“I’ve located the girl Stephanie met in Big Pine—Chrissie Smith.”
“Has she seen Stephanie?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that I’ve talked to her. I’ve just learned where she lives. In Wray.”
“Oh. When are you going there?”
Wray is about ten miles west of the point where Nebraska and Kansas meet on the Colorado border. Given the present road conditions, I figured it was at least a four-hour drive, probably more. And I’d already spent the morning on the road. My legs were stiff. Besides, Stephanie had known Christine Smith for only a few months. I had no real reason to believe that Stephanie was staying with her; it was just one more slim lead. But if Stephanie was staying with a girlfriend on a ranch in Wray, she was no doubt safe and sound. I could take it easy this afternoon and drive up there first thing in the morning. Stephanie could spend one more night away from home and it wouldn’t hurt a thing. Except a mother’s heart.
“I’m on my way,” I said.
Before I left, I clipped a gun to my hip. Stephanie might be on a ranch. Ranches meant ranchers. And ranchers meant guns. At least I thought they did. I was just trying to fit in.
I took I-25 north to I-76, which led me northeast out of the metro area, beyond the fringes of suburban sprawl.
After an hour I was in the midst of vast, open land. There were a few humps and bumps, but mostly it was flat and white. The snowfields were occasionally broken by houses and barns, outbuildings and fences. The horizon was an indistinct line of white and gray.
A few hours later I reached Fort Morgan and turned onto State Highway 34 heading due east.
The wind had picked up. It blew snow across the highway, making it slippery. What few cars there were crept along at a cautious pace. Of course, a few jerks in four-wheel drives with fat studded tires would periodically blow by and temporarily blind us sensible types in clouds of cold powdery snow.
It was nearly six when I got to Wray.
There were few lights on as I cruised down the main street. The Conoco station at the end of town was an island of cold white fluorescence in the dark landscape. The old geezer running the station wore coveralls, a red parka with greasy sleeves, and an orange hunting cap with the earflaps turned down. He filled my tank and checked my oil. Then he told me how to get to the address I showed him.
The house was a mile or so from the center of town.
It was a rambling single-story ranch-style brick built in the fifties. It looked like a typical suburban dwelling. Except that the backyard was thirty acres of snow surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. My tires crunched over gravel and crusty snow as I pulled into the long, dark circular drive.
The porch light went on before I’d shut off the engine. When I climbed out, cold air stung my face. A couple of dogs started barking from inside the house.
The woman who answered the door was wrapped in a bulky sweater, which I guessed she’d knitted herself. She was around forty, with long dark hair, a thin jaw, and tired but kind eyes. A pair of golden retrievers crowded in front of her and barked ferociously. Their tails, though, swung like metronomes.
“I’m sorry to bother you at this hour,” I said. I told her who I was and what I did for a living. “I’m looking for Christine Smith.”
She pulled the dogs back and quieted them down.
“I’m Chrissie’s mother. Is there something wrong?”
“Not as far as I know. I was hired by a family in Denver to find their daughter, Stephanie Bellano. I was hoping she might be staying with Chrissie.”
“Chrissie … isn’t here right now,” she said.
“Right now, hell.”
A man appeared behind Mrs. Smith. He wore a robe and slippers. His hair was mussed, his face was pale, and his nose was red.
“She doesn’t live here anymore. And just who the hell is this, Alice?”
“He’s a detective from Denver,” Alice Smith said. “He’s looking for a friend of Chrissie’s.”
“Well, you know where to send him,” he said, and sneezed.
“Go lay down, hon. I’ll bring you some tea.”
“I can make my own damn tea.” He turned his back on us. “And close the door. You’re letting in the cold.”
Alice Smith hesitated for a moment.
“Please come in.”
The house was furnished in beige-on-brown neotacky American. There were clear plastic covers on the lampshades and on the arms of the stuffed chairs. The coffee table held a sculpted ashtray the size of a canoe. It was clean and shiny. I stood in the warmth of the living room and let the dogs sniff my pants cuffs.
“You’ll have to excuse my husband,” she said quietly. She nodded toward the kitchen and the sound of a kettle banging on the stove top. “He’s feeling under the weather.”
“I understand. He said your daughter doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Of course she lives here,” Alice Smith said with feeling. “This is her home as much as it is mine and Bob’s. I keep her room up, and she can stay here or come and go as she pleases. She’s practically a grown woman, you know.”
“I see.” What I saw was hurt. Her little girl had moved away.
“Where does Chrissie li—, er, where is she staying now?”
She folded her arms under her breasts and lifted them in a sigh.
“Over at Reverend Lacey’s place.”
“If he’s a reverend,” Bob shouted from the kitchen, “then I’m the goddamn Roman pope! Where the hell are the tea bags?”
“Excuse me a moment.”
Alice Smith went to the kitchen. She and Bob spoke in voices too low for me to understand. Their tones, though, were plain enough—his, anger laced with frustration; hers, sweet solace. In a few minutes she was back, another line in her face, another strand of gray at her temple.
“He really is feeling poorly,” she said. “Now this girl you’re looking for …”
“Stephanie Bellano.”
“There was a girl who came here last week asking for Chrissie. No, it was week before last. I didn’t get her name, though. I did tell her where Chrissie was.”
I showed Alice Smith my photos of Stephanie.
“That’s her,” she said.
“Was she alone?” Obviously Stephanie hadn’t driven her own car, and I hadn’t talked to anyone who’d lent her one.
“She was,” Alice Smith said. “In fact, now that you mention it, when she left here, she walked clear down the driveway to the road.”
She’d hitchhiked from Denver, I thought. And with the number of weirdos out there, it was probably fortunate she’d made it this far.
“You said Chrissie is staying with Reverend Lacey.”
“Yes. His place is twenty-five, thirty miles from here.”
“Is it a church?”
“Well, not exactly. It’s more like a commune. They’ve got some livestock and some acreage of wheat and corn and beets.”
“Is he an ordained minister?”
“He—”
“Hell, no,” Bob Smith said, coming out of the kitchen, rattling his cup and saucer. He sat down on the couch, sipped his tea, and made a face. “Oh, he does Bible readings and calls his place the Church of the Something-or-other, but he’s no goddamn minister.”
“Bob, please.”
“Well, he’s not, no more’n I am.” He looked up at me. “This Lacey character showed up four or five years ago when old Roy Smalls died and his wife put the place up for sale. It wasn’t much of a place to begin with, so Lacey bought it for a song. He hung out a sign and called himself a church. Which, when tax time rolls around, is a pretty damn good idea.”
“Bob …”
“Anyhow,” Bob said, waving aside his wife’s warning, “Reverend Lacey, as he calls himself, opened his arms and his place to every drifter, prevert, and drug addict in the state, or I should say, in Denver, because that’s where most of them come from.”
“Bob …”
“What?”
Alice Smith sighe
d at her husband, then turned to me.
“Most of Reverend Lacey’s followers are young people from the city, and some of them are there to try to overcome drugs. He gives them a roof and a bed and food to eat. In return, they help him work the land.”
“Help?” Bob Smith snorted. “I’ll bet you a dollar Lacey never gets his hands dirty.”
“Why is your daughter staying there?” I asked. “Did she have a drug problem?”
“Jesus God, no.”
“No,” Alice Smith said. “Like some of his other followers, she was going there to … well, as she told it to me, to get away from modern society.”
“Modern society?”
“‘Responsibility’ is more like it,” Bob Smith said. “Most of them are city kids running away from something. Lacey isolates them out on his place, which gives him plenty of cheap labor.”
“Now, Bob, that’s not necessarily true.”
“It is true,” he said angrily, standing, spilling tea in his saucer. His robe hung crookedly on him, giving him a comical appearance. Nobody laughed. “And if Christine ever figures that out,” he said, “well, then maybe we’ll have a daughter again. Right now we don’t.” He looked at his wife, daring her to argue. She didn’t. He hung his head, then turned his back on us and mumbled, “I’m going to bed.”
We stood for a moment in silence. I asked her for directions to Reverend Lacey’s place.
“When you go there … if you see Chrissie …”
“Yes?”
“Would you … tell her we both said hello.”
Alice Smith’s directions took me south and then west on a snow-packed county road. I hoped I didn’t meet anyone head-on, because the plow had left room for only a car and a half.
My headlights picked up barbed-wire fences. They ran along both sides of the road and made me feel as if I were in a long, narrow animal pen. Beyond the wire was darkness. Every few miles the fences were interrupted by gates, beside which stood oversized mailboxes. I could read the names without leaving the car.
I nearly missed Lacey’s gate, though, because it didn’t have a mailbox. There was a wooden sign wired to the gate:
The CHURCH of the PENITENT
Rev. J. Lacey
No Trespassing!
I turned in the narrow drive, sliding through deep ruts of snow. I stopped at the gate. There was a heavy chain wrapped around the metal gate and post. There was also a padlock the size of my fist. I shut off the lights and climbed out.
The sky was beginning to open. A few brilliant stars poked through. The moon, though, was still a fuzzy wad of gauze. My eyes gradually adjusted to the feeble light.
The Church of the Penitent was a shadowy snowfield dotted with small, vague black shapes. They were either cattle, stunted trees, or nameless demons. In the distance, perhaps half a mile from where I stood shivering in the black night air, were tiny warm dots of yellow light. Windows.
The only sounds were the rumbling of the Olds and the grumbling of my stomach.
My options were limited. I could pick the padlock, drive up to the house, and beg for something to eat, hoping the punishment for trespassing in the night wasn’t crucifixion. Or I could go back to town and try to find a motel that was close to a bar.
No contest.
CHAPTER 17
THE NEXT MORNING I stood in the tiny shower in the Columbine Motel until I’d used up all the hot water. The other guests didn’t mind. There weren’t any.
The motel was on the outskirts of Wray. It was a dumpy six-unit affair with a vacancy sign that hadn’t been taken down in years. Last night, after I’d checked in, I’d found a bar and drank shots and beers with a couple of good old boys who raised hogs north of town. By closing time, when I stumbled out to my car, I’d almost gotten used to their smell.
The shower had somewhat eased my hangover. But when I stepped outside into the clear, crisp morning air, the sunlight went through my eyes like a needle.
I found a café up the street and chowed down on ham, eggs, home fries, and coffee.
Then I drove to the Church of the Penitent.
The sky was royal blue, and the fields flanking the road were startlingly white, with tiny dancing points of brilliance. I turned off the snow-packed road into the snow ruts of the church’s driveway. The gate was still chained shut.
I climbed out, picked the padlock, and pushed open the gate. Then I drove through and stopped. I closed the gate behind me. It was the neighborly thing to do.
I followed the ruts in the snow toward a complex of unpainted wooden structures, a few hundred yards distant. The dark demon shapes I’d seen last night were discernible now—cattle lethargically trampling the snow into narrow, muddy paths.
I didn’t see any people.
The main house was a hodgepodge of additions tacked on to a central building, which I guessed had been the original farmhouse. Beside it was a propane tank the size of a submarine.
The other buildings were all to my right, separated from the main building by trampled snow and mud. There were a big two-story barn, a long, low chicken coop, and a foggy-windowed greenhouse. There were several other structures, which were probably garages and storage sheds. Or maybe that’s where they kept the grain for the demon cattle. There was one other large building, nearly as big as the barn, which stood apart from the others. It had a high peaked roof. There was a crucifix over the door. The building looked newer than the others, but its unpainted wood was beginning to show the weather.
I pulled alongside the main house and stopped. A young woman stepped out of the chicken coop. She carried a covered basket. Before she closed the door, I could see the ugly red-and-brown birds behind her.
She stopped short when she saw me. Then she hurried into the main building.
I shut off the Olds and got out.
Before I took two steps through the slush and mud, the side door of the house burst open and out came two men. They were both in their twenties and dressed in blue jeans and flannel shirts. The first one, though, was bigger. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He had a beard and a long-handled ax. The latter he carried at port arms.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
I told him. “I’m looking for Stephanie Bellano.”
The men glanced at each other.
The big one said, “You’ll have to talk to Reverend Lacey about her. But he’s in town now. So you can just turn right around and leave.” He motioned with the ax. The sunlight danced on its keen, clean edge.
“When will he be back?”
“You heard him,” the other guy said. “Get out of here.” He felt brave standing behind his pal with the ax. Hey, who wouldn’t?
“Why don’t I just wait here for the reverend,” I said.
The big guy shifted his boots in the snow. Apparently he wasn’t quite sure what to do without Lacey around.
“Maybe if you come back in an hour or—”
He stopped at the sound of a truck engine. I turned to see a large pickup roaring toward us from the distant gate and throwing equal amounts of snow and mud from all four tires. It was an old International Harvester with different-colored front fenders and a winch on the bumper. It slid to a stop a foot behind my Olds.
“Looks like your waiting is over,” the smaller guy said to my back. I didn’t like the way he said it.
Reverend John Lacey clambered out of his truck. He was clean-shaven and tall—a rawboned man in his late forties with steely blue eyes and shocking red hair that was clumped on his head in thick curls. His arms were a bit too long for his coat, and his wrists stuck out, hairless and hard as ball bats. His patched khaki pants were tucked into high-top lace-up boots. He covered the distance between us in a few long strides.
“Who is this man?” he bellowed, rattling the windows in the house. Before either of the young men could answer, he turned his glare on me. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“My name is Jacob Lomax and—”
“And
how did you get through my locked gate?”
“I unlocked it.”
He stiffened, pushing his already adequate height up another inch or so. Then he smiled. Barely. It was more like an unstraightening of his hard, thin lips.
“An honest thief?” he said.
“I’m not a thief, Reverend, I’m a private investigator.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
I opened my mouth to give him a cute answer, but he cut me off.
“What do you want here?” he demanded.
“I’m looking for Stephanie Bellano.”
“She’s not here.”
“She was here, though, wasn’t she?”
He nodded yes. “But she left a few days ago. You two”—he said suddenly over my shoulder—“help Judith put everything away. And I mean everything.”
For the first time I noticed a young woman in the truck. She got out. Then she and the two men carried sacks into the house. Probably flour and dried beans. Several men and women watched from the windows.
“Where did Stephanie go?”
Lacey turned his long, lean face to the side and aimed one hard blue eye at me. “Why do you want to know?”
“Number one, her father hired me to find her. And number two, her mother is worried sick.”
Lacey spread his large hands with the palms upward. They were shiny with calluses. I guess Bob Smith had been wrong about Lacey not doing any work.
“Stephanie is of age,” he said, his tone as condescending as if it had come from the pulpit. “She no longer need answer to her earthly father.”
“You’re right about that. Her earthly father was blown to bloody bits by a car bomb.”
His mouth parted, then immediately clamped shut.
“Look, Reverend, it’s important that I find Stephanie.”
“It sounds as if she’s in danger.”
“She may be.”
“And how do I know that you’re not the danger?”
“Phone her mother.”
“And how would I know that this woman is her mother?”
“You don’t trust anyone, do you?”
“I trust in God.”
“Right.”
He squinted at me.
The Dead of Winter (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 3) Page 12
