The Truth of the Matter (11 page)

“You can see things,” Roebuck said in a low voice.

Ellie came in and sat down in the webbed chair, taking a sip of Roebuck’s beer. “Should be ready to eat pretty soon. What’ve you two been talking about?”

“About what a homebody you are,” Roebuck said. “How you like to sit by the fireplace back home—in Chicago.”

“Sure,” Ellie said. “We don’t go out much.”

“You folk got any kids?” Boadeen asked.

“One,” Roebuck said quickly. “A boy in junior high.”

“That’s great,” Sheriff Boadeen said earnestly. “We never had kids. Then my wife died nine years ago in a highway accident. Damn drunken driver doing a hundred miles an hour. He didn’t even have insurance.”

“That’s too bad,” Ellie said.

“Surely is.” Boadeen nodded his head soberly. “She was a real good woman.”

Ellie stood. “I guess that rare steak should be about ready. Excuse me.”

Boadeen’s eyes darted to watch her walk back into the kitchen, then he looked up at Roebuck. “You’re a lucky man.”

Roebuck was well aware of what the sheriff was really thinking, but he forced himself to smile. “Thanks,” he said, and he could see the subtle mockery in Boadeen’s pale eyes.

“Food’s ready!” Ellie called, and they went into the kitchen to sit at the tiny formica-topped table.

Roebuck saw that Sheriff Boadeen was one of those people who ate with impeccable manners, possessing the ability to hit his mouth with unerring accuracy without looking at his food.

“You surely do this steak credit,” Boadeen said, looking admiringly at Ellie as he severed another piece of meat with his steak knife.

Ellie acknowledged the compliment with a brief smile.

Boadeen was still looking at her as he lifted his fork to his mouth.

“Do you really have much trouble out here?” Roebuck asked.

“You’d be surprised.” Boadeen turned his gaze on Roebuck. “It ain’t all in the big cities, the agitation and the commie inspired unrest. They have control of some of the newspapers and T.V. stations, you know, and folk out here read and watch T.V.”

“What kind of trouble have you had?” Ellie asked.

“Well, at the Danton high school not long ago they tried to have these lectures on sex education. Some of the things they went into I wouldn’t tell you about because we’re eating.” He speared a bite of steak with a vengeance. “No, the commies and long-haired radicals haven’t forgotten the folk in the small towns. I’ve got the statistics to prove it!”

“Do you think the communists were behind those sex education lectures?” Ellie asked, buttering a roll.

“I surely do! This Dr. Luther who was giving the lectures is from Detroit, and I know people there who tell me he consorts with suspected communists.”

“The last communist I saw,” Roebuck said calmly, “went down in flames while I was looking at him through my gun-sight. Straight into the Yalu River. I almost felt sorry for him.”

“I say good riddance to him. Pass the pepper please, Ellie.”

“You sure don’t like communists,” Ellie said, handing him the shaker.

“Don’t like lawbreakers of any kind. But these communist agitators are the worst I ever seen. Somebody’s got to stop them from spreading their seeds of insurrection and their Maoist lies.”

“You seem to know a lot about international politics for a county sheriff,” Roebuck said. “It seems a little out of your line.”

Boadeen laughed and looked down at his plate. “I’ll tell you, Lou, this sheriff thing can be just a rung on the ladder. If the wind blows right I plan to run for County Supervisor next year, and then who knows what?”

“We wish you luck,” Ellie said.

“Why, thank you, Ellie. By gosh, it’s still a great country, and a man can go as far as his ambition will take him.”

Roebuck saw the spark in the sheriff’s eyes when he said this, and the rather wolfish grin. For a second Boadeen’s ambition was naked before them, the covering of righteousness and small town affability stripped briefly from him.

“How far do you think you can go, Sheriff?” Roebuck asked.

“Far enough to do some good, I hope to God! I don’t do things by halves, Lou. That’s why you see me driving a brand-new high-speed cruiser, and all my enforcement equipment is top quality. The people of Clark County want first-rate protection, and they’re willing to pay for it.”

“They certainly seem to have it in you,” Ellie said.

As they finished their meal Roebuck tried to accustom himself to the sheriff’s presence. He was a big man, though not quite as tall as Roebuck, and his uniform seemed to dominate the tiny cabin. Suppose he found out about them before they left? Sheriff Boadeen, with his unyielding, hard-driving ambition, seemed to Roebuck the embodiment of the relentless lawman, a modern-day Pat Garrett, a yokel Mountie who would never give up.

As Ellie was clearing the table Boadeen pushed back his chair and lit a long, expensive-looking cigar. He offered one to Roebuck, who declined and lit a cigarette.

“Why don’t I fix some drinks,” Ellie said, “and we’ll go into the other room.”

“Sounds fine,” Boadeen said from behind a bluish cloud of smoke. “Make mine a Scotch and water if you have any.”

“I think we’ve got a little,” Ellie said.

“Bourbon for me,” Roebuck said, resenting the odorous haze Boadeen was exhaling.

When they went into the main room of the cabin Roebuck opened a window. “Gets hot in here sometimes with a fire.”

Boadeen stuck out his lower lip and nodded, then clamped the cigar between his teeth. Roebuck realized that he knew the smoke was bothering him, and that the sheriff was secretly enjoying it.

Ellie came in with their drinks, holding the three glasses bunched together between the spread fingers of both hands.

Boadeen quickly took two of the glasses from her and handed the bourbon and water to Roebuck.

“Can’t overwork the little lady,” he said. “Unless she likes to be overworked.” For her he politely ground out his cigar in the glass ashtray.

They sat before the lazy, flickering fire, Roebuck and Ellie on the sofa, Sheriff Boadeen in the webbed chair.

“Yes, sir,” the sheriff said idly, gazing into the fire, “a man can go far in this world, far as his nerve’ll take him. Don’t you think so, Ellie?”

“Could be.”

“Wha’d’you think, Lou?”

“That’s true to a point,” Roebuck said, looking down at his drink. “The fact is, though, I’ve seen some men overstep themselves because of their nerve. I did a stint with the C.I.A. in Japan. One of my best friends in the agency took it on himself to try to steal the famous purple machine from communist agents in Tokyo. They caught him and he lost his nerve; he talked when they poured hot coffee in his ear through a funnel. I had to get out of the country.”

“Purple machine?” the sheriff asked in an interested voice. “What’s that?”

“Still classified,” Roebuck said curtly, looking into the fire without expression. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“But did we ever get hold of it?” Boadeen asked.

“Six months later,” Roebuck said, “when I went back to Japan.” And he refused to say more.

“I don’t mean to pry,” Boadeen said, catching Ellie’s eye while Roebuck was looking the other way. “Least not in matters of
national
secrecy.”

Ellie caught the meaning in his look. She drew a deep breath and turned her head.

“Maybe if the sheriff gets elected governor you can tell him about it,” she said to Roebuck.

Roebuck flicked his cigarette butt into the fireplace. “Not even then.”

Three drinks and two hours’ conversation later, the sheriff left, and Roebuck sat gazing morosely at Ellie as she casually tidied up the cabin.

“You were nicer to him than you had to be,” he said.

She stopped what she was doing and turned to face him with the dirty glass ashtray in her hand. “We have to be nice to him. The nicer we are the less likely it is he’ll be suspicious.”

“Isn’t it obvious to you what he’s got in mind?”

“’Course it is. But the worst thing I could do for us would be to tell him to get lost.” She set the ashtray back down and turned on the small table radio. “He knows how long we rented the cabin for,” she said as the radio warmed and began to emit soft music. “It’ll look funny if we leave sooner, even though we want to.”

That was true, Roebuck had to concede. Right now the police had no exact idea as to their whereabouts, only the vague knowledge that they were headed west. If they left here unexpectedly and Boadeen got suspicious and started making inquiries, it wouldn’t take long for him to find out who they were. Of course they could make up some lie to leave early, something about Ellie’s mother getting sick, or their imaginary teen-age son getting into trouble, but Boadeen wasn’t a complete fool—a lie might make him more suspicious than if they simply packed and left.

And Benny Gipp. Roebuck had hardly thought of him since they’d rented the cabin, but Gipp was still looking, he was sure. The lakeside cabin provided a refuge from Gipp as well as the police. While Roebuck and Ellie stayed here, Sheriff Boadeen was a problem, but he was their only real worry.

If it came to a choice between Sheriff Boadeen and Benny Gipp, Roebuck would have to say that he feared Gipp the most. Boadeen was a professional zealot, but Gipp was a fanatic. Roebuck wondered now as he had before about the relationship between Gipp and Ingrahm, about the bond between the two men that made him so sure Gipp would never give up, would pursue him around the world if necessary to avenge Ingrahm’s death. Gipp was like a capable and deadly slave, carrying out with unquestioning loyalty the last unspoken command of his dead master. It was an unnatural dedication, damned unnatural, and it was a dedication that frightened Roebuck.

“See if you can get some news on that thing,” he said to Ellie.

“The news’ll be on that station, pretty soon,” she said. “It’s the one we always listen to.”

She was right. It was almost eleven o’clock, later than Roebuck had thought. He and Ellie nightly tuned in the eleven o’clock news on the local station, listening for some gleaning of information about themselves. In the two and a half weeks that they’d been there the news broadcasts had mentioned once that they were still being sought, but that was all. The stolen station wagon apparently had not been connected with them, and no one seemed to have recognized them since that time in Collinsville.

Roebuck sat back and watched Ellie move about the cabin in unconscious time to the soft music. It was easy to understand why Sheriff Boadeen was interested in her. He probably made it a practice to size up all the women who stayed at the lake, and it was no wonder he’d decided blonde, slender Ellie was the most attractive. Roebuck didn’t tell himself that the sheriff might also have decided she was the most likely.

“I want you to be careful with Boadeen,” Roebuck said. “Don’t let him get too close.”

“Don’t worry,” Ellie said. “That kind of creep is easy to handle.”

“I don’t want him to ever do anything to you. If I assault a county sheriff they’ll be looking for us twice as hard as they are now.”

“Let’s go to bed,” Ellie said with a smile that Roebuck had learned to interpret. “And while I think about it, see that I get up early. Tomorrow’s the day I go shopping in Danton.”

Ellie was pushing a wire grocery cart easily over the smooth cement floor of Blatkin’s Foodliner when she happened to glance out between the
LOW, LOW PRICES
signs on the wide plate glass window. The glass had just been washed by a young man in a white shirt and was still smeared where the squeegee had glided over it, and at first she wasn’t sure it was him. But the smears disappeared almost immediately under the hot sun and she could see Sheriff Boadeen quite clearly. He was standing near the curb, examining the front of the station wagon.

Ellie pushed the cart over by some shelves of canned goods and stood watching as the sheriff looked toward the store as if trying to make up his mind whether or not to enter. He drew himself up, looked from side to side, and advanced on the store with wide, purposeful strides.

There weren’t many customers in Blatkin’s, so Ellie knew she couldn’t get out without him seeing her. She pushed the grocery cart forward and pretended to concentrate on the merchandise that lined the narrow aisle. The electric-eye door hissed as Boadeen entered, and Ellie moved slowly along the aisle toward the back of the store as she examined the rows of dog food and soap powder.

She turned the corner and moved down the next aisle, stooping to pick out a bottle of catsup. When she straightened there he was, looking at her from the next aisle over the dietary peaches with a sugary smile on his clean-shaven face.

“’Lo there, Ellie.” The overhead light from the fluorescent fixtures glinted off the gold badge on his cap. “Odd running into you at Blatkin’s.”

“I suppose, Sheriff.” Ellie returned the smile. “I come in here about twice a week to do the shopping.”

The sheriff disappeared for a moment, then walked around the corner of the aisle, glancing into her grocery cart as if to make sure she was indeed shopping as she’d claimed. Ellie saw that he carried a jar of instant coffee as an excuse to have entered the store.

“Well, what do you think?” Boadeen asked.

“Of what?”

“Why, of our little town of Danton. Best place to raise kids in the whole state.”

“I really haven’t seen much of it,” Ellie said. “I just drive straight in here and straight back. But it does look real nice,” she added, as an elderly woman bumped her in the rear with a cart. Ellie moved to the side to let her through and Boadeen nodded to the woman as if he knew her.

“Where’s the husband?” Boadeen asked, making a big show of waiting until the old woman was around the corner. Ellie could take that as she wanted.

“Fishing, I suppose,” Ellie said, “He doesn’t like to shop.”

“Well now, I don’t see how he can’t like to shop with you.” Boadeen fixed what he thought to be his confidential stare on her.

“Maybe because we’ve been married a good while,” Ellie said smoothly, reaching for a can of beans. As if giving it some thought, she suddenly reached for a second can. Boadeen watched her knowingly.