by Jim Heskett
“I have no idea what that means.”
He pointed at his computer. “I know it could be used for bad things. But you know I’m not going to do that, right?”
She nodded. “Of course, I know that. I’m not judging you, Harry.”
“Okay,” he said as the screen changed to show a mug shot from six years ago. There was “Revolver,” with front and profile pictures. A chill went through Harry when he gazed into the eyes of a man who could’ve killed him last night. If Harry’s network had glitched and the disco ball failed, he would possibly be dead right now instead of munching a Hot Pocket in relative peace.
“That’s one of them?” Serena asked.
“Sure is.” He typed a few commands into the screen to create a network matrix. Now, Revolver’s mug sheet connected to dozens of others, based on linkage between arrest records, taxes, property filings, and other records. Harry saw himself staring at a web of dozens of criminals.
They all had a few things in common. First, they were almost all either from Arkansas, or had done time here. And the time was largely related to drugs and trafficking.
And several of them had court cases for selling unnamed controlled substances, which was code for homemade drugs. Like black market vapes. And while Harry couldn’t find any evidence linking Ginny’s brother Alan to this specific group, there had to be an undiscovered link out there somewhere.
He sat back. “Oh, wow. This is a wrinkle I wasn’t expecting.”
Serena crossed her arms and gawked at him. “What? You’re going to have to explain this to me.”
“I know why there has been a rash of vaping-related illnesses in the area.”
“Why?”
“Because this isn’t a collection of isolated incidents. There is a high concentration of criminals in this area, and the linkage between them can only mean one thing: there’s a drug cartel in Northwest Arkansas.”
31
Serena leaned over to open the car door, but Harry told her to wait. As she did, he reached into the back seat and pulled out a silver case, roughly the size of a pack of playing cards.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Harry beamed. “My new toy.” He opened the case toward him and she couldn’t see the contents, but she watched him tap on his phone as his face lit up. “Drone. Arrived this morning.” He tapped a few more times as the rectangular device beeped once, then Harry emitted a little giggle. He seemed pretty excited about it.
“My youngest sister is into drones,” she said.
Harry raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh yeah?”
“Yes. It started with this bonkers idea that she was going to gather intelligence on a boy that had broken up with her. She planned to sneak out every night, camp out nearby his house, and fly the drone to his window and find out who he was dating now.”
“Yeesh.”
“Yeah, but the funny thing is: she fell in love with drone piloting and forgot all about the boy.”
Harry cackled. “Of course she did. Flying drones is way more fun than dating.”
He tilted his head and Serena opened her car door. As they exited the car in front of the Motorway Lodge, she noted that Harry at least took the time to study the parking lot for threats, which was more than he usually had in the past. If taking a baseball bat to the stomach and the scary in-home visit from the goons had given her boss a better sense of self-preservation, then maybe it had been worth it. Of course, Serena didn’t want to see Harry get hurt, but he did need to learn how to take threats more seriously.
She asked, “What’s our specific goal here?”
Harry pointed at a group of men and women loitering near the conference area entrance. “Today is the last day of the conference, so let’s poke around, see if we can learn more about Ginnifer Applewhite. If we want a chance to talk to her in person again, this is it. After today, she’s potentially in the wind.”
Serena eyed the denizens of the parking lot. A pang of guilt stroked her chest due to the misunderstanding at the other hotel. She’d driven Ginny away by rushing to Harry’s aid, which had frightened their top suspect. A skittish type. Couple that with Serena’s inability to catch the fleeing man who’d attacked Harry at the cabin, and she felt terrible. Inadequate. She’d already tried to tender her resignation to Harry once, and he had refused.
And she should’ve expected Harry to deny her an easy way out. He valued loyalty over results, which felt like a strange metric to measure success. Maybe he knew more about managing people than she did. If the situation were reversed, Serena didn’t know if she could extend the same courtesy to him. Probably a good thing that she wasn’t the boss.
She wouldn’t fail again. That much, she knew for sure. But a lot of this felt like foreign land to her, since the rules in private investigation were different from the rules in espionage or covert assassination. A lot more red tape, which Serena loathed.
“What’s our play?” she asked.
“I thought we’d act as casual as possible and go for a stroll around the building. Let’s see what we see.”
She nodded and wriggled her hands into the pockets of her jeans. She and Harry meandered through the parking lot, with Harry sort of sashaying left and right with the swagger of a person with no particular place to go. For a moment, she evaluated his technique. Old Harry would have never “gotten into character” like that. It seemed he’d learned a trick or two in his time out here in Middle America.
They rounded the corner, and she saw it right away. Ginnifer Applewhite near the rear of the hotel, leaning over into the open window of an idling car. The car was a black Dodge Charger, with a paper temporary license plate on the back. But the paper had crinkled and folded, so Serena couldn’t read the writing on it.
Ginny stood, now clutching a box of something in her hands. She looked directly at Harry and gasped. With a start, she smacked the side of the car and the driver gunned it, out of the parking lot. Serena still couldn’t discern the plate number as it drove off.
Ginny spun and ran as the package spilled open. A dozen vape pens spilled out, many of them cracking on the pavement. As she turned around the side of the building, Serena lowered herself to run, but Harry grabbed her by the arm.
“Wait,” he said. “This is exactly why I got this thing.”
He opened the silver case and removed what looked like a rectangular hunk of plastic with gadgets and doodads inside of it. But Harry quickly twisted one side of the little device and Serena watched it transform into a drone, approximately two inches by three inches. Much smaller and more high-tech than the ones her little sister owned.
Harry tapped on his phone and then tossed the drone up into the air. It whined as lights flickered all over it and it ascended above the hotel. The little rotors buzzed like bees, with the sound fading as it flew higher and higher.
Serena didn’t need to ask Harry’s plan. She removed a headset piece from her pocket and jabbed it in her ear as she took off. A second later, a call from Harry came in, and she tapped on the earpiece. “I’m here,” she said as her legs scissored underneath her, her hands like blades slicing the air.
“Turn left at the edge of the building,” he said over her earpiece.
Serena planted her feet when she reached the edge of a blue dumpster, then she pivoted left. Behind the hotel was a small parking lot running along the length of the buildings. To her right, forest. She looked up to see Harry’s dot of a drone hovering over the trees, zipping left and right like a hummingbird suspended in midair.
“I lost her,” Harry said, “but I’m almost positive she’s in those trees. She probably saw the drone and is seeking overhead cover.”
“Roger that,” Serena said as she pushed into the foliage. Like everything else in this town, the space behind it was hilly, with trees slicing up from the angled ground.
She paused, listening. For a moment, she had flashes of her old life, working for the government in the field while Harry whispered coordinates and enemy move
ments in her ear like a guardian angel from a bunker thousands of miles away. Of course, neither of them had those jobs any longer, but a part of Serena actually missed it.
She could almost hear the sound of breathing. Too hard to tell with the sounds of the town in all directions.
Then she heard it. Movement. She spun to find Ginnifer Applewhite hiding thirty feet to the east, in the dirt, cowering next to a downed log. She clutched the box in her hands.
Serena had a P320 in her concealed carry holster, but decided not to draw it. Instead, she held up her hands. “Please don’t run. We only want to talk.”
Two seconds later, a frazzled Harry caught up, wheezing and red-faced. He tapped on his phone a few times and then frowned at the screen. He tapped harder and then frowned harder, and then his face fell as he stared into the sky. Serena heard the drone sink back toward earth, but it seemed like it was going too fast.
“No, no,” Harry said as the drone crashed into the side of a tree and broke into a hundred pieces. Glittering bits of metal and microchips and plastic rotor wings spread across the ground. “Crap. Those things are expensive.”
“Harry?” Serena said, pointing at Ginnifer.
“Right. Ginny, why were you running away? Who was that guy in the car?”
The tall woman’s head fell into her hands as she cried. “Why should I tell you?”
Now Serena watched Harry set his face. He stood a little taller, with his fists balled at his side. Odd to see him project such conviction. He pointed south, in the general direction of both the barbershop and No-Name Holler. “Because people are in trouble, Ginny. Someone has already died, and more could get hurt, and keeping those secrets inside your head is helping to make that come true.”
The words hung in the air for a few seconds. A moment later, Ginny lifted her head and drew one of the vape pens from the box and puffed on it. She cast reddened eyes at Harry as she exhaled a stream of billowing air vapor that smelled a little like marijuana, but also had a hint of sour chemical flavor. “I relapsed, okay? I don’t have nineteen days sober. I have nothing.”
Serena took a step forward. “Who was that man who sold it to you?”
Ginny hesitated a moment and then hit her vape device again. It now smelled odorless coming out, but Serena suspected it was more than liquid nicotine in that futuristic pen. Two hits in, she seemed to calm a little. Her shoulders stopped vibrating, at least.
She stood and looked at the vape pen in her hands. At first, staring blankly, and then, with rage. She smashed the vape pen against the downed log. “Tommy. Thomas. Thomas Bixby. Now leave me alone.”
As she stormed off, Serena made a move to follow her, but Harry held up a hand, which Serena took to mean he wanted to let her leave. This was not how Serena would’ve played the situation, but with Harry as the boss, she would follow his lead.
Once Ginny had fled, Serena crossed the wooded area to raise an eyebrow at Harry. “Why’d you let her walk away?”
“I know who Thomas Bixby is.”
“You do?”
Harry nodded. “He was at my house last night.”
32
Harry removed his dinner from the microwave and then walked it across the room. He and Serena were at his office in the strip mall, because Harry kept reminding himself that even though he preferred to work in his basement, he was paying rent on this office space, so he might as well use it. It didn’t matter all that much now, with his client list so small, but once things got going, he expected he would be glad he spent the money. Better to meet clients here, instead of the sitting room at his house.
Serena stood next to the printer as it spat out pages, then she would tack each one to a corkboard, to replicate the setup he had at home. Thinking about it, Harry decided it would be much easier to install webcams at his house and livestream the existing idea boards from there to here, rather than duplicate them.
“But then I couldn’t interact with the board,” he mumbled.
“What?” Serena said.
“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.” Then he realized that he could manipulate the boards, if he could create a robotic arm to hold a dry erase marker. There would be a little lag, for sure, but it wouldn’t be too hard to prioritize it on the network to make a cleaner signal. Also, he could probably get all the pieces he needed within a couple weeks, and it might take about thirty hours to code the firmware and assemble the parts…
Harry shook his head and cleared his throat. “Focus, Harry.”
He opened his laptop and started diving into the name and lore of a man named Thomas Bixby. Thomas had rendezvoused with Ginnifer Applewhite earlier today in town. Thomas had also visited Harry late last night to intimidate him; to make Harry stop the investigation. He had been Revolver, the one less aggressive than Sneer, who had led the conversation. While Revolver/Thomas hadn’t done anything to stop the threat of violence, he hadn’t raised and pointed his gun at Harry like Sneer had.
Harry had been so far unable to put a name and face to Thomas’ companion Sneer. But it didn’t take much effort to link Thomas himself to the spiderweb of criminal activity in the area. Most of the information was freely available on county courthouse docket websites.
As Harry worked, Serena stood near the window, watching the sun plummet in slow motion, arms crossed. He paused typing to note how she stood with a curved back and lowered head. Usually, she maintained near-perfect posture.
“You okay?” he asked.
She slowly turned and sighed at him. “I feel like I’ve been failing you all week.”
Harry removed his hands from the keyboard and angled his chair toward her. “Hey. That’s not at all true.”
Her stoic face pulling into a frown was one of the saddest things he’d ever seen. Like watching a statue cry. The only time Harry had ever seen Serena with such a pained look on her face was after she had been shot in Monte Carlo. And even then, she hadn’t seemed sad about it. Mostly angry.
“How long have we known each other?” he asked.
“Seven years, maybe eight?”
“How many times in that eight years have you saved my life?”
She shrugged. “A few. At least once or twice.”
“If I were a wookie, I’d owe you a life debt.”
Her brows knitted together and her head tilted, confused.
“Never mind about that,” Harry said. He stared at her for a second, wondering what to say to make her feel better. How does one provide aid and comfort to a switchblade knife?
And then Harry realized that feeling better wasn’t what Serena wanted. He knew what he had to do, but the panic of decisiveness throttled him for a couple beats before he found his voice.
“Here’s the deal,” Harry said as he forced himself to shift his tone from empathetic to authoritative. As soon as he did, he noticed her standing a little straighter.
“I’m paying you to do a job, so you’re going to do it. No more tendering resignations and feeling sorry for yourself. No more worrying about how I feel about your performance. Just do your job.” The words felt horribly bossy coming out of his mouth, but he kept his face firm and waited for her reaction.
Serena uncrossed her arms and put them at her sides. Her frown evened out, not quite a smile, but the hesitancy had vanished from her face. “Roger that. Thank you for making your expectations clear. Honestly, it helps.”
Harry looked back at his laptop, stifling a grin. He couldn’t believe it had worked. But, then again, given what he knew about her, it made sense she would respond better to a firm hand than a shoulder to cry on. In many ways, he was still getting used to the idea of being her boss.
His screen changed as a report finished running. “How about that.”
Serena approached his desk. “How about what? Did you find something?”
“I was casting a wide net, looking for ways Thomas Bixby and Ginnifer Applewhite could be linked.”
“Is it the church? The religious cult?”
Ha
rry shook his head. “I have not found a link from Thomas to Ginny, at least not via the legal system or employment records. No connection between Thomas and Ginny’s formerly incarcerated brother. No links from the NDCS to either of them. But I did find something interesting here: Thomas Bixby and several of his criminal friends all worked for this one particular landscaping company.”
Serena turned up her palms. “A landscaping company hiring ex-cons isn’t that unusual. It’s a respectable job to get back on your feet.”
“Right, but here’s the thing: this landscaping company is owned by a company that’s owned by another company. And at the top of that chain is one Rourke Mannafort.”
“Sounds like the name for an Army vehicle.”
Serena’s comment caught him off guard, and Harry chuckled. She even cracked a hint of a smile, but she soon put it away and the statue face returned.
“Yeah,” Harry said, “but it’s a human. I believe he’s English or Irish, but definitely not American. His past is pretty murky, but his recent history is a lot less so. However—and here’s the kicker—he lives in No-Name Holler.”
Harry tabbed over to a browser window and opened a map of the United States. He rolled the computer mouse wheel to zoom into the Arkansas, then northwest Arkansas, and then eventually deep into the holler. As he switched from topographical to satellite view, he said, “It’s hard to see because of the trees, but this is where he lives. The general area, at least.”
Serena rounded the desk to look over his shoulder. “If someone was looking to obscure a building, one of these hollers would be the perfect place to do it.”
Harry waved at a dense section of trees. “Yeah, exactly. It’s not a single house, but more like a compound with a main house at the center. These other buildings are a barn, greenhouse, toolshed, things like that. That’s my best guess as to their use.”