“I’ve got a bomb squad guy from the Virginia State Police coming to examine the scene. I know you don’t want to hear this, but it might have been an accident. Willie was gone, maybe the propane was leaking and Bob lit a cigarette when Willie came through the door, and boom.”
“If the propane was leaking, it would have exploded before then. I saw Shirley there like I told you and she was smoking a cigarette. And you would think Bob would’ve smelled the propane. The odor they put into the gas is pretty pungent for that very reason.”
“I know. But why would they want to kill Willie so badly?” Tyree asked. “First an overdose and now a bomb?”
“He knew Debby didn’t kill herself. He was going to keep making noise until the truth came out. Somebody obviously didn’t like that.”
“But now that they killed him we know there’s something going on,” Tyree pointed out.
“But these people are good and we have no proof that a crime’s even been committed. So in their eyes it’s better.”
“Well, I’m not giving up until I get to the bottom of this.”
“Tyree, everybody needs to watch their back here, and that includes you.”
“I hear you.”
Stone clicked off and stared down at the phone. Danny had a late-model Verizon cell phone with all the bells and whistles, including e-mail. Stone had never been into mail that didn’t involve pen and paper. He scrolled down Danny’s contact list. The names there were mostly female. He’d even made annotations by each entry indicating the lady’s strong suits, and each contact also came with a digital photo of the woman. Several of the pictures would have qualified as pornography, at least in Stone’s estimation.
He shook his head. Danny needed to seriously upgrade the quality of his female companions.
He looked outside. It was dark. He slowly eased himself from the bed. He was pretty stiff and sore but the more he moved around, the better he felt. His butt was already numb from lying in the damn bed all those hours.
He walked out of the room and over to the nurses’ station. After being chastised for being out of bed, he asked and was told where Danny’s room was.
He walked down that hall and saw a man sitting outside of Danny’s room. When Stone approached the man stood. “Can I help you?”
“You the deputy Tyree put on Danny?”
“That’s right. Wait a minute, you’re that Ben fellow, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I wanted to see Danny?”
“Seeing as how you saved his life, sure, go on in.”
When Stone popped his head in, Danny was sitting up in bed, his face red and his eyes puffy slits.
“Danny? Can I come in?”
He looked over at Stone. He didn’t say anything but waved him in with a feeble sweep of his hand.
Stone pulled up a chair and sat down. “I’m really sorry about Willie.”
Danny didn’t look at him but kept his gaze on the pillow he held over his midsection. When he did speak his voice was heavy and slow. The meds, Stone thought.
“He didn’t deserve to die that way.”
“Nobody does.”
Danny glared at him. “Some people do.”
“I guess you’re right. Maybe some people do.”
“He never hurt anybody, you know that?”
“I know.”
“And Bob. I mean he’s a damn old man. And they blew him up too?”
“Who blew him up, Danny? Who are we talking about?”
Danny glanced at Stone. “Why ask me?”
“Why’d you leave Divine?”
“Fresh start, like I told you.”
“And why’d you come back?”
“My business.”
“You want to tell me about Debby Randolph?”
“What’s to tell? She was Willie’s girl. He loved her, man. They were going to get married.”
“So you knew about that?”
Danny nodded absently. “I was all over his case to get off the drugs. Mine work was killing him. He was in pain, okay, I get it. But I saw what the shit did to my old man. I didn’t want that happening to Willie. And then Debby came along and she got him back on the right track, you know what I mean? He was doing all right. Called me up out of the blue, told me he was thinking about proposing. Asked me what I thought. Part of me wanted to say, ‘No man, run the other way, you’re too young. We got stuff to do. Girls to bed.’ But deep down, I was jealous, man. I got pieces of meat on my plate. He had a woman who loved him.”
“So what’d you end up telling him?”
“I told him to go for it. I knew Debby. She was a great gal. And great for him. He asked me to be his best man.”
“Sounds like you two had patched up your differences.”
“We never had any real differences. It was just crap really.”
Danny fell silent and Stone sat back in his chair and watched him for a while as the darkness fell more heavily outside.
“I saw you crying over Debby’s grave. You want to tell me about that?”
Danny’s head snapped up. “Nothing to tell. I was sorry she was dead. And I knew Willie was all busted up about it.”
“You know who killed her, don’t you?”
“If I did I would’ve told Tyree, wouldn’t I?”
“Would you?”
“I’m tired, man. Going to sleep.”
“You sure you don’t want to tell me?”
“Sure as I’m lying here doing nothing.”
Stone returned to his room but did not get back in the bed. Something was gnawing at him. Something he’d seen, heard or maybe both. Something that just did not add up.
He absently pulled out Danny’s phone. He went through the contact list again, to see if anyone on there would provide him with a clue and explain why Danny refused to tell him what had happened. Yet nothing stuck out.
He continued pressing buttons, pushing the phone’s memory into advanced fields of content. Then he stopped as the screen came up with only one name and phone number on it. Tyree. Yet the phone number next to the name was not the one Stone knew for the lawman. He punched it in. A few rings later a voice answered.
“Danny?” the man said.
Stone immediately clicked off. It was Tyree. He’d recognized the voice. Why would Danny have the man’s name and a different phone number hidden in his phone’s memory? And if this number was to be a secret, why not just memorize it? Why input it where someone like Stone could find it? He looked back at the regular contact list. Even on here he saw the numbers for Abby’s house, the restaurant, numbers Danny should have easily remembered. On impulse he called Abby and told her about his conversation with Danny, though he didn’t tell her about finding Tyree’s number on her son’s phone.
“Abby, does Danny have trouble remembering numbers?”
“Ever since high school. Doctors said it was from the concussions he got playing ball. I told him to stop playing but he loved it too much. Killed him when his knee wouldn’t let him play for Tech. Why do you want to know?”
“Just sitting here with too much time on my hands. Thanks.”
He clicked off and then heard a rumbling sound coming from down the hall and glanced over in time to see an orderly passing by with a load of boxes. That ordinary sight produced an extraordinary reaction in Stone.
It came together in a neat little box all its own.
Sixty, not eighty boxes. Black dirt instead of the normal red clay. And miners who left town to get their methadone pop long before the crack of dawn.
It seemed like a spontaneous revelation, but it really wasn’t, Stone knew. This stuff had been swirling around in his subconscious for a long time now. And it had finally percolated to the surface.
He grabbed his bag from the closet and quickly changed into clean clothes.
“Come on, let it be there,” he said to himself as he searched the bag some more. He remembered putting it in there.
His hands finally closed around the gun Abby had loaned him.
He stuffed it in his waistband and covered the bulge with his shirt. A moment later he peered out the door. When the nurses’ station was empty he bolted down the hall. When the nurses came that night to give him his meds they would find his room vacant.
He had no way of knowing that they would find the very same thing in Danny’s room. An hour earlier, the young man had juked his guard and made his escape.
CHAPTER 57
KNOX ROLLED INTO DIVINE not really knowing what to expect. It was late and it was dark and hardly a light burned on the town’s main street. He drove down the road looking to the left and right, although he doubted he’d see John Carr loitering on the corner awaiting his arrival. He passed a restaurant named Rita’s. There was a courthouse and jail, both seemingly deserted at this hour. Knox contemplated whether to wake up the local constabulary to help him in his quest, but he’d found the other town cops to be useless at best. He would try a different approach this time.
He turned off the main drag and headed east, at least according to his vehicle’s compass. Knox’s own internal direction monitor had long since given up trying to keep track of his heading after meandering through the boxy Appalachians all this time.
He slowed the truck when he saw what looked to be the remains of a trailer home. At first he thought it must have been a tornado passing through that had destroyed the place, but the trees and earth around it had not been disturbed by a twister’s route. He stopped the truck, got out and inspected the site.
The blackened and jagged remains and the diameter of the debris field told him that an explosion of some kind was the cause. That was a little unusual. Of course it didn’t mean that John Carr was in the vicinity, but it was at least something out of the ordinary.
He did a circle of the downtown area and drove back through. That’s when he spotted the little rooming house. He parked down the street from the entrance and did a slow walk up, keeping his gaze alert for any sign of Carr.
He knocked on the door and kept tapping for another five minutes until he heard the steady if unhurried footfalls heading his way.
The door opened and the little old man with tufts of white hair standing on the other side of the threshold looked up crossly at him. “Do you know what time it is, young man?”
Knox hadn’t been called a young man in at least twenty years. He hid his smile and said, “I apologize. But I got in a lot later than I thought I would.”
“You mean you were heading to Divine?” the old man said incredulously.
“Is there a law against that?” Knox said, now smiling broadly and, he hoped, disarmingly.
“What do you want?” the man said gruffly.
So much for disarming. “Right now, a place to sleep, Mr. . . . ?”
“Just call me Bernie. Sorry, but I’m all booked up.”
Knox looked over his shoulder. “This the high season in Divine?”
“I’ve only got two rooms to let.”
“I see. Thing is, I was supposed to meet a buddy of mine up here. Maybe you’ve seen him, tall, lean guy around sixty with close-cropped white hair.”
“Oh, you mean Ben? He’s got one of the rooms, but he’s not there right now.”
“Any idea where he is?”
“Over at the hospital?”
“What’s he doing there? Did he get hurt?”
“Almost got his butt blown up. Killed Bob and Willie Coombs, and your buddy came real close to meeting his maker.”
Knox kept his voice calm and level. “So where is this hospital? I want to go see if he’s okay.”
“Oh, he’s okay. We’re all glad of that. Ben’s a real hero.”
“How’s that?”
“Helped a couple of our own. Danny Riker when he got in trouble on the train. And Willie Coombs when he almost died on drugs. Ben saved ’em both. Right good fellow. And then Danny got attacked here in town. And Ben saved him again. Beat up three guys, or so I heard.”
“Wow, that sounds like Ben all right. He was always in the middle of all the action. I’ll give him your best when I see him at the hospital. And where was that again?”
Bernie told him. “But visiting hours are long over.”
“I’ll try to talk my way in. But if I can’t, anybody else around here that can help me?”
“You can try Abby Riker out at her place, Midsummer’s Farm.” Bernie gave him directions. “From what I heard she and Ben got real tight.”
Knox slipped a twenty into the old gent’s hand when they shook.
“You’re welcome to sleep in the front room,” Bernie said, indicating the space behind him.
“Thanks, I might take you up on that.”
He walked back to his truck trying to keep his nerves steady. He climbed in the rig, fired it up and pulled away. As he steered one-handed along the winding country road, he used his free hand to flip open the glove box. He pulled out his nine-millimeter pistol and laid it on the seat next to him.
John Carr here I come.
CHAPTER 58
ANNABELLE LOOKED DOWN at her vibrating phone. “Who would be calling me in the middle of the night?”
“Maybe it’s Reuben?” said Caleb as he drove along.
“No. I don’t recognize the number.” She flipped open the phone.
“Hello?”
“Annabelle? How’s it going?”
She snapped, “What the hell do you want?”
Alex Ford said pleasantly, “It’s nice to hear your voice too.”
“I’m a little busy, Alex.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“Wait a minute. Where are you calling from? I didn’t recognize the number.”
“A payphone.”
“Why a payphone?”
“Because I’m pretty sure my home, cell and office phones are being tapped.”
“And why is that?” she said slowly. “Is Knox on your case still?”
“That’s why I’m calling. I got a frantic phone call from Knox’s daughter, Melanie. She’s a lawyer in D.C. Her dad’s disappeared.”
“No he hasn’t. He’s after Oliver and we’re after Knox.”
“And where is all this taking place?”
“In the boondocks of southwest Virginia. So you can tell little Melanie that her daddy is just fine. For now at least.”
“That’s not all. His house was turned over by someone looking for something, and I’m not talking your random burglary. And on top of that I had a visitor, a man named Macklin Hayes.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“No reason it should. He’s a former army three-star who’s now on the intelligence side. His rep is like a Carter Gray only more sinister and evil. He’s also Knox’s boss and he doesn’t know where his guy is, which means Knox is roaming free.”
“Why would he be doing that?”
“He might if he found out something that made him uncomfortable about what was really going on with all this. I don’t think Knox is a killer. He’s a tracker, and if Hayes put him on Oliver, he must be the best they have on that score. It seems clear that when Knox finds Oliver, he was to call in Hayes’ heavy artillery to finish the job.”
“What would Knox have found that would make him start freelancing?”
“No clue. How close are you to finding Oliver?”
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