Blood Trails

by Diane Capri

  “Welcome back to the land of the living. I’m driving you to the closest ER to get your thick jarhead examined.”

  Drake, the proud Marine, glared. “Like hell you are, leatherneck.”

  Flint grinned and pulled over at a gas station to fill up while Drake climbed out of the back. He stretched cramped limbs and walked around the pavement before making his way to the men’s room.

  Flint grabbed a package from the car. His source had delivered the hospital records as promised. He opened the envelope and reviewed the pages. He slid the records inside, closed the envelope, and tossed it into the backseat.

  By the time Drake returned, Flint had paid cash for the gas, stocked up on road food, and resettled himself behind the wheel. Drake moved into the front passenger seat. His eyes were concealed behind reflective sunglasses that snugged close to his face. He swigged a cold soda.

  “How exactly did those two guys manage to lay you out?” Flint rolled the Navigator out of the driveway and onto the blacktop. Speed leveled out at eighty and he set the cruise control. “You forgot everything you learned in combat training?”

  “Funny,” Drake snarled, and popped a few Tylenol capsules from a bottle he found in the glove compartment then gulped the soda chaser. “Nothing wrong with me that busting their fat heads won’t fix.”

  “Good plan. Happy to help.” Flint laughed. He’d known Drake a long time. Trusted him. They’d served together in the Marines and worked together frequently. Like Flint, Drake didn’t make idle threats he couldn’t deliver. “But it’ll have to wait. We’ve got something else to do first.”

  “Like what? And where the hell are we going, anyway?” Drake drained the last of the cola and dropped the empty can into the foot well.

  “My original plan was to fly in your helo. As good as you are, even you can’t pilot a Sikorsky while you’re unconscious. So we’re driving to West Texas.”

  “Are you kidding me? What the hell for?” Drake kneaded his forehead as if he could force the chemically induced headache away.

  Flint’s grin widened. “Man, you’re grumpy when you first wake up. No wonder you live alone.”

  “Yeah, well, what’s your excuse? Ginger won’t have you?” Drake laid his head back against the headrest.

  After Flint left the city behind, the drive from Houston north and west to Mildred’s Corner was pretty much the way he remembered it. A strange sense of déjà vu settled over him.

  He’d been two days past his eighteenth birthday when he left Bette Maxwell’s boarding school and foster home to join Uncle Sam and see the world. He was a scrappy kid feeling a burning need to fight without landing in prison, which Bette said was surely coming. Flint believed her. Uncle Sam provided a better opportunity, he’d been certain, because Uncle Sam had offered Scarlett the same opportunity two years earlier for similar reasons. Neither of them had ever looked back.

  Flint stared at the dreary landscape surrounding the Navigator. Maybe there’d been a bit of gentrification out here, but some things never changed. Like dirt and dried weeds as far as the eye could see. Like long, flat stretches of blacktop, shimmering in the heat, that seemed to lead to the end of the harsh, flat earth until the road fell off the edge into nothingness. Exactly as depressing as he remembered it.

  Now and then he met an oncoming vehicle. Usually a farm truck or a tractor that had pulled out from a dusty driveway, suggesting that acres of empty ranch land still lay beyond the road on either side. He’d seen a few head of cattle and an occasional scrawny horse or two, heads down, mowing the weeds. Nothing else for miles.

  The drive seemed endless, as if the Navigator were standing still. But the odometer said the car was cruising at eighty miles per hour and steadily covering the pavement. Before they reached the dead center of the state, Flint turned north on the road that connected nothing to nowhere—only God knew why anyone had bothered to build it.

  Fifty miles farther on, the crossroads at Mildred’s Corner popped up from the flat land. In 1989, it must have seemed like a rusty oasis. The original building and everything else about Mildred, except for her name, were long gone.

  A modern truck stop combo, probably about ten years old, occupied the spot now. Big rigs were parked on one side in an orderly fashion. On the other side, pickup trucks, dusty vans, and SUVs filled the vertical parking slots.

  A sign pointed to car wash bays and air hoses around back. Newer diesel and gas pumps stood proudly under cover, but the high metal awning that deflected the throbbing heat was painted white more regularly than Mildred’s old one had been.

  Even on a Sunday, the place was busy. Customers milled about the pumps and streamed steadily in and out of the convenience store. The store’s windows were plastered with flyers that promised sandwiches, snacks, and cigarettes inside. Neon signs announced cold beer, distilled spirits, triple-X-rated adult DVDs for rent, and several types of lottery tickets.

  Mildred’s Corner was still the only one-stop shop between distant points on the Texas map. The kind of place you’d have to know about before you’d believe it existed. Just like Scarlett had said.

  Which meant Laura Oakwood must have known Mildred’s convenience store was here. She and Rosalio had known what kind of customers Mildred’s served, and when, and why.

  They’d have known about the cash, too. How much Mildred collected every week. Where the cash was hidden inside the building. How Mildred carted the brown deposit bags off to the bank twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. Every week without fail.

  Oakwood and Rosalio would have known the best times to rob the place and how long it would take to get a cop out here, too.

  And how to get away clean.

  Flint chewed on the inside of his lip. He identified only three possible reasons Oakwood could have known those things. Either she had worked here at Mildred’s, shopped here, or knew someone who did.

  Would any of the three options be of much help to Flint after all these years? Probably not. But he had to get a fresh angle on this heir hunt or he’d fail just like all the others before him. Failure was never an option. The idea that Oakwood could hide from him was simply unacceptable. He could find anyone, anywhere, anytime. He’d never failed and he didn’t plan to start now.

  What he needed was to soak up Laura Oakwood’s life like a white carpet soaking up spilled red wine. He’d internalize everything. He’d figure it out.

  Flint slowed the Navigator as they approached the driveway, and Drake lifted his head. “What’s up?”

  “We’re here.” Flint pulled off the road and found an empty parking slot near the back corner on the east side of the building.

  “Okay, I’ll bite.” Drake turned his gaze slowly from side to side, looking at the truck stop and the acres of nothing that surrounded it. “Where the hell are we?”

  “The scene of the crime, my friend. Where else would we be?” Flint slid the transmission into park, pushed the stop button, and stepped out of the vehicle. Fuel and idling diesel engines assaulted his senses like a blaring wall of oil stench.

  He ducked his head back into the SUV. “Go inside and check around. See if you can find any old-timers. Somebody who remembers an armed robbery here back in 1989. Two people were killed.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything about a woman involved in the robbery. Her name is Laura Oakwood. Still at large.”

  “You really expect me to find anybody who knows anything after all this time?”

  “Not really.” Flint pulled his head out of the SUV. “But maybe you’ll get lucky.”

  Flint had come here to get the feel of the place. He didn’t plan to find anything much that might help to locate Oakwood. Twenty-seven years was a long time.

  He pushed the door closed behind him and walked toward the rows of idling diesels.

  The noise outside was deafening. He wondered whether gunshots from inside the building could have been heard out here the night of the robbery. Was it possible that there were tr
uckers here when the robbery went down? The files he’d read didn’t name any witnesses on the outside of the building. From what Scarlett said about its quality, the police report, once he finally got it, wouldn’t name any either.

  He counted sixteen big rigs. Tractors hooked to various trailers hauling products across Texas. Two were car haulers, a couple were open trailers full of produce, and the rest were closed containers and tanks transporting bulk liquids. A few of the tractors had license plates on the front where he could see them. He noted Missouri, Colorado, and California.

  Truckers were a friendly bunch, in Flint’s experience. Willing to take a chance on people. Back in 1989, Mildred’s Corner would have been an easy place to hitch a ride going in either direction. Even for a woman with a baby in tow.

  Which probably meant it would have been easy for Oakwood to hitch a ride a few miles along the road on either side of Mildred’s Corner, too. But not if the truck drivers knew what had happened inside the store, unless they had a grudge against Mildred or something. Otherwise, they’d want to help find the killers, not help them escape.

  Flint saw what he’d been hoping to find on the windows of two big rigs parked near each other at the end of the row. Yellow-and-blue decals proudly displayed. The drivers were standing outside, talking. Both wore plain white T-shirts with left breast pockets. Both had their hands shoved down into the front pockets of their jeans. Their boots were sturdy and worn. They looked tired.

  One guy was about forty, Flint guessed. The other was maybe a decade older. Beards covered their jaws and squint lines marked the corners of their tired eyes. When he approached, they looked up and nodded a friendly welcome.

  “Hot out here,” Flint said, to get the conversation started. They nodded again. “Where you boys headed?”

  The younger man said, “Houston.”

  The older one said, “Phoenix.”

  “Long ride ahead, then.” He offered his hand. “I’m Flint. I saw the decals in your rigs. Road Warriors against Human Trafficking, right?” He felt big callouses on their palms when they shook. These were honest workingmen. Reliable. “I’m wondering if you might be able to help me. I’m looking for anybody who might have been traveling this route maybe twenty-five, thirty years ago. Any old-timers around?”

  The older one shook his head. “Sorry. I’ve been running that long but only on this route for about five years.”

  “Name’s Tom Manning,” the younger guy said. “Why are you asking?”

  “I’m looking for a girl, Tom. Runaway teenager. We think she might have caught a ride from here. We’re not sure what happened to her after that. Been a while, though. I know it’s a long shot.” Flint shrugged.

  Most truckers were willing to help find missing kids, in his experience, even if they weren’t formally involved in the volunteer effort against human trafficking. He showed a copy of the best photo he’d found of Laura Oakwood when she was a seventeen-year-old cheerleader. He had age-progressed pictures of her in his pocket, but in 1989, she probably looked more like the kid she’d been in high school.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The older truck driver took the picture and looked at it, then shook his head again and passed it along to Manning.

  “I don’t know her.” Manning studied the photo briefly and returned it to Flint. “But my Uncle Larry used to run this way between Houston and Amarillo. He knew Mildred Tuttle, the woman who owned the place back in the day. He’s been helping locate runaways for years.”

  Flint nodded. “Why would runaways end up here? Seems pretty remote. Where would they come from?”

  “We’ve got a few cults around here now, but we had a lot more back then. Before the David Koresh thing ended, you know?”

  Flint knew. Koresh’s compound was the site of one of the most notoriously bad FBI raids in history. But it didn’t happen until 1993, four years after Laura Oakwood robbed Mildred’s Corner. And the Koresh compound was over in Waco. Quite a long way from here.

  Flint glanced around at the acres of nothing. “What kind of cults? And where do they hang out?” He hadn’t considered the possibility that Oakwood had been involved in a fringe group, but given the times she could have been.

  “There’s a few abandoned properties around this area where they congregate. I’ve heard about some over at a place called Clovis Ranch. Groups of druggies, faith nuts, and stuff like that.” Manning shrugged. “Local sheriff chases them off and then another batch shows up a few months later.”

  Flint nodded. “The Koresh group was active for a long time. Are there any cults around here now that might have existed back in the 1980s?”

  “Hard to say. Far as I’ve heard, the cults come and go. People are always coming here, looking for teenagers or lost souls, and we tell them about the cults, you know? I’m not sure what happens after that.” Manning moved the toothpick around with his lips and chewed the end a bit. “Uncle Larry knows the area well. Answers the trucker’s hotline couple times a week now. He might know where to start looking for your girl, at least.”

  If Oakwood and Prieto had been living with a cult near Mildred’s Corner, they’d have known everything about the place. Robbery, and general lawlessness, was one way some of the cults kept food on the table and drugs in their systems. The cult could have hidden Oakwood after Prieto was killed. Maybe helped her get away, too. She had needed help to run and disappear the way she had. A cult was the perfect answer.

  Researching local cults and finding a connection to Oakwood was a task better suited to Scarlett’s resources. But it was a solid possibility. When he could, he’d hand it off to her.

  “Think I could talk to Larry today? We really want to find this girl. People are worried sick about her.” Flint fished around in his pocket as if he was looking for a business card and couldn’t quite find one.

  “Hang on a minute. I’ll see if I can get him on the horn for you.” Manning pulled his phone out of his jeans, pressed a quick-dial number, and waited while it rang.

  He shook his head and shrugged and finally left a message. “Larry, I’m at Mildred’s Corner. Got a guy here looking for a missing woman. Thinks she may have hitched a ride from here a long time ago and maybe got into trouble. Could have been involved with a cult, maybe. Guy’s name is Michael Flint. He’ll give you a call.”

  When he disconnected, Manning walked over to his truck and retrieved a business card. He handed the card to Flint. “Sorry I couldn’t reach Larry. But call him later. He’ll be glad to help you if he can.”

  “Thanks.” Flint looked at the card briefly before he shoved it into his pocket and shook hands with the two truckers again. He walked along the row of semis but didn’t see anyone else to approach.

  When he turned to make his way back to the Navigator, a dancing knot of broad backs and flying fists consumed the area in front of the convenience store.

  The only broad back he recognized was Drake’s. “What the hell?”

  Two truckers were pounding on Drake, but he was holding his own.

  Drake could take care of himself. But he rarely demonstrated those skills these days, particularly against petty insults. He said his bones took too long to heal. After he’d lost the battle to Baldy and Earless earlier, Drake was probably defending his pride more than anything else.

  Flint hustled over to break things up, but before he reached the huddle, a scrawny guy wielding an aluminum baseball bat overhead burst through the door and ran into the parking lot screaming like a hockey referee. “Go on! Get the hell outta here!”

  Drake looked up just in time to catch a swing of the bat on the meat of his left bicep. He turned to grab the bat with his right hand, but a bigger guy grabbed it first and wrenched it away from the scrawny guy, knocking him to the ground.

  Flint heard the sickening sound of skull on concrete, and a split second later, the knot of truckers who had been cheering the fight piled on Drake like angry wasps.

  The one holding the bat swung it like a club, landing a
couple of solid blows on Drake’s shoulder. Drake fought back.

  Flint heard sirens approaching fast.

  The last thing he needed right now was another night in jail.

  He looked at the fight again. Drake was holding his own against four burly truckers, but Flint needed to get him out of there before the cops showed up.

  He hurried to the Navigator and fired up the engine. He threw the transmission into reverse and stomped the accelerator.

  Tires squealed as the shiny black behemoth sped backwards directly toward the knot of fighters.

  Flint slammed to a squealing stop and laid on the horn. The noise penetrated at least one thick skull because the fighters’ knot burst apart like an explosion from the center, inches behind the Navigator’s back bumper.

  The first two truckers, the ones who had initially jumped Drake, were still vertical, but barely. Drake took two final swings, one uppercut to each chin. The blows pushed them back far enough to give Drake room to move.

  Drake dashed to the Navigator’s passenger seat and scrambled inside. The door was still open when Flint punched the accelerator.

  The limo leapt forward. Momentum closed the heavy passenger door with a solid thud.

  He glanced toward Drake to confirm that all his limbs were intact before he pressed the accelerator to the floor. The big vehicle rolled out. He grinned. “You look like crap.”

  Drake scowled his reply as he wiped blood from a cut near his hairline. “How kind of you to notice.”

  Flint put a dozen miles between the Navigator and Mildred’s Corner. “What the hell did you do to get those guys so pissed off?”

  “You tell me. I bought a Coke and chips. Put them on the counter and paid for them.” Drake had pulled antiseptic wipes out of the glove box and was cleaning the blood from his hands. “I said I was looking for Laura Oakwood. Everybody said they’d never heard of her. I picked up my stuff and walked outside. Next thing I know, they’re on me like bees protecting the hive.”