place, but no one knows for sure. Kathy Burton was last seen near our place, but it would be more exact to say she was in front of the Stevenses’ house. After all, Elizabeth said they parted at the woods, and that’s right at the property line. And as for Jimmy Tyler, we don’t know anything about him at all. The Tylers live a good quarter of a mile farther out than we do. So why do you think they’ll focus on me?”
“It’s natural,” the policeman said smoothly. “Everything’s happening on Conger’s Point Road. So who comes to mind when you think of Conger’s Point Road? Conger, of course.”
“I see,” Jack said slowly. “What do you think I should do?”
“I think you should come to that meeting tonight, and I think you should come to it with me.”
“After what you told Marty Forager about us?” Jack said, still managing to cling to a shred of humor, however black. Ray Norton chuckled.
“Well, if we have the name, as the man says, we might as well have the game. Seriously, though,” he went on. “I think you’d better plan to be at that meeting tonight, if for no other reason than not to be conspicuous by your absence.”
“Well,” Jack said doubtfully, “I’m not sure I go along with your reasoning, but I’ll be there, if not as a private citizen then as the editor of the Courier. If they all know they’re going to be quoted, it might help to keep the lid on things.”
“Maybe with some of them, but not with Marty Forager. I think he’s beginning to think of this whole mess as a one-man crusade.”
“Yes,” Jack mused. “He is that sort of person, isn’t he? Do you want to ride in to the meeting with me?”
“Fine,” Ray agreed. “Tick me up a little before seven. I’ll find out where it’s going to be, and either get back to you or tell you when I see you.” The conversation ended.
“Is there anything I ought to do?” Rose asked.
They were in the small study. Rose had listened in silence as Jack told her of the meeting he would have to attend, and the direction that Ray Norton was afraid it was going to take.
“Maybe I ought to go with you,” Rose continued.
“No,” Jack said. “I don’t see any reason for that I think you ought to stay here with the girls.”
Rose looked at him, trying to fathom his mood. He seemed worried about something, but she wasn’t sure what it was.
“Surely you don’t think anything’s going to happen to them, do you?” she asked.
Jack shrugged. “I don’t see how. Not as long as you’re here and they stay in the house,” he said. “But I’d feel more comfortable if I knew what was going on.”
“Jimmy Tyler,” Rose said slowly. “That’s odd.”
“What’s odd?”
“That he should disappear. I mean, suppose Anne Forager’s story is true, and frankly I’m beginning to think it is. Well, then, at least it makes some kind of sense for Kathy Burton to have disappeared. But Jimmy Tyler?”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” Jack said, although he was afraid he did.
“Well, let’s face it,” Rose said. “There haven’t been any kidnap notes or ransom demands, have there? So what does that leave? A nut Some crazy person who gets turned on to children little girls. Except that now Jimmy Tyler is missing, too, and he doesn’t fit the pattern.”
“If there is a pattern,” Jack said reluctantly.
“Isn’t there?” Rose was looking into his eyes. “Don’t you see a pattern?”
“Yes,” Jack said finally, “I suppose I do.” He hoped that what was hanging between them, unsaid, would remain unsaid. “And it doesn’t help matters that it’s all happening out here, does it?”
“No,” Rose said quietly. “It doesn’t” She was about to say more when Elizabeth appeared at the door. Rose wondered how long she had been standing there.
“Mother?” Elizabeth said uncertainly.
“Come in, darling,” Rose said, glad of the interruption.
“Is it trae that Jimmy Tyler’s gone too?”
Rose glanced at Jack, unsure of how to handle the question, and saw that she was on her own. She could see no point in denying it.
“Yes, he’s been missing since yesterday afternoon.”
“What time?” Elizabeth wanted to know.
“Why, I don’t know,” Rose responded, puzzled. “I don’t think anybody knows, really. But no one’s seen him since after school.”
“I walked home with him yesterday,” Elizabeth said slowly, as if trying to remember something.
“You did?” Rose said. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I guess it didn’t seem important,”