“Tamper with it?”
“Yes. I’m going to ask someone to do some tests. Nothing that will harm it, though. Would that be okay?”
“It’s all yours. But first, fill out this form.”
Larry was at the courthouse, leaning against the counter, talking to some of the sheriffs. He straightened when Amanda arrived, and made stiff introductions. The officers stood a little taller in her company.
“This way,” Larry said, hustling her down the hall. “You don’t want to date cops,” he said. “Trust me, I should know.”
“You were one,” she said.
“Exactly. Here, the records room.”
He ushered Amanda in, hovering over her protectively while she took a chair in front of a computer. Then he pulled up another chair and showed her how to run names through the various court records systems, including the federal database.
It wasn’t hard, Amanda soon learned.
“I already checked for Ike Tressler,” he said. “Now you run him.”
“Okay,” she said. She felt the comforting weight of the tooth in her bag. “Nothing,” she said after a few moments.
“Right. Which doesn’t mean he hasn’t done anything. He just never got caught.”
“We should ask the constable about him,” she said.
“Agreed. But first, let’s run Ralph. Maybe there’s something my friend at the bureau missed.”
Amanda typed in the name, searching for court records. Nothing came up for Oregon, but there was a match in the federal database.
A Ralph Higgins swam up on the screen. Amanda enlarged the photo.
“Not the right guy,” she said. “Too old.”
“But the same name,” Larry said, peering close, so close she could see the pores on his nose. “Check it out.”
“Ralph Higgins Sr.,” she said. “You think he was his father?”
“Possibly.”
Ralph Higgins Sr. had been arrested, tried, and convicted for assaulting a public safety officer many decades before. It had happened in a place called Sleeping Giant, Arizona.
“Feel like an airplane ride?” Larry asked.
Amanda had been thinking how she should go see her parents, tell them all that had happened. But she didn’t want to do that. This was the first time she had ever done anything without their guidance or help. It was also the first time, besides when she was at work, that she felt like herself.
“I’d like that very much,” she said.
24
If Martha King was tired of seeing the constable, this time she didn’t show it. She looked fresh-faced, as if she had been out taking a walk on the beach. She smiled at the constable and then shook her head, bewildered, at his account.
“The man who reported it is a bit of a local reprobate,” he said.
“Well, that explains that, doesn’t it?”
“I’m sorry to have bothered you, ma’am.”
“It’s fine.” She smiled.
