Chapter 5

Thursday, 10:00 AM: I pulled up in front of the police station, such as it was. Testament was too small a town for a police force of its own. It only had a sheriff’s office, and not much of that. The building must have been an afterthought to the builders of the town hall. Jail and all, it was smaller than the house I was renting, with windows that were little bigger than portholes. I parked on the street behind a patrol car and walked in. The front room was deserted, the jail cells empty, but there was a light on behind the door marked "Sheriff". I could see it shining under the bottom. I knocked.

"Who is it?" The voice was muffled.

My eyebrows up, I answered truthfully.

"Come in."

I obeyed, and looked around. Cluttered was too weak a word for that office. Along one wall, hanging above a row of file cabinets, none of which had a single drawer completely closed, were maybe two dozen pictures of different people in coveralls standing in front of old cars. Whoever hung the pictures must have had one leg shorter than the other, with the short leg switching sides. Sometimes the pictures tilted left, sometimes the tilted right. Maybe that wouldn’t have been bad, but half of the pictures were hung over a bulletin board well layered with old notices. New ones were apparently added without bothering to either move the pictures aside or remove old ones. On another wall were rack after rack of rusty shotguns in varying stages of restoration, with two notable exceptions. At the very top was a beautifully restored silver-plated double-barreled shotgun, and at the very bottom was a new-looking target rifle. Hung high on the third wall was a large case of mounted butterflies, many disarrayed or broken. Lower down, wanted posters, captives of cellophane tape, struggled to free themselves from the wall, most at least partially successful. The last wall was dominated by a large ripple-glass window. The other side must have been inside, because the glass was dark. Paper boxes, taped shut, were stacked nearly window-high against the wall.

In the middle of this clutter was a battered green desk. A desk light, switched on, teetered on the back edge. Shoved into the corners, the heaped papers in the ‘in’ and ‘out’ boxes threatened to spill onto the floor. Hunched over the center was a round-shouldered specimen in khaki working intently on something. Taking the single step to the desk and looking down past his bald spot, I saw he was painting the feathers on a ceramic eagle.

"Close work," I observed.

"Be with you in a second," he muttered. He dabbed again at a feather, then looked up. "Stack, huh?" He put the lid on his little jar of paint. "What do you want?"

I reached into my shirt pocket. "A friend of mine, a detective in Knoxville, asked me to return this. He heard I was going this way." I handed him the photo I got from X.

The sheriff glanced at it. "Who’d you say gave this to you?" he asked harshly.

"Don’t you keep records of who you give police property to?"

He rubbed his face with one pudgy hand. "Yeah, but…"

"But? What, do you think I robbed him just to give this back?"

The sheriff stood and, pushing his ‘out’ box a little closer to catastrophe, hopped onto the corner of the desk, and looked me over good. "Stephen Stack, big city privateyeee." He slapped the photo. "You working on this?"

"Word gets around fast here."

"Then you are." He put the picture down on the desk behind him. "You made quite an impression on my sister last night." I look the question. "Gas, Miss Beverly Gas." The Librarian. "She said you were after something. She also said you would probably get what you go for."

"Tell Ms. Gas thanks for the compliment. All I’m after is a vacation. Though maybe I’ll make it a busman’s holiday, since everyone’s so insistent. Come on, as a professional courtesy: who do you think did it? Jealous friend? Jealous friend’s wife? Did she short-change somebody?" Gas just looked at me. "Come on, a hooker makes plenty of enemies. You got to know who they were here in town. You don’t think it was somebody outside Testament, do you?"

Gas shook his head. "Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you." He poked a finger at me. "I think you’re working on this case, and even though, personally, I think it’s a waste of time, the case is still officially open. The last think I need is for you to go questioning a suspect and put him on his guard, or maybe scare him into skipping." He got off the desk and stood looking me right in the chin, though obviously trying to do better. "Not that I’d give a damn if he did, I just don’t want you messing it up." He went back to his chair behind the desk and opened the bottle of paint, set it down, rolled away from the desk, opened the middle drawer and held the photo over it. "That photo, which I showed you as a professional courtesy, has never left this office in anyone’s possession but mine." He dropped the photo in, shut the drawer, dipped his brush and intently ignored me. So I beat it.