Now the bartender spoke up. ‘He was looking for a gun. Said he needed one for protection.’
The man called Patton said, ‘I saw you walk back to the office with him. You were in there long enough to give him one.’
‘Shut the hell up,’ the bartender said.
‘Grimes was half nuts. I sure wouldn’t have given him a gun.’
‘That’s my business, not yours, Patton.’
To the bartender I said, ‘Grimes’s granddaughter is terrified because we can’t find him. Think we could step back in that office and talk a little?’
‘Cindy’s a sweetheart, Hal. You should talk to this guy.’
Patton started to say something but I clamped my hand on the back of his neck and squeezed hard. ‘Shut the fuck up. You understand?’
One of the men at the table said, ‘Kick his ass, man. He’s had it comin’ a long time.’
‘C’mon,’ Hal said.
The office was a collection of ancient girly calendars, two wooden filing cabinets, a desk with one leg propped up by a phone book and an adding machine you probably hadn’t been able to buy parts for in several decades. There were two chairs. Neither of us sat.
‘He was in Nam. With me.’
‘Grimes?’
‘Yeah. We were good buddies and still are. You go through a war with somebody, you don’t forget about them.’
‘So you gave Grimes a gun?’
‘Old Colt I got from my old man.’
‘Loaded?’
‘Yeah. He was so scared I figure he needed it.’
‘What did Patton mean about Grimes moving so fast?’
‘He was so scared he jumped at everything. He heard a siren and he just ran out of here. Knocked over his glass on the bar and broke it while he was at it. I felt sorry for him. A lot of people don’t like him. But like I say, we went through Nam together.’
‘Any idea where he went?’
‘No.’ He nodded to the door. ‘I don’t trust Patton. I better get out there.’
‘I appreciate the information.’
‘I just hope he’s all right.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Me, too.’
Thirty-Eight
The hotel bar stayed open until midnight.
Tonight I didn’t find any middle-aged female counterpart to comfort my roiled state of mind. The first thing I did was call the hospital to get an update on Karen. She was in a stable condition.
There were two calls on my cell pertaining to two other races.
One was good news, one bad.
The other man at the bar wanted to talk politics with the bartender, but she laughed and said that from what he’d been telling her last night he’d better be careful because sitting two stools away was none other than the dreaded congresswoman’s campaign manager.
The guy was two drinks shy of belligerence, so I shoved off and went up to my room, where I fell asleep much faster than I would have thought possible.
I dreamed about the shooting again, except this time it was for real. This time Jess’s head wrenched around and gaped at me. Then the bullets struck the back of her skull. But as blood and pieces of her brain bloomed in the air above her head, she started laughing. The laugh, unlike a sound I’d ever heard before, was more disturbing than the violence had been.
Why was she laughing? I was never to find out.
The call was from a man whose voice was the human equivalent of a dangerous bridge. Very old. Unsteady. ‘Is this Mr Conrad?’
The nightstand digital clock read six minutes after one a.m.
‘Yes.’
‘My name’s Skully. I run River Cabins.’
‘River Cabins?’
‘Yeah. Along the river out to the west side.’
‘I see.’
The nightmare had made more sense than this call. Skully? River Cabins? One in the morning? What the hell was this about?
‘I’ve got an envelope for you.’
‘What kind of envelope?’
‘Just a plain white business one with your name on it.’
‘Why do you have an envelope with my name on it?’
‘Because he gave it to me.’
The ‘he’ gave me focus. I knew not to lose patience now. I swung around in bed and put my feet on the floor. The old habit of fumbling around for my pack of cigarettes came back to me. All these years and I still wanted one.
‘You know a man named Grimes?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, that’s why I’m calling.’
I cleared my throat. This was now an official call. This was a man who could lead me to Grimes. At least, that was the feeling I had.
‘Is he with you right now?’
He might not have heard me. He didn’t answer my question. ‘Well, I don’t want to get mixed up in nothin’ so I thought I’d call you.’
‘Mixed up in what? Mr Skully, I really need you to be more specific about things.’
‘He left me this envelope with your name on it and the address of the hotel there. He said that if anything happened to him I was to get this to you.’
Whatever was going on, Cindy sure wasn’t going to be happy about it.
‘Is he there now in one of your cabins?’
‘I think so.’
‘You’re not sure?’
‘He was so jittery he might’ve taken off. He had a handgun. Soon as I seen it I knew I didn’t want no part of it. But I took the envelope ’cause I was scared not to.’
The bartender’s gun.
Worse and worse and worse. I’d been thinking that Grimes had just gotten scared and was hiding out. But the envelope made me wonder if he was up to something else only he could concoct.
‘Where exactly are you located, Mr Skully?’
He told me. I’d need to program the GPS. ‘Do you have phones in the cabins?’
‘No.’
‘I appreciate the call, Mr Skully.’
‘I don’t want any trouble. You have trouble and your name gets on TV and people don’t want to come out here no more.’
‘I understand. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘You don’t bring any guns, either, you hear me?’
‘I hear you, Mr Skully. I hear you.’
I realized that I’d be waking Cindy up, but she needed to be told.
She was more asleep than awake when she answered. ‘’Lo.’
‘It’s Dev. I may have located your grandfather.’
‘Oh, God. Is he all right?’
I explained to her about the bartender giving him the gun and the old man calling me about her grandfather renting a cabin.
‘Oh, God. They’re pits. They’ve been closed down several times over the years. They’re not even cabins. More like little garages. They were built during the Depression. Probably all he could afford.’ Then, ‘But why would he do this?’
‘My guess is he didn’t think it through. He got so excited about naming his price to Showalter that he didn’t realize that there was no way Showalter could leave him alive. Now he’s hiding from him.’
‘Oh, God, poor Granddad. I know he sounds terrible doing this, but I love him so much and I’m so afraid for him. I can’t help it, Dev.’
‘I know that. I’m going to do my best to find him and protect him.’
‘Just please call me and let me know what’s going on.’
‘I will, Cindy. As soon as I’ve got some news.’
I stuffed the Glock and the flashlight into the large interior pockets of my rain jacket. I also grabbed my thermos.
On my way out to Skully’s I stopped long enough at a Hardee’s to get my thermos filled.
Whatever the hell Grimes was up to, I was pretty sure he was going to make this a long and terrible night.
Thirty-Nine
A wooden sign standing next to the narrow two-lane highway announced River Cabins, and in the heavy growth of pines far down the slope to the river you could see the outlines of cabins no bigger than a small garage.