by Allen Eskens
“Is this Jeremy?” he asked.
“What? How…?”
“You brought your autistic brother to a shithole motel. Well, doesn’t that beat all. Regular guardian-of-the-year stuff.”
I couldn’t talk. How did he know about Jeremy? About the guardianship?
“Why so surprised, Joe? You claim to be my kin, well that means that I’m going to take an interest in you—get to know you…and Jeremy.” He gave a wink at Jeremy that went unnoticed by my brother.
“You leave Jeremy out of this.”
“You’d be amazed what you can find out about a person if you know where to look,” he said. “Court records, police reports, that kind of thing. Did you know that Larry Hogermiller and I went to high school together? Imagine my disappointment when I found out he was in prison. Oh, by the way, Larry asked me to pass his love on to your mother.”
“Go fuck yourself,” I said. My retort fell far short of what I would have liked, but my mind was reeling, and those were the only words that made it through the clutter.
“Such language. And in front of your brother.”
Charlie took a step in and started to raise his hand to shake Jeremy’s. I slid in between them, Charlie stopping inches from my face, his outstretched hand bounding off of my stomach. “You keep away from my brother,” I said.
“Ah, and there it is. That famous Joe Talbert temper I’ve been hearing so much about. I’m surprised you were able to get guardianship over your brother, you being such a hothead. Your mother must be far more wretched than Larry remembered.”
I put a hand on Jeremy’s arm and led him to our room, unable to think of anything to say beyond pointless curse words.
“Where are you going?” Charlie said, holding his arms out to the side in a beckoning gesture. “I was just trying to be neighborly—get to know my kin.” Then he laughed and made his way to his room.
I got Jeremy inside, closed the door, and huffed as pithy comebacks flooded my head, all too late. Then I noticed Jeremy standing by the door as still as a brick, his hands balled together and pressed against his stomach. I turned my attention to my brother, asking him which of the two beds he preferred, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be able to sleep on the bed nearest to the exit. That would also put him on the bed closer to the bathroom. “I think you should sleep here,” I said, patting the inside bed. “Look, it’s right in front of the TV.”
“Maybe…” He looked around the room, the muscles in his jaw flexing as he began to grind his teeth. “Maybe we should go home.”
“Jeremy, I’m sorry, but you have to stay here with me. Besides, you’ve never been to a motel before. This’ll be fun. Look.” I walked to the bathroom. “We have a bathroom right here. I can put your toothbrush in this cup, and look at this.” I showed him the drawers in the dresser beneath the TV. “You can put your clothes in here. Remember in Guardians of the Galaxy, when Quill and Rocket and Groot went on that adventure? This is like our own adventure.”
The old television in the room didn’t have an HDMI port, so I had to use my laptop to play one of Jeremy’s movies. Once I had the movie queued up, I coaxed Jeremy to the foot of what would be his bed, and he sat down, one hand rubbing the knuckles on the other hand. Then he looked around the room as though searching for a door that might lead to a place where he could feel safe, a magic portal that would whisk him back to Lila and our apartment in St. Paul.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
Jeremy didn’t answer.
I backed my way toward the door, doing my best to be invisible. Jeremy seemed settled. He had his movie, which would run for an hour plus. That would give me time to go through the first part of my plan. In order to get to Moody Lynch, I would need to find his parents, and to find his parents, I would start with my best source of information, Vicky Pyke.
“I’m going to go get some stuff, Jeremy,” I said. “I’ll be right back. Are you okay watching your movie for a little bit?”
Jeremy sat on the edge of the bed, his hands on his lap, his eyes fixed on the familiar characters moving across my laptop screen. He didn’t answer, so I slipped out and quietly closed the door behind me, keeping my departure away from not only Jeremy but also Charlie. I crept along the face of the motel until I turned a corner and was well out of view from Charlie’s room. I gave one last look back, and then, satisfied that Jeremy was safe, headed to the Snipe’s Nest.
The Snipe’s Nest had a handful of people scattered about the place, none of them being Harley Redding, so I walked in and took a seat at the bar.
“Hey, stranger,” Vicky said with a smile.
“Is it too early to get a bite to eat?”
“Cheeseburger basket?”
“Two. I have my brother staying with me for a day or two.”
She turned to the opening between the bar and kitchen and yelled, “Marv, two cheeseburger baskets.” Marv, an older man with a trace of white hair frosting the sides of his head, was watching monster trucks on a TV in the kitchen. He nodded to Vicky and turned to his grill.
“I was hoping you might stop by,” she said to me.
“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
“I wanted to tell you that I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said…you know, about me maybe going to college. Getting out of Buckley.”
“Vicky, don’t pay any attention to me. I can be a horse’s ass sometimes.”
“No, I wanted to tell you that you were right. Last night, I went to talk to my Uncle Don, my dad’s brother, and he agrees with you. He said that I’ve done my duty, and if I decide to go to college, he’ll see to it that Dad’s taken care of. Can you believe it? And I never would have had the guts to talk to my uncle if you hadn’t said what you said out there by the river.”
I watched the light dance in Vicky’s eyes as she told me her news. She reminded me of a giddy schoolgirl who’s just been asked to the prom. Her excitement seemed infectious. But then she leaned into the bar, her eyes locked onto mine, and where the schoolgirl had been now stood a woman whose calm, steady gaze demanded my attention. She slid her hand across the bar and laid it on the back of my hand, and said, “I’m still not sure if I can do this, but I want to thank you for…well, for making me believe that it’s possible.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, my words faltering just a bit before finding some footing.
She pulled back, and the giddy schoolgirl returned. “I also wanted to tell you that I know why Harley Redding wants to beat you up. My Uncle Don knew the story. It’s all about Harley’s stupid car.”
“His car?”
“Yeah. Harley had this Pontiac GTO. Needed a little body work, but basically it was a pretty nice car. He always talked about fixing it up and selling it for a small fortune. The problem was that Harley didn’t know the first thing about fixing up cars. That’s how he and Toke got together.”
“Toke was a body man,” I said.
“He was. And Harley used to go down to Dub’s and bug Toke about fixing that car. Of course, Harley didn’t have a dime to spare, so it was all a pipe dream. But then old man Hix died, and Toke and Jeannie were looking to inherit a buttload of money. Also, about that time, Harley fell into some legal entanglements.”
“Let me guess, DUI,” I said.
“No. He beat the shit out of a good old boy from St. James, some guy who got a little too mouthy with Harley and wasn’t able to back it up the way you did. Harley needed money for a lawyer. He was desperate. And that’s when the whole deal got cooked up.”
“Deal?”
“Harley needed five grand for his lawyer, so he went to Toke to see if he could sell the car to him. Now, the way Harley puts it, Toke said that he wouldn’t have that kind of scratch until the Hix estate got settled. And because Harley couldn’t wait that long, they agreed that Toke would pay Harley five grand up front, and another fifteen once Toke got the farm. But when they did the title transfer, Toke convinced Harley to put down that he was selling the car for five grand so Tok
e could save a few bucks on taxes.”
“I’m betting there was no documentation about the other fifteen grand,” I said.
“Bingo. Not a single scrap of paper. As far as Harley’s concerned, Toke stole the car.”
“Why didn’t Harley just take Toke to small-claims court?”
“He did. But it was Harley’s word against Toke’s. Toke told the judge that they set the price at five thousand because Harley was desperate and needed the five grand for his attorney, that last part being true. Harley tried to convince the judge that there was more to the deal, but all the documents showed that the price was five grand. The judge ruled against Harley. Toke got a twenty-thousand-dollar car for five grand.”
“When did this happen?”
“The judge’s ruling came down two weeks ago.”
A guy, eating by himself up near the front of the bar, waved a hand to get Vicky’s attention.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m being summoned. Don’t go away.”
I watched as she smiled and chatted with the patron, and handed him his lunch bill. She had a great smile, the kind that could make a man forget the world outside of the Snipe’s Nest.
When she came back, I said, “Vicky, I need a favor.”
“Name it.” There was that smile again.
“I want to interview Moody Lynch’s parents.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
I didn’t tell her the real reason—that I was laying the groundwork to get him to turn himself in. Instead I said, “I’m a reporter, and I want to see if there’s any way I can help him.”
“Help him?”
“He’s not doing himself any favors by staying out in the woods. If he’s innocent, I can help clear his name. I’ve done it before.”
“But his people…they don’t talk to strangers.”
“Why’s that?”
“You ever hear of Posse Comitatus?”
“The white-supremacist group?”
“Well, around here, they’re not so much white supremacists as they are haters of anything government. They don’t believe that the law has any authority over them.”
“Moody’s family is Posse Comitatus?”
“That’s the rumor. They live in the valley about ten minutes north of my dad’s place. I can tell you how to find their house, but you should be careful.”
“They won’t shoot me or anything, will they?”
“They haven’t shot anyone yet, but there’s always a first time.” She smiled when she said it, so I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.
I said, “If things look fishy, I’ll haul ass out of there. Trust me.”
She wrote an address on a napkin and handed it to me. About that same time, Marv slid my lunches through the window, sacked and ready to go. I added a couple drinks to the tab, paid my bill, and as I was leaving, Vicky said, “I mean it. You be careful. It’s best to stay on the good side of the Lynches.”
Chapter 24
Uncle Charlie’s car was gone when I got back to the motel. Jeremy hadn’t moved from his spot at the foot of the bed. His movie was two-thirds finished, and I could see his lips moving slightly as he ran through the lines in his head. The oddness of the motel room no longer seemed to press on him, and I gave him his cheeseburger and pop, which he ate without taking his eyes off the computer screen.
While I ate my lunch, I plotted my route to the Lynch place on my phone. Twenty minutes there and twenty back. I would need to find a longer movie for Jeremy to watch, maybe Pirates of the Caribbean, which ran two hours and twenty minutes. That would give me more than an hour to talk to the Lynch clan.
By the time Jeremy finished his lunch, Guardians of the Galaxy was running the closing credits, and I brought him a washcloth to wipe the food from his face. “This is a pretty nice room, isn’t it?” I said. It was a lie, but Jeremy didn’t know a good motel room from a bad one.
“When will we go home?” he asked.
“We’re staying the night. That’s your bed and this is mine. We’re sleeping in the same room, just like when we were kids.”
“Maybe we should go home.”
“No, Jeremy. We can’t go home right now. Lila needs to study for her test so we’re going to stay here. You like it here, don’t you?”
Jeremy scratched at the bandage on his wrist.
“How does your arm feel?”
“Maybe it hurts a little.”
“You want an aspirin?”
“No.”
Jeremy wasn’t a fan of swallowing pills, so I bought a bottle of chewables on the way down. I handed him two. “You can chew these. They’re good.”
Jeremy took the aspirin, and I started his second DVD. When the movie started, he became still, sitting on the end of the bed in his rigid way. Charlie’s car was still gone, but a sense of unease followed me around the room as I gave it a final look. Everything seemed to be in its proper place, yet something wasn’t right, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I shook away those doubts and slipped out the door.
The Lynch house lay at the end of a long gravel road, with a turnaround butting up against their front yard. They had a chain-link fence lining their property with several no-trespassing signs posted around the perimeter. The fence had a gate but no lock. Not wanting to risk walking up to the house to ring a doorbell, I parked my car with the nose facing away from the property, leaving it running just in case, and I hit my horn three times. Then I took a seat on the trunk.
I could see curtains rustling in the front window. They moved, came to rest, and then moved again. I pulled out one of my business cards and waited.
A tall man came out of the house carrying a shotgun in one hand, the barrel pointing at the ground ahead of his feet. I gave serious thought to jumping in my car and taking off. I’d done some stupid stuff in my life, and I was starting to think that this might be another one. But there was something in the man’s demeanor that kept me there. He walked with an easy gait, his face relaxed—just a guy out for a stroll with his shotgun. Besides, why come out of the house to kill me―he could have accomplished that from the window.
“What the hell you think you’re doing, sitting out here making all that racket? Who are you?”
“Your sign says no trespassing,” I said. “I would have come up and knocked, but that might be construed as a trespass.”
“Well, making noise is trespass enough. I’ll ask you again, who are you?”
The man stood at least six foot six, with black hair slicked back and a long beard that gave him the look of an old-time trapper. He stopped at the gate with his gun resting in the crook of his right arm.
“Are you Moody’s dad?”
“Mister, I’m not going to ask you again, who are you?”
“I’m a reporter,” I said. “I work for the Associated Press.”
My introduction seemed to slap the man in the face. “Get the hell off my property,” he said, his right hand now gripping the stock of his shotgun near the trigger. He kept the muzzle down, but it would take less than a second for that to change.
“I’m also the son of Toke Talbert,” I said, hoping that his curiosity might kick in and get us past this dustup. It worked.
“Bullshit,” the man said.
I held up my card and waved it. He flicked a finger to signal me to approach, and I handed him the card. “I’m not one hundred percent sure about Toke being my dad, but it’s a good bet. My mom told me that she named me after my father. I never met the man. He abandoned us.”
“Well, that sounds like Toke all right.”
“I’m here to look into what happened.”
“I got nothing to say to you, so you may as well hit the road.”
“I think I can help Moody.”
“Help Moody?” He had what seemed to be a permanently downturned mouth, a frown carved there by years of fighting against the world. But I caught his attention. I could tell by the way he rolled the ball of his tongue against the inside of his ch
eek as he considered my words. When he spoke again, he sounded more curious than angry. “How in the hell do you figure on doing that?”
“The sheriff thinks Moody killed Toke. They’ve been building a case that lands Moody dead in the middle of it all. The problem is that they don’t have Moody’s story to put a stop to that nonsense. I want to get Moody’s version out there. If I could just talk to him—”
“Moody ain’t here.” The man squinted to look past me up the gravel road as if checking to see if I came with backup.
“I’m alone,” I said. “I know about Moody’s trouble with Deputy Calder. I understand why—”
“Nathan Calder’s a no-good son of a bitch,” the man said. “He’s been after my boy ever since Moody was a kid. Ain’t right that a man like that gets to carry a gun and go around arresting people.” Mr. Lynch was angry again. He had moved his gun back up so that the butt rested in his armpit, thus freeing up his hands so that he could pound the index finger of one hand into the palm of the other as he fumed. “They’re trying to pin this on Moody because Nathan has it in for my boy.”
“There’s more to it than that,” I said, thinking about the text messages that Jeb told me about. “They have reason to believe that Moody was out at Toke’s barn the night Toke was killed.”
“Moody didn’t kill your old man,” he said. “I know that for a fact.”
“How do you know that?”
“He told me, and Moody don’t never lie to me. His word is all I need.”
“Did he go out there to see Angel that night?”
“I’m not sayin’ one way or the other.”
“But they were dating?”
“I’m not saying they were, and I’m not saying they weren’t.” He rocked back on his heels slightly as if pleased with his stonewalling.
“Look, if I could talk to Moody, I might be able to help him.”
“Don’t be blowing smoke up my ass. If you’re Toke’s son, you ain’t here to do Moody no favors.”
“I’m here to get to the truth. You say Moody didn’t kill Toke. Well, if that’s the case, he has nothing to worry about. I’m not the law. I can’t arrest him. I only want to talk to him. If he talks to me, I can tell Sheriff Kimball what he says. That’s got to help, don’t you think?”