The Threepersons Hunt

“What do you want to know? You can take these files with you.”

“I do have one question. The captain seems to think Threepersons is hiding on the Reservation. Is there any evidence or is that just his theory?”

“Actually it was my theory and he picked up on it. No, there’s no evidence. It’s just that Threepersons spent his whole life on the Reservation or just outside of it. Where else would he go at a time like this?”

“Any sign of how he got out of Florence in the first place? I don’t mean the prison break, I mean afterward.”

“No. Nothing at all. We’re still working on it.”

“Then for all we know he could still be in Florence.”

“Not unless he’s a mole. We’ve done a house-to-house.”

“He’d know how to lie up in the brush.”

“The dogs would have found him.”

“Not if he got his hands on a bottle of vinegar.”

“You think he’s that bright?”

Watchman said, “I don’t know the man. What do you think?”

“He didn’t impress me as being very bright. But you could have a point—that’s the kind of tidbit they pass around the mess table in slam. He could have picked up that information and remembered it when he passed somebody’s kitchen window. But I don’t set that much store in it myself. A well-trained hound won’t be discouraged by a little vinegar.”

Wilder pushed the papers together into a stack, the notes and the files on Joe Threepersons. He put them in a manila accordion-file envelope and wrapped the closer string around its disc, and passed it over to Watchman. “Anyhow I’ll ask the Florence police to give it another once-over. I doubt he’s still there, it’s been too long.” A glance at his wristwatch: “They busted out of there sixty-three hours ago.”

“It’s a pretty cold trail and we don’t seem to have any leads at all. Don’t expect miracles.”

“I never do.” Wilder sounded weary.

“Where do I hang my hat now?”

“It’s a road job. You don’t need a desk, do you? I hope you don’t, we haven’t got any to spare. Damned building’s bulging at the seams.”

“You’ll pull Buck Stevens in this morning?”

“If I can get the captain’s okay. I’ll get on it right away.” Wilder gave him the benediction of a meager smile. “Good luck anyway. I suppose I should say that. I don’t really expect you to find him unless he makes a stupid mistake. That’s what usually nails them.” He spoke like a man moving toward cynicism, as if he’d lost his faith in good police work.

“How important is it? Finding him I mean.”

“On a priority scale of one to ten it rates about an eight. It wouldn’t rate that much except he’s getting a pretty good press—one widower Indian at large in spite of dogs and everything else the Establishment can throw against him. It’ll give the department a black eye if he stays loose too long.”

And it’ll look a lot less like an underdog getting ground up in the computerized meat grinder if an Indian’s the one who nails him. That was the unspoken kicker but they both knew it and it made Wilder break out his sad little smile again.

Wilder’s intercom phone buzzed. Wilder picked it up but held the mouthpiece cupped in his palm while he spoke to Watchman. “You need anything else?”

“Not right now.” Watchman got out of the chair and Wilder lifted the receiver, talked and listened, then reached for the outside telephone and answered it. With his hat in one hand and the Threepersons file in the other, Watchman got to the door but Wilder’s voice arrested him:

“Wait one, Sam.”

Wilder went back into the phone: “Give me that again.” He penciled something on his calendar pad.

There were more grunts and murmurs and finally Wilder cradled it and ripped the page out of the pad. “A break. City P.D. found a hot wagon along the Grand Canal early this morning. They just got done tossing it and labbing it and guess whose prints are all over the damn thing.” The sad smile. “I did say he wasn’t too bright, didn’t I.”

Watchman looked at the scrawled jottings. “Stolen out of Florence last night.”

“So the son of a bitch was hiding out in town all the time.”

“Okay,” Watchman said, “but how did he know when the dragnet was lifted?”

“Maybe just luck. He knew we couldn’t keep the town bottled up forever.”

“Do you believe in that kind of coincidence? Look at the timing—he had to come out in the open and steal that car within a few hours after we called off the roadblocks. How did he know?”

“Maybe he had a radio with a police band.”

“And knows all the signal codes by heart?” Watchman shook his head. “And he wouldn’t be traveling around in a prison uniform, somebody’d have spotted him. So he got himself a change of clothes.”

“I think we’ll make a detective out of you all right.”

“What I’m saying is he must have had outside help.”

Wilder said, “Your job to find that out.”

Watchman went to the wall map and traced the line of the Grand Canal on the inset city map of Phoenix. “Along North Sixteenth,” Wilder said. “Mean anything to you?”

“Two blocks from the Federal Indian Hospital. Where’d they take his wife after the accident?”

“City morgue I imagine. Case like that, there’d be an autopsy, they’d check for alcohol or drugs in the system.”

“But would Joe Threepersons know that?”

“That’s another good question. You find out, all right?”

“Here’s another one. Why leave the car here?”

Wilder said, “That one I can make a stab at. You don’t hang onto a hot car any longer than you have to. You ditch it and steal another one. If you keep changing cars nobody has time to catch up with you because it takes time to post a car onto the hot list.”

“If he’s that smart he’d be smart enough to wipe his prints off, wouldn’t he?”

“He would unless he wanted them to be found. But we may be giving him credit for too much smarts.”

“Why would he want them found?”

“To make us think he’s still in Phoenix.” Wilder smiled again. “You can read anything into it you want to, Sam, but the only way to find the answers is to go out and do the legwork.”

Watchman swung toward the door but stopped with his hand on it. “Am I uniform or plain?”

“You can suit yourself. If you go plain you’ll have to use your own wheels, but you can voucher the mileage.”

Watchman considered it. A lot depended on what types you had to interview. Some were put off, closed up, by the uniform; others were scared enough to open up.

Waiting for Stevens to come in off patrol he sat in the canteen with coffee and the file. It didn’t tell him much. Joe Threepersons had confessed to the murder of Ross Calisher; the confession had been obtained lawfully with his attorney present.

Subject had been born at Cibecue on October 5, 1941; it made him some two-and-a-half years younger than Watchman. Raised mainly at Whiteriver and nearby communities on the White Mountain Reservation. Mother died 1947, father died 1962. One brother, born 1934, died 1953 in South Korea. One sister, Angelina, born 1944, evidently still alive.

Bear that in mind, he thought. They were only three years apart in age. How close were they? Would the subject expect his sister to hide him out?

Subject had been educated after a fashion at mission schools on the Reservation; evidently he hadn’t been much good at school—at fifteen he had gone to work for one of the white-managed cattle operations at Whiteriver. In 1959 he had gone into the Army for two years with a nine-month stint in West Germany, two months of which he had spent in the stockade—his first recorded criminal conviction. (Assault on a noncommissioned officer.) It appeared he had frequent problems with his temper. Returned to Arizona in August 1961, and the record showed three arrests for drunk-and-disorderly and one for drunken driving, all in the space of the next seven months. It wasn’t unusual. A lot of them came home from the Army, took one look at the Reservation and spent their back pay on whiskey.