1

The Help Wanted section of the local paper had little to offer Garreth. The jobs advertised all appeared to be day positions. "Is there night work available anywhere in town?" he asked the Driscoll Hotel's desk clerk.

She pushed her glasses up on her nose. "Well, there's the drive-ins, but high school kids usually work there. I suppose you could try the Pioneer Cafe up the street and the Main Street Grill across from us. They stay open late, until nine o'clock, and until eleven weekends."

That late? Gee whiz. Aloud, he said, "Thanks." And left the hotel.

In the street outside he stood orienting himself. Baumen was a far cry from San Francisco. He had never seen a main street with railroad tracks down the middle. With two lanes of traffic and two strips of diagonal parking on each side, the far side of the street looked almost as distant as the far end of Baumen's three blocks of stores. Like the grain elevators, though, the buildings intrigued him. Everything here seemed to be built of that buff sandstone: barns, houses and stores, high schools, courthouses, even fenceposts. He rather liked it, both for the easy color and the way it gave human habitation an appearance of having grown organically from the prairie around it.

Heading up the street toward the Pioneer Cafe first, he found himself almost alone in the late afternoon. With the stores closed for almost half an hour now, the street lay empty of all but a scattering of parked cars. A placard in the ticket window of the Driscoll Theatre next to the hotel announced showtimes on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Garreth eyed it in passing. A weekend theatre? What did these people do nights?

Three-quarters of the way up the block, all thoughts of entertainment were wiped from his mind. The breeze carried a foul taint, a smell that turned the air turgid in his lungs. Garlic! He spun away. So much for the Pioneer. But would the Main Street be any better?

He crossed his fingers.

Across the tracks and down the other side of the street, he stopped at the drug store, which also served as the local newsstand, but they carried no papers from San Francisco or anywhere in California. A few doors farther down, a display in Weaver's Office Supplies included I Ching along with other books, Bibles, religious jewelry, and stationery. The book brought a stabbing pang of homesickness.

Give it up, a voice in him urged. Go home and tell Serruto where to find Lane. Let him handle it. You don't belong here.

The very logical, sensible suggestion tempted him, but he shook his head. Get thee behind me, angel. It's my case; she's my collar.

At the doorway of the Main Street, he paused, cautiously sniffing. The air smelled of grease but no garlic. He went in. The menu, stuck in a holder in the middle of the table, offered a range of meals from breakfasts and hamburgers to chicken-fried steak, but nothing even vaguely Italian.

"Take your order?" the single waitress asked.

"I'd like to speak with the manager, please."

She raised a brow. "You mean the owner? Verl," she called to a man at the grill, "someone to see you."

Garreth came up to the counter and introduced himself.

"Verl Hamilton," the stocky, balding man replied. "Aren't you the kid looking for his relatives?"

Word had spread. He nodded. "And I need a job in order to afford the search. Do you have anything open?"

Hamilton eyed him. "I like to see a man's eyes when I'm talking to him."

Garreth took off the trooper glasses.

"You know how to cook?"

He considered lying, then shook his head. "TV dinners and hot dogs and marshmallows over an open fire is about all."

Hamilton sighed. "I could sure use an evening cook."

"I'm a fast learner. I was a police officer for eight years and a couple of times had to learn new skills in a hurry for an undercover assignment. And I really do need a job," he finished earnestly.

The waitress said, "Verl, I've subbed on the grill. Let him wait tables and I'll cook."

Hamilton pursed his lips and tugged an ear, then nodded. "We'll give it a try."

Garreth grinned. "When can I start?"

"Tomorrow. Come in at three o'clock."

"Verl, tomorrow's Thursday," the waitress said.

"Damn." Hamilton frowned. "How about starting right now? It'll only be a few hours but you can see what's going on. Tomorrow you can give me your social security number."

"What's wrong with Thursday?" Garreth asked.

The waitress replied, "The stores stay open late. Everyone comes in to town to shop and they stop here for coffee and dessert. It's no time to break in."

So Garreth quickly found himself in his shirtsleeves, sitting at a table with Sharon Hagedorn, the waitress, nodding while she explained the table numbering and how to write up orders. They went through it twice, then she turned him loose.

The job seemed easy enough, barring the tiring drag of daylight on him. Sunset helped that. The plates lightened and his step quickened. The novelty soon wore off, though. He saw that it would be a job, something to earn money. Nothing more.

Shortly before closing time, a cop walked in to a chorus of: "Hi, Nat," from Hamilton and Sharon. Garreth had seen the car park outside, a tan-and-dark ­brown compact with a sleek Aerodynic light bar on top. The uniform of the stocky cop had the same colors as the car, a tan shirt with shoulder taps and pocket flaps of dark brown to match the trousers.

The cop, whose name tag said TOEWS, slid onto a stool at the counter, eyeing Garreth. "You're new."

Garreth nodded. "Coffee?"

"With cream. Throw on my usual, Sharon," he called toward the waitress at the grill, then he set his radio on the counter with the volume adjusted to make it just audible. He smoothed his mustache—red like his sideburns though his hair was dark—and looked Garreth over some more. "Is that your ZX with California plates in front of the Driscoll? You're the one looking for your relatives."

Garreth nodded and poured the coffee. He longed to sit down and talk. Seeing the officer was like meeting a cousin in a foreign country, but the brusqueness of Toews's voice warned him away.

Hamilton rang up the ticket of the last customer and locked the door behind the man. "This is Garreth Mikaelian, Nat. He used to be a cop out there."

Garreth winced. Now he felt as though he had just badged an officer who stopped him in a strange town, to keep from being ticketed.

But Toews immediately thawed. "You were? I'm Nathan Toews." He pronounced it Taves. "Where did you work?"

"San Francisco. Homicide."

Toews raised a brow. The unspoken question was obvious: Why did you quit?

Garreth felt compelled to answer it. "My partner got shot up pretty bad and it was mostly my fault. It shook me up."

"Order up," Sharon said.

Garreth picked up the cheeseburger and fries.

Toews poured catsup over the fries. "Too bad you're transient. We've lost an officer and god knows how long it'll be before we find a replacement."

Hamilton snorted from where he sat counting receipts. "Latta's no loss. He deserved to be canned for a stunt like blowing out the window of the patrol car with the shotgun and claiming someone took a shot at him."

Garreth stared at Toews for a long time before shaking himself. Forget it, man. He thought about the officer's remark, though. A permanent job would give him an excuse for staying past the end of his alleged search, and being official would help when arresting Lane.

"What's the job like?"

Toews shrugged. "Door rattling, traffic, refereeing domestic disturbances, and picking up drunks weekends, mostly."

Which did not really answer the big question: Could Garreth handle the job? How much would his limitations handicap, if not outright endanger, other officers? And in view of the circumstances under which he had quit at home, why should these people even want him?

Still, he continued to think about it all the way back to the hotel and while pulling on his running suit for "exercise."

He followed the main street north. From four lanes it narrowed to two on the west side of the railroad tracks, passed the railroad station and stock pens with a sale bar and fairground east beyond them, then crossed the Saline River and angled west as Country Road 16. The countryside, which had dropped from the plateau Bellamy sat on into the river valley around Baumen, rose again to rolling plateau, pastureland brightly lighted by the waxing moon and broken only occasionally by a stretch of barb wire fence. Cattle dotted every section, block-square beef cattle, sleek black or curly red-and-white. All, he noticed, appeared smaller than the white behemoth he drank from that first night, but like the Charolais bull, the black steer he finally approached yielded to him, and he fed, wishing he had some way to refrigerate his thermos so he could bring it along and fill it up.

Patting the cow's head in thanks as he stood, Garreth became aware of something else near him. He turned to face another pair of glowing eyes. The animal looked like a small, thin German shepherd. A coyote?

The creature eyed him, and the supine cow beyond. Garreth shook his head. "No. Don't bother it."

The coyote's eyes burned into his. Garreth held them until the cow scrambled to its feet.

Leaving, he found to his surprise that the coyote followed, trotting about ten feet off to the side. When Garreth broke into a run, so did the coyote. It followed like a shadow, not threateningly, he decided, reading curiosity in the cock of the carnivore's ears. Puzzled by his not-quite-human scent? Whyever, he enjoyed the company.

The coyote paced him most of the way back to town, until Garreth passed through the fence onto the country road just north of the river. Than it dropped back and faded into the darkness of the prairie. Garreth jogged on into town alone.

He heard a car coasting in behind him as the passed the railroad station. Glancing over his shoulder, he identified the light bar of a patrol car and stuck up a hand in greeting.

The engine revved. The car shot past him to swing across his path and come to a tire-screeching halt. A spotlight flashed in his face. Garreth threw an arm up in front of his eyes.

"In a hurry to go somewhere?" a voice asked from behind the light.

Damn! "I'm jogging." Garreth plucked at his jogging suit.

"In the middle of the night? Sure. Come over here. Put your hands on the car and spread your feet!"

What? Garreth opened his mouth to protest, and snapped it closed again. Resisting would only make trouble. Angrily, he spread-eagled against the car.

The spotlight went out. Moving up behind Garreth, the cop began frisking him. Garreth glimpsed an equipment belt polished to a mirror shine. The cloying sweetness of aftershave masked any scent of blood. "You do this like someone with a lot of experience at it, friend," the cop said.

Which was more than Garreth would say for the cop. Almost any of the scumbags on the street back home could have turned and taken the man in a moment. The cop's idea of a frisk missed half the places a weapon might be hidden, too.

Keeping his voice polite, Garreth explain who he was.

"Oh, the ex-cop Nat met. No wonder you know the routine." The cop stepped back. "I'm Ed Duncan. Sorry about the frisk, but you understand we can't be too careful with strangers. There's a lot of drug traffic through the state. No hard feelings?"

Garreth understood that Duncan had probably been bored out of his skull and used the first opportunity to create some activity. He resented being the subject of it. "No hard feelings."

Turning, he discovered that Duncan bore a faint resemblance to Robert Redford. From the way the cop walked and wore his uniform, Duncan knew it, too.

The car radio sputtered. Duncan leaned in through the window for the mike. "505 here as always, doll. What do you need?"

Someone had reported a prowler.

Duncan rolled his eyes. "It's probably just the Haas dog again but I'll check it out."

Watching Duncan drive away singing a country western song, Garreth thought again about Toews remark. If someone as cavalierly careless as Duncan could survive here, maybe Garreth's limitations would not cause trouble. In the morning, he decided, he would drop by the station and check out the job more closely.