by James Newman
“Do you think this could be tied to organized crime?” Nick asked him.
“Around here?” Mackey seemed to get a kick out of that.
“I’m serious.”
“Thought you were. The closest thing we have to ‘organized crime’ is the rare trailer-park meth lab that I’m proud to say we shut down the second I get wind of it. Solicitation at the truck stops off I-26. But if you’re talking about something out of The Godfather? I can assure you that those kind of people do not congregate in Midnight, North Carolina.”
“Suppose Eddie Whiteside owed some bad people a lot of money. What if my granddaughter was the collateral that paid off his debt?”
The sheriff sighed. “I will review the information supplied to us by Leon Purdy. After what happened to you tonight, I’d be a fool not to admit that this whole thing is more complex than I first thought. But I wish you would leave the detective work to me, sir.”
“You’ve done a hell of a job so far,” said Nick.
The sheriff chewed at his bottom lip. Looked like he’d love to pull out his Glock, spend the next few hours pistol-whipping Nick with it. He took a long sip at his coffee before he spoke again.
“We’re gonna play it like that? Well then, my turn to ask you a question. You told me that, before yesterday evening, you never knew you had a granddaughter. I took this to mean your relationship with Melissa is estranged. Would that be a fair assessment?”
“It would be.”
“How well do you trust your daughter, Mr. Bullman?”
Nick glared at the sheriff, did not reply.
“Melissa stands to gain a lot of money from Eddie Whiteside’s death. She happens to be the sole beneficiary of an insurance policy Eddie took out on himself a month before he was murdered.”
Nick clenched his teeth. Fought to keep his temper in check. The big man had no nose, but the two wide black holes in the center of his disfigured face flared with anger.
Sheriff Mackey said, “I’m not insinuating anything, by the way. Just thinking out loud.”
Score one for the prick in the khaki uniform.
“Do you need anything else from me?” Nick said. “If not, I should probably start looking for another place to stay.”
“You’re free to go,” the sheriff replied. “But...Mr. Bullman?”
“Huh?”
“A blind man could see we’ve got a clear case of self-defense here. However, pending a meeting with the D.A., I’m sure I’ll need to speak with you again. Make yourself available?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Nick. “I promised Melissa I’d help her. That’s what I aim to do.”
“Try the south end of Brookshire, up past the bowling alley. Couple decent motels out that way, shouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg.”
Mackey gave Nick a final once-over, before walking away.
Nick watched him join his fellow lawmen in Room 118, then climbed into his Bronco, feeling every second of his fifty-four years. He was sore all over. His bicep burned, his bad knee throbbed, and his groin ached as if someone had been standing on it for the last few days, maybe jumped up and down when they got bored.
He didn’t see the motel manager approaching him until the guy rapped on his window with one bony knuckle.
He took his time rolling down the window. “What the hell do you want?”
“Thought I’d better tell ya, a’fore you take off...somebody’s gonna have to pay for the damage in there.”
“Beg your pardon?” said Nick.
“Me and the missus, we ain’t exactly got money fallin’ outta our buttholes. It’s all we can do to break even runnin’ this place most days. Somebody’s gonna have to pay for the repairs.”
“A man tried to kill me tonight,” said Nick, “in case you missed it.”
“Wasn’t me. I just own the motel. Now, I know you wasn’t the one doin’ the shootin’. But after what you did to that fella, I don’t see him gettin’ up to pay me what I’m owed.”
Nick couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “How did he know what room I was in? Tell me that, old man. Hell, I’m surprised he had to pick the lock, somebody didn’t hand him a goddamn key...”
The gruesome double entendre in his own statement—hand him a key—was not lost on Nick.
The senior citizen’s gaze dropped to the cracked asphalt. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“How much did he pay you?” said Nick.
“I ain’t got no dog in this fight, buddy. I just own th—”
“You just own the motel. I got that.”
The geezer gave up then. He stalked off, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe how he’d been conned.
Nick started the Bronco. It backfired. He got a wicked thrill out of seeing every cop on the premises flinch.
As he pulled out of the lot, he passed a white van with a satellite dish on its roof, CHANNEL 13 NEWS painted on its side. He said a silent prayer, thanked whoever might be listening that he’d gotten out of there just in time, didn’t have to deal with that shit.
As he cruised through Midnight, down lonely back roads and side streets smothered in darkness, he kept an eye on his cracked rearview mirror.
Nick Bullman was tired. So tired. But after tonight he wondered if he would ever sleep again.
†
Eight hours had passed since the attempt on Nick’s life. Early the next morning, he called Melissa to tell her what happened. Their conversation was brief, as she was on her way to work (she had quit her job at the bar a few days after Sophie went missing, and had recently gone back to pulling double shifts at the Waffle House). He assured his daughter that he was okay as she wept into the phone, and he promised her that he would continue to watch his back. Before they said their goodbyes, he asked for her Aunt Patty’s number. She gave it to him, along with a warning that he had never been her aunt’s favorite person. He told her he suspected as much, but after an attempt on his life he could handle just about anything.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve calling this number,” Aunt Patty started berating him as soon as he identified himself. “You are a piece of work, you know that? All that money, all that fame, you’re still nothing. You’re the lowest of the low.”
He allowed her to get it out of her system, didn’t bother reminding her that both the money and the fame had said adios a few years ago.
“I guess we can all rest easy now that you’ve come rolling back into town. After all these years. Gonna fix everything! Think you’ll solve the mystery, Nick? Gonna find that little girl, so we can all live happily ever after?”
In the background he could hear water running, clinking glassware. Sounded like she was washing dishes.
She sighed. “Look. I already told the police. I haven’t heard from Sophie. I don’t know where she is. I wish to God I did.”
“Pat,” said Nick, “did either Sophie or Melissa ever mention a man called ‘Daddy’?”
“Never. There’s one name that’s always been missing from both of their lives.”
He knew he had walked right into that one. It stung.
“Last time I called Melissa, she told me to eat shit and die. After all I’ve done for that girl. She’s in denial. I don’t know if it’s because of some misguided loyalty to that dirtbag, even though he’s dead now, or because she knows if Sophie really was the one who killed him she would have to admit to herself what had been going on in that house right under her nose.”
“You think—”
“Eddie had been molesting that poor girl. And she decided she wasn’t gonna take it anymore.”
For the first time since Patty answered the phone, her tone softened toward the man who should have been her brother-in-law. Not much, but a little.
“Something wasn’t right with him,” she said. “He had an unhealthy interest in Sophie before he ever laid eyes on her.”
“What do you mean?”
“He called asking to speak with her. Late April, early M
ay this would’ve been, when Sophie still lived with me. I handed her the phone. I had met Eddie a couple times at that point, and he seemed decent enough. I didn’t find out about all the stuff he was into till after he was dead. I assumed he was just calling to relay a message from Melissa. But then he called again. Two or three times after that.”
“What did he want?”
“He kept begging Sophie to come to Midnight to live with them. He told her it was the one thing her mother wanted more than anything in the world. Wasn’t too long after that, he got his wish.”
Nick was stunned.
Everything Patty told him matched the sheriff’s original theory. As did Sophie’s call, when she had asked her mother not to come looking for her. But Sophie didn’t leave home of her own free will that night. She left because she had been taken. By four men in suits, driving a fancy car.
How did those goons fit into all of this, if Sophie had pulled the trigger on Eddie? Why had he seemed so hell-bent on reuniting Melissa with her daughter, if not for the vile purpose the cops initially suspected?
Two plus two kept coming up five. Nick couldn’t make the pieces fit together. Trying made his brain hurt.
Aunt Patty gave another loud sigh into the phone then.
“That’s all I’ve got.” She sounded tired. Defeated. “Now do me a favor, Nick. You never brought anything but heartache to Melissa and her mother. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call this number again.”
“I’m sorry, Pat,” he said. “For everything. If I could go back—”
“I’m tempted to say you deserve what happened to you, and I’m glad they took your face. But that wouldn’t be very Christian of me. So I won’t.”
She hung up.
†
Later that morning, Nick trudged through the forest behind his daughter’s former home, once again approaching Leon Purdy’s crooked trailer. He wore a scuffed brown leather jacket, an old gray stocking cap. Twigs and dead pinecones crunched beneath his boots.
“Leon!” he called out. “You home?”
He didn’t want to spook the little weirdo. Good way to end up...with an aquarium dropped on your head? Nick couldn’t help chuckling as he thought of their first encounter. The look on Leon’s face when he realized he had assaulted his hero! He wouldn’t forget that any time soon.
The stench of cow manure tickled his nostrils. From somewhere on the far side of the pasture adjacent to Leon’s property, Nick heard laughter, the stop-and-go buzz of some kids on a four-wheeler. A crow cawed from the branches of a massive oak tree, before swooping down to claim the remains of some small forest creature that had crawled under Leon’s trailer to die. As its beak dipped and tore into the carrion, the bird’s obsidian eyes watched Nick suspiciously, as if the giant human might try to make off with its prize.
Nick heard music coming from inside the trailer. He climbed the milk-crate steps, knocked on the dented front door. It swung open.
“Leon?”
He ducked through the doorway. Felt the mobile home tremble beneath his weight.
From the battered stereo system by the bar came the raucous din of death metal: squealing guitars, machine-gun drumming, and a singer who sounded like Satan himself wired on PCP.
Nick instantly had a headache. He wasted no time crossing the room, turning the music off.
“Leon?”
A shout from the opposite end of the trailer. “That you, Nick?”
“It’s me.”
“Make yourself at home!”
Nick was somehow able to find an uncluttered spot on the sofa.
“Be out in a minute, dude. You caught me droppin’ some friends off at the pool.”
“What’s that?” Nick said, distracted. He swatted at a big green fly that was buzzing around his head, bouncing off the bandage on his bicep.
“Takin’ the Browns to the Super Bowl.”
“You lost me.”
“Do I gotta spell it out for you, hoss? I’m takin’ a shit!”
Nick groaned. As if the cigarettes-and-mildew stink of this place wasn’t endearing enough already.
He heard toilet paper being rolled off its spool. Enough to last a family of six for a month, from the sound of it. The toilet flushed.
Nick shifted in his seat, breathed through his nose. “You almost done in there?”
After what felt like forever, Leon came strutting down the hall, zipping up his cut-off shorts. Today his scrawny torso was covered in a loud yellow T-shirt that read: GIMME HEAD TILL I’M DEAD.
“You ever wondered why they call it takin’ a shit? To me that implies walkin’ away with more than you had when you started. I prefer to leave it. Ha!”
Nick shook his head.
Leon nodded toward the silenced stereo. “What’s the matter, bro? You didn’t like my music?”
“Sorry,” said Nick. “Not my thing.”
Leon looked disappointed. “Them was the guys did your entrance theme back in the day. You remember?” He arched his back, played a few licks of furious air guitar, and sang badly, “Gonna make your wife a widowwww, gonna send you six feet underrr!”
“I remember it,” said Nick. “Heard it every night for twenty-five years. I don’t normally listen to that kind of music, though.”
“You’re pullin’ my dick.”
“I wouldn’t think of doing that.”
“What do you listen to?”
“Blues, mostly. More my speed.”
“The blues is alright, I guess.”
“It’s the only music that’s real,” said Nick. “Where it all began.”
Leon stared off into space, as his drug-addled brain tried to work that out. “So, anyway...to what do I owe the pleasure? Somethin’ I can do for ya, brother? What happened to your arm?”
“Leon, I need your help.”
“I’d love to help you, dude. Whatever you need. Did I tell you I always was your number one fan?”
“You might have mentioned it.”
“How about a coldbeer?”
“No. Listen...”
Leon went to the fridge, got himself one. He slurped at it as he leaned against the bar and gave Nick his full attention.
“I’m gonna need you to be my second set of eyes,” said Nick.
“Okay...?”
Nick stood, joined Leon in the kitchen. “A lot has changed in Midnight since the last time I was here. It’s not as easy as it used to be for me to get out and talk to people. Plus, you know about this town’s dark side. The things that crawl beneath the surface. You can get to information that it might not be so easy for Sheriff Mackey to come by.”
“I’ll try my best,” Leon said.
“Eddie was a dealer. But he wasn’t the only link in the chain. He got his product from a supplier.”
Leon said, “Right...”
“His boss. Any idea who that might have been?”
“No idea, man. When I needed a bump, I always went through Eddie.”
Nick abandoned that topic for now. He thought hard for a minute, and then he proceeded to fill Leon in on the events from the night before. The wound on his arm itched as he told his story.
“Somebody put a hit on you?” Leon exclaimed.
“Looks that way. And it didn’t take long for them to find me. Leon, I need to know if you told anybody where I was staying.”
“I ain’t talked to nobody, dude. Don’t plan on it, either.”
“Maybe you bragged to a few of your buddies about hanging with the Widowmaker? You meant no harm, I’m sure.”
“I ain’t got no friends. Since Vonda left me, I ain’t got nobody, man.”
“Leon, do you know anyone who goes by the nickname ‘Daddy?’ ”
“Can’t say as I do.”
“It was worth a shot.” Nick reached into his jacket then. “I almost forgot. I’ve got something to give you.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s a Trac-Fone. Picked one up for myself too. They’re cheap pay-as-y
ou-go deals, nothing fancy like the kids are using these days, but they’ll work for our purposes. I thought it’d be a good idea for Melissa to be able to contact me any time she needs to. Figured it wouldn’t hurt for the two of us to stay in touch as well.”
“You bought me a cellar phone?” Leon said.
“Throw it out when I leave town, for all I care. But while I’m here, I need you to call me right away if you hear anything around town about Sophie, or if you see anybody snooping around Eddie’s place.”
“Dude, I don’t have a clue how to use one of these contraptions.”
“I spent all morning translating the user’s manual, already got it programmed for you. All you have to do is answer it if it rings. It’ll say ‘WIDOWMAKER’ on the little screen when I call.”
That earned a grin from Leon. He held the phone up to his ear, inspected its shiny silver buttons. When he sat it down on the bar, though, he kept one eye on the phone, as if it were something that might jump up and latch onto his carotid artery if he dropped his guard for a second.
“Somebody tried to off you, man. I can’t believe that shit!”
“It’s true,” said Nick.
“Say the dude had a silencer and everything? It’s like somethin’ outta one of them old private-eye flicks!”
“I guess.” Nick’s tone was sardonic, yet at the same time somber. “But real life isn’t black-and-white. I’m no Philip Marlowe. And I’m surrounded by rejects from Deliverance instead of double-crossing dames with perfect gams and tits out to here.”
Leon beamed at the mention of tits. He gave his hero two thumbs up, oblivious to the fact that he had been insulted.
†
Dinnertime found Nick and his daughter again sitting in a corner booth at Annie’s Country Diner. But they didn’t stay for long, after he told her what the man who tried to kill him had said about Sophie (“Oh, God,” she cried, “I knew it! Some pervert’s got her locked up like he owns her!”). Nick tossed a few dollars onto the table to pay for their untouched sodas, helped her stagger outside as the diner’s patrons looked on.
All morning, a bruise-colored sky had hinted of a storm on the way. Seconds after they climbed into Nick’s Bronco, the threat was realized. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed as if all the angels in Heaven were throwing down in some celestial brawl.