“She called me on the phone. Said, ‘Oh, daddy! Do something! I can’t stand this—they’re killing me!’ I asked her if she knew where she was, and she said, ‘No, but I can see Twin Peaks from here. There’s three men and a woman, and—’ And then I heard a man curse, and a sound as if he had struck her, and the phone went dead. I tried to get central to give me the number, but she couldn’t! It’s a damned outrage the way the telephone system is run. We pay enough for service, God knows, and we …”
O’Gar scratched his head and turned away from Gatewood.
“In sight of Twin Peaks! There are hundreds of houses that are!”
Gatewood meanwhile had finished denouncing the telephone company and was pounding on his desk with a paperweight to attract our attention.
“Have you people done anything at all?” he demanded.
I answered him with another question: “Have you got the money ready?”
“No,” he said, “I won’t be held up by anybody!”
But he said it mechanically, without his usual conviction—the talk with his daughter had shaken him out of some of his stubbornness. He was thinking of her safety a little now instead of altogether of his own fighting spirit.
We went at him hammer and tongs for a few minutes, and after a while he sent a clerk out for the money.
We split up the field then. Thode was to take some men from headquarters and see what he could find in the Twin Peaks end of town; but we weren’t very optimistic over the prospects there—the territory was too large.