Hello, Stranger

by Virginia Swift

  She wasn’t backing off. “Listen, Sheriff. Somebody in this town who thinks they’re on first-name terms with God is putting together the Laramie real estate deal of the millennium, probably using insurance claim funny money. Hasn’t it occurred to you that Bea Preston’s in a position to have been on the inside of whatever’s going on? Where’d she go?”

  Dickie avoided eye contact. “Mrs. Preston’s gone on home. She’s been very helpful with our investigation. We’ll be talking with her again tomorrow. Don’t worry about it.”

  She reached up, grabbed his face, made him look at her. “What in the hell are you talking about? Where’s Charlie?”

  He looked at her because he had to. But she couldn’t believe her ears. “Mrs. Preston says Charlotte’s doing well,” Dickie told Sally. “She’s been recuperating in a private treatment center. She’ll be released tomorrow. If she’s able, we’ll talk with her too.”

  “A private treatment center! I can’t believe this. Think about what happened all those other times Bea put her in a nice, quiet, private place!”

  He looked her in the eye. “Don’t worry about it, Sally. Bea has assured us that she’ll produce the girl tomorrow, and we have every reason to believe she’s in decent shape, at least as decent as it’s possible for somebody that messed up to be. And the most important thing is that we’ve got the guy we’ve been looking for.”

  “And how long have you been looking for him, might I ask?” Sally said.

  Dickie got busy, patting his pockets for his cigarettes. “Oh, I guess ever since the Fort Collins police found a partial thumbprint on the trunk of that Miata,” he admitted. “We sent them to the federal registry, and it turned out that the print matched up with a guy named Wesley King, who’d been a suspect in an abortion clinic fire in the state of Washington. We got the information back yesterday, just so you don’t think we’ve been holding out on you.”

  “Oh no. I’d never think that. I mean, just this afternoon we had a nice conversation in Dave Haggerty’s office, at which you mentioned not one word of this. So why would I ever think you’re holding out on me?”

  Dickie didn’t bother to answer.

  “So let me guess,” Sally pushed on. “You asked Bea Preston if she’d ever encountered this King character, and she said, well, yeah, as a matter of fact, he’s in my Bible study group, and if you like, I can get him to meet me at church tomorrow night?”

  “Something like that,” Dickie said, lighting up, taking a desperate drag, blowing smoke. “Seems Mr. King also worked for some time as a medical technician at the Shelter Clinic. You never know how a case is gonna break.”

  “I presume you’re aware that he showed up with the Chipmunk,” Hawk said.

  Dickie stared at Hawk, noted the way his jacket was hanging in the back. “Yeah, we’re aware. You developing dowager’s hump there, Hawk?”

  Hawk shoved his hands in his pockets and started whistling.

  “The Chipmunk,” Sally pursued. “He slipped out while you were busting Wesley King. Don’t you need to talk to him?”

  “We’re not complete idiots, Sally,” said Dickie. “We’ve actually managed to have a word or two with the man. We’ve advised him to stay in touch. He’s a slippery one, but we’re not done with him yet.”

  She puffed out a breath. “So was this King guy involved in the insurance fraud? Is that why he killed Brad Preston?”

  “Looks that way. Mrs. Preston is helping us put those pieces together. She’s appalled at what that clinic evidently did to Charlotte and the other kids.”

  “I can’t believe this. Bea Preston has basically been torturing her kid for years! Why in the name of God are you believing her now?”

  Dickie took a long drag of his cigarette, regarded the glowing tip, exhaled slowly. “Let’s get serious here, Sally. How do you know that? I mean, exactly who are your sources of information?”

  She thought a minute. “Charlie. Billy Reno. Aggie Stark.”

  “Great. Two sociopaths with criminal records and a gullible little kid.”

  “You’d be a sociopath too, if you’d been through what those kids have. It’s the worst. You’ve probably even been too busy kissing up to Bea Preston to let Billy out of jail, huh, Dickie?”

  “Below the belt, Mustang. He was released late this afternoon. Don’t ask me where he’s gone. Probably somewhere stealing a police cruiser, if I know Billy. Go ahead and feel sorry for those two, but don’t be fooled. They have only the most casual acquaintance with the truth, and that only when it’s easier than lying.”

  “Better an honest sinner than a canting hypocrite,” Sally shot back. “What about Bea blackmailing Dave Haggerty?” Sally insisted.

  “Dave’s not exactly an unbiased source on that question, now is he?” Dickie said. “We haven’t found a shred of evidence that what he told you about that is true.”

  “How about checking the donation records of the Traditional Family Fund? If they’ve been cashing checks from a leftie like Dave Haggerty, wouldn’t you think that’d be pretty good evidence?”

  Dickie looked at the sky, then back at Sally. “I guess you would, at that. And we will take a look, as soon as their lawyers stop fighting our subpoenas. But look, Sally. You’ll note that nobody, not one single soul, has accused Beatrice Preston of laying a hand on her stepdaughter, ever. In fact, if you look at the evidence another way, it might appear that all Bea Preston has done is to try to take care of an extremely disturbed girl, to protect her from a violent father and get her some treatment. This is a deeply religious woman, a community leader. Who you gonna believe, Sally, her or the crazy kids?”

  Sally looked him right in the eye. “I know who I believe.”

  He looked right back. “Believe who you want. My job requires me to look at things from all sides. And right now, it looks like we’ve got the guywho murdered Bradley Preston. If it makes you feel any better, Charlie and Billy are in the clear on that one. We can take our time sorting out the rest of it.”

  Sally kept staring at him. “This is disgusting. Some-body’s squeezing you. I’d never have thought you’d cave in to pressure.”

  Something came and went in his eyes, but he didn’t look away.

  “Who’s stepping on your unit, Sheriff?” she asked. “What’s going on? Did Bea call up some big-time buddy of hers? Did you get a phone call from Washington, D.C., maybe, telling you to watch yourself around upstanding Christian ladies with powerful friends? Or maybe suggesting that you might want to do what you can to accommodate people who might bring a lot of money into Laramie, say in the form of an evangelical university?”

  He dipped his head now, flicked his cigarette butt in the parking lot dirt, ground it out with the heel of his boot. “Sometimes I hate this job,” he said, looking back up.

  “We’re not done,” Sally told him.

  “You certainly are,” he said. “Not one more step, Sally. You’ve gone far enough. I’ve got about all I can handle, without having to get into a cluster fuck with you pissing off the people who rule the world. I am not kidding. Give it a rest.”

  Hawk snorted.

  Dickie and Sally looked at him.

  “You’ve got to be kidding, Sheriff,” said Hawk. “You think you can just throw her a big piece of red meat like that, and not expect her to take a bite?”

  “If she does, she’ll be the meat,” said Dickie. “Look at me, Dr. Alder. I swear on the graves of John Lennon, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin, and Hunter S. Thompson, I am doing everything I can to get to the bottom of this, to take care of Charlotte Preston, and to keep the peace in my town. But we’re in the tall weeds here. There’s big money involved, and lots of people who think they’re doing God’s work, probably even including you. I’m just taking it day by day, trying to mind the people’s business. I thought I had you convinced this afternoon that it’s time for you to back the very hell off. I can’t be worrying about you and doing my job. Please, Sally?”

  Sometimes you could see the whol
e world’s pain in Dickie Langham’s eyes. “You promise me?” she said.

  “I just did,” he answered.

  “I’m on her,” Hawk told him.

  “Okay,” said Dickie, giving her a hug. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Chapter 26

  Disturbing the Peace

  Her intentions were good. Really, they were. She couldn’t help sympathizing with Dickie, who’d found himself in the middle of a bigger mess than he’d ever seen. Plus there was the element of fear. The cops might have captured Wesley King, the presumed murderer. But she didn’t have much confidence that King was the one who’d shot her bathroom door. It took more than one person to cook up a conspiracy, right?

  She felt like ten miles of bad road as they headed home. Hawk was doing all he could to console her. “He can’t help what he’s doing, Mustang,” he said, holding her hand as he drove. “He’s an elected official. If guys with big bucks and a grudge decide to go after him, he’ll not only lose his job, he could end up being the target of a national smear campaign. They wouldn’t have a bit of trouble digging up a mountain of dirt on him. Imagine the headlines: ‘Alcoholic Coke Dealer Now Sheriff of Cowboy Town.’ They’d run him out of office, maybe drive his kids out of school, who knows? For all we know, they have the power to fuck up his credit rating, maybe even get him thrown in jail himself. When you think about it, they could do the same to any one of us.”

  She’d always said that if she ever decided to run for president of the United States, she’d have to do so on the “Yes, I Did” ticket. You could start an agribusiness on the dirt they’d have on her. But she’d never seriously considered the idea that anyone would bother. For all her bravado, she’d felt safe in the academic cocoon. “I get the point. It’s incredibly depressing.”

  Hawk drove slowly, as if he was afraid to disturb the peace of the quiet streets of Laramie, late on a Saturday night. Downtown, the bars might be hopping, but up by the university, there was almost no traffic. It was a cool night, but not cold. Even out on Ninth Street, there was nobody out, except one young couple walking a dog.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” said Sally. “Is that who I think it is?”

  Hawk pulled to the curb just ahead of the dog walkers. Sally rolled down the window. The little dog, recognizing her, yipped happily, tugging at his leash.

  “Hey, Aggie,” she said. “Do your parents know where you are?”

  Aggie Stark tossed her mane of hair, pouted, and said saucily, “Of course they do. I’m walking my dog.”

  Beanie wagged his stumpy tail, still barking.

  Billy Reno stood watching them, legs splayed apart, head cocked in wariness, or defiance. Hawk narrowed his eyes, measuring the boy. “You’re Billy,” he said.

  “This is Hawk,” Sally told him. “He helped me with Charlie when she called me from the bus station.”

  Billy remained silent.

  “When’d you get out?” Hawk asked.

  “This afternoon,” said Billy, giving nothing away.

  “He made the evening news,” said Aggie, gaining steam. “That’s how I knew. So I called him up.”

  “You called him up?”

  “They took my cell phone when they busted me,” said Billy. “They gave it back when they let me out. Dave made sure of that.” He stuck his hand under his shirt, revealing a hard belly and several inches of striped boxer shorts above his sagging jeans. “My old man. He’s a goddamn prince.” Billy smiled bleakly, looking very young in his backward baseball cap.

  “So where are you headed?” Sally inquired, as coolly as possible.

  “We’re going to find Charlie,” Aggie told her, “even if it takes all night.”

  Sally and Hawk shot a look at each other. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea,” said Sally.

  “If you feel that way,” said Billy, “maybe it’s none of your fuckin’ business.”

  Sally found herself granting his point. “What makes you think you have any chance of finding her, Billy?”

  A long pause, while he considered his answer. “Put it this way,” he said finally. “I gotta figure that whoever’s got her has either killed her”—he hesitated, gulping, forging on—“or is keeping her close by, since they couldn’t take her to that so-called clinic. And if they’re keeping her alive, they must figure they’ll have to let her come out sometime, after they’ve got her so scared or doped up or hurt or whatever that she wouldn’t get in their way, at least for a little while.

  “If they’ve killed her, shit, I can’t do anything about that. But if she’s around here somewhere, I gotta say that the assholes who have her are so fuckin’ arrogant, they’d make it easy on themselves. They’d want to be able to move her around if things got hot.”

  “You probably haven’t heard,” Sally told them. “They got the guy who killed Brad Preston. The blond guy. His name is Wesley King.”

  Billy looked at the sky, threw his hands out in a gesture of reverence. “Hallelujah,” he said, “and fuck that.”

  “Why do you say that? You told me he was the one who beat up Charlie that last time. He worked at the Shelter Clinic. Bea helped them get him.”

  Billy laughed without mirth. “I bet. I just fuckin’ bet. You know what? Old Wesley, he was one of their success stories at that clinic. I mean, he first went there just like Charlie did. She told me his parents put him in there because he was the kind of little kid who couldn’t help hitting other little kids. He was always bigger, so he had a tendency to really hurt the littler ones. I guess that made him useful to those bastards at the clinic. After a while, they told him his treatment was working, and they kind of made him a trusty of the other kids, kind of like they do in jail. He’s one sad, scary motherfucker.” Billy shook his head. “And you know how he finally got out? Bea got him out. She said she’d help ‘mainstream’ him—I love that word—kind of keep him close, keep him walkin’ on the Jesus road, all that. He’s her fuckin’ enforcer. And now she’s hung him out to dry. What would Jesus think?”

  Sally knew that Dickie was right. Billy wasn’t the kind of reliable source you could take to the bank. But despite his bad mouth, his tattoos, his rap sheet, his tough pose, and his lifelong intimacy with lying, she felt certain that everything he was telling them was true.

  She looked at Aggie. Aggie shrugged. “I don’t know this Wesley King guy. Charlie never told me about him. But she did say that one of the worst things about the clinic was that they didn’t protect the little kids from the big kids.”

  What made it all plausible, Sally was sure, was the real estate connection. Brad had been a landlord. The evictions had started after he’d died, and the only heir who’d have been interested in evicting was Bea. Her actions exactly matched those of whoever else was buying up houses, evicting tenants, and flipping the properties at a huge profit. The transactions seemed to go through a Fort Collins management firm with the name of WWJS. Why not believe that Bea and her well-heeled, well-connected Traditional Family Fund were in the middle of it all, especially now, with plans seemingly going forward for an evangelical college in Laramie?

  What would Jesus think?

  Or do?

  Or sell?!

  “It stands for ‘What Would Jesus Sell’!” she exclaimed.

  “What?” said Hawk.

  “That Fort Collins real estate firm, WWJS. Get it? What Would Jesus Sell!”

  Hawk’s eyes grew wide. “I had the impression that it was Jesus who drove the moneylenders out of the temple.”

  “That’s the beauty of the Bible,” said Billy. “You can pick and choose what parts you feel like ignoring.”

  Hawk went on. “There are a lot of empty houses around here, right about now. Former party houses, where people coming and going are pretty much par for the course.”

  Billy inspected his fingernails. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  “I bet you know all those places,” Hawk observed. Billy hesitated again, nodded.

  Hawk put his hand on Sally’s arm. “
Maybe we’d better go with you,” he said. “And Aggie’d better go on home.”

  Aggie stuck out her lower lip. “I’m the one who came up with this idea,” she said. “You can’t make me go home.”

  “No?” said Sally, pulling out her cell phone. “Why don’t I just call your parents and see about that?”

  “You can’t reach them. They’re in Denver at the symphony with my aunt Maude,” Aggie tossed back. “They said they might stay over if they didn’t feel like driving back.”

  “So...they don’t exactly know where you are?” Hawk said, eyes boring a hole in the girl. “And they left you alone overnight? That seems a little hard to believe.”

  Aggie realized she’d been caught. She squatted down and got busy petting Beanie, for comfort, and to avoid Hawk’s gaze. “I’m supposed to be at a sleepover. It got canceled.”

  “I bet,” said Hawk.

  Billy grinned cynically. “Don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter, Aggie,” he advised.

  Sally knelt beside her, letting the dog lick one hand, patting Aggie’s back with the other. “You can come home with us. Both of you,” she added, looking up at Billy.

  “Um, no thanks,” he said. “Sorry.”

  What would a parent do at this moment? Sally looked at Hawk. He looked back. Neither of them had a clue.

  “Come on, Billy,” said Hawk. “You’re not going to do Charlie any good, and you’re just going to get yourself in a big heaping pile of trouble.”

  “I been in trouble my whole fuckin’ life. It don’t mean shit to me. If I don’t try to find my girl, all’s I am is a fuckin’ ten-time loser with nothin’ to show. So don’t think you can change my mind. And just in case you want to try, I’d advise you not to.”

  He reached into the pocket of his baggy pants, pulling out a small handgun with a short, large-bore barrel, and pointing it at Hawk.

  “What the fuck would you want to shoot me for?” Hawk said, unconsciously adopting Billy’s manner of speaking.

  “He wouldn’t.” Sally turned to Billy. “You wouldn’t, would you? You don’t shoot people. That’s not your thing.”