War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel (21 page)

No wonder he felt betrayed.

He had no family to speak of, so he couldn’t get a hardship deferral.
He had no health problems and no history of mental illness.
He had no money for college, so he couldn’t get another student deferral.
He couldn’t even object on religious grounds.
Even if he had an argument, which I didn’t think he did, the government had made getting conscien
tious
objector status nearly impossible.

“Let’s say we get you back to Chicago on time,” I said, “what would you do then?”

“I don’t know.” Malcolm was looking out the window now, and it was clear he wasn’t seeing anything.
“I really don’t.
I don’t want to go to prison, I don’t want to go to Canada, and I don’t want to go to Vietnam.”

“You can’t just do nothing,” I said.
“Eventually, you will have to make a decision, or the government will make it for you.”

“I know that
,
too,” Malcolm said.
“I just didn’t expect this, Bill.
I thought they’d never find me, not after Mom died.
I figured I’d be okay.”

“Well,” I said after a moment, “you’ve got about a month before they start looking for you.”

“I know,” he said.

“You’ve used a week of it.”

He nodded.

“We’re going to have more than one discussion about this,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.
“Maybe by then, I’ll have made up my mind.”

SEVENTEEN

In the middle of the night, I left the motel room and walked to the office again.
There I found the friendly night manager who had checked us in.
I told him about our afternoon, watched his face go gray with anger, and then showed him the receipt the afternoon manager had given me.

The night manager confirmed that the receipt was good, and he assured me that he would personally vouch for our safety.
I wasn’t sure how he’d do that, but I thanked him anyway.

Malcolm had been awake when I left, and he was awake when I returned.
He had guard duty for the first half of the night.
I would take over near dawn.

Jimmy hadn’t moved except to roll over once, about midnight.
The day had caught up with me, and I surprised myself by falling into a sound sleep.

My dreams, however, were of cold and ice, and of carrying a dead man from a trench we had dug together back to the base, his blood hot against my freezing hands.

I woke shaking.
I’d had
that nightmare
off and on since I’d come home from Korea, and I had always awakened disgruntled.
In the past, it had been worse, and sometimes it acted as a warning.
In this case, I hoped it was only a response to stress.

The morning paper didn’t help my mood. The two cops had known that the bank robbers wouldn’t be at a motel. Those robbers had arrived at the Wallingford Colonial Bank and Trust at eleven
A.M.
, exactly the time when an armored car arrived at the bank to deliver
twenty-seven
thousand dollars.

Only someone who had spent weeks casing the bank would know when the armored car delivered, which varied from day to day, but did follow a pattern if observed over time.

I didn’t show Malcolm the paper.
He was upset enough.

We had a quick breakfast and
headed downtown.
I dropped Malcolm and Jimmy at the Green, letting them cho
o
se whether they wanted to ask more questions at Yale, go to the library and while away the day, or sightsee around downtown New Haven.

Me, I had a lot of legwork, none of which I was looking forward to.

I started at the
Crow
.
Rueben Freeman wasn’t there, but the receptionist remembered me and gave me his home phone number.
Rueben was at home, working on an article for some education journal, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to expose the officers
’
motel
scam, not even for a national byline.

The call wasn’t entirely wasted: he gave me a list of buildings that catered to students and landlords who might be amenable to a visit from me.
I used the
Crow’
s phone book, and found a list of rental agencies that would also give me a place to start.

It soon became clear that I couldn’t hog one of the
Crow’
s phones.
I went to a nearby drugstore, and bought a roll of dimes.
Not far from the
Crow
, I found a phone booth with an intact glass door.
When I pulled it closed, it locked out most of the street noise. Then I took over the phone booth as if it were my office.

My ploy was simple.
I introduced myself with a fictitious name, claiming to be a landlord from nearby Branford.
I told the people I talked with that I had had a tenant named Daniel Kirkland and that he had skipped out on three months
’
rent, trashed the place, and cost me enough in damages to make it worth my while to take him to court.

All I needed, I said, was an address so that my process server could find him.

My story was horrible enough that other landlords would check their records just to see if this Kirkland deadbeat was on their rolls. It didn’t hurt to tell me as well.

That afternoon I went through half of my roll of dimes, and ended up with nothing.
After my third call, I got smart enough to have them check for Rhondelle’s name, and still I came up with zero.

I was beginning to get discouraged.
I took five more dimes and called the numbers Grace had given me, getting no answer.
And no answer either from Whickam’s number at home or at his office.

Finally, I decided to call it a day.
Deep down, I was very concerned for Daniel Kirkland and, oddly, the more roadblocks I ran into, the more concerned I became.

Jimmy showed up shortly after I arrived at the Green.
He was out of breath and sweat-covered.
I hadn’t even seen him come toward me.
Malcolm took his time reaching us, looking from side to side as if he were searching for someone.

“Didn’t think you’d be here yet,” Jimmy said.

“I needed a break,” I said.

“Me
,
too.
Malcolm promised ice cream.
Want some?”

“I’d rather have dinner,” I said.

“He deserves ice cream.” Malcolm reached us, overhearing the last interchange.
“He worked all afternoon.”

“Doing what?”

“Skimming.” Jimmy held up his hands. His thumbs and forefingers were black.

“He got the bright idea to go through the New Haven papers for the past year, searching for Daniel’s name.” Malcolm leaned on the bench’s arm.
“He said he didn’t believe all those people who told you Daniel wasn’t in trouble.”

I looked at Jimmy.
He shrugged.
“Folks lie, Smoke.”

“Did you find anything?” I asked.

“Not Daniel,” Malcolm said.
“But we found a couple articles about Rhondelle Whickam.”

“Really?” Now I was interested.
“What were they?”

“The librarian gave me paper.” Jimmy shoved his hand in his pocket.
“I wrote it all down.”

He handed me some crumpled sheets of scrap paper.

“Tell me anyway,” I said.

“Her daddy said she’s missing,” Jimmy said.
“They’re searching for her.”

Sidbury hadn’t told me that.

“It was a short news article,” Malcolm said.
“
‘
National Merit Scholar Disappears.
’
I think the only reason they ran it was her dad’s connection to Yale.”

That made sense.
“Anything in there?”

“It was really short,” Jimmy said.
“Just her name and that everybody was worried about her.
It was in May.”

“Near the Panther murder?” I asked.

“Before,” Malcolm said.

I would like to see that article.
“You said you found more than one article.
Did they find her?”

“Nope,” Jimmy said. “That was the newest one.
But we found an old one
,
too.
Malcolm did.”

“I saw that she’d won a National Merit scholarship.
I remember when Daniel got his national scholarship
,
it even hit the
Chicago Tribune
.
So I figured the New Haven papers would cover hers.
And they did.
There wasn’t a lot in that article either, just her address and her parents saying they’re proud and all that and a picture.”

Something in the way that Malcolm said “picture” caught my attention.
“What about the picture?”

Jimmy giggled.
“Malcolm says she’s a fox.”

“Did not,” Malcolm said, his cheeks growing red.

“Said Daniel didn’t deserve her.”

“I did say that.” Malcolm grinned at Jimmy.

“You were amazing,” I said to Jimmy.
“What made you look that up?”

“The sooner you find Daniel,” Jimmy said, “the sooner we can leave.”

I ruffled his hair.
“Let’s get you some ice cream. Then let me see those articles, see if I can find anything in them.”

Jimmy grinned.
Malcolm smiled
,
too. “We’ll get the ice cream and meet you at the library.”

“Deal,” I said, and
headed
across the
G
reen
.

EIGHTEEN

The article about Rhondelle Whickam was only five paragraphs long, but it told me a few things I hadn’t known.
I learned that she hadn’t returned to Vassar for the spring semester, although she had told her parents that she had.
And they didn’t find out until the school sent a letter inquiring whether she’d return in the fall.

The last time her parents had seen her had been the day she
left for Vassar.
She had called them once or twice since, but their letters had gone unanswered (and unreturned). Her parents had simply assumed she had become too busy to write.

When they found out, in May, that she was gone, they searched everywhere, but hadn’t found her.
The police had no leads, so they were turning to the community for help.

I couldn’t find a follow-up story, which led me to believe there was none.
I used Jimmy’s scrawled notes to find the original news story about the scholarship.
There wasn’t really a news story per se, just a photograph of the National Merit Scholars from Connecticut.
Only a handful of students were in the picture, along with the governor.

Rhondelle Whickam was the only black, and the photographer had her stand to the side, behind two boys who were taller than she was. The other girl stood up front, but she probably looked like Connecticut’s idea of a National Merit
S
cholar, with her pale skin and smooth blond hair.

Rhondelle’s hair was smooth
,
too, but it had clearly been straightened or ironed.
Her eyebrows had been plucked into an arch, accenting her delicate nose and the European look to her face.
If it weren’t for her hair and her lips, her skin color wouldn’t be readily
apparent
.

I stared at the photograph for some time, committing it to memory.
I wasn’t the kind of person who would rip a photograph out of a library newspaper, although in this case I wished I was.

I finished with the papers quicker than I expected, feeling no need to double-check Jimmy’s efforts.
It pleased me that he had taken initiative.
Part of his willingness to do this, obviously, had been his desire to leave New Haven.
But one year ago he wouldn’t have known how to help.

The work he had done with Grace Kirkland—reading, studying the daily papers, learning how to use a library—was really paying off.
I felt like I owed her even more.

* * *

The next morning dawned sunny and warm.
I had guard duty from
three
A
.
M
. on, so I had plenty of time to plan my day. I used the motel phone to see if the Whickams had returned.
They hadn’t.