They exited pothole city and swung onto Main Street. Trooper Cirba drove slowly as he texted something on his cell phone. Here the town looked every bit like the Pocono Mountain dream that real estate agents and holiday home builders put on the front of their brochures. All the buildings on Main Street were old-school wood and painted the same brick red. There was a quaint hardware store, the kind you could imagine buying nails by the pound, that outside had a display of weathervanes. There was a fruit and vegetable stand laid out so pretty that it looked like a postcard. Next to that was a sporting goods store and then a pizza shop. It all had that mid-Atlantic rustic charm that made city slickers sigh.
The Oaktree Diner was at the end of the street. Harry and Trooper Cirba entered and walked to a booth in the back. A 70-year-old guy with a grey beard and a matching grey braided ponytail said: “Uh oh, it’s the fuzz.”
Cirba reacted with a tolerant smile.
The Oaktree Diner was one of those small-town American diners with so many items on their menu it made you wonder if the cook was an eleven-armed alien.
A middle-aged, tired but friendly waitress plonked down two ice waters and filled their coffee cups while saying: “Hiya, Ed, who’s your friend?”
“Darlene, this is Harry. Harry, Dar—”
“He calls us all Darlene in here,” the waitress said cutting him off. “I’m Sue.”
“Pleased to meet you, Sue.”
“So, is Ed here buying you a last meal before he hauls you off to jail?”
“I came because I heard you have the best potato pancakes in the Commonwealth.”
“Well that’s no lie. Anything else?”
“He’ll have the meatloaf,” Cirba said.
“Apparently, I’m also having the meatloaf.”
“Now don’t let him push you around, sweetie, just ’cause he wears one of those funny hats. You have whatever you like.”
“I will have the meatloaf,” Harry said returning the menu.
“Same for me,” the trooper echoed.
“Comin’ right up.”
After she had left Harry said: “You gonna let her diss the hat like that.”
“She’ll have a parking ticket on her car in the morning.”
Harry laughed. “If you hadn’t taken me to that other part first, I would have said this place was perfect small-town America.”
“Used to be. Not anymore.”
“You grow up around here?”
“Yeah, well, about thirty miles west. Around here, that’s next door.”
“You sure you’re not just being nostalgic about your childhood?”
“Oh, no, there’s been a real demographic change. With the rise of the Internet, lots of the financial types can work mostly from home. If they have to go to Wall Street it’s only two hours away. That commute is too much for every day but once or twice a week it’s manageable. People often moved here because their children in New York and New Jersey were falling in with bad kids. Problem is that a lot of the bad kids were actually their own children. Now we have the bad kids. These days we got tons of drugs up here we never had before, and we’ve even got gangs. There are kids wearing colours at the high school in Hilltop.”
“Like Sharks and Jets?”
“More like Crips and Bloods.”
“Sounds bad.”
“It is. Maybe it’ll settle down, but at the moment people don’t know how to cope.”
Lunch arrived and even though it most certainly would not have made the American Heart Association’s recommended menu, it was awfully delicious.
As Cirba pushed away his plate with a satisfied sigh, Harry said: “I thought you were on a diet?”
“I’m on a diet when Mrs Cirba is cooking. The less I eat of her food the better.”
“So I can’t mention to your wife about Nirvana or that you eat lunch at the Oaktree Diner?”
“You wanna get found in the woods like Big Bill?” Cirba’s phone beeped. He checked the text, then opened his wallet and threw money on the table. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to Feather.”
Back in the squad car Harry asked: “Who or what is Feather?”
“Feather’s the pothead that wasn’t home before. Officer Barowski just texted me to say he was back in town.”
“Interesting name, Feather.”
“It’s short for his nickname from when he was young – Featherbrain. Strangely, he likes the moniker enough to have it tattooed on his neck.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“You know, a lot of people live up here because they want a simple life, and that’s all well and good, but there is a minority who are here because they are just simple. Feather is part of that – more tattoos than teeth brigade. Prepare yourself.”
* * *
They parked on the street and Harry jogged three paces behind Trooper Cirba as he walked up Feather’s driveway. Inside the house, what sounded like a pack of wolves went ballistic. Venetian blinds parted enough for a peek and then closed.
“Feather,” Cirba shouted. “I don’t have a warrant. I just want to talk.”
“How come you told him you don’t have a warrant?” Harry asked quietly.
“He just saw me and is now about to flush all of his junk down the toilet. I want him to talk to me, not to be mad at me.”
The door opened a crack and half of a scrawny unshaven face appeared. “You promise, Officer Ed, you got no warrant?”
“I swear, Feather. I just want to talk.”
“’Bout what?”
“Big Bill.”
Feather’s face disappeared from the doorway. “Sheeeet, you think I killed Big Bill?”
“Did you?”
Feather’s face reappeared in the crack. “Nooooo. He was my bro’.”
“I’ll take you at your word, Feather. Can we come in and talk about it?”
“Not ’less you have a warrant. I know the law. If I let you in you can bust me for anything you see.”
“I just want to talk, Feather. I won’t see nothing. Hell, you can even smoke a joint while we talk if you like. I know we’ve had our differences but I’ve always been square with you – right?”
“That’s no lie,” Feather said, pushing the door closed and undoing the safety chain. “Not like that fuckwit Barowski. Wait here while I put the dogs away.”
They waited while Feather screamed at his baying hounds. The front door opened and Harry got his first look at the man called Feather. He was one of those guys that was probably still in his twenties but had been so tough on himself that he looked a decade older. He wore a red plaid shirt and baggy blue jeans. His hair was in the style of an unkempt Jesus, and his fingers were nicotine stains on top of home-made star tattoos.
He pushed open the screen door and said: “Entre chez Feather. Hey, can I smoke crack while we talk?”
Cirba stepped into the house and said: “Don’t push it, Feather.”
The place was neater than Harry expected.
Feather