Cope gunned the bike and put it on the highway. Dust curled up behind us and hung for a moment in the dark, thick summer air before disappearing.
“What’s up, Darcy?”
“I know him. I know that cop.” I banged a fist against the sidecar. “Damnit. What the hell is he doing here?”
“What? Y’all know that one? Ain’t I told you we supposed to be avoiding the cops?”
The bike picked up speed, slipping, I hoped, into the darkness. Behind us, getting further away, were the cop’s taillights. Smaller and smaller and then flashing brilliant red.
He was slowing down.
Then turning around, red lights to white and growing fast.
“Fuck. Go go go go.”
“White-Boy, who—”
“Kurston. It’s fucking Kurston. The detective looking for me.” I banged on the front lip of the sidecar, the fiberglass cracked beneath my blow.
“The one you thought was at the Church?” The color drained from Cope’s face.
“Yeah.”
He kicked the accelerator back as far as it would go, but the bike hardly moved forward. “We ain’t going much of anywhere.”
“Just go.”
“Darcy, ain’t no way in hell this is going to outrun that.”
The car grew, larger and larger as it bore down on us. No emergency lights, no siren, but moving quick. Cope squeezed the handlebars so tightly his hands bled white. His thighs pressed against the gas tank, digging in like spurs in a horse’s side.
Then the emergency lights snapped on and they flooded the road with red and blue and still he kept coming. Faster and faster.
Was he going to drive right over us? Hammer us down, take care of me and too bad about the other guy, whoever he’d been?
A quick snap of the steering wheel and the cruiser flew out around us, the siren on now, gouging the air. The squad drew even with us and still Cope poured on the gas. He had no intention of stopping and even though I wanted him to lose Kurston, I couldn’t believe Cope wasn’t going to stop for the cops.
Then the cruiser was gone. A blast of warm wind, of dust and exhaust stench. Quickly left us far behind while it melted into the dawn. The face was gone, too.
It hadn’t been Detective Kurston. Yeah, stone-chiseled face. Yeah, handle-bar mustache. Yeah, thinning hair. But not Kurston.
My breath was blast furnace hot in my chest, gold stars in my vision. I fell back against the side car as Cope released the gas and the bike lurched. Cope didn’t jam the brakes, didn’t put the thing into a power slide to stop it. He just let it roll to a stop, then snapped the engine off.
There was a laugh in his voice. “I got fifty-two years running. That’s about the second closest I ever come to getting popped.” He ran his ringed fingers over his head, as though he could make himself invisible if he wiped away the sweat.
“Yeah? What’s the first closest?”
“Roy the Poh-leece.” He cocked his head toward me. “Both’a them times today and both’a them times with you. Y’all got some bad mojo going.”
“Yeah...well...I thought you figured that part out already. I thought that was why you grabbed me up off the sidewalk and took me to the church. To help fix that mojo.”
“Hell, no, it wasn’t.” Cope shook his head. “Gotta fill that damn quota. Get so many new members a month and get me a ‘lectric toaster.”
For about ten minutes, we caught our breath. Eventually, Cope put us back on the road.
“Fifty-two years? Sounds like an entire lifetime.”
“Damn near my whole life.” He nodded, gave the tired, old bike a bit more gas. “Parents are dead.”
Was the heat even there? Were we suddenly in the Artic? The cold polar wind froze my insides. Dead? Couple that with being a member of the church and I came up with two and two is four, we got us a parental murderer. I wanted nothing but to know my own parents and Cope had killed his. He had casually tossed away something that I had fought my whole life to find.
Cope chuckled. “I got blood on my hands, but not theirs.”
“What happened?”
“This and that. Grands raised me for about a year. I been running since then.” His eyes glassed over, as though grabbing a memory from far along the horizon. “Ever been woke up in the middle of the night? Every night...2:04 a.m. He’d feed me macaroni and cheese, we had any, then we’d say some prayers, a little hellfire and brimstone, see the wicked world for what it was, then go back to bed.”
“2:04?”
“When his daughter died.”
“His daughter?”
“My mama.” He swallowed visibly. “Daddy died, too, but Gramps didn’t care so much about that. Thought my daddy was a piece of shit.”
“Was he?”
“I didn’t think so. They were drunked up, screwing in the back of the car, parked on the damned railroad tracks. Maybe they didn’t know, maybe they did and didn’t care. Didn’t matter either way, I guess.”
“How’d you get into the church?”
Cope ignored my question, pasted a soft, ill-fitting smile on his face. “Tell me about all them banks. Why your daddy go to those banks in those towns?”
My teeth ground together. “First of all, he isn’t my daddy, he’s the sperm-donor. Second of all, I have no idea why these banks and these towns. I thought it was for the pendant but you’re right...it can’t be. So I don’t know.”
I settled more deeply into the sidecar and went over my bank spiel, knocking the rust off. I hadn’t done it in a few weeks so I had to make sure I could remember it before I tossed at some bank manager again.
A mile down the road, Cope said, “They’s something else about that deposit box, too. Y’all figured it out yet?”
There was a moment of silence, full of the motorcycle engine, full of the wind in my ears. When the road curved slightly and the sun caught the chrome handlebar and winked at me, I understood. “Son of a bitch. No key.”
A Little More Than Four Days Ago
Big Bend National Bank
Marathon, Texas
The security guard saw it in my eyes.
He was tall, banging the door on six-five, maybe six-six. Medium build, but relaxed body language. I’d seen that body language before and my heart sank. This relaxed security guard, watching women’s asses and the curve of their calves, was ex-blue.
Name badge said Lucas and he knew the exact moment I placed him. A flick of his eyes and a smirk on his lips. “Can I help you...sir?”
The bank sprawled out as though it had been delivered from central casting. Send up a Depression-era bank and boom, here it was. Marble floors. Or something that looked like marble. Marble, or faux-marble, columns. High ceiling, teller booths stuck out into the room with fancy, dark woodwork and iron bars around the tops and sides of their windows. At the far end was the vault. A huge door, open for all to see. Two feet thick, shot through with bars probably three inches thick that slipped from the door into the solid metal frame. Inside the opening was a screen door and behind that, a woman with a radio and phone clipped to her waist.
A drip of sweat fell from my forehead to the floor.
“Sir?”
I coughed, a cheap way to cover nerves, and asked for the manager’s office.
Lucas pointed toward the back of the lobby. There were a number of offices, each small and nondescript except one. Where the others had doors painted gray, with tiny little name plaques, one door was dark wood with the bank’s name in flowing script, along with the manager’s name.
“Thank...uh...thank you.”
I went to the office quickly, before I gave Mr. Ex-Blue more reasons to stare at me. In one of the many mirrors decorating the teller windows—decoration designed with security in mind—Lucas eyed me, every step, every move.
Watched me just like the cameras did. Scattered through the lobby, discreetly hung near plants and not so discreetly directly behind each teller or desk. Just like in every other bank I’d visited.
Near
the manager’s office, a frail middle-aged man sat at a desk. His fingers flew over a computer keyboard. Even as he typed, he glanced up at me and smiled with nicotine-stained teeth. “Can I help you, sir?”
“The manager, please,” I said, hoping for authoritative and commanding.
“In regards to?”
Here it was; the moment when I actually committed a felony. I pulled my wallet and snapped it open. A gold detective’s shield winked at the secretary. “A major investigation. Please get the manager.”
The man raised a single eyebrow and stood. “Just a moment, sir.”
The man’s feathers never ruffled and that set my teeth on edge. The lie worked, when it worked, because they were awed by the badge.
A few moments later, when the secretary came back, I cleared my throat and stood a bit taller, dressed as well as could be in Esther’s khakis and white shirt. It was, I saw in the secretary’s eyes, just about perfect. The best a cop could afford, the man’s eyes told him.
“Mr. Milner is finishing up a phone call. Please have a seat.”
He ushered me into an office filled with cowboy art: Horses and sheriffs and sunrises, trail rides in the sun-baked desert, lakes and streams lit up until they gleamed a golden-blue. On the coffee table sat a sculpture of an oil well. On the corner of the man’s huge desk sat a snow-globe, the snow not white, but green, falling on a bank.
“Can I get you anything, Officer?”
“It’s Detective.” And I could really use a hell of a big-ass tumbler of whiskey. “No, thank you.”
With a nod, the man disappeared.
From behind a large desk, the bank manager, still on the phone, stared hard at me, his gaze as penetrating as a scalpel. He’s cutting my skin, layer by layer. Soon enough, it’s gonna pile up at my feet like dirty skivvies.
Layer by layer...just like the tattoo artist that night. Exactly how he laid down a black foundation, then a colored touch, then more lines or whatever. Layer by layer.
F—A—G—A—N.
The sperm-donor’s idea. I licked my lips, sandpaper against sand, and swallowed into a sandbox throat. Fagan had wanted the other one, too, the number. “Yeah, 101645,” he had said to the tattoo artist. “Slap it on that boy.” Then a sloppy laugh and, “Drink up, boy, we’re having fun.”
Damned if the tattoo guy hadn’t slurped down a huge chug of the whiskey bottle Fagan was passing around. I had slurped down even more.
I was pretty well buzzed, said fuck yeah, do it, Fagan, do it. Do it, Daddy, was what I meant. Do it do whatever do anything long as we can get some years back. Beneath the booze and drugs and even the two cheap whores Fagan had bought, there were the missing years. That was all the fuck I wanted: Get those years back. If that means drinking smoking screwing and getting some ink, so be it.
“Got no head for numbers, boy....”
The tattoo wasn’t some bit of our family history; it was a safety deposit box.
“...gonna make us rich and....”
Why the hell hadn’t I remembered that until now? Why had it just now come loping around the corners of my brain? I ran the back of my hand over my dry lips, stared again at the snow-globe. Why the fuck was the snow green?
What was going to make us rich?
Standing, the president offered his hand. “James Milner, bank president.”
I was startled at the power in the grip. Was he trying to grind my bones on purpose? “Good afternoon, Mr. Milner. My name is Darcy Kurston.” I paused. “I’m with the Barefield police and I need some information.”
Milner nodded thoughtfully. “Can I inquire what this is about?”
“An official investigation.”
“Hmmm.”
I ignored the man’s subtle push for more information. Pulling Fagan’s picture from my pocket, I slid it across the desk. “Joseph Fagan. He ever rent one of your safety deposit boxes?” I tried to warm up my face, to chill the frost that hung in the room despite the blazing summer. “I appreciate any help you could offer, it would mean a great deal.”
The man glanced at the picture. “I’m sure it would.”
It was the picture Fagan and I had taken together at a club in Barefield. The real picture had us both in it. I had ripped myself out and had the remainder blown up. It was grainy and dark, a little hard to see.
Milner stared at the picture. “What would have been his business in my bank?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.” I tapped a finger on the picture to draw the man’s attention back to it and away from me. The less he committed my face to memory, the better off I’d feel. “Our friend has visited banks all over west Texas. He asks to talk to an officer. A president, a manager, a loan officer.”
“To what end, exactly?”
I took a few deep breaths. This wasn’t going well so far. Too many questions, too much stalling. “Well, why don’t you tell me what someone like him would have found interesting at your institution.”
Milner nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t know what ‘someone like him’ means, which makes speculation difficult, officer.”
“Detective.”
Milner’s smile—and isn’t it interesting how much of that word also makes up the word smirk, I thought—remained solidly in place. “If I knew what he had asked at other facilities, it might well help jog my memory here. Has someone asked my people about opening accounts with more than ten-thousand, for instance.”
“Well, he—”
“Or has anyone asked about opening accounts with checks written on banks in New Jersey. Do you understand my point, officer?”
I leaned forward in the chair. “It’s Detective, sir.”
“Forgive me. Obviously, Mr. Fagan hasn’t caused any notable problems at banks in this area.”
“You know that how?”
“I would have heard.”
“Would you?” I tried to choke back my surprise.
“Certainly. There is a...confederation, call it, of area banks. Nothing official, nothing on paper, nothing—”
“That can hold potential liability.”
Milner’s smile disappeared. “We inform nearby institutions of notable occurrences. Usually it has to do with a group of people moving from bank to bank, trying to cash bogus checks or something along those lines.”
“This is simple. He asks for information, gets it or doesn’t, and leaves. He rented a box or he didn’t.”
Since he continued to visit banks, but never revisited any, I knew Fagan hadn’t gotten whatever info he was looking for. The problem had been, until today, I had no idea what Fagan was looking for, nor which banks he’d been to and which not. Security tapes from banks in Barefield before that last night showed him in those banks, but no one remembered his questions, only that he was charming.
Oh, he was always charming. It was what he did best.
Ten years on, Mama’s words had lost none of their clarity. I heard them as if she were sitting in the chair right next to me.
“You two could be brothers,” Milner said.
“Excuse me?”
He tapped the picture as I had done moments earlier. “You and he. You have similar looks.”
I resisted the urge to wipe my lips again. “Well, now that you mention it, I guess that’s vaguely true. After all, there are only so many different hair colors.”
Milner nodded. “True enough.” Then his gaze darted to the office door. “Ah, Mr. Lucas, I was wondering when you might join us.”
I turned and stared directly at a badge and a hand holding steady just above a gun.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Milner,” Lucas said. “Sorry to bother you, but did I hear the officer here say he was from Barefield PD?”
Milner smiled, graciously this time, and waved the guard to a second chair. “I figured you’d hear that part.” Milner turned his gaze to me. “Mr. Lucas here was on the job in Barefield.”
Of course he fucking was.
“Sir,” Lucas asked. “Are you feeling okay? You loo
k kind of pale.”
“Fine. I’m fine. On the job in Barefield, huh? That is amazing, absolutely amazing.”
Lucas shrugged it off. “Well, it’s not like we both worked in some small town in Maine or somewhere. Barefield isn’t that far from here.”
“That’s true.”
With his head cocked, reminded me of a puppy hearing a new sound, he said, “Detective Kurston? Have I heard of you? Maybe we worked a case together years back? A series of thefts or something?”
I knew I was nodding, knew I was smiling, but all I fucking felt was panic. This guy had worked in the same department as Kurston? Fuck that, worked on a case with him? Twenty-four banks on the list and this guard was drawing a pension from Kurston’s department?
Damnit, Fagan, what are you doing to me?
“Could be, Officer. Eventually, you know, they all run together. Sometimes, I forget this one or that one.”
The man grinned. “But never the big ones, right?”
“Absolutely.” I laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Never the big ones.”
Milner stood. “If you gentlemen would excuse me, I will check on your request, offic—excuse me, Detective.” He took Fagan’s picture and left the office.
“How’s the Peterson case going?” Lucas asked.
“I’m sorry, the which?”
“Peterson? The dead girl...1977? Unsolved.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat seemed to have swollen closed. “Oh. Well, you know...slow. Sometimes you catch a break and sometimes you don’t. We’ve had some good breaks recently and so I’m following those up. Really, it’s the only case I’ve worked on for the last few months.”
What the hell did you say that for? You tell him you’re not working on anything else and yet you can’t even remember the dead girl’s name.
I closed my eyes and tried to dredge up some detail I could toss this guy. But it was as though someone had snatched the memory right out of my head. There was nothing there. Not only no memories of Peterson, but no memories at all. Hell, I couldn’t even remember what the Barefield PD offices looked like.
“Yeah, I can understand that,” Lucas said. “Well, if anyone can close that bastard, I’m sure it’ll be you.” The man smiled and his head tilted the slightest bit. “I gotta tell you, Detective, you’re looking pretty good. Exercising? Lose some weight?” He patted his paunch. There wasn’t much to it. “I could stand to lose a few pounds.”
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