A third fly, and lately a big juicy one, was Cash's friend, Joe Kelly. Kelly stayed with Cash and Warr between runs. Then, a month earlier, he'd disappeared. Nobody knew where. Everybody wanted to know. Calb had begun to suspect that Kelly had made a move on Jane Warr, and that Cash had buried him out in the woods.
Now this.
CALB WASN'T LISTENING to Ruth Lewis's appeal. He was staring past her, out into the shop, thinking about the whole mess, and calculating. He had to have something going out there when the cops arrived. Maybe he could haul one of his own trucks in, tear it down, start repainting it. The place couldn't be empty, with a bunch of guys sitting around staring at the walls…
"Gene! Gene!"
Calb looked back at Ruth: "Sorry-I was thinking about… getting something going out in the shop. Before the cops get here. It looks weird, being empty."
"Give us the cash to buy a truck," Ruth said. "One truck."
"Listen. Guys. We've got to figure out what's going on here. You have to figure it out, too-I mean, you're doing the driving. I thought maybe Joe Kelly just took off, but there was no sign he was going and Deon said all his clothes are still hanging in his closet… "
"You think Joe's dead, too?" Katina asked.
"Well, where is he?" Calb asked. "Nobody in Kansas City has heard from him."
"There's an auction Saturday morning in Edmundston that's got the perfect truck," Ruth said. "Three years old, two hundred and fifty thousand kilometers, runs good enough to get across."
"I gotta talk to my Kansas City guy… "
"Gene, we've got to do this," Ruth said urgently. "We've got a load waiting. We're desperate."
"Let me talk to my guy." He looked around the office. "You know, if this doesn't get settled quick, we might have to start worrying about where we talk. What we say."
"You could always come over to the church to talk," Katina said. "I don't think they'd have the guts to bug the church."
"Maybe… " Calb looked out the window. "I wonder what happened? I heard they were just hanging there, like icicles, all… messed up."
"Jane Warr. She was not a nice woman. Deon was worse," Katina said. She turned to Ruth. "The Witch used to hang around with Jane. I hope she's not involved with this somehow."
"Ask Loren," Ruth suggested.
"I will. But Jane and Deon… "
"May God have mercy on their souls," said Ruth, and she crossed herself.
5
ARMSTRONG, THE COUNTY seat, came over the horizon as a hundred-foot-tall yellow concrete chimney with a plume of steam hanging over the prairie, then as a couple of radio towers with red blinking lights, then as a row of corrugated steel-sided grain elevators along a double set of railroad tracks. They followed the tracks past the elevators, past a few broken-down shacks on what had once been the bad side of town, into a quiet neighborhood of aging Cape Cod houses, all painted either white or a dirty pastel pink or blue, over a bridge labeled CROSS RIVER, and into the business district.
"What's that smell?" Del asked, as they came into town.
Zahn looked at him. "What smell?"
"Paper plant, or chipboard plant," Lucas said.
"Chipboard," Zahn said. "I don't smell it anymore."
"Jesus. It smells like somebody's roasting a wet chicken, with the feathers on," Del said.
"Ain't that bad," said Zahn.
"Yes, it is," Del said.
The downtown was a flat grid, mostly brick, yellow and red, with meterless curbs along blacktopped streets, three or four stoplights. Lucas could see both a Motel 6 and a Best Western, Conoco and BP stations on opposite corners with competing convenience stores, a Fran's Diner followed by a Fran's Bakery followed by a Fran's Rapid Oil Change, a McDonald's on one corner and a Pizza Hut halfway down the block, a sports bar called the Dugout.
At the heart of the town was a scratchy piece of brown grass, patched with gray snow, with a two-story, fifties-ish red-brick courthouse in the middle of it. A newer red-brick Law Enforcement Center hung on to the back of the courthouse, with a fire station even farther back.
Three cops and a couple of firefighters were outside in the cold, leaning against the walls of their buildings, smoking.
Holme's Motors was across the street from the LEC, in a metal building with a single plate-glass window looking out at a dozen used American cars. Red, white, and blue plastic pennants hung down from a wire stretched above the lot; there was just enough wind to keep them nervously twitching. Zahn pulled into the lot, and through the window they could see a man poking numbers into a desk calculator. "That's Carl," Zahn said.
Carl Holme was broad and bald-headed, with a cheerful smile. "Heard about the Negro getting hung," he said to Zahn, when they pushed through the door. "That's gonna dust things up, huh?"
"I'd raise your prices before the TV people get here," Zahn said.
"Really? You think?"
Five minutes after they walked in, they walked back out into the cold. Lucas took the Olds and Del cranked up the Mustang and they trundled behind Zahn, a three-car caravan, sixty feet across the street to the Law Enforcement Center.
The smoking cops said hello to Zahn, looked with flat curiosity at Lucas and Del. Zahn took them inside, was buzzed through a bulletproof-glass door to a reception area, where he introduced them to Zelda Holme, the car dealer's wife, a pretty, round-faced woman who was also secretary to the sheriff.
"Sheriff Anderson called and said you wanted to talk to Letty. We've got her back in the lounge," Holme said, smiling and friendly. "Come right along."
"I'm gonna take off," Zahn said to Lucas, lifting a hand. "You've got my number. Call if you need anything."
"See you later," Lucas said. "Thanks." He and Del fell in behind Holme, and as they followed her along a cream-painted concrete-block hallway, Lucas mentioned that they'd just rented cars from her husband.
"I hope you counted your fingers after you shook hands with him," she said cheerfully. "Carl can be a sharp one."
The lounge was the last door on the right, a pale yellow concrete cubicle with Office Max waiting-room chairs, vending machines, and a slender girl in jeans who had her face in an Outdoor Life magazine.
"Letty, dear?" Holme said. "You've got visitors."
LETTY WEST TURNED her head and took them in.
She was blond, her hair pulled back tight in a short ponytail. She had warm blue eyes that Lucas thought, for an instant, he recognized from somewhere else, some other time; and an almost oval face, but with a squared jaw and freckles. She wore jeans and a blue sweatshirt and dirt-colored gym shoes that had once been white nylon. A Coke can sat on an end table at her right hand. She might have been a female Huckleberry Finn, except for a cast of sadness about her eyes-a Pieta-like sadness, strange for a girl so young. Lucas had seen it before, usually in a woman who'd lost a child.
A good-looking kid, Lucas thought, except for the weathering. Her face and hands were rough, and if you hadn't been able to see her preteen figure, you might have thought she was a twenty-year-old farmer's daughter, with too much time hoeing beans.
"These gentlemen are here to see you from St. Paul," Holme said. She was stooping over like older women did when they approached younger children, her voice too kindly.
"Cops?" Letty asked.
"State policemen from St. Paul," Holme said.
"Cops," Letty said.
Lucas looked at the kid and said, "Hi," and then to Holme, "We can take it from here."
"Okay," she said. Holme looked once at Del, as though he might be carrying a flea, and went back out the door. Lucas had the impression that she might have stopped just outside, so he said to Del, "Did I see a water fountain in the hallway?"
"Let me check," Del said, smiling. He stuck his head out, looked both ways, and then said, "Nope. Nothing there." More quietly, "She's going."