The boy stared at him solemnly, a hesitant smile flickering across his lips.
A heavyset man passed in front of Jeremy, who moved to the side, trying to reach the boy. Then a luggage cart blocked him, a bellman and young couple alongside it.
When they had passed, the boy was no longer there.
Jeremy strode to the front door and then out to the street. He looked in every direction. There were plenty of people out, taking advantage of the mild autumn night.
But there was no sign of a boy.
Swearing softly, he headed down the street and around the corner.
A sightseeing carriage, drawn by a single horse, the driver a pretty woman with reddish-blond hair, rumbled by. He could see a hearse leaving the mortuary down the street, and a group of uniformed high-school-band members were heading back from the green, two chaperones in the lead, two more in the rear.
Life still went on, obviously, but under supervision. No one was feeling lax regarding security these days.
He walked around the back of the hotel, through the parking lot, and looked down the street with its treelined median. It was dark, and, except for a few people walking dogs, there was no activity going on.
And there was no boy.
He turned and walked back into the lobby, looking thoughtfully toward the elevators.
He told himself that he had simply seen a boy who looked like Billy, and who had gone up to his room. Squaring his shoulders, he reminded himself that there was nothing he could do for Billy, but there was a good chance Mary was still alive, which meant there were things he could do for her. He also reminded himself that Brad and Rowenna were waiting for him in the bar.
He strode back in, shrugging his shoulders as if, in doing so, he could shake off the memory of the boy he had failed.
14
Rowenna was glad to see Jeremy walk back into the bar. She was trying to be supportive, but she was having a hard time putting any more credence in Brad’s theory about the Devil than Jeremy had. She’d tried to get him to order some food, thinking dinner might take his mind off his dire thoughts, but he’d announced that he wasn’t hungry.
He was Jeremy’s friend, and Jeremy could no doubt deal with him better than she could. She didn’t want to admit it, but…
He’d been creeping her the hell out.
“Who was that?” she asked Jeremy as soon as he arrived, glad to have him back by her side. It occurred to her almost immediately that his phone call might have been private, that she was barely a part of his life, and he might just tell her it was none of her business.
But he answered right away, looking thoughtful and a little distracted. “That was Joe,” he told her. “First.”
She inclined her head, waiting.
Brad, too, had perked up to listen.
“They’ve found the guy who was with Dinah Green here at the bar. The Boston cops picked him up.”
“Oh, my God, has he said anything?” Brad demanded. “Does he have Mary?”
“He claims he wasn’t here on Halloween, that he spent the night with a hooker in Boston. They’re holding him, and I’m driving down with Joe to talk to him.”
“When?” Brad asked anxiously.
“First thing in the morning.”
“I’m going, too,” Brad said.
“No, you’re not. You’re too emotionally invested to be in on this, Brad,” Jeremy told him, his tone compassionate but firm. “I’m lucky Joe is letting me go along, and you know I’ll ask all the right things.” Then he hesitated. “Besides, I’m sure he didn’t do it,” he said after a moment. “But we have to clear him so we can get down to figuring out what did happen.”
Rowenna frowned, looking at him. “How do you know he didn’t do it?” she asked. “How can you be so sure?” She would like nothing better than to find out that some Boston guy was the killer, because she hated the thought that someone she might know, might even think she knew well, could be the psychopath they were seeking.
“Our killer has too much local knowledge, for one thing. And for another…Gut feeling, and I’ve been around too long to ignore that,” he told her. He glanced toward the band, and at Eric Rolfe, who was talking to the keyboard player. “We need to be looking for a local, someone who knows who owns what land, who manages it and knows what’s going on with it. Ginny MacElroy may own that land, but she doesn’t go walking around her fields making sure her corn is growing well. She leaves that to the real farmers, and I doubt they inspect it daily, either, as if their lives depend on every stalk out there.”
“The cornfields,” Brad said, turning to look at them solemnly. “I’m going to walk through every damn one of those cornfields if I have to.”
“Brad, everyone who has anything to do with those fields has been alerted. They’ve been searching the fields for days,” Jeremy told him. “And they haven’t found…anything.”