Slow Dance in Purgatory(10)

Mayor Carlton herded his wife and son through the front doors. Chief Bailey thought he saw flashbulbs go off. Leave it to old Al Tibson, owner of the Honeyville Crier, to be there with his great, big, flashing camera all set up to capture the lurid details. He would let Mayor Carlton deal with that. It would serve the philandering peacock right. What the dickens was pretty Dolly Kinross doing with Mayor Carlton, anyway?

“Chief?” Dolly Kinross cleared her throat nervously and suppressed a sob that was threatening to break free. “Whose blood is that?”

***

Dolly Kinross did not take the news well. She kept insisting that Johnny wouldn’t have left his younger brother to save his own skin, and if he had left at all it had to have been against his will.

“Johnny was very protective of Billy and me, Chief Bailey. He wouldn’t have just left Billy laying there dead! And he wouldn’t have left me – not without telling me where he was going!” Dolly Kinross had sobbed into his shoulder. Chief Bailey had silently agreed with her. He had tried to comfort her, and he had reassured her that they would figure it out. But the truth was, he was completely stumped.

Thinking back on that awful night he sighed and rubbed the thinning hair on the back of his head, unfolding himself from his desk chair. None of it made any sense. From what he knew about Johnny Kinross, the kid was no angel. After all, he had stolen the gun that his kid brother had been waving around that night. The owner had come forward and reported it missing from his car just yesterday. That had answered the question of the gun.

He had wrangled the story of the rumble out of Roger Carlton and a few of the kids that had gathered for the fight that night. Roger had apparently been giving Billy Kinross a hard time, and Johnny had called him out. Johnny Kinross had been involved in his share of fights over the years, and he had a reputation as a pretty tough kid. Apparently, Roger Carlton had tried to increase his odds in the fight with a little element of surprise.

A day or so after the disappearance, Chief Bailey had also been barraged by a steady stream of hysterical females, all claiming to have had a special relationship with Johnny. He had even been visited by plain little Dorothy Barker, Johnny’s English teacher, who had seemed unusually distraught by the news of Johnny’s disappearance. Chief Bailey had his suspicions about that. Seems Johnny had a way with the ladies. Still, angel or not, Johnny didn’t seem like the kind to run when there was trouble

Unfortunately, that was the only option that made any sense. They hadn’t found a trace of him anywhere. His car had still been right where he left it that night. The doors were hanging open and the lights were still on. Somebody had done some real damage to it, too. Chief Bailey was working on charging Roger Carlton with that. The Carlton kid had been seen taking a bat to the Bel Air, and he was going to pay to have it repaired, whether Johnny Kinross turned up or not. Roger Carlton was up to his eyeballs in this thing, although Chief Bailey didn’t think he had anything to do with Johnny’s disappearance. Still, Roger should have to pay restitution in some way or another.

Chief Bailey was also going to demand that Mayor Carlton set up some reward money in an account at the local bank. It might encourage someone who might have some information to come forward. Dolly Kinross sure didn’t have a damned dime, and Mayor Carlton had plenty. He owed the woman that much; Chief Bailey would make sure he paid, too. It was his own way of doing something, because he had done precious little to solve the missing persons case. It wasn’t for lack of trying. There just wasn’t much to go on.

They had turned the school inside out the night of the tragedy. They had turned the town upside down in the days that followed. Johnny Kinross had just vanished. The only clue they had had was the destruction in the men's locker room a day or so after the tragedy. The mirrors had all been broken. They hadn't been broken when he and his deputies had searched the school the night Billy Kinross died. They had found the window that had been shot out, just like the Carlton kid said, and Billy Kinross’s glasses. But the destruction to the mirrors had to have happened after. They wouldn’t have known about the mirrors at all, but the new janitor had reported it. He had been hired several months before the tragedy and had been asked to clean up the construction dust and debris and ready the school for its first day.

“Parley? What was that janitor’s name again?” Chief called out into the front office area where his secretary, Sharon, and Parley were chatting over cups of coffee.

“Huh, Chief?” Parley shot his head inside Chief Bailey’s office. “Oh, um, the colored boy?”

Chief Bailey didn’t much like the term colored, but he didn’t correct Parley, who truly meant no harm and didn’t seem to know any better.

“His name is Gus...Jackson? No, Johnson…..Jasper! Gus Jasper. Why?"

“I want to talk to him again. Can you drive over to the school and see if he’s there – see maybe if I can have a word with him when he gets done with his shift?”

“Sure thing, Chief.”

Gus Jasper was visibly nervous when he arrived at the police station at about 5:30 that afternoon. He held his cap in his hands and twisted it uncomfortably, but his eyes held Chief Bailey’s and his gaze was direct. He was a good looking black man in his early twenties, tall and well built, with limbs suited more to the basketball court than the janitor’s closet. Chief Bailey had noticed that he limped a little when he walked, but decided not to ask any personal questions. Gus had stayed in the background when the chief and a couple of deputies had gone to check out the broken mirrors he had reported. He probably thought he was in trouble now, and Chief Bailey rushed to put him at ease.