“I’m not a private investigator.” I returned the card.
“No, you’re not.” Frank smoothed back his hair.
I felt a weight settle on my shoulders.
“Do it for my daughter, then.” Frank stuck the card in the pocket of my T-shirt. “Imagine you’re doing her a favor, if that makes you feel better.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I spoke my wife’s name out loud, the first time in weeks. Two syllables carried away on a hot breeze drifting through Piedra Springs, Texas.
The image of my infant daughter that day in the hospital was overpowering, the smell of her skin competing with the odor of Wrigley’s Doublemint and Polo aftershave, the latter an odor I now associated with the darkness that is in every man’s soul.
“What did you say?” Hannah Byrne looked at me with a quizzical expression on her face.
We were standing on Main Street, across from where the three hoods had attacked me. The day was heating up. Not a cloud in the sky.
“My father-in-law,” I said. “He could sell life insurance to a dead man.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You have any children?”
She looked at me for a second, then shook her head.
“Tell me about this big story you’re working on,” I said.
A few seconds passed. Then she said, “How about you tell me what your name is first, cowboy?”
I was wearing a black T-shirt faded to dark gray, a pair of Levi’s, and lace-up work boots. Not exactly cowboy attire, but she was from out of town, so I decided not to call her on it.
“Arlo,” I said. “Arlo Baines.”
“You don’t look like an Arlo.”
“What do I look like?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded genuinely confused by me.
High overhead, a jet streaked across the sky, gray contrails stark against pale blue.
“The way you took down those guys,” she said. “That was pretty impressive.”
“Every now and then I get a little wood on the ball.” I wiped sweat off my brow. “It’s getting hot. See you around.”
I headed for the library, my original destination.
She followed after me, canvas shoes slapping on the asphalt.
“Hey. Wait up.”
I kept going.
“I want to know about Molly.”
“Ask the sheriff.” I reached Maple Street.
The library was to the right, across from a large brick building encircled by a chain-link fence. The First Presbyterian Church of Piedra Springs, now abandoned. A marble cornerstone read, founded 1879.
I stared at the church for a moment before walking on toward the library, a two-story limestone structure.
“You looking for something to read?” Hannah called out.
I stopped on the sidewalk in front of the library. Two granite columns were on either side of the entryway. Above the columns was a white plaster gable with words molded into the surface: carnegie—1906.
“You know who that was?” Hannah stopped beside me. “Andrew Carnegie?”
There was a slight tremor in her voice, like she needed to clear her throat or her emotions were getting the better of her.
“He was a Scottish-American industrialist,” I said. “What they used to call a robber baron. Made millions in the steel industry.”
“Look at you. Being all knowledgeable.” The tremor was gone.
“My parents were history professors.” I began walking up the library steps.
Hannah called out to me again. “You know of any Russians or Eastern Europeans in town?”
I kept climbing. “In this town? You’ve got Piedra Springs confused with Houston.”
“Bratva. Do you know what that means?”
I stopped halfway up, looked back at her.
“Russian mafia,” I said. “Roughly the equivalent of a made man.”
She nodded. “You’re a cop, aren’t you?”
“Was. Past tense. What’s the Russian mob got to do with this dinky little town?”
“Two guys in New York. Both named Boris, but the bigger of the two, this guy tipped the scale at three and a quarter; they call him Fat Boris.”
“What’s the other one called? Regular Boris?”
“No, he’s just plain ‘Boris.’ Anyway, these two are . . . were big-time into money laundering and cybercrimes. You know—identity theft, credit card hacks, that sort of thing.”
I nodded.
She continued her story. “A week ago, the Borises were found in a dumpster in Queens.”
I stared at the abandoned church across the street, wondering what was coming next.
“Their throats were slit. Just like your friend Molly’s.”
I didn’t say anything. On average, fifty people were murdered every day in the United States. Surely a small percentage of those died from knife wounds to the neck.
“So what’s that got to do with your being in West Texas?”
“Fat Boris, he had a burner phone in his pocket,” she said. “The only number in the registry traces back here to Piedra Springs.”
“Maybe he was looking to buy a ranch.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Could be spoofed,” I said. “That’s the most likely explanation.”
Telemarketers had perfected ways to trick caller ID, to make a phone number in Vegas appear like it was in Florida; they called it spoofing. Hackers and other illegal operators often used the same techniques.
“I checked. The number’s legit. Belongs to a pay phone across the street from that god-awful restaurant.”
“The phone by the bar,” I said. “Jimmy and Dale’s.”
Hannah nodded.
“That’s the sum total of your story?” I said. “Morbidly obese Russian thug has friends in small West Texas town?”
She didn’t say anything. The expression on her face indicated there was more, but she wouldn’t be giving it up anytime soon.
I wondered what would bring the attention of somebody like Fat Boris to Piedra Springs. What scam is there to run in a place all but devoid of people and businesses?
“I’m staying at the Comanche Inn.” She told me the room number. “Drop by when you’re ready to talk about Molly.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Piedra Springs Library was cool and quiet, the air thick with the musty smell of old paper and lemon furniture polish.
Books were everywhere, and I immediately felt comfortable and relaxed.
The house where I’d grown up had been full of the printed word, too. Works of history and political science, volumes on philosophy and anthropology. Novels, both classic and popular.
At the time, I’d not appreciated having ready access to so much wisdom and knowledge. I’d been a jock, an enigma to my soft-spoken parents, more interested in girls and football than in first-edition Hemingway novels and the complete works of Herodotus in the original Greek.
Now, I was a different person, but the books were gone, as were my parents. As was everyone else in my life who’d been important.
I looked around. There wasn’t much else in the library other than printed materials and a small selection of DVDs. There certainly weren’t many people, only two patrons that I could see. A Mexican guy in a rumpled suit reading the Sunday issue of the Dallas Morning News and an elderly Anglo man, leafing through an unabridged dictionary.
The librarian, a woman in her seventies, was perched behind the front desk. She was friendly, but she didn’t know anybody named Molly, even the woman north of town.
She showed me to a computer terminal at the end of the rea
ding table, opposite the old guy with the dictionary.
“Internet service isn’t very good on this side of town,” she said. “Cuts off a lot.”
“Oh, for a good fiber-optics line.” I smiled.
“Fiber what?”
“Never mind.” I sat down at a computer that was at least a decade old.
The Internet connection was indeed dial-up slow, but within a few minutes, I had managed to learn a fair amount about Piedra Springs, piedra being Spanish for “stone.”
The town had thrived up until the last few decades of the twentieth century, the population nearing ten thousand, almost double what it was today.
The primary industries were ranching and farming, the latter mostly north of town where the soil wasn’t too rocky. Unfortunately, one too many droughts and the consolidation of family spreads into larger, agribusiness holdings had hurt employment and driven people to larger metropolitan areas.
The economic deathblow had come about fifteen years ago when the single biggest employer in the area, a prison in the south part of the county, had closed. The very remoteness of the area that made the place suitable for a correctional facility had made it too difficult to find qualified workers.
None of this helped explain the presence of a terrified woman in a prairie dress and the two thugs after her.
Across the table, the old man cleared his throat loudly, the sound like a goose being strangled. He looked at me like I was making too much noise by clicking the keys of the computer. After a moment, he opened the dictionary to a new section.
I returned my attention to the computer and googled Sheriff Quang Marsh.
Nothing out of the ordinary came up there, either.
A LinkedIn page that hadn’t been updated in a while. A PDF newsletter announcing Marsh as a speaker at a conference in Abilene next month. Several pictures of the man in gym shorts, coaching a children’s softball team sponsored by the First Presbyterian Church. One of the players was a girl about eight years old with the same Asian features as Quang Marsh, his daughter no doubt.
The date on the photos was three years ago. I wondered when the church had ceased operations. Probably not long after.
Next, I searched for Silas McPherson, but there were too many hits to sift through.
So I entered his name in quotes followed by a qualifying word: Texas. Still, there were pages and pages of results, many of them old census records and other historical documents from a hundred years ago.
I pulled out the business card he’d given me and entered the address. Nothing came up.
The search engine’s mapping software placed a pin in the far southwestern part of the county, on a small road where no street view was available. The nearest thoroughfare with a view, a state highway a few miles to the east, showed nothing but an endless sea of rocky terrain, barren and bleak, except for the occasional mesquite tree and outcropping of cacti.
A satellite overview indicated no buildings at that location or nearby except for a large complex to the south, marked piedra springs state correctional facility—closed.
Again, this set of facts was not all that remarkable. The satellite imagery that was freely available on the Internet was not in real time. A building could have been constructed on that road since the last flyby, though why on earth anyone would have a home or office in such a remote area was beyond me.
One last bit of data to forage for, the phone number on Silas McPherson’s business card.
I entered the digits, pressed the “Search” button.
A business name appeared at the top of the page, ZL Enterprises, followed by an address in Midland. No indication as to what kind of company ZL Enterprises was or what type of commercial activity the firm engaged in. Just a name and an address associated with that phone number, neither of which matched what was on the business card.
I opened another browser page, copied “ZL Enterprises” into the search box. Pressed “Enter.” And waited. And then waited some more.
After about half a minute, I tried to navigate to a new page just to see if everything was working properly. The browser went blank, followed by a one-line message: no internet connection.
Across the table, the old man looked up from the dictionary. “You think that machine has all your answers, do you?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s not working, is it?”
I stared at him for a moment and then shook my head.
“The information superhighway has a crack in it.” He chuckled in appreciation of his joke.
“You know how to get back online?” I punched “Enter” again.
“Not hardly.”
I looked toward the front desk. The librarian smiled at me and then got up and shuffled to the women’s restroom.
“We’re a long way from anywhere,” the old man said. “Phone lines get damaged, power goes out. Pretty much on your own.”
He was wearing a faded denim shirt, khaki trousers, and a long gray ponytail. A thick scar ran across one side of his forehead.
“You live in Piedra Springs?” I tried to reload the search page. Nothing.
“Most of my life. My great-granddaddy was born here in 1891.”
“You know a woman named Molly?” I looked up, described the person I’d seen the night before. Told him about the children.
“Molly?” He stroked his chin. “Had a mule with that name one time. A right fine animal. Good teeth.” He paused. “Does your Molly have good teeth?”
Oh joy. An elderly comedian. Just what my day needed.
“Beats me,” I said. “Wrong species anyway.”
A period of time passed. I restarted the computer to no avail while the old man continued reading from the oversize dictionary.
The Mexican in the rumpled suit carefully folded his newspaper and left. The librarian returned to the front desk. She was about thirty feet away, out of earshot.
Across the table, the old man flipped a page loudly. “I saw what you did to Chigger and his posse.”
I looked up. “So you know he had it coming, then?”
“Chigger’s had it coming since the day he dropped out of his mama’s cooch in a gas station bathroom.”
“When I have some free time, I’ll feel sorry for him. Right now I’m trying to find the children who were with Molly.”
I took a closer look at the old man’s head. The scar was deep, tracking a slight indentation in the skull. I wondered if some of his wires had been crossed by whatever had happened to him.
“Next time you ought to just kill him,” he said. “Save everybody a truckload a’ trouble.”
“I’m not a murderer.”
He stared at me for a long few seconds. “Your eyes say something different.”
“You’re creeping me out.” I stood. “See you around, pops.”
“Where you going?” He leaned back. “Don’t you want to see Suzy?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The old man pushed himself out of the chair. He wore flip-flops held together with duct tape. The knees of his khakis were patched with different-colored pieces of cloth.
“You friends with Suzy?” I said.
“Let’s go out the back.” He pointed to a passageway between two bookshelves.
“Why not the front?”
“You scared to go into the alley with me?” he said. “After what you did to Chigger’s crew?”
I didn’t move. “Tell me about Suzy. What’s your connection?”
“Me and her grandpa, we roomed together at Texas Tech.”
The bell over the front door of the library tinkled.
“We might ought to hurry,” the old man said.
The entryway was o
ut of view from the reading table. The front desk was not.
The librarian nodded toward whoever had just entered, a friendly, welcoming gesture. She said something that was not quite audible from my location, a greeting probably.
I could make out only one word—sheriff.
The old man shuffled toward the rear exit. I waited an instant and then followed.
A few seconds later, we were behind the library on a narrow gravel track that ran perpendicular to Main Street.
Even the alley was desolate. No dumpsters or stray dogs, no bags of trash. Certainly no people.
He walked north, away from Main Street. I followed.
We crossed over to the next block. On one side of the alley was a relatively new strip mall, at least by the standards of Piedra Springs, built probably in the 1970s. On the other was a vacant, overgrown field.
From the rear, the strip mall appeared unoccupied, the back doors marked with the names of businesses that had long since gone away.
Robby’s Shoe Store. Tiger Tan. Big Pam’s Burger Shack.
The old man stopped at the last unit, a nail salon. He fished a key from his pocket, unlocked the dead bolt.
“Hold up, pops.” I pressed a hand against the door, kept it from opening. “Tell me what’s on the other side.”
“Name’s Boone. Not Pops.” He rubbed the scar on his forehead. “Dr. Boone, if you’re being formal.”
“What kind of doctor?”
“Veterinarian. Specialized in large animals. Horses and cows, mostly.”
“What happened to your head, Dr. Boone?”
“You don’t have to call me that. I was joking. I’m retired now.”
He looked like he wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, he leaned against the side of the building.
“You OK?”
“Headaches. They come and go.” He closed his eyes. “I’ll be all right in a sec—”
The Devil's Country [Kindle in Motion] Page 7