by Jim Heskett
He dropped off his laptop at his office and then shuffled down the sidewalk to the barbershop. The front door still stood, so Harry opened it to find Kemba sitting at a simple folding table near the back, with one hand on a laptop keyboard and a stack of paper receipts in the other. Little glasses sat on the edge of his nose.
Head down, his eyes flicked up, and he set down the receipts to remove his reading glasses. “Morning, Harry. I got doughnuts, if you’re hungry.”
Harry pursed his lips. “Thanks, but no.”
“I don’t suppose you’re here to tell me you’ve solved the case already?”
“Just getting started. But I do have some ideas. I wanted to take a look around, if that’s okay.”
Kemba’s eyes darted around first, then he waved a hand to the room. “Help yourself. Not a lot to see in my new, open-air barbershop.”
The barber went back to tapping as Harry stood in the middle of the space. He told himself to start with the basics. The barbershop was mostly contained in a single room, with a front door along the windowed wall, and two doors on the far wall. One for bathroom, and the other was marked office.
There were two barber chairs, each on opposite sides of the room, anchored to the floor with bolts. Also, a couple of shelves with hair products and a tablet-powered cash register on a podium near the front.
Harry pointed at the office door. “Why are you doing your paperwork out here?”
“That will be the office someday, but it’s just storage now. My entire life in a collection of cardboard boxes.”
“Heh. I know the feeling. Is it okay if I peek in there?”
Kemba hesitated, an odd blip of silence between them. Eventually he nodded, and Harry tried not to reveal how curious he’d found that blank moment. Kemba’s expressions were like a game of Where’s Waldo; trying to find that glint of happiness or pain or sadness or anger among the flat facial movements. It didn’t look like he’d had plastic surgery or wrinkle-killing injections that also dulled his facial muscles. Kemba had plenty of wrinkles.
Harry opened the unlocked office door, and a lampshade jumped out at him. He shrank back as Kemba cackled.
“Told you,” the big guy said.
Harry saw a closet-sized room stacked with bits of furniture and other junk, floor to ceiling. He picked up the lampshade and stood on his tiptoes to settle it atop a tower of boxes. “I’ll take your word for it next time.”
He returned to the middle of the room and gave it another slow turn, letting his eyes wander as his body moved. He studied the floor, noting how clean it looked.
“Did you sweep anything besides glass yesterday?”
“Aside from hair?”
“Yeah. Paper trash, pine cones, anything.”
Kemba put down his receipts and stood, frowning at the area near the window. “I think maybe there was a little muddy spot, or dirt, or something. But I don’t know if it was here before the break-in or not. Mud and dirt gets tracked in here quite a bit, I’m learning.”
Harry kneeled next to the window. He noted the faint brown marks of dried mud near the edge of the broken glass. It was a tiny streak, too small to discern if it had come from a shoe.
“Not including you, has anyone else been in here since the break-in?”
“No, I don’t think so. I didn’t cut any hair yesterday, and I technically opened for business only about ten minutes ago. You’re looking a couple weeks past due for a cut. Want one? Half price.”
Harry shook his head as he stayed low and continued examining the area. He’d hoped to find another streak, to see if they looked stride-length apart, which might give him a clue about the thief’s height, weight, and sex. But no such luck.
Harry groaned as he stood, and Kemba coughed a morose chuckle. “I know that old-bone sound.”
“Youth is wasted on the young, isn’t it?”
Harry pushed opened the front door and noted no mud on the sidewalk or the immediate parking lot area. Based on the smell in the air this morning, Harry suspected there might have been a few minutes of spring rain during the night.
“Footprints all washed away,” he mused, then he wandered out into the parking lot to view the barbershop from further away. It was at the end of the strip mall, and Harry clenched his jaw in anticipation when he saw it: the awning running around the side of the building. The awning provided a narrow lane of protection from the rain.
He headed for it, and under the awning, near the back corner of the building, he detected the spot. Just past the awning, at the edge of the concrete parking lot, sat a dirt patch. In that small area where the awning overlapped the dirt was a pattern in a depression.
“Hey, Kemba, got something out here,” Harry called, and a few seconds later, the barber arrived, with a little laptop clutched under one arm. A hopeful look lightened his face.
Harry pointed at the indentation in the dirt as Kemba came to a stop behind him. The big guy put his hands on his hips and cocked his head, squinting as he stared. “I don’t get it.”
“Does that look like your shoe print?”
Kemba and Harry both hunkered down. The mark in the dirt looked like the back half of a shoe, and the angle indicated whoever made the mark had been running at top speed.
“I don’t think so,” Kemba said. “Looks small. I don’t think I have any shoes with that waffle pattern on the bottom.”
“I thought it looked small, but I had to ask.”
“Is this from the person who took my cigars?”
Harry swished his lips back and forth, then he took out his phone and snapped a few pictures of the imprint. “Maybe. It could belong to anyone, theoretically. The cops might find it useful, though, in case you’ve changed your mind on that.”
Kemba gave a stoic shake of the head. “I haven’t changed my mind.“
“Fair enough.”
“Is this enough to… build a profile, or whatever? I dunno how this works.”
“No, the stuff in the movies where they can code a 3D model of a person based on a shoe print? That’s all make-believe. I was hoping for something better. I was hoping you had a surveillance camera you’d forgotten about.”
“Sorry, no. I don’t even have my WiFi set up yet.”
Once again, there was something odd in Kemba’s expression, and Harry couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He was holding something back, or he’d misrepresented himself in some way. Or, maybe like imagining everyone in town replaced by pod people, it was all in Harry’s head.
“It’s okay, Kemba. I’m still working on it.”
The big guy smiled, a sad parting of the lips. “I appreciate everything you’re doing to help. My focus is on keeping my head above water right now.”
Harry nodded and said nothing as Kemba lowered his eyes and returned inside the barbershop.
7
As Harry drove along Highway 127 near Hobbs State Park, Serena fiddled with something in the passenger seat. Harry looked over to see she was pushing bullets into a magazine, and he blew out a sigh. His hands ached from holding the wheel too tightly, and he didn’t know how to make himself relax.
“You okay?” she asked.
“All good. Trying to keep a lot in my head right now.”
She sat quietly for a few seconds as they drove along the winding path through green fields and dense trees. Hills appeared frequently, turning their drive into a tame rollercoaster ride.
“What’s a Holler?” she asked. “I’ve heard the word before, but I don’t know what it means.”
“It means Hollow.”
“Ahh, right. That makes sense.”
“It’s usually a quiet and out-of-the-way place in the country, usually in a valley with tree cover. People settle in them because it gives protection from wind and stuff like that, so they basically become villages out of convenience.”
“Hidey-holes,” she said, nodding. “Probably where they used to make all the moonshine.”
“Yep. Probably where they still make
it.”
“Really?”
Harry shrugged as he downshifted to propel his car up a steep hill. “From what I hear. Moonshine, meth, all kinds of things. The scattered nature of everything and rapid elevation changes and the density of the forest makes it hard for satellites and thermal imaging to penetrate. People around here know they can throw a few tree branches over a meth lab running out of a full-size van, and no one will ever know unless there’s actual boots on the ground who discover the van.”
Serena looked out the window, squinting. “Boots on the ground seems like a difficult way to explore this terrain.”
“Totally agree.”
“How is the case research going? You look into Kemba Wood yet?”
“I did, a little. I thought he told me yesterday that an ACL injury ended his pro football career, but I did some digging. Turns out, he dated a team reporter, which is a big no-no. He was cut by the Dolphins six years ago and didn’t sign with another team after. He couldn’t even get on any team’s practice squad.”
Serena finished loading the magazine and slammed it home into her pistol, making Harry jump. “Maybe he lied because he was embarrassed.”
“Maybe so. But no matter why he lied, it’s a problem. It’s hard for me to do my job if I don’t have all the information.”
“Isn’t that the job, though? Starting with a few pieces of the puzzle and then figuring out where they fit?”
“Sure,” Harry said, “but it would help to know if all the pieces came from the same box.”
“Roger that. You know where No-Name Holler is?”
“I do not,” Harry said. “These hills have hollers all over. Some have no names, but apparently, there’s one actually named No-Name, which doesn’t help to clear things up much. I don’t think we’ll find any road signs pointing our way, and these little dirt roads don’t exactly show up on Google Maps.”
Harry turned a corner through the trees and emerged into a clearing. But he hit the brakes when the road came to a sharp and sudden end in a few hundred feet. They’d stumbled upon a large pond with a bridge spanning one side to the other, but the middle section of the bridge had collapsed. No bridge out sign, no orange cones or anything. If Harry hadn’t hit the brakes in time, they’d be sipping pond water right about now.
“Well done,” Serena said.
Harry blushed a little as he killed the car’s engine. “Thanks. Glad I was paying attention.”
He and Serena left the car and wandered over toward the banks of the pond, standing in the morning air with hands on hips.
“Crap,” Harry said. He could see the road continued on the other side of the pond, but there was no detour around the shoreline that he could see. The rocky banks did not look like they could support a car. “I guess we head back and take one of those side roads.”
She pointed across the pond. “Is that the way we need to go?”
“I’m not sure. No-Name Holler might be back in the other direction. What do you think?”
Before Serena could respond, Harry spun as the sounds of tires churned around the blind bend. A muddy pickup truck pulled to a stop across from Harry’s little sedan, the grill hovering like a mastiff leering at a dachshund.
As Harry squinted at the tinted windows, Serena shifted over, putting herself between Harry and these new arrivals. She snaked a hand toward the pistol jutting from the back of her waistband, but she didn’t draw it yet. A chill ran down his spine at the thought of an armed conflict. He prayed it wouldn’t happen.
The passenger and driver doors opened and out spilled two young men who looked like brothers. Mid-twenties, probably, but it was hard to tell. One wore a wifebeater and had a mullet, and the other had no shirt and a buzzed head. Low-quality tattoos covered his body, including one that might’ve been the cartoon animals Ren and Stimpy, but Harry couldn’t tell for sure.
Mullet spat a glob of brown juice onto the ground as he shut the door and leaned against the car. He wore a perma-grin across his chapped lips. “Howdy. You having car trouble?”
“Not exactly,” Harry said, shuffling a little to his left to emerge from behind Serena. “Bridge is out, huh?”
“Obviously, you dumbass,” Buzzcut said.
“Watch it,” Serena said through clenched teeth. She locked her eyes on Buzzcut, unblinking, jaw set. While her outsides still projected calm, Harry knew better. She was ready to launch at any moment.
Mullet pointed at Serena while offering a low-tooth-quantity grin at Harry. “You let this wetback order you around, too?”
Harry watched Serena’s fingers wrap around the grip of her pistol, and he took a step forward, stopping in front of her. “That’s unnecessary.”
“She looks angry,” Mullet said. “I like it.”
“We just want to know what’s on the other side of this pond,” Harry said.
Buzzcut cackled. “Y’all don’t even got a clue where you are.” He looked Serena up and down, licking his lascivious lips. “We saw you driving, and I said we gotta catch up to that girl. I’m glad we did. We’re having a party tonight, and you should come by. Your elderly boyfriend ain’t invited, though.”
“You need to stop running your mouth,” Serena said.
Buzzcut kept on laughing. “What’re you gonna do?”
Harry expected her to raise her pistol, but she didn’t. Instead, she crouched and snatched a small rock from the ground. She pointed up into a tree where a squirrel sat in the crook of a branch, watching the proceedings below. It was at least twenty feet up, maybe higher.
Serena cocked her arm and then pitched the rock into the tree, like zipping an earthen bullet into the sky. The rock smacked the squirrel in the side, causing it to squeak and scamper to a different branch.
Harry watched the disappointment on Serena’s face, and assumed she’d been aiming at the creature’s head. Still, hitting a target that small and that high up amazed him. The locals didn’t seem too impressed, though.
“So,” Buzzcut said, “you can hunt squirrels. Good for you.”
“What’s on the other side of the pond?” Harry interjected, hoping to push this conversation forward before things got ugly.
Incredulous, Buzzcut waved his hand at the woods all around them. “More of this shit. What are you looking for?”
Harry debated mentioning the cigars, but decided these two would definitely not answer truthfully or provide anything useful. “We’re looking for people who know how to get things.”
Mullet chuckled. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“Yeah,” Buzzcut said. “This guy likes talking in riddles.” Then he grinned at Serena. “If you’re tired of his limp dick, why don’t you come with us, mamacita?”
Harry was starting to worry the snarl on Serena’s face would consume her. After a couple seconds of pained silence in the woods, Mullet tilted his head toward Buzzcut, and they flipped Harry and Serena their middle fingers and then jumped in their truck.
Once the doors were closed and the truck’s engine revved, Harry finally relaxed. He was actually quite impressed with his bodyguard’s restraint during the episode. He’d assumed those two were asking for trouble the minute they tossed their leering eyes at Serena.
As the truck spun around and drove past the bend, she turned up her palms. “What do you want to do?”
An idea jumped up, equal parts terrifying and exciting. Harry couldn’t believe the words about to come out of his mouth. “Let’s follow them.”
8
Harry drove. Serena had offered to take the wheel, and he almost accepted. But he couldn’t. Harry had been driving for almost thirty years, and he knew how to tail someone without giving away his location. In theory. Harry had endured much of the same training regimen as Serena, although he hadn’t used many of those skills sitting behind a desk.
Now, they cruised through the backwoods of rural Arkansas hill country. They called these the Ozark “mountains,” but after seeing the Swiss Alps and Denali, it was ha
rd to think of the earth ripples here as anything other than hills.
Serena sat in the passenger seat, leaning forward and intently focusing on the road ahead. At first, following the two hillbillies in the truck was easy, because the road wobbled up and down over the hills and left and right to dodge creeks and ponds. But then it began to descend the valley around a grand hill and entered a proper holler. Out of nowhere, multiple tendrils of branching streets marked both sides of the road, and Harry hit the brakes when they came around a bend and saw a three-way stop with no sign of the truck in any direction.
“Well, this isn’t great,” Harry said. “Five seconds ago, we were right behind them.”
Serena sighed and said, “I don’t know what to do.” That made Harry pivot in his chair to gawk at her, because Serena always knew what to do, and if she didn’t, she never admitted as much out loud. Given the current level of frustration on her face, though, he held his tongue instead of cracking a joke about it.
“Okay, then. Let’s check around a little more.”
Serena dipped her head in acceptance, then she returned to focusing on the road. Harry chose the right-turn, and the sun soon disappeared under a blanket of trees. Driveways cut paths away from the road, some with mailboxes and house numbers near the road, but many without any markings.
“What are we looking for?” Serena asked.
“I’m hoping I’ll know it when I see it. Maybe before. Not after, though, because that doesn’t help much.”
Serena bit her lip and didn’t reply as Harry navigated through the narrow dirt roads for a few more minutes. No sign of the truck. He could feel his car getting dirtier by the second as it crawled over the loose dirt roads.
Harry yawned, and Serena eyed him. A hint of a grin cracked one corner of her mouth. “I had a workout partner back in DC. She yawned after every set. It infected me half the time, too. I still think about that every once in a while, and just thinking about it makes me want to yawn.”