by Robert Ward
They found Phil Holden at the Piñon Bar. He was standing at the bar downing a margarita. He wore a green silk shirt with blue parrots on it and white pants. He looked like an eighties refugee from Miami Vice.
Alex Williams introduced Jack, who noticed that Holden's face was bloated from alcohol.
“I understand you were up at the Tewa Pueblo yesterday,” Jack said. “Did you happen to see this girl?”
He showed Holden a picture of Jennifer Wu.
“Yeah,” Phil said, as he picked up his drink. “Yeah, I guess I did see her. She was standing over by the big round structure they got there. What's that thing called?”
“The kiva,” Jack said.
“Right, me and Dee Dee—that's my wife—we just come out of there and we saw this Chinese girl talking to some people.”
“What did they look like?”
“I don't know. Three or four guys. Not Indians, I don't think. They seemed to be asking her for directions. She kind of walked away with them . . . and she was pointing, you know, south, I guess. Like they were asking directions to Santa Fe, or someplace south of Taos, anyway.”
“You sure of this?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, I am.”
“Well then, yesterday, when the second Chinese girl came up and asked you where her sister went, why did you tell her you hadn't seen her?”
Phil shook his head.
“I don't know why I said that,” he blushed. “I just smelled bad news coming and I didn't want any part of it.”
“What do you mean, bad news?” Jack pushed. “We think that this girl, Jennifer Wu, was kidnapped and maybe you could have stopped it.”
“Yeah, I see that now,” Phil said. “I do. But I didn't know anything about that yesterday, right? I mean, for all I know, those Chinese girls coulda been in cahoots with the bikers. They get us to go somewhere with them and the next thing me and Dee Dee know is we're out in the desert somewhere, our money gone, and bullet holes in our heads.”
Jack sighed.
“You see what kind of rides the bikers had?”
“Couldn't be sure. Harleys maybe.”
“License plates?”
“Well, they were New Mexico plates, that's for sure. But I didn't get any of them.”
“Could you physically identify any of the guys who took her?” Jack asked.
“Not really. I didn't get that close and, you know, it's dark up there. Only moonlight. Now, if you guys don't mind, I'm going to order another drink and then take a nap.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jack said. “That's just fine. But I may want to talk to you again. Okay?”
“Sure,” Phil said. “Most exciting thing that's happened to me since I been here.” He took another sip of his drink and turned away from Jack.
“Does that help you at all?” Alex Williams asked, looking concerned, as they walked outside.
“Well, it confirms one thing. That Jennifer was taken by bikers.”
“Very unsettling, Jack,” Alex said. “Do you want to talk to any of her coworkers?”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Anyone she worked with in the nursing department. Speaking of which—what kind of a nurse is she?”
“Surgical nurse and a damned good one,” Alex said. “I'll work up a list of all her coworkers. You can tackle it after lunch.”
“Thanks for all your cooperation, Alex.”
“The least I can do. First, you saved me from a beating, and second, this is one of our own. We think of Blue Wolf as an extended family. What happens to one of us happens to all of us.”
“Y'know, I'd like to see Jennifer's room, if that's possible,” Jack said.
“Of course,” Williams said. “She lived on the fourth floor of the medical building, in the dorm rooms. I took the liberty of getting you a key. The only thing is, I can't allow you to ask questions of the guests on the first and second floors. Many of them are well-known people who pay quite a bit of money to have their treatments with maximum security.”
“Really?” Jack asked. “But what if she worked with some of them?”
“You can talk to the surgeons she worked with. But not the patients. We wouldn't be open for a week if word got out that our privacy rules had been violated.”
“All right,” Jack said. “You're the boss.”
Alex smiled and warmly shook Jack's hand.
“Now I've got to get back to work. I want to thank you again for standing up to those bikers. That took real courage. I won't soon forget it. And I'm sure you'll find Jennifer. The only thing is . . .”
“What?” Jack asked.
“I'm about ninety-nine percent positive she isn't around here. And if one of the cycle gangs took her, maybe you should be looking at them and their brothels. If they grabbed her right off the street, well, they could be hustling her out of the state right now.”
Jack nodded. “I know. Trust me, I'm on it.”
“Good,” Alex smiled. He waved good-bye and headed across the parking lot.
There was a separate door that led to the dorm rooms on the third and fourth floors of the medical building, and a skinny, pock-faced guard who sat at a desk ringed with cameras. On hearing Jack's name he let him in at once and pointed to the elevator to the fourth floor, then went back to playing his computer game, Dr. Dinky's Death Camp.
Jennifer's place was a one-bedroom apartment, neatly kept. There was much more of an Asian motif than Jack had seen in any of her sister's merely functional apartments. There was a Qing Dynasty red Suzhou cabinet. It must be a knockoff, Jack thought. The real thing would be ridiculously expensive . . . unless, of course, it was stolen. Michelle had always maintained that her little sister was straighter than straight, but one couldn't really believe much of anything Michelle said. For that matter, Jack thought, as he opened the doors of the chest, Michelle herself could have stolen the chest and given it to her sister.
With Michelle Wu and any of her friends or family, pretty much anything was possible.
He looked at a golden ceremonial robe on the wall and a floor screen with cranes and pines on it.
Jennifer was much more into her Asian heritage than Michelle, who veered from punk rock to super goth depending on her mercurial moods.
In her bedroom he found a jade-inlaid desk, which Jack guessed was made in Shanghai perhaps a hundred years ago. He looked at the wood—elm—and then tried to open the drawer, but it was locked. Jack took out his lock picks, and within two minutes the desk was open.
Inside were piles of papers and receipts wrapped with rubber bands, and a book of photographs of Michelle and Jennifer when they were young and a woman who might have been their mother. She had the girls’ good looks, and was wearing shorts and a halter top. Very rare for a Chinese woman of that era to show so much skin. Jack found himself forgetting why he was here as he leafed through the pictures. Just seeing Michelle's photos did something visceral to him—one part protective, one part desire.
Reminding himself why he was in this room, he looked under the bed, then in the medicine cabinet, and found nothing.
Then he saw it. The outline of dust on the desktop where a laptop computer must have been.
Whoever took Jennifer had also been here and found her computer.
Which could mean only one thing . . . she knew something, something that could be bad news for her captors.
In all likelihood, Jennifer's kidnapping was not just a random crime, nor was it a simple, impulsive revenge play by Lucky and his crew.
Lucky was probably involved, though, in some way. Maybe Michelle and Jennifer were in cahoots after all, and they were threatening Lucky's enterprise. Jack was walking back toward the front door when he heard someone in the hallway. He quickly ducked back into the bathroom and waited until the footsteps subsided. Standing there, he saw a pack of matches that had fallen behind the sink.
He reached down and picked it up. The Jackalope Ranch. Interesting. He put them in his pocket and quickly headed toward the front door.
Outside, Jack was walking around toward the back end of the medical building, trying to figure out a way to get inside, when he saw a blonde he'd noticed earlier that morning as she had been taking people around the grounds. She was a stunning-looking thirty-something woman with a terrific body, a fantastic smile, and intelligent eyes. She wore tight blue jeans and a Blue Wolf T-shirt.
“Hello,” she said, as they crossed paths, “my name is Kim Walker. I do publicity for Blue Wolf.”
“Jack Morrison,” he volunteered.
“I know,” she said. “You're the talk of the lodge. You saved Alex last night.”
“Maybe,” Jack said. “But he's a pretty tough guy. I bet he could have handled Lucky all by himself.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “Where are you heading, Jack Morrison?”
“Need to grab some lunch,” Jack answered.
“Why don't you eat with me here at the Piñon?” she offered. “We have great food, and maybe I can help you with that girl you're looking for.”
“You heard about Jennifer?” Jack asked.
“Of course,” Kim said. “And I've got my own little theory.”
“Really?”
“Really. Come along, Jack. I think you'll be interested in what I have to tell you.”
As they waited for their food, Jack smiled and looked hard at her. Her skin had an almost luminescent shine to it and her eyes actually twinkled when she spoke.
“Okay, here's the deal. Lucky Avila lives in an old converted motel not far from Blue Wolf. Just below us, actually. Fortunately, there's no road between his place and ours, but every once in a while some of the drugged-out bikers and other lowlifes who live there like to drive their cycles up to our property line and hassle our guests. This all started about five years ago. It was irritating at first but Alex decided to ignore them. That worked for a while, until one day about three years ago, a teenaged girl named Ellie Kozack went missing. The cops were called in, then the FBI. For a while, maybe two weeks, there was nothing, not a trace of her. Then a witness stepped forward, an old guy named Charlie Huff who was out of it on various prescription drugs, so no one knew whether to believe him or not. Anyway, he swore he saw Ellie getting on the back of a cycle. He said the driver looked like a gang member. He also said they were headed down to El Coyote, Lucky's place. The police came and looked all around but didn't find anything. Which, of course, means nothing. Whoever took her had her for at least three days before the search at Lucky's place. They could have all raped her, slit her throat, and buried her out in the desert by that time. Trust me, Jack, people disappear in the desert all the time and are never heard from again. Just about the only way they can be found is if animals dig them up and somebody, a hiker or someone like that, happens to cross paths with the body before the animals devour it.”
“So you think maybe the same thing happened to Jennifer?”
“I don't know. From what I heard your missing girl was up at the Taos Reservation but Lucky and his boys do a lot of business up there. Selling speed to the Indians. They could have bumped into her, got her to take a little ride . . .”
“No,” Jack said, “she was not the kind of girl who'd take a joy ride with bikers. If they took her they must have knocked her out.”
“Sounds more and more like Lucky,” Kim said. “He might do it on a whim. The guy is very impulsive.”
Jack looked at her with a thoughtful expression.
“What?”
“I don't understand why Alex didn't mention this.”
“That's easy. The case is closed, and Lucky would love to sue Blue Wolf. He's the most litigious person on the planet.”
“I see,” Jack said.
“You want my advice, I'd say get a search warrant and some help from the sheriff's office and go over Lucky's property with a fine-tooth comb. Before Jennifer Wu ends up like Ellie Kozack.”
“Not easy to get a search warrant based on hearsay evidence. I imagine if Avila is like many other motorcycle gang leaders he's got some big-shot lawyers representing him.”
Kim Walker shook her head and picked at her salad.
“That's bullshit. That girl could be on his property right now. Maybe she's still alive, but if I know Lucky Avila she won't be for long, and once she's dead no one will ever find her bones.”
She dabbed a speck of blue cheese dressing from her mouth.
“I have a feeling about you, Jack. You seem like a very capable man who wouldn't let a technicality like a search warrant stop you from saving a girl's life.”
She smiled warmly at him and Jack felt it deep in his bones.
Chapter Thirteen
Kim was right, Jack thought, as he left his car on a mesa top and looked down at Lucky Avila's spread, El Coyote. The place was situated under Blue Wolf, but a range of hills hid any sign of the spa from Lucky's old motel. There was a small guard shack in front of Lucky's place. Whatever went on in there, it was obvious Lucky wasn't interested in having people pop in to say hello.
Jack drove by and saw two beefy guards carrying rifles and sidearms. He wouldn't be entering anywhere near there.
What he did find about a mile down the road was a dirt trail that ran adjacent to Lucky's property. There was nothing to stop someone from parking on the trail and then crawling on his belly under the barbed-wire fence that bounded Lucky's land.
Which was what Jack did now, snaking his way under the fence, then running low across the land, hiding behind trees and cacti until he saw Lucky's back barns and small cabins. This, according to what he had learned from Kim, was where his men lived, but he saw no sign of them.
Perfect. He would start with the barn, then move to the cabins and see if he could find any sign of Jennifer Wu.
Jack slid down a dusty hill, hunched over, and made it to the faded red barn. The door was open and he slipped inside.
It really was a barn. There were horses, a hay loft, and some pigs who wandered through like they were looking for a friend.
Jack moved through the barn, looking for trapdoors that might lead to an underground cell. He had once read a study of kidnappers, and something like 78 percent of them put their victims underground. Many people's ultimate fear was of being buried alive. It made the kidnapper feel that much more powerful.
Jack smelled a particularly noxious odor in a stall near the barn door and looked in. There was a huge javelina pig with tusks that could tear a man's stomach apart. The pig stared up at him, and there seemed to be something shining and sinister in his eyes.
“Nice piggy,” Jack said. He started to turn around and head back the way he had come in, when something hit him in the back of the head.
He saw a few blue lights, and then hit the hard ground, out cold.
Jack dreamed that he was snorting like a hog. He could feel his nostrils turning hogesque and his legs mutating into hog feet. He could feel himself getting hog angry and ready to charge an interloper who was interrupting a nice sexy dream of a sow, who was giving him a lap dance.
Jack opened his eyes and looked into the sun. At first blinded, he then squinted hard and realized that the hog he had just been dreaming about was staring at him for real. He and the hog were no longer in the barn, but outside, with only a battered wooden fence between them.
He struggled to a kneeling position and saw how massive the animal was. It snorted and stared into his eyes.
Jack reached for the fence for support, but someone slapped his hand away.
Zollie, the heavy biker from the Red Sombrero, was standing over him. In his hand was a pump-action 500 Slugster shotgun, which he pointed at Jack's head.
“You waking up, hero?” the big guy asked menacingly.
“I could use a drink of water,” Jack said.
Zollie turned to his right to look at the great hog and Jack noticed he had a walleye and a cauliflower ear. Jack took him for an ex–club boxer, the kind of guy who inflicted a lot of damage but took twice as much.
Jack started to get to his feet, b
ut Zollie pushed him back down with the gun stock.
“Why you messing around in our business, mister?”
“I'm not. I just didn't like seeing you guys beating up on old people.”
Zollie slammed the gun stock into Jack's forehead, knocking him back into the mud.
“Don't you try to bullshit, me, pal. I know exactly why you're here.”
“Listen, big guy. I'm trying to find a woman. That's all. A woman named Jennifer Wu.”
“Bullshit,” said the big man, his face reddening in fury. “You're here to take Ole Biggie, my pet pig. I knew you was a pig stealing mother ever since I laid eyes on you at the Sombrero.”
Jack looked at the pig, who made another grunting noise as though he were in complete agreement with Zollie.
“I do not want your pig, Mister,” Jack said.
“Bullshit,” Zollie said again. “I know exactly what you aim to do with Ole Biggie, too. I've seen your kind before. I betcha you go green when you take a crap. But it's fine if you steal my pig and do some work on him, huh?”
Jack wondered which lunatic asylum Zollie had escaped from.
He looked back at the pig, who eyed him as a possible appetizer.
“I might jest let Ole Big here eat you up,” Zollie said. He walked over to the pig and petted the animal through the fence slat. The pig purred like a car revving at a stoplight.
Jack managed to pick up a handful of mud as he got to his feet.
“You think you can fool ole Zollie’ cause you got a college diploma. But you ain't about to.”
Jack walked toward him and the big man moved backward, keeping the shotgun on him, chest high.
“Don't get any ideas about running for it. Lucky told me he wants to talk with you but if you try and run I should do my thing. He wants to question you but that's all bull. ’Cause I know why you're here. Yessir, I do.”
He nodded his head up and down as if reassuring himself that he had Jack nailed.
Jack laughed and shook his head.
“I think I understand why you feel such a close kinship with that ugly, hairy, fuckface motherfucker and that's because you look just like him. Except he's a little better looking, warthog head.”
