by Scott Blade
“Something happened here,” Widow said. He took a pull from his coffee and glanced out the window.
He saw a black Mercedes with tinted windows drive by, which was expensive for a town like this one.
As he was putting the coffee mug to his lips to take another pull, he felt something on his shoulder. It was a pair of fingers tapping him. Widow put the mug down and turned around. Sitting in the booth was a kid. Widow guessed he was about ten years old at the oldest.
Widow said, “Hello.”
The kid was up on his knees in another booth. He faced them. He kept looking back at the counter like he was looking at the waitresses. In front of him were crayons. He had been drawing on the back of one of their takeout menus.
The kid said, “Hello.”
Keagan slid all the way up against the window so she could see the kid past Widow’s bulk. She said, “Hello. Who are you?”
The kid said, “My name’s Jeremy.”
Keagan said, “Hi, Jeremy. What are you doing here by yourself?”
“My mom works here. She’s the younger waitress. Over there,” he said, and he pointed at one of the other waitresses.
His mom was in her twenties. She was seated at the countertop. She was polishing silverware. Widow had dated a few waitresses in his day. He knew the job. What she was doing was called side work.
Keagan said, “She’s very pretty.”
The kid said nothing to that. Widow turned all the way around so he could see the kid. He looked at the drawings. He recognized one of them. It was an object he knew well. It was colored green. There was a white star colored on the side.
Widow said, “That’s a tank.”
The kid said, “Yeah.”
“You like tanks?” he asked.
The kid shrugged and looked down at it. There were three crayons in his hand. He said, “There pretty cool.”
Widow said, “I used to work with tanks.”
The kid looked up at him. His eyes grew huge in his head. He said, “Did you ever hear one fire? Up close?”
“I have,” Widow said. It was true.
The kid said, “That’s cool.”
Keagan asked, “You know anything about this town?”
“I know some things,” the kid said.
Keagan asked, “You know Mr. Garret?”
The kid said, “I seen him once. He’s old.”
Keagan said, “Yeah. Pretty old.”
Widow asked, “You know why this town is called Maiden’s Creek and not Ruffalo Creek?”
The kid looked around to make sure that no one was listening. Then he looked at Widow and pulled himself close like he was going to whisper it. He said, “It’s because of the murders.”
Widow asked, “What murders?”
The kid said, “Mr. Ruffalo killed two agents. He drowned them in his pool. Mr. Ruffalo used to own the whole town. He owned the oil plant. Have you seen it? It’s haunted.”
Keagan ignored the kid’s question about the oil refinery and asked, “Two agents?”
The kid said, “Yeah.”
Keagan asked, “What kind of agents?”
“They were like police officers or something,” the kid said. “It was big news. I think. I don’t know. I wasn’t alive then.”
Widow asked, “How long ago was it?”
The kid said, “Thirty years ago. I think. So long ago.”
Thirty years ago, Widow thought.
Just then, the kid’s mother, the youngest waitress was standing up. She was facing them and standing about halfway between them and the countertop. She stared at the kid. He immediately flipped back around and went back to coloring, like he had never spoken to Widow and Keagan.
From across the room, she said, “Jay, keep to yourself.”
She turned to Widow and Keagan and said, “I’m sorry about him. He won’t bother you. Please, enjoy your lunch.”
Their own waitress came out of the kitchen carrying their orders right then. She walked over to their booth and dropped off their food. She left and returned with a pot of coffee to refill Widow’s mug. She asked if they needed anything else, and they told her they were all set. She left with a smile.
Keagan stared at Widow. He was somewhere else. In his own head, she guessed.
Widow thought about Maiden Creek. He thought about the post office. He thought back to Kodiak. He thought about the postcard still in his pocket. He thought about the post office there. He had gotten a postcard. He had stopped to look at the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list.
He thought about goggle eyes and that white scar on Liddy’s face and the familiarity of him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he had seen Liddy before. And suddenly, like lightning from the sky, it struck him. He returned to the present moment and stared back at Keagan.
Keagan said, “What?”
Widow said, “I might know something.”
Keagan said, “What?”
“Can you get your hands on FBI Top Ten lists?”
“Sure. Anybody can. On the internet. It’s public information.”
Widow said, “Take your phone out and search for the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list. Check for all of the lists from nineteen ninety through nineteen ninety-five. I need to see their faces.”
Keagan didn’t protest. She takes her phone out and googles the information. It took a couple of minutes because there were dozens and dozens of people on the list from that five year period.
She handed Widow her phone, and said, “Looks like about a hundred people on that list in that timeframe.”
Widow took the phone and started swiping though the images of faces of the FBI’s Most Wanted. He drank his coffee and stared intensely.
After a minute, Keagan asked, “What’s up? You’re not telling me something.”
Widow said, “Let me look through these for a minute. I want to check to see if I’m right before I speculate.”
“Okay, I’m going to finish my salad then,” Keagan said, and she did just that.
She ate her salad and stared blankly at it until there was nothing left but olives, she never ate the olives. She wasn’t a fan.
Keagan looked out the window and saw a black Mercedes with tinted windows and a tinted windshield, which wasn’t legal, but she wasn’t a cop, not in Maiden Creek. The Mercedes eased into the lot from the street. It drove up to the diner’s window, directly in front of them, and right near their rented Impala.
Keagan watched it. The driver seemed to be interested in their car. She was about to tell Widow, but he suddenly stopped looking through the photos.
He said, “So back in Kodiak, I went to the post office. This was two days ago. I was shopping for a postcard for my friend. I saw that they still put up the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted poster for the public to see.”
Keagan turned her head and attention back to Widow and forgot about the black Mercedes. She asked, “And?”
“In Kodiak, I met this guy, a local. I stayed at his place in a hamlet to the north of the island called Bell Harbor. Do you know it?”
Keagan said, “Sure. It’s one of the smaller hubs on the island. There’s a bunch of them.”
Widow asked, “You know Liddy’s Lodge?”
“There’s a bunch of those too, not just on Kodiak. They're all over the state.”
Widow held his coffee mug in one hand like he was going to take a pull from it at any moment. He held Keagan’s phone in the other.
He said, “So I met this guy. We became friendly, and he invited me to stay in one of his rooms. Which I did. He was very nice, but I couldn’t help but feel like I'd seen him before. I couldn’t remember from where. It was driving me crazy. He insisted we had never met. He said he hadn’t left the state for decades. But I knew I knew him. He looked different than I remember seeing him. Somehow he was different, but I knew his face. He had a long white scar on his cheek. I couldn’t shake that I had seen him.”
Keagan said, “Okay?”
Widow turned her phone around so that the s
creen faced her. Keagan looked at it. It was zoomed into one black-and-white face on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. The year was 1993. It was a man with a long white scar on his cheek and deep-set eyes in sockets that could’ve palmed a pair of goggles.
Keagan stared at the screen and read the name out loud. She said, “James Thomas Ruffalo.”
Widow said, “Read the rest.”
Keagan reached across the table and took the phone from Widow. She held it in her hand and read the text aloud. She said, “James Thomas Ruffalo was the owner and CEO of Ruffalo Oil and Gas. He is wanted for the brutal torture and murder of two FBI agents in 1993 in Ruffalo Creek, Utah. He’s considered armed and extremely dangerous. Call authorities if you spot him.”
Widow said, “Ruffalo. James Ruffalo and Bill Liddy are the same guy. He’s the guy I met in Kodiak.”
Keagan said, “Kloss was an FBI agent. He was in contact with Sheriff Garret while staying in Kodiak. And now he’s dead.”
Widow said, “Maybe Garret is his client and doesn’t remember. Or maybe he’s a witness, and Kloss kept calling him to get him to confirm something or whatever.”
Keagan said, “This is the connection. We have to get Garret to talk to us.”
“We can go back out there. Maybe he’ll be in a friendly mood. He might’ve forgotten us already.”
Keagan saw that Widow still had half his burger. She said, “Finish your lunch first.”
Widow nodded and set down his coffee and picked up the other half of his burger and began eating. Keagan set the phone down on the tabletop and glanced back out the window, but the black Mercedes was gone.
25
Babbitt wasn’t his real name, but it was the name he had been known for professionally. Not even the Broadcaster knew his real name.
Babbitt had driven his black Mercedes all morning and all night. He left not long after getting the phone call from the Broadcaster. He was going to Nowhere, Utah, to kill three people. It was important that he get the drop on them. Apparently, one of them was most troublesome. The Broadcaster had said he was a man named Jack Widow.
Babbitt hit a snag on his trip. He ran into a flat tire back in Colorado, which took him some time to repair. He had a spare, but it was one of those donut tires and not meant for long excursions across state lines. So he had to stop because of the time of night and get a motel room for several hours. He couldn’t get a new tire that late at night. He stayed in a cheap motel right off the highway, and as soon as a tire shop nearby was open, which was six o’clock in the morning, he went in and offered double the pay in cash to the mechanic on duty. Within a half hour, he was back on the road with a new tire.
He drove through the town of Maiden Creek, saw the Murder Creek sign and the downtown and the two churches and old bank and post office. He saw all the same things as Widow and Keagan. But on his way to the address for the old sheriff that was also on his hit list, he saw a car parked in a diner that was definitely rented. Being such a small town, he thought it could be possible that it belonged to two of his targets, because who really goes to Maiden Creek anyway?
So he slowed his car and made a U-turn on an old country road and headed back to the roadside diner. He pulled into the lot. The car in question was a rented white Chevy Impala. It was parked right up at the front of the diner. He pulled up behind it and saw the plates and a license plate frame that listed the car rental company. He saw car rental company stickers in the back window. There was another car rental company item that hung from the rearview mirror. It was an air freshener with the car rental company’s name on it. And there was a Salt Lake City International Airport permanent parking sticker in the front window. Security issued them out to all car rental cars so they can stay parked in the airport’s lots at any time.
Babbitt looked up and into the front windows of the diner. He saw his targets. He saw Keagan, and he saw Widow in the same booth, right there in front of him, plain as day. He thought about killing them right there, but he would have to park his car, get out, stand over the window in plain view of all the restaurant patrons and staff, and aim his gun and fire through the window. He probably wouldn’t get away. Sure, he could do it and be in his car in seconds. He could even be back on the road, but local police and highway patrol would have a description of both him and his car. He would be easy to find.
He could kill them right there, drive off down the road to the sheriff’s, kill him, and steal whatever vehicle he had on the premises. He could abandoned his Mercedes. The plates and the registration would lead the cops to a dead end. But there was no guarantee he'd get away because he didn’t know what kind of vehicle the sheriff had. Or even if he did have a vehicle. No, it was too risky. He could wait. According to the Broadcaster, Widow and Keagan were there to meet with the sheriff. Since they were at the diner eating, Babbitt felt safe in assuming that they decided to stop first and then go on to Garret’s place. So they didn’t know Garret or anything about him … yet.
Babbitt smiled and watched them for a moment. He was struck by how attractive the woman was. He wondered if the Broadcaster knew that?
It seemed like an important detail that shouldn’t have been left out. Babbitt reversed his Mercedes, K-turned, drove back out of the lot, and turned right onto the old country road, headed off to Garret’s address.
26
After they finished their lunches and paid the waitress, Widow folded a ten under his mug for the waitress and told her to buy the kid a dessert of his choice and for her to keep the change. They left the diner and drove back up the street past the abandoned oil refinery and turned back on Garret’s long driveway. They drove back to his farmhouse. They drove up a little further into the yard this time, with a little more courage than last time. Only this time, it was different. There was a black Mercedes parked in front of the house. It was pulled up off the dirt track and onto the grass. There was something ostentatious about it. It was an expensive car, and it was just thrown up onto the grass off the designated car area, like the owner thought he also owned the house. It was pretentious even, like someone throwing their weight around that didn’t belong.
“Who’s car is that?” Keagan asked.
“I have no idea.”
Keagan put the car into park and turned off the engine. She said, “Maybe’s it belongs to the younger Garret. The one the waitress told us about.”
Widow stayed quiet.
They got out of the car and closed their doors. This time, a draft came up off the plains, and Keagan shook from it. She went to the Impala’s back door, opened it, scooped up her jacket and her weapon, and put on the jacket and fixed the holster and gun to her belt. Before she shut the door, she called out to Widow over the roof of the car.
“You want your coat,” she asked.
Widow stood there a second. He felt the same wind she had felt. The hairs on his arms stood up. He looked back at her and nodded. She grabbed his coat. It was heavier than hers. She tossed it to him over the roof. He took it and slipped it on.
Keagan shut the car door and joined Widow at the nose of the vehicle. They walked past the fruit trees and garden and up to the front porch. This time, the front door was shut.
Widow stayed back a beat and stood there listening.
Keagan made her way up to the top step and onto the porch landing. She looked back at him. Being elevated, she was finally taller than him, but not much. She said, “Widow? What is it?”
He was looking to the side of the house. He said, “Where’s the dog?”
Widow turned his attention to the black Mercedes. It had Colorado plates. He saw the tinted windows. It was the same car he’d seen drive by the diner. He looked at the old farm truck and where it was parked. He looked at the tire tracks from the Mercedes. Then he looked at the ones from a different car, the ones he saw earlier. They were different. They were from a much lighter car. Perhaps they were from the Volkswagen bug that the waitress had mentioned?
Just then, the front creaked open, along with
the screen door. Standing in the doorway was a man they had never seen before. He stepped out onto the porch, keeping the screen door open.
The man was a white guy of average height, average build, but with a little more muscle on him. It was hard to tell because he wore a puffy vest with big puffy pockets. He wore blue jeans and cowboy boots tucked under the cuff of the jeans so that no one could tell if they were ankle boots or longer. When he stepped onto the porch, the sound was a distinguished boot-on-floorboards sound. The boot heels sounded heavy.
He had fair hair, a little thin in places, but nothing to worry about. He shone them a big white smile. It was all teeth and warmth.
He said, “Howdy. Can I help you all?”
Keagan smiled back, took her wallet out of her pocket, and flipped it open to her badge. She showed it to the man and said, “Hello. We’re federal agents. We’re here to speak to Buck Garret?”
He looked at her badge from the porch. He didn’t ask to see it up close. He continued to smile. He said, “Oh dear. I hope everything is all right? Buck is my father. I’m Bob. Bob Garret.”
Keagan said, “Oh, great. We came by earlier, and your father was here alone. He told us to get lost. We thought we might come back and try again.”
The guy called Bob Garret said, “He sent you away? Well, you have to forgive him. He forgets things, including his manners. Why don’t y’all come on in, and we can talk. It’s getting chilly out here.”
Bob Garret stepped back and held the screen door open for them. He signaled them to enter. Keagan went in first, and Widow took another look back at where he had seen Garret’s dog and then back up the stairs.
Bob stopped Widow before he crossed into the house and asked, “You looking for that dog? Don’t worry, he’s tied up behind the barn. He keeps the critters away from the livestock. Come on in.”
Widow nodded and passed Bob Garret and entered the farmhouse. Inside, he saw Keagan standing in the middle of a mudroom area. Bob Garret went for her coat and offered to take it.
Keagan said, “I can take it off.”