by R. J. Jagger
Wilde was in the wrong legal pad.
He picked up the next one.
It was wrong.
Wronger, even.
Then he found the one he needed and flipped through it.
There it was.
Bingo.
6/10
NEW CLIENT – MR. SMITH – NOT REAL NAME
HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
$2,000 CASH RETAINER BY MESSENGER, 1 HOUR.
HE’LL CALL BACK AFTERWARDS AND EXPLAIN CASE
KEEP NO NOTES
Wilde flipped through the following pages to see if any more notes existed on the case.
He found none.
HE CONTINUED SEARCHING all the way through Wednesday, yesterday, just in case there was a phone call he wasn’t aware of.
He found none.
Damn it.
Damn it to hell.
49
Day Four
June 12, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
SHADE GOT AS STILL AS DEATH behind the rabbit bush, not moving, not breathing, not looking, not giving the man a reason to get excited. He passed within ten steps, judging by his shouting and swearing, before firing the gun in rapid succession three times and heading back for the house.
Even then Shade didn’t move.
Three minutes passed before she raised her head enough to look around the immediate area, not all the way to the house, just close by.
She saw nothing.
She got her eyes up higher and still saw nothing.
Now what?
Slither away deeper into the terrain?
Stay put just in case the guy was up on the roof scouting around with binoculars?
The ground was hard.
Her body was tight from forcing motionless on it so long. If the man returned, she wouldn’t be able to stay that still for that long again. It would be better to get out of there.
The topography to the south was flat.
The north had a few more curvatures, not a lot, but a few.
She stayed low and headed north.
Ten steps passed.
Then twenty.
Then fifty.
The roof of the house disappeared entirely over a curvature. Shade got into a full upright position and ran. No shouting came behind her.
No gunfire erupted.
Five minutes went by.
She slowed to a trot.
Ten minutes went by.
She slowed to a walk.
She was safe now.
The danger was gone.
SOME TYPE OF STRUCTURE loomed up ahead, something in the nature of a storage shed, made of dark, blotchy wood long past its prime.
She headed for it.
It was about the size of a small garage, maybe used for remote storage of farm equipment or tools at one point. It sat at the end of a long narrow dirt road that was overgrown with weeds and vegetation. That would take her back to the main road. It would be easier walking than through the bare field.
A weather-beaten red cloth of some sort dangled off the roof and down the side for a foot or so.
Strange.
What was up there?
She couldn’t tell.
It was too high.
She jumped up and grabbed it but it didn’t pull loose of whatever it was attached to.
It was snug.
She pulled harder.
It came farther down but was definitely attached to something.
She tugged.
Something dangled over the edge of the structure.
It was an arm.
A human arm.
She pulled again with a solid yank.
A head came over the edge and hung limp.
Matted, clumped blond hair draped down from it and swayed for a few heartbeats.
The head belonged to a woman.
She’d been dead for some time.
SHADE STEPPED BACK and thought about whether she should actually do what she was thinking about doing. Then she decided to just go ahead and do it.
The red cloth was a scarf.
It was wrapped around the neck.
Shade got a double-hand hold on it and tugged, not sure whether it would cut through the neck or pull the body off.
The body was snagged on something.
Shade pulled harder.
Suddenly it shot forward and tumbled down.
It landed in a clump.
What Shade saw she could hardly believe.
The woman was scantily clad in a short white dress.
Under that were red panties.
On her feet were red high-heels.
On her legs were nylons with a line down the back, held up by a garter belt. Her top was a white blouse with the bottom buttons undone. The ends were tied in a knot above her bellybutton.
She looked like a pinup girl.
50
Day Four
June 12, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
THE MORE WILDE THOUGHT about the mysterious “9” in Senn-Rae’s notes, the more he began to believe it referred to nine o’clock. Maybe it meant that Mr. Smith would call Senn-Rae tomorrow morning at nine.
On the other hand, maybe it meant nine tonight.
Maybe they planned to meet.
Maybe Mr. Smith was taking a cat-and-mouse game to the next level.
Wilde would hang in the shadows outside tonight and see.
Starved.
That’s what he was right now, starved.
“I’m getting hungry,” he said. “It’s time to cook the cat.”
Alabama punched him on the arm.
“Don’t even talk like that.” Then to Tail, “He’s just joking.”
Wilde grabbed his hat and dipped it over his left eye.
“Let’s go to the Down Towner. My treat.”
“Bryson, are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You just said, My Treat.”
“I did?”
Yes.
He did.
He put a surprised look on his face and shook his head in confusion. “That just goes to show what hunger can do to the brain.”
They were halfway out the door when the phone rang.
Wilde gave it an evil look.
This would delay food by seconds.
Maybe even minutes.
The voice of Shade came through, excited, urgent, fast. “I think I know where Visible Moon is being kept,” she said. “I need your help to get her. The guy has a gun.”
Wilde took his hat off.
“Keep talking.”
She did.
The more she said, the less Wilde got convinced. When she was done he said, “You got nothing, other than the place is remote. You admit yourself that you called in and didn’t get any response.”
“She’s drugged.”
Wilde frowned.
“He came after me with a gun,” Shade added.
“Every yoyo out in the sticks has a gun,” he said. “More like ten. If I was him and came home to find someone tried to break in, I’d take a few minutes to flush the field too.”
“The blinds were all closed,” Shade said. “That’s because he didn’t want anyone snooping around.”
“Or maybe it’s because he didn’t want the sun turning the place into an oven while he was gone,” Wilde said. “I’ll bet if we looked around we could find twenty other places just like that one. From where I sit, you want Visible Moon to be there and you’re letting your brain convince you it’s true.”
Silence.
“Just help me check it out,” she said.
Wilde exhaled.
“I’m up to my ass in alligators,” he said. “You know that. Let’s just stick with our bait plan. Tonight, you’ll come back to the hotel room and we’ll see if anyone shows up.”
“Bryson—”
“I can’t go on wild goose chases,” he said.
“Fine, I’ll do it myself.”
Wilde almost relented.
He almost said he’d join her.
Then he didn’t.
Time was too valuable.
“COME ON, WILDE,” Shade said. “This guy’s a killer. I can feel Visible Moon inside that house. I know this sounds a little extreme but I know in my heart I’m right.”
“What do you mean, he’s a killer?”
“I found a body,” she said.
Wilde froze.
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
She told him about finding a woman on top of a shed a half-mile from the man’s house. The woman was dressed like a pinup girl.
“He killed her,” Shade said.
“How to you know?”
“I don’t know, I just do.”
A beat.
“Swing by my office,” Wilde said. “We’re going out there.”
“We are?”
“We are.”
HE HUNG UP, gave Alabama a five from his wallet and said, “Run down to the Mill and get some grub to go. We’re going to eat in the car.”
She almost asked for an explanation but headed for the door instead.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Wilde thought about it.
“Cat if they have it,” he said. “Otherwise a turkey sandwich. Make it two, plus an RC and chips.”
She threw him an evil look, said Cat if they have it, then left.
Wilde pulled his gun out of the drawer, checked the chambers and found everything ready to go.
He picked up Tail.
“Just kidding about the cat.”
51
Day Four
June 12, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
TOO MUCH OF THE FACE had been eaten away by birds, bugs, sun and wind for Wilde to tell if it belonged to Natalie Levine. He looked around for a way to get on top of the shed and found nothing readily obvious. No ladders were lying in the dirt. The structure had no windows or ledges.
He pulled one of the hinged doors open.
The floor inside was dirt.
A few rusty remnants of machinery were abandoned in place.
Spider webs choked everything.
“She wasn’t held captive in here before she was murdered,” Wilde said. “No one’s been here for years.”
Shade agreed.
“I wonder how he got her up there,” Wilde added. “It’s too high to throw her. He must have brought a ladder.”
Shade shrugged.
“He could have backed a pickup in and stood on the side.”
Yeah.
Right.
“I want to get up there,” Wilde said. “You didn’t bring a ladder or a pickup with you, did you?”
Shade smiled.
“Tell Alabama I feel sorry for her,” she said.
“You mean for having to spend time with me?”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll tell her.”
He gauged the distance to the roof, jumped up and caught the edge with his hands. He hung for a heartbeat, trying to figure out if splinters were poised to dig into his flesh. He didn’t detect any and muscled up.
“He could have done what I just did and then pulled her up with a rope,” he said.
“Maybe.”
Wilde looked around.
He found no red matchbook.
That pointed towards the victim being Natalie Levine, since a matchbook had been left behind in her clothes. One wouldn’t be here too unless the guy placed two of ’em. Then again, maybe he did. Maybe he put one at the victim’s house to show he’d been there and a second at the body to tie up the fact that he was the one who did it.
WILDE NEEDED to find out who the woman was on the boxcar.
He needed to get inside her house.
He needed to see if there was a second matchbook there, in addition to the one he found at the scene.
THERE WERE NO CIGARETTE BUTTS on top of the shed. That wasn’t surprising. They would have disintegrated and blown away.
“Nothing up here,” he said.
He was just about to lower himself down when something in his peripheral vision grabbed his attention. It was something on the smaller side, mostly buried by dirt.
He picked it up and scraped it off.
It was a money clip.
A number of bills were still inside.
Two fives and fourteen ones.
He shook the dust off each bill one at a time, then folded them up and stuck them in his pocket. A closer examination of the clip itself showed no markings or engravings.
Too bad.
Wilde shoved it in his pocket and made his way back to the ground.
HE AND SHADE spent the next half hour examining the ground around the shed, fanning out in an ever-widening circle.
They found nothing.
No cigarette butts.
No red matchbooks.
No nothing.
“I wonder how she was posed up there,” Wilde said.
Shade exhaled.
“We’re wasting time,” she said. “We need to go get Visible Moon.”
52
Day Four
June 12, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
FROM THE BODY, Shade and Wilde crept through the field towards the house. A vision shot into Shade’s brain, a vision where Visible Moon was drugged and unconscious on a ratty mattress; one ankle was chained to the wall; a few remnants of clothes were all she had left.
Her legs were spread.
A man was between them.
His pants were pulled down to his knees.
He was thrusting into her.
The fat in his ass jiggled.
Over in the corner, Tehya’s scalp hung from a string.
“What’s wrong?” Wilde asked.
The words snapped her back to reality.
“Nothing.”
Wilde had a gun in his right hand.
“Let me carry that,” Shade said.
Wilde shook his head.
“We don’t know that she’s in there,” he said. “We don’t know anything yet other than we have a body back there. For all we know, this guy’s totally innocent.”
“He’s not,” Shade said. “I just had a vision. He’s in there raping her even as we speak.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t believe in visions.”
“You will in five minutes. Then you can apologize.”
WHEN THEY GOT CLOSE ENOUGH to see the front of the house, there was no car there.
“No one’s home,” Wilde said.
Shade hesitated.
“He’s in there,” she said. “It’s a trap. He left his car up the road and doubled-back on foot.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he hasn’t caught me yet.”
They got up to the house and listened.
No sounds came from within.
The window coverings were drawn.
The front door was locked.
The back window was boarded with plywood.
All the windows were shut tight.
Shade picked up a solid rock and threw it at the closest window. The shattering of glass split the silence like an axe.
She looked at Wilde and took a deep breath.
“If he kills me, kill him back.”
She started to crawl through.
Wilde pulled her back.
“Let me go.”
53
Day Four
June 12, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
WITH THE GUN IN HAND, Wilde went from room to room and found no one there, not in the way of a man or in the way of a Visible Moon. He opened the front door and let Shade in. She immediately headed for the back bedroom.
A ratty mattress was on the floor.
Shade squatted down and ran her hand over it.
“This is the exact mattress out of my vision.”
Wilde studied her to see if she really believed what she was saying.
She did.
“There’s food in the kitchen,” he said, “but the house is pretty much empty except for the mattress. So someone was holed up here.”
Shade paid him no attention.
Her attention was on the mattress.
She was looking for something.
Something small.
Then she picked something up and held it in front of Wilde’s face. At first he didn’t see anything but then realized she had a hair.
Shade stretched it out.
“See how long this is?”
It was three feet.
“See what color it is?”
It was pitch-black.
“This belongs to Visible Moon,” Shade said. “Hardly anyone has hair this long unless they’re Indian.”
Wilde nodded.
“There’s no ropes or anything like that,” he said.
“He took everything,” Shade said. “After he saw the window broke this afternoon, he didn’t know if someone had come in and seen her or not. He had to assume they did. So he abandoned ship. He got out while the getting was good.” She sat down on the mattress and bowed her head. “While he was taking her, I was busy going the other way through the field, saving my own ass.”
Wilde sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulders.
“He had a gun,” he said. “You didn’t know for sure she was in here. You did the right thing.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” she said. “Out in the field, he shot five or six times. He was probably out of bullets. I should have confronted him. If I’d done that, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Not true,” Wilde said. “For all you know he had a knife too. Remember, he scalped Tehya. He would have done the same to you. If you had confronted him, the only thing different is that you’d be dead right now and no one, including me, would know about this place. At least now we know he was here. We have a starting point to track him.”
Shade shook her head.
“I never even raised my head up to see what he looked like,” she said. “The only thing I cared about was saving my own ass.”
“If you’d looked up, he would have seen you,” Wilde said. “The bottom line is that we need to find something here to use. Let’s look around.”
THEY FOUND three more strands of hair on the bed, plus two in the bathtub drain. “He let her wash up at least,” Wilde noted.