by Diane Capri
“You know who we are. You know we have limitless resources. Go ahead and run if you want. We will find you, Josh. I will find you. I will kill you. Just like Dan and Skip. You will never be safe. Never. You can count on that.”
Was it true? Could Ruben find him anywhere, everywhere? Because if Ruben found him, Josh was certain Ruben would kill him.
He realized Sam was looking at him strangely. “Are you in some kind of trouble, son?”
Yes, he was. He was in serious trouble. But it wasn’t the kind of trouble Sam could help with. So he replied, “Other than being out in the middle of nowhere with no car and no way to get back home, you mean?”
Sam said, “I can help you with that. Tomorrow, I can give you a ride to the bus station. You can take the bus until you reach a city. Catch a plane home.”
Josh nodded. A ride to the bus station. And where would he go? How far would he have to go to escape Ruben’s reach?
“That would be great, Sam. I’d be happy to pay you. I have a little bit of cash on me.”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t need nothing. You don’t owe me nothing. We’ll head out tomorrow morning after breakfast. How’s that?”
Josh nodded. “That’ll be just fine. Thank you.” Sam found an old John Wayne Western on TV and they watched it while Josh’s clothes finished in the washer. He moved them over to the dryer, and once they were done and the movie was over, he went back to the barn.
He lay awake on his bunk for longer than he’d expected. He was thinking about where he would go and how he would get there. Not back to Chicago. That much was certain. Ruben would easily find him there.
No, he’d go somewhere else. He’d become someone else. And he’d spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. But at least he’d be alive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Younge Farm, California
Thursday
The next morning, Flint met Drake at the airstrip and they flew back to Red Maple Lake. The closest town to Red Maple Lake Resort was Layton. Tahoe was in the opposite direction.
Flint figured Hallman wouldn’t have run to Tahoe. Too easy to find him there. Of course, if he wasn’t running from anything, then Tahoe would be the logical choice. Somehow it didn’t feel right to Flint, though.
Drake flew over the two-lane highway again. This time, Flint identified a few houses and a couple of storefronts clustered together a couple of miles north of the Wilcox place. Hallman could have stopped in there. But if he was running away, he’d have steered clear of people likely to know about the Wilcoxes and about the crash. Homes closer to the crash site were more likely to know about it.
Flint sent Scarlett an encrypted message asking her to find contact information for those homeowners and everyone who lived there. He also asked for a list of residents six years ago. They’d go there next.
Drake circled the farm they’d seen on their last flyover. He set the Pilatus down easily on the long drive and taxied closer to the house. The old truck he’d seen on the road two days ago was still parked in the side drive. By the time Drake shut the Pilatus down, Flint had pulled off his headset, lowered the stairs, and climbed to the ground.
An old man came out of the side door. He watched as Flint walked toward him. He was medium height and reed thin and wore an old-fashioned ribbed tank-style T-shirt.
He approached the man directly, right hand extended. “I’m Michael Flint. I’m sorry to bother you.”
The old guy shook hands. “Sam Younge. Nice plane. You lost?” He shoved both hands into the back pockets of worn work jeans that had probably served him for a couple of decades.
Flint grinned. “No, we’re not lost.”
“Nothing out here except me, and I don’t know you, do I?” He had a wooden toothpick held between his teeth and it bobbed when he talked.
“I’m looking for a guy. I thought you might be able to help me find him. It’s important, or I wouldn’t be here.” Flint fished a card from his pocket and handed it to Younge. He squinted to read the large black print.
“Not many folks wander out this way,” Younge shrugged, stashing the card in his jeans.
“He’s been missing for more than six years. His plane crashed over in Red Maple Lake. I thought maybe he’d found his way here, looking for a ride or something.” Flint paused, removed his sunglasses, and focused an earnest look on Younge. “His family has hired me to find him. They’ve already tried everything else. He could have been hurt. Hit his head or something. Maybe lost his memory. They aren’t sure.”
Younge squinted in the sunlight. He chewed the toothpick. Thinking things through, maybe. “Red Maple Lake is a long way from here. Hard to walk that far, especially with any kind of injury.”
Flint nodded. “We’re not sure whether he was walking or might have hitched a ride. Anything at all you could offer could be helpful.”
He stared at Flint for a few seconds before he said, “We can talk inside.” He turned and limped toward the house, favoring his left knee.
Flint followed the old man into the house. “You live here alone?” The kitchen table was set for one. He’d finished his meal moments before.
“Since my wife died. Coffee?” Younge picked up his mug and walked to the pot.
“That would be great. Black,” Flint replied. Younge poured the coffee and handed a full mug to Flint. He sat at the table and waved Flint to a chair.
“I remember when that plane went down. It was all over the news for days. And when they pulled out the bodies years later, it was heart-wrenching.” He shook his head and blinked away tears. He drank the coffee to conceal his sentimentality. “I guess when a man gets to be my age, people think we’ve seen everything and we’re pretty jaded. But that young man’s wife, the pregnant one? I felt sorry for her.”
“Of course.” Flint nodded. “They never found the pilot’s body. He could be down there in the lake, too, I guess. But his family hopes he escaped whoever killed his friends.”
Younge’s eyes widened. “His friends were killed?”
“Murdered,” Flint said. “One had two gunshot wounds in his body. Autopsy says the gunshots were the cause of death. It’s pretty clear the guy didn’t shoot himself in the back.”
“You think the pilot killed him?”
Flint shrugged. “Hard to say. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense that Hallman would have flown the guy all the way out here to shoot him.”
“That was his name? The pilot?”
Flint nodded. “Josh Hallman.”
Younge studied his coffee like a gypsy studied tea leaves, as if he might find the answer somewhere in the black liquid.
“I’m not the law, Sam. I’m a private investigator.” Flint lowered his voice. The old man was sentimental. He’d be moved by the facts, maybe. “I’m looking for Hallman because his son needs a bone marrow transplant.”
Younge looked up. “He had a son?”
“Good kid, too.” Flint nodded, pulled out his phone, and found the video of Jamie. He passed it across to Younge, who stared intently at the images. “The boy’s mother thinks Josh could be a suitable donor.”
Younge kept looking at the video. “Is that true? Could he save the boy’s life?”
“I won’t lie to you. It’s a long shot. But Hallman’s his father. He has a better chance. I need to find him and do it soon.” Flint leaned closer and spoke earnestly. “If you know anything at all, it could really help his son. Everything I’ve learned about Hallman says he’d want to help the boy, if he knew.”
Younge stood and paced the room, obviously agitated. After he’d done a few laps, Flint said, “Look, Sam, I’m running out of time here. If you know something, now’s the time to say it.”
Younge nodded. He leaned his back against the sink and folded his arms over his scrawny chest. “I was driving home. It was late in the day. I saw him staggering along the road, his thumb held out, kind of halfheartedly. Like he didn’t expect anybody to stop, you know?”
“So y
ou picked him up.”
Younge shrugged. “He seemed harmless enough. I’ve done some hitching in my day. It’s hard. Thought maybe I could help.”
“You brought him back here?” Younge nodded. “How long did he stay?”
“Couple of days. I took him to the bus station in Layton, few miles south, and dropped him off.”
“Where was he going?”
“He didn’t say. I figured he’d head back to Denver. That’s where he lived.”
Hallman had lived in Chicago. So he’d lied to the old man about that much. Flint figured he’d lied about heading to Denver, too, but he’d ask Scarlett’s team to follow up, just in case. “And you never heard from him again?”
“I did, actually. A few months later, he sent me some cash. Repaid what I gave him for the bus ticket.”
“Do you still have the envelope?”
Younge shook his head. “That was years back.”
“Any return address?”
Younge shook his head again and scrunched up his face, as if he was visualizing something that happened a long time ago. “But the stamps were interesting. Lots of them. Colorful. And the postmarks. Quite a few of those. The envelope had traveled a long way. Pretty beat up, but the cash was all there.”
“Did he include a note?”
“Yeah. Short one. It said thanks for the loan. That’s all.” He shrugged. “Sorry, but I threw it away, too.”
“How long had Hallman been out there on the road when you picked him up?”
“Maybe a few days, from the look of him.”
“Did he tell you anything about what had happened?”
“I didn’t know for sure about the plane crash at that point. The plane hadn’t been found and the men hadn’t been reported missing. Josh was already gone before all of that came to light.”
“You didn’t call the police? Later? Once you knew what had happened?”
Younge wiped his face with both palms. He cleared his throat. “Look, I didn’t know what happened. I still don’t. At that point, I thought Josh had gone back home. Later, when they pulled up the bodies and started talking about him being missing . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Except I guess I had a feeling that Josh could be in trouble and I didn’t want to add to that. He seemed like a decent guy to me.”
Flint didn’t buy that part of the story. Younge was a cantankerous old man. He didn’t tell anyone about Josh Hallman for a better reason than sentiment.
At least he’d confirmed that Hallman had made it out alive. He’d sent money through the mail a while later, which meant he’d been alive at that point, too. But why didn’t he collect that $50,000 from his bank account? That much money would go a long way in many countries. There was only one reason Flint could think of. He was afraid to make the withdrawal. Afraid someone was watching.
Younge said the envelope Hallman sent had come from someplace far away, where they used brightly colored stamps. Flint had found other people with less information than that. This thing might be looking up. “You know anybody living in that village up the road?”
“Geraldine?” Younge shook his head. “Josh didn’t stop off there.”
“How do you know?”
“Because if he had, he would have told me. And if he’d stopped there, wouldn’t he have stayed instead of walking on down the road? He was dog tired. Barely putting one foot in front of the other. He looked like he’d been chased by the hounds of hell, you know?” Younge shrugged. “Nice people up in Geraldine. Somebody would have taken him in for the night. Given him a meal. When I found him, he hadn’t eaten in days. No. He didn’t go there.”
Flint nodded. Made sense. And would save him some time. But he’d have Scarlett’s team check with the residents of Geraldine anyway.
“I’ve got to get going, Sam. You’ve been helpful. Thank you.” He pulled out another card and wrote his satellite phone number on the back. “If you think of anything else, call me, okay?”
Younge looked at the floor for a few seconds. When he looked up, he was frowning. “People came looking for Josh before. Right after they pulled the bodies out of the lake.”
“What kind of people? Police?”
“Two men. One stayed out in the SUV. Expensive one. I never saw one like it before. The other guy came to the door.” Younge shook his head. “He asked me if Josh had been here and I said no. I didn’t like the guy. Mean-looking SOB.”
Flint pulled out his phone. He found the photo of Ruben Vega and held it out. “Was this the guy?”
He squinted at the photo. “Yeah. That’s him.” He handed the phone back. Flint showed him the photo of Kevin Hayes and Younge squinted, nodded, and returned the phone. “He was the one driving. How did you know about them?”
“They threatened the boy’s mother. What did they say to you?”
“They said they were looking for Josh, and they told me some crap about him being dangerous and to watch out for him.” Younge cleared his throat and his voice was much stronger. “I knew that was a lie. Hell, he’d stayed overnight. Slept in my barn. Ate my dinner. He washed his clothes here. I’d talked to him a lot. He wasn’t the least bit dangerous. I told them nothing. They never came back. Good thing, too. I’m pretty handy with a shotgun.”
“I’ll bet you are.” Flint grinned. Younge had to be ninety-five years old, at least. But he looked like he could shoot pretty straight. “I’ve got to go. Please call me if you remember anything else that might help Jamie.”
“Not likely to happen,” Younge said. “Josh wasn’t here that long and it was too many years ago. And he didn’t tell me about the boy when he was here. Must have been a good reason why he didn’t mention his son. Do you know?”
It was a valid point, but Flint declined to engage the old man. He shrugged. “Maybe he was just exhausted, like you said.”
“Maybe.” The old man’s tone was doubtful. “I’ll call if I think of anything. I hope the boy’s gonna be okay.”
They shook hands again and Flint hustled out to the Pilatus.
Drake said, “Now what?”
“Great question. Wish I had a great answer.” He strapped into the copilot’s seat. “There’s a bus station about twenty miles southwest of here. Let’s start there.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Layton, California
Thursday
Layton, California, was an old mining town that time had forgotten. From the air, Flint saw a central business district with half a dozen buildings. A few rows of wood-framed homes clustered behind the main road. Not many vehicles parked on the streets, mostly pickup trucks and SUVs. On the east side, Drake found a patch of grassy field where the Pilatus could land.
“You stay here,” Flint said from the copilot’s seat when they hit the ground. He removed his headset. “I won’t be long. Thirty minutes, tops.”
He opened the door and pushed the steps down and deplaned. He jogged to the south end of town, where the quick internet search he’d done from the plane had located the bus station.
The building was at the end of a row of storefronts on the south end of the street. A driveway on the side was for loading and unloading the bus as it came through. From the looks of the setup, they never had more than one bus at a time. There was no bus around now. Only two vehicles parked in the lot, a faded red sedan and a shiny black SUV.
The bus station looked like it had been built in the 1920s. Flint pulled the glass door open and stepped inside the dim interior. The furnishings were the same vintage as the building. There were eight wooden pews lining the walls and two back-to-back in the center of the open room. On one end was a ticket booth with a woman sitting on a stool behind the glass window.
A schedule was posted on a letter board next to the ticket window, and a map was plastered to the wall next to the letter board. The letter board was an old-fashioned contraption that could be changed manually, but this one didn’t seem to have been changed lately. Even the letters were dusty.
The letter board proclaimed arrivals and departures. There were two of each posted. The bus arrived on Tuesday and Friday at 1:00 p.m. It departed on Tuesday and Friday at 4:00 p.m. There was only one destination listed: Stockton, California.
Flint and the ticket agent were the only two inside. He approached the window and waited. The frumpy woman seated behind the counter pulled her attention from her tattered paperback and looked up.
“No bus today,” she said. “Come back tomorrow.”
Which answered his first question. The letter board schedule was accurate.
“So you only have one bus every three days, then?” He smiled, friendly like.
“That’s right. To and from Stockton twice a week. You can catch a bus or rent a car from there, if you need to.”
“I guess I thought you’d have more options.”
She shook her head. “Sorry. Only one bus to Stockton since Methuselah was a pup. Twice a week. There and back. That’s it.”
“I see.” When he didn’t say anything else immediately, she returned to her paperback. “How long have you been the station agent here?”
“All my life,” she said, without looking up again. Must have been an exciting book.
“I’m trying to find a friend of mine. I think he came through here a while back.”
“How long ago?”
“Six years, I think.”
“He’d have gone on to Stockton, then, and changed there.” Her eyes kept scanning her book, left to right. She flipped a page.
“Do you take passenger names when you sell the tickets? Keep any records?”
“If they pay with a credit card, I guess the bank would have a record. Cash or check, we give them the ticket and they ride the bus.” She looked up. Her eyes narrowed. “That your SUV outside or do you need a ticket?”
“I don’t need a ticket, thanks.”
She nodded and returned to her book. He left the ticket window and moved to study the route map on the wall next to the letter board. The map was stained where travelers had run their fingers over the lines, checking their routes and destinations. The line representing the road from Layton to Stockton was marked by more black grime than the others.