“That’s exactly what I intend to do,” Wil said.
Julie put her arms around Samantha. Wil watched the gesture, then looked at Samantha.
“She really likes you,” he said. To Julie: “Samantha’s a special person to you, isn’t she?”
“Yeah,” Julie said. “I love her.”
“But you’ve only known her for a few days,” Wil pointed out in a gentle tone.
“I still love her,” Julie insisted.
“That’s nice,” Wil said. “Julie, I’d like to talk privately with Samantha, okay? For just a few minutes?”
“Okay,” Julie said, letting go of Samantha. “I’ll go upstairs and draw.”
Samantha led Wil to her office. He sat down in an armchair, tossing a throw pillow to the rug. Samantha took the seat behind her desk.
“Something happened last night,” she said. “When I went to pick up Julie at my friend’s house, she was drawing pictures of that yellow house I told you about.”
“Did you remember anything new?”
“No,” Samantha said in a disappointed tone. “I just had a stronger feeling that it was a place I had been once, a long time ago.”
“Might be some kind of vacation home,” Wil suggested. “I’ll see if I can locate this Haybrook’s place.”
Samantha reminded him that he’d come with information.
“I found Mr. Henley,” Wil said without prelude.
“What!”
“It was easy enough,” Wil said. “Just a matter of going back to that hotel in Durango. Raoul Henley used a credit card to pay in advance for your room. I traced his home to an address in union Fort.”
Samantha thought about this.
“That’s about halfway between here and Durango,” she said.
“Right,” Wil answered. “I’m going to be checking into Mr. Henley. So far I know he’s single, drives a 1981 Reliant, and rents a house at 358 Maple Avenue in union Fort.”
“How do you know all that?”
“It’s a matter of public record,” Wil said. “People think there’s a great deal of mystery to detective work, but mostly it’s just knowing where to find information that’s available to anyone who wants it. Raoul Henley is listed, as is everyone else, in the union Fort city directory.”
“The phone book?”
“It’s a little more detailed than that,” Wil said. “You can find one in the library. All I had to do was take a ride to Henley’s town and look him up.”
“But we still don’t know anything more,” Samantha said. “Did you talk to him?”
“Not yet,” Wil said. “I’m sure he’ll deny everything anyway. I need more solid information before confronting him.”
Samantha got up and went to look out the window. A crow was attacking a caterpillar just outside.
“What about Julie?” she asked. “Did you find an orphanage?”
“Sorry,” Wil said. “So far, I’ve only come up with dead ends.”
Samantha turned to face him with a concerned expression. Wil held up a hand, the silver-and-turquoise ring he wore flashing under the track lights.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Henley will be more than happy to talk to me.”
There was a menacing quality to his tone that suggested he wouldn’t stop until Henley did talk.
“I want to come with you,” Samantha said.
“I can’t allow that,” Wil replied. “You hired me because you need help. Don’t play amateur detective. It’s dangerous.”
“You made it sound rather mundane a few minutes ago,” Samantha pointed out.
“It is, to a degree,” Wil said. “But there’s a lot of danger too. If I feel I need you, you’ll know right away. At the moment, I’d rather handle things myself.”
He rolled up the cuff of his pants to reveal an ugly red scar that ran from his knee around to the back of his ankle.
“That’s a bite from a pit bull,” Wil said. “One of the people I was trying to interview for a case sicced him on me.”
Samantha made a face, although she’d seen plenty of gore in the emergency room. Most of those incidents had been accidental. But someone had purposely turned his vicious dog on this man!
Wil pushed the pants leg back down again.
“I’ve been driven away at gunpoint too,” he said. “Fortunately for me, no one ever fired a shot.”
“Do you carry a weapon?”
Wil shook his head. “Only on certain cases, under special circumstances. Guns aren’t the protection they’re cracked up to be. Of course, as an ex-cop I’m licensed, and in my early days as a detective I did carry one at all times. But I found that one of two things usually happened: some bully would try to provoke me into using it or would try to wrestle it away from me. I had a few close calls before realizing it wasn’t worth it. To tell you the truth, people are a lot more cooperative than you realize. Most of them are good citizens who want to help. And I can handle myself well enough without a gun.”