He handed me the notice on Farrell. I looked at it. “No-o. I don’t think so. Wait a minute, though. Maybe I have, at that. When I was fishing up there yesterday. Man was having trouble with his motor. No, he was older than this. Must have been forty-something and much thinner.”
“That picture was made ten years ago. It was probably him, all right. The dope I got on him is that he’s living in a shack pretty far up the lake. Take this along, and make sure you’ve got the right man before you bring him in. The tip may be a false alarm. You know how it is.”
“O.K.,” I said. I went over and got the gun and a pair of handcuffs. “I’ll rent a boat and motor down at the store.”
“Watch yourself, in case he is Farrell. He’s wanted for murder. You want Hurd to go along?”
I looked at Hurd and winked. “Not unless he wants to handle the motor while I troll for bass.”
“O.K., then. You’d better get started. It’s a long trip.” He reached for his hat. “Wait and I’ll walk down with you. I want to get a cup of coffee.”
At the bend of the stairs there was no one in sight for a moment. He took an envelope out of his coat and handed it to me and I shoved it in my pocket. “Good luck,” he said. “And remember what I told you.” Don’t come back, I thought. Out on the sidewalk there were several people standing around and we couldn’t say any more. “I’ll see you tonight,” I said, and he waved and started across the square toward Barone’s.
I went down to the garage for one of the county cars. While I was waiting for it I ducked into the rest room and checked the envelope. It was all there, in hundreds, fifties, and twenties.
The boy brought the car down and I got in and headed up past the square. It was beginning to be hot now, and I could hear the pigeons cooing up under the eaves of the courthouse.
You remember Jack Marshall? I thought. Big fellow, lived around here a long time. Quite a football player in high school. Daddy was a district judge, but he never did amount to much. Got to be a deputy sheriff and was killed out there in the swamp somewhere. Never did find his body.
Marshall? Jack Marshall? Name sounds familiar. Whatever became of him, anyway?
I swung around the courthouse, and then I was headed out the street going south toward the highway.
Seventeen
As I drove down toward the south end of the lake, I was busy with the fact that Shevlin hadn’t gone all the way down there yesterday with his fish. It wasn’t a very big thing, but I knew it could lead to talk. When I had parked the car by the boat place I walked across the road to the restaurant and ordered a cup of coffee. The proprietor himself, a sour-looking man in his fifties, was on duty behind the counter. He brought the coffee and then went back to looking at the morning paper.
“You know anything about the people who live up the lake?” I asked.
He turned a page, glancing up at me once and seeing the gun and the white hat. “Ain’t many up there now. Used to be a few trappers, but most of ‘em are gone the last few years.”
I took out the wanted notice and shoved it across the counter. “Ever see this man around?”
He studied it for a moment, then shook his head. “No. Don’t think so. Looks a little like a man up there I buy fish from once in a while, but he’s older than this.”
I knew he had recognized the picture, all right, but was reluctant to get mixed up in anything involving the police. He said nothing about the fact that Shevlin hadn’t shown up yesterday.
“This is an old picture,” I said, rambling on like a fool. “It’s probably the right man, all right. I was up the lake about ten miles yesterday, and ran into him. His motor was broken down. Something wrong with the ignition, I think. I offered to give him a hand with it, but he said he was going to row back to the house and work it over.”
“Oh?” He said nothing further, but I was pretty sure I’d cleared up Shevlin’s failure to appear, in case it came up later.