“Tell you what,” she said, brightly. “I’ll split a pizza with you.”

“Hey, you really are hungry.”

“I’ll keep an eye on the radio, if you’ll go get it.”

“Sure.” Mike put on his hat and left.

“Anything but anchovies,” she called after him. Scotty ran for her purse, got the filing cabinet key, threw herself at the thing, and got it open. She pulled out the miscellaneous file, removed the other five green ledger sheets, made sure they were in the proper order, added the sixth sheet, and started to replace them in the file. They stuck halfway in. She ran her fingers between the pages to push aside the obstruction, and they met something small and thick. A notebook, she thought. John said there’d be a notebook. The front door to the office slammed. She spun around, the forbidden file in her hand. A man she did not know was standing at the counter.

“I’d like to pay a parking ticket,” he said.

“Oh, sure,” she said, relieved. She hesitated for a moment, then put the file on top of the cabinet, and went to help the man.

She took the ticket. “That’s five dollars.”

He opened his wallet and thumbed through some bills. “You got change for a twenty?”

“Haven’t you got anything smaller?” she asked, looking toward the door nervously. Mike might be back at any moment; or worse, Bo.

“Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”

Scotty took the twenty, went to her desk, opened a drawer, took out the cash box, unlocked it, put the twenty in and took out a five and a ten, conscious all the time of the unlocked cabinet and the deadly file, lying there, waiting to be discovered.

“There you are,” she said, stamping the ticket and tearing off the stub. “And here’s your receipt.”

The man left, and Scotty raced for the file. She reached in for the notebook and came out with a small, green booklet with a gold American eagle stamped on it. A passport. Quickly, she thumbed through the pages. Bo’s face stared at her from the photograph, but he was wearing glasses. Bo didn’t wear glasses. The passport was issued to a Peter Patrick O’Hara. The address was Bo’s.

Scotty wanted a copy of this, badly, but she looked up and saw Mike standing across the street with a pizza box in his hand, talking to somebody. She went quickly through the passport; there were a lot of stamps, but only for two countries – Switzerland and the United States. She repeated the passport number to herself three times, aloud, returned it to the file, and the file to the cabinet. She was sitting at her desk again, making a note of the passport number, when Mike came in with the pizza.

At ten minutes to twelve, Howell parked the station wagon where he could see the front door of the courthouse and waited. Bo’s story had been gnawing at him for days. It was plausible enough, but the reporter in him wanted it confirmed. At the stroke of noon, the girl who worked in the records office left the courthouse and turned a corner, out of sight. Howell went and did some grocery shopping and returned just before one o’clock, in time to see the girl go back in. Shortly, Mrs. O’Neal, the battleax of county records, left the courthouse. He had an hour.

The girl looked surprised to see him. “I thought we’d run you off,” she said, laughing.

“I lost the battle, but not the war, I hope.”

“You want me to look for the map for you?”

“Actually, there’s something else I’d rather see. Can you find me an old deed of transfer? Maybe from twenty-four, twenty-five years ago?”

“Sure. We’ve got all those. I don’t need to ask Mrs. O’Hara.”

“Good.” Howell read her the lot numbers he’d copied from the maps.

“Right this way.”

He followed her across the room and down a long row of filing cabinets. She consulted the lot numbers and the labels on the drawers. “Here we are,” she said. She opened the drawer, flipped through some files, and extracted a deed.

Howell skimmed through it, and it seemed straightforward enough. The property had transferred from Donal O’Coineen to Eric Sutherland, and O’Coineen had signed it. Or had he? Howell thought for a moment. “Would you have a record of old business licenses?” he asked. In addition to being a farmer, O’Coineen had been a well digger, Enda McCauliffe had said.

“Sure. In what name?”

“Donal O’Coineen. Try 1951.” He followed her to another row of filing cabinets.

“Here you are,” she said, extracting a sheet of paper. “Here’s the renewal application for 1951.”

Howell took the application and the deed to a window for better light and compared Donal O’Coineen’s signature on the application with the one on the deed. They were identical, or near enough. O’Coineen had signed over his land to Eric Sutherland, and almost immediately after that had taken his family and left the farm. Shortly afterwards, the roadbed had given way, and the farm had been obliterated. It all added up. Howell felt disappointed. The story had excited him, and now it was over. At least he could get back to work on Lurton Pitts’s book, now, with this O’Coineen thing settled in his mind.

He took the deed and the application back to the girl. “Thanks,” he said. “I really appreciate it.” He was about to hand her the papers, when his eye caught something, and he took them back. Under O’Coineen’s signature on the deed was another signature.

The document had been witnessed by one Christopher F. Scully.

23

Scotty burst into the cabin, startling Howell, who was banging away on the word processor.

“I’ve got him, John!” she cried. “He’s dirty and I’ve got him!”

Howell clutched his chest. “Well, do you have to give me a coronary in the process? I’m at that age, you know.”

“You’ll be younger than springtime when I’ve told you what I’ve found,” Scotty said, throwing herself on the sofa and kicking feet in the air, losing her shoes in the process.

“All right, all right, what is it? What have you found?”

“Bo has got a passport,” Scotty crowed, triumphantly.

Howell looked at her incredulously. “So what? So have several million other Americans.”

“Not in the name of Peter Patrick O’Hara, they haven’t.”

“Come again?”

“It’s got Bo’s picture in it, but O’Hara’s name. It’s a phony!”

“Is that it?”

“Huh?”

“Is that all you’ve got? You’re going to ring up the FBI and turn him in for a phony passport? This is going to get you a Pulitzer? I can see the headlines in the Times now – ‘INTREPID REPORTER CATCHES SHERIFF WITH INCORRECT TRAVEL DOCUMENT.' Swell.“

“Well, listen, that’s not all,” Scotty replied, undaunted. “The only place he’s been is Switzerland. Lots of times.”

“Oh, that’s different. Make that headline, 'REPORTER UNCOVERS SHERIFF’S SKIING HABIT.'”

“Come on, John, don’t you know what’s in Switzerland?”

“Alps.”

“Banks, dummy. Secret banks. Banks you can walk into wearing a bad wig and a false nose, carrying a suitcase full of thousand dollar bills, and they don’t ask any questions.”

Howell looked thoughtful. “What did you do with the copies of Bo’s ledger sheets?”

“In your desk drawer.”

Howell got them and spread them on the dining table. “Look at this,” he said.

Scotty ran over. “What? What?”

“These lumps of numbers that were interspersed throughout the ledger pages. Look at this first group.” He pointed.

D121 A 1845

F0720

L002 F 1005

Z 1110

S241 Z 1611

F 1716

D122 F 1200

A 1645

“Okay, I’m looking.”

Howell read through it and did some mental calculations. “Right. Yeah. It’s just shorthand for an airline schedule. See? The times are on the 24-hour clock. Depart Atlanta on Delta flight 121 at 6:45 PM, that would be, arrive in Frankfurt at 7:20 the next morning. Get Lufthansa 002 at 10:05, arrive Zurich at 11:10. Then back to Frankfurt on Swissair in the afternoon, and a noon flight back to Atlanta the next day.”