“He’s a brute, Bill. Others have tried. No one can get near him.”
“I can,” Thatcher said, still speaking directly to the sheriff and trying to ignore the butt-in. “That’ll be easy enough to check with Mr. Barker. By the time I left his place, the sun was going down. I stopped by a secondhand store he’d recommended, but it was closed. I got back to the boardinghouse a little before seven o’clock. After supper, I went out on the porch and sat for a spell. A dozen men can vouch for that.
“Mr. Henry Hobson would vouch for me, too. When I left for the army, the ranch didn’t have telephone service yet. It was out too far. They may have gotten it by now. If not, by hook or crook you could get word to Mr. Hobson.” As an afterthought, he added, “When you do, ask him to please send me my gear. It’s locked in a trunk in the bunkhouse. He’ll know.”
He forced himself to relax his shoulders and sit back in his chair. He’d been as honest and earnest as he knew how to be.
But they locked him up anyway.
* * *
For the next two hours, heated discussion filtered through a door that separated the main room from the cell block. Thatcher had been placed in the last cell. He was too far away to catch all the words, but he heard enough to piece together what was happening.
The mayor—Bernie Croft was his name—overstepped the duties of his office. Sheriff Amos resented his interference and told him so, although it did no good.
Dr. Driscoll cycled between frustration, rage, and despair.
The highway department was alerted to be on the lookout for Mila Driscoll. It would be a hostage situation; she couldn’t drive.
It was suggested that the Texas Rangers be brought into the investigation, but none seemed enthusiastic about the prospect and postponed making a decision.
Boats had been launched to search every body of water within a twenty-five-mile radius.
Volunteers on horseback and in motor vehicles, many with dogs, had converged on the sheriff’s office, creating chaos and a lot of noise, until they were organized into groups and dispatched to search assigned areas.
Soon after their departure, the deputy named Scotty brought Thatcher a cup of coffee, a biscuit, and a sausage patty from a nearby café. Thatcher thanked him, but the deputy didn’t acknowledge it.
Thatcher heard his name repeated hundreds of times beyond the door, but hadn’t always been able to discern the context in which he was mentioned. He could guess, though.
On paper, he looked like a stranger of limited means, who’d wandered into town after having been in a fight, and was seen being friendly with a woman who was now missing. It added up.
It adds up had become the mayor’s refrain. But the sheriff had been reluctant to act on a supposition, especially since they didn’t have a witness to a crime or one iota of evidence on which to base a charge against Thatcher Hutton.
“We don’t even know that a crime has been committed,” Thatcher had heard the sheriff exclaim.
That had been followed by the doctor’s hoarse shout, “Then where is she?”
Now, as Thatcher lay on the bunk staring up at the low ceiling, he heard the telephone ring, but it had been ringing often, so he didn’t place any importance on this call until Scotty reappeared and instructed him to put his hands, wrists together, through the bars of the cell.
After being cuffed, he was guided back into the main room. He knew he must look disheveled, but he had fared the intervening hours better than Dr. Driscoll had. There were dark circles under his eyes. His unknotted necktie lay against his chest, which seemed to have been scooped out like a watermelon. He sat stoop-shouldered, his listless hands dangling between his knees, vacant eyes staring at the floor between his shoes.
Thatcher had seen men fresh from a days-long battle looking just like that, like they’d been to hell and back, and were wondering if having survived it was for the better or worse.
Hulking Harold was absent.
The mayor no longer looked smug, but rather like he’d eaten a bad tamale.
Sheriff Amos merely looked tired. He had one hip hitched on a corner of the desk with his nameplate on it. He smoothed his mustache as Thatcher came in. “Mr. Hutton, I just got off the phone with the Potter County sheriff. I explained our situation here. Telephone operator told him there’s no line