“The spider man keeps the woman you seek in a cave near a river many miles from here. There is a chain about her so she cannot run away.”
Crockett wondered how she appeared to be so bright, when everthing surrounding them was hazy and dark. “Is she all right?”
“No. She suffers several injuries. None of them threaten her life, but they deal badly with her comfort.”
“Is she, uh, does he…”
“No. He offers her no deliberate abuse.”
“Why did…”
“Revenge. He sees her as the cause of a difficult life and her keeping as his duty. He is confused in his mind.”
“Do you know her location?”
“Only that she is in the land of the spiders.”
“Do you know who he is?”
She shook her head. “Now you know all I know.”
Crockett sensed it was time to back off. “Thank you,” he said.
She made the sign of the cross in front of her forehead and Crockett felt the touch of her fingers just above his nose. “Offer me no thanks, Crockett man. I had no more choice in this matter than you. It is not our will that drew us here. This is bigger than we. Go with God and find the woman.”
With that, she walked away, her long skirt swinging from side to side over bare ankles. Crockett sank to a seat on the curb and waited for the street to return and his shaking to go.
“Now see? That’s just what I mean,” Clete sputtered, getting to his feet and waving his arms. “All this goddam spooky voo-doo bullshit! Haints an’ fortune tellers an’ black chicks waitin’ on ya for no reason, and that perfume stinkin’ up the basement. What’s next? You gonna show up with a bone through your nose, dancin’ around some goddam campfire, rollin’ your eyes and singin’ Heartbreak Hotel while ya wait for the Great pumpkin to show up?”
Crockett leaned back in his chair and began to laugh, a low quiet chuckle that he couldn’t quite control. After a moment Clete joined him. It took a little while for the two of them to straighten up.
“You know what I mean,” Clete said, panting a little. “What’s next, the search for King Solomon’s mines?”
“At least we know more than we did,” Crockett said.
“She’s chained up in a cave?”
“That’s what Calamity said.”
Clete grimaced. “That’s a little tough to believe.”
“Would you have believed anybody was gonna snatch her in the first place? Would you have believed all those spiders in her bedroom?”
Clete shook his head. “Probably not,” he said.
“You smelled the perfume.”
“Mass hypnosis,” Clete grumbled.
Crockett smiled. “Probably.”
“So now what?”
“So now we think of things we haven’t thought of yet.”
Clete dropped into a chair. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Carson Bailey,” Crockett said.
“Who?”
“Or Bailey Carson.”
“What?”
“A woman Ruby spoke of from time to time. She even wanted to fix me up with her once or twice. She’ll be in Ruby’s computer or address book. She and Ruby have been friends for a long time. She might know something.”
“That’d make one of us,” Clete said.
Crockett had been waiting at a table in the Classic Cup for about fifteen minutes when a tall slender woman with long chestnut hair and the promised dark green sweater came in. He stood up. She noticed him, walked to the table and extended her hand. She was an unusual combination of elegant and earthy.
“I’m Carson Bailey,” she said. Her voice was contralto and well-modulated. She was lovely.
“Call me Crockett,” Crockett said. “Thanks for meeting me.”
“Sunday morning,” she said. “If I wasn’t here, I’d be out at the barns. I can go riding later.”
A waitress arrived. Carson ordered coffee with scones and turned back to Crockett.
“Once upon a time, Ruby suggested that you and I should get better acquainted. Is that what this is?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“I didn’t think so. You’re too serious, and Ruby would have checked with me first. Besides, the last I heard you and she were involved, sort of.”
“How long since you’ve seen Ruby?”
“Six months or so. I talked to her on the phone a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been friends for nearly ten years.” She smiled. “That’s all. Just friends. She said you and she were, ah, estranged.”
“Ruby’s missing.”
“Missing? Whatdaya mean, missing?”
“She’s been abducted.”
Two shades of color drained from the woman’s face. “Like taken?”
“Exactly like that. The best information we have is that she is being held a considerable distance from here. We don’t know where or why. The local police and the FBI are involved.”
“Oh, shit,” Carson said, rummaging in her purse. “I’ve got a million questions that won’t help one little bit. I need a fix.”
She extracted a card of nicotine gum from her bag, put two pieces in her mouth and began to chew vigorously. Crockett smiled.
“I used to be addicted to cigarettes,” she said. “Now I’m addicted to this gum. I use it to relax. Ever see anybody chewing gum that looked relaxed to you? Christ! I’m rambling. What can I do to help?”
Crockett sipped his coffee to give the woman time to focus. Her coffee and scones arrived, but she barely noticed.
“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “During the time that you’ve known Ruby, did she ever speak to you about a particular situation or patient that made her fearful?”
“No. She never talked to me about her work at all, except to bitch about a particularly bad day or something.”
“How did the two of you meet?”
“At a salon over off Jarboe called Nails. We began a conversation that we finished later over coffee. Here at the Classic Cup as a matter of fact. We became friends over time. I actually referred a couple of people to her.” She frowned and picked up a scone. “I’m sorry,” she went on. “My mind is flying all over the place. God. I just can’t believe it. Ruby’s been, like, kidnapped?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Get her back,” Crockett said. He watched the woman stare blankly at the tabletop for a moment while shredding a scone with French manicured nails.
“I guess you’d be the one to do that,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I know a little bit about you, Crockett,” Carson went on. “Not so much details as impressions of some of the things you and Ruby were involved in. She had a lot of confidence in you. Has a lot of confidence in you. Oh, God. I just talked about her in the past tense, for chrissakes!” Pieces of scone were flying all over the table.
Crockett took the woman’s hands in his. “She’s alive,” he said. “We know that. We also know that she is in no immediate critical danger.”
“You’re sure?”
“Reasonably, yes.”
“But how could you…never mind. None of my business. Gum’s kicking in.” She took a sip of coffee. “I honestly can’t think of anything to help. She never talked about specifics. Can we get out of here? I can’t sit still. Would you walk me to my car?”
Carson was quiet on the block and a half jaunt to the parking garage. Crockett left her to her thoughts. At length she stopped beside a black Dodge Charger.
“This is me,” she said, pulling two business cards and a pen from her purse. “Give me your phone number. If I think of anything I’ll call you.”
Crockett wrote his cell number on the back of one card, she wrote a number on the back of the other, and they made the exchange.
“I own the Better Cheddar on the Plaza,” Carson went on. “You can reach me there or at the number on the back of the card. You let me know what’s going on. I love that lady.”
Crockett smiled. “Of course,” he said.
“And you. You need to talk or get drunk or rage at the gods, pick up the phone. You need an ear or a shoulder, you got me.”
Crockett felt tears in the bottom of his eyes. “Thanks. I mean it. Thanks.”
She put her arms around his neck. “You find her, Crockett. You find her and bring her home. I am not ready for a world without Ruby.”
Without another word she got in the car and roared away, her tires squealing on the slick cement. Crockett watched her go.
“I’m not either,” he said.
It was a long walk back to his truck.
Crockett’s cell phone went off as he walked into his kitchen. Clete was having coffee.
“Crockett?”
“Yeah.”
“Carson Bailey. I may have something. It came to me on my drive home. If I hadn’t been so freaked out at the Classic Cup I would have remembered it there. Five or six years ago, Ruby had to testify at some guy’s trial. He was up for murder. Killed his wife. She was a client of Ruby’s.”
“You know any names?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Do you remember anything at all?”
“I think the guy might have been from Arkansas.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Ruby called him something like a ‘dumbass Arkansas country fuck,’ or words to that effect.”
“Was he convicted?”
“Oh yeah. Put him in prison.”
“Did she ever seem to be afraid of him or what he might do?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Thanks, Carson.”
“You bet. If I think of anything else, I’ll call. Keep me posted.”
“Sure,” Crockett said, and disconnected.
“Whatcha got?” Clete asked.
“Ruby testified in a murder trial five or six years ago. Husband killed one of her clients. Carson said she got the impression the guy might have been from Arkansas. Convicted him and sent him away to the graybar hotel.”
“Wasn’t him that snatched Ruby,” Clete said. “If that was his DNA at the scene it woulda set off all kinds of bells when they ran it through CODIS.”
“If the killing happened here in Jackson County, I should be able to track it through the Jackson County Circuit Court. Sixteenth judicial district I think. The courthouse is over on 12th Street. I got summoned there once for jury duty.”
Clete grinned. “How’d that work out for ya?”
“Council for the defense didn’t like me very much.”
“No?”
“Nope. I was dismissed.”
Clete chuckled. “Harsh,” he said, “but fair.”
Clete was on his third cup of coffee the next morning when Crockett, wearing his dark gray suit with the cranberry pinstripe, ambled in.
“Son! A fashion plate if I ever saw one. Who you tryin’ to impress?”
“The sixteenth judicial court,” Crockett replied, preening vigorously. “Do these pants make my butt look too big?”
“You’ve never been lovelier.”
“Thanks. Lemme borrow your H&K, willya?”
“You wanna go armed? You? He who dislikes guns so much?”
“I don’t mind guns. It’s the bullets that freak me out. Today I’m Daniel Beckett of the Justice Department. Beckett carries a gun. Your gun if I can talk you out of it.”
“What’s the matter with your 686 Smith?”
“It’s a wheel gun. Too old fashioned for somebody like Beckett.”
“Sure,” Clete replied, and vanished up the stairs.
By the time Crockett had poured a cup of coffee Clete was back, H&K .45 and two holsters in hand.
“You want kidney or shoulder?”
“That a honest to God shoulder holster, or one of those things that still ties to your belt?’
“Right up under the pit. Holds the gun upside down in a clamshell. Had it specially modified.”
Crockett grinned. “That’ll do,” he said, and unbuttoned his coat.
Forty-five minutes later, after a two block walk from the only parking space he could find, Crockett bought a pale purple rose from a sidewalk vendor and climbed the massive stone steps of the Jackson County Courthouse. At the entrance was a metal detector, manned by a bored looking black man in a Jackson County Deputy’s uniform. The little Smith and Wesson Chief .38 special he carried looked like it hadn’t been out of the holster in years. Crockett unloaded his pockets into the plastic bowl provided and walked through the detector. It went off. The echo whanged around the granite walls of the massive lobby.
“Must be the cane,” he said, backing up to his original position. He laid the cane on the counter and tried again. The buzzer sounded. Again Crockett retreated. The deputy lifted slightly from his stupor.
“Could be this thing,” Crockett went on, drawing the H&K out from inside his jacket and laying it beside the cane. The deputy rose to his feet from his official stool and leaned forward to look at the pistol. Crockett tried again. Again the buzzer sounded.
“Gotta be my leg,” Crockett said, lifting his pant leg to show the officer the strap steel.
“You got a Missouri permit for that?” the deputy inquired.
“Now why would I need a permit for my leg?”
The deputy’s right hand began to drift toward his little revolver.
“I doan mean your leg,” he said. “I mean that goddamn gun. You got a permit?”
“You mean a Missouri permit?”
“Yeah.”
“Nope.”
The deputy’s hand drew ever closer to his gun. “Lemme see some ID,” he said.
“Don’t have it with me,” Crockett replied. “Everything is in your little bowl.”
Using his left hand to keep his right free for a quick draw, the deputy extended the bowl in Crockett’s direction.
“Show me,” he said.
Crockett selected his commission case and opened it to his badge.
“I’m a fed, Deputy,” he said. “Relax. You go for your gun and you’ll probably rip your pants trying to get it out of the holster.”
The man examined Crockett’s commission and shield.
“Very well, sir,” he said. “You may collect your things.”
“Thank you. I’m trying to trace a trial that occurred a few years ago through the identity of one testifying witness. Who would I have to see?”
“That’d prob’ly be the Court Administration office on the third floor. Take the stairs. We got the worst elevators in the world.”
Three more long flights of stairs and Crockett arrived at the Court Administration Office. From what he could see over the counter, it was typical. Redundancy wrapped in red tape, smothered by bureaucracy. A couple of men lounged at desks in the rear of the room while an administrative type woman peered with an expression of harried disapproval at activity generated by law clerks, paralegals, stressed public defenders, and low level gophers, as two or three other fools such as he stood at the counter and waited for someone to notice them. Much like the DMV of county law. He zeroed in on the harried woman.
She was in her mid-forties, thin, pale, and not very attractive in a malnourished sort of way. As she moved closer to the counter he could see she bit her nails, her feet hurt, and her official county nametag/badge proclaimed her to be Virginia Cobb. He stepped around the counter into the highly restricted area and advanced on her. She saw him coming and set about to straighten him out. Her voice was thin and reedy with a slight quaver of hectic frustration.
“Sir? Sir! Please return to the front. This area is for court employees only.”
Crockett smiled. “There you are,” he said. “You’re Miss Cobb.”
“I’m, uh, Mrs. Cobb,” she replied, slightly confused.
Crockett bumped his smile up another notch.
“Mrs. Virginia Cobb?”
“Yes.” Slightly wary, but
curious.
“Of course you are, how stupid of me. It says so right on your name tag,” Crockett went on, lifting the rose out from behind his leg. “Then this is for you,” he continued, holding it out to her.
Mrs. Cobb did what anyone would do when offered something pleasant. She took it.
“For me?”
“Yes, it is, Virginia. From me, in a blatant attempt to gain your favor, I’m afraid. Please forgive me for being so forward, but I have been told that if I needed results in the middle of chaos, you were the lady with the power to get things done. I need to get some things done. I’m Daniel Beckett, special investigator for the Department of Justice.”
He produced his commission and shield and held them out for her inspection at his chin level so she couldn’t forget his smile. Her eyes flickered from the ID to his face several times and she broke. Her eyes softened and she returned his smile.
“What can I do for you, Mister Beckett,” she said.
“Nothing that I would expect you to do personally, Virginia,” Crockett said. “Your responsibilities far exceed my simple needs. But if you could spare one of your people for a while I would certainly appreciate it. I need to locate information on a particular trial that may have been heard in this courthouse five or six years ago. I don’t know the date, the defendant, the Judge, or the lawyers. I do know the name of a witness for the prosecution. A psychologist who was heavily involved in the case. It was a murder trial that ended in conviction.”
“Murder?”
“Yes.”
“What was the name of the psychologist?”
“Ruby LaCost.”
She handed him a piece of notebook paper and a cheap pen. “I’ll do this myself. If you would write down the correct spelling for me, Mister Beckett, and have a seat, I should have the information you require in fairly short order, providing the trial was ours.”
“Really!”
“Oh yes. We’re quite efficient you know.”
Less than an hour later, as Crockett was nearly dozing in one of several wooden chairs placed against a wall, Virginia, armed with a sheet of paper, scurried over and sat beside him.
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