Fire and Rain

by Katy Munger

  "Never heard of him," I said rudely, as if that would make a difference. And it wouldn’t, if what Bill was saying about Cody Sherrill was true. I do not date criminals. Not even the good-looking ones.

  "It happened twenty-three years ago," Bill explained. "But the case was never solved. Firewalker Coombs was the leader of the Renegades at the time. They may be seen as screw-ups now but, apparently, that club mattered back then. Firewalker Coombs was the reason why.”

  I had to ask the obvious question. "Why was he called Firewalker?" I said. There are two groups of people in the South unable to resist dumb nicknames—rich people and bikers. And I always wanted to know the stories behind them. It was a compulsion I could not resist.

  Bill looked embarrassed at knowing the answer. "I asked around. The old guys knew. Turns out Coombs was kind of a legend. They say he walked away from a wreck on I-85 about three years before he disappeared, literally through a wall of fire. Three men riding alongside him were killed instantly by a truck that switched lanes without looking. The driver freaked when he realized he’d hit a couple of bikers and lost control. He overcorrected and the rig flipped. There were bike parts and body parts scattered across all four lanes. But Coombs survived somehow. Witnesses say he was walking straight down the middle of the highway with his back on fire, looking as if he didn’t feel a thing."

  "He probably didn't, if he was in shock."

  "Nonetheless, that incident elevated him to the top of the Renegades food chain. The rest of their officers were dead, so Coombs took over. He stayed at the top until he vanished. But what I find most interesting about the whole thing is that Cody Sherrill was the last person seen with Firewalker Coombs before he vanished.”

  “They never found his body?” I asked.

  "Nope. The two of them were last seen arguing at a biker rally that was being held outside the racetrack in Statesville. Their disagreement led to an altercation between their clubs. Just about everyone got hauled in because of that fight, but when the dust had settled, Firewalker Coombs was missing. He hadn’t been arrested and he hadn’t been booked. He had disappeared during the fight and no one ever saw him again.”

  "That doesn't mean Cody Sherrill killed him."

  "Maybe not," Bill acknowledged. "But your Mr. Sherrill is still definitely not one of the good guys." He closed the folder and tapped it with his finger. "That was twenty-three years ago, Casey. Cody Sherrill was only twenty-two years old at the time, but he was already suspected of being the lead on an East Coast drugs and gunrunning operation. Things haven't changed much since then. We've never been able to nail him, but the gang division thinks he's the brains behind a major meth operation that stretches from New York City to Miami. They've nabbed some of the lower-level people, but they've never been able to go higher. And they think your man Cody Sherrill is at the top of the pyramid."

  "Or he's just the leader of a half-assed motorcycle gang that isn't good enough to be in the Hell’s Angels," I suggested stubbornly.

  "I wouldn't stake your reputation on that, Casey."

  “What does this have to do with what happened to Rats and Candy?” I asked.

  “Rodney Salem,” he said. “It was his bike we found abandoned outside the strip club yesterday. Where is he?”

  “He’s missing.” I shrugged. “That doesn’t mean he did it. He might be a victim, too.”

  “He’s the common denominator,” Bill explained. “He’s a Renegade now, but he started off in the Panthers. That’s the connection. And he left the Panthers just as your friend Cody Sherrill was taking over.”

  "Why are you telling me all this?" I asked. He was usually stingy as hell when it came to intel on my cases.

  "I want you to stay away from Cody Sherrill. That guy is bad news.”

  As much as I hated to admit it, Bill was right. But I pouted anyway. I felt like he had snatched my shiny new toy away before I could play with it.

  “What about the letters?” I asked. “And all those threats? Don’t they tell you anything?”

  “They sure do,” he said. “They tell me that the person who wrote those letters is not the same person who wrote the ransom note left at the hotel yesterday.”

  “So? That just means multiple people are involved.”

  Bill shook his head. “They’re not related. We’ve got a guy from Chapel Hill examining them now, but he’s already certain that whoever wrote those letters was all talk and no action. You’re going to have to trust me on this one.”

  “They did seem a little over-the-top,” I admitted grudgingly.

  “Exactly. Like someone’s been watching too much TV.” His phone buzzed and he glanced at the screen. “Gotta go. Get some more sleep. At the very least, it’ll keep you out of trouble.”

  And with that, Bill was gone, not even asking if he could top off my cup of coffee first. When I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I can't say I blamed him. I looked like an extra in The Walking Dead. My hair stuck out in wild clumps and mascara rimmed my eyes, making me look like a demented raccoon. Every wrinkle on my face seemed etched in stone. God, I was getting old. Too old to waste an entire night drinking myself into oblivion and the next day recovering from it.

  After twenty minutes of heaving up coffee and milk, plus stomach bile mixed with enough residual alcohol content to pass as jet fuel, I came to one clear conclusion: there was no way in hell I was staying in bed and sleeping the day away. I had wasted enough time already.

  ●

  I have been called pigheaded, willful, and more stubborn than a Mexican mule on a cold morning. I plead guilty on all counts. The truth is pretty simple: I do not like to be told what to do. I raised myself, then I clawed my way up to where I am today, and I did most of it without help from anyone else. So I don't really appreciate people acting like I don't know what I’m doing. Especially ex-boyfriends who have no business poking into my personal life.

  At least, that was what I told myself as I began the painful process of looking and feeling human again so that I could track down and question Cody Sherrill.

  Maybe I was looking for an excuse to see him, or maybe I just wanted to piss Bill Butler off. Maybe I was even working on the case. I don't know. I just knew that I was going to need a heavy-duty concealer to hide the bags under my eyes and the scratches on my cheek, wounds that I dimly associated with trying to find the door to the Ladies Room at the bar the night before. While spackling would not have been out of order, given what I was up against, I contented myself with a solid hour’s worth of painful bathroom preparations—finishing the tail end of a concealer stick and a tube of liquid foundation in the process—before I managed to make myself look like something the cat drug in, rather than something the cat had first mauled and then pissed all over. After that, I made myself eat buttered egg noodles and drink a Coca-Cola while standing over the sink in case it all came back up. It was touch-and-go there for a moment, but in the end it stayed down. My home remedy had not failed me. Trust me, when it comes to hangover remedies, this one works. I’ve perfected it over decades.

  Ten minutes later, I was in my battered Porsche and heading toward the outskirts of Garner, where the Panthers liked to hang out. Burly had not told me a lot about his club days, but I knew that their territory stretched from the eastern edge of Wake County through Johnston County towards Goldsboro. He had often talked about a bar called The Oasis on Highway 70, and I was pretty sure I would find at least some of the Panthers there in mid-afternoon. Find one, I knew, and you’d likely find them all.

  It was close to 4:00 PM by the time I found the bar, though recognizing it in the first place was something of a miracle. From the highway, it looked like little more than a one-story shack that sprawled across an asphalt acre abutting the highway. The Oasis was painted a pale green that was flaking off in the afternoon sun. The screen door sagged from its hinges and looked as tired as I felt. I climbed the concrete block steps to the entrance and stepped gratefully into the artificially-cooled atmosph
ere of a roadside bar on a hot Indian summer Carolina afternoon. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the lighting, but when they did I understood why the Panthers liked to hang out there. The place was immense, despite its misleading exterior, but shallow so that you could keep an eye on the doors and get out quickly if trouble started.

  A scarred wooden bar ran the length of the room, except for two rooms that had been built on either end of the main building, like barbells on the end of a lift bar. The two end areas accommodated what looked to be world-class pool tables. All together, there was enough room in the Oasis for two hundred people to belly up to the bar while another thirty played pool. In other words, paradise.

  A couple of old men sat at the bar. Neighborhood regulars who were tolerated, I guessed, or maybe just really, really, old bikers. Who knew? Old bikers had to go somewhere, just like everyone else, and a nursing home seemed an unlikely fit. The rest of the place was nearly empty, except for one group of men who sat at an oval table near the front door. I thought I recognized a couple of the guys from the strip club show a few days before. One of them recognized me back.

  "Hey," he said, pushing an empty chair toward me with his foot. "You're Burly's old lady, right? Have a seat.”

  "I was his girlfriend," I corrected him, joining them at the table. The smell of their beer welled up in a cloud. I inhaled the dusky odor of stale hops and unwashed floors and thought I would puke right then and there. I managed to keep it down with Herculean willpower. Vomiting all over their leather jackets would not help my stature with these guys. But man, I was not going to last unless I took drastic measures.

  "Be right back," I mumbled and fled to the bar. A bartender with a nasty cheek scar silently served me a double Jack on the rocks. I drained it and ordered a Coca-Cola chaser. He slid it across the bar with a look of pity and I wondered how many alcoholics he served this way each day. I took the Coke back to the table and reclaimed my seat. The men stopped talking the instant I rejoined them. I was too hung-over to pick up on what they had been talking about, but I was pretty sure it was either something illegal or an in-depth discussion about the size of my ass.

  "What brings you here?" the meanest-looking of the bunch asked. His voice was curiously high-pitched for such a mountain of a man. He was over six feet tall and weighed close to three hundred pounds, with a weird Japanese warrior-like topknot that sprouted from his head in a tangle, as if daring anyone to make fun of him.

  I could not take my eyes off his ridiculous whale spout of hair. He was overcompensating for sounding like Minnie Mouse, no doubt. I could only imagine what his girlfriend looked like. Probably a water buffalo.

  I realized then that I was the only woman in the bar. I thought I knew why: most of the women who hung out with the Panthers had day jobs as administrative assistants, nurses, or dental hygienists. They worked hard all week, earning the money to pay the rent, while their men were hard at work doing everything they could to escape having day jobs. Sunday afternoon was probably the only time those women had to themselves and they chose to spend that free time sober and elsewhere. This realization affirmed at least one life choice of mine: I lacked the temperament to be a biker chick. I would have had to fight the urge to give my old man a kick in the ass each morning until he manned up and got a damn job.

  "I'm looking for Cody Sherrill," I told my tablemates. I did not appreciate the knowing looks that passed between them. "But not for that reason," I felt compelled to add.

  Man, that bunch gave nothing away. And what a motley crew they were, even without the Samurai biker dude. If any of them had ever been young and hot, it didn't show. They were all between forty and sixty years old and every single one of them had clearly led a hard drinking life. Their bellies hung over their belts like they were carrying twins and they had more wrinkles than Willie Nelson. And for a bunch of supposedly nonconventional guys, they sure did dress alike. Black tee shirts with various insignias on them, ranging from the ubiquitous Harley logo to one fearless guy wearing—ironically, I hoped—a Justin Bieber tee shirt. Their greasy jeans looked as if they could walk across the bar and order a drink all on their own. Each man also wore heavy boots draped in chains and spurs and, of course, they wore black leather jackets with the Panther insignia that marked them as members of their club. The only thing that distinguished them from each other was the degree of their obesity and the amount of hair they had, which ranged from Mr. Topknot to another big dude with a shaved, bullet-shaped head to a skinny guy with long graying hair he'd pulled back in a ponytail, an ill-advised look given his eroding hairline. None of the bikers seemed the least bit interested in me, not that I could blame them. I looked like Tara Reid after a bender. One of the bikers, a guy in his forties with dirty blond hair, had slipped away to a spot by the bar and was talking into his cell phone. I was pretty sure I knew why.

  Twenty minutes of unenthusiastic small talk later—and, trust me, small talk with bikers is about as easy as teaching a hound dog to dance—my hunch was confirmed when Cody Sherrill strode through the front door of the bar. He came barging in like the sheriff of a Western town who has spotted a bank robber in the local saloon. Every eye turned to him and his boots jangled with each long stride toward me.

  The heavens should have opened up for me at the sight of him. After all, that was exactly what had happened at the strip club. But all I felt was curiosity. Maybe my estrogen was too diluted by Jack Daniels from the night before. He looked a lot older than I remembered, and the cocky walk I’d found sexy a few days before now seemed a little too forced. Yeah, he was still a lean, mean sex machine. But for the first time, I wondered if maybe his weight was maintained with methamphetamine and if the glint in his eye was chemically induced.

  I, of course, had no room to throw stones. I looked like I belonged on a slab in the morgue. But Cody Sherrill was enough of a gentleman, or perhaps enough of a businessman, to pretend not to notice. As he approached, the bikers at my table stood up silently and headed toward the pool tables to shoot a few games. That left me and Cody alone to talk.

  The trouble was, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. Mostly, I just wanted to get a feel for who he was. I didn’t want to take anyone else’s word for it. I wanted to decide who and what he was for myself. I wanted to know if he was a killer.

  He sat as close as possible to me without actually being in my lap. I expected a tingle but all I got was the recognition that he smelled slightly musty, as if he had worn the same clothes one day too many. Was the bloom off the rose? Maybe. He’d seemed ruggedly handsome a few days ago, but now I noticed the damage that a lifetime of hard partying and hard riding had done to his face. His skin was sallow in some patches and ruddy in others. Worse, he needed to go to the dentist. Up close, his teeth had so much plaque they looked like they had tiny little yellow sweaters on them.

  Damn, but I hated it when my illusions were busted. Just give me a dream I can hold on to.

  When he leaned toward me and smiled, I smelled mint. At least he had bothered to pop in a stick of gum for me. I'll take my compliments where I can find them.

  The bartender brought him a beer without being asked. I was amused to see he drank Bud Light. Had to protect his girlish figure, I guess.

  "Not drinking today," Cody asked as he eyed my Coke. My double Jack, at least, had remained a mystery to him.

  "Massive hangover," I explained. I was pretty sure my appearance told him the rest.

  "Yeah, I heard about Rats. I was sorry to hear that. He was a good guy."

  "Yes, he was," I said, more fiercely than I had intended. "He didn't deserve what happened to him." Unexpected anger welled in me and I had a brief mental image of what I would do to Cody Sherrill if he turned out to have had anything to do with Rats being killed. My mental image involved lots of his body parts being rearranged in impossible anatomical combinations. I was surprised by my own ferocity.

  "No, Rats didn't deserve it," Cody agreed. “But then, people seldom deserve what happen
s to them. Haven’t you noticed?”

  He was eyeing me like a butcher evaluating a carcass for prime cuts. It unnerved me. Normally, I would have liked it. But I had the uneasy feeling that, quite suddenly, he had become the predator and I was the prey. A disjointed mood surrounded us, as if the situation might turn from cordial to raw violence in an instant. Given my current condition, that meant I was in over my head.

  I do not second-guess myself often but I suddenly wondered if this trip had been a good idea.

  "Is that why you're here to see me?" Cody asked. "You wanted to talk about Rats? Or could you just not stay away from me any longer?"

  God help me, I laughed. It was a terrible line. "Maybe a little bit of both," I actually said, although I had the decency to be ashamed of myself. "Mostly I'm here to see what you know about Rodney Salem. The cops think he had something to do with what happened to Rats. You know about Candy Tinajero going missing, right?"

  Cody nodded. "Word went out. Everyone's been keeping an eye out. I haven't heard anything that might help."

  I could not tell if he was telling the truth or if it was all lies. Something told me he did not distinguish between the two. I leaned back, needing to put distance between us. It was as if my body was trying to warn my brain. It's usually the other way around.

  "But you knew Rodney?" I pressed him, aware that he was now inching away from me in return. This was becoming a Cold War.

  "I knew him a little," he admitted.

  "But he was in your club once?" I said.

  "He was. Sort of."

  "What's that supposed to mean?”

  "Why do you want to know?"

  “His sister is a friend of mine,” I said. It was only a little white lie. Frieda Salem had served me homemade chicken salad. That pretty much made her a friend for life, in my book. “She's worried about her brother. She thinks something happened to him."