Thirty-two
With Saturday's morning's daylight still a dark and
featureless steel gray outside, Jim Langton pecked at the computer
keyboard in a spare cubicle in the Eagle Junction substation. Slowly, he
chipped away at the shift's accumulation of paper work. He happened to
glance up in the dimly lit office to have his soul swallowed by dark brown
eyes in a heart-shaped face.
"Morning Deputy Langton. Where's Ben?"
The authoritarian tone of Sheila Davies voice sparked
a flash of anger. "What do you want with Ben?"
She refused to yield to the bite in his tone of
voice. "I don't often see the two of you apart."
"What's it to you?"
She handed him a slip of paper over the monitor.
"What's this?"
"It's a one-eight hundred number. I think he's late
on a really big car payment. Or a boat, maybe?"
Jim's heart pounded. The car. He had warned Ben against spending so much
on a new car, but he had let it slide thinking it would help keep Ben in
line. His face turned beet red knowing what the size of the payment would indicate to the razor-sharp mind lurking behind the
beautiful face beaming down upon him.
Jim could feel himself coming apart at the seams.
He had little in the way of social skills to cope with her inquisition.
Women had never considered him attractive, and he had no expertise to
dealing with them. Gaunt and nervous, he showed his
worse face to the world when people stared at him, especially women.
"Any break in the missing persons case yet?" she
said.
It was not the business of the dispatcher to be
prying into ongoing investigations. It irritated him that she had
abandoned the switchboard to harass him. It occurred to him in the next
moment that she was probably off-duty and pestering him on her own time.
She worked third shift, but haunted the substation during the day as well.
"I don't know," he growled back rather than volunteer
even a simple yes or no response. "Get it from the horse's mouth."
"I sent the sheriff home. He works too many hours."
He ached to spit back a little sarcasm and ask her
why she hadn't gone with.
"I hear John Hartman's a prime suspect,” she goaded,
“as far as you're concerned, anyway. I understand he used to work for the
department."
Jim was tempted to fill her ear with the scoop on
John Hartman.
"He doesn't seem the type, more of a homebody,
really."
Jim kept his mouth shut and basked in pride for
managing the feat.
"I guess it's hard to imagine who else might be
responsible. Who would have anything to gain?"
She planted her shapely derriere on the edge of his
desk. She was small, slender, and alluring enough to set a man's guts to
aching. Jim wished she'd go away and leave him alone. And he didn't want
Ben talking to her again. Ben would be defenseless against her.
"After all," she purred in her soft voice, "what
would Orville Kahl have to gain from a missing daughter?"
The comment startled him. "What?"
"What would he have to gain?"
"He wouldn't have anything to gain," Jim said with
indignation. "That's a crazy idea."
She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. "Who else
could have pulled it off? John Hartman can't be responsible for so many people
disappearing. Where would he hide them all?"
Jim pondered the startling notion. "But
it's Kahl’s kid, his little girl."
"So? His wife is
missing. So are a few other people that have
crossed swords with Mr. High and Mighty down through the years."
Jim was thrown too far off balance to follow her
reasoning. "But why would he harm his own daughter?"
She gave a nonchalant shrug. "Beats me, but he's
blaming John Hartman, which hardly makes any sense either. I heard he
even have tried to have him killed, or do you suppose Roy Rockingham flew
from the logging camp to the Ridge all by his lonesome?”
Which definitely was none of her business. Gene
would fire her ass in a minute for gossiping so irresponsibly.
"You used to work with John," she said. "Do you know
of any reason Mr. Kahl might want him dead?"
Jim shook his head. He closed his mouth when he
discovered it hanging open.
Sheila flashed a brilliant smile. "I've never met
the man myself, being new in town and all. I'd love to see his window.
You've heard about it, haven't you, the biggest picture window in the
world?"
Jim had seen it. Kahl showed all of his visitors.
He had met Kiki, Kahl's Asian sex slave, and Callavier, Kahl's head of
security, and Silverstone, the butler. They were all hard, dangerous
people. Sheila Davies was the same type. He could see it in her eyes.
And there was something very wrong with the questions she was asking. Jim
wondered who she was, or rather who she was working for, to grill him for
information about Kahl.
Sheila Davies was a plant, he suspected, and he
wondered why Gene hadn't noticed.
Jim went back to not talking.
"You'll have to introduce me the next time you
visit." She noticed his expression of alarm and gave him a look of amused
exasperation. "Jim, you can't fool me. You were up at the estate just
yesterday. Take me with the next time. I'd really appreciate it."
She spread it on thick, and he couldn't help the
effect it had on him. He imagined what it would be like to take her along
sometime, to show her how important he was to know men like Orville Kahl.
He tried not to imagine what it would be like to see her naked, or to
touch her body. Fantasies of that nature would torment him unendingly.
Best to keep them out of his mind entirely.
"After all, what harm can a little action on the side
do," she said. "A girl gets bored listening to all the excitement
happening out in the world and being stuck in a cramped office. I'd
rather be out in the thick of things." She leaned a bit closer. "I find
your line of work very exciting."
"I've got lots of exciting work to do," he said,
hoping she couldn't hear the tremor in his tone of voice. "Please excuse
me."
She gazed at him for a time. Studying him. Defying
him. Then she slipped off the edge of his desk and sauntered away. He
had to tear his eyes away from the slow undulation of her body.
He simmered with an anger that was soon a boiling
rage. Maybe Orville Kahl would appreciate knowing that he was suspect in
the disappearance of his own daughter. He chuckled at the thought. Maybe
Kahl would want to know who she was and who she worked for. Maybe Kahl
would ask him to interrogate her in a dark place where nobody could hear
her scream.
He tried to tear himself away from the dangerous
fantasy. But the things he could do to make her talk popped up into his
mind until they became a haunting torment. And afterward, if he let his
fantasy extend far enough, who else would all the suspicion fall upon but
John Hartman?
