by Vivien Sparx
The neon sign in the window of ‘Stan’s Bar’ was glowing red and green when Stone cruised back into Windswept. He nosed the big car into the gutter out front of the police station and walked across the road.
The door was open, jammed back with a timber wedge. Stone walked in, looked around.
The bar was one long narrow room that was partitioned out back by an open archway, beyond which were restrooms and a door marked ‘Office’. The bar itself was on the right side of the room with a row of stools set in front, and clusters of tables on the left. The lighting was low and gloomy. The television above the bar was off. The jukebox was off.
There were three men sitting on stools, all of them grimy and dusty, all of them big brawny types in dirty clothes from a hard day’s work. Two more men were sitting at one of the tables, drinking beer from long-neck bottles. At the end of the room, in a corner, three women were sitting back in their chairs, laughing too loudly and chattering over the sound of each other. The tabletop between them was scattered with empty glasses and bottles. One of the women had a white veil pinned into the hair at the back of her head.
Stone stood in the entrance, eyes adjusting to the gloom after the bright glare of daylight. Stood there for maybe thirty seconds, just a big solid shape in the doorway. Everyone in the bar turned their head and was looking at him.
Stone ignored them. Went to the bar, but didn’t sit down. He chose a place between two of the men and leaned comfortably against the polished timber.
The bar was dark red. Stone didn’t know his timbers. It could have been teak, oak or pine for all he knew. But it was different to the walls, which were lined with some kind of grainy panel board.
Stone looked at the guy to his left. The guy was staring back at him. He had a beer in his hand, and another empty glass at his elbow. He was wearing a black t-shirt, stained under the armpits by sweat and dust. He had a big beefy bearded face, framed by sideburns, and huge arms. He was heavy, solid, but without muscle tone. Stone nodded to the man. The man ignored him. Stone wasn’t surprised or bothered.
The guy to Stone’s right had a head full of springy black hair under a dirty Dodgers baseball cap. He was wearing some kind of a grey work shirt, like a uniform of some type. The shirt-tail was hanging out the back of his jeans. He was tall and wiry – not skinny. Stone could see there was muscle definition under the man’s shirt and in his shoulders. Maybe he worked construction, or maybe he just worked out. He had a bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Stone nodded. The man turned his head away.
Stone shrugged, and looked along the bar.
The bartender was handing the last guy at the end of the bar a fresh beer. The bartender was a big guy, almost bald, with just a few remaining wisps of grey hair around his ears. He had a big nose and dark sunken eyes. His face was pale and splotched. He saw Stone but didn’t acknowledge him.
Stone waited.
The bartender scooped up a handful of coins then turned, thumped the cash register with the palm of his hand, and dropped the money into the till. He nudged the cash drawer back shut with his hip and wiped his hands on a towel. Stood there for a moment, like he wasn’t sure what to do. Then he came from behind the bar and disappeared into the office in the back corner of the building.
Stone pushed himself away from the bar and went down the corridor. Went through the archway and into the restroom. When he came back a minute later the Office door was still closed. Stone came back out into the bar area and went over to the jukebox.
The women at the nearby table were watching him. They were all in their early twenties. One of them turned in her chair and appraised Stone with open interest. She had glossy black hair down to her shoulders.
“Well look who we have here,” she said slowly to her friends. “A man.”
The two other women moved. The one wearing the veil suddenly pushed at her hair with one hand and tugged at the hem of her skirt, while the other’s face split into a bright red lipstick smile as she sucked in her tummy and crossed her legs. They were all young, had drunk too much, and gave off the unmistakable aura of small town boredom.
Stone glanced at them, said nothing.
The woman with the dark hair was the prettiest of the group. She was watching Stone intently, with an unfathomable expression – maybe contempt, or dry amusement, or maybe something much more dangerous. For an instant Stones eyes met hers, and then she turned her head away, her attention drawn to movement behind Stone’s shoulder.
Stone turned round. The bartender was coming out of the office. He pulled the door closed behind him, bent over the handle and fiddled with a lock, taking elaborate care. Then he straightened, saw the imposing shape of Jack Stone standing by the jukebox.
“Can I get a Coke?” Stone asked.
The bartender stared at him, but didn’t reply. He edged past Stone, went back behind the bar and poured Coke into a tall glass. Set it on the counter without a word and stood there.
Stone crossed the room, and pulled a couple of bills from his wallet. Put them down on the counter beside the glass and then picked it up.
“You’re the owner, right? You’re Hank Dodd.”
The bartender stared. “Maybe.”
Stone frowned. “You mean you don’t know your name?”
“I mean maybe it’s my name, and maybe it’s none of your business.”
Stone set his Coke down. “I’m not looking for trouble,” he said, keeping his tone conciliatory. “I’m trying to find the two girls who went missing from around here last week. I wanted to ask you about a blue SUV.”
“You some kind of investigator?”
“No.”
“Then why do you want to get involved?”
“Because my sister went missing three years ago. I know how the families must feel.”
The bartender said nothing. He glanced down at his watch, then back at Stone.
“We don’t need your help,” the man said. “We don’t like strangers around here. This is the town’s business, and we take care of our own.”
Stone raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Really.” Dodd looked down at his watch again. Stone started to sense the man’s growing anxiety, and he didn’t think his questions were the cause.
Instinct.
Stone turned towards the door then, turned slowly. Not like he was startled or surprised, just turned with a sense of knowing.
In the doorway of the bar were two tall, solid silhouettes. Two men, standing shoulder to shoulder, their bodies held tense.
It was the two men Stone had confronted in the diner yesterday. The two men in the dark blue SUV. The two men he had been looking for.
Stone gave Hank Dodd a long weary look. Dodd was watching him with bright little eyes with a detached and clinical interest like a scientist studying a specimen in a laboratory. Stone pushed himself away from the counter.
In a split second he assessed the threat. He had no weapon, but the bar stools weren’t bolted to the floor. They were steel-framed with a solid timber seat. Useful. The chairs around each table were timber, so they lacked weight. Stone discounted them as an option. But there was also the glass in his hand.
More than enough, he figured.
The two men came into the bar and stood blocking the doorway with their hands on their hips. Stone gave them to the count of five. Neither of them moved.
From the periphery of his vision, he saw two of the men who had been sitting at the bar suddenly get to their feet and cross the room to stand behind the two strangers. The third guy hadn’t even turned round. He was hunched over his beer, paying no attention.
Okay, Stone figured. Four threats, unless Hank Dodd had a weapon behind the counter and decided to get involved. But Stone didn’t think so. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who did dirty work. Then his mind jumped to the next realization. He figured Dodd had phoned these men. When Stone had entered the bar, Dodd had gone into the back office. That told Stone two things. These men
knew Hank Dodd, but maybe not well – and these two men had been somewhere nearby, somewhere within six or seven minutes of the bar. That meant they couldn’t possibly be staying in Rapture. It was too far away. They had been hiding up here in Windswept all along.
The two men came closer. The other two guys from the bar stood their ground, holding back.
Now they were close enough for Stone to see the extent of their injuries. One of the men’s noses was strapped with white surgical plaster and beneath both his eyes was bruised and blackened. The other man seemed to be favoring one side, and Stone remembered the sound of the man’s shoulder bones grating against each other. He could hardly believe either of them had come back for more.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Stone said to the men.
They exchanged brief glances. “We’ve been looking for you too,” the man with the plaster across the bridge of his nose said. “We’ve got a score to settle. You should have left town.”
Stone shrugged. “I’ve got questions I want answered. And you should have brought more reinforcements.”
The man turned, glanced over his shoulder, and then turned back. “You think four of us isn’t enough to take you down?”
Stone nodded. “I know it.”
Then the second man reached behind his back and under his jacket. When Stone saw the man’s hand again, it was wrapped around a pistol. Not the one Stone had taken from them at the diner. A different one. “I brought Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson. What do you say now?”
Stone said nothing for a long moment. A gun made things dangerous, but he kept his voice calm and detached when he answered. “I’d say that just made me mad,” he said. “I’d say that just got you a whole lot more broken bones than I was going to give you.”
The man made a face. It might have been a laugh, might have been a grimace.
“We want you out of town.” Stone turned. It was Hank Dodd who had spoken. “We don’t want you round here.”
“And I’ll go,” Stone said agreeably, “When I get answers. When I find out what these two men are doing in Windswept, and when I find out what you know about the girls who went missing. And when I find out if the two matters are connected.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’m not going anywhere until those two girls are found safe and sound,” Stone said, and then on an impulse he added, “and until I find out everything you know about a man named Harper.”
At the mention of the name, Hank Dodd’s face seemed to flicker with an instant of recognition. It was just a fleeting change of expression, there and gone again within a heartbeat.
“Never heard of anyone called Harper,” Dodd said. “And I don’t know nothing more than I told the police about those two little girls.”
Stone’s face went icy. “You’re lying.”
He sensed movement and his eyes went back to the two men from the blue SUV. He saw the man with the gun in his hand raise the weapon until Stone was staring down the barrel. “Be that as it may,” the gunman said, “the fact is you aren’t welcome and you aren’t going to get any answers. What we’re giving you is an ultimatum. Get out of town. Be gone before morning. If you aren’t, we’ll come looking for you, and there won’t be a second warning.”
Stone took a pace towards the man, fists down by his side, bunched and ready. Then he checked himself. Even if he could take these guys, and avoid the gun, there was no way he was going to get the answers he wanted – not from these two men and not from Hank Dodd. Not like this. Not in a crowd. His only hope was to single them out – cull them from the herd and beat the answers from them.
Stone took another step – and then another. The guy kept the gun on him all the way. Stone walked out the front door of the bar and didn’t once look back, which was just as well for the two men and for Hank Dodd.
Because Stone’s face was set and grim and merciless.
It wasn’t over. Not by a long way.
Eighteen.
Stone was parked outside the diner at five minutes to six. He saw Lilley through the glass windows. She was cleaning tables. The diner was empty. She waved at him, then tugged at the ties of her apron and reached behind the counter for her handbag. She came out the doors, smiling brightly. Stone climbed from behind the wheel of the Chevy and went around to the passenger side so Lilley could drive.
“How was your day?” Stone asked.
“Good. Busy.” She had a couple of plastic storage containers under one arm. She reached behind her and set them on the back seat. “I brought left-over pie for dinner.” She settled herself behind the wheel, tugged at the hem of her skirt. “More importantly, how was your day?”
“Interesting.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“Yes I do,” he said. “I have a theory…”
Lilley said nothing. Just made an all-purpose gesture of delay and craned her neck to look over her shoulder at the stream of traffic coming behind her. She waited for a small truck and a semi trailer to roar past and pulled out onto the road behind them.
Stone sat patiently. He stayed silent until Lilley had turned off the highway and was on the road to Windswept before he started talking. She drove with one hand and pulled the pins from her hair with the other. Released from its bun, her hair broke like a black wave over her shoulders, then rippled and swayed with the small movements of her head. She used the back of one hand to brush it from her forehead, then looked up at him, her expression attentive and focused.
“I’m listening,” she said.
Stone sat back in the passenger seat and rubbed his temples. He had been thinking hard since leaving the bar, and now he just began to talk, watching Lilley’s face from the corner of his eye for signs of her reaction.
“I think Hank Dodd kidnapped the two local girls,” he said.
Lilley shot him a wide-eyed glance of horror. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “How do you figure that?”
Stone sighed. Started from the start.
“I took your advice and went to the library this morning. The lady there was very helpful,” he said. “She told me the police weren’t investigating the disappearance as a kidnapping at all – they were treating the whole incident as a runaway. They think the girls went to Phoenix.”
“Why do they think that?” Lilley sounded genuinely surprised. “That wasn’t mentioned in the newspaper. The report said it was a suspected kidnapping.”
“No, it wasn’t mentioned,” Stone agreed. “Because they didn’t report one key fact. Hank Dodd told the police when he drove past the girls, they were walking along this road, and Margie Bevan was carrying a suitcase,” Stone explained. “By reporting that to the police, he has deflected their investigation. Everyone in town assumes this is a kidnapping, apart from the police, because of what Hank Dodd told them. That makes me suspicious. It means the police are less likely to pursue every lead, and less likely to give this case the attention it deserves.”
“But maybe Margie was carrying a suitcase. Maybe they did run away to Phoenix.”
“No. They didn’t,” Stone said. “And Margie wasn’t carrying a suitcase.”
Lilley glared at him. “How do you know that, Stone?” she asked. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because I visited Margie’s parents today. She didn’t own a suitcase, Lilley.”
There was a long silence, like Lilley was processing all this information. Stone stared out the window, giving her time to think. They were approaching Windswept. Lilley eased off the gas as they hit the town limits. She drove in silence, her brow furrowed like she had to concentrate on driving, but Stone knew she was thinking about what he had told her.
He didn’t speak again until Lilley had parked in front of her cottage and killed the engine. They sat in the silence for a minute, listening to the motor and exhaust tick and ping as they began to cool.
“I can’t believe it…” Lilley said finally. “So far all
you have are some suspicions, and a theory. It all sounds pretty thin, Jack. I just can’t imagine these girls being kidnapped by a local. I don’t understand why.”
Stone nodded his head. “I think I know,” he said. “And I’ll tell you the rest when we get inside.”
The house was warm and stuffy with still air. Stone left the front door wide open and Lilley went through to the kitchen, cracked the window and set the plastic containers on the counter.
She turned round to Stone, her face still ashen and perplexed. “I need to take a quick shower,” she said.
Stone nodded. He found a can of Coke in Lilley’s refrigerator and went out onto the porch. Sat on the worn timber steps and stared at the houses across the street.
He thought about the men in the blue SUV. He couldn’t figure where they were. When Hank Dodd had gone into his office, Stone was sure it had been to phone the men – and they had arrived at the bar within a matter of minutes. That meant they couldn’t be staying in Rapture – they had to be waiting somewhere in Windswept.
But where? For Stone it was the one missing link.
Stone got to his feet and walked to the mailbox. He stood there for a long moment, drinking his Coke and looking along the street. None of the properties had rental signs, and he didn’t imagine the rental market was a big one for real estate agents in these parts. It didn’t make sense. Stone was sure that if the blue SUV had been parked up nearby, he would have seen the vehicle. He frowned, shook his head.
It just didn’t make sense.
He went back into the house. He heard the shower shutting off. He went to the kitchen, pulled another Coke from the refrigerator.
A moment later Lilley came into the kitchen smelling of talcum powder and lavender. She had washed her hair. It hung down her back, wet and shiny. She had changed into a t-shirt and shorts. Stone ran his eyes over her body. Her legs were long and well shaped, and the shorts were cut off denims, frayed and faded and tight. They were short enough that Stone could see the white fabric of the pockets peeking from below the fringe of denim. The t-shirt was not one of those big, loose nightshirt things. It was Lilley’s size, which meant the fabric was stretched across her chest, making it very obvious to Stone that she was not wearing a bra. She had finely shaped breasts, larger than he suspected, and her nipples stood out in little dark lumps under the thin cloth.
