of ’em.”
“Excuse me for disturbing you,” Powder said.
“That’s quite all right. I’ve found life very quiet lately. A little disturbance makes the day more interesting,” the woman said. She closed the door.
Powder drove to the East Tenth Street address given in the phone book for Cozy Hoosier. It was a small administrative office in a street storefront. On presenting his ID Powder was immediately shown in to the boss.
“What can I do for you. Lieutenant?” the man asked nervously. He was short and fat, and as he began to sweat he wiped his forehead with a white handkerchief he took from his desk drawer.
Powder showed him the leaflet. He read it slowly.
Then he read it again.
He looked at the telephone. He buried his mouth in his handkerchief. “Jesus God,” he said. He closed his eyes. “The money I paid for that printing!”
On his way back to the department. Powder stopped at Lock and Key.
Although the store did not have a large street frontage, it was very deep and well stocked.
Powder did not see William Weaver. But two young women glanced at each other as he came in and without speaking decided which would assist him.
Powder asked to see Weaver, but as he did so. Weaver appeared from an office room in the back of the store.
The clerk, a slightly built woman in her early twenties, left without comment.
“Hello,” Weaver said impassively.
“I was driving this way, thinking about absent wives, so I thought I’d stop in and see how you were coping.”
“I see,” Weaver said.
“I haven’t been here before. Quite a place.”
“Thank you,” Weaver said.
“You have three employees, I believe.”
“That’s right.”
“Only two here. One has the day off?”
“Yes.”
“I sort of expect a security store to have male clerks. Is the third one a man?”
“No,” Weaver said. Then, “My wife did all the hiring.”
“Oh,” Powder said. “That’s interesting. And did she do the firing too?”
“When it was necessary. But she has good judgment about staff.”
“You must have confidence in them if you are going to leave the store on Friday and Saturday. Pretty busy days, I would have thought.”
“Sometimes,” Weaver said.
“Who will be in charge?”
“Miss Hilgemeier.”
“Which one is she?”
“She’s not here today.”
“How are you getting along, without Annie? I take it she’s not returned?”
“No.”
“Or called?”
“No.”
Powder waited.
“I’m coping,” Weaver said finally.
“I was thinking,” Powder said, and then paused to look at the photoelectric door openers.
“Yes?”
“Have you canceled the credit cards which Annie took with her?”
Weaver hesitated. Then he said, “No.”
Powder looked him in the eyes. At last, he said, “That’s pretty cunning.”
“What do you mean. Lieutenant?”
“If it were me, I’d probably cancel credit cards my wife took because I wouldn’t want her spending my money. But it’s cunning because if she uses them, then you’ll have an idea where she’s gone.”
“I suppose I will,” Weaver said.
“Well, much as I would like to stay and gas some more, I’ve got to be getting on now,” Powder said. “See you again soon.”
For a few minutes after he returned. Powder worked on the Listing of the Missing, which he distributed monthly to hospitals, travel points, employment offices, housing bureaus, welfare offices, social and community workers, and to other police departments in the Midwest.
Often, work on the Listing was a reminder of his irritation with police planners for their failure to see the advantage of making the document bigger, more frequent, and backed with personal visits by Missing Persons staff.
This time. Powder was less impassioned. When he decided to close the file, he announced to Fleetwood, “With more money, we could get it out every two weeks, maybe, find one extra kid.”
Fleetwood was dealing with the paperwork from a couple whose foster son had been gone from their home for two days. She didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about.
At five to five Powder called his ex-wife at her place of work.
“Good heavens. What do you want? Make it quick I can’t stay on the telephone for personal calls.”
“This is not a personal call,” Powder said.
“You know what I mean, Leroy.”
“It’s about your son.”
“Ricky? What about Ricky? Has something happened to him? Is he hurt? What’s happened? Don’t mess around, Leroy, tell me, for God’s sake!”
“He’s not hurt.”
“What’s happened?”
“Nothing’s happened,” Powder said irritably.
“You wouldn’t call me about him if nothing had happened.”
“I just wanted to know when you saw him last.”
“What’s wrong? You’re talking about him like you were tracking him. What has happened, Leroy Powder?”
“Nothing’s happened. He just seems to have a lot of money all of a sudden. I called you to ask, in a civilized way, whether you made a financial contribution when you saw him last. That’s all.”
“He’s all right?”
“As all right as he ever is,” Powder said.
“Always facetious.”
“Always,” Powder agreed. “Did you give him money, or not?”
“So what if I did?”
“Several thousand bucks?”
“Now where would I get cash like that?” she snapped.
“The question that I want to answer is where he got cash like that,” Powder said.
“I’m sure that there is nothing wrong.”
“Good. Where did he get it?”
“He lived here for about three months, until a couple of weeks ago.”
“You’re not telling me he opened a savings account with the rent he didn’t pay you?”
“No, but he was doing some work on the side with some friends.”
“What sort of work?”
“I don’t know what sort of work. I didn’t pry. But he was working very hard. Evenings, weekends.”
“Doing what?”
“I said, I don’t know what.”
“He’s just bought a fancy new car,” Powder said. “Any parent would be entitled to ask how he paid for it.”
“By working, of course. How else?”
Too involved to allow for the fact that she couldn’t see him over the telephone. Powder shrugged.
“Trust him, Leroy.”
They hung up.
When he turned to look, he saw that Fleetwood was watching him.
For a moment he stared back. Then he chuckled. “I don’t know about you, kid, but I’m beat.”
She said, “It’s been a long day.”
He rose and looked at the log.
They had recorded twenty-three phone calls as a result of the stories in the Star and the afternoon News. Some had been referred to Bull; two had been opened as new cases in Missing Persons.
“The power of advertising,” Powder commented sourly as he turned the inside lock of the front door of the office. “But you already know about that, with your Heart Line Wheelchair Appeal.”
Fleetwood, who looked gray and tired, said nothing.
“We’ll have another batch tomorrow morning, when the Star reports no progress today.”
“Did you want me to go to the hospital in the morning?” Fleetwood asked.
“No.”
“All right.”
“Why put off till morning what you can do tonight?”