Here was a multipurpose room, with the lines for a basketball court tiled into the floor and a stage’s proscenium standing at the far end. This morning, a stainless-steel coffee urn burbled on a folding table beneath blue stained-glass windows protected from fun and games by wide wire mesh. Decimated boxes of pastry stood beside it. An institution-sized pickle jar, with a slit cut in the lid, was stuffed with one- and five-dollar bills—and an awful lot of change. The men in this church-run shelter might not have had much, but they were willing to share anyway.
In the middle of the gymnasium, a handful of men rolled up thin pallets topping creaky metal bed frames before folding them, too, and storing them against the far wall. I approached a guy tugging a full, heavy-duty trash bag from its bin. Like a boar’s bristles, stubble sprouted on his chin and cheeks, and his cool blue eyes had sunken into his lined face. All in all, however, I guessed he was much older than Marc and me. And that hardship had made him haggard before his time.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said to him. “I’m looking for Dustin Toomey. Is he here this morning?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The bristly man pointed a callused finger at another guy across the room. “That’s him. Over there.”
Marc and I got a long look at the back of the man in question. His sandy hair had grown a little shaggy and the heavyweight flannel-chamois shirt he wore was the color of charcoal briquettes. The shirt’s elbows, however, had been patched with suede the color of the sky outside, and that wasn’t some fashionable affectation. Dustin Toomey had worn that garment and mended it rather than spend money on another. That meant he loved it. Or he didn’t have a lot of cash to waste on his wardrobe. The real reason could’ve been a little bit of both, but given that Toomey was sleeping in a charity shelter, I’d have said he didn’t have a lot of change to spare.
Marc and I approached Toomey cautiously, arcing toward him to take his measure from the side. The man was an unknown quantity. And while folks usually checked their firearms and other weapons at the door when they walked into a church, the procedure was far from a certainty these days. But Toomey held nothing worse than a clipboard in his hands. And he remained intent on scribbling down notes as Marc and I neared.
“Dustin Toomey?” I asked, halting a good three feet away from him.
He didn’t even look up. “That’s me.”
“We’d like to ask you a few questions about Elena Preble.”
That got Toomey’s attention. He turned to face us, blinking like a deer in headlights. But it was the clerical collar at his neck that drew my eye and held it.
Chapter 27
Elena Preble’s boyfriend, it appeared, was a man of the cloth. Marc reached this obvious conclusion the same time I did. Unfortunately, he was a lot less tactful about it.
“You’re a goddamn priest?” Marc roared.
More like a pastor, I thought.
Catholic priests weren’t the only Christian clerics who wore so-called dog collars. Since the Presbyterians got the ball rolling after the Reformation, clergy from plenty of Protestant denominations sported the symbol alongside their Catholic brethren. And none of those denominations barred their members from a little wholesome dating. So, if Dustin Toomey and Elena were indeed an item, it wasn’t exactly a scandal. Even if Marc couldn’t quite see it that way.
Toomey, however, didn’t take offense at Marc’s outburst. Even if his smile was on the sad side. The sparkle in the minister’s dark blue eyes, however, was pure mischief.
Before Marc could make matters worse, I said, “I hope you can forgive my colleague. He doesn’t get out much.”
Marc scowled at me.
Toomey said, “It’s okay. Forgiveness comes with the job.”
Neither Marc nor I reacted.
And that made Toomey laugh.
“It’s a joke,” he assured us. “A little religious humor. Really, it’s all right. You can say anything you want to me.”
“How about you say things,” Marc told him. “About Elena.”
Toomey’s demeanor cooled. His wariness suggested he’d been expecting someone to come looking for Elena. But since his lawyer wasn’t hovering over him like the shadow of Doom and he himself was still in one piece, I figured we were the first visitors to come calling.
“Elena…” Toomey tucked his clipboard beneath his arm and led us away from the men tidying the gymnasium. “It’s a nice name.”
Marc’s fists clenched.
I nudged him with my elbow.
We’d reached a swath of retractable bleachers. They could collapse against the wall, accordion-style, if anyone wanted to use the multipurpose area for a non-spectator event, but today, the rows were extended fully. Toomey invited us to have a seat on one of the lengths.
“You sit,” Marc growled at him. “We’ll stand. And you’ll answer my questions.”
But Toomey didn’t do any such thing—except consider Marc closely.
“You’re Marc Sandoval,” he realized. “Cody’s father.”
“Do you know Cody?” I asked.
But Toomey plowed right past my question with one of his own. “Is Cody all right? Elena told me not to worry. She said he was with you, but if you’re here—”
Marc’s jaw tightened.
I said, “You’ve seen Elena? Recently?”
“She came to see me.”
“When?”
“Last Monday.” Pastor Toomey sank onto a bleacher. “I’ve been worried about her ever since.”
He wasn’t the only one.
I said, “Did Elena usually come to see you on Mondays?”
“No. Opening this shelter has taken a toll on our relationship. Neither Elena nor I have been happy about that consequence. But we both believe my running this place is the right thing to do. I mean, look at these men.” Toomey swallowed hard. “For some of them, making good in Fortune’s Crossroads is their last chance. Elena understands that. She knows what it’s like to feel you can’t get out from under your past mistakes. So do I.”
“But you were still seeing her,” I persisted.
“We talk most nights, but I only get back to Colorado every six weeks,” Toomey admitted. “Once a month, Elena drops Cody at her parents’ and flies up for the weekend. She stays at a cabin belonging to a friend of hers.”
“You and Elena have been hooking up in Sam Brewer’s cabin?” Marc demanded.
Now it was Toomey’s turn to scowl. He rose to his feet, looked Marc dead in the eye. “I care deeply for Elena. I respect her. I respect my calling as a pastor, too.”
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t having sex with her. Yet, even if he were, the matter was between him, Elena, his denomination’s leadership, and the Almighty. It surely wasn’t any of Marc’s no-never-mind.
I said, “Did Elena tell you she ran into someone last week? Someone from her past?”
“Like someone from her Adderall days? She’s not into that garbage anymore.”
“How do you know?” Marc challenged.
But I found it far more significant that Elena had told Toomey about her past drug problem. Obviously, she and the pastor were close no matter what he said about their physical distance—and through him, this was the closest Marc and I had come to her. We couldn’t afford to alienate him if we wanted to find her before Ribisi did.
I said, “Pastor Toomey, you probably know about Elena’s final case. It involved sending a gangster to prison. And protecting his battered wife and child.”
Toomey neither confirmed nor denied that Elena had told him any of that.
But I had his full attention now.
“Did Elena mention running into that battered wife, just last week, in Manitou Springs?”
Toomey might’ve answered me.
But as if it were closing time at the local pub, a shabby fellow with a clanging handbell hollered, “That’s time, gentlemen! Everybody out!”
“I’m sorry,” Toomey shouted over the racket. “We have to be out of the building by nine. Otherwi
se, the town council will swoop in and close us for being a flophouse. They may be monitoring us from the parking lot outside.”
Toomey moved down the basketball court’s sideline, herding the slowest sheep of his flock toward the exit.
But I wasn’t going to let him shake me off that easily.
“Come with us. We’ll buy you breakfast.”
Toomey glanced from Marc to me and back again. “Marc, you’re a federal agent, aren’t you? DEA, I understand.”
Marc folded his muscular arms across his chest. His jacket gaped. And gave the pastor a glimpse of the service weapon, holstered at his hip.
“Marc’s not here in an official capacity,” I added.
I could see the wheels turning in Toomey’s brain as he grabbed a ratty messenger bag from a series of coat hooks on the wall, coiled a wool scarf around his throat. He desperately wanted to protect the woman he loved. He wasn’t sure how best to do it. But I was pretty sure he knew what Elena needed protection from. Toomey slung his bag across his torso to buy a little thinking time, and all the while, the shabby fellow kept up that infernal ringing.
I took a chance. I reached out, clasped Toomey’s hand in my own.
“Elena’s worked hard to put her history behind her,” I shouted over the din. “But now she’s got bigger problems than Adderall. That gangster is gunning for her. Just days ago, he killed her father, and he put her mother and brother in the hospital. Help us so he can’t hurt Elena—or Cody.”
Toomey’s forehead creased as he weighed what I’d had to say. The ringing ceased. And the silence was deafening.
In the echoing quiet of the church hall, Pastor Toomey’s voice was sure and strong.
“I can’t let harm come to Elena, or that blessing of a boy, Cody.”
“Then tell us where Elena is.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. I have to meet the town council right now. Half of them are pressuring the church to throw out my two hundred and thirty residents, and the other half want to fund us. I have to talk to the council, and then I’ll talk to you.”
“When?”
“Meet me here at five. The men aren’t allowed in until six. I’ll tell you everything you need to know. If possible, I’ll get Elena to tell you about it herself.”
With that, Toomey strode from the hall.
And with hooded eyes, Marc watched him go.
“That was too easy,” he complained. “He’ll lie to us about Elena’s location, babe, and then he’ll find some reason buried in his faith to rationalize why he lied.”
“No, he won’t. He’ll tell the truth. But it’ll be difficult for him.”
“How do you figure?”
“Toomey wants to do the right thing. He just isn’t sure what the right thing is.”
Marc snorted at this assessment.
And I rounded on him.
“When was the last time you did the right thing, Marc? How easy was it for you to decide to do it?”
Marc’s black eyes went wide. He stuttered as he tried to come up with an answer. And flushed when he realized he didn’t have a ready one.
“Never mind,” I told him. “I’m not your confessor.”
I left Marc in the middle of the gymnasium, made tracks for the parking lot. We needed to tail Toomey pronto. Because he was probably headed to his town council meeting, just as he’d said. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t make a pit stop. Toomey could lead us straight to Elena—if she was holed up nearby.
Outside, in the parking lot, Marc scrambled into the SUV’s passenger seat as I fired up the vehicle’s engine.
“Jamie, believe me, I—”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
I caught sight of Toomey, hoofing it along the state route that formed the cross street at the heart of Fortune’s Crossroads, his wool scarf flapping behind him, his shoulders hunched against the wind. Every other car tapped their horn at him in friendly greeting. He returned each salutation with a wave—until a rusted-out Ford Taurus, now browner than whatever it had been fresh from the factory, swerved to the berm and offered him a lift.
Toomey hopped into the car.
And I threw the Honda in gear to tail him down the road.
Chapter 28
If the Fortune’s Crossroads’ town council held their meetings on the ground floor of a falling-down grain elevator alongside a wide set of railroad tracks that trailed off into the distance, then Marc and I had come to right place.
In the elevator’s dusty dirt lot, the brown Ford paused long enough for Toomey to slip out and head inside, messenger bag and all. The business office in the squat building between the silos had to be open, though this early in the spring there probably wasn’t a lot of work to be done. Farmers might bring truckloads of winter wheat, sell it to the elevator for the futures price that had been established months ago, upload the grain into one of the elevator’s four squarish towers, and drive away. Then it would be up to the business office of the elevator itself to sell tons of the grain to commercial processors and other concerns that would mill the wheat into flour, which in turn would end up in the mixing bowls at my favorite bakery back in Georgetown, and eventually show up in the blueberry scone I’d nibble at my desk. For now, however, the Fortune’s Crossroads grain elevator seemed to be a sleepy place with only seven or eight trucks holding down the dust outside—and Dustin Toomey up to something inside.
“I’m going in to take a look,” I told Marc, swinging the Honda around and backing it between a hard-used Ford F-350 and a dilapidated Chevy Silverado with a long crack snaking across its windshield.
“That’s not a good idea,” Marc warned. “There’ll be no one but locals in that office, babe—and most of them will be men.”
My father, the general, firmly believed our world belonged to the male of the species—and dissenting opinions on that topic had never been discussed in our house. He wanted his only daughter to be able to function in that world, however, so thanks to his tutelage, I could gut a fish, fire a shotgun, and hit my target nine out of ten times before I turned twelve. And though I could hold my own, Marc had a point, even if I didn’t like to hear it.
“You draw their notice,” he said, “and you’re done.”
Marc was right about that. The first rule of surveillance meant preventing the target from knowing you’re on to him. If I walked into the grain elevator’s business office, I’d draw every eye to me as a stranger and maybe the only woman in the room, and it would be awfully difficult to blend into the background and study Toomey at that point.
“I’ll go,” Marc said, not unkindly. “If I’m stopped, I’ll say I’m looking for a job. Besides, Elena—and Toomey—are my problem. I should’ve never dragged you into it.”
I wanted to argue.
Except Marc was right on all counts.
Not so patiently, I watched him trot up the wide wooden stairs of the main building and disappear inside. A minute crawled past. Then two.
An ancient pickup rattled into the lot. An old man in a feed cap climbed out. He took so long tottering up the steps that I was tempted to jump from my vehicle and tow him indoors.
At least the old man isn’t Marshal Douglas, I told myself.
And he wasn’t likely to be one of Max Ribisi’s enforcers, either. I couldn’t say whether Elena knew those goons were hunting her, but I suspected Dustin Toomey’s hesitation to talk meant he had a good idea someone uglier than me or Marc would come after her. He could be on his cellphone with Elena right now, warning her about that danger—if he hadn’t walked right through the grain elevator’s office and out the back to go see her.
Determined to cut off that route, I slid from the Honda, circled wide to walk where last year’s weeds grew in hanks at the edge of the smoothed dirt. A northern wind whipped through the weeds and threatened to slice me in half, too. I’d never hear anyone approach me with the wind whistling in my ears—but I’d surely see them coming. In the field beyond the parking patch, nothing i
nterrupted my view from where I stood to the earth’s gentle curve. And that perspective made me feel unbelievably small.
Train tracks, black with age, swooped in from the east. The rails split into a main line and a bypass the closer to the elevator they came. The silos towered over me from this angle. They stopped the wind the moment I stepped into their shade. And nestled between them, like the runt of the litter, was the elevator’s business office.
Grimy windows flanked each side of the office block’s battered back door. But the door let onto a short walk off a wide platform, built of concrete and about four feet high to accommodate the trains. If Toomey had come this way, there’d be no place for him to go except down onto the ground and through the open fields until he hit Canada, along the train tracks east or west, or around the cluster of silos and back to the vehicles out front.
No, Toomey had to be inside, even if I could only see blocky silhouettes shifting across the dirty window on the left. Those shadows likely belonged the town council. In the window on the right, a woman came close to the pane, lifted some papers from a desk or shelf below. From my position on the tracks below the platform, I couldn’t see much other than her rather flat chest, but she probably wasn’t Elena. This woman worked in the office here, and behind her, the sharp outline of a man looked an awful lot like Marc’s.
His silhouette shifted, passed from view. And in my jacket pocket, my cellphone jangled. Marc’s name lit up my caller ID.
Dropping beneath the lip of the concrete platform and out of sight of the windows, I answered the call.
Marc’s voice crackled with static. “Where are you, babe?”
“Got my eye on the back door.”
I glanced around for a cellphone tower. Though ubiquitous everywhere else in this great nation of ours, they were thin on the ground in North Dakota. And Marc’s voice faded and returned as a result.
The Kill Wire Page 17
