“She’s better. Sleeping,” he told Thatcher as they left the house.
Less than five minutes after Scotty’s announcement that Bernie Croft had been seen heading for Lefty’s, the sheriff and Thatcher were speeding toward it, having no idea if their quarry was still there.
Croft’s notable town car, with Hennessy behind the wheel, had been spotted taking the turnoff to Lefty’s by a deputy who’d come off guard duty at the Johnsons’ property and was on his way back into town.
Bill took the turnoff now but didn’t go far off the highway before stopping. As he checked his pistol to make sure it was loaded, he said, “I’m waiting for that warrant.”
“I’ll reconnoiter.” Having checked his own Colt, Thatcher clicked the cylinder back into place and opened the passenger door. “Just in case I don’t come back, that poisoned bottle of bourbon is in your kitchen cabinet behind a box of oatmeal.”
“Only you would think of that right now.”
“Could make the difference in a verdict.” He hooked Barker’s rifle onto his shoulder by the strap.
“Take these, too.” Bill passed Thatcher a pair of binoculars. Thatcher recognized them as army issue and looked at Bill, who said, “They were among Tim’s effects.”
Thatcher left the car door ajar and jogged over to the trees that bordered the road. They were sparse, providing only marginal cover as he moved among them. The sun was high and hot. Last night’s rain steamed up from the spongy ground. Thatcher was breathing heavily by the time the roof of the roadhouse came into view.
He proceeded in a crouch. Still about a hundred yards away from the building, he spotted Croft’s auto parked in front. A boulder provided him an advantageous spot from which to take a closer look. Situating himself behind the outcropping, he propped his elbows on it and looked through the binoculars.
He wasn’t surprised to see Hennessy leaning against the front fender of Croft’s car, smoking a cigarette. He whisked a fly off his face. He took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped the back of his neck with it. He turned once and looked behind him down the road. Seeing nothing, he faced the building again.
Thatcher focused the binoculars on the screened entrance, and then on each of the front windows, but could see nothing through any of them. He watched for a couple more minutes. Nothing happened. He was about to turn away and return to report to Bill, when the screened door was pushed open and Gert appeared.
She called out something to Hennessy. Thatcher didn’t catch her words, but the former IRA fighter responded immediately by tossing away his cigarette and climbing the steps to go inside.
* * *
Laurel had lost track of time under the barrage of Croft’s questions, few of which she knew the answers to. He didn’t believe that, so he continued relentlessly.
He hadn’t hit her again, but the threat of his doing so filled her with dread. Her ears were still ringing. The side of her face throbbed. She could feel it swelling.
The blow had also fueled her contempt. She took pride in knowing that the only way the Honorable Mayor Croft had managed to subdue her was to strike her while her hands were bound. Some big man he was.
He never raised his voice. He ignored Gert’s snorts of derision over his “going too easy on her.” At her suggestion that she take a whack at Laurel, Croft had said, “I don’t want her dead.”
“I ain’t gonna kill her till she tells me where she’s hid that girl. She ain’t reappeared at the shack.”
“You see, Laurel?” Croft spoke with the dulcet tone and phony smile of a public official making a campaign promise. “If you’ll just tell us what we want to know, we can end this unpleasantness.”
What you’ll end is me.
She feared she wouldn’t live out this day, but she didn’t know the answers to Croft’s questions about Chester Landry. Why would he think she would? And she would never give Corrine over to Gert.
Croft asked her the same questions repeatedly, her answers never varied, but she began replying with mounting hostility. With her hands bound behind her, and Gert’s evident affection for her shotgun, Laurel didn’t have any means of fighting back except to show her loathing and defiance of both of them.
“Let’s try one more time, Laurel,” Croft said. “Landry went behind my back and offered to form a partnership with you, didn’t he?”
“No.”
“You’ve admitted that he returned to your house last night.”