Twenty-four
The morning following the first night of surveillance
at the base of the Ridge, Deputy Ben Reeves paced Sheriff Packerson's
office, sipping hot coffee to fight a chill that lingered from the cold rain. Twice he got up to leave. He'd sleep on it and reconsider
saying anything at all about what he had seen. Nobody would believe him,
so why risk his credibility in the eyes of everyone in the department?
The sheriff stopped by at seven to gather paperwork
for his daily visit to the court house in Eagle Junction. He came in his
office smelling of cologne and looking alert.
No one had ever determined a pattern in Gene's
routine, if he had one. He was available when needed and slept and took
his personal time off when things were quiet. He seemed surprised to have
an early visitor. "Ben. Good morning. How did the night scope work in
the rain?"
"Worked fine," Ben said.
Gene paused, sensing something amiss in Ben's
behavior. "I can imagine that it makes for a long night. I'll have your
reliefs in place today. Is Jim behaving himself?"
"Jim checked on that shooting over by Portmount. I
kept an eye on things by myself most of the night."
"So, how did it go?"
Ben sighed and took a deep breath to brace himself.
"Went fine. I might have seen something about daybreak. It's nothing I
put in the night's report. I wouldn't know how to go about putting it
into words."
Gene dropped himself into his high-backed chair.
"You saw someone?"
"I saw John Hartman."
Gene leaned forward in his chair and feigned casual
interest in the disclosure.
"Go on."
"I thought I saw some other people with him."
Gene grew visibly tense. "What people are we talking
about, Ben?"
Ben squirmed in the tight grip of his inner
conflict. He should have gone to Jim first, except that Jim would have
laughed at him, or worse. Jim had never been much good at showing him any
respect.
"It was too foggy for clear identification," he said,
hoping that would be enough to relieve him of the responsibility for the
rest of it. "A man, a woman, a kid maybe. I thought I saw Angel. She's
hard to miss with those skinny legs of hers and that stole around her
neck."
Gene Packerson rose to his feet. "Are you serious
about this?"
Ben shrugged. He nodded reluctantly, breaking out in
a sheen of sweat. "Gene, I swear John was talking to somebody. He was
arguing, throwing his arms around. I thought I saw others, and then there
was nobody there. They were there, and then they were gone, but I'll be
damned if anybody's going to tell me it was my imagination. I saw them."
"Let me have a chronological sequence of these
events."
Ben took a seat facing the desk and tried to look as
casual as Gene was pretending to be. "I watched John leave his house at
about dawn. It had been raining most of the night. He went out the back
way and walked to that big stand of trees. He went into the bushes for a
minute, came back out and got all excited about something like I
described. That's when I saw the others."
"How did you put it? A man, a woman and maybe a
kid? Angel and two others?"
"No, Angel and three others. It looked like he was
arguing with Joyce. The others were further away. I just saw shapes,
Gene. The scope makes people stand out like they're on fire, but I didn't
see anything except John in the scope. I saw the others with my own
eyes."
"You didn't hear what they were talking about?"
"John's voice carried, but I couldn't catch what he
was saying. I didn't hear anything from the others at all."
Gene sat back down and studied Ben's failing
composure. Ben knew his story was going to reap scorn. By the end of the
day, he suspected he was going to be doubting his own sanity.
"I don't know what to make of it," Gene confessed.
"You didn't put any of this down in your report?"
"Gene, I came close to keeping it to myself
entirely."
"Jim wasn't around to back any of this up?"
"No. I was by myself."
"You're telling me you saw our entire missing group
talking to John Hartman out in the middle of nowhere at four in the
morning."
"I swear."
"How did they get there? Where did they go? Where
in God's name are they hiding out?"
Ben wiped some of the grime and sweat from his face.
He ached for a hot shower and a solid eight hours of sleep. "I don't
know."
Gene thought about it for a time and decided upon a
course of action. "I don't know what to make of it, but I'm glad you
confided in me. You called it like you saw it. I don't know what else to
expect from you. Something pretty damned odd is going on, and I'm hoping
like hell we'll get it unraveled before it gets the best of us."
"What do you want me to do?"
Gene shook his head. "Nothing. I'll pay John a
visit, of course. Sit on it, I guess. Forget about the written report.
Don't mention this to anyone. Jim, maybe, if you want to confide in him."
Ben rose to his feet. "Gotcha."
"If you remember anything else that might clarify the
situation, give me a buzz on the spot. Go home and get some sleep. Maybe
it'll help."
"I've got that at the top of my list for the day."
Sheila Davies was coming in the building as Ben was
leaving. She blocked his way at the door momentarily. Lost for a second
in her big brown eyes, he floundered.
"You wanted me to patch you in to Jim Langton last
night," Sheila said. "I'm sorry I had so much trouble getting him back to
you. Was it important?"
Ben shook his head numbly. He had been upset when
he had called and asked for Jim. Sheila would be curious.
"Who did you see?" she asked softly, soothingly.
"You said you thought you saw Angel."
Had he said that over the air? The possibility made
him light-headed with nervousness. Jim would chew his ass out up one side
and down the other. He gave a noncommittal shrug and started to brush
past her.
"Has she been kidnapped, do you think?" She leaned
close, her eyes bright with excitement. "Would we hear about it, do you
think, if Orville Kahl got a demand for a ransom for his daughter?"
It was a possibility that should have occurred to
him. Now that he thought about it, Gene and Jim would think the same
thing. John and the others had gotten together to blackmail Orville Kahl.
"Have you ever met Mr. Kahl, Benjamin?"
Benjamin. His mother had called him Benjamin. "Not
that I can recall," he said, hoping the answer neutral enough to cover
anything contradictory she might run across later.
She flashed a smile, and her beauty disarmed him.
She was like a doe galloping light as air through the world, but a
dangerously fast thinker.
Suddenly jittery with excitement, he needed
desperately to talk to Jim. He should have done so before going to Gene.
"I've gotta go," he mumbled clumsily.
She forced him to pass uncomfortably close. He
hurried down the sidewalk to his car with her eyes boring into his back.
The sun came out and beamed a moment's worth of
brilliant light into the world, then passed again behind rolling,
water-laden clouds.
Once seated behind the wheel of his car, he
reconsidered the conspiracy scenario. It still didn't explain why he had
seen only one figure in the night scope, and how the others had come and
gone so quickly. Jim would be quick to point that out, but it had been
more than just his imagination. Angel had turned and looked right at
him. She had smiled. How could she have known about the blind?
Ben started the engine and burned rubber trying to
escape the blunder of ever having ever shared the incident with anyone.
