Free The Walkaway by Scott Phillips Page A

scrap of paper. It was a deposit slip for Belinda Naismith, her phone number circled in red ballpoint.
    Lester Howells yawned like a giant redheaded baboon, his eyes clenched shut and his head thrown backward, his teeth bared and his tongue rolled back, one hand clutching his desk as his spine arched, the other thrusting into the air above him, opening and closing. “Sorry, Ed. Pulling a lot of those late nights this summer, still got to be up at five irregardless.”
    “Been up since five myself. Went over to Maple Grove and saw Daisy before I came down here.”
    “Pretty there in the morning, isn’t it? I go early mornings sometimes and visit my folks.”
    “Yeah. My nephew and his wife come by every other week, I guess. There were flowers, anyway.”
    As they talked Ed examined a Xeroxed list of all the places Gunther had been spotted, looking for a clue to his thought processes and finding none. Maybe he’d just wanted a haircut and a cup of coffee.
    “Well, I’m glad you’re here. Wish you didn’t have to be.” Howells draped one calf across the top of Ed’s old desk. “Why couldn’t that son of a bitch have wandered off in the spring or the fall so I could spare someone full time?”
    Ed waved him off. “I know how it is in this kind of heat.”
    “You going out to Lake Vista today? You might look in on old Rory Blaine if you do.”
    “I thought he was in that place out on Twenty-first.”
    “Nah, they moved him. He more than likely won’t know who you are, but it’s nice when he gets a visitor.”
    “I’ll give him a holler.” Not much chance of Rory forgetting me, he thought.
    “Probably Gunther’ll just turn up at Dot’s wanting dinner like nothing’s up at all.”
    “That’d be just like him,” Ed said. He stood up. “I’m sure I’ll talk to you before I leave town.”
    “Hope so. Give my best to old Dot when you see her.”
    He took the elevator downstairs. City offices were just about to open and the lobby was filling up with city workers and citizens, most of the latter looking aggrieved. He stepped into the press room and found it full of strangers, one of whom, a young woman wearing a hat decorated with flowers, looked up at him. “You looking for parking fines? Third floor, right across from the elevators.” He nodded, thanked the woman, and left.
    Sidney had been up since five-thirty; by the time Janice got there at eight he’d already been on the phone for more than an hour and a half, talking to the police, to the nursing home, to Ginger Fox, and to Gunther’s other daughter Trudy in Florida, Ginger having been too distraught to do the job herself.
    “Hey, Sidney,” Janice said. “Heard about your stepdad on TV last night. Find him yet?”
    “If they’d found him, I wouldn’t be getting here before you.”
    “My great uncle Rudy wandered off one time, walked from his house to a bus station five miles away, said he wanted to go to New York City. We couldn’t ever figure out why, he’d never been farther than fifty miles away from the house where he was born.”
    She picked up the flyer. He hadn’t run it off yet, but he’d attached another photo of Gunther to it.
    “What’d you do, Sidney, go out to a kindergarten and get the kids to letter this?”
    “It doesn’t have to be pretty, just readable.”
    “It’s neither one of those, believe me. Let me do it on the computer. I’ll make it nice and eye-catching, and we’ll get them printed up in color over at Printco.”
    “It’s fine the way it is.”
    “I’m not going to argue about it, Sidney. This is for your stepfather’s sake, let’s do it right and don’t get all prideful on me.”
    “Fine, do it your way, I don’t care.” He rose to let her take her seat. “I want to print up about five hundred. I’ll go start putting them up soon as they’re done.”
    “Why don’t you get Larry and Bill to do it?” They were the college kids who went around to the supermarkets, schools, churches,