by Nick Pirog
“You mean to tell me this key doesn’t belong to that truck?” I rattled the keys that I found in her purse. There were two Ford keys on the ring. They looked similar, but they were slightly different.
“Give me those!” Kim said, jumping off the couch.
I pushed past her toward the front door. I pulled it open and walked across the lawn to where the truck was parked.
“Thomas.”
I turned.
Wheeler was a step behind me.
“What are you doing?” she said, shaking her head. “You’re being ridicu—”
I hit the unlock button on the key fob and the truck lights flickered.
Wheeler’s mouth hung limp.
I glanced to where Kim stood on her doorstep, her face looking like a wax sculpture under a heat lamp.
“How did you know?” Wheeler said, still shaking her head.
“I haven’t seen many trucks since we reached Columbus city limits. This isn’t truck territory. Then I checked the odometer. The truck has less than a hundred miles on it, but it’s a few years old.” And I found it odd the truck was parked away from the garage. It was as if was on display. And it was. It was a trophy. Kim’s trophy.
“That’s not a whole lot to go on.”
“I was just slightly suspicious at the beginning. That’s why I wanted to check her keys. When I saw the two Ford keys on her keychain I found it odd. Most people wouldn’t keep their spare key with the primary key. When I checked the grooves against each another, I noticed they were different keys altogether.”
I locked the truck then made my way back to Kim. I handed her the keys. Her hand shook as she wrapped her fingers around them.
“How did the money come?” I asked.
“Cash,” she said. “A big bag of cash.”
“Did you get the license plate of the truck?” Wheeler asked.
We were a mile from Kim’s house, nearing the highway.
I shook my head.
“It might come in handy,” she said. “If we need to prove any of this. Prove a money trail.”
$250,000.
In a paper bag.
Kim Barnes said she never knew where it came from. She found it three days after the murders. It was under the bathroom sink. She didn’t know if the money had come from drugs, guns, or what, but she did know Lowry hadn’t come into the money legally. She swore on her life she never once suspected the money had anything to do with the Save-More murders. Tears ran down her cheeks as the words flew from her mouth. It must have felt good in a way. To get it off her chest.
She led us to a safe in her bedroom closet and showed us what was left of the money. There was $20,000 in cash. Then there were two envelopes. Inside were forms detailing the college trusts she’d set up for both her kids. Both for $90,000.
I think she expected me to confiscate the money. But I had no intention of telling anyone about the money Kim received. She’d been through enough. What she did with it was her business.
I only cared that there was money. I only cared that Lowry Barnes was paid to kill.
All the same, Wheeler was right. At some point we might have to actually prove a money trail. And Kim Barnes, her truck, and her new life might end up as collateral damage.
I pulled the car over on the shoulder and made a U-turn.
A minute later, I was cranking the wheel to turn onto Kim Barnes’ street, when I eased my foot down on the brake.
“What?” Wheeler asked.
There was a car parked in front of Kim Barnes’ house. It was a black SUV. Two men stood on Kim Harrison’s doorstep. Even with their backs facing the street, I recognized one of them.
Dolf.
“Blackwater,” I said.
Wheeler raised her eyebrows. “You think they were following us?”
I thought about it. I was pretty good about spotting a tail. “No, I would have seen them.”
“Then how did they know to come here?”
I let out a long breath. “They bugged my car.”
“You think?”
“They must have done it when I was at Lunhill headquarters. That’s how they knew where I lived.” I’d always suspected the Blackwater goon was the one who lit my barn on fire and now I was positive.
I started to drive away.
“What are you doing?” Wheeler asked. “We need to get the truck’s license plate.”
“I don’t want to risk them seeing us. Plus, I don’t really want to get Kim involved. We’ll find another way to prove the money trail.”
She nodded.
A few minutes later, I pulled into a gas station.
It took me five minutes to locate the GPS beacon. It wasn’t under the car, which was the normal location. It was under the hood of the car, stuck to the inner wall near the engine.
“It’s so small,” Wheeler said.
And it was, maybe half an inch square.
Wheeler cocked her head at a car filling up its tank. “We should put in on that car so they follow it.” She grinned. “Like they do in the movies.”
“I have a better idea,” I told her.
There was a good chance it wouldn’t work. It all depended on how closely Dolf and friends scrutinized the GPS data. If they were looking at each and every turn we made, they might notice the Range Rover doubled back toward Kim Barnes’ street. They might put two and two together and realize we’d seen their car and realize we were onto them. But that’s why I drove directly to a gas station. Hopefully, they would think we simply did a U-turn realizing we needed to get gas before we started on the interstate.
Still it would look suspicious.
“Do you really think this is going to work?” Wheeler asked over the phone. “This is pretty remote.”
“That’s the point.”
The houses were half-built. Frames and windows only. A couple had the beginnings of drywall. Probably the funding ran out at some point and the project was abandoned.
An hour earlier, we’d parked the Range Rover in front of one of the houses for thirty minutes, then we drove a few blocks away where we saw a man getting ready to get in his car. Wheeler approached the man and asked for directions before stealthily sticking the GPS beacon on the side of his car.
Wheeler said, “And the goons will see that we were here for half an hour and come to check it out?”
“Hopefully.”
“And then they will think we are the car that I stuck the GPS beacon on?”
“Yes, just like the movies.”
I could hear her smile on the other end.
I was parked a few streets down from the decoy house. Wheeler was huddled somewhere near there, waiting to give me the go-ahead.
“I hear something,” she murmured. “A car.”
It was silent for a few seconds.
“It’s them!” she yell-whispered. “It worked!”
“Settle down,” I said. “Let me know when they both get out.”
“Okay…right now they’re parking, right in front of the house where we did…one of them got out. Shit, he’s huge.”
“That’s Dolf.”
“Who?”
“I’ll explain later. Was he driving?”
“No, he was in the passenger seat…Okay, Dolf is going into the house…he’s looking under boards and stuff.”
That’s what I’d hoped. I wanted them to think that I hid something in the house. Maybe something either Kim Barnes or Darcy Felding had given me.
“Okay, now the driver got out. He’s a little smaller. But he looks mean. Let’s call him Snake.”
I laughed. “Okay.”
“Now Dolf and Snake are both in the house.”
That was my cue.
I put the car in drive and slowly idled my way up the two streets, then parked. I grabbed the red canister out of the back and crept my way around the four houses to Dolf and Snake’s black SUV.
Wheeler was hiding behind a low wall across the street and I signaled for her to go to the car. I
might need a quick getaway.
She darted toward the car and I uncapped the red gas can and began pouring the liquid on the hood of the SUV, then all over the roof, the tires, the back bumper, emptying all three gallons.
“Hey!”
I turned.
Dolf stood in the doorway of the house.
He pulled his gun from his hip and pointed it at me. He barked, “Don’t you do it.”
I think he was talking about the match in my hand.
Snake came up behind him. He was half a head shorter than Dolf. His head was shaved and he had a scar running down the side of his right cheek. I watched as his eyes took in the situation: Dolf pointing his gun at a handsome man holding a box of matches next to their SUV dripping in gasoline.
I could sense Dolf giving serious thought to pulling the trigger, putting three in my chest, but at the sound of Wheeler screeching up in the Range Rover, he slowly lowered the gun.
I flicked the match against the box and tossed it on the car. It erupted in an inferno of flames.
Both Dolf and Snake stood with their hands at their sides, seemingly dumbfounded. I guessed they hadn’t been bested too many times in their lives. Then again, they’d never crossed the likes of me.
I pulled open the door to the Range Rover. I turned and thought about yelling, “Now we’re even.”
But we weren’t.
Not by a long shot.
The gun Dolf was pointing at me.
He was holding it in his left hand.
The Blackwater goons knew where we stayed the first night so we switched hotels. And we upgraded from a Holiday Inn to the Crowne Plaza downtown.
At the front desk, I asked for two rooms.
Wheeler glanced up at me, then told the clerk, “Actually, we’ll just need the one.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The investigation was on hold while Randall and I busied ourselves fixing the irrigation and planting seed. Lady Justice would just have to wait. But I wasn’t worried, she’d waited four long years; she could wait another couple of weeks.
Just as I had the previous ten mornings, I woke up to the rooster’s crow, then made my way out to greet him. “I hate your guts,” I told him with a smile.
He replied with a couple clucks.
Besties.
I then made my way into the chicken coop and snagged a half-dozen fresh eggs. I scrambled them up, then divided the eggs equally among myself and the piglets.
Then I went for a quick jog. When I returned, Randall’s Ford Bronco was parked in front of the house. He was heaving a large bag from the trunk.
He turned as I approached and said, “This is the last of it.”
After fixing the irrigation over the course of the previous week, we’d spent the last few days seeding 150 acres of corn, which with the many eco-fuel companies out there, would fetch the highest price per acre. After much deliberation—at least on Randall’s behalf—we decided to seed the remaining 100 acres with sorghum, a grain that had increased in popularity over the past decade as a gluten-free substitute to wheat.
Needless to say, all the seeds were non-GMO.
The tractor and the attached ten-row seeder were parked twenty feet away, and Randall and I spent the next twenty minutes emptying the bags of seed into the ten separate bins.
“How long will this stuff take to grow?” I asked.
“I’ve never grown it before, but a buddy of mine said he usually does his harvest right around day ninety. It all depends on how hot it gets over the next month.”
This was a bit longer than the sixty to eighty days it took for corn to mature. According to Randall, the range accounted for temperature, precipitation, and several other variables.
Today was July 18th, which meant the corn would be ready for harvest sometime in September and the sorghum sometime in October.
Most people planted their crops in early June and we were definitely behind schedule. I asked, “Is it risky to wait until October to harvest?”
“Can be,” Randall said, his lips pursed. “We’ve hit freezing a few times in October, but it’s rare. We should be good, and really, if the weather stays the way it has been, we should harvest the last week of September.”
Randall and I spent the rest of the day trading off driving the tractor and refilling the seed.
At 7:00 p.m., after seeding half the remaining acreage, we called it quits. Randall and I had somewhere to be.
Wheeler and Randall’s wife had set up a date night.
We were going bowling.
Tarrin Lanes was fifteen bowling lanes plus an attached bar. The lighting was drab and the place smelled faintly of shoe polish. A baseball game was finishing up on the big screen in the bar, and through the glass partition you could see a healthy crowd slugging back beers and cheering loudly.
All the lanes but one were occupied, and I spotted Alexa and Randall in a lane near the middle.
“Look at you,” Alexa said as Wheeler and I approached. I hadn’t seen her since their church revival the first week of June. She pulled me into a hug, exclaiming, “How much weight have you lost?”
“Thirty pounds.”
I was still another ten pounds from fighting weight, but I was no longer fat. In fact, after six weeks of running, working out with dumbbells, and the long days on the farm, I felt stronger than I had in a long time.
Alexa released me, then said, “Well, don’t you go losing any more weight, you gotta give this girl something to hold on to.” She winked at Wheeler.
Since returning from our road trip, Wheeler and I had spent countless hours intertwined: at my house, at her house, even once at her clinic, which I’m guessing had to break some sort of oath.
Wheeler grinned and grabbed what was left of my deteriorating love handles. She said, “Oh, there’s plenty to hold on to.”
Wheeler was wearing a black tank top and a pair of tight blue jeans that accentuated her exquisite backside. Her hands gripping my waist, I was currently struggling with a temptation of the flesh.
Down, Boy.
“Now my guy,” Alexa said, tilting her head toward Randall, who was on his haunches examining a purple, sixteen-pound ball. “He could stand to lay off the Thin Mints.”
Randall let loose his infectious cackle and said, “You’re the one who bought twenty boxes.”
The four of us were all giving this a good laugh when the rest of our bowling party arrived: my cousin and his wife. Being a small town, Jerry and Joan had met Wheeler, Alexa, and Randall at various points and I didn’t need to make introductions.
After some idle chatter, Jerry clapped me on the shoulder and asked, “So, when was the last time you went bowling?”
“Probably a decade ago, when I worked at the Seattle PD.”
“How’d you do?”
“I want to say I bowled a 240…no….a 242.”
Wheeler was tying her bowling shoes nearby and glanced up. She said, “Don’t listen to him. He rolled a 68.”
“I told you that in confidence!” I huffed.
Everyone laughed.
A waitress came over and we ordered one of everything: chicken wings, nachos, pizza, cheese sticks, French fries, chili fries, potato skins, sliders, you know, healthy stuff. Randall, Jerry, and I ordered a pitcher of beer and the women went the martini route.
Alexa, who seemed by far the most eager to do some actual bowling, sat down to the computer and started setting up our game. Randall had mentioned how she was always the one to get things going, whether it was rounding everyone up for a board game or getting people on the dance floor. “Okay,” she said, “everyone needs to come up with a nickname.”
She typed hers in first: Winky Dink.
“Randall?” she asked, turning around.
He thought for a moment, then said, “How ‘bout Pokémon?”
Alexa laughed, then typed it in. “What about you Wheeler?”
She said, “I’ll be Sarah.”
I cut my eyes at her and said,
“Hardy-har-har.”
She smirked, then said, “Thomas will be Dergen.”
So much for Ice Man.
“Dergen?” Jerry bellowed.
“It’s my middle name,” I explained.
“You know it means ‘shit’?”
I glared at Wheeler. “I have been apprised of this, yes.”
Joan said, “I’ll be Jo-jo.” Then she pointed at Jerry and said, “He’ll be Fuzz.”
It took a moment for it to register.
Fuzz?
I scoffed, loud enough that Wheeler turned and asked, “What?”
“Nothing,” I said, waving her off.
I thought back to Will Dennel’s Moleskine—Fuzz. I’d thought it was a nickname for someone at the Tarrin Police Department, but was it possible that it was Jerry?
Jerry had proven he was a betting man, first on the golf course, then when he was playing video games with his kids. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think he would have had action with the local bookie. Could Jerry have been the one who owed Will Dennel $83,000?
I glanced at him. He was clad in another of his token golf shirts, this time red. If he was in fact Fuzz, did that change anything? Everyone had their vices. Maybe gambling was his. Who was I to judge him?
But $83,000?
Still, I didn’t know what had happened in the past. Maybe he won that much previously. Or more. Maybe over a lifetime of betting he was up a million dollars. He drove a nice car, lived in a nice house, had nice things. If he did owe $83,000 it didn’t appear to have affected him financially.
Then it struck me.
He never had to pay off this debt.
Will Dennel was murdered.
I asked Jerry, “Where did the nickname Fuzz come from?”
He sighed, then said, “I’ve had it since high school. When I was a sophomore, I tried to grow a mustache. Didn’t turn out very well and all my buddies starting calling me Peach Fuzz. They shortened it to Fuzz, and thirty years later, half the town still calls me that.”
The pitcher of beer and the martinis were delivered. Jerry poured three glasses of the amber liquid, and as if reading my mind, he asked, “You guys care to make this interesting?”