“It’s nothing serious, sir, I assure you. We only need to get back to where she’s stashed. An hour—two, tops.”
The big Crown Victoria was so quiet and plush on the inside that, even doing eighty on the highway, Montez could still hear his boss’s troubled breathing through the cell phone connection.
“Very well, then,” the voice said. “Do it and do it quickly. And let me know the moment you have her secured.”
“Yes, sir,” Montez tried to say, but he was cut off when the receiver on the other end clicked dead, leaving him holding the burner phone in his curled fingers, just like his own limp dick. He frowned down at the cheap plastic brick, and then stared out the front window, taking the road not afoot and not light-hearted.
- 15 -
FOUR ON THE FLOOR
IT WAS LATE afternoon when Wolf spotted the big guy. The guy was at the end of the block and had his arms crossed in the universal you-will-not-get-past-me pose. Another three climbed out of a pickup truck and stopped about two steps behind the first, barring the way forward on the concrete sidewalk.
All four were big. All four were of the well-fed, cornhusker variety. Probably once football players destined for bigger and better things, now farm boys taking odd jobs just to get by. They were all wearing boots, jeans, and plaid flannel shirts ripped at the shoulders, white cotton T-shirts beneath. Two looked remarkably similar to one another and were probably brothers. The other two were probably ex-teammates, or had different mothers, fathers, whatever.
Wolf stepped forward to meet the lead guy. For her protection, he wanted to make sure Pearson remained behind him, tucked away safe and secure. But she maneuvered herself to stand alongside him. It was definitely a bad idea, but he could respect her for doing so. From where he stood, he could sense that these four were not here to welcome strangers or to offer any kind of friendly advice or to help them locate the missing girl. No, in fact, it was more than likely they were about to suggest that he and Pearson take a different direction, one that led out of town.
And just that simple fact made Wolf a little angry.
The lead guy folded his arms across his chest. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Wolf raised his chin and cracked his knuckles, one by one. Yeah, he thought it was a little cliché, but it was often effective. Usually, since he had about three inches of height on the biggest guy in the group, and weighed roughly the same, the guy just might decide to leave him alone. Wolf had often found his sheer size persuaded others to back down without a fight.
But not the dumb ones.
Seeing that these guys were not backing down, he drew himself up to his full height, pulling in a massive quantity of air, which he let go of slowly as he said, “No need for anyone to get hurt.”
“Oh?” the lead guy said. He turned to his buddies. “Well, then, we believe you might be mistaken. This is our town. We got enough of your types around here already.”
“And what type is that?” Pearson asked.
“Mexicans,” the lead guy spat through fat lips, then looked to his buddies for support. He smirked, pulling a corner of his mouth up and exposing oversized teeth.
Pearson chuckled at him. “You think he’s Mexican? You cow-shit-for-brains seriously think that? With blue eyes?”
“Shut up, bitch,” the lead guy said.
She just couldn’t, apparently. “You big Nebraska boys are too much. Who sent you here to bother us? And how much are they paying you? Enough, I hope.”
One of the three behind the lead guy stepped forward. He squinted. It wasn’t a good look for him.
“We don’t need to take any money for this. We are doing this for our town. Keeping it clean.”
The leader nodded and turned his palms upward. “See? This is all about eliminating the undesirables.”
Pearson stepped past Wolf and into the breech.
“‘Undesirables’ is such a big word for such a big guy,” she said. “You’re college educated, right? Maybe a year of remedial English…? Here’s what I think. I think you guys are all just washed-up football players who couldn’t get NFL contracts and are now back home crying to mommy and daddy about it.”
The leader said nothing, but it was obvious that she had him pegged.
“And,” she continued, “I’ll even bet that you now have to pay to get your dicks sucked. Am I right? No more freebies from the local farmers’ daughters? Or do you all take turns blowing each other?”
The swirling black in the leader’s eyes was almost enough of a prize for Wolf to take and walk away.
Almost.
Pearson seemed to know right where to hit the guys. It was a skill he wished he’d had. It usually took him a long time to come up with something good to say in a situation like this, and those few times when he did, it was often too late for it to count for much. This was yet another one of those times. He kept his mouth shut and said nothing. But maybe he did smile a little.
Pearson wasn’t quite done with the guys yet.
“Get out of our town?” she said in a mocking tone. “Are you guys like twelve years old?”
That brought all four of them closer together, almost shoulder to shoulder, which was just how Wolf liked them—in bunches. That way they would get in each other’s way when the swinging started.
“I do have a serious question, though,” Pearson said. “Can you tell me how far it is to the nearest hospital?”
That seemed to catch the four guys off guard, but only for a moment while they looked at each other long enough to reestablish their collective courage. Then the lead guy ground a fist into his open palm and cracked his knuckles like Wolf had.
“About time you find out, bitch.”
Guys who wanted to hit women? They had no place in Wolf’s world.
And what Pearson had been saying, her little statements of attempted wit and defiance, well, they had been a good delaying tactic, because he knew it was rather childish to say such things. But he also knew that she was there with him in knowing where this whole thing was going right from the start. It had also given him time to prepare and to size up each of the guys he now faced. He had to drop the lead guy first. And, in knowing that, he also knew it would cause the other three to have their come-to-Jesus moment and rethink their various life plans, suddenly seeing just what a bad idea it had been for them to have come after him in the first place.
So, if the first guy dropped fast, it might just force the other three to back away with their hands raised and apologizing.
But that was only a maybe because that was the smart play. Far too often, it had been his experience that these henchmen types turned out to be the fully committed to the cause kind, and would just stand still for a moment with blank looks on their faces, blinking furiously while they rethought the most important of life’s twin choices—fight or flight—and then foolishly go with fight.
These guys had apparently made their shared choice—the bad one. All four rushed Wolf at once, probably thinking they could overwhelm him quickly and take him out of the fight. But he was not about to oblige them by going down easily. His right arm was already coming up, and his elbow was already folded, and he had already shoved off hard from his back foot, using the entire mass of the earth to push against and add force to the blow.
The bone in his elbow smashed into the lower jaw of the lead guy and practically lifted him from the pavement. The noise of enamel shattering and bones snapping filled Wolf’s ears. Only inches from the guy’s face, he followed through on the blow by pushing the lead guy aside and bringing his right knee up and into the groin of the nearest of the other three. As that guy bent forward in testicular-wrecking pain, Wolf shoved him down onto the sidewalk with a straightened arm and maneuvered for space to take another run at those still of the vertical persuasion.
Two down, two to go.
The two who remained standing did not back off as would have been the smart play. They had separated. One was preparing to charge while the other
—probably sensing the only valid option left to him that might give him a chance—went for Pearson.
The guy that charged Wolf paid for it with a quick hip-twisting, sidekick to the belly that doubled him over and whooshed out all his air. He folded up and joined the other two already writhing about on the sidewalk.
Three down, one to go.
When Wolf spun to meet the final guy, that guy was still not about to give up so easily, which was an admirable trait under different circumstances. But, before Wolf could reach him, the guy came at Pearson and was preparing to grab her by the wrist and yank it behind her back, a move that would be used to make Wolf back down and step away.
But, as soon as the guy tried for Pearson, who was probably two hundred pounds his junior, she folded her hands around his wrist, gripped it tight, stepped inside his spread legs, and tossed him to the sidewalk while holding onto his wrist.
The guy’s wrist reversed, and the bone broke in a short, sharp crack, and the look on the guy’s face as he rolled onto his side and nursed his now dangling appendage was one of extreme regret for his previous actions, so Wolf decided not to add to the guy’s misery by breaking anything else.
Four down, zero dead, and no one went for weapons. Not too bad. He and Pearson could leave the four behind and just walk away. He could live with that. In fact, they all could live with that because they would have to live with that. Perhaps the pain these guys were now experiencing would lead to them reflecting on some of their choices in life. However, he doubted that these guys would learn much from their mutual experience, but he held out a slim hope that they would.
Life was a series of choices. Some bad, some good. While he’d made plenty of bad choices, there was no use dwelling on them. Or, at least, that was what he kept telling himself. But even after the hundredth retelling, that ‘dwelling on’ never seemed to go away.
Wolf glanced at the four lying on the concrete sidewalk in various states of pain. They had not come here as good samaritans as they had claimed, so what was truly important right now was knowing who had hired them and why they had been sent.
But, before he asked them in a way that would discover the truth, he flashed a half-smile at Pearson. What she’d done with that guy who’d come after her was smooth, efficient, and effective. He was impressed.
“State Judo champion,” she said in answer to his smirk. “Two years back to back. You?”
His grin widened. “Playground, third grade.”
- 16 -
HANDS UP, DON'T SHOOT
WOLF STOOD BEHIND Pearson as she knocked on the door of the small bungalow house at 331 E. Bidwell. She stepped back and they waited together, side by side. When there was no answer for several seconds, she stepped forward and knocked again. Wolf heard movement inside. Footsteps. Then the door swung open and a woman of about thirty answered. She was dressed in sweatpants that said PINK down one leg in raised purple letters and an oversized T-shirt with stains on the front. She held a child in one arm and a bottle with a nipple in the other. The kid was reaching for the bottle and squirming and making sour faces that reminded him of the deputy they had just left behind.
Pearson spoke first. “Excuse me, ma’am. Sorry for the interruption, but I really need to know where the sheriff is. Where he is right now.”
The woman gave an appraising look. “You can find him at the station.” She then bumped the door shut with one hip.
Pearson cocked her head, glanced sidelong at Wolf, then stepped forward and spoke through the closed door.
“Ma’am. He’s not at the station.”
The woman shouted back, “Then I don’t know where the hell he is. Go away!”
“It’s important that we speak with him. It might even be an emergency. I’m an investigator following up on a case. We’re looking for a runaway girl. Maybe you—”
“Check with Margaret then!”
Pearson backed up a step and glanced at Wolf. “Who?” she asked him, then repeated it louder and through the door.
“It’s his goddamned deputy. Now, go away! I mean it.”
The child inside the house began an angry cry.
Pearson looked at Wolf once more, and he just shrugged before backing off the porch onto the walkway leading to it. But she did not appear ready to give up just yet, so he stopped there and waited.
“Did he have a girl with him, ma’am?” Pearson called. “She was about sixteen years old, with long brown hair, wearing a jacket, blue top underneath.”
There was no sound for a moment, then the door swung open again on squeaky hinges. The infant in the woman’s arms was now sucking on the bottle greedily. Wolf made a funny face at the kid, and the baby responded by pushing the bottle away and reaching out toward him—fingers twitching in the air—which made the sheriff’s wife flash a puzzled look at them both.
“Do you know the girl?” the woman asked.
“Maybe, ma’am,” Pearson said. “Sorry to disturb you, but I came here all the way from Chicago. I’ve been…searching for a girl by the name of Rachael Stone. Maybe you’ve heard your husband mention her name in passing…? It would have been about a week ago.”
“No, but I did meet a girl he had with him earlier today. And I know her name was definitely not Rachael Stone, I can tell you that much. She said it was Melinda or Melody, or something like that. Could that be who you are looking for?” She stopped to readjust the baby. “I’m sorry, but I’m not really comfortable telling you any more than that. The girl, though, the one with him today…I’m pretty sure he’s taking her to Lincoln. And…I should probably let you know—I’ve already called Margaret. She’ll be here soon, so you’d better get going. And…I don’t think she was too happy to hear that you two came here.”
The door shut, this time with finality.
Pearson knocked again. “Ma’am?”
No answer.
She tried again.
Again, nothing.
It was Pearson’s turn to shrug. “Guess that solves that.”
And when Wolf turned and stepped down off the porch again and onto the walkway that led to the sidewalk, the deputy that he’d seen in the police station, the overweight one with the sourpuss face, well, she had her gun up now and was approaching at a run.
“Hands up where I can see them!” the deputy shouted as she slowed.
- 17 -
GET OUT OF JAIL FREE
BACK AT THE sheriff’s office on the second floor, Wolf accepted his Oklahoma driver’s license from Deputy Margaret Reid and slid it into the front pocket of his road-worn jeans. He squinted into the glare of a sunbeam while the deputy, frizzled hair outlined in a halo of white, returned Pearson’s identification, scraping it across the desktop to her.
“You both check out,” the deputy said, begrudgingly. “Now which one of you is going to tell me why you were bothering Eugene’s poor wife? Don’t you think she has enough to deal with, newborn baby and all?”
Wolf and Pearson turned to each other. Pearson crossed her legs and rested her folded hands on top of her knees. Wolf pushed up slightly, rocking his metal-legged chair onto two legs. The chair was almost too small for him and creaked under the strain.
Pearson spoke first. “If you would have been polite enough to have told us where he was in the first place, we wouldn’t have had to go there.”
The deputy frowned as she lifted her fingers and started drumming her thumb on the desk, then pushed back in her chair, which rasped in protest. She glanced at Pearson and back at Wolf, and spread her hands. “Big guy like you shows up on her front doorstep, which darn near scares the poor lady half to death. And—I might add—that was after Eugene told you specifically to get back on that fancy motorcycle of yours and ride on out of here, now, didn’t he? Why’d you not take that advice to heart when it was given the first time around?”
Wolf shrugged, a little.
The deputy continued, “All right—okay—before Carol contacted me, old Mrs. Pierce up the street called to say tha
t she saw you two beating up on a couple of our locals. What do you have to say for yourselves about that?”
Wolf and Pearson both said nothing.
The deputy nodded grimly. “At least you two match the description she gave—which, I can’t say was all that hard to get wrong. But, since they didn’t stick around long enough to give any kind of statement, you see, I can’t do much about it.” She waited, thumb still drumming its own tune. “Any idea where they might have gotten to?”
Some local hospital, is what Wolf had wanted to say but instead remained silent. The deputy glanced down at her thumb and stopped tapping it against the desk.
“Hmmm,” she mumbled. “Those boys are a known quantity here. Trouble, nothing but trouble. But they are our locals, and you are not. In a way, though—” She leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper. “—I’m actually a bit glad they found a little trouble of their own, after what they…” She shook her head and pulled back, suppressing a grin. “Without them around to press charges, I guess there’s not much I can do about it right now, so I’m going to let you two off with a warning this time. Just leave town and don’t come back.”
Pearson nodded warily and drew a breath. “Thank you…I suppose?” She looked at Wolf, looked back. “There’s something else I should tell you.”
Deputy Reid waited, one eyebrow ticking up slightly.
Pearson tilted her head toward Wolf. “He says he saw something today. Just outside of town. It could be nothing, but it seemed a little odd to me. At least odd enough to have it checked out. I’d like to have the sheriff take a look when he gets back. It’s probably nothing, but…”
The deputy leaned forward again. “What is it?”
Pearson hesitated for a moment, shook her head, and then straightened in her chair. “It’s nothing. Never mind.” She wet her lips. “So the sheriff will be back tomorrow? You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a decent place nearby to stay for the night?”
Wolf Who Walks Alone: A Raymond Wolf Mystery Novel Page 8
