“There’s kind of a situation up here I’d like to bounce off him.”
“Bad things happen to you when you associate with Lawrence,” Sarah said, using the voice she did with the children when they misbehaved.
“That’s not totally true,” I objected. “Bad things happen to Lawrence when he associates with me.” It was true that, the first time Lawrence and I had worked together—he was doing his thing as a private detective and I was writing about it—he’d taken a knife in the gut and nearly died. But it was also true that the reason he hadn’t died was that I’d shown up at the right place at the right time.
Arguing these points with Sarah, however, was unlikely to score me any.
“That’s not very funny,” Sarah said. “What could possibly be going on up there that you’d need Lawrence’s help for? You want him to do a stakeout on a bear?”
“There’s no bear,” I said.
“There’s no bear? Tracy didn’t say that in the story she filed. She says the coroner said the guy, what was his name?”
“Dewart.”
“That a bear killed him.”
“It’s a long, long story, Sarah. Have you got Lawrence’s number in your book or not?”
She gave me two. His home/office and his cell.
“A couple other things,” I said. “I know we’ve probably run a million stories on this, but can you look up what sort of services there are for women? Like shelters?”
“Abused women?”
“Well, sort of. I mean, I don’t know if there’s actual physical violence, but—”
“Zack. What the hell are you getting into? I thought you were helping your father run the camp?”
“There’s a woman up here, her name’s May Wickens, and she’s got a son, and she’s kind of under the thumb of her father, who doesn’t want to let her move out, and has threatened to hold on to her son if she tries.”
“Jesus. And what does this have to do with you?”
“Sarah.”
“Look, tell her to get a good lawyer.”
I laughed. “Yeah, fat chance in this town.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll see what there is, but the services are probably mostly in the city. I can’t imagine there’s much like that up in Braynor.”
“And one last thing.”
“Shoot.”
“Does the name Orville Thorne mean anything to you?”
Sarah took a moment. “No. Should it?”
“He’s the local police chief, and from the moment I’ve gotten here it’s been bugging me. He reminds me of someone, and I can’t figure out who. I feel like maybe I’ve run into him before someplace, like maybe doing a story for the paper, or something. I thought, if that was the case, maybe you’d recognize it.”
“Hang on,” Sarah said. I could hear her tapping some keys. “I’m just keying the name into the system.” She was referring to the paper’s library system. If we’d ever run a story with Thorne’s name in it, it would come up. “Is that Thorne with an ‘e’?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s nothing,” she said.
“Google?” I said, glancing at Dad’s computer. I could have checked myself. But Sarah was already on it.
“Absolutely nothing,” Sarah said.
“Okay, thanks. It was worth a shot.”
“Can you send me a picture?” Sarah said.
“What?”
“A picture. Maybe I’d recognize him, too, even if the name doesn’t ring a bell.”
I glanced over to the shelf where Dad’s digital camera sat. I knew Dad used his computer to send guests pictures he’d taken of them with their catch.
“I might be able to pull off something like that,” I said. “Leave it with me. Listen, while you’re keying in names, I’ve got another one for you.”
“Fire away.”
“Timmy Wickens. Maybe Timothy Wickens. Or Tim Wickens. If he’d ever been arrested, it’d probably be Timothy.”
“Arrested?”
“Sarah.”
“Okay, hang on. Nothing in our own files. Let me check Google…. Okay, there’s a writer…”
“I don’t think that’s him.”
“And a hairdresser in Reno.”
“Definitely not.”
“And a story here, from, like, five, six years ago, it’s just one name among a dozen, bunch of people arrested for causing a disturbance at a Holocaust memorial event in Pittsburgh. They were Holocaust deniers.”
“Read me some of the names.” I grabbed a pen and Dad’s yellow legal pad and began scribbling.
“Uh, other than Wickens, there’s Randall Stilton, Gregory Bent, Michael Decker, Charlene Zundman—”
“Hang on. Charlene? What was that?”
Sarah repeated it. Then she read the rest of the names, all of which I made note of, but no other ones rang any bells.
“Anything else come up?”
“Nothing,” Sarah said. Then, with more gentleness in her voice than before, “Zack, you’re being careful, right?”
“Of course,” I said.
“There’s nothing dangerous going on up there, is there?”
“Of course not,” I lied.
“Because, I’ve had enough, you know?”
“Sure,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“Lately, you seem to have this knack for attracting trouble.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “those days are over.”