by Jon McGoran
Chief Pruitt turned to leave with a smug look on his face.
“Don’t you want to see the phone? See who’s making these threats?” I called after him. “You know, police work?”
“I’ll have someone call you for a statement, Ms. Watson,” Pruitt called over his shoulder. “I got more important things to do than investigate a bunch of burnt weeds.”
We watched him walk away. Then Nola turned to look at me. “Doyle, is that true?”
I didn’t answer her, instead turning to Moose. “Where the hell were you?”
“What?” he asked, groggy and bewildered. “I was asleep, I guess … I heard the sirens.”
Nola turned on her heel and marched inside.
Moose watched her go, then turned back to look at me. “What happened?”
“Someone torched the heirloom patch. Gasoline. She got a call right before it happened. They sent her a picture of the fire.”
“No shit!”
“No shit.” I looked at my watch. It was just after three. “And you were asleep?”
“Yeah, I guess I was.”
“What’s up with that?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, must be coming down with something.” He scanned the scorched field, shaking his head.
“Do me a favor,” I said, “go keep an eye on Nola. I don’t want her alone right now.”
He looked at me with his head to one side, then shrugged. “Okay.”
I waited until he had followed Nola inside, then I walked around the smoking remnants of the heirloom patch as quickly as I could without breaking into a run. I plunged into the thick line of Siberian elm, knowing what I’d find before I got through it.
Emerging on the other side, I saw a rolling expanse of stubble, row after row of corn stalks, all cut off at the ground. I hate to admit it, but as angry as I was about what was happening to Nola, it was the twist in the case that made my pulse quicken.
I called Danny the way I usually did when I found something in a case and I didn’t know what to make of it. When I had told him what happened, he was quiet for a moment.
“Corn?” he said with a snort. “Jesus, Doyle, you’re desperate, aren’t you?”
I was going to say that if he had seen Nola Watkins, he’d want to find out what happened to her corn, too. Instead I told him to fuck off.
“So what’re you doing now?” he asked.
“I’m going down to the town hall, see if I can figure out who owns this land where the other corn was growing.”
“Why? Doesn’t really matter now, does it?”
“I just want to know what’s going on.”
He laughed. “I’m telling you, Doyle, there’s plenty of movies out there you haven’t seen. Hell, you could just about catch up on what the rest of the country’s been watching. Maybe start picking up on some of those cultural references that are always going over your head.” He laughed, but it died out quickly. “You know, your local law enforcement already called to find out what your story is.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“He spoke to Lieutenant Suarez, so you can imagine how that went.” He sighed. “Doyle, you got like seventeen days. Don’t fuck it up.”
28
Dunston Town Hall was a low brick building that looked like a small post office. Behind the counter was a surprisingly friendly woman in her late fifties with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. The nameplate on the counter said NOREEN GOOD.
I gave her what I hoped was a charming smile and said, “Hi, Noreen…”
To which she countered, “Hi, Doyle.”
To which I didn’t counter anything, because I was not expecting that. Instead, I laughed nervously.
“I was at Branson’s when you tussled with Cooney,” she explained with a sly smile. “Your name’s come up a few times since then.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not Cooney’s auntie or anything.”
She leaned toward me over the counter. “So what can I do for you?”
“I need to look at some real-estate records. I’m trying to find out who owns a parcel of land near my mom’s house. Just south of Bayberry, just east of Valley Road.”
She came around from behind the counter. “I can help you with that.”
She led me toward a wooden door with a window, PUBLIC RECORDS stenciled across it. As she opened it, a voice called out behind us, “Hey Noreen, you seen Mitchell or Tompkins?”
“Both out sick,” she replied without turning around.
“Couple of sissies, those two, I swear. If I ever—”
The voice stopped just as I turned around and saw Chief Pruitt standing in the doorway, wearing his mirrored shades in the fluorescent-lit lobby.
“Where the hell are you taking him?” he demanded.
Noreen gave him a look to make it plain she was unimpressed. “I beg your pardon?”
“You can’t let him in there,” he said.
“Francis, I know it’s probably hard for you to see in here with those ridiculous sunglasses on, but can you read what it says on this door here?” She stepped out of the way to make sure he could see it.
Pruitt didn’t utter a sound, but I’m pretty sure I saw his lips moving.
“That’s right,” she said, “Public Records. My, you are making such progress.”
He stared at her for a second, his face turning red. Then he turned on his heel and left without a word.
“Don’t mind him,” she said, ushering me into the records room. “He takes protecting this town very seriously.”
“Really?” I asked, following her down an aisle of shelves.
She shrugged. “There’s been a lot of new faces in town lately, a lot of change. People are suspicious of outsiders. And I’m not talking about the Mexican workers or any of that—that’s something different. I’m talking about outsiders who come in and tell folks the way they’ve been doing things for generations is wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like your friend Ms. Watkins. She’s a delight. But all this organic stuff? I’m sure she didn’t mean to offend anybody, but when you come in saying the way you’re doing things is better than the way everybody else is doing them, even if you don’t say it, it rubs them the wrong way. You’re with the police back in Philly, right?”
“Right.” I didn’t feel the need to explain the nuances of my current employment situation.
“Well, Chief Pruitt is probably a little defensive about that, too. Big-time city police coming in telling him how he’s doing things wrong.”
“But I never—”
“Doesn’t matter what you said or didn’t say. He’s filling in all those blanks himself.” She pulled a long ledger book off the shelf and laid it out on a table, then she folded her arms under her breasts and cocked a hip. “Now, is there anything else I can do for you?”
I smiled. “I think I’m fine for now.”
“Well, you let me know if you need anything else.”
* * *
Some cops will tell you that a stakeout is the most boring part of the job, sitting in a car for hours, staring at a window or a doorway, that the boredom makes each minute feel like an hour. Dwayne Rowan notwithstanding, stakeouts don’t bother me like that. I sit there and wait and I go into a different state of awareness, like hibernation or suspended animation. And in the back of my mind, the whole time, I think to myself, this still beats sitting in a cubicle.
Searching through public records, on the other hand, is like jabbing forks into my eyes. Except boring. And often about as productive.
But I did find out that Nola was right—almost all the real estate in the block of land we had driven around that morning had changed hands at least once in the past two years. A lot of it had been purchased by the developer Nola mentioned, Redtail Holdings, Inc., owned by a guy named Jordan Rothe. Redtail’s properties formed a ring around a cluster of properties owned by a handful of different companies, and many of those parcels had bee
n divided and separated from the homesteads that fronted onto the road, which meant they were essentially landlocked, with no access in or out.
A thin strip of properties along Bayberry were owned by individuals, and then there was Nola’s farm, jutting into the patchwork of corporate-owned parcels. Some of the adjacent plots, outside the perimeter we had driven that morning, had changed hands as well, mostly purchased by Redtail Holdings.
The land next to Nola’s farm seemed to be owned by a handful of holding companies: BCD Holdings, RST Development, Inc., and Berks Land Group, none of which listed any information other than a post office box. I looked at some of the other listings, and they were all post office boxes, too, and all out of state. Redtail was the only one based locally, and the only one with a real address and a phone number.
I copied them down, thinking if they were nice enough to leave contact info, it would be rude not to get in touch.
29
When Noreen Good leaned through the doorway and said the place was closing in five minutes, I’d already had more than I could bear. In the time I’d been down there, I’d stiffened up nicely, and by the time I stood and stretched and gathered my stuff, Noreen had her key in the door to lock it behind me.
I thanked her on the way out, and she said she hoped to see me again sometime.
It was hot and sunny outside, and it had been dry and dusty inside. Branson’s was only a few blocks away, and sucking down a cold beer was the only logical next move.
When I stepped through the door, out of the sunlight and into the dim interior, I felt a moment of unease, wondering if the guys who ran me off the road were sitting in there, watching me. But as my eyes adjusted, I saw that the most likely candidates were the three codgers sitting at the bar, and my paranoia ebbed.
Bert Squires was behind the bar, drying a pint glass with the towel slung over his shoulder. He gave me a smile and a little nod. “Afternoon, there, Mr. Menlow.”
In unison, the three old boys looked at me in the mirror behind the bar, then turned on their stools to see me in person.
“It’s Carrick,” I said, taking a seat a couple of stools down. “But you can call me Doyle.”
Squires tilted his head, confused.
“Frank wasn’t my biological father,” I explained.
“Really?” he said, somewhat taken aback. “Isn’t that something? He talked about you plenty, but he never mentioned that.”
I nodded wordlessly for a few seconds, making sure that particular thread of conversation had died out. Then I leaned over the bar to get a look at the taps. “How about a pint of lager?”
He slipped the glass he had been drying under the tap with one hand and simultaneously flicked the tap with the other hand, so the beer and the glass reached the same point in space at the same point in time. Nothing showy about it, just smooth efficiency.
When the glass was just shy of full, he flicked the tap, letting the last few drops create a small, sudsy dome. As one hand moved the beer glass in front of me, the other tossed a cork coaster, and again, the two met simultaneously on the bar right in front of me.
“Hot out there?” he asked.
I nodded as I took a sip, savoring the feel as much as the taste. “I was over at the town hall.”
“What were you doing over there?”
I shook my head. “Just looking something up.”
“You see Noreen over there?”
“I did. She was very helpful.”
He leaned forward and lowered his voice, pointing at me for emphasis. “You want anything done in this town, you talk to Noreen. Woman single-handedly makes this town run.”
I nodded and took a long drink. “What about Pruitt?”
One of the old guys laughed and looked away.
“Aw, he’s okay.”
“I don’t know. Somebody torched some of Nola Watkins’s crops, and he didn’t do a damn thing.”
The three old heads turned to look at me.
“Torched her crops? How do you mean?”
“I mean torched them. Doused them with gasoline and set them on fire.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Trying to get her to sell her land, I think. Some new development or something.”
He screwed up his face. “That’s hogwash. I heard of people talking about stuff like that, trying to scare people off their land like the old west. But that stuff’s not for real.”
“You don’t think so?”
He shook his head. “No way.”
I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “I was with her right when it happened. Someone texted her the word ‘sell’ on her phone and sent her a picture of her crops in flames.”
“No fooling?” he said breathlessly. “And Pruitt didn’t do nothing?”
“Said he was too busy to investigate a bunch of burnt weeds.”
“He said that?”
I nodded and leaned forward even more. “You think he’s on the up-and-up?”
Squires’s head pulled back, like he’d been swatted on the nose. “Don’t even ask that. That ain’t right. No. He works hard. It’s just him and a couple of knuckleheads he has part-time a few hours a week. I know Pruitt’s no Kojak or whatever, but he’s not dirty.”
He scowled at me like he thought less of me for even saying it, then took a couple of steps down the bar.
“Good,” I said. “That’s good to hear.”
* * *
I drank the rest of my beer, and when I stepped back out onto the sidewalk, I almost bumped into Sydney Bricker. She stopped and turned on her heel.
“Mr. Carrick,” she called out with a smile. “Given any thought to my offer?”
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“The property?” she prompted me. “You said you were thinking of selling it.”
“No, not really. Actually, I was thinking maybe I’d sell it to one of the local farmers,” I told her, although I don’t know why.
Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned back to look at me more appraisingly. “Farmers?”
“Yes. Pennsylvania is losing open space at a rate of three hundred acres a day.”
She smiled slyly. “Are you messing with me, Mr. Carrick?”
I smiled slyly back.
She laughed. “I see.”
I was about to say something wickedly clever, but just then, I saw a brand-new white Ford Econoline van coming down the street, just like the one I’d seen in Cooney’s driveway.
As I stepped toward my car, Bricker noticed the rumpled side and winced. “Ouch.”
I got in my car, telling her that if I changed my mind she’d be the first to know.
“Well, don’t play it too cool, Mr. Carrick, or you could end up being left out in the cold.”
30
Bricker’s reaction reminded me how angry I was about the damage to my car. I wondered if whoever was in the van had anything to do with running me off the road. My car had never been exactly inconspicuous, and with the side all banged up, I had to hang back even farther for fear of being noticed. I thought the van’s driver must have seen me; he was driving like someone who was nervous about getting pulled over. He kept the speed down, waiting at every stop sign for three full, infuriating seconds, making it even more difficult to keep any distance between us. I was sure he had spotted me when he coasted to a stop, but he pulled into a parking lot behind a small office park and continued around to the back, parking next to some Dumpsters.
I drove on to the end of the block and parked on a side street, up on a rise where I could keep an eye on the van.
The driver-side door opened, and out climbed Dwight Cooney. He walked across the lot and got into another car, a Nissan. I slid back in my seat and tried to shift into stakeout mode, but less than a minute later, I sat back up. Derek Roberts got out the passenger side of a black SUV that had already been parked at the far end of the lot. He got into the van and pulled away.
I thought I saw movement through the SUV’s tinted wi
ndows, like someone was still in there. But I couldn’t be sure. I paused for a moment, then pulled out after the van and called Stan Bowers.
“Jesus, Doyle, again? My wife doesn’t call this often.”
“I’m pretty sure I just watched a drop-off. I was following a local asshole named Dwight Cooney in a white van that I don’t think is his. He parked it behind a small office park on Devon Road. A minute later, Mr. Softee himself, a.k.a. Derek Roberts, gets out of an SUV that was already parked there. He gets into the van and drives away.”
“No shit. You’re sure it’s this guy Roberts?”
“Definitely.”
“Where are you now?”
“Following the van, going south on Ridge Road. I just passed Schoolhouse Lane.”
“Good man. You got a plate number?”
I read it to him.
“Great. Keep this line open, but don’t get involved, okay?”
“You got it.”
He called back a minute later. “Okay, the van is a rental, probably a bogus credit card number. We have a mobile unit nearby, and I’m on my way, too. Just keep them in sight and don’t do anything, okay?”
“All right, all right.”
“Good work, Carrick.”
Roberts seemed a little more comfortable behind the wheel than Cooney. He drove a couple of miles above the speed limit, like everybody else, rolling stops at stop signs, like everybody else. Just a normal driver transporting a normal vanload of illegal drugs.
After a mile, he made a left onto Shady Lane, another one of those narrow country roads. I hung back again, letting a little more space accumulate between us. Then I made the turn as well.
This is where it would get a little trickier. The van was two hundred yards ahead of me, enough space that Roberts could easily shake me with a quick turn down a side road, but still close enough that he could pick up the tail as well.
Each time the van disappeared around a curve, I held my breath, waiting for the road to straighten out and the van to reappear in front of me. We had been winding down Shady Lane for a quarter of a mile when the van turned down a driveway on the left.