Adamant

by E. H. Reinhard

  Chuck didn’t bother to stand from his spot on the floor, slouching against the blue-painted concrete block wall. He waited to see the guys step in. Jake with the twelve-gauge was usually first.

  Jake appeared in the doorway but was unarmed. He stepped in and put his back to the wall opposite Chuck.

  A second later, Jerry—wearing black boots, jeans, and a faded black tank top—walked in. “You’re Chuck Burr?”

  “Depends if you’re a friend or not,” Chuck said.

  “Answer the question,” Jake said.

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “Help him up,” Jerry said.

  Chuck rolled to his side and got his knees under him. Jake, with a hand under Chuck’s right armpit, helped him to his feet.

  “We talked to Leland,” Jerry said.

  “And?” Chuck asked.

  She jerked her chin at Jake then Chuck. Jake walked to him with a key for the cuffs, which he removed from Chuck’s wrists.

  “He says you’re good. Vouched for you. Says that we should try to help you out.”

  Chuck nodded.

  “Now having said that, he’s in there, and I’m out here. I say what goes out here. Especially in this bar. You want my help, you better damn sure remember that. And if you forget that or try any bullshit, Jake here is going to take your head off with his shotgun and we’ll dump you in a hole somewhere.”

  “Got it,” Chuck said.

  “Come on. Let’s go get a drink,” she said.

  Jerry led the way toward the bar. Jake followed the two. While Chuck was no longer cuffed, he didn’t exactly get the impression that he was free to do as he pleased.

  “Sit.” Jerry pointed at the barstools, walked behind the bar, and grabbed a bottle of whiskey.

  Chuck bellied up to the end of the bar near the pool table. He could see that it was daylight out of the bar windows, but whether it was morning or evening, he hadn’t a clue. How long he’d been in the room, he didn’t know. Jake grabbed a seat near the dartboard and the two other guys playing pool—Chuck recognized one of them as the prospect, Lenny.

  Jerry clanked the whiskey bottle and a pair of glasses down onto the bar and took a seat beside Chuck. She poured a few fingers of whiskey into each glass. “I have to pour my own drinks now that my bartender Red is in the hospital.”

  “Sorry about that,” Chuck said. “How’s he doing?”

  “Not well,” she said. “And you’re lucky he wasn’t a brother. If he was, friends with Leland or not, you wouldn’t be breathing.”

  “I’ll try to make it right with the guy if I see him.”

  “Yeah, you will,” she said.

  Chuck lifted his drink and nodded. “How long was I in that room?” He filled his mouth with whiskey.

  “It’s, like, four o’clock,” she said.

  Chuck had been in the makeshift holding cell for twenty-plus hours.

  “We needed to get word back from Leland that he sent you,” she said. “And the only way to communicate with him confidentially is to send the lawyer in. He went and talked to Leland, then got word back to us.”

  “Covering your ass. I get it,” Chuck said.

  “We don’t take any chances anymore. Especially after they got to my brother.”

  “You mean Leland?” Chuck asked.

  “He’s the eldest. I’m the baby. A couple in between,” she said.

  “Ah,” Chuck said. “So, Jerry, is that a nickname or short for something?”

  “Gerrianne,” she said. “Tell me, Mr. Burr, what are you looking for here?”

  “I don’t know. My goal was to get here. I didn’t have any set-in-stone plans for afterward. I guess I just need a place to lay low for a bit until the heat dies down and I can figure out what to do or where to go from there.”

  “Are you trying to leave the country?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Do you have any money?” she asked.

  “A few hundred bucks,” he said.

  “That’s not going to get you anywhere.”

  Chuck shrugged. “It’s all I got.”

  Her face said that she was in thought—that her wheels were turning. “You wouldn’t happen to speak Spanish, would you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Seriously?” she asked.

  “Spanish, I’m pretty fluent in.” Chuck rattled off a couple of sentences in Spanish, mostly thanking her for the whiskey as he took a drink. “I’ve been working on French and German.”

  “Wouldn’t have thought,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, after you’re inside a while, you need to find stuff to stimulate your brain. Plus, it’s just another way to watch your ass. You get a couple people speaking a different language right next to you, and if you didn’t speak it, they could be talking about killing you and you wouldn’t know. That wasn’t going to be me.” Chuck thought the fact that she’d asked him if he spoke Spanish seemed odd. Odd enough for him to inquire. “Why did you want to know if I spoke Spanish?”

  “Just that it could help you. We’ll get back to that.” Jerry scooped up her drink and took a sip. “Do you have any idea how much heat is on you?”

  Her tone said that she knew the answer.

  “Probably a lot,” he said.

  “You’re all over the news,” Jerry said. “FBI top ten most wanted. Big reward for information leading to your capture.”

  “And whoever tries to claim that big reward won’t live to get it,” Chuck said.

  “They’re saying you left bodies in Louisiana, left bodies at some diner north of Houston, killed a guy and took the truck that was parked outside a little further north of that. Just leaving a trail of death behind you.”

  Chuck noticed that she didn’t mention the gas station.

  “Just trying to stay a step ahead of everyone,” Chuck said. “When people get in my way, they need to be dealt with.”

  “That may be. But that truck you had parked out front of my bar has been all over the news. It was a big giant billboard saying that you were here. We moved it over to our shop and have it under a tarp in the back.”

  “Okay,” Chuck said.

  “We’re going to take you over there as well. It’s a couple miles from here. The shop and property are fenced in. There shouldn’t be any prying eyes if you keep your ass inside. Our clubhouse is attached to the back of the office. Plenty of booze, plenty of food. You can hang out there until we figure out something else.”

  “All right,” Chuck said. “Thanks.”

  Jerry finished her whiskey in a big gulp and slapped the empty glass down on the bar. A bottle sat on the bar, and she nudged it toward Chuck.

  “I have some shit to take care of. Have a couple drinks,” she said. “Have more than a couple if you want. We’ll take you over to the shop tonight after the bar closes.”

  “What am I supposed to do until then?” Chuck asked.

  “Drink. Sleep. Relax. Enjoy not being in jail,” she said.

  She had a point. “Thank you.”

  Jerry nodded and walked off.

  Chuck grabbed the bottle of whiskey and filled his glass.

  Chapter 17

  We’d looked around the remains of the gas station for about forty-five minutes after we found the first melted camera but never found anything else—not another camera and not anything that looked like a DVR or recorder for a surveillance system. I walked around the building’s perimeter, went back inside, and did more digging through still wet and burnt rubble than I would have liked. There was nothing but the single camera. While more cameras could have been lost to the fire, I’d thought we would have at least found some more after finding the one. I tried calling the contact number for the tenant a few more times. I went through all four prompts on the messaging system to be connected to various people, and three of the four had Catalane for a last name, but it didn’t matter. No one answered. The fire chief went over the file with us before we all parted ways.

  On our way out
of town, Beth and I made a quick stop at the tenant’s listed address, located inside a five-story office building. Their lights were off—no one was there. I left a note and my card in the office’s door. How a local company wasn’t aware that their business had been lost a few days ago was beyond me. I figured I would get my answer once we finally made contact. We let Maddox and Agent Disick know that we’d be back in the morning and would be in touch with both of them. When we were still a solid hour away from Houston, my phone rang. Bill was calling.

  “Hey,” I answered.

  “Are you guys still in Waco?” he asked.

  “We left a couple hours ago. We’re about an hour from our hotel in Houston.”

  “Damn. Are you heading back there?”

  “In the morning. Probably be back up there around ten o’clock or so. Maybe a few minutes after. What’s up?”

  “We think Waco may have been his destination. We’ve got a connection.”

  “A connection? I’m all ears.”

  “Yeah, remember—”

  “Hold on. Let me put you on Speaker so Beth can hear you.” I clicked Bill onto Speaker and thumbed up the volume.

  “Did we get something?” Beth killed the radio.

  “Sorry. Go ahead, Bill.”

  “Okay. Remember I told you that we had a guy here who wanted to talk for some kind of a deal?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Well, what it came down to was he wanted to be moved to a different wing for sharing information. Basically, he had a falling out with this group of bikers in here that Burr hung out with. He said that he feared for his safety. Which if there was any merit to that, the warden said that he would have been moved, anyway. So, long story short, a deal was made to get him on another block if whatever information he shared ended up getting Burr back in custody.”

  “All right,” I said. “What did he say?”

  “The guy’s name is Frank Pidgeon. There’s a d in the last name, but it sounds like pigeon, which is actually kind of ironic.”

  “Even more if his middle name was Stool,” I said.

  “Good one,” Beth said.

  Bill continued, “So Pidgeon said that Burr always talked about getting out—wouldn’t shut up about it. But not in the way that everyone inside talks about getting out, like escaping. Dead set and determined to find some way to get free. Pidgeon said the guys always gave Burr shit about it. Would joke that he was digging tunnels or going to hide in a laundry basket and stuff like that. Well, one day in the yard, Chuck was going on about getting out, and Leland, the group’s leader, said something along the lines of ‘If you ever get out, go to Waco and go to some bar.’ He didn’t remember the actual bar name, but Scott and I did a little digging. Turns out, this Leland Walters is from Laredo, Texas, but he has a sister from the Waco area. And his sister, a Gerrianne Walters, just happens to own a bar there.”

  “That’s interesting,” Beth said. “What’s the place called?”

  “The Iron Mug.”

  “That may actually be something,” I said. “We’re going to need to call up there and see what we can come up with. Did you guys get anything else?”

  “Just the bar. We were running interviews all day, went to search the place, and got the call that the guy was ready to talk when we were heading to our hotel. We turned around and went back up to the prison. Just got this story about this bar and called you guys right away.”

  “All right. We’ll call up to Waco and see what either the local agent or detective that we’ve been working with can tell us about the place. Maybe we can get eyes on it overnight and come up with something when we get back up there.”

  “You don’t want to send the locals in?” Bill asked.

  “I think we need a little more information before we make any kind of move,” I said.

  “Okay. Let Scott and me know what you get. We’ll probably be heading your way tomorrow evening. A few things to wrap up here, but that’s about it.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll let you know what we get out of the locals up there on this bar. Good work. Seems like the first real lead we’ve got.”

  “Fingers crossed,” Bill said.

  “Talk to you in a bit,” I said.

  “Bye, Bill,” Beth said.

  “Yup.” He clicked off.

  I looked over at Beth, driving. “What do you think?”

  “About getting packed up at the hotel, turning around, and going back up there tonight?”

  It seemed as if we were on the same page. “Let me call Disick and see what he knows or can tell us before we do anything.”

  “Not the worst idea,” Beth said.

  I dialed Disick’s number. The phone rang three or four times before he picked up.

  “This is Tom.”

  “Agent Disick, this is Agent Rawlings. I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Ever hear of a Leland Walters?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” he said.

  “What about a bar in Waco called the Iron Mug?”

  “Biker place kind of up by Baylor?” he said.

  “I don’t know exactly where it is but—”

  “Probably the place,” he said. “I don’t know of another by that name in the area. What do you need to know about it?”

  “If Charles Burr is there,” I said.

  “You think he may be there? How did that come up?”

  “Our guys in Louisiana got the lead to us. It seems Burr was friends with someone inside who has a connection to the bar.” I gave Disick what I’d gotten from Bill.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Well, what are you trying to do?”

  “Not sure yet. I’d like to get eyes on the place. Agent Harper and I are thinking about making the trip back up that way tonight.”

  “We can watch the place for you if that’s what you need,” Disick said. “Probably want to have a full unit if we’re trying to go in and shake any trees. You’ll need some paperwork forcing their hand if you want to look around, I’d imagine. The place is rough and I don’t think one or two people going in there and showing a badge or gun is going to get positive results.”

  “Right now, I just want a roll past. See if the BOLO truck is around. Make sure Burr isn’t standing out front of the place, smoking a cigarette.”

  “I’m in my car now. Maybe five miles away. I can roll past and let you know what I see.”

  “I’m good with that,” I said. “Don’t stop if you don’t have to. I don’t want to raise any flags until we’re a little more prepared.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” Disick said. “I’ll go past and give you a ring back with what I’m looking at.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Are you going to reach out to Maddox? Or want me to?”

  “Nah, let’s leave him out of it for now,” I said. “Just until we know more.”

  “All right,” Disick said. “I’ll call you back in a few.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  He clicked off.

  Phone in hand, I searched for the bar, hoping I could get a street view of the place. When Disick called back with what he was looking at, I wanted to have a reference.

  “You don’t want to involve Maddox?” Beth asked.

  I took my eyes from the screen of my phone and looked over at her. “Not until we’re up there. Not that I think he would go rogue and try to put something together on his own, but you just never know. If we mention something to him about this bar and the possibility of Burr hiding out there, and he could round up everyone from the local PD and head over. Big bust for him if Burr is there. If Burr isn’t there but is in the area and has something to do with someone at the bar, they could warn him, and he’ll be gone.”

  “I agree,” she said. “Did you want to head back up that way tonight? Is that the vibe I’m getting?”

  “What do you think? Are you up for driving back?”

  “I think we should. Get an early start in the morni
ng.”

  “Hell with that. I’m thinking about heading out for a drink when we get up there. I think I know just the spot.”

  I pulled the bar up on a map on my phone and got a street view of the place. The bar was a black-painted standalone brick building on a corner just off the frontage road running alongside Interstate 35. Garage doors were on the building, next to what looked like the main entrance facing the frontage road. The shape of the building and garage doors made me think it might have been an auto service shop at one point. I moved the map to get a view of the other side of the building, the side that ran along the other road, Fifteenth Street. A small parking lot took up the area between the street and building. There was room for only seven or eight vehicles, though in the street view of the map, there were just two and a couple of motorcycles parked outside the place. The words “The Iron Mug” were painted in gold on the side of the black building facing the lot.

  My phone buzzed in my hand—Disick calling back. I swiped to answer.

  “Rawlings,” I said.

  “It’s Disick. I just drove past the place.”

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “Motorcycles out front. Probably about a dozen. A couple pickup trucks and cars parked along the side and in the gravel parking lot across from the place. None of the trucks are the one we’re looking for. There were some people lingering about outside, smoking. Not that I could really tell much in the single parking lot light, but none of the five or six people looked like Burr. I don’t know. Looks like what’s probably a typical Saturday evening around there. Guessing it’ll pick up more a little later.”

  “Okay. No signs of the truck, eh?”

  “Nope. Not that I saw. If you want, I can loop around the block again.”

  “Up to you,” I said. “If you didn’t see it, it’s probably not there. I think Agent Harper and I are going to make the turn at our hotel and head back that way tonight. We may put eyes on this tavern ourselves a little later. Worst-case scenario, we’ll be up there to get an early start in the morning.”