“It was the postman, honest.”
I watched as Tommi’s hand tightened around the pistol. “Dave.”
“He always rings twice.” Figuring the kid was scared enough, I reached over and lowered Tommi’s weapon. “Tell me about Mr. Rowan, Curtis.”
“It was his idea.” Thor relaxed and leaned against the pole. “He gets these catalogs with women in them at the post office, and he figured he could go into the business himself what with it closing and him losing his job anyway.”
“Mail-order brides?”
“Yeah . . . Well, kind of.”
“Kind of?”
He nodded. “More like servants. We were all talking over at the bar one night, and he brought the subject up. We didn’t know that he’d already done it twice with women from town, but we figured we had a supply of girls that we could use from the club—”
“You mean you abducted these women against their will and sold them?”
“Um, yeah.”
I sat there, thinking that the report from Tommi’s pistol had affected my hearing. “Slaves.”
“Sort of, yeah.”
She raised the pistol and aimed again. “Can I shoot him now?”
I pushed the 9 mm away. “Not till we find out where the women are.” I turned and gave the bouncer my most immediate and severe attention. “At last count there are three—where are they?”
“Um . . .” He mumbled the next part. “All over.”
“I’m shooting this little bastard on general principles.”
I held the gun away. “Where are they?”
He shook his head as he spoke. “One might be somewhere in Florida, maybe.”
“Rowan has the list?”
He nodded. “He knows everything.”
“So, where is he?”
“I don’t know.” Tommi lifted the pistol again, and this time I didn’t attempt to dissuade her, and Thor suddenly remembered the conversation. “He came in here and told me you were going to kill us all and that I was supposed to stop you no matter what it took.”
“Then he left?”
“Yeah.”
I thought about it. “There had to be a place where you kept the women before shipping them out or delivering them; where was that?”
“We kept them sedated in the trailer.”
“The one that burned down?”
“Yeah.”
I stood. “What about Jone Urrecha?”
“Who?”
I gestured toward Tommi. “Shoot him.” She did, this time missing his foot by inches. “Your running partner, the Basque woman.”
“The schoolhouse.”
I stuffed the Colt Walker into my sling. “Over by the bar?”
“No, the old one back up the canyon road.”
I walked to the stage and lifted the short curtain that trimmed the dancing area but couldn’t see the .357. “There’s a pistol that slid under there that belongs to the detective that’s been working on this case. When the sheriff’s department gets here to take golden boy into custody, tell them about it, would you?”
She nodded. “Will do. You headed for the schoolhouse?”
“I am.”
“You can’t see a damn thing out there.” She stubbed her cigarillo out on the table. “You want me to send the troops and my half-wit brother after you, or do you just want to shoot that asshole Dave and leave him for the coyotes?”
“It’s tempting, but send them after me.”
“Will do.”
I straightened my hat and zipped up my coat with my good arm, careful of the bandage on my neck. “Can I drive there?” She and the bouncer looked at each other. “I take that as a no.”
“It’s just a dirt road and all rutted out; in weather like this I think you better walk.”
“How far?”
“’Bout a mile.” She frowned. “And I was going to marry that son of a bitch.”
—
When I came out the back door of the strip club and looked across the field, I could see that the Jeep was gone. I could also see the revolving lights of a Campbell County Sheriff’s car. I hustled across the parking lot and down the road, getting to the Sixteen Tons Bar in time to see the present sheriff of Campbell County and the retired sheriff of Absaroka loading the wounded investigator into the backseat.
“Where’s the EMT van?”
Sandy turned and looked at me as they made Harvey as comfortable as possible, his head wrapped with so many bar towels it was starting to look like the top of a snowman—all he needed was some coal and a carrot. “With this fog, you’re lucky that radio call you put in with my dispatcher got through to me. I’ll drive him over to the hospital and then come back.” He glanced past me, toward the mail office next door. “I understand we’ve got somebody who’s gone postal?”
“From what I got from Curtis, the kid I handcuffed to a pole over at your sister’s strip club, he, the dead bartender, and the postman are running some kind of white-slavery ring.”
He guffawed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I wish I were.” I glanced at the hills behind the small town. “Supposedly they kept the women in the old one-room schoolhouse up in the hills out here.”
Sandy stopped laughing and nodded. “There’s a road, but the fastest way to get there is to follow the railroad spur behind the school that deadheads about a mile down the canyon—and that way you can drive.” He pointed to a line of empty coal cars. “They sometimes park the cars there before they roll ’em down to Black Diamond, where they fill them up. When you get to the end of the line, hop over the top of the hill, and the school will be right there.”
I held a hand out. “Let me borrow your cuffs?” He handed them to me, and I reached for my keys. “There’s a road beside the tracks?”
He nodded. “A lot better one than that goat path on the ridge.”
I started to move off, but Lucian caught my arm. “What do you want me to do?”
I glanced at Sandy. “Is this the only road out of town?”
“In or out.”
I turned back to the old sheriff, the man who had gotten me into this mess. “Stay here in case he decides to make a run for it. Take Harvey’s car and set up out there on the entryway to the railroad crossing.” I started off toward my truck. “You see him, you stop him.”
Lucian called after me. “Like I did the bartender?”
I called back over my shoulder, “Or the coffeepot.”
14
There was a BNSF high-rail truck sitting at the top of the deadhead, the kind that can run on railroad tracks when the gear is lowered, and I slowed down and stopped to yell out my window, “Any chance of you guys moving these cars in the near future?”
He smiled. “You chasing the mailman?”
“He go by here?”
“About twenty minutes ago.”
I looked at the cars and at the narrow roadway on the side, clogged with snow. “Really, any chance of moving these damn things?”
He pushed the hood back on his Carhartt, and I recognized the man I’d met at the Sixteen Tons, Fry printed on a name patch. “In about forty-five minutes we’re gonna move ’em out and fill ’em up.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The mine is worried they’re gonna get snowed in, so they’re gonna take this spur train and attach it.”
“No sooner, huh?”
He smiled. “Not unless you want to hook that big V-10 up and pull ’em yourself.”
“Don’t tempt me.” I rolled the window back up and decided that I didn’t need the sling anymore. Pulling the cumbersome thing off and stuffing it in my pocket, I carefully slid my arm into the sleeve of my coat—my neck was sore, but I could deal with that. I spun the wheel, negotiated my way around the coal cars, and began the slow and arduous task of drifting my way down the sloped road in an attempt not to slip off into the ditch or run into the train cars.
There was a fresh set of tracks that rolled alongside in a straight line, a testament to the Jeep’s more nimble design, but I kept turning into the slide and making progress. I glanced at the tops of the coal cars and could see that they were, indeed, empty.