Luring

Jake started to shake hands and to offer his condolences, but the doctor’s arms were still waving in circles as he ranted on at Tallhamer. He noted that Dr. Gibson was a remarkably homely man with a heavily pockmarked face that wasn’t improved by the flush of fury. He remembered Cardin describing him as “that toad she took up with.”

Indeed, Cardin was positively handsome by comparison.

Jake figured that Earl Gibson must have virtues that had attracted the dead woman despite his looks. After all, Gibson was a doctor, and Alice’s ex was nothing more than a failed short-order cook …

Probably a pretty easy choice in a town with few options.

Gibson’s anger only increased when he found out who Jake was.

“The FBI! What business does the FBI have even being here? You already caught my wife’s killer. You had him locked away. There’s not a jury in the world that wouldn’t find him guilty. And now you just let him go!”

Sheriff Tallhamer shuffled his feet and spoke in a patient, almost condescending tone …

“Now, Earl, we talked about this just a little while ago, didn’t we?”

Dr. Gibson said, “Yeah, we did. And that’s why I stayed right here, waiting. I had to see this for myself. I wanted to stop it.”

“We’ve got to let him go, and you know it,” Tallhamer said, “Another woman was murdered last night over in Dighton, the same way as Alice was. I can vouch for Phil Cardin’s whereabouts last night, and he sure wasn’t anywhere near Dighton. He didn’t kill that woman, and now we’ve got no reason to think he killed Alice, either.”

“No reason!” Gibson said, sputtering with rage. “He threatened her life that very day. And don’t insult me with all this nonsense about the victim in Dighton, and how Phil Cardin couldn’t have killed her. We both know there’s a perfectly viable suspect for the other murder.”

Jake’s interest was suddenly piqued.

“A viable suspect?” he asked.

Gibson scoffed at Sheriff Tallhamer and said, “So you didn’t tell him, eh?”

“Tell me about what?” Jake asked.

“About Phil Cardin’s brother, Harvey,” Gibson said to Jake. “He takes Phil’s side in everything. He threatened Alice too. He’d get her on the phone and tell her that he and Phil were going to get revenge. He called her the same day she was killed. And wherever he was last night, he wasn’t in any jail cell. He’s the one who killed that woman in Dighton. I’d bet my life on it.”

Jake was truly startled now.

He asked Gibson, “Why do you think he’d kill someone in another town?”

Gibson said, “His motive you mean? Maybe he had something personal against that woman. He wanders around the state a lot so maybe he got involved with her, then followed his brother’s example. But I think he most likely did it to protect his brother—to make people think he didn’t kill Alice.”

Tallhamer sighed and said, “Earl, we talked about this too a little while ago, didn’t we? We’ve both known Harvey Cardin all our lives. He travels around because he’s an itinerant plumber. He talks tough from time to time, but he’s not like his brother. He’d never hurt a fly, let alone kill anyone in such an awful way.”

Jake’s brain clicked away, trying to process what he was hearing.

He wished Tallhamer had told him about Harvey Cardin from the start.

Small town cops, he thought. Some of them are so sure they know everything about everybody in their district that they can miss what’s important.

Jake said to Sheriff Tallhamer, “I want to talk to Harvey Cardin.”

The sheriff shrugged as if he considered it a waste of time.

He said, “Well, if that’s what you want. Harvey lives only a couple of blocks away from here. I’ll take you there.”

As Jake started walking with the sheriff, he saw that Gibson was following along. The last thing Jake needed right now was a grieving and irate widower inserting himself into the interview of a possible suspect.

As delicately as he could, he said, “Dr. Gibson, the sheriff and I need to do this on our own.”

When Gibson opened his mouth to protest, Jake added …

“I’ll want to interview you in a little while. Where can I find you?”

Gibson fell silent for a moment.

“I’ll be in my office,” Gibson said. “The sheriff can tell you where it is.”

Gibson turned and stormed angrily away.

Jake and Tallhamer walked the short distance to a tiny white house where Harvey Cardin lived. It was a ramshackle cottage with an overgrown lawn.

Tallhamer knocked on the front door. When no one answered, he knocked again, and there was still no answer.

Tallhamer said, “He’s probably away, maybe working in some other town. We’ll have to catch him some other time.”

Jake didn’t want to wait for “some other time.” He peered through one of the  glass panes in the front door. He could see some stark, simple furniture, but little else inside—certainly no personal touches to the decor. It looked like a the kind of place that was rented furnished, but there was no sign that anybody lived there.

Jake guessed that Harvey Cardin was out of town, all right …

But is he ever coming back?

His musings were interrupted by a man’s voice from next door …

“Can I help you with anything, sheriff?”

Jake turned and saw a man standing in the yard.

Tallhamer said to him, “This FBI fellow and I are looking for Harvey Cardin.”

The man shook his head and said, “You won’t have much luck, I don’t reckon. I saw him loading up his truck a week ago—just after his brother got arrested for killing Alice Gibson. It looked like he was taking everything he had, not that there was much of it to begin with. I asked him where he was going, and he said, ‘Anywhere that’s not Hyland. I’ve had it with this goddamn town.’”

Jake felt a jolt of alarm.

This possible suspect had already disappeared.

“Come on,” Jake said to Tallhamer. “Let’s go talk to some people.”

*

Jake and Sheriff Tallhamer spent the rest of the day conducting fruitless interviews, starting in the neighborhood where Harvey Cardin had lived. All that Harvey’s other neighbors knew was that they hadn’t seen him since he’d driven away weeks ago.

They had no better luck with Alice’s friends and acquaintances. Alice’s female coworkers at the beauty parlor agreed that Phil Cardin had made a terrible, frightening scene there on the day before Alice was killed.