Deadline (26 page)

Donovan’s face was blank.

“You knew him pretty well,” Armstrong said. “Do you know any special girls he went out with?”

“I didn’t know him that well.”

“Well enough to have him to your house.”

“Who told you that?”

“It’s in his file. It says he came to your house for dinner a few years ago, when he was working for
Newsday.”

Donovan looked at the file with suspicion and some resentment. “That’s a long time ago.”

Armstrong nodded and grinned with pain. “I’ve got to check everything.”

Donovan went out. For a full minute Armstrong stared at the door. Then, in a raspy whisper, he said, “You lying son of a bitch.” He pushed the red button, Donovan’s private line. He looked up the number and called Donovan’s home.

Kim answered on the third ring.

“Mrs. Donovan, this is Armstrong. Is your husband there?”

“Why no, Mr. Armstrong. Isn’t he with you?”

“No, ma’am. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. But right now we’re working a new line on the Joanne Sayers case, and I needed to ask him some questions. It’s possible that the Sayers woman took Walker’s girlfriend along with them.”

“Diana?”

“Is that her name?”

“Yes, Diana Yoder.”

“Spell that, please.” Armstrong wrote it down and said, “This girlfriend. What does she do?”

He took notes while Kim talked. She told him about Radio City and the girl’s religious background. “I think she’s from Pennsylvania,” she said.

“Could you describe her, Mrs. Donovan?”

“Very nice-looking. Tall, maybe five-ten in low heels. I remember her telling me she just made the height limitation for a Rockette. Hundred twenty-five pounds. Very intelligent, lots of interests.”

“What about her hair?”

“Black. Or very dark brown. And bluish eyes.”

“Have you been in touch with her at all this week?”

“No, not since last week. We had them over to dinner.”

“I see. Thank you, Mrs. Donovan.”

He called Radio City. Someone there told him that Diana Yoder had quit her job without notice and hadn’t been heard from in more than a week. She had called in Monday, the day she was supposed to have reported back after a week off.

He buzzed and asked for Kevin Lord. While Lord waited in the chair facing Donovan’s desk, Armstrong got another agent moving on the Diana Yoder development. “Get over to Radio City right away,” he said into the telephone. “Find out everything they have on a Diana Yoder.” He spelled the last name. “I want everything, where she’s from, where she lives, who she sleeps with, what kind of food she likes. Don’t say anything to anybody. Just get that information and get it fast. I don’t care if you’ve got to interview those broads in the middle of a show. Call me as soon as you’ve got anything.”

He hung up and faced Kevin Lord. He clenched his hands and hunched forward over Donovan’s desk, shifting his weight in an effort to relieve the pain.

“You’ve come a long way in five years, haven’t you, kid?” Armstrong said.

Lord’s eyes were cold. “I’ve done all right.”

“You’ve played your hand right, been careful, stayed out of trouble.”

Lord waited, watching him.

“You know how the world works, don’t you?” Armstrong said.

“I try to keep my eyes open.”

“All right, then.” Armstrong sat back, emitting a deep groan. “All right. I need your help.”

Lord’s mouth twitched in involuntary eagerness.

“You understand what I’m saying?” Armstrong said.

“I think so.”

“Let’s be very sure,” Armstrong said. “This game’s liable to get a little messy before it’s finished. How far are you willing to go with it?”

Lord smiled. “For what end?”

Armstrong grunted a laugh out. Lord was a cool one. Much cooler than he had thought.

“To help the Bureau get those papers back.”

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”

Now Armstrong smiled. “And to help keep the girl quiet.”

Lord hesitated only a few seconds. “Whatever it takes,” he said.

“Good,” Armstrong said. “Let’s talk about that.”

They were in conference for a long time when the call came in. Armstrong talked on his private line for ten minutes, then Armstrong and Lord came out and left the office. “You sit tight,” Armstrong said to Donovan. “If Walker calls, try to keep him on long enough to get a trace. I’ll be calling in.”

They went down the hall. Donovan sat there until he heard the faint, unmistakable closing of the elevator door. Suddenly he was full of turmoil. The tension wound tighter inside him. When he was sure they were gone, he went into his office. He felt strangely like a sneak. Even the secretary, he thought, looked at him suspiciously as he closed the door behind him. He sat at his desk, then lifted the telephone and unscrewed the mouthpiece. The tap was still there, where he had put it months before. It fed by wire into a tiny recorder hidden in a false bottom of his desk.

It was voice-activated. When the phone wasn’t in use, it recorded anything that was said in the room. Donovan rewound the tape and played it back. Everything that had happened since Armstrong returned. It took him a while to hear it all. Armstrong’s call to Kim. The call to Radio City. The conversation with Kevin Lord, and another call in from an agent at Radio City, less than ten minutes ago. Finally the call to Kennedy, booking flight for two to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

It was true. Walker’s story was true after all.

He turned off the machine and stared out into the darkening street. There was no doubt in his mind what was to happen now. Joanne Sayers would die. So might Walker and the Yoder girl, and anyone else who happened to be there. And the funny thing was that neither Armstrong nor Lord had once mentioned killing. They didn’t have to. They spoke the same language, and it was a language that Donovan, for all his shortcomings, understood only too well.

He called Kim and told her he was being sent out of town, and would be home in a day or two.

Then he called the various airlines, until he found one leaving thirty minutes ahead of Armstrong’s flight. He fished around in his wallet for his credit cards, and used the personal card, leaving untouched the one he used for Bureau work. He booked passage for one, reading off the digits to the girl at the airport.

When the girl asked, he told her to make it one-way. There was no telling how long this might take.

Almost as an afterthought, he erased the phone calls from the tape.

W
ALKER SQUIRMED THROUGH THE
deep plowed earth, back down the hill toward the farmhouse he had just left. The hill rose behind him, hiding him from Donovan’s eyes. Soon he got to his feet and began to run. A predawn fog was settling in over the land, sealing the houses in a gray shroud. Walker leaped the fence and ran across Michael Yoder’s yard. He stopped near the edge of the house and listened. Somewhere he could hear Trudy, humming softly to herself.

He waited, but he didn’t hear Joanne and she didn’t come. At last he moved up onto the porch and knocked. Trudy came and peered through the glass.

She opened the door. “Mr. Walker, I thought you’d gone.”

“Where’s Joanne?”

“She went for a walk after you left.”

“Which way?”

“Down by the river, I imagine. She said she likes to walk down there.” She came out onto the porch. “Is there anything I can do? You look so upset.”

“I am upset. I’ve got to find Joanne.”

“I’m sorry…”

He walked to the edge of the porch and looked out across the field toward the river, now sealed in with fog. When he turned to her again, she was standing about five feet away, looking pale and anxious.

“Something’s wrong, I can feel it,” she said. “Mr. Walker, you look like death itself.”

“Where’s Michael?” he said.

“He went over to Abe’s house. The men are raising a barn.”

“Where is that?”

“Straight out through the trees.” She pointed behind her. “Across the paved road, about a mile down.”

“Trudy, do you think you could go over there too?”

“What for? Mr. Walker, you’re scaring me.”

He came toward her, knowing now that she had to be told. “Some people are looking for us. For Joanne especially. They may come here.”

“What people?”

“I don’t know. They may say they’re police. Maybe FBI agents.”

“Are they?”

“I don’t know what they are.”

She shivered visibly.

“Trudy.” Walker spoke slowly now, deliberately. “Joanne’s life may be in danger. Did she say anything to you about where she might be going?”

Her eyes went wide. “No, nothing. I wish I could help you.”

“You can.” He went to the other end of the porch and looked out toward the road. “Go to Abe’s. Say you felt like walking. Say anything you want. Only don’t tell anyone what I’ve just told you. Can you do that?”

“I’ll get my coat.”

He watched her hurry away along the dirt road toward the highway. At the bottom of the porch steps he began searching for Joanne’s footprints. He found them in the field, just beyond the fence, and followed them across the endless furrows of earth toward the river. At the riverbank, he began to go double-time. The sun had come up, squatting just above the trees ahead, but the fog was too heavy to burn off and the sun hung behind it like a pale ball. Walker trotted evenly until the land broke away from the water, separated by a series of bogs and marshes. The path ran like a backbone along the river’s edge, with the marsh to his left. He had long since lost her trail, and was going now by instinct. The marsh expanded as he went along, separating him from the field by a broadening gulf. Then the fog closed in around him, and he couldn’t see the field at all.

He came to a bridge, built, he guessed, the way everything was here: by three dozen hands, all at once. It spanned the river, and the dry path continued through the marsh on the other side. He hurried across, into where the marsh grass grew in thick around his shoulders. For perhaps fifty yards trees grew down close and formed a tunnel over the path. In a pool of soft earth he found a footprint, and it spurred him on. The path meandered in and out, then broke away from the riverbed for a straight run north, away from the water. He emerged into a field, just like Jacob Yoder’s. A hill sloped upward gradually, and just over the top he could see the red-and-white roof of a farmhouse.

Smoke poured from the chimney. In the yard was a buggy, all hitched up and ready to travel. Walker skirted the field and picked up her trail again. She had gone carefully, so as not to trample the plowed rows. He followed her tracks in a long arc toward the house. The fog enveloped the house, outlining it like a ghost as he came nearer. One of the windows glowed, with that distinctive yellow that suggested an oil lamp. He broke away from his place at the edge of the trees and ran across the clearing to the corner of the yard.

From there it was a quick sprint to the window. He heard an old woman’s voice asking if she could pour more tea. Joanne said, “Yes, thank you.” Walker eased along the side of the building until his head was just below the windowsill.

“It’s nice of you to invite me in again,” Joanne said. “I hadn’t intended to stop by this early.”

“No bother,” the old woman said. “We don’t get many people over here anymore. When they were all youngsters, they used to come here all the time, fresh from swimming in the river, the three Yoder boys and their sister. What a joy to see her last Sunday. Now we never see any of them, except at church.”

“That’s their loss,” Joanne said.

“Ours too,” the old woman said. “Ours too.”

“I love your country. And your Church.”

They were quiet for a while. Walker stood for perhaps a minute, and the only sounds were the clinking of teacups.

“I’m thinking of settling here,” Joanne said. “Of maybe joining the Church.”

“That’s nice. Maybe you could persuade some of the children to come visit us again. We never had any of our own.”

“You people here have got it made,” Joanne said. “You have a simplicity I’ve never seen anywhere else.”

Now a man’s voice chimed in. “If it’s simplicity you want, you’ve found it. We don’t have much, but we’ve got that.”

“It’s enough,” Joanne said.

“Except for the young,” the old woman said. “That’s never enough for the young.”

“Maybe they just haven’t seen enough of the real world,” Joanne said. “When they do, they’ll be back.”

“She may be right,” the man said. “Look at Diana Yoder.”

Walker moved forward toward the door. Then a movement far out in the field caught his eye, and he flattened against the house and held still. Something black formed against the gray woods. It solidified, stood up and became…a man.

He was too far away yet to be recognizable. He was moving in Walker’s trail, skirting the edge of the field where the trees were. He came fast, with confidence, moving as if he belonged here. Walker dropped to the ground and rolled under the house.

He waited, looking out under the wood steps. He heard the man before he saw him: the crisp crunch of feet on autumn underbrush. Something unhooked and a gate swung open, and Walker saw a pair of feet coming toward him. He was dressed in the clothes of a city man, with slacks that could double for work or casual, a dark sports jacket and a pullover sweater under it. The jacket was unbuttoned in spite of the cold and he walked loosely, his hands swinging at his sides. He made no effort to conceal himself, but marched up onto the porch and knocked. Footsteps sounded above Walker’s head. A chair scraped and someone—the old man—got up. The door opened and a muffled exchange of dialogue filtered down through the floor.

Sorry to bother you. I was looking for the Yoder place.
There was something about the voice. Walker didn’t know it well, but he had heard it somewhere.

The old man.
Which one? The county’s full of them.

The man hesitated, as if at a momentary loss.
Michael Yoder, I believe the name is.

Another pause. Walker could almost see it: the old Amish farmer, staring curiously at the newcomer, unable to understand why some outsider would come looking for Michael Yoder. They had no business with outsiders, none of them. Then Joanne spoke up.
I’m staying with him.
Walker could hardly keep from groaning. She came out onto the porch. “I’ll show you where he is,” she said.