Why not?
That was the problem: The whys. There were too many of them.
Allie got up, adjusted her jacket’s collar, and picked up the files and dumped them into the shopping bag. It wouldn’t be long now before Deputy Lincoln realized Marshall wasn’t bringing her back. How long would it take for him to sound the alarm? His neck would be on the line one way or another.
Or would it? Maybe there was someone else giving the orders, who in turn instructed Lincoln to let her out of her jail cell?
It didn’t matter. She was out, regardless of how it’d happened. Now she had to stay out because she wasn’t going to find Tom Marshall’s real killer, or killers, by rotting in jail.
“Good hunting, Allie Krycek.”
That was exactly what she was going to do. Hunting.
And she knew where to start, too.
Twenty-Two
“Holy shit. It’s you.”
Allie smiled. “I’ve been greeted worse.”
“How’s that possible?”
“You have no idea.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I do. And I’m not sure I wanna know, either.” Mickey the bartender looked from Allie’s face to the shotgun in Allie’s hands, then back up again. “That’s loaded with blanks.”
“I replaced it with real shells.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Don’t you?”
“No.”
Allie shrugged. “You know who I am, right?”
“Of course I do. They’ve been talking about you on the news all morning. You killed Tom Marshall. And that’s not counting what you did to poor Bill yesterday.”
And I also escaped from jail, Allie thought, noticing that Mickey hadn’t added that bit, and the bartender would have if she’d known.
Allie had also been monitoring the morning news ever since she broke into the Don’t Stop In, and there hadn’t been any mentions of her jailbreak on any of the channels. And the media would have been in a frenzy over it. More salacious than the possible murder of a notable citizen like Tom Marshall would be that possible murderer’s jail escape in the middle of the night. It was the stuff of Hollywood.
But there was zero mention of it, and Allie was leaning toward the Wells City Police Department covering up her escape. That notion led her all the way back to Archibald Marshall’s influence. The man had not only arranged her release from jail but was, somehow, also keeping the authorities from reporting it.
I guess I should be glad he’s on my side.
Allie motioned with the same pump-action shotgun Mickey had fired yesterday morning, and Pete had the night before last. She’d checked the shells, and they were indeed blanks. A quick tour of the building had produced no live rounds to replace them with.
But Mickey didn’t know that, and given Allie’s growing reputation—or rather, infamy—she had a good feeling the bartender wouldn’t test her. The fact that Mickey had already seen Allie assault Trent and take his gun, before using the deputy as a human shield, probably helped with Allie’s credibility.
“Close the door and lock it,” Allie said.
“What if I don’t?” Mickey asked.
“Do we really have to do this?”
“Do what?”
“I don’t have a lot to lose, Mickey. You know that, right?”
“I guess…”
“Close the door and lock it. Don’t make me ask a third time.”
“Okay, okay, just relax.”
Mickey did as she was told, though her hands were shaking when she pushed the deadbolt into place, then also took the time to turn the tumbler on the doorknob.
The bartender turned around. “What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, on the run?”
From a bunch of assholes that tried to set me up? No fucking way, Allie thought, but she said, “The security camera.” She pointed the shotgun at the small device perched on top of the cabinet behind the bar. It hadn’t taken very long to find it now that she knew its general location. “How does it work?”
“It sends the footage to an online cloud server, then is downloaded to the PC in Walt’s office.”
Allie had to smile at that. For some reason, she hadn’t expected a place like the Don’t Stop In to be using cloud service storage for their security cameras. She’d searched the manager’s office in the back, along with the basement for a TV setup where the footage could have been stored, but had come up empty. There was, as Mickey had said, a PC in the back room, but she didn’t have the password to turn it on.
She again motioned with the shotgun. “Let’s go.”
“Where we going?” Mickey asked.
“Back room. I want to see the security footage on that computer.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You sure?”
Allie smiled again. “For now.” Then, with just a bit of an edge to her voice, “Let’s go.”
Mickey walked across the dance floor. Her eyes kept going from Allie to the shotgun and back again. Allie didn’t have to think very hard about what was going through the bartender’s mind: she was trying to decide if it might be worth the risk to make a run for it. Or, if she was feeling really brave, tackle Allie, though Allie doubted that one. Mickey would probably go for the door if she thought the chances were good the shotgun was still loaded with blanks, which it, of course, was.
The bartender must have decided the potential rewards weren’t worth the risk because she didn’t do anything as they entered the manager’s room. Mickey walked over to the desk and turned on the computer.
“How’d you get inside?” Mickey asked.
“You should think about getting a better lock for your back door,” Allie said. “It took me half a second to pick it.”
That wasn’t entirely true. It’d taken about five seconds. Six, tops.
Mickey sighed. “I told Walt to fix that damn lock. It’s been there as long as he’s been alive. Longer, maybe.”
Allie didn’t ask who “Walt” was. She assumed it was either the owner or the manager, or the big guy in the cowboy hat whose pictures were all over the room they were standing in now.
“The police have access to everything on that computer?” Allie asked.
Mickey nodded. “Yeah. Walt made copies for them.”
“Copies of everything?”
The bartender shrugged. “I guess.” Then, “I can’t believe you came here.”
Allie wasn’t sure if that was amusement or awe in the other woman’s voice. Maybe a little bit of both. It had been a no-brainer for Allie to return to the Don’t Stop In. She had no reasons to go back to her cabin—and besides, it was probably crawling with surveillance right now—and even less reason to stay in town. There had to be something in the footage from two nights ago that she could use. The fact that it existed at all, and Dawson hadn’t added anything from it to his files, was another mystery she needed answers to.
Right now, anything and everything was possible. She was playing catchup. What made it worse was that she didn’t know how far behind she was.
Getting to the Don’t Stop In had been easy. She’d acquired (re: stole) a bike from a bus stop, then pedaled it out of the city while keeping off the main roads. It was already morning and bright out by the time she reached the state highway. From there, she’d only had to hitch a ride with a passing semi. Allie was betting that a long haul trucker driving through the county wouldn’t have any idea about Tom’s death. She was right, when the friendly Texan dropped her off at the bar and continued on his way.
The computer in front of Mickey beeped a couple of times before turning on. Mickey leaned over it to type in the password.
“What are you looking for anyway?” the bartender asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Allie said.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” When she was finished, Mickey took a step back. “It’s all yours.”
Allie walked over. “Show me how
to access the camera footage.”
“From how long ago?”
“How far back do they go?”
“Just one week. Then they’re erased with new footage, and on and on. I told Walt to pay for a longer retention period, but he said it would cost double what he was already paying. He’s a bit of a penny-pincher.”
“I don’t need one week, just from two nights ago. From eight to midnight.”
Mickey bent over the computer again and clicked the mouse. Allie stood behind the other woman and watched her work. Mickey knew her way around the PC’s desktop and had opened up a browser and was sifting through folders and links. She didn’t stop until she’d found what she was looking for.
Allie noted the long filenames, each one appended with a corresponding date.
Mickey opened the file. “That’s from two days ago. It’s a huge file, so it’ll take a while to open.”
“And the police have all of this?”
“I guess. You’ll have to ask Walt. He was the one who dealt with the detectives.”
Allie nodded. “What about just the footage from between eight and midnight?”
“It’s either all day or nothing.”
“Okay. Go take a seat.”
Mickey walked over to a couch and sat down. She put her hands in her lap and stared at Allie as she slid into a comfortable, albeit raggedy, swivel office chair.
“So, you killed Tom Marshall,” Mickey said.
“I need you to be quiet,” Allie said.
“It was just a question.”
“Quiet.”
Allie laid the shotgun on the counter next to her. Out of the corner of one eye, she glimpsed Mickey’s own eyes immediately going to the weapon.
But the bartender didn’t move and didn’t appear to be about to move, so Allie was able to focus on the screen.
The footage began with Mickey walking into frame and wiping down the counter in the morning. The camera began recording only when she appeared, so Allie assumed it had motion sensors and only became active when it detected movement. Allie made a mental note to wipe the footage of her entering the place this morning.
Fast-forwarding through the footage was easy—she just used the mouse and clicked the fast-forward button and the scenes blurred by. The camera, as she’d already noticed when seeing the stills from the police files, was a straight shot from behind the bar, so it saw everything that Pete or Mickey would from their usual spot. This included all of the bar, about eighty percent of the tables, the stage at the very back, and the dance floor in the middle. The bathroom hallway was missing, as was the front door. A second and third camera would have provided a more thorough coverage, but apparently ol’ Walt was too cheap to spring for those.
Allie paid attention to the time stamp at the bottom of the frame as customers came in one at a time in fast-motion. Some loitered for a while, and others stayed just long enough to use the bathrooms before moving on. Eventually Mickey was replaced by Pete, who repeated the process of greeting customers, serving them, and alternated between making small talk with the regulars and wiping down the counter.
Night fell, and Stan stumbled in and took his usual spot in front of Pete. The man sat and drank and didn’t seem to move at all for what seemed like hours. By the time Allie finally entered the scene, first going to the bathroom before wandering over to the bar, Stan had been camped out on his stool for over three hours.
Allie switched the footage back to normal speed as Pete came over and made small talk with her before bringing over a beer. Stan finally perked up, sensing prey, and made his move on Allie. Or slurring in her direction while trying mightily—and shockingly, succeeding in—not falling off his stool. Allie hadn’t realized how precarious the man was perched on that seat of his until she could see it from a stationary angle. Of course, she also wasn’t trying to pretend he didn’t exist at the moment, so that helped—
Recorded Allie was turning in the direction of the door.
There, she thought, remembering when Sarah and Tom first entered the place. The door had slammed, which had drawn Allie’s attention. Even Pete, behind the bar, glanced over at the couple, though he was back to cleaning a pair of pitchers a few moments later. Neither Sarah nor Tom entered the frame because they had taken a table near the corner, out of the camera’s view, but Allie remembered the moment well.
Nothing happened for a while after that, so Allie fast-forwarded through five endless minutes of Stan hitting on her. Then another five more minutes of the same thing. She didn’t stop until Sarah finally appeared in frame, walking across the dance floor and toward the bathroom. Allie couldn’t tell from the footage if Sarah looked frightened or not. The camera didn’t get a very good look at her face, and there was a jerky quality to the footage when recording people from a distance.
Allie let the footage play in regular speed, watching her video self as she tried in vain to pretend Stan didn’t exist. Pete, his back to the camera, was doing his best to keep Stan from, literally, falling and slobbering over her. Allie hadn’t realized how much effort the bartender had put in that night to keep her unmolested. She made another mental note, this time to thank Pete if she ever saw him again. Hopefully he wouldn’t run to call the cops the second he spotted her.
Finally, recorded Allie got up to go to the bathroom. She recalled not crossing paths with Sarah during this time. Looking back, she guessed the other woman was probably occupied in one of the stalls, possibly painfully writing her note down on those flimsy sheets of toilet paper, when Allie entered and found a spot near the back. She’d heard doors opening and closing more than once during the time she was inside.
Allie didn’t have to wait long to see Sarah walk back into frame post-bathroom. She walked across the dance floor again before disappearing to the other side. Then, about fifteen seconds later, the woman reappeared, this time walking to the bar and standing between Allie’s empty stool and Stan to her right. Sarah opened her purse and took out some money and handed it to Pete. The bartender turned to get change, but Sarah smiled and said something to him before turning and walking away.
Sarah smiled and said something to Pete, before turning and walking away.
“What?” Allie said out loud. She hadn’t meant to and saw Mickey glancing over in curiosity.
“You say something?” the bartender asked.
“No.”
“I swore you said—”
“Be quiet.”
“Geez, okay, don’t have to be rude,” Mickey said. She crossed her arms across her chest in annoyance.
Allie focused on the screen again. She rewound the footage and watched again, leaning forward to get an even better look.
Sarah, paying Pete with money from her purse.
Pete, turning to make change.
Sarah, smiling and saying to keep the change, before turning to go.
But she hadn’t left anything underneath Allie’s coaster.
She hadn’t even touched it.
Then Sarah was gone, walking off frame.
A few seconds later, recorded Allie appeared, looking in the direction of the front door—after Sarah and Tom Marshall. But mostly Sarah, because Allie had seen the other woman standing next to her stool seconds earlier.
Recorded Allie sat back down at the bar and picked up her glass of beer to drink, and as she did so, noticed something underneath the coaster. The note. The same note that wasn’t there before.
So she hadn’t imagined the whole thing after all. For a moment, just a brief moment, Allie was entertaining the idea that she might have conjured up the note in her mind, maybe as some part of a delusional episode. But she hadn’t. There was recorded Allie picking up and staring at the two pieces of tissue paper. She read it once, then again, before looking toward the front door, then back to the note…
“What the hell?” Allie said, again out loud.
“Huh?” Micky said.
Allie rewound the footage, stopping only when Sarah appeared at the bar
to pay the bill. Allie leaned in even closer, waiting for Sarah to take something other than money out of her purse.
Except she never did.
The camera, at this range, was almost crystal clear, and Allie would have seen it if Sarah had put the note under her coaster.
But she did no such thing.
Allie rewound the footage once again, until she was back to sitting at the bar next to Stan a few minutes before she’d gotten up to go to the bathroom for the second time that night.
Sarah appeared behind her, walking across the dance floor toward the bathroom.
Then recorded Allie got up and walked in the same direction.
Allie squinted at the screen, trying to see if she could spot the note underneath the coaster.
Nothing yet.
Nothing yet…
Then Pete appeared onscreen on the other side of the bar, his back to the camera. He was standing between Allie’s now-empty seat and Stan’s. The bartender reached for Allie’s coaster and picked it up, then slid something underneath it.
Allie clicked the mouse to freeze the video.
Sonofabitch.
Pete. It was Pete who had slipped the note underneath her coaster, not Sarah.
Allie sat back and stared at the screen. There it was, in color. Pete, sliding the note underneath her coaster.
Not Sarah, but Pete, the bartender.
The friendly, handsome bartender.
“Pete,” Allie said out loud.
“Huh?” Mickey said. “Did you say Pete?”
Allie looked over. “What’s his last name?”
“Williams. Why?”
“How long has he worked here?”
“You mean here, here?”
“Yes. Here, here.”
“Not too long. Maybe three months?”
That jived with what Pete had told her about his employment status at the Don’t Stop In. So at least the man hadn’t lied about everything. The question was: What else did he lie to her about?
“So he just moved into town,” Allie said.
“I guess,” Mickey said. “We didn’t exactly sit down to talk about his history or anything. He’s just the other bartender who works here when I’m not. He’s not my type, if you know what I mean.”
Allie Krycek (Book 4): Savior/Corruptor Page 18
