Blood Walk Part 19

"He's put three men in the hospital. You could have paid for that walk with your life." The deputy handed back the driver's license. "Suppose you forget about looking at the night sky and go on back to town."

Garreth went, shaking in retrospective fear. But gradually, new feelings replaced the fear. He had found a plentiful source of blood, and he had controlled the bull. Best yet, he had not had to kill for his meal. He had better find a cover for his nocturnal hunting trips, though. The next deputy might not believe that he was driving for lack of anything better to do.

He would take up "jogging." Everyone ran these days. Tomorrow before he set out south to look at more school records, he would buy a pair of running shoes and a warm-up suit to lend his story credence. But maybe he should be a bit more careful, too, about what cattle he fed on.

12

One day . . . two . . . a week. Garreth combed the records of the towns around Hays, places with exotic names like Antonino, Schoenchen, Liebenthal, Munjor, Bazine, Galatia, and, of course, Pfeifer. He could hardly afford to overlook Pfeifer. But in all of them, he drew a blank. Deciding that mentioning Lane's name in any connection might leak back to alarm her, he revised his questions to ask about any Bieber girl who had left home late in her teens during the thirties, possibly to go to Europe or one of the coasts. That should sound innocent and expected in light of his cover story to directly question as many Biebers as possible.

The question brought some response. A number of older people said, "I remember that. She went to the college in Hays and ran off with one of her professors. Caused a big scandal." They spoke with a curious accent, hissing final s's, turning w,'s to v's and v's to f's.

"Do you remember her name and where she lived?" Garreth asked.One old woman said, "She was one of Axel Bieber's granddaughters, I think. Axel was my mother's half brother's cousin. They lived in Trubel up in Bellamy County."

Trubel? Garreth checked the letters. No, the B would not fit the postmark. Still . . . Heart pounding in hope, he headed for Trubel.

It proved to be another dead town . . . six houses, a general store-c.u.m-gas station and post office, and the inevitable grain elevator. The high school had burned near the close of World War II, destroying all its records, and had never been rebuilt.

Garreth tried to swallow his disappointment. "There used to be a family here headed by a man named Axel Bieber. Are any of them still around?" he asked the man at the general store.

"There's Rance and Ed Bieber farming south of here about six miles," was the reply.

Garreth lost his way twice before finding the farm. Rance Bieber turned out to be a man in his thirties, a great-grandson of Axel Bieber. He knew nothing about one of his father's cousins running away with a college professor. His father, Edward, was off in the state capital at a meeting protesting grain prices. His mother had been dead for twenty years.

"Where can I find one of your father's brothers or sisters who might know this cousin I'm looking for?"

"Well, the closest are an uncle in Eden and an aunt in Bellamy."

Garreth took the names and addresses and went to see them. Both said essentially the same thing, that they knew of the cousin- the scandal had set the family on ear-but they did not know the woman personally.

The aunt in Bellamy said, "My Grandpa Bieber wouldn't have anything to do with Uncle Ben-that was her father. My grandfather was a Lutheran, you see, and Uncle Ben married a Catholic woman and joined her church. Grandpa never forgave him for becoming a Papist."

"Where does your uncle live, do you know?"

"He's dead now, I think."

Graves and more graves. Disappointment settled in a cold lump in Garreth's stomach. "Where did heused to live, then?"

"Oh, up in Baumen in the northern part of the county."

The lump in Garreth's stomach dissolved. Baumen was one of the towns on his list from which the letter to Lane might have been mailed.

That day he paid off his motel bill and moved his base of operations to Baumen. After checking the cash he had left, Garreth bypa.s.sed the single motel to check into the Driscoll Hotel downtown. Fortunately, while old, it was clean, but even at its low prices, he could not afford to stay there long . . . not unless he found a job soon.

He swore unhappily, resenting the time that working would steal from his hunt. Still, what else could he do? He had to have money for gas and his room. He would check the local high school, he decided. Maybe that would end his hunt for Lane here and he would not have to stay any longer.

13

For a change, the records for the Baumen High School were stored in an attic instead of a bas.e.m.e.nt. Like the bas.e.m.e.nts, the attic was dusty, but unlike a bas.e.m.e.nt, it was also hot and stuffy. The school princ.i.p.al, a man named Schaeffer, had not been able to find the graduation pictures for the years 1930 to 1936 and Lane had not been in the '37 to '40 pictures, so he took Garreth up to the files. "There's a picture in their school records. That cabinet should hold all the Biebers."

Garreth stood at the cabinet, bending down to go through its second drawer and praying for the princ.i.p.al to leave. As long as the man breathed down his neck, he had to check each and every file instead of being able to go straight to where Lane's file would be located.

"How can you see up here with those gla.s.ses on?" Schaeffer asked.

Eyes. Garreth thought carefully about that, then took off the gla.s.ses and hung them on his shirt pocket. He twisted around, blinking in the light, to look straight at Schaeffer. "Don't you think it's hot and dusty up here? I know you'd be more comfortable in your office. You don't have to stay with me."

Schaeffer's face went blank for a moment, then he mopped at his brow. "It's a shame we can't afford air conditioning for this building. Mr. Mikaelian, if you don't mind being left alone, I think I'll go back to my office."

"I'll be fine."

He watched Schaeffer leave, and the moment the door closed behind the princ.i.p.al's figure, he slammed the drawer shut and pulled open one on the bottom. He flipped through the files, past the Aarons, Calebs, Carolyns, and Eldoras. His hand paused at Garrett Bieber out of simple reaction to the similarity to his own name, and then went on, through the letters of the alphabet to the M's.

The folder there came to his fingers like iron to a magnet. BIEBER,Madelaine. He pulled it out of the drawer and spread it open on the floor. First the picture. He studied it. Though obviously of a young girl and brown with age, it was recognizably Lane. A sigh of satisfaction came up from his soul. He had found her origin. From here, hopefully, he could reach out to capture her. He paged through the record of her four years in the school, looking for anything more he might learn about her from it.

She had been a good student, he saw, earning straight A's. She had graduated first academically in her cla.s.s of ten, but had not been valedictorian at graduation. The grades he somehow expected, but the lack of honor surprised him; that is, it did until he noticed the long list of disciplinary actions against her. She had, various teachers stated, an uncontrolled temper and frequently became involved in fights-the knock-down, tooth-and-claw variety-with both other girls and an occasional boy. Garreth saw the young woman who had attacked a prost.i.tute for stealing her supper . . . but a very different person from Lane Barber. Could any of those teachers still be alive to appreciate how well Lane had learned to control her temper?

The record also gave her parents' names, Benjamin and Anna, and her home address, 513 Pine Street. Garreth made a note of it, though he doubted that it remained valid after all these years.

When he had all out of the file that he thought he could use, he returned it to the drawer, then he had only to sit in the stifling, dusty heat to wait until enough time had elapsed for searching the files before leaving the attic.

He headed for a phone. The phone book listed five Biebers, one of them an Anna living at 513 Pine. Smiling at the clerk in the high school office, he copied down the addresses of all the Biebers. "I guess I'll talk to a few people. Thanks for the help."

He started, of course, with Anna Bieber at 513 Pine, just a few blocks from the high school. A middle-aged woman answered the door. Her face bore similarities to Lane's. "Mrs. Bieber?" he asked. If she was not Lane's mother, perhaps she was a sister.

"Come on in," the woman said. "I'll get Mother."

Mrs. Bieber turned out to be a tiny, frail-looking wisp, nothing like the strapping woman Garreth would have expected to sp.a.w.n an amazon like Lane. Like her daughter, though, she looked younger than her years. Though she moved slowly, she still walked straight, without the bend of age, and her eyes met Garreth's face directly, undimmed. For a moment, the similarity to his own grandmother seemed so strong, panic fluttered in him, and he wondered if she, too, possibly recognized him for what he was.

But her hand did not touch the crucifix around her neck and she cordially invited him to sit down. At the end of listening to his story, she looked him over with searching eyes. "My daughter Mada ran away at the age of eighteen with a professor from Fort Hays. May I see the picture you have?" She spoke with the distinctive accent he had heard so often these past days.

"It isn't your daughter," he said, handing over the photograph of Grandma Doyle. "I've been to the high school, and your daughter's school picture doesn't match mine. But I thought maybe you would remember a relative who looked like the girl in my picture."

She studied it. "I'm sorry. No." She handed it back.

Now what? How did he bring up Lane without asking questions that would arouse suspicion, and without appearing to pry?

Garreth pretended to examine his photograph. "I wonder how anyone can just leave home and never go back. I hope you hear from your daughter?"

The old woman beamed. "Mada calls every week, no matter where she is. She's a singer and she travels a good deal, even to Mexico and Canada and j.a.pan. I'd be satisfied with a letter; calling must be terribly expensive, but she says she enjoys hearing my voice."

His breath caught. Jackpot! He did not have to pretend delight. "Every week? How lucky you are."

"I know." She launched into stories about friends who had children who hardly ever called or wrote.

Garreth only half listened. Called every week. Could he reasonably ask where Lane had called from the last time? Knowing even just a city- Belatedly he realized Mrs. Bieber had said Lane's name again. "I'm sorry. What was that?"

"I said, for someone so huge and awkward as a girl, Mada became a very attractive woman. She's still handsome."

He blinked. "You see her often too?" Could she be somewhere near?

"Every Thanksgiving or Christmas," Mrs. Bieber said with pride "She always comes home for one of the holidays."

Garreth wanted to yell with happiness and hug the old woman-Lanecame home. Lady Luck, you're a darling! Instead of running around the world looking for her, all he had to do was wait . . . find a job here, make friends with Mrs. Bieber so he would know when to expect Lane . . . and let the fugitive come to him.

1

The Help Wanted section of the local paper had little to offer Garreth. The jobs advertised all appeared to be day positions. "Is there night work available anywhere in town?" he asked the Driscoll Hotel's desk clerk.

She pushed her gla.s.ses up on her nose. "Well, there's the drive-ins, but high school kids usually work there. I suppose you could try the Pioneer Cafe up the street and the Main Street Grill across from us. They stay open late, until nine o'clock, and until eleven weekends."

That late? Gee whiz.Aloud, he said, "Thanks." And left the hotel.

In the street outside he stood orienting himself. Baumen was a far cry from San Francisco. He had never seen a main street with railroad tracks down the middle. With two lanes of traffic and two strips of diagonal parking on each side, the far side of the street looked almost as distant as the far end of Baumen's three blocks of stores. Like the grain elevators, though, the buildings intrigued him. Everything here seemed to be built of that buff sandstone: barns, houses and stores, high schools, courthouses, even fenceposts. He rather liked it, both for the easy color and the way it gave human habitation an appearance of having grown organically from the prairie around it.

Heading up the street toward the Pioneer Cafe first, he found himself almost alone in the late afternoon. With the stores closed for almost half an hour now, the street lay empty of all but a scattering of parked cars. A placard in the ticket window of the Driscoll Theatre next to the hotel announced showtimes on Friday, Sat.u.r.day, and Sunday. Garreth eyed it in pa.s.sing. A weekend theatre? What did these people do nights?

Three-quarters of the way up the block, all thoughts of entertainment were wiped from his mind. The breeze carried a foul taint, a smell that turned the air turgid in his lungs. Garlic! He spun away. So much for the Pioneer. But would the Main Street be any better?

He crossed his fingers.

Across the tracks and down the other side of the street, he stopped at the drug store, which also served as the local newsstand, but they carried no papers from San Francisco or anywhere in California. A few doors farther down, a display in Weaver's Office Supplies includedI Ching along with other books, Bibles, religious jewelry, and stationery. The book brought a stabbing pang of homesickness.

Give it up,a voice in him urged.Go home and tell Serruto where to find Lane. Let him handle it. You don't belong here.

The very logical, sensible suggestion tempted him, but he shook his head.Get thee behind me, angel. It's my case; she's my collar.

At the doorway of the Main Street, he paused, cautiously sniffing. The air smelled of grease but no garlic. He went in. The menu, stuck in a holder in the middle of the table, offered a range of meals from breakfasts and hamburgers to chicken-fried steak, but nothing even vaguely Italian.

"Take your order?" the single waitress asked.

"I'd like to speak with the manager, please."

She raised a brow. "You mean the owner? Verl," she called to a man at the grill, "someone to see you."

Garreth came up to the counter and introduced himself.

"Verl Hamilton," the stocky, balding man replied. "Aren't you the kid looking for his relatives?"

Word had spread. He nodded. "And I need a job in order to afford the search. Do you have anything open?"

Hamilton eyed him. "I like to see a man's eyes when I'm talking to him."

Garreth took off the trooper gla.s.ses.

"You know how to cook?"

He considered lying, then shook his head. "TV dinners and hot dogs and marshmallows over an open fire is about all."

Hamilton sighed. "I could sure use an evening cook."

"I'm a fast learner. I was a police officer for eight years and a couple of times had to learn new skills in a hurry for an undercover a.s.signment. And I really do need a job," he finished earnestly.

The waitress said, "Verl, I've subbed on the grill. Let him wait tables and I'll cook."

Hamilton pursed his lips and tugged an ear, then nodded. "We'll give it a try."

Garreth grinned. "When can I start?"

"Tomorrow. Come in at three o'clock."

"Verl, tomorrow's Thursday," the waitress said.

"d.a.m.n." Hamilton frowned. "How about starting right now? It'll only be a few hours but you can see what's going on.

Tomorrow you can give me your social security number."

"What's wrong with Thursday?" Garreth asked.

The waitress replied, "The stores stay open late. Everyone comes in to town to shop and they stop here for coffee and dessert.

It's no time to break in."

So Garreth quickly found himself in his shirtsleeves, sitting at a table with Sharon Hagedorn, the waitress, nodding while she explained the table numbering and how to write up orders. They went through it twice, then she turned him loose.

The job seemed easy enough, barring the tiring drag of daylight on him. Sunset helped that. The plates lightened and his step quickened. The novelty soon wore off, though. He saw that it would be a job, something to earn money. Nothing more.

Shortly before closing time, a cop walked in to a chorus of: "Hi, Nat," from Hamilton and Sharon. Garreth had seen the car park outside, a tan-and-dark brown compact with a sleek Aerodynic light bar on top. The uniform of the stocky cop had the same colors as the car, a tan shirt with shoulder taps and pocket flaps of dark brown to match the trousers.

The cop, whose name tag said TOEWS, slid onto a stool at the counter, eyeing Garreth. "You're new."

Garreth nodded. "Coffee?"