The little bell over the door jangled as another patron came in. Normally Carl might have bothered to look, but he was exhausted. He would have completely ignored the door, but just as it rang Becky was heading his way with a plateful of scrambled eggs, hash browns, and a lethal dose of extra-crispy bacon. Becky looked at the door, looked at Carl then shook her head in warning. The expression on her face said it was bad, very, very bad.
Carl turned to the door and saw Hell in high heels heading in his direction.
It was much worse than he’d expected.
CHAPTER TWO
Calvin Martin tipped the beer can back to get the last of its contents, then crumpled the can and tossed it onto the floorboard of his truck to join its eight brothers. For the umpteenth time he looked out the side window at the house that had once been his. Parked in back of a currently empty house, Calvin had been waiting for night to fall. It was full dark now and lights had come on in his former home. Good. That meant Leslie was home.
Calvin opened the door and the dome light illuminated the cab, allowing him one more look at the restraining order. That bitch. She thought a piece of paper could keep him away. He’d show her. Nobody could keep him away from what was his. Not her father. Not the fucking cops. She hadn’t been much of a wife, truth to tell, but she had been his and nothing was over until he said it was over. Plus there was no way he was just going to let her take everything he had.
Calvin shut the door and started down the driveway. He barely felt the beers. He was a big man and he could handle his drinks. Maybe he would have something stronger later, after he had taught little miss fucking bitch how the world worked.
He looked around as he reached the bottom of the drive. No one about. Great. He could cross the street and come at the house from the side where there were plenty of trees, and that would get him to the back door. Leslie had changed the locks but Calvin knew he could kick the door in. Hell, he’d done it before.
He had just crossed the street and was stepping into the yard when a voice said, “Mister Martin.”
No questioning tone. Whoever the hell it was knew who he was looking at. Calvin turned. In the dim light from a street lamp he could make out a big man standing near the trees. A damn big man. Calvin moved closer. The big guy had close-cropped brown hair and pale eyes.
“Who the fuck are you?” Calvin said.
“That’s not pertinent at the moment.”
“Huh?”
“Pertinent,” repeated the man. “It means it’s not important.”
“I know what the fuck it means, wise-ass.”
“Good. Just making sure. You look a little slow.”
Calvin grimaced. Had that fucker just called him slow? “Listen pal. I don’t know what your deal is, but you better close that smart mouth or you’ll be spitting teeth.”
“That’s unlikely,” the man said. “But back to our discussion. What is pertinent, is that you’re currently under a restraining order, which states that you’re not to come within one hundred feet of your ex-wife. You’re in violation of that order as of now.”
“You a cop?”
“Not anymore. Now why don’t you trot on back to your truck and go home and finish getting drunk.”
“Or what?” said Calvin.
“Or I’ll hurt you.”
Calvin’s face grew hot and he could feel the old anger welling up. He had hoped to let a little of that anger out on the former Mrs Martin, and later he would, but here was a bigger target. Yeah, the asshole was big, but he wasn’t that big. Calvin started toward the man, balling his fists as he went. “Oh so you’re going to hurt me. Gee, I’m all scared.”
The man didn’t answer and his silence only made Calvin more pissed. “I’m going to stomp your ass all over this street, fuckhead.”
Calvin lunged, swinging a long, looping right at the man’s head. He’d always been good at punching. He had big thick bones. Never even broken a knuckle pounding on some deserving head. But there was a problem. The man wasn’t there anymore. Calvin’s punch met only empty air, and he stumbled forward, almost falling.
“Last chance, Mister Martin,” the man said. “Go home.”
Calvin spun. Somehow the man had gotten behind him. “Fuck you,” he said, and threw another punch.
He was never sure exactly what happened after that. His nose exploded into a pulpy mass and then something that felt like a cannon ball slammed into his stomach. Calvin went to his knees, vomiting up his nine beers and the cheeseburger that had preceded them into his gullet.
He looked up just in time to see a foot coming at his face and then the world went dark.
* * *
Wade Griffin grabbed a fist full of the back of Calvin Martin’s work shirt and dragged the man back across the street to the truck. Griffin opened the passenger door and threw the two-hundred-plus-pound man into the cab. Griffin slammed the door and walked around to the driver’s side. He smiled. The keys were still in the ignition. Griffin got in, started up the truck and pulled out onto the street.
Leslie Martin had been right. She had told the county sheriff that her ex-husband would just ignore the restraining order and would find her and give her another of the beatings he had handed out so often over the two years of their rocky marriage.
The sheriff had told Leslie that he would step up patrols in her neighborhood but had also recommended she hire a private investigator. In fact he had recommended one specifically. Griffin grinned, thinking of Sheriff Carl Price sending the woman his way, telling her that she could trust Wade Griffin, a local boy who had just moved back to town.
He had only to watch the house for two nights before Martin showed up. Griffin had waited for the man to build up enough courage and when Martin had finally come strolling over, Griffin had intentionally pissed him off. It had made it much easier to deal with him. Anger makes people stupid and reckless. That was one of the first things Griffin’s sensei had taught him.
He drove Martin’s truck to the parking lot of the Brennert County Hospital emergency room entrance. He had noted that the late-model truck had an anti-theft alarm. Griffin pulled a four-way lug wrench from behind the front seat, locked both doors, tossed the keys into a storm drain, and then threw the lug wrench through the truck’s passenger side window. The alarm began to wail as Griffin vaulted the parking lot’s chain-link fence and disappeared into the darkness.
Griffin took a cab to a gas station a few blocks from where he had parked his own truck. As he walked to his ride he checked his cell phone. He had turned it off during his surveillance of Leslie Martin’s house of course. Three calls. All from Charon, the light of his life.
Griffin hit the button that dialed Charon’s number. She picked up on the second ring and Griffin said. “Looking for me?”
“In all the wrong places apparently. Did you have your phone turned off again?”
Griffin grinned; he could hear the scowl in her voice. She had a really cute scowl. “Yeah, I was on a job.”
“Anything I should ask about?”
“What do you think?”
“We’ll call that a no. Well I may have something a bit more respectable for you. A man named Paul Traylor called. He said his daughter is missing and he wants to hire you to find her.”
“Hmm. I’ll talk to him but I usually stay clear of missing person’s cases. Nothing I can do that the cops can’t do a hundred times better.”
“I figured that,” Charon said. “But I told him I’d relay the message, just like I was your secretary.”
“I bet you’d look good in a little yuppie business suit.” Charon tended to dress in what could best be described as funky Goth-light.
“Dream on. However, if you pick up some Chinese takeout on your way home, I’ll wear whatever you like later.”
“Even if it’s nothing at all?”
“Especiall
y that.”
“Consider it done.”
“See you soon, wild man.”
CHAPTER THREE
Nervous? No shit she was nervous.
Carl Price was facing away from Tammy when she came through the door of the diner and she was glad of that. She didn’t want to see him in the first place, but it was necessary.
How long had it been since they’d parted company? A little over four years this time around. Four years since she’d packed up and left while he was at work. Not that hard, really. She’d never moved all the way into his house, so making a clean getaway wasn’t really a challenge.
He looked the same from behind. Broad shoulders straining his shirt. His posture relaxed but ready. Was there gray in his hair? Hard to say. He was out in the sun so much it might have just been a little sun bleaching. She hoped it was gray, it would serve him right.
And then the man turned and looked in her direction and she froze, and all the thoughts she had been working over in her head went out the window. How the hell could any man look so angry all the time?
Carl froze, a scowl on his face. Not an angry expression really, just thoughtful, cautious. And then it was gone. The puzzled expression that bordered on looking like he was ticked off dropped away, replaced by cold, unmoving stone. The only part of his face that showed anything was his eyes and those were, well, those showed all the anger and hurt she’d have expected from him.
“How are you, Carl?”
Carl’s eyes didn’t move from her face. His muscular arms were spread apart, one leaning against the counter where he sat, the other near his hip and the service pistol he sported all the time. Did his fingers twitch near the grip? Best not to think about that too much.
Carl waved his hand, the one resting on the counter. “Becky? Hon, I’m gonna need that breakfast to go. Can you do that for me?” There had been a time when they were in bed together, after what could only be called a marathon weekend of sex, when they shared secrets and observations as only lovers do and only after just that sort of encounter. When they were in that afterglow, still wired, but too wiped out to do much more than talk Tammy told Carl that she could always tell when he was getting seriously angry, because those were the times when he seemed the calmest. His face was calm, his posture was relaxed, and his voice? Well, his voice got all soft and quiet, like Clint Eastwood before everything went to hell in one of his old spaghetti westerns.
He’d found that funny, but she was deadly serious.
Just then, when she came into the diner and Carl was ready for breakfast? Good old calm Carl was about ready to break shit into little bitty pieces. She felt the hairs on her neck rise in warning of the absolute danger of the moment.
Not that she had anything to worry about. Carl had done a lot of things in their relationship that had left her worried, but he had never once raised so much as a finger to her.
Not that it mattered. Too many miles, too much left unsaid the last time.
“Carl? Can we talk?” She walked a few steps toward him, but carefully.
His face was still stone. His eyes flickered, looked her over from head to toe. Finally he nodded, a barely perceptible twitch of his head. “Talk if you want to.”
Damn that voice was just above a whisper, really. She had to strain to hear him. “I was thinking, maybe at your office?”
The waitress slid a Styrofoam tray with built-in cover to Carl and he nodded a thanks and dished a ten spot from his pocket. He placed the ten on the counter and picked up the food without ever taking his eyes off of Tammy.
He slid away from his seat with that fluid grace he reserved for when he was about to get extremely hostile — she’d seen him crack more than one head in their years of off and on romance — and moved toward Tammy. His eyes finally broke from hers as he walked past.
“You know where the office is,” he said, then he was out the door and heading toward his truck.
She stood where she was and watched him climb in and drive away. And then, finally, she exhaled, not even aware until that moment that she’d been holding her breath.
* * *
Carl drove calmly away from the diner, his hands clenching the steering wheel in a death grip. His teeth ground together in his jaw and the muscles in his skull clenched a vice around his temples. The food from the diner sat in its little foam tray and he knew even then that it would go cold and go to waste. His appetite was gone.
“Gotta be fucking kidding me.” He felt his lips forming words but they weren’t important. Instead, he forced himself under control as best he could.
Hadn’t seen that one coming, had he? But then he never did with her. Every damned time he thought he knew where he stood with Tammy she did something to prove him wrong, like disappear from his life without warning, or run off to have an encounter with some asshole she used to know, or just show up out of the goddamned blue when he thought he was finally over her.
“Every fucking time. Every fucking time.” His knuckles popped as he shifted his grip on the steering wheel. He could feel himself falling. All it took was seeing her. What the hell kind of way was that for a man to live?
The phone rang and he grabbed it off the car seat like a drowning man grabbing a lifeline. “Price.”
“Carl? It’s Vince.” Vince Carlson was the poor bastard currently stuck with desk duty. That was Carl’s way of handling a deputy with a medical reason for not driving these days. Vince had dislocated his shoulder in a car wreck. He wanted to work. Carl made it happen.
“What’s going on, Vince?”
“Got two things going on. First, we just got a call from Corey Phillips. His little girl, Amber, is missing. She went to bed at nine last night and when they checked on her a few minutes ago her bed was empty and the window in her bedroom was open.”
Corey Phillips. He knew the name, but it wasn’t clicking. “Who is Corey Phillips?”
“Says he lives in your neighborhood, over on Euclid Street.” That brought everything into focus. Phillips owned a little photography studio in Wellman. Mostly he did weddings and the like, but he also took family portraits, did a lot of the school pictures for the locals. Good business and a nice enough man.
“How old is his daughter?” It was always possible the girl had run away. It would hardly be a first in the area.
“Eleven.”
Too young to fall into the runaway category easily, but it was still a possibility. “I’ll head his way in a few minutes. I’ll need the proper address. What else were you calling about?”
“Well, when he went outside to look for his little girl he realized his truck was gone. Looks like someone stole his Ford F-150.” Carl pulled to the side of the road and shook his head. Of course someone stole the man’s truck. He thought back to the night before, to the face in the back of the truck, and the screamed, unintelligible words, the hand that slapped the back window. The face, the hand, they could have belonged to a little girl. It was hard to say for certain, but if he had to bet, Carl would have placed a few dollars on being right.
“Give me that address.” Vince called out the street address and Carl jotted it on an envelope sitting in the passenger’s seat. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Meanwhile, I want everyone looking for that goddamn truck. Everyone. Got me?”
“Yessir.”
Carl spun the wheel on the truck after checking both ways, and headed back toward the other side of Wellman. There was good news in this at least. Tammy wouldn’t be able to follow him to a crime scene. If he played it the right way maybe he could avoid the bitch for a few days. Or just maybe forever.
Of course his mind was not agreeing with him. Even as he drove away from her, away from the very thought of being near her, he felt the memories of her in his arms rising in the back of his head like bubbles escaping the mouth of a drowning man. “Every fucking time I’m almost over her. It’s like she
plans it.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Traylor home was a two-storied, rambling house of pale white brick. It wasn’t quite a McMansion, but it was close. The house sat on a tree-lined street in one of Wellman’s newest subdivisions, surrounded by thirty or so identical houses. Griffin parked in front of a two-car garage and stepped out of his truck. He was immediately assaulted by the late-August humidity, and he could feel a trickle of sweat on his back. He shook his head. Nine in the morning and the temperature was already eighty-eight degrees. Welcome to summertime in Georgia.
Griffin climbed three stairs to the front door and knocked. A moment later the door was opened by a tall man with thinning, sandy-blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses.
“Mister Griffin,” the man said. “I’m Paul Traylor. Thank you for coming.”
Traylor motioned for Griffin to enter and he stepped into the welcome oasis of air conditioning. Traylor said, “Amazing how hot it is this early, eh?”
“It is,” said Griffin, following Traylor into a tastefully furnished living room. Everything was done in pastels and shades of gray. Soothing. Griffin sat on the edge of a gray chair and Traylor took the couch across from him.
Traylor said, “My wife Claire may join us, or she may not. She’s extremely upset as you can imagine.”
Griffin nodded. “You said your daughter has disappeared. Any theories at all as to where she’s gone?”
“She ran away,” Traylor said. “Beyond that, I haven’t a clue.”
“But you’re sure she ran away?”
“Lynn’s suitcase is gone and some of her clothes.”
“Sounds like you’re right then. Can you think of any reason she would run away, Mister Traylor?”
Traylor slumped back on the couch. “Meaning were we having any trouble at home. Fights and such.”
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