"Something significant". That's all he would say.

"What's significant?" Steve asked.

Richard only scowled, but he's like that. Asking Richard about any kind of puzzle is like asking questions about a movie you're watching together. The problem is that Richard always figures out the ending first. He knew exactly what we were looking for, but to tell us now would take all the fun out of explaining why it was important once we found it. So I didn't even bother to ask.

I just hoped we weren't looking for Mike face-down in a ditch, with a bullet through his brain...

At exit 157 Steve found a shoe.

"Is it Michael's?"

"Not unless he's been wearing a girl's size 4."

Richard grimaced. "Irrelevant."

I found it at exit 159. It was a pile of stubbed-out cigarettes halfway down the exit ramp. I wouldn't have noticed them except for the distinctive overlapping L and M and the fact that I'd already heard seven commercials for them that morning.

"Lucky Man cigarettes," Richard agreed, smiling.

"So what?" Steve asked.

Richard sighed. Steve hadn't been paying attention to the movie. "A violent convict escaped from an Ohio prison about fifteen miles from here the day before Mike stopped at this exit. Mike, in fact, bought gasoline at that Shell station over the rise there -- we know that from the receipt in his trash receptacle. That same morning a pawn-shop owner in this town was murdered. A number of items were stolen from the pawn shop, but notable among them were several cartons of Lucky Man cigarettes.

"This pile of cigarettes gives strength to a theory consisting of three points: first, that Mike picked up a hitchhiker here. Second, that the hitchhiker was the escaped convict. Last, that the convict was the same person who murdered the pawnshop owner."

"So Mike's somewhere out there with an escaped murderer?"

"I think it probable."

Steve cracked his knuckles. "Let's go!"

"It's 11:30," Richard said. It wouldn't matter if Sherlock Holmes and Perry Mason were waiting at exit 171; Richard wouldn't skip a meal. "Let's have lunch. Then we can proceed to Cygnet, Ohio." He sighed. "Today we ride a most tenacious wave of assumptions, slippery coincidences, and shallow conjecture. Regrettably, I'm afraid it's all we have."

Cygnet is a nice little town about half the size of Benville. We finally found what might have been its only phone booth next to the only parking meter. For practical reasons Richard waited in the car while Steve and I crowded into the phone booth. Steve dialed. After a couple of requests he got through to the person we needed.

"Where are you?" I heard Doug ask. I didn't have to strain my ears because Doug talks pretty loud.

"Cygnet, Ohio," answered Steve. "At a phone booth." He gave Doug the number.

"What are you doing in Cygnet?" Doug asked.

"Surfin'," Steve answered.

"Say what?"

"Ridin' the waves. And most tenacious and slippery they have been today, I might add. Doug, my man Richard has got it all figured out. There was a convict who escaped from prison a couple of days ago--"

"Bud Worden," I put in.

"--yeah, and, Worden killed a pawnshop owner, then hitched a ride with Mike and kidnapped him, and made him go to Cygnet, Ohio, so that's ..." He stopped because Doug was laughing. "What's wrong?"

"You're barking up the wrong tree," Doug said. "Guys, this is police work in the real world. It ain't a friggin' treasure hunt."

Steve's face turned the color of his hair. "What makes you think--"

"Worden was apprehended last night." Doug's voice was serious now. "In Kenton, Ohio, in a K-Mart, trying to steal cigarettes." He laughed, without humor. "Mike, I'm sorry to say, was not with him. There's nothing to tie him to the Findlay murder. He got a change of clothes somewhere but they weren't from the pawn shop. Yeah, I read the papers, too, and I thought about it. I have an imagination too. So you've had your fun. Now get back to Lima, where the car was found, and--"

"I told you where we'd be." Steve's mouth was tight. "At this phone booth."

"Guys, you're barking up the wrong tree! Just--"

He might have said more but I didn't get it because Steve hung up. Loudly. Which is kind of a shame because I'd wanted to ask what brand of cigarettes Worden had been caught with.

We walked back to the car where Richard sat watching us. "Yes?"

"Washup," Steve growled, and kicked the parking meter, denting it.

Richard sighed. "From the beginning," he said. "Verbatim."

I told him.

© Copyright David T. Jarvis 1997, 1998, 1999

All Rights Reserved.