The Case Against Owen Williams Read Free Page B

“I came here with Vinny, and I better let her know where I am. If you’ll walk me home, I won’t need to go with them. It isn’t very far. Would you do that?”
    â€œYes,” Williams said. “Sure.”
    They didn’t see Brick and Vinny at first, so they danced. She sang along with the music, her face down against the rough wool of Williams’s tunic. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.”
    Later she saw Vinny and Brick and waved at Vinny.
    When the set finished, the band played a few bars of “The Bear Went Over the Mountain.” This was the signal for intermission. The band climbed off the stage, and among the dancers there was a general move towards the canteen.
    â€œWould you like something to eat?” Williams asked.
    â€œNo,” Sarah said. “Let’s go outside again.”
    â€œWhat about your friend?”
    â€œShe knows I’m with you.”
    There were more couples outside this time, their cigarettes glowing along the side of the dance hall and around the parked cars.
    â€œLet’s go somewhere there ain’t so many people around,” Sarah whispered.
    She took Williams’s arm and led him towards the darkness at the edge of the woods. As they faded into it, someone whistled shrilly and gave a wolf-howl.

CHAPTER
TWO
    Tuesday, July 4. Twelve miles away across the border, the Americans were celebrating their independence. Corporal Drost, his hour of glory at the head of the Dominion Day parade mercifully behind him, sat at his desk in the RCMP office reading the Saint John paper.
    There was a double headline. nazis blasted from last major soviet city. sharp offffensive is launched on cherbourg. Inside, there were the day’s casualty lists for the province with the photographs of six of the dead in a neat block. Elsewhere, Drost read that the Cardinals were continuing to run away from the Pirates and that the Browns were still ahead in the American League. In Saint John, one of the movie houses was playing Jane Eyre with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine.
    He finished scanning the paper, and got up and looked out the window. The RCMP establishment in Wakefield was across from the rear of the courthouse on a little side street. Across the street and just behind the courthouse stood the county jail, a square, red brick building with a little crenellated tower and a yard enclosed by a high wire fence.
    As Drost stood studying it, wondering vaguely once again what purpose the tower was supposed to serve, the telephone rang.
    â€œI’m phonin’ about my daughter,” the woman’s voice said—a country voice, nasal and raw-edged.
    In the background, there were other voices and a sound of dishes being rattled.
    â€œShe’s been gone since Saturday,” the voice went on, “and I just been to town and she ain’t been to work for the last two days.”
    They always began in the middle and worked both ways from there.
    â€œCould I have your name?” Drost asked. “Then tell me what happened.”
    â€œMy name’s Matilda Coile,” the voice said. “My husband’s Daniel Coile. We live on the Hannigan Road. You know?”
    â€œYes, I know it. So what about your daughter?”
    â€œI said. She ain’t been home since Saturday. She went out on Saturday night, with a friend of hers named Vinny Page, to that dance hall on the Bangor Road. And she ain’t been back. I went to the Page girl’s house because I thought she might be stayin’ there, but they ain’t seen her neither, not since Saturday. Then I went to the dairy where she works, and they ain’t seen her neither. I think somebody better start lookin’ for her.”
    â€œDoes she have any friends, any relatives she might have gone to stay with?”
    â€œShe don’t have a lot of friends. We got a lot of relatives, but she ain’t at none of the ones I asked. And why ain’t she at