The Frank Peretti Collection

by Frank E. Peretti

  Then a voice came from inside the house. “Mrs. Macon, would that be Nevin Sorrel?”

  Nevin hollered through the open door, “Yes it is, Mr. Nichols!

  I’m here to offer my services!”

  Brandon Nichols appeared, looking freshly showered. He studied the lanky cowboy a moment, then asked, “Who’s the boss around here, Nevin?”

  “You are, sir. No question about it.”

  “You know how to run a backhoe?”

  Nevin grinned and nodded. “Been running that very machine for years.”

  “We’re developing a spring up in the willow draw. I have plans drawn up but I need someone to do the excavation, lay the pipe, haul the gravel. . . .”

  “I’ve done all of that!”

  “It’ll pay twelve bucks an hour.”

  “I’ll take it!”

  “And you live here on the place.”

  Mrs. Macon balked at that. “What?”

  Nichols told her, “He can have that trailer the Pearsons donated. We’ll park it out back of my place.” Then he told Nevin, “I want you around where I can keep an eye on you. No more goofing off.”

  “No sir, not one bit.”

  “No hanging out at the tavern and getting into fights.”

  “No.”

  “You’re the kid now, and I’m your old man. Got that?”

  “I’ll try to be worthy of your trust, Mr. Nichols.”

  Brandon Nichols looked him up and down and reached a decision. “Okay. Start today. Make me proud of you.”

  I PULLED UP in front of the little brick police station on the main highway. Brett Henchle’s squad car was still parked in front so I figured I’d find him inside. I rattled off the days in my mind as I pushed through the front door: Thursday I found the car . . . Friday, Saturday, Sunday . . . well, maybe he had time to do some checking on Friday or this morning.

  He was seated at his desk behind the counter, going over some paperwork. A cup of coffee sat on his desk, steaming and looking desirable. “Hey Travis, how’s it going?”

  “Oh, fine. How’s the leg?”

  The question seemed to embarrass him. “It’s okay.”

  “Any information on that car in the river?”

  He shook his head. “A dead end. We’ll probably just impound it and scrap it.”

  I could tell he didn’t want to get into it. That didn’t matter to me. I did. “You didn’t find out anything? Even with a license number, a make, a model?”

  “The car was probably stolen and ditched in the river. We can’t find the owner, we can’t find the suspect. End of story.”

  “So who is this owner you can’t find?”

  Now he was irritated. He reached for a file folder on the corner of his desk and opened it. “Somebody named Herb Johnson.

  He used to work for a wrecking yard in Missoula but he quit. He used to live in an apartment in Missoula but he moved. There’s no forwarding address.”

  He closed the folder and tossed it on the corner of his desk again, his way of saying he’d answered all my questions.

  “May I see it?” I said, indicating the folder.

  He wrinkled his brow at me. “Travis, just what are you fishing for?”

  “I’m—”

  “Just what do you think you’re going to do that I haven’t?”

  I didn’t want to offend him. “Just curious, that’s all.”

  “Well the case is still pending so it’s confidential.”

  “I thought the case was closed and you were going to scrap the car.”

  He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “That’s right. Soon as we pull it out of the river I’ll button up the case and you can read to your heart’s delight.” I was looking at him funny.

  “What?”

  “The car’s gone.”

  That was obviously news to him. “What do you mean, it’s gone?”

  “Somebody already pulled it out. I thought it was you.”

  He thought a moment. “Somebody pulled it out? You sure?”

  “Drove by there just this morning. Saw the tire tracks, deep ruts, and no car.”

  He looked puzzled, but then he shrugged and went back to his paperwork. “I’ll look into it.”

  Well, I thought, so will I.

  I NEVER WANTED to resist the Lord if I sensed he was nudging me. When Brandon Nichols took an intrusive interest in me, that was probably a nudge, but okay, I didn’t catch on. Kyle getting broadsided made the nudge more noticeable, however, and Morgan Elliott’s distress over her son cinched it. I now considered myself officially nudged.

  I went from the police station directly to Mike’s Towing, only two blocks away. Mike Downing had run his little tow truck business from the same cubicle of a garage for at least ten years, and had a contract with the local police and state patrol. Any time a vehicle broke down or was abandoned on the highway or somewhere in town, the authorities called Mike. If he didn’t pull that car from the river, he might know who did.

  I didn’t drive into the yard surrounding Mike’s garage. I valued my tires too much, so I parked out on the street. Mike hauled hulks for scrap, and over the years he’d gleaned from every hulk whatever he took a shine to: a fender here, a bumper there, a headlight, a window, an engine block, you name it. He had no specific place for anything, so every piece lay where it first fell, filling the yard from fence to fence. If you wanted to visit Mike’s Towing, you definitely kept your eyes on the ground, and you didn’t even consider driving in there.

  I found the lower half of Mike’s son Larry in the garage. The upper half was under the hood of a ’57 Chevy and didn’t know I was there until I hollered hello.

  “Yeah?” He was dirty but happy. “Oh, Pastor Jordan, how are you?” Pastor Jordan? It had been a while since we’d seen each other.

  “Just fine. I came to see Mike.”

  Larry broke into his grin with one tooth missing, then hollered, “Hey Dad! Pastor Jordan’s—”

  “I heard him,” came a rude reply from the back room. Mike appeared, yawning and rubbing his messed-up hair. His lip was puffy, his left eye was nearly swollen shut, and he had a sizable white patch on his forehead. He could see the look on my face and explained without my asking, “I got in a fight.”

  “So I see. How’s the other guy?”

  He went to a coffeepot sitting on a hot plate on the workbench.

  “Oh, Matt looks about the same, maybe a little better. Want some coffee?”

  “No thanks.” It felt so strange to be asking, “Matt Kiley?”

  “Yeah, good ol’ Matt. Can’t blame him. I borrowed a set of wrenches from his store three years ago and never did pay him. He was in a wheelchair so it kind of slipped my mind, you know?”

  I was still incredulous. “And he came after you?”

  “Well . . . I got in a few good licks myself, but he got the price of those wrenches, let me tell you. The tavern’s lost a chair and a window, but they’re still open. You lookin’ for some tires?”

  “No.”

  “I got some that’ll fit your rig. Studded snow tires, real cheap.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “What else you want?”

  “I was wondering if you pulled a car from the Spokane River.”

  That widened his good eye. “From the river? Who went into the river?”

  “I’m not sure. But I found a car in the river Thursday, and now it’s gone.”

  “Did you tell the cops about it?”

  “Brett Henchle knows about the car, but he didn’t know somebody pulled it from the river.”

  Now he looked perturbed. “Henchle never told me about it.

  The cops want a car pulled, they’re supposed to call me.”

  “But you didn’t pull any car out of the river since last Thursday?”

  “No. And I’m sure gonna find out why.”

  “WELL,” said Morgan Elliott over my speakerphone, “Brett Henchle isn’t the only cop on the plane
t.”

  Kyle and I looked at each other across my kitchen table, the telephone between us. She had a point there.

  It was the first hush-hush meeting of the Jordan–Sherman–Elliott underground resistance movement. Kyle even parked around the block and came through my back yard to keep from being seen, which seemed a little excessive to me.

  “You know another one?” I asked.

  “Gabe used to go hunting with a guy who’s a cop in Sandpoint, Idaho. I’m still good friends with him and his wife.”

  “So, you’re saying a cop in Idaho can do a check on a car from Montana that’s found in Washington?”

  “Law enforcement people are all linked together by computer these days. Any cop can find out who owns any car anywhere, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Well okay.”

  “What kind of a car was it?” Kyle asked.

  “Ford LTD, probably early ’70s. It was red where it wasn’t covered with silt.”

  “Okay,” said Morgan, “I’ll pass that along. What about the pictures?”

  Kyle answered as he leafed through the snapshots he’d just gotten back from the drugstore. “I got some good shots of Nichols’s face. I’ll get some extra prints made up.”

  Morgan asked, “So what if the car doesn’t belong to Brandon Nichols?”

  “That won’t surprise me,” I answered, “But that car went into the river during the spring run-off, and that’s the same time Nichols showed up in town. That and the Montana license plate are enough to make me curious.”

  “Plus Brett Henchle’s silence about it,” said Kyle.

  “You think Nichols bought him by healing his leg?” Morgan asked.

  I hesitated a little, but Kyle didn’t. “Absolutely. We’re not going to get one bit of help from him.”

  “So, okay. I’ll get back to you as soon as I find out something.”

  “Before you hang up, let’s pray,” I said. “I’d really like the Lord to shield us a bit. I, uh, I don’t want Brandon Nichols to know what we’re doing.”

  “TWO-TWO-ONE-ONE-TWO South Maurice . . .” Kyle flipped and folded and gathered an unruly map of Missoula as we drove on the outskirts of the town, looking for numbers, signs, anything.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think anybody actually lives around here.”

  The drive through Idaho and into Montana had been beautiful, weaving through mountains and along rivers. Missoula itself was nestled in a wide, flat valley, surrounded by green hills and timbered mountains. This part of Missoula could be pleasing to the eye as well, depending on how excited you got about metal buildings and cyclone-fenced yards filled with big things: tractors, trucks, farm machinery, concrete sewer and drainpipe, roof trusses. We passed a John Deere dealer with a whole fleet of green tractors lined up along the street, and then a masonry supply company with neat stacks of concrete block, decorative stone, and a zillion different colors of brick. This was definitely the guy part of town.

  “Hey, wait, wait,” I said, releasing my foot from the gas pedal.

  “‘Abe’s.’ The car owner’s name is Abe, right? Abe Carlson?”

  Kyle looked up and saw it too: a sheet of plywood painted white with big blue letters: Abe’s Auto Wrecking. It was hanging crookedly next to an opening in still another cyclone fence, this one festooned with automobile wheels painted red, white, and blue. “That’s it,” he said, reading the numbers under the name.

  “Two-two-one-one-two South Maurice.”

  I turned left and pulled up to the opening, but took a moment to survey the place before driving in. We were looking at an acre of dead cars in long rows, their carcasses dented, hollow, and vacant, picked clean of chrome, glass, mirrors, wheels, and anything else a living car might need in the world beyond the fence. In the center of it all, like an old barge floating on a multicolored sea of metal, stood Abe’s big shack wearing hubcaps like sequins.

  “Maybe we should have called first,” Kyle suggested.

  I eased the car down the long, jagged aisle toward the big blue shack.

  Two pit bulls came charging out of a yawning garage door.

  A grisly looking character in gray coveralls came quickstepping after them, hollering their names so loudly it sounded like “KAP!

  FREET! GEBACKERE!!”

  “Kap” and “Freet” didn’t hear him. They had a mauling to attend to, circling the car, barking, growling, and waiting for either of us to stick a leg out.

  “HAH! GEDOUTHERE!” This guy had to be Abe. A face and bark like his made me wonder why he needed dogs. He shooed them away, yelling and banging on the nearest hulk with a tire iron. They both scampered into a dog pen alongside the building and remained there while he slammed the gate on them. I was impressed.

  He returned to our car and may have smiled, at least around the eyes. I rolled down my window. “That’s Casper and Frito. They just ate a Jehovah’s Witness. Whatcha after?”

  “Uh, are you Abe Carlson?”

  “Yeah. Who are you?”

  “Uh, may I get out?”

  He backed away from my door and I got out. Kyle got out too and walked around to join me. We introduced ourselves and told him where we were from.

  The moment I mentioned the town of Antioch, he scowled at us. “You cops?”

  “Uh, no. Kyle here’s a pastor and I teach the sixth grade.”

  “Got a call from a cop in Antioch. Is this about that car?”

  “We—yeah. If we could—”

  “I got nothing more to say about it.” He turned and started walking away.

  I turned to Kyle. “Get the photos.” He reached inside the car while I hollered after Abe, “Could you just look at a picture for us?”

  He turned. “What?”

  Kyle handed me the photos. I said, “Look at a picture? These pictures right here?”

  He glanced thoughtfully at Casper and Frito, then walked back.

  I guess I got him curious.

  I held up the best photo we had of Brandon Nichols, a nice shot of him preaching in Mrs. Macon’s garage. “Do you recognize this man?”

  He took one look and his expression turned so dark I almost backed away.

  “You know him?”

  He nodded. “That’s Herb Johnson. Where’d you get this?”

  I exchanged a glance with Kyle. “Herb Johnson?”

  “He used to work for me.”

  Kyle asked with surprise in his voice. “He worked here?”

  “Yeah, worked here for a year or so.”

  “We thought he worked on a ranch somewhere.”

  “I don’t know what he did before Hattie brought him over.”

  “Who’s Hattie?” I asked.

  “My girlfriend. Herb was one of her tenants and he needed a job.”

  He paused to spit on the ground. “Worst mistake I ever made.”

  “Your girlfriend owns some apartments or something?”

  “She manages a building over on Myers Way. She gets some flaky characters in there. I about gave Herb that car just so he’d leave.”

  Bingo. I tried not to look too excited. “The, the, uh, Ford LTD?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, did he buy it from you, or . . .”

  “I sold it to him cheap. He wanted to move on and I wanted to help him.”

  “But the car was still in your name.”

  “I’ve already been through all this with that cop.” He started looking elsewhere.

  I didn’t want him getting away. “Uh, Kyle took this picture on a ranch near Antioch.” Abe stood still. “Herb’s working there, only he’s using another name. He’s calling himself Brandon Nichols.”

  Abe cursed. He looked scared. “I don’t need to hear no more.”

  “But . . . did the cop tell you the car was ditched in the river? I mean, it looks like somebody tried to hide it.”

  Abe waved me off, shook his head, backed away. “I don’t want to hear no more. Now that’s it. We’re through talking and you guys can just get ou
t of here.”

  Kyle pleaded, “We’re afraid Herb might be up to something and we were hoping you could—”

  “GETOUTTAHERE!”

  Casper and Frito went crazy, leaping against the fence of their pen. He headed their way with an obvious intention. I got back in the car and Kyle followed my lead. We got out of there.

  I DROVE BACK into Missoula while Kyle flipped and folded and rattled the map. “Myers Way, Myers Way . . .” he mumbled, trying to find it.

  “So let me think: Brett said he couldn’t find the owner or the thief. But he talked to Abe . . .”

  “But Abe isn’t the owner. He doesn’t want to be the owner.”

  “Right, he wants to be through with Herb and the car.”

  “So it’s Herb Brett can’t find.”

  “Because Herb’s Brandon.”

  “And the car was never stolen because Abe sold it to Herb.”

  “Unless someone stole it from Herb.”

  “But Herb Johnson never reported it stolen.”

  “No, he just ditched it in the river.” I got a hunch. “Which could make sense if Herb is trying to break all ties with his past and become somebody else. Remember when I said it wouldn’t surprise me if Brandon wasn’t the owner?”

  Kyle looked up from his map to exclaim, “It sure scared Abe when you told him Herb had a different name.”

  “Yeah, like Herb Johnson might not be Herb Johnson.”

  “Which also means Brandon Nichols might not be Brandon Nichols.”

  “So . . . Myers Way . . .”

  Kyle went back to the map. “Okay, turn right. We need to double back.”

  WE FOUND MYERS WAY, a residential street lined with well-used cars and low-cost fixer-uppers. The yards were small, many were unmowed, many populated by mongrel dogs and rusting tricycles. Aging McDonald’s cups and hamburger wrappers lay fading along the street curb, and graffiti marred the sidewalks. We found four apartment buildings occupying the four corners of an intersection. We could see more multi-units farther down the street. This could be a long day.

  Kyle knocked on the first manager’s door. He’d never heard of anyone named Hattie.

  I went across the street and knocked on another door. A young mother with an infant in her arms and a toddler in tow sent me two doors down. The manager of this building didn’t know a Hattie.