by Rick Reed
“She’s probably still on her honeymoon, pod’na.”
“I happen to know she’s back home. Mark was called back home to stop a war between the County Council and the Sheriff’s Department.” Mark Crowley was now the sheriff of Dubois County.
“His dad starting trouble again?” Liddell asked.
Mark’s father was Tanner Crowley, who was the previous sheriff, but had stepped down. Tanner was in early stages of dementia. Sometimes he was okay, and sometimes he forgot he wasn’t sheriff anymore and would stop cars or go back and start interrogating people from cases he had closed. The County Council was threatening to have Tanner put in a secure nursing facility. Tanner was threatening them, and Mark was trying to keep peace.
“Mark can take care of it, Bigfoot,” Jack said. He called Anna Whiteside to have Angelina brought into the case.
ICE Special Agent Whiteside answered the phone. “What?”
“I need something from you,” Jack said.
“What a surprise, Jack. Go ahead and ask.”
Jack had to laugh. Pretty on the outside and, like an ice sculpture, cold on the inside. “ICE Queen” definitely fit her.
“We’re going to need some computer support on this,” he said.
“Have you gone through the other case files completely?” she asked.
“Yes. But there’s a ton of paper, and I don’t think we have time to connect all the dots thoroughly. Can you get...”
Anna interrupted with, “Angelina’s already at work on this. I sent her everything. You need to send me what you found at that café in St. Louis. I understand the Missouri Highway Patrol is still on scene, so there will be more, but send me what you can and I’ll share it with Angelina,” Whiteside said.
Jack had the call on speakerphone, and Liddell was listening. “Anna, this is Liddell. Since you have Angelina on this, do you think you can just put her on our task force after this is over?”
Jack had the same idea.
“No,” Whiteside said. “Who says you’ll even have a job when this is over?”
“Bite me, Anna,” Jack said.
“We’re tracing the trucks’ owners, any log books, tickets issued, that kind of stuff, but it’s a mess,” she said. “The license plates on your truck were stolen. The truck was listed as sold for salvage. All of the trucks were listed as salvage and sold for parts or destroyed. We’re talking to people at the salvage yards where the trucks were supposedly scrapped, but it looks like a dead end. The salvage papers are phony like everything else about this. We’re dealing with human trafficking, so it’s not surprising they are creating dead ends between the big bosses and everyone else.”
Jack thought that if ICE couldn’t trace the truck owners, he didn’t have much chance of doing so. That was one thing he could cross off his list.
“Anything else?” Anna asked.
“Just an observation,” Jack said. “This guy covers his tracks like a professional assassin. We think he has special military training, or maybe was, or is, law enforcement. Can you check into that angle?”
“Already being done. You know the driver in St. Louis was ex-Border Patrol. We gave Sanchez what we found, but we’re still digging. Or I should say, Angelina is digging. You think it’s an ex-Border Patrol guy?”
“Maybe,” Jack admitted. “But the bayonet thing is off. He may have a grudge against illegal immigrants, but why kill civilians?”
“Why does anybody kill anybody?” she asked. “Freud would say the bayonet was an extension of his penis or something like that. We know we have to consider that all of this is a rivalry between trafficking organizations. MS-13 is always expanding territory. Anything else you want?”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Do I need to call Toomey?”
She was laughing when she hung up.
Chapter 27
Willard Library looked like an old river mansion to Coyote with its brick walls and Bedford stone pillars and steps. The cold air cleared his mind and made him pick up his pace. He didn’t get enough exercise these days. He was still strong, but he was getting older and could feel the change even if he couldn’t see it.
He trotted up the eight stone-slab steps and admired the craftsmanship. The steps were worn, polished down three inches or more each from tramping feet of the curious, students, children, and more likely now—in this weather—the homeless.
The doors were made from solid slabs of mahogany, four inches thick, with roses and vines ornately carved inside the wooden panes. He opened one door and stepped into what should be a museum. His cowboy boots clacked across the marble tile floor. Ahead was the checkout counter with a very attractive woman scanning and stacking a dozen books. On his right were rows of tables, all empty except for one young girl, maybe twenty to twenty-five years old. She was sitting at the end of a table nearest the old-fashioned heating radiators that were as old as the building. A thick book was open on the table in front of her. She wore a fatigue jacket, pulled up, with her chin stuck down the front, arms holding the jacket tight and her head lolling down and then jerking upright. She was obviously stoned.
The woman at the counter smiled and asked, “Can I help you find something, sir?”
Coyote pointed to the bank of computer terminals.
“Help yourself,” the woman said and continued scanning books.
There were eight computer stations, all with wooden dividers for privacy from the sides, but all with the monitor facing the front desk. Coyote took the computer station nearest the girl, keeping her between him and the librarian. She smelled ripe. Humanity at its weakest. He pushed it out of his mind. He didn’t want to start down that path.
He followed the directions on the card taped to the table and logged on to the internet easily. He typed in Channel Six and brought up the one he wanted. He moved the cursor over “Channel Six Live News” and clicked the mouse. A menu popped up. One of the headlines was titled “Immigrants Abandoned to Die.” Another was titled “Immigrant: Survivor.” He clicked on that one.
He made the video wide-screen and watched with interest. The volume was too high, and he hurriedly turned it low. He glanced behind him. The stoner and the librarian didn’t notice.
He watched the video twice, pausing, focusing his attention on the face of the boy. The lone survivor. He was young. The woman reporter said he was. She didn’t have a name for him or an age or where he came from, but she made the most of the boy’s startled expression when they had confronted him in a hospital room. Bitch.
The end of the video showed a tractor-trailer in the distance, and you could see by the shaky view that the camera was moving toward the scene at a brisk pace. He guessed the reporter had a camera on her clothes or in her purse. She was approaching the two detectives he’d already seen on the video at the little café in Missouri. She called one of them Detective Murphy. The conversation between them was muted except for her asking Murphy what they were investigating.
“She don’t know squat,” Coyote muttered. He wrote the number for the station down in his journal. He typed Jack Murphy into the computer. There were more than a hundred hits. He scrolled through the newest dozen and found what he wanted. Two stories. One was from the Evansville newspaper and titled “Hero or Killer?” He tried to pull that story up, but it required him to open an account and log in. He hated computers. He scrolled through the other headlines, and a pattern emerged. Jack Murphy was a dedicated cop. He wasn’t someone who could be intimidated or bought. Even the mayor didn’t seem too pleased with him. In several Instagram photos, Murphy was seen with his partner, Liddell Blanchard, or at a murder scene.
He shut he computer down and wrote one word under Jack Murphy’s name. “Dangerous.”
Coyote walked to a foyer where a set of stairs led down to something called the Walnut Room. At the bottom of the stairs a heavy wooden door led outside, and a similar one into the Waln
ut Room.
A landline was on the librarian’s desk upstairs. Another landline was down here on the podium in the Walnut Room. He considered using the one down here, but he didn’t want to be overheard. He didn’t want another bloodbath on his hands.
He heard footsteps coming down, and the librarian passed him. “We’re very proud of this addition,” she said. “Have you been here before?”
Coyote was careful to keep his face turned away, which wasn’t hard. The librarian was tall, he was short. He held his thumb and little finger to his ear, mimicking a phone.
“We’re not very busy, as you can see,” she said. “It must be the cold keeping them home. You can use the phone in the Walnut Room if you like. Just no long-distance calls,” she said with a smile and opened the door to the room for him. “The phone is on the podium. Just dial nine to get an outside line.”
He decided to chance using the library phone. If that nosy waitress hadn’t been reading his journal, he wouldn’t have had to leave things like they were at the café. No one knew who he was. Here, he was just another schmuck in a library.
He picked up the receiver and opened his journal. He punched in the telephone number for Channel Six. A woman answered. He asked who the reporting team was on the truck murder that morning. She gave him the names. Claudine Setera was one of them. The other was a guy. Bart Hiller. The cameraman.
“I remember talking to him out at the scene,” Coyote lied.
“I can connect you if you wish. Can I tell him who’s calling please?”
“Tell him the guy he talked to at the truck scene. He’ll remember me,” Coyote said. It rang twice before being picked up.
“Bart Hiller, Channel Six, can I help you?” said the man’s voice.
He sounded young. Eager. Coyote said, “This is Bobby John. I saw you at that horrible truck thing over there on the west side.” Claudine Setera had reported the name of the street it was near, but he didn’t want to be too specific. “You’re that cameraman, aren’t you?”
Bart said, “Yes. I was there. Who is this again?”
Coyote said, “Bobby John. I talked to you at the scene, but I guess you was too busy running errands for that woman reporter.”
“Oh yeah. I remember you,” Bart said. “What can I help you with, Bobby?”
“I think it’s me that c’n help you, Bart,” Coyote said. “I want to tell you something that I bet will get you out from under that woman. She was snitty with me. Like I was dirt under her feet.”
Bart didn’t quite take the bait. “She’s an okay person. I don’t really work for her. I work for the station.”
“Okay. Sorry if I said somethin’ wrong. Maybe I should talk to her. I got information. I might’ve seen the truck park there.”
Coyote could hear Bart’s breathing increase and his voice took on an urgency. “No. You don’t have to do that, Bobby. Was it Johns?”
“Close enough,” Coyote said. “If you want to transfer me to one of them reporters that’s fine. I thought someone would want to hear what I got to say. The cops at the scene didn’t seem too interested. Assholes.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you saw, sir. I’ll make sure it gets to the right person,” Bart said.
“Well. Okay. What I saw was a big semi with a trailer drivin’ real slow down the street and pull in behind one a them empty warehouse buildin’s.”
“What time was this, sir?”
“Last night. I don’t know, maybe just after dark. I don’t have a watch.”
“Did you see the driver leave the truck, sir?” an excited Bart asked.
Coyote said, “Yeah. He walked away. Didn’t go in one of the buildings or get in a car. That’s why I thought it was strange. You know?”
“That is strange, sir,” Bart agreed. “What else did you see?”
“Well. I didn’t see anything else there.” He could imagine the disappointment Bart was feeling, but he’d be happy again. “But after I saw that report from the hospital. You know? The survivor.”
“Yes. I know. I filmed it,” Bart said.
Coyote could hear the pride mixed with impatience in that sentence. He’d set the hook. Now it was time to reel in the fish.
“I just saw that boy. Saw him plain as day. He was just walking down by the hospital.”
“Wait! What?” Bart said.
“I seen that survivor you had on the news. Little guy. Eight or ten years old, right? Dark skin, dark hair?”
“That’s what the kid looks like, yeah, but...”
“He was walking down the street, heading north. He kept looking over his shoulder like.”
“Mr. Johns, sir, I don’t think you could have seen the boy. The detectives found him a while ago. By now he’s with Immigration.”
“No, he ain’t,” Coyote said mustering some anger. “The police are liars if they said so. They ain’t got him. He’s gone. That’s the way this damn government works. I just saw him. You calling me a liar, Bart?”
“No sir. I just...”
“Damn right I’m not a liar. I’m telling you that boy is out there in this cold-ass weather. The decent thing would be to find that boy and get him in a home or something so he can go back to wherever he came from. Right?”
“You’re absolutely right about that, sir. I’m not calling you a liar, Mr. Johns, but are you sure you saw him?”
Silence.
“Sorry, sir,” Bart said. “What would you like me to do?”
“Well, that’s it, ain’t it. What are you going to do? You’re a reporter. Well, I mean, you’re not a reporter yet, but if I was you, I’d check on the kid. Maybe the police just found him. But if they did, I think the public has a right to know. Maybe there’s a good story in it for you. Maybe next time you’ll be in front of the camera instead’a using it.”
Bart was quiet for a moment. “Okay. Which way he was walking again?”
Coyote chuckled. “Now you ain’t gonna catch him on foot, are you? It’s been an hour or so since I saw him. I just now worked up the nerve to call someone about it. I didn’t call those detectives I saw on TV because they don’t give a shit. And they’re liars. Who were the detectives again?”
“Jack Murphy and Liddell Blanchard, Mr. Johns.”
Coyote said, “I heard about those two. If you can’t find the boy, maybe they got him stashed away. Murphy don’t seem honest if you ask me.”
“I’ve had some dealings with Jack Murphy just this morning, sir. He is a liar, just like you said. You can’t trust him. But if I can’t verify the boy is or isn’t in their custody, I really can’t do anything with this. I’m sorry, sir, but...”
“You got a phone, don’t you?” Coyote asked.
“Yes, I...”
“You call them immigrant people and ask where that boy is at. If they won’t tell you, threaten them with that right to know stuff.”
“The Public Information Act?”
“Yeah, that. An’ if that don’t work, you call the police and demand to know about the boy. O’ course they’ll lie, but you keep the pressure on ’em. You call those welfare people. You know. The ones that take kids away from poor people.”
“Child Protective Services?” Bart said.
“You call them and say you’re doing a piece on how they fell down in their duty to protect that boy from the cops. You lay it on heavy like. That’s all these public workers understand. Ain’t it?”
Bart said, “You know, it might work. It just might work. Thanks, Bobby, I mean Mr. Johns. Can I get you on camera saying what you told me about the truck and the boy, sir?”
“Well. I don’t know about that now. If those cops see me saying something against ’em they’ll be harassin’ me. But, maybe I will. You just find the boy. When I see it on the telly, I’ll call you back. Bart Hiller, right?”
“Where are you
calling from...” Bart was saying when Coyote hung up.
Coyote would go back to his room, watch the “telly” and wait. If he’d told Bart there were some similar cases all over the South, the kid would have shit himself. If Bart struck out getting any information on the boy’s whereabouts, he’d think of something else.
He was hungry, and it was getting dark.
Chapter 28
The detectives drove past the Federal Building. A few office windows on the upper floors were lit, but the halls were dark. The same with the civic center except for the police department, where every light was on. Police departments and Walmarts never closed.
Liddell pulled in to a parking space where a metal sign on the back wall declared the space reserved for “Deputy Chief of Police Richard Dick.” The metal sign was twice as big as any of the other parking markers, but needed to be, as it included Double Dick’s name and rank.
“If I see Double Dick, I’ll back out over him, pod’na,” Liddell said without much humor. “Twice.” He was tired. Jack could see it in his eyes.
Jack was wiped out, too. It had been one hell of a day. “I’m going home, Bigfoot. A double Scotch, with a Scotch chaser, seems to be in order.”
“Marcie saved me a plate of roast turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy. I can’t let it go to waste. There are hungry children in China,” Liddell said.
“My dad used to say, ‘Finish your beer, Jack. There’re sober kids in China.’”
“Wise man, your dad.”
“Yeah.” Jack wondered what his dad would have thought about the death toll this crazy bastard was leaving in his wake. Back in his dad’s day if someone killed a couple of people they were called “mad dog killers.” Now, if they don’t kill at least a dozen, they don’t get many “Likes” on Facebook. It was a competition.
“Going home,” Liddell said. “See you early unless something comes up.”
“Go on,” Jack said. “I’m going to make a few calls before I head out. We need to give the stuff Sanchez gave us a going over. I feel like we’re missing the tree for the forest.”