29

Nobody in Carbondale remembered the man who had gone to the state fair with Gabe and Sharon. One waitress at Denny’s remembered seeing Sharon and Gabe talking to someone seated nearby, but had no memory of who it was. She thought he might have been Gabe’s brother.

Sharon’s relatives were difficult to interview. She had a father named Walt who had pretty much given up on her shortly after she had reached puberty. When she was twelve he had put her to work in his hardware store for a few hours every Saturday, sweeping up and washing windows. By the time she was thirteen she would breeze in for an hour or so in the morning, take an advance on her pay from the register, and then come in on Sunday when the store was closed to make up the time. That way she didn’t have to do as much actual work. She spent her evenings on the phone, not doing homework.

Sharon’s mother, Matty, was essentially the opposition. When Walt said the girl was lazy, Matty said, “Sharon is a dreamer.”

Till had learned many years ago to ask questions and then show nothing but attention to the answers.

Walt said, “She did inherit one thing—her mother’s looks. She’s a very pretty girl, but it wasn’t a great advantage for her. When she was really young, I could see older guys had an eye on her. With some of them, you could see all they were waiting for was for me to stop watching.”

Matty said, “Sharon had to work in the hardware store as soon as she was in middle school. She had to learn to get along with grown men, understand what a torque wrench was and a socket wrench, and still learn to grow into a fine young woman.”

Behind Matty, Walt was rolling his eyes. He said, “Sharon grew up. We had great hopes for her. We wanted her to go to college, but what she accomplished was to be Gabriel Tolliver’s girlfriend.” He sighed.

“What do you think happened in Springfield?” Till asked. “They met this man and went to the fair with him, and then what?”

“I don’t know,” Walt said.

Matty said, “We’re not so sure there was a man. Where do we get him from? Gabe’s brother says Gabe told him there was a man who would drive them to Springfield. Who does that?”

“You doubt the story?”

“I mean it doesn’t sound likely. Gabe had a car.”

Till said, “Gabe and Sharon apparently left it at Gabe’s brother’s house while they were gone.”

“Did they? Who saw it there?” Matty said. “I mean besides Gabe’s brother.”

“It’s still there,“ said Till.

“I think maybe he didn’t take his own car because he was going to rob a bank.”

Till said nothing.

“Who do you think robs banks?” she asked. “Losers like Gabe Tolliver. Men who never will amount to much, who work in their brother’s auto shop and pump gas on weekends. And I think he took our beautiful Sharon and got her in the worst kind of trouble.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I think he took her with him to sell her to somebody. That’s the only other man in this.” She was beginning to produce tears at the thought of it. “I think he decided this little town was too small for him, and that he could start over again as a big shot. I think he was changing his life, rolling the dice. I think he gave his brother his car in exchange for lying about him and Sharon. I think he took all the money they had, and then went to Springfield to sell her and rob the bank. You can check all of that. The police found no money in their apartment. None.”

“Do you happen to have some photographs that I could take and reproduce? I promise I’ll give the originals back.”

“What do you want to do with them?”

“I’ve been looking for a man for months who might be the one who went to Springfield with Sharon and Gabe,” he said. “If he has her, then she’s in danger.”

“What good is a picture of Sharon?”

“I don’t know his name, and I don’t have a picture of him. But if he’s with Sharon, then a picture of her might be just as good.”

Matty stood and went to a large sideboard and pulled out a family album. She opened it and browsed. He could see that it was full of pictures. Now and then she would choose one, look at it, and set it aside. Till was struck by how similarly she and Gabe’s brother behaved.

Till accepted the pictures without looking at them. “Thank you. I’ll do my best to get to her as quickly as I can.” He walked to the door. “I’ll have her call when I’ve got her.”

Till drove out of town toward Springfield. The three of them had gone to the fair, and there might be some news footage or a security camera on the cashiers’ booths. If they had stayed at a hotel, there would certainly be some captured images there. Nearly all hotels had cameras mounted in their hallways.

If there was footage from the hotel’s cameras, he knew what it would be. At some point during the night, the Boyfriend and Sharon would be seen entering the same room.

Till sat in a hotel office watching the videotape for the tenth time. He watched the young man come out of the elevator, look at the sign on the wall telling him which hallway room 680 was on, and walk that way, toward the camera. He was wearing a thin nylon windbreaker and a baseball cap.

He was the man Till had seen in Phoenix and again in Boston, always as a blur or a shadow, or in this case, a black-and-white image with half-defined boundaries. He had the squared shoulders and the swimmer’s build, but Till couldn’t make out the face. This man had already walked around the state fair for a whole day, but his gait looked like the step of an athlete who was well-rested. He kept his head down most of the time, and the baseball cap shielded his face. The weather in the upper Midwest had been hot all week, so probably he was wearing the windbreaker to conceal a weapon.

The next video Till watched answered a few questions he’d had. It was the girl, Sharon. She stepped out of the elevator, walked up the hall to the same door, looked behind her to be sure she was alone, and then knocked. She put her ear to the door, and then knocked again, a little harder. She tried to look in the peephole, but the door opened, and she slipped inside and the door closed again. Later, she came out alone and went to the elevator.

The hotel security man said, “Would you like any copies of this?”

“No, thanks,” said Till. “I didn’t find what I was looking for. But thanks very much for your help.” When he had asked to see the tape he had given the man five hundred-dollar bills.

Till left the office, and walked up the corridor to the hotel lobby, thinking about how he must look on the cameras right now. He went out and got into his car. It was as he had supposed. This girl was another one who had seen the Boyfriend and thought, “What the hell. It wouldn’t do any harm,” and slept with him. She had probably been the one to talk Gabe into walking into that bank to withdraw the Boyfriend’s money for him.

Till took out the collection of photographs of Sharon and looked at them. She was pretty enough, and if she wasn’t innocent, at least she looked naive and uncalculating. People would see the pictures and feel an instant sympathy. He selected a few of the best, and then put them away so they wouldn’t get bent. He looked at the road map that had come with the rental car, started the engine, and drove north toward Chicago.

Tonight he would check into a hotel and begin working on the first Web site. Tomorrow he would begin getting appointments with the advertising departments of the largest cable television companies in the Midwest. Then he’d fly to Los Angeles and start getting appointments there. He could see the ads now—the beautiful skin, the blue eyes, the shining blond hair: “Have you seen Sharon?”