quite get clear with her, but maybe that was just the drugs talkin’
through her. You think?”
“Just the drugs,” Sharp said.
“Well, she knows of a certain place he might be,” The Stone said. “The
fella owns a cabin above Lake Arrowhead, she says. It’s a sort of
secret retreat for him.”
He took a folded paper from his shirt pocket. “I’ve written down these
directions.” He handed the paper to Peake.
To Peake, not to Anson Sharp.
Peake glanced at The Stone’s precise, clear handwriting, then passed the
paper to Sharp.
“You know,” The Stone said, “my Sarah was a good girl up until three
years ago, a fine daughter in every way. Then she fell under the spell
of a sick person who got her onto drugs, put twisted thoughts in her
head. She was only thirteen then, impressionable, vulnerable, easy
pickin’.”
“Mr. Kiel, we don’t have time-” The Stone pretended not to hear Sharp,
even though he was looking directly at him. “My wife and I tried our
best to find out who it was that had her spellbound, figured it had to
be an older boy at school, but we could never identify him. Then one
day, after a year durin’ which hell moved right into our home, Sarah up
and disappeared, ran off to California to live the good life.” That’s
what she wrote in the note to us, said she wanted to live the good life
and that we were unsophisticated country people who didn’t know anythin’
about the world, said we were full of funny ideas. Like honesty,
sobriety, and self-respect, I suppose. These days, lots of folks think
those are funny ideas.”
“Mr. Kiel-” “Anyway,” The Stone continued, “not long after that, I
finally learned who it was corrupted her. A teacher. Can you credit
that? A teacher, who’s supposed to be a figure of respect. New young
history teacher. I demanded the school board investigate him. Most of
the other teachers rallied round him to fight any investigation cause
these days a lot of ’em seem to think we exist just to keep our mouths
shut and pay their salaries no matter what garbage they want to pump
into our children’s heads.
Two-thirds of the teachers-” “Mr. Kiel,” Sharp said more forcefully,
“none of this is of any interest to us, and we “Oh, it’ll be of interest
when you hear the whole story,” The Stone said. “I can assure you.
Peake knew The Stone was not the kind of man who rambled, knew all of
this had some purpose, and he was eager to see where it was going to
wind up.
“As I was sayin’,” The Stone continued, “two-thirds of the teachers and
half the town were agin me, like! was the troublemaker. But in the end
they turned up worse stuff about that history teacher, worse than givin’
and sellin’ drugs to some of his students, and by the time it was over,
they were glad to be shed of him. Then, the day after he was canned, he
showed up at the farm, wantin’ to go man to man. He was a good-sized
fella, but he was on something’ even then, what you call pot-marijuana
or maybe even stronger poison, and it wasn’t so hard to handle him. I’m
sorry to say I broke both his arms, which is worse than I intended.”
Jesus, Peake thought.
“But even that wasn’t the end of it, cause it turned out he had a uncle
was president of the biggest bank in our county, the very same bank has
my farm loans.
Now, any man who allows personal grudges to interfere with his business
judgment is an idiot, but this banker fella was an idiot cause he tried
to pull a fast one to teach me a lesson, tried to reinterpret one of the
clauses in my biggest loan, hopin’ to call it due and put me at risk of
my land. The wife and I been fightin’ back for a year, filed a lawsuit
and everythin’, and just last week the bank had to back down and settle
our suit out of court for enough to pay off half my loans.”