“What?”
She glared, trying to keep her eyes above my waist. I could tell it was a struggle for her, which made it that much more enjoyable. She didn’t say anything. Everything I needed to know I could see in her stare.
“I’m taking a shower.”
She glanced around like she was looking for luggage and then realized I didn’t have any.
I wrapped myself up in a towel and folded my clothes over the shower rod. Shirley walked into the doorway, but kept her head turned away.
Her reflection steamed up in the mirror.
“Don’t you have other clothes?”
“Not here.”
“Why?”
“Don’t like carrying bags.”
The steam from the shower clouded the bathroom, lingering near the ceiling.
“You’re going to burn yourself.”
I shook my head. “I don’t burn.”
She peeked back and caught my eyes, then she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the towel wrapped around my waist.
I dropped the towel and watched her head whip back around, looking toward the room. I smirked and climbed in the shower. The scalding hot water relaxed my muscles and the steam would get the wrinkles out of my clothes.
I stood under the water, wincing at first, but the initial sting quickly subsided. I let the water sluice over the curves of my body. I was six-two, two-twenty. Always had been. All-natural muscle. It came from eating all organic and staying on the move. Why pay for a gym to work out in and a grocery store to feed me when the earth provided everything I needed for free?
I let the hot water cascade over my face. The shower was awesome, just what I needed. After I’d thoroughly washed myself and allowed my mind and body to relax under the water, I turned the knob to cut the water off, and stepped out of the shower.
The cool air was like breathing in a new world. It was part of the allure of a hot shower. The cold air afterward. It made my mind and body sharp.
“So did you find out anything new?” she said.
I smiled at Shirley. She still looked away. “Did you?”
“SOS HURRY SAVAGE.”
I nodded and wrapped myself up in the towel. “Nice work, detective.”
“It wasn’t hard. There’s a decoder on the internet. I just typed the letters in.”
I shrugged. “Whatever works.”
“What exactly is your plan?”
“You’re going to take me to the farm today instead of tomorrow.”
She nodded, knowing I’d kick her to the curb if she didn’t and I’d find it on my own. She had to be assigned to keeping an eye on me. Maybe that’s why she showed up. I figured it was a combination. She wanted answers. Wanted to know about me. Wanted to know more about the case.
“I think we should do something else first. I’ve been thinking.”
I didn’t respond.
“I want to take you to see someone. He might be able to help. He lives near the farm.”
“Who is it?”
“A friend of my family. Well, my grandpa and my dad.”
She waited for me to ask another question. It didn’t happen.
“Any chance you’re going to put a shirt on?”
“Don’t have another one.”
“Right.”
“Does it bother you? Human anatomy?”
She gulped and shook her head.
I watched the pulse in her neck. She was lean. I wanted to kiss that spot between her ear and collarbone. Her eyes were dilated. Making her nervous was fun, but we had work to do.
“Tell me about your friend.”
“I don’t know much about him. He was best friends with my grandfather and then my dad.”
Interesting. He’d probably be in his 70s.
“He knew a lot of people in town. Back in the day. He lives down the road from McCurdy Farms, so he’ll know the area. I figured he might be able to give you some background info, and we’ll be right there anyway.”
“Good thinking.”
“Are you going to put your clothes on?”
“Making you nervous? I’m wearing a towel. You act like you’ve never seen a naked man before.” I grinned.
She bit her lip. “It’s a bit of a drive out there.”
“How long?”
“Maybe forty-five minutes or longer.”
“How long did you look at it?”
“At what?” Her eyes darted to my towel, then snapped back up.
I smiled. “The rest of the message from Sean.”
“Oh. All night and this morning.”
“Me too.”
“Anything?”
I shook my head. “We’ll look at it together after we gather more intelligence today.”
“How do you know I won’t be busy?”
I pulled on my clothes, underwear then jeans and socks. I saved the shirt for last. I caught her glancing at my chest and arms. Maybe checking me out. Maybe staring at my scars. People were always curious. I didn’t respond to her question. We both knew she wasn’t busy. She needed answers, and I still believed her boss told her to follow me around. It was why she was a good detective. Her partner didn’t care about Sean or the truth. That’s why he slept easy at night. Some people just have to know. Those people make good investigators.
I tossed on my shirt and did a quick frog bend down to the floor to stretch everything out a little. My jeans were slightly damp from the steam in the shower. The Tulsa sun would take care of that for me before we got there. I locked up Sean’s computer, the Beretta, and the two magazines in the safe.
“Let’s go see your friend.”
12
WE DROVE A FEW BLOCKS north and hopped on I-244 heading east. A huge Classic Cola billboard caught my attention. It was massive and royal blue, with the yin-yang company logo right in the middle and painted to look like there was condensation dripping from it, like the side of a soda can on a summer day. As we passed by, I immediately became thirsty. Corporate marketers were good at their jobs, it seemed.
Shirley drove a used Ford Focus, similar to the one the Boston guy sat in outside Sean’s house. Hers was black and small. I messed with the seat lever and finally got it to slide back some. It wasn’t like I was a giant, but someone petite had been in the passenger seat last. Shirley paid no attention, keeping her eyes glued on the road.
Downtown slowly disappeared to our rear as we headed east and left the central business district behind. I looked up in the sky to confirm the direction. The sun had slightly turned down toward the west. It didn’t matter anyway. I had a mental compass. It’d been there since I was a child. I always knew what direction I was headed.
It hadn’t become useful until I’d started hunting in my teens. Then I honed it further during my years in the Army and afterward. We went on long timed hikes during Delta training with heavy rucksacks, navigating rugged terrain. It’d saved me more than once in many parts of the world. People don’t realize how important directions are until you’re in the middle of nowhere and the wrong direction can be the difference between home and torture in a prison camp. You could drop me in the middle of the ocean at night and I could tell you which way I was facing.
Shirley’s eyes kept darting over to me and back to the road. She was still trying to figure me out. I’d already said more than I’d have liked, but something about her made me want to open up. It was a good skill to possess in her line of work. Information was ninety percent of the job. It could make or break a case for her. It would come in handy and help further her career. I was trained to pry information out of people in a different way.
“How much farther?”
“Maybe twenty or thirty minutes.”
This part of Tulsa was uneventful, mostly industrial stuff. It was a much older part of town than where I’d traveled earlier in the south of the city. We passed a drive-in movie theater that looked familiar. I stared at it for a while.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
I s
hook my head. “No, some of the stuff around here, like that drive in? Feel like I’ve seen it before.”
She grinned. “The Outsiders.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “That is where it’s from. It’s one of my favorite books and movies.”
“I’m surprised Callahan didn’t tell you—” She froze up and her face paled. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Keep talking. I want to hear about it. I love that kind of stuff. Sean did too.”
Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel, but she went ahead anyway. “It was filmed here. Well, okay, back up. The author, S.E. Hinton, wrote the book while she was in high school. She grew up not far from here.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded. “Yeah. The book was set here too. The rumble, all that stuff. You’ve probably seen a lot of downtown and the Admiral Twin Drive-In during the movie.” She paused. “You have a good memory.”
“I see things in pictures sometimes. In my mind.”
“A photographic memory?”
“Not really. I don’t remember everything everywhere. But if I take a mental snapshot of something I can recall most of it later.”
“Seems like it’d be a useful skill.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Anyway, yeah, there’s a lot of history here in Tulsa.”
“How do you know so much about it? You a history buff?”
“My dad was a historian and a teacher. He loved this area, knew everything about it.”
I nodded and stared out at the road. We passed a sign for the zoo. Memorial Drive was the next exit and I recognized the street. It must’ve ran north to south all the way through the city. The land was flat. You could see for miles. A few newly-planted trees dotted here and there for cosmetics, like they’d recently expanded the highway and done landscaping work.
“Tell me more about the city. I love that kind of stuff.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What’s the Hex House?”
She snickered. “Where in the world did you hear about that?”
“I walked by a parking lot last night and some kids were taking pictures. I think I scared them.”
She laughed. “I imagine. Especially if you snuck up on them out there.”
I told her what happened. “So, what is it?”
“It’s kind of a long story, so I’ll try and give you the Cliffs Notes. We still get calls about that place sometimes. A lady lived there named Carolann Smith, but that wasn’t her real name. She had a mysterious past. Before she lived at the Hex House, her husband allegedly committed suicide off Riverside Drive. She collected a large life insurance policy. She moved to the Hex House, which was a duplex, and made arrangements for her dad to live there too. Only he died before he got there, and she collected another life insurance policy.
“I don’t know how much of that is true, but that’s what my dad told me. After her husband died, some lady ran from the house screaming straight into oncoming traffic and was killed. Smith collected another life insurance policy, and said the lady was her nurse.”
“Interesting,” I said.
“Oh, it gets weirder, Savage. Smith met two other ladies and convinced them to live with her. During World War II, she applied for some ration books, saying they were for her children, but the neighbors knew she didn’t have any kids. I guess that type of fraud was a serious thing back then. An investigation was opened, and neighbors reported screams and all kinds of stuff that came from the house. They learned that Smith had buried a coffin in her backyard.
“They dug it up, and it was an actual coffin, but her dog was inside it. When they went inside the house, they found the two women in the basement sleeping on crates, starving, beaten. Nobody really knows what happened, but it was basically a kidnapping, and it’s said she brainwashed them somehow with all kinds of religious crap. Some people say she cast a spell on them. The whole time they were in the basement, Smith was living in luxury upstairs. Police found all kinds of makeup and 200 pairs of shoes. The ladies would work during the day and give their paychecks to her. She also extorted money from a father of one of the girls, saying she needed medical treatment.”
“Damn.”
“Exactly. You can imagine how the story grew from there, most of it urban legend by this point. The place was razed in the 70s and paved over as a parking lot, but the basement is still there under it. It attracts people sometimes. There’s even a haunted house around Halloween that plays off the story, and it’s called the Hex House. For a while it was a parking lot for the Akdar Shriners of all people, so the legends got real crazy with all the freemason stuff. People would report cars starting on their own. Or they’d park in one spot and come out and the car would be parked somewhere else. Fun little ghost stories, but a bunch of nonsense.”
“Well, that explains those kids out there.”
“Yeah, my dad loved stuff like that. Not what happened with the women, but stories like that—urban legends.” She smiled as she said it, like she was reliving her childhood.
Soon we joined back up with I-44 heading northeast.
A huge tan and purple building shot up on the horizon and grew closer.
“What’s that?”
“Hard Rock Casino.”
Interesting. “Gambling is legal here?”
“It’s on Indian land. Big money for the tribes.”
“Right.”
Sean had told me almost everyone from Oklahoma had Native American ancestry. He was one thirty-second Cherokee and said almost everyone from Tulsa was to some degree.
The hotel was massive. A large Jumbotron screen said Willie Nelson was coming soon. I liked Willie. On the Road Again played in my mind. It was one of my many anthems. Music often kept me entertained on cold nights in the middle of nowhere. That was the great thing about music, nobody could take it away from you.
We passed the casino, and I saw a sign telling us we were in a place called Catoosa.
I-44 turned into the Will Rogers turnpike and veered northeast. If we kept going, we’d end up in Joplin and then St. Louis, according to Shirley. The land stayed the same, very green, lots of trees, rolling hills. The only break would be a U-shaped cutout in the trees for powerlines. A long stretch of wooden T-shaped poles with skinny ropes of wire sagged off to the horizon. Shirley was quiet, deep in thought. Anytime she said anything it was like she was having to force herself to make conversation.
Driving must’ve been her thinking place. I rarely drove anywhere, but thought it might be mine too if I did. Body occupied. Mind accustomed to driving every day, on autopilot. It would allow the brain to focus.
I didn’t want to disturb her, even though I did love hearing stories about the city. She had good insights. Maybe she’d come up with something I hadn’t thought of if I left her alone.
Signs let us know Claremore was coming up. We drove for a while, took an exit, zipped through the Pikepass lane, and looped around. We headed back southwest and passed through the city. There was an older downtown strip and most of the buildings were brick. It looked like any other downtown in a small city. We passed the J.M. Davis gun museum. That’s where I’d heard the name Claremore. It was the largest private gun collection in the world. I’d have loved to check the place out. Sean talked about going there as a kid. They had just about every type of firearm imaginable in the place. I liked firearms.
I made a mental list of places to visit.
Cain’s Ballroom.
J.M. Davis Gun Museum.
Admiral Twin Drive-In Theater.
Claremore was nothing but flat fields and rural farmland as we made our way to Route 66.
“There’s McCurdy Farms.” Shirley nodded off to the west side of the road just outside of town.
I glanced over. It made sense, right off the highway, a few quick miles from I-44. Trucks would pull in and out of the place. The speed limit on Route 66 was only sixty-five so I figured that’s why Shirley had taken I-44 and cut over. It was s
eventy-five on the turnpike. She might have gone this way to give me a chance to see the farm before we got to her friend’s place. I glanced around for security. Just fences along the perimeter, high ones, maybe eight feet. Chain link. It was odd. Most places I’d seen that size used a standard barbed wire setup. It was much cheaper. The chain-link was easy enough to get through, but I knew it’d only get more difficult the farther in I worked. It was like an outer cordon, especially if they had stuff to hide inside. There would be layers of security if they were smart.
There was a main gate at the entrance with a guard, two brick pillars on each side. The guard stood out front with a chair behind him, most likely checking-in visitors.
There was a building near the front. It was a regular office, bare bones, unremarkable. Used for administration. That’d be the place where Sean had worked. He may have even logged in to work remotely from home.
The rest of the farm was three long buildings with corrugated metal roofs that winked in the sun. They were standard structures, I-beams for frames. All three ran in long perfect rows. It must’ve been where they did all the canning, processing, etc. I pictured one for the generic brand, one for the premium, one for organic and raw produce. That’s what companies did in every industry, had different brands aimed at different consumers. It was the same in electronics. If you cracked open a television on a cheap brand and a nice one, all the components inside were likely identical and came from the same factory in China.
Next to the metal buildings were two giant greenhouses. If they grew pot, that’s where it would be. Maybe? Or not. Maybe they grew some of the organic stuff in there. The pot would be hidden. There’d be some kind of processing center out of sight. They’d only want necessary people involved.
Whoever ran the place was no dummy if they were breaking laws. It looked just like a corporate farm should. A huge billboard out front read MCCURDY FARMS in giant red letters. The corporate logo was a giant ear of corn.
The farm passed by and Shirley kept heading southwest.
“How much farther?”
“Maybe five minutes.”
“Your friend expecting us?”
She shook her head. “No. He doesn’t have a phone either.”
Savage Beast (Max Savage Book 1) Page 6
