One Good Deed(98)

The woman frowned at Archer. “Here to see Miss Crabtree, are we?” She might as well have tacked on, You ex-convict, you.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The woman glanced at the door and then at the clock on the wall overhead and her expression changed to confusion.

“The door’s locked, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Did you try knocking?”

“I did indeed. I’ve been out here a while. I hope she’s not ill in there or anything.”

“Hmm. Wait just a minute.”

She went inside her office and returned with a key in hand.

“I work in the court clerk’s office, but this key will fit all the locks in the building.”

“Well, that’s handy,” said Archer. “Wouldn’t mind having a key like that.”

“Hmm,” she said disapprovingly. “What were you in for? And don’t say some petty crime. I’ve heard it all before. And don’t lie and say you’re innocent or misunderstood.”

“No, ma’am. Fact is, I was a bank robber.”

She looked at him with a new level of respect. “Indeed? Well, that’s where the money is, after all.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She unlocked the door, swung it wide, and said, “Miss Crabtree? It’s Mrs. Gibbons from across the hall. Yoo-hoo. Anyone in here?”

Clearly, the room was empty.

Archer also noted that the big, squat Royal typewriter was missing.

Archer said, “You want to check the ladies’ bathroom down the hall, ma’am? I, uh, can’t do that.”

“What? Oh yes, of course.”

As soon as she left, Archer looked in the wastebasket and searched the desk. Other than office supplies and parole office forms, the only thing in the drawers was a small book. He picked it up and read off the title: “A Room of One’s Own.”

He remembered it as being her favorite one of Woolf’s works.

He slipped the book into his pocket when he heard the woman returning.

“She’s not in the bathroom,” she said when she appeared in the doorway.

“She might be sick at home.”

“Well, if so, she should have let someone know. If this is your day to meet with her, tell me your name so you won’t lose credit.”

“No, ma’am, it’s not my day. I was coming by to tell her that I got a job.”

“Really, where?”

“Slaughterhouse.”

“Hmm. Knocking in hogs’ heads, I suppose.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You sure you were a bank robber?”

Archer held up two fingers in the form of a salute. “Scout’s honor.”

“Hmm.”

He left her there and walked out of the building.

He sat on a bench and opened the book to a page whose corner had been turned down.

A sentence was underlined. He read it off: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Archer kept staring at those words as though they would cause everything in his life to instantly make sense. It didn’t work.

He imagined there were two ways to leave Poca City. A car or a bus. If she had left by bus, he might be able to check that, or Shaw certainly could. If by car, that would be more problematic.

Car?

He hoofed it over to Fulsome Street, hoping to beat the rain, which he did. Mostly. The heavens burst open just about the time he made it to the garage. He shook off the rain and slapped his hat against his thigh and watched as rainwater turned reddish brown by the dirt ran in meandering rivulets down the asphalt.

Well, this whole place could use a good cleaning.

The Nash sat in its space. And according to Shaw this vehicle was a veritable bastion of evidence. Mostly against him.

Now, he was no trained detective, it was true. But Archer had spent years of his life in another part of the world noticing little details that might save his life and that of his men. A machine gun muzzle barely visible under a mess of straw. A Panzer barrel edging out from the tree line. The too-intense stare of a villager who was trying to hide something. A wire leading to a bomb that looked like only a bit of plant vine. And then in prison it was sort of the same. A shiv sticking out from the cuff of a shirt, a guard clenching his baton a little too tightly before bringing it down on someone’s skull, a group of cons edging a bit too close for comfort.

His realizing all these things before they could impact him, giving him a bare moment to react, and to live—those experiences had rewired Archer’s brain, bestowing on him a level of skillful observation to perhaps successfully accomplish what he was about to attempt.

Shaw had said that in the Nash’s trunk were the imprints of what had appeared to be the gold bars, their weight pressing down on the soft carpet in the trunk. And along with that were grains of the gold dust. Clearly that had been the haul from Tuttle’s safe. Shaw had told him on the way to the police station that pictures of all this had been taken and would be used as evidence in a trial.

In my trial.

He checked the car, which was unlocked, but the keys were not inside, and the trunk was locked. He managed to work the back seat free and was able to access the trunk that way. He used his Ray-O-Vac light to look at the trunk carpet. He could make out the bar impressions and a bit of sparkly particles in one corner; he concluded the latter represented fragments of the gold dust.