“I listen. I hear conversations all the time in the café. And the motel? I hear that trash, too. Who’s sleeping with who.”
“People wouldn’t talk about that kind of stuff in a public restaurant.” Mick could hardly believe it. Portage? She made it sound like the Mafia.
“Everything I just told you?” Grace said. “Heard it all. And Cookie. He’s worked there for years. He’s like the town wiki. I want to know something, I ask him.
“I didn’t show for work and ran. Hammond’s thinking I have something. Like maybe Evelyn told me something. Him and the judge, him and Larry, even the doof at Social Services. Any of them might be doing something that Evelyn found out about. Or, it could be the escort thing.”
“Are you making this up?” JJ asked. “Anybody in western Montana could have killed Evelyn.”
“So why was Hammond calling as soon as he learned I was there when we found the body?”
“Uh, he was worried about you?” JJ offered.
“No way. He knows my name. Flirts. I’ve done a couple of things for him outside work. But he collects lots of girls like me and he doesn’t call to see how they are. We’re just the help, just advertising. End of story. Until Evelyn was killed.”
“You did things for Hammond?” Mick remembered. “Like what?”
Grace shook her head.
Mick would go after that later. Maybe when JJ wasn’t around in case Grace was embarrassed to tell in front of her. Right now he was thinking about men he’d met that were like his dad. “I don’t see a guy like Hammond killing Evelyn. I don’t see him needing to. It’d have to have been an accident.”
“Maybe,” Grace said, “but Bolton? He’s like the whole law. A judge. He can do whatever he wants and no one can touch him.”
“Yeah, but same deal,” Mick argued. “Why? Why would he put himself in that position? Risk everything?”
“Okay, Scott Cassel,” Grace said.
“What about Larry?” JJ asked. “You think he couldn’t kill a girl if she said no to him? Or how about Tim? Tim and his buddy sure want us to shut up and I wasn’t even thinking of him and Evelyn.”
That statement stopped the conversation.
“You weren’t?” Mick, incredulous. “Who did you mean when you asked if the body was Cassel’s girl?”
“Larry,” JJ answered.
Mick and Grace looked at each other openmouthed.
“You couldn’t have said this earlier?” Mick asked, sarcastic.
“Cassel’s girlfriend?” JJ held her hands up like stop, let me explain. “I’d seen her talk to Larry a few times and I wondered. That’s all.”
Grace was leaning forward. “Larry Cassel? Evelyn? She wouldn’t give him the time of day. Not even for money. She was afraid of him.”
“I don’t know about that. I just saw them together … or maybe not exactly together, uh, with each other. On the street, in a store, I just assumed—”
“You’re wrong,” Grace interrupted.
Mick was surprised by Grace’s energy on this subject. She couldn’t have a thing for Larry Cassel. Not him. Just the edge of the idea made his heart sink.
“It was just a thought. I reacted,” JJ said, defending herself. “It’s not like I knew anything. I didn’t even know the girl’s name.”
Nobody spoke for a minute or two.
Finally, JJ. “Okay, Mick’s right. Doesn’t seem like the killing is something a person like Hammond or Bolton would do. It could have been somebody passing through, somebody none of us will ever meet. So, what’s next?”
“Dovey told me the girl was killed Monday night,” Mick said, eager to keep figuring it out. “She said whoever did it had to have a car, ’cause her car was left east of town on the highway to Plains. So she was probably killed there. Right? And then taken to the river.”
“That’s dumb.” This from Grace, while she tried to remember if anybody had been waiting for Evelyn in the restaurant parking lot that Monday night. “That would put the car right near the Clark Fork. Easier to dump her there.”
“Yeah, but more river traffic. The guy probably thought nobody would find the body for weeks up on the Salish. It was just luck we did,” JJ said.
“Maybe whoever killed her freaked, grabbed the body, and drove away to hide it. He probably never gave her car a thought,” Mick said, imagining what he might feel like if he killed somebody. “If I did it, I’d run as fast and as far as I could. I wouldn’t be doing any great planning.”
JJ could see the logic. Two people, in their own car, they would have hid the girl’s car, too. One guy to drive it, the other guy to follow. One person, he’d have to leave Evelyn’s car where it was. “But how did some guy stop her out on the highway?” JJ asked. “Would Evelyn arrange to meet the guy out of town, on the road?”
Grace was going to shake her head no but reconsidered. Ev might. For a quickie.
“Not in the middle of nowhere,” Mick said. “There’s twenty better spots: a bar, the river park, the overlook…” He caught Grace’s eye. Oh. Okay. Maybe it was convenient. “So the guy didn’t make her stop? She chose to?”
“How?” JJ couldn’t picture it.
“She knew him. Or she set it up.” Mick could see it now, could see how it probably happened. So it could be any of Evelyn’s customers?
“Or somebody could have surprised her … or tricked her,” JJ said, not liking the idea that Evelyn set herself up to be killed.
* * *
Another hour’s talking left them with a lot of theories, no conclusions. Mick decided that Grace’s revelation about Evelyn’s hooking was the key. JJ disagreed. Grace was preoccupied and rarely offered any opinion about the murder itself. Afternoon moved into evening, time to decide. Grace was suddenly involved and adamant. Keep going to the next city. “Coeur d’Alene,” she said. “Party town. Lots of tourists.”
Mick was against it. Wanted to go home and face the music. By the time they got back, Dovey could give them some of the missing information, like where the girl was actually killed and what was found around the body, and then they might be very close to figuring out who could have done it.
JJ wanted more time away from Portage, stay out of town another day or two, let tempers cool. She made her case to Mick. “Think about it. There’s possibilities we haven’t even had a chance to talk about and we need to solve this thing before we go back.”
“Coeur d’Alene’s close,” Grace chipped in with JJ. “Good place to wait while Portage calms down.”
Majority rule. They decided to drive back into Wallace for food and cell phone reception, each call their work with an excuse, and head back to the creekside for the night. In the morning, farther west to the edge of the Idaho panhandle and Coeur d’Alene.
43
JUST AFTER DARK, back in Portage, Mick’s dad kicked in the door of the Stovalls’ trailer. His pistol was in his hand and he demanded they tell him where Mick went. Tina couldn’t get herself organized and Jon, still handcuffed, started crying.
Gary saw Fitz’s pupils were pinpoints, thought Mick’s dad looked tweaky and lethal.
“They didn’t say. Didn’t tell anybody. I wasn’t here when they left,” Gary said, remaining seated, trying not to escalate the situation.
Fitz poked Tina with the gun. “How about you?”
“Dunno,” she said.
He pointed the automatic at Jon and Jon went crazy, screaming, crying, jerking at the cuff so hard his wrist started bleeding.
“I’m going to hold him, okay?” Gary said, looking for permission.
Fitz nodded.
Gary moved to the floor and wrapped his arms around Jon. Held him like you would a baby so the boy couldn’t hurt himself further. “They just left,” he said. “Took clothes. I checked after I saw your car was gone.”
Fitz glanced out the open door and back, shook his head.
“Must have split this morning, nine or ten,” Gary said. “One of ’em, Grace probably, got my cell phone. Why are
you … What’s going on?”
“Cassel. At the Conoco. He’ll be back. I’m not taking Mick’s fall.”
Gary flinched as he watched Fitz’s hand tighten on the pistol.
“Let the boy go,” Fitz said.
“I can’t,” Gary told him. “I don’t know what he’ll do. Run off. Talk. Make a shitstorm.”
“You should shoot him,” Fitz said.
“That’s the drugs talking,” Gary told him. “You love Mick. You been taking care of him. Jon here’s like that. I just don’t know how to help him. If I did, I’d do it.”
“Let him go,” Fitz repeated.
Gary looked at the man. Pleaded. “You’ve seen him,” Gary said. “Words don’t work. What … You got a better idea?”
“Put a gun in his mouth, like I did,” Mick’s dad said. “He don’t mind you, pull the trigger.”
“You’ve done that to Mick?” Gary asked him.
“Discipline,” Fitz said.
Gary swallowed. Looked at the man.
Fitz gestured with the pistol. “It’s loaded.”
Gary reached in his pocket, took out a small key, and opened the cuff.
Jon was up and out the door in a blur. Before anybody could move.
Gary kept looking at Fitz.
“Shoot you?” Fitz asked, belligerent.
Gary shook his head.
“Looks like you better git while the gettin’s good.”
“Can’t,” Gary said. “I live here.”
Fitz shook his head. “Mistake,” he said. “Don’t be coming outside.”
In a minute or so Gary heard a car start. Looked out the window, saw taillights turning up toward the highway. Hoped it was Mick’s dad, leaving for good.
44
THEY MADE THEIR PHONE CALLS at the gas station complex and drove north out of Wallace on the creekside road past the twinkle of homesteads in the hills bordering the wide canyon. Soon found their same spot from the afternoon and began discussing sleeping arrangements. Grace wanted to be by herself, but they had nothing that would make decent bedding in the flat area nearer the creek. JJ told her that in this mountainy area you couldn’t guarantee what kind of animal would come to the water at night. Could even be a bear. Grace took in the information. Said, “Open the trunk.”
Mick didn’t think the trunk would make a tolerable bed, but maybe Grace was thinking about finding a weapon or a blanket. No one had a light. Luckily the trunk itself had a small bulb at the back that showed a burlap bag of tire chains, an oily towel, a folded tarp, and a sweatshirt that might serve as a blanket.
“It’ll do,” Grace said. She got her duffel from the rear seat and tossed it in the back, on top of the chains, while JJ got in front with Mick. Grace stepped high, putting one foot over the bumper, and started to lever herself in when something stopped her: the distant sound of an engine or, more likely, the flick of headlights between trees. Within seconds they all realized a car was coming. What the …
Grace pulled her leg out, slammed the trunk, and ran for the trees. JJ had both hands on her door leaning out the open passenger window to see better. Mick was frozen behind the steering wheel trying to decide if this posed a danger. Just a rancher driving to a home farther out? A landowner who’d spotted them parking, coming to tell them to move on? Or … a sheriff checking make-out spots and flushing kids home.
JJ called it. “It’s got a light bar!”
Okay, Mick had seen Grace run but what should he do? What would look less suspicious? He didn’t want to give a cop any reason to check out the car. They’d all be screwed. His dad had stolen plates from a wrecked Dodge near Plains months ago. Mick knew that when Fitz had been stopped at the river barricade the night before, the cops there had gotten his plate numbers. If this sheriff or whoever it was checked these plates now on his in-car computer, they were busted. But maybe he wouldn’t. If they ran … could they pull any farther out of sight?
JJ slid across the seat and crawled on top of him.
“Hey!” Mick tried to push her away but she had her arms around his neck. “Damn it, we have to run,” he said, his words mashing into her hair.
“Shut up.”
“JJ—” The headlights pulled into the clearing. Trapped. “Let go, damn it!”
“Shut! Up!” she hissed in his ear. She brought her face around and kissed him just as the headlights swung in behind and illuminated them through the rear window.
Oh.
She jerked her head away, pulled her hands up over his head messing up his hair, and slid to the seat beside him.
Mick was breathing hard. From fear? From wrestling? From the kiss? He put his hands on the steering wheel to steady himself as he heard a car door opening and steps coming his way. The beam from a flashlight lit the back of his head, moved to the wheel and across the dash. A uniformed man stepped up to the window.
“What’s going on?”
“Uh, we … we were just talking.” JJ, sounding breathy.
The man snorted. “Yeah, I could see that.”
“No, I mean, we didn’t have, er, we wanted some pri—” Mick, getting into it.
“My mom doesn’t like him,” JJ interrupted. “She’s super strict and I have to be home prettty soon.” She smoothed Mick’s hair back. “We just wanted a little time together. We weren’t going to do anything.”
The man leaned over and shone the light into Mick’s eyes, then JJ’s. “Been drinking?”
“No, sir,” Mick said.
The man shone the light on their feet, the backseat, the back floor. “Duffel?” he asked.
“My things,” JJ said, “laundry.”
“Fool her?” he said.
“Yeah,” JJ said, giving an embarrassed smile, “so she’d let me out tonight.”
“I used to do something like that,” he said.
Mick breathed. First time in a while.
“Sack?” the man asked.
JJ dug her fingernails into Mick’s leg.
“My gym stuff,” Mick said.
The man nodded. “I’ll be driving back this way in twenty minutes. Be gone.” He returned to the cruiser, made a K-turn, and regained the road to go farther out on his patrol.
Mick wiped his face on the bottom of his shirt. Wanted to look at JJ. Didn’t. Started the car instead. In a few seconds Grace popped in the backseat.
“Nice,” she said. “What’d he say?” When neither Mick nor JJ spoke, Grace lay down and used JJ’s duffel for a pillow. “Coeur d’Alene’s not that far.”
Mick backed to the county road and they were on their way. Thing is, by the time he reached the freeway, both Grace and JJ were sleeping. Time to use his own judgment. If he took the left, back toward Montana, he’d seen several places including the outskirts of St. Regis where they could pull over and sleep the rest of the night. Mick parked across from the on-ramp. East or west? Two hours back to Dad and interrogations, or one hour forward with the girls to a new town? Put it that way, it wasn’t so hard. He swung the car toward Coeur d’Alene.
45
IN SANDERS COUNTY, law officers continued to investigate the murder. The jurisdiction was split as it often was in rural areas, and collaboration was weak as neither Cassel nor Paint had any use for each other.
The same day the body was discovered the Montana Highway Patrol began advertising on radio and TV, searching for drivers that regularly traveled Highway 200 at night. They began tracking down commuters between Portage and Plains and sales vans or semis with regular routes between Missoula and Sandpoint. They also reviewed trucking company logs and traffic citations for the afternoon and evening of the murder.
The Sheriff’s Department started a similar and parallel investigation, posting pictures of the girl and her Subaru on bulletin boards at convenience marts and community business windows in a thirty-mile radius asking anyone who had seen Evelyn Edmonds talking with male friends or strangers to contact officials.
By Thursday deputies had canvassed the restaurant staf
f and interviewed local girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. Because Evelyn was a waitress and a friendly one at that, the compiled list of male acquaintances was a long one, well over a hundred, many with no alibis.
Evelyn’s father and mother believed that she currently had no regular boyfriend, an assumption that was confirmed by the girl’s friends from Plains. At that point Patrol investigators learned Evelyn had lately been receiving a number of gifts and selling them. Conjecture began concerning her extracurricular work activities.
Paint had arrived at a similar assumption about Evelyn’s additional employment after examining her frequent male contact survey. The results suggested something other than plain affability was at work. It reminded Paint of a stakeout he’d done a few years before on a meth house where, in the course of a week, the place had fifteen to forty different nightly visitors. A phone call to the investigating deputy in Plains confirmed his suspicions. Girlfriends reported Evelyn was dating a “whole lot of guys” and had “big plans” involving Seattle or L.A., but none knew any specifics.
46
NEAR MIDNIGHT, the city of Coeur d’Alene was lit up like an amusement park. Knots of tourists still walking the main streets near the wharf, restaurants and bars still open. They didn’t have motel money, so where? They drove the lakeshore hoping to car-camp near water, but everything was built up, marinas, condos. On the southeast shore, just before the street reached water’s edge, finally, a cheap-looking motel that had parking in back near a poplar grove. Figured they could sleep till dawn or maybe even later, then go find a public park and clean up.
* * *
Mick woke agitated. He’d been dreaming about kissing. Who? He couldn’t remember. Fugitive, car thief, stud wannabe. Pretty feeble. He needed to get his mind off sex. First priority, food, and they’d been wasting their money on junk. Right. Like Mick was an expert. He and his dad, salami and Fritos. They had enough money left for block cheese, apples, maybe enough for bread and peanut butter. Before he could share his insight, everybody had to pee. They used the poplar grove.
Dead Girl Moon Page 11