Carnival of Shadows Read Free

face. He showed Travis his own office, nothing more than a plain-deal desk, a chair on either side, against the right-hand wall a half dozen file cabinets, the drawers labeled alphabetically— AA–CA , CE–FA , FE–KI , and so on. On the wall was a photograph of Rourke with another man.
    “That’s George Docking,” Rourke explained. “Governor of Kansas. Met him while he was doing his rounds before the election. Nice enough feller for a Democrat.”
    Rourke sat behind his desk, indicated the second chair for Travis.
    “You a political man, Mr. Travis?”
    “The Bureau operates in the same way regardless of who’s in the Oval Office,” Travis said. “The director’s answerable to the president, of course, but I think some of those conversations might be a little one-sided.”
    Rourke smiled knowingly. “Oh, I can imagine that would be the case. I think your Mr. Hoover there is a somewhat forceful and determined individual and not unused to getting his own way. People may know us out here for The Wizard of Oz , but we’ve had our fair share of G-men down here looking for the likes of Alvin Karpis and Ma Barker’s boys. You know Karpis?”
    “I know of him, of course,” Travis replied. “He’s been in Alcatraz since thirty-five or thirty-six, as far as I remember. I know that he was very much at the forefront of the director’s attentions in the early thirties.”
    “Well, your Mr. Hoover got him all right, and got him good.”
    Travis smiled. He didn’t understand why they were talking about Prohibition-era gangsters. Maybe such things were of interest to small-town sheriffs. Travis was interested only to hear the details of this most recent case.
    “So to our current situation,” Rourke said, as if prompted by Travis’s thoughts. “We had this crowd show up early on Thursday morning, like some sort of bizarre motorcade. Half a dozen trucks, a handful of pickups, three or four cars, even a couple of caravans.”
    Travis took his notebook from his jacket pocket and started to write down details.
    “I got everything you need to know already written down in a file,” Rourke said. “But there ain’t much.”
    “Just for my own recollection,” Travis said. “I find it easier if I make my own notes as well.”
    “Anyway, they show up, this troupe of strange-looking characters. At first I think they’re just on a layover for food, a night’s rest perhaps, but then they set themselves to erecting tents and Lord knows what else just on the outskirts of town.”
    “Whose land?”
    “Well, it isn’t land that belongs to anyone as such. It’s town land, I suppose. Just a few acres that run down to the edge of the river. It’s no use for farming, not big enough to build much of anything, and it kind of just sits there. It’s where we sometimes have a livestock market. One time we even tried to get a Christmas sort of festival thing going, but that flew like a dodo. So, like I said, it ain’t anyone’s.”
    “And a cease-and-desist warrant, an order to move on?”
    “Well, that was all in progress. Takes a few days to sort out that kind of thing, making sure it’s all legal and aboveboard, but before we even had a chance to discuss it, this thing happened, and now we got ourselves a crime scene. Until we figure out what the hell happened, the last thing in the world we want ’em to do is move on, right?”
    “Okay, so they showed up on Thursday,” Travis said, aware that Rourke would elaborate and head off course if he wasn’t corralled somewhat. Travis had taken an immediate liking to the man. There was something altogether unassuming in his manner. Travis, both personally and professionally, considered himself a good judge of character, even from initial impressions, and Rourke came across as an honest and decent man.
    “Yes, Thursday, sometime late morning, and then they’re working all day, all night, on into the middle of Friday, and then the late afternoon of Friday there’s about