She did as I instructed, but this time I had her stop before we got to the car. I hopped out and then she slowly drove on past, using her car to provide cover as I walked to the Impala and easily jimmied the trunk. I leaned inside for less than a minute before slamming the trunk and jumping back into Harriet’s car.
“Okay, go, go,” I said, and so she increased her speed just a bit and went around the parking lot one more time.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well,” I said excitedly, pulling off my gloves. “I was right. He has an emergency auto kit in the trunk, and the kit contains flares.”
“And?”
“And it has slots for four flares.”
“And?”
“And one of the flares is missing. My guess is that was the flare that was used to start the fire at Luisa’s trailer.”
We gave each other a high five and then she found a parking spot at the end of the row and pulled to a stop.
“Okay, Callie,” she said, grinning. “I gotta admit, in a way it’s kind of fun doing things just a little bit outside of the law.”
“I’ll make a real detective out of you yet, girlfriend,” I said, giving her another high five.
“So tell me again,” she asked, “why are we going inside?”
“Because I want to know the ‘why’ behind the ‘what,’” I said.
“Okay,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “That explains everything.”
We went into the bowling alley, surprised to see that it was nearly full even at 11:00 on a Wednesday night. Smells of popcorn and musty carpet and dirty feet permeated the air, that odd odor unique to all bowling alleys. Beyond the smells were the sounds, the thunderlike roll of the balls down the lanes, the ping of the pinball machines along the wall, the electronic beeping of the digital scorecards.
“Hey, it looks like ol’ Greenbriar has kept up with the times,” Harriet said, admiring the computerized setup that complemented each lane. We walked over to the front counter and started untying our shoes.
“League play only, until midnight,” the bored girl behind the counter informed us. Harriet and I looked at each other.
“Is the snack bar open?” I asked.
“’Til we close at one,” she said.
We tied our own shoes back on and strolled over to the snack bar, where we purchased two sodas and an order of fries that neither of us wanted.
Fortunately, the eating counter inside the snack bar looked out over the bowling lanes. We sat, ate, and observed the whole place, which was definitely hopping.
Every lane was filled with a team, and each team member was wearing a matching shirt with a company logo on the back. It didn’t take long to find the group we were looking for: Hooper Construction, all in yellow.
They were in the second-to-last lane on the left, and the team members were Butch Hooper, Snake Atkins, and two other men I didn’t recognize. Zeb Hooper was not among them.
From what I could tell, they were all pretty good bowlers except for Snake, whose every third or fourth roll went into the gutter. Still, they all seemed to be having a good time, and it looked as though Snake was a welcome, accepted member of the group despite his lack of proficiency with a bowling ball.
“So how do we do this?” Harriet asked once our fries were gone and we had drained the last of our sodas. “Should we stroll over there and say hello?”
“Give it another minute,” I said. “It looks like they’re about to take a break.”
Sure enough, soon three of the four men began heading toward the snack bar.
“Well, hello, Callie!” Butch said when he saw me. “I’m surprised to see you here tonight.”
“Yep, we were out looking for something to do, and this was the only place that seemed to be jumping.”
“Oh, yeah,” he laughed. “Bowling is big in Greenbriar.”
I introduced Harriet, and then Butch introduced Snake and the other man.
“I thought you needed five to make a team,” I said.
“Yeah, Pete couldn’t make it tonight, so we’re bowling blind.”
“Bowling blind?”
“When you’re short one but you don’t wanna forfeit the game, you put the missing guy’s name down and he gets an automatic hundred and fifteen points.”
“What’s Pete’s usual score?”
“Around two hundred, so his not being here really hurts us.”
“Pete didn’t come because he’s sad about Enrique,” Snake told us. “He said it’s ’cause he wasn’t feeling well, but that’s not true. I know the real reason. He’s just sad.”
The other men looked embarrassed, but I smiled at Snake encouragingly.
“I think everybody’s sad about Enrique,” I said. “So I guess we can’t blame Pete one bit, can we?”
I managed to give Harriet a quick glance, and she knew what I wanted her to do. She needed to distract Butch and the other man so I could speak to Snake by myself.
“So, what’s your shirt say?” Harriet asked Butch, turning on the charm. “Hooper Construction? Is that your company? Because I’m thinking about building a little vacation house…”
“Hey, I think I’ll get more soda,” I said to Snake. “You want some too?”
The two of us went to the counter and I asked for a refill. I pulled out my wallet and flashed my cash so that Snake would see it.
“Can I buy you something to eat?” I asked. “Something to drink?”
“Sure!”
He ordered a chicken basket, a side of onion rings, and an extra large Coke.
“Too bad you can’t bring food out to the lanes,” I said, hoping he and I would able to sit in the snack bar and talk while the rest of his team played their next round.
“They got a little table right behind every lane, so you can eat and bowl at the same time.”
“Oh. Good.”
We made small talk while we waited for his food, though with Snake it was rather like making conversation with a young teenager.
“So tell me more about Enrique,” I said as we stood at the counter. “Your mom told me you were friends.”
“He always gave me Juicy Fruit,” Snake agreed, nodding.
“Are you friends with his whole family?”
Snake grew visibly agitated, playing with the leather strap of beads that hung from his belt.
“I don’t…I don’t really know his wife or his little girl.”
“What about Pepe?”
“Pepe and his friends used to pay me,” Snake said mischievously, looking around and lowering his voice. “To do something they couldn’t do.”
I leaned in close.
“What’s that?” I whispered.
“I bought cigarettes for them. ’C-cause they were minors but I’m not. I’m legal.”
“I bet you buy cigarettes for a lot of the boys in town.”
“No, but sometimes they get me to buy their beer. They say, Snake, old buddy, could you buy us some beer?”
“Do you do it?”
“Nah, ’cause I got caught. I got in big trouble. So now I don’t do that no more.”
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll get in trouble for buying cigarettes?”
“No, ’c-cause I smoke too. So everybody just thinks I’m buying them for me.”
I nodded, wondering how to take this conversation where I wanted it to go.
“You know,” I told him softly, leaning toward him, “I know a secret about Pepe’s trailer.”
“What?” he asked, coming in even closer.
“You know the fire they had there the other day? Well, you’re not going to believe it, but somebody set that fire on purpose.”
He jerked up straight, looking as guilty as if I had caught him with the gasoline can in his hands.
“So why do you think someone would do something like that?” I asked.
“Dunno.”
“Starting a fire is a dangerous thing. But whoever set this fire did it very, very carefully.”
&
nbsp; “Very carefully so they wouldn’t get burned. Just like they were told.”
“That’s right. My problem is, I just can’t imagine why someone would do something like that. It’s so mean.”
“It’s not mean if it’s a prank.”
“Setting a fire isn’t a prank, Snake. It’s serious.”
He stepped away from me, his body nearly vibrating from the tension.
“It’s a prank if they have to do it for their initiation,” he said finally.
“Initiation?” I asked. “Like, a club?”
“Yeah, I guess setting fires and lighting stink bombs and things doesn’t really hurt anybody. And then they can earn their beads. Or…or whatever.”
I looked at him. He was still nervously fiddling with the strap on his belt. I remembered it from before—single strip of leather about six inches long, and at the end hung about eight plastic beads.
Snake’s rattler.
The noises of the bowling alley pinged and rumbled all around us, and from across the kitchen I could see the counter person headed our way with Snake’s food. My mind raced, wondering what to do with these last few seconds of conversation.
“How about if someone gets stabbed?” I said. “That’s not a prank.”
“I don’t know anything about that!” he cried. “Just do your job and shut up. Just do your job and keep quiet.”
“Who told you to keep quiet, Snake?”
He shook his head.
“Who gives out the beads?” I asked, trying again.
“I can’t tell you,” he said. “If I tell, I’ll get stabbed too, just like that guy.”
“Here you go,” the waitress said, sliding the tray to Snake. I paid for the food and told her to keep the change, eager for her to leave.
“This is none of your business, okay?” Snake said, on the verge of tears. “Leave me alone.”
He stomped off like a terrified child, carrying his food to the table near the lane.
I watched him go, wondering what to do next. I didn’t want to push him too far, but there was more to say.
Harriet was already down by the lane, deep in conversation with Butch about her imaginary vacation house. I walked down there myself, watching as the men seemed to wrap up their conversation so they could start their next game.
“I’m gonna bowl an outhouse!” Snake cried, biting into an onion ring, seeming to already have forgotten our conversation. “Gonna bowl an outhouse!”
I looked questioningly at Butch, who smiled.
“A score of one hundred eleven is called an outhouse. It’s Snake’s favorite score.”
Butch picked up his ball from the queue and stepped onto the shiny wood floor of the lane. As he prepared to roll, I leaned down next to Snake and spoke in his ear.
“Why would you want to be in a club,” I whispered, “with someone who threatened to kill you?”
He glanced at me and then shoved his mouth full of onion rings. When he couldn’t shove in any more, he simply started shaking his head. Then he put both hands to his mouth, held it tight, and shook his head back and forth, back and forth as fast as he could.
“Okay, buddy,” I said, one hand on his shoulder, patting him until he calmed down. “That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me right now if you don’t want to.”
Thirty-Eight
I called the police station from the car as Harriet drove us home, and despite the late hour, I insisted that Detective Sweetwater would want to talk to me. She called me back just a few minutes later, sounding as if they had roused her from a deep sleep on my behalf.
“What is it, Callie?” she asked.
“I just had a conversation with Snake Atkins,” I said. “You need to bring him in—both for questioning and for his own safety.”
“Give me a reason,” she said, sounding much more awake. “What have you got?”
I explained to her what I had learned, that someone had created a “club” and told Snake that if he performed certain “pranks” he would be initiated into that club.
“The club symbol,” I said, “is a leather strap he wears on his belt. My best guess is that every time Snake pulls one of these pranks, he gets a bead to put on that strap. Apparently, once he’s earned enough beads, he’ll become a full member of the club.”
“Do you think there is such a club?”
“No. I think someone took advantage of the whole ‘snake’ angle and invented it just for him. I mean, what could be more appealing to that kid than to earn his own ‘rattler’? He’s easily duped, apparently, but I’m afraid he’s in way over his head on this one.”
“Did he stab our John Doe as one of his pranks?” she asked.
“No, but the person who did told him if he said a word about it to anyone, he would be stabbed too. I feel certain he was a material witness to that crime.”
The detective thanked me for the information, and I told her there was one more thing, that they would probably want to get a warrant for Snake’s car because in his trunk they would find some road flares that might match the one that started the fire at Luisa’s trailer.
“I’m not even going to ask you how you know that,” the detective said.
She thanked me again for my help, and I hung up the phone.
Though I ought to be exhausted by now, I was running on a second wind. When we got home, I called back my hacker friend in Seattle and asked him if he had been able to come up with anything on Zeb Hooper’s travels.
“I’m sorry, Callie,” he said. “I found some pretty good credit card records, but as far as I can tell, he hasn’t been out of the country—or if he has, he didn’t pay for it with plastic.”
“Not even the Caribbean?” I asked, thinking of the Bahamas or the Caymans.
“Nope. The only tickets I’ve seen are flights from Asheville, North Carolina, to LaGuardia.”
“New York?” I asked. “Can you give me dates?”
He read off what he had, and my heart was pounding as I hung up the phone.
“Harriet!” I said, interrupting her as she was brushing her teeth.
“What?”
“Do you have the Su Casa records here with you?”
“No,” she replied, pausing to spit toothpaste into the sink. “They’re down at the office.”
“Can you remember the dates of any of those big cash deposits?”
She finished brushing her teeth, thought for a minute, and then said, “Just two: January tenth and July second of last year.”
I looked at the dates I had written on the pad in front of me: Zeb Hooper had gone to New York City on January 8 and July 1 of last year. My guess was that he was either delivering something or selling something and then coming back home and depositing the money in the bank, laundering it through Su Casa.
The question was, what on earth could that something be?
Thirty-Nine
After a night spent tossing and turning, I was up by six the next morning. Sitting up in bed, I decided it was just as well. There was some exploring I wanted to do, and I’d be better off doing it early in the morning before anyone else might be around to see me.
I threw on some clothes, left a note for Harriet, who was still asleep, and headed out to my car. The morning was chilly, and I was glad I had worn a sweater. I had the key in the ignition, ready to turn, when a movement in the rearview mirror caught my eye. Snapping my head up, I realized that someone was just walking by on the road, whistling softly to himself as he went.
It was Zeb Hooper! I froze, feeling fairly confident he wouldn’t notice me unless he specifically turned to look inside my car. Sure enough, he walked on by, his gate slow and steady. Once he was past, I quietly opened my car door and climbed out. Then I stuck to the tree line and crept across the muddy ground to the road, watching his back as he continued down the hill to his own home. As he went, I noticed that his clothes were filthy. Once he turned into his driveway, I knew there was nothing more to see. The mud under my feet gave me an idea, howe
ver.
Sure enough, along the shoulder of the road, right where he had been walking, his footprints remained, deep indentations in the mud. Without hesitating, I decided to take a little walk myself, in the opposite direction of the footprints, to see where they had come from.
The prints led me up past two more houses and around a curve toward the crest of the hill. When I was nearly to the top, I was surprised to see that the prints simply veered off into the brush beside the road.
They led to an empty lot filled with bushes, weeds, and kudzu blocked by a barbed wire fence and posted with several bright yellow “No Trespassing” signs. Bending over, I studied the footprints in the mud, noting that it looked almost as though he had simply walked right through the fence! I stepped closer and studied the wire, and I soon realized there was a latch on the fence post. By unhooking it, I was able to swing the wire in easily, step forward, and then close it behind me. Looking around to make sure I wasn’t being observed, I carefully continued to track the prints on the ground. To avoid leaving prints of my own, I tried stepping on leaves and grass.
Soon, however, I lost the trail. The ground was higher here, and a bit rocky, and there just wasn’t enough mud to make tracks. I stood where I was, looking ahead and side to side. As far as I could tell, I was in the middle of nothing, a bit of woods along the road with absolutely no indication of a home, a trail, a stream, or anything else except kudzu and rocks and trees.
Disappointed, I let myself out of the fence and walked all the way back down to my car. I decided that tonight, when Zeb Hooper took his walk again, I would be ready for him. I was going to track him in person this time and see which way he went once he reached this point.
Eager to keep moving, I got in my car, drove over the top of the mountain and just a little bit back down the other side. From what I remembered, there should be a street coming up on the left, a gravel road.
I turned onto it and drove a short ways, bouncing in the ruts and the mud. Afraid I might get stuck, I finally pulled over to the side and turned off the car. The rest I could do by foot. I got out and set off at a slight jog down the road, hoping I didn’t have far to go. Eventually, the house showed up on the left, a tiny run-down shack that definitely looked deserted.
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