“I’m not sure, but a few nights ago, or maybe it was last week, some guy told her that he knew the guys she was talking about. He’d seen them someplace a few times. She left right after that.”
“Where did he send her?”
Longo shrugged loosely, as though he could not possibly have cared less. And he very likely couldn’t have. “I don’t know,” he said.
“How do you know that some guy told her that?” Bix asked.
“I was shooting pool with the guy.”
“Didn’t you hear where he told her he’d seen those guys?”
“We were shooting pool, Bix. They were talking but I walked away when it was my shot. I didn’t hear the rest of what they said. As I recall, I went on a good run, sank five or six balls, and when I was done, Katie was gone.”
“The guy you were playing, the guy who told Katie where she might find those other guys . . . is he here tonight?”
Longo gave a cursory glance around the bar, then shook his head. “Don’t see him.”
“Does he have a name?”
“It would be weird if he didn’t, right? But I don’t know it. I’ve seen him here two, maybe three times before. He’s not a regular. Just some guy.”
Bix exhaled in frustration and rubbed the stubble on his chin as he thought.
“Can I make a suggestion, Bix?” Longo said. Without waiting for a reply, he continued. “If you and Katie really are together, why the hell don’t you just ask her these questions yourself?”
It was a fair question.
“Maybe I’ll do that, Longo. Thanks.”
Longo held his fist up for a good-bye bump and Bix complied.
“Don’t forget those beers you owe me,” Longo said.
“I don’t owe you yet. We’re arm wrestling for them, aren’t we?”
Longo looked at him with amusement for a moment, then laughed as he turned back to the pool table and said loudly, “Okay, so whose turn is it to lose money to me?”
Bix wended his way through the bar, back to Caitlin and Josh, who reported that they hadn’t learned anything of value. Josh said he would tell them what little he discovered when they were back in the Explorer, assuming it was where they’d left it, which wasn’t a given in this neighborhood. They all agreed it was past time to leave.
As soon as the cute redhead left the bar with the men she was with, a guy with a scruffy goatee named Richie Janzen left his stool at the bar and made his way to the pool table. He put a ten-dollar bill on the edge of the table, reserving his place to play the winner. Two shots later, one of the players scratched on the eight ball and said, “Damn it, Longo, you got lucky that time.”
“Seems like I get luckier every time I play you, Chet,” Longo said with a laugh.
Janzen starting racking the balls. “Longo, right?” he asked.
“Do I know you?” Longordo asked.
“We shot stick a few weeks ago,” Janzen lied. “You took me for twenty bucks. I’m back to get even,” he added with a smile.
Longo shrugged and scattered the balls with a thunderous break.
Janzen waited through a few shots before casually asking, “Hey, I think I saw you a few minutes ago talking to a guy I used to work with. He left with that sweet little redhead.”
“Bix?” Longo asked.
“Bix . . .” Janzen repeated, frowning, as if that didn’t sound right. “Are you sure that’s his name?”
Longo sank two balls, then said, “Last name’s Bixby. First name is something weird, like Delbert or Desmond.”
Janzen snapped his fingers. “Now I got it. Everyone calls him Bix, right?” Which, of course, Longo had called him a few seconds ago. “What’s the deal with him and that redhead?”
“Katie? I guess she lives with him, the lucky bastard.”
Janzen nodded, as if he once knew that but had temporarily forgotten. “I can’t remember Katie’s last name,” he said.
Longo was leaning forward for a shot. He looked sideways at Janzen for a moment. “I never caught her last name. How did you say you know Bix?”
“Worked with him, I think.”
“Doing what?” Another ball dropped.
Janzen had no idea. “Landscaping,” he said.
“Didn’t know Bix ever landscaped.”
Longo lined up a shot on the eight ball.
“I think he was only with the company a few months. I was there less than a year myself.”
The eight ball settled into a corner pocket. Janzen hadn’t taken a shot. That was fine with him, though. He left the table a winner.
On the street outside, he took out his wallet and removed a folded cocktail napkin from it. He read the phone number written on it and dialed it on his cell phone. A moment later, his call connected.
“It’s Janzen,” he said into the phone. “Yeah, I’m down at Bob’s. The redhead you were looking for the other night, Katie, she was in tonight. Just left . . . Swear to Christ, she was . . . No, I didn’t get her last name, but I got something almost as good . . . The name of the guy she lives with. That’s gotta be worth the hundred you promised, right? . . . Well, fifty, then, at least . . . Yeah, okay, next time I see you.”
Janzen gave up the name and ended the call. It had cost him ten bucks to get the information from Longo, but he’d make forty bucks in profit. Not a bad return on twenty minutes of his time.
Martin Donnello slipped his cell phone back into his pocket and gave a quick scratch to the skin under his eye patch. He was a little surprised to have heard from Janzen. Sure, the guy spent his every waking hour in that dump, so if the redhead ever returned, he was likely to see her, but Donnello hadn’t expected her to return so soon after what happened the other night at the warehouse.
Donnello knew she’d been there that night. Not her, necessarily, but someone. When bullets started buzzing and Donnello saw her in the shadows, he and his partner, Mike, gave chase, but even though they split to cover more ground, they lost her. Then when Donnello saw the woman’s face in the police sketch, he remembered where he’d seen her—at the Barrel O’ Beer two nights ago, the night things went to shit just hours later at the warehouse. It was only the second time Donnello had been to Bob’s, so he didn’t know who the woman was, but when he went back today shortly after the place opened at three this afternoon, he asked around and everybody seemed to know her. But no, that wasn’t really true. They all flirted with her, they said, and she flirted back, but nobody actually knew who she was. And given what had gone down the other night, Donnello had doubted that she’d ever show up there again. More likely, he’d thought, she was on a Greyhound at the moment just outside of San Antonio or somewhere equally far away. So when Donnello gave that pathetic boozehound Janzen his number and asked him to call if the redhead ever came back, he didn’t really expect to hear from him. But Janzen had called.
Donnello dialed his phone and waited. Damn voice mail again. Where the hell was Mike? Donnello thought he might have been shot the other night, but he figured it was only a flesh wound. But maybe Donnello was wrong. Maybe it was much worse.
When Mike’s outgoing message ended, Donnello said, “I don’t know where the hell you are or what the hell you’ve been doing, but I’ve been busy looking for the girl from the warehouse, like you should have been doing. And I found her. Well, almost. I’ve got her first name and the name of the guy she lives with. As soon as I have his address, I’ll call you. Pick up next time, would you?”
Donnello hadn’t talked to Mike since the warehouse. When things go to shit like they did that night, you stay the hell away from the people you were involved with for a little while. But things were different this time. This time, that damn redhead got involved. The cops would find her eventually. Donnello planned to get to her first.
Fortunately, he had a name now. Delbert or Desmond Bixby. Couldn’t be too many of those around. Shouldn’t be hard to find him. And when he did, he’d find her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CAITLIN
SAT LOW IN HER seat, her back to the rest of the diner behind her. She hoped the high seat backs of the booth would keep people from seeing and recognizing her. For good measure, she was wearing a worn Red Sox baseball hat Josh had found on the floor of Bix’s car.
“Relax a little, Katie,” Bix said. “No one’s going to recognize you. And if they do, no one in this place is gonna call the cops on you.”
“How can you be so sure?” Caitlin asked.
“Because there’s no reward in it for them. If the cops ever put a dollar figure on you, then we’ll have to be careful.”
“What about someone seeing me and calling the police just to do his or her civic duty?”
“We’re in the wrong part of town for something like that.”
When they’d left the Barrel O’ Beer a couple of minutes ago, they’d driven a few blocks until spotting a hole-in-the-wall with the no-frills name of “Diner.” They were hungry, not having eaten since breakfast, so when they saw the diner, Bix slowed down the SUV and they looked in the windows as they passed. There were only a few customers, so they decided to chance it. Once inside, Caitlin walked with her head down to a booth in the back. Josh slid in beside her and Bix sat across from her.
“I like what I see here,” Bix had said.
“What’s that?” Josh had asked.
“That nobody gave a shit about us when we came in. Nobody looked up, not even the waitresses.”
Bix’s observation was borne out over the next several minutes when nobody came to take their orders. As much as they craved anonymity, they also wanted food, so Bix finally whistled for a waitress, who shuffled over and took their orders without looking up from her little notepad.
While they waited for their food, Bix finished telling them what Longo had said, that he overheard someone telling Caitlin where he’d seen the one-eyed blond guy once or twice.
“But he didn’t say where?” Josh asked.
“He didn’t know.”
“So we still don’t know where the hell to go.”
“Maybe we do,” Caitlin said. “I think we should go back to the King of Pawns.”
“The shop was closed,” Josh said.
“It’s the only address on my list. It has to be there for a reason. The Barrel O’ Beer was on the list, too, and that panned out.”
“It did?”
“Well, we know I hung out there, right? Looking for One-Eyed Jack and his friend. And apparently I got a lead on him there, too. So why should we assume that the address on my list isn’t relevant?”
“Well,” Josh said, “because, like I said, it’s closed . . . it’s closed down.”
Caitlin nodded. “Remember the hours I wrote on my list, next to the address?”
“Sure, ten to four.”
“We assumed that was ten a.m. to four p.m. But what if it was ten p.m. to four a.m.?”
“Who stays open till four a.m.?” Josh asked. “And besides, the place was empty. Closed for years, by the look of it. I doubt they’ll be up and running again”—he looked at his watch—“in half an hour.”
“The pawnshop won’t be. But maybe there’s more there than just an empty pawnshop.”
Bix nodded, looking impressed. “It’s worth checking out.”
“We don’t have anything else to go on,” Josh said with a shrug. “Might as well go back to the worst part of town.”
“We’re already in the worst part of town,” Bix said. “That’s just a different street in the worst part of town.”
Their food arrived and it wasn’t terribly good, but it was filling. Caitlin ate her spaghetti as she thought things through. Finally, she said, “How does the Bogeyman fit into all this?”
The guys looked up from their meals.
“The Bogeyman was on my list,” she said. “Why? One-Eyed Jack makes sense now. So does Bob. If we’re right about the address, then that makes sense, too. But what about the Bogeyman?”
“He can’t be One-Eyed Jack’s buddy,” Bix said. “Bookerman’s still in prison, right? Has another ten years to go?”
“That’s what we read online,” Josh said, “and Bigelson confirmed it. And I didn’t see any article about him being released. Besides, we don’t even know if he’s still alive. Like Bigelson said, maybe he died in prison.”
“And let’s not forget,” Bix said, “you were telling people One-Eyed Jack and his buddy are both in their thirties. Bookerman would be in his sixties by now.”
“The Bogeyman—the Bookerman I thought I was shooting in my dream—was young,” Caitlin said. “Younger than he’d ever been before.”
“Bogeyman Junior,” Bix said. “Maybe Bookerman has a son.”
“If he does, I couldn’t find him,” Josh said. “After we learned about Bookerman, I searched for any sign of that name and got nothing but the old news items we already saw. There are no other Bookermans in the area.”
“Who owns the junkyard he used to run?” Bix asked. “The one next to the town dump.”
“I looked for that junkyard. I don’t think it’s there anymore. The dump is still there, but none of the junkyards in the local Yellow Pages had addresses near it.”
“I don’t think the guy I shot in the warehouse could be a Bookerman,” Caitlin said.
“Caitlin,” Josh said, “will you please stop saying that?”
“Whatever. The murder victim in the warehouse? I don’t think he’s related to Bookerman.”
“Why not?”
“No resemblance.” She knew that the guys were thinking of the man in the police sketch. Caitlin, though, was remembering the face from her dream, lying on the cement floor with a bullet hole in it. “Bookerman was one of the ugliest people I’ve ever seen. Very distinctive and ugly features. The dead guy in the warehouse looked too . . . normal. He was really average-looking. It’s hard for me to believe that Darryl Bookerman could be that guy’s father. I just can’t see it.”
They were just about finished with their meals. For her part, Caitlin was relieved about that. She had needed the sustenance, but the food had ended up being pretty lousy.
Josh looked at his watch. “Ten after ten,” he announced. “If you’re right, hon, the pawnshop, or whatever is at that address now, should be open.”
“So let’s head back there,” Bix said.
Josh nodded, looking pretty brave, Caitlin thought . . . certainly braver than she felt.
Hunnsaker had left two messages for Jane Stillwood, the person who Martha at Commando’s recommended she call first. Hunnsaker had also left messages for a few other employees and had managed to speak with three of Katherine Southern’s coworkers. They all liked Katherine—quite a lot, actually—but none of them knew her well. No one knew where she lived. No one knew who her friends were outside of work. Every one of them recommended that Hunnsaker call Jane Stillwood, though. So while she continued calling other Commando’s employees in case one of them knew Southern better than those Hunnsaker had reached by phone so far, Hunnsaker was heading to Jane Stillwood’s home address to have a chat.
She had just finished leaving a message for yet another person on the list when Padilla called her.
“What’s up, Javy?”
“I can’t find her,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I can’t find any Katherine Southern. She doesn’t exist anywhere that I could find. Motor vehicle, Social Security, property, tax, nothing.”
“Damn,” Hunnsaker said. “False identity?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“So what does Katherine Southern, or whoever she really is, have to hide, other than the fact that she may or may not have shot our victim in the warehouse the other night?”
“I don’t know, but there’s something else, something interesting.”
Hunnsaker liked the sound of that. She liked interesting.
“A call came in through the tip line from a guy who says he used to be on the job. Jeff Bigelson. Retired from the Nort
h Smithfield PD nine years ago.”
Wow, an honest-to-God tip that wasn’t anonymous. And from a former cop, no less. “You check him out?”
“He could be lying about being Jeff Bigelson, of course, but there was definitely a Detective Jeffrey Bigelson who retired nine years ago from the North Smithfield PD.”
“And he called about this case?”
“Yeah. Says he spoke with our redhead—that is, with Katherine Southern.”
“He spoke with her? About what?”
“He didn’t say, but he wants the lead detective on the case to call him. That would be you.”
Padilla was right. This was interesting.
“Give me his number.”
Not surprisingly, Greendale Boulevard, where the King of Pawns was located, was even scarier at night. Looking up and down the street from the relative safety of Bix’s car, Caitlin saw a collection of frightening characters similar to but slightly different from the ones who had populated the street when Caitlin was there that morning. It was almost as if the night shift had shown up and relieved the day shift.
As Caitlin, Josh, and Bix watched the long-shuttered pawnshop, looking for signs of life that would indicate the place saw nighttime activity despite being closed for business, they talked about whether Caitlin could really have come here by herself. Josh hoped that if she did, she had sat in the car like they were doing now and watched from afar, waiting for One-Eyed Jack and his buddy, rather than going inside. If not, Josh said, she must have been crazy. Bix reminded them that apparently Caitlin had visited the Barrel O’ Beer every night for the past few weeks and survived, and that place wasn’t exactly a Friendly’s. Caitlin promptly noted that she was, in fact, crazy, hence the fugue state. Josh stepped in to reassure her that experiencing a fugue state didn’t mean she was crazy. While they were debating, a couple of guys walking along the other side of the street slowed down in front of the former pawnshop, then pushed open the doors and went inside.
“There was a padlock on those doors earlier,” Josh said.
“Looks like Caitlin might have been right about this place, whatever it is,” Bix said. “You two ready?”
The Prettiest One: A Thriller Page 22
