by Scott Blade
I couldn’t be sure because I knew nothing about the case John Martin was talking about, and I knew nothing about the good guys and nothing about the bad guys. All I knew for sure was that something had forced him to drive all night down Route 66, alone and not in the best of health. My guess was that he had known about his heart condition but that he was obsessed with Kara’s protection for some unknown reason. Perhaps she was that one case that had haunted him even after he retired, or perhaps he had become personally involved with her and her daughter. Perhaps he felt a sense of responsibility for their well-being. Perhaps it was more than professional to him. In some way, it was personal.
I could only guess because at that moment there were only two certainties about John Martin. One was that he wasn’t going to be able to help anybody, not tonight, and not for a while. The second was that John Martin had no idea who to trust.
One of the primary functions of the US Marshals Service was to protect witnesses to major crimes. Witnesses whose lives were often in grave danger. The US Marshals Service was tasked with overseeing the witness relocation and protection programs.
From the circumstances of John Martin’s current predicament and last words to me, I could only assume he had been heading to Cedar Corner to warn a witness from a fifteen-year-old case that she and her daughter were in jeopardy. Somehow, Kara and her daughter had been made by the bad guys. And so John Martin had taken himself out of retirement, told no one of where he was going, and hit the road toward Kara’s last known residence.
I presumed that he told no one because it would’ve been ten times easier for a retired US marshal to pick up the phone and call the local field office and warn them of his fears. And the local office was probably in Albuquerque, which wasn’t that far up the highway. Certainly, it was a lot closer than he was, and the agents there were younger and better suited for this sort of thing. So why not let them handle it?
Easy.
He trusted no one.
Just as I, being an outsider, trusted no one.
The ambulance pulled into the town of Cedar Corner, which was when I questioned whether or not I should’ve thought of it as a town. It looked more like a nook than a corner. It was tiny. There was, surprisingly, one three-story building, which was the federal building the paramedic had spoken of. There was a gas station, a McDonald’s that was closing its doors and turning off its sign as we passed, about a dozen other buildings, a Walmart Super Store that barely qualified as super, and finally, off at the end of the main street, there was an all-night diner.
The ambulance pulled into the federal building parking lot. There was no overhang like most emergency rooms had. No clear markings except a pitiful blue and white sign with fading bulbs in it.
I waited until the ambulance stopped and the driver slid the gear into park and stepped out of the door. Then I reached back and undid the latch to the rear doors. I stepped out and helped the paramedic with the gurney and lifted it up and out of the van and rested it on its wheels on the pavement.
The paramedic who had spoken with me earlier said, “If you head east, you’ll reach the interstate. Step off of the road and follow alongside it. That should keep you out of sight, and the cops won’t see you. If that’s what you want.”
I said, “What if I want to talk to these sheriff’s deputies?”
The paramedic said, “You can wait here if you want. You’ll have to stay in the parking lot. But if I were you, I’d get going. Whatever they want with you will probably inconvenience you at the least, and at the worst—well, let’s just say the cops are pretty bored out here. So when they see a nobody from nowhere coming into their jurisdiction and getting involved with a US marshal who ends up in the emergency room, they’ll be inclined to detain you for the max allotted time.
“Look, I’m not a cop. I’m only doing my job. You should get going while the going is worth getting. Forget about this place.”
The paramedic turned his attention back to John Martin and his partner, and they headed toward the emergency room’s uninteresting entrance and rolled Martin in.
I stood in the night air and watched them leave. It was late August, and the fall hadn’t yet come on, but the summer was wafting away, and it showed. The temperature was still warm, but it was mellowed by a nice coolness. With the exception of the car accident and the impending danger, it was one of the nicest nights in my recent memory.
I looked toward the main strip of Cedar Corner and traced the closed daytime businesses with my eyes as they led into the places with later hours of operation. The first building I saw was a bank, then a Protestant church, then a pharmacy, then a dry goods store that looked like it was cut straight out of an Old West movie set, and then there began stores that catered to a more nightly crowd. I saw a coffee shop, a bar, and a fast food place I’d never heard of, which was across from the McDonald’s.
Corporate America competing with small businesses, right here in the perfect example of a small town with small business. The McDonald’s parking lot had some cars in it, and the fast food place that I’d never heard of didn’t.
The straight street winded slightly to the left, and I saw a motel with a blinking red sign and across from the motel’s parking lot was a diner. Must’ve been the one that Martin had mentioned because it was the only thing that really classified as a diner. There was a dwindling car count in the parking lot, and a short staircase led up to the front door. Windows stretched from one corner to the other and then wrapped completely around the building.
I couldn’t read the sign from where I was, but I was sure it was some locally owned thing. And like most of the places I’d been to in America, it probably had a name like Lloyd’s Diner or Clint’s Greasy Spoon.
I headed toward the diner’s lights without even thinking twice about the coffee shop. Which was unusual because I loved coffee. Diners had coffee, like coffee shops, but one thing I’d discovered was that coffee shops often had more expensive blends I’d never heard of. Even though they were priced high, I liked to try them. I was a man who craved new adventures and liked trying new things. I had found that the coffee shops that were small chains or even single units seemed to have a knack for importing some of the best coffee beans in the world. Coffee beans that had been roasted, experimented with, and tested until the perfect blends were discovered. And if other people in other countries had discovered coffee, and then centuries later the farmers of those far off places had tested it and experimented until they discovered the best flavors and qualities, then who was I to reject their efforts? The least I could do was try. Besides, I was a consumer living in a consumption culture. So why not consume?
But I wasn’t in Cedar Corner for the coffee. In fact, I’d never even heard of the town until John Martin had nearly run me over with his car.
Next, I did what I did a million times a day. I put one foot in front of the other and marched up the strip to the diner that lay ahead.
Chapter 6
THE THING ABOUT GOING INTO A SITUATION where you’re looking for suspects who fit squarely into the bad guy column, those seeking to do grave harm to a witness that they haven’t seen in twenty years, is that when you’re in a small town diner just after the dinner rush is over, the first suspicious person in sight is you.
When I walked into Ceanna’s Diner, two things stumped me. The first was that I was way off base on the name. And the second was that the room had only two full tables, two patrons sitting at a long, white counter, and a cook, a dishwasher, and two more waitresses.
The first waitress wasn’t a waitress but a waiter—a young black guy probably younger than me. He had steel wire glasses and a look on his face like this was his first night working. There were patrons sitting in his section with angry looks on their faces like they had been waiting for their change or their checks or they hadn’t even gotten their food yet. But it seemed like they had already eaten because most people would’ve just gotten up out of their seats and walked out. Of course, this was a s
mall town, so where else would they be going to? I guessed they could go to the coffee shop, which probably had a limited menu. Maybe it had some food on it, but most coffee shops I’d been in had only cold food. No grill. No selection of home-cooked meals. And families and patrons in small towns often liked to go out, but ironically, they also wanted home-cooked meals, just not at home.
So I figured that the patrons had already eaten, and they were now waiting with decreasing patience for their bills. Which was good for me because that meant that they would get up and pay their checks and walk out soon enough. And that’d leave me with only two suspects. The guys at the counter.
But I knew instantly that they were no good for two reasons. The first reason was that the waitress behind the counter had talked to both of them and called them by their first names and smiled at them like she probably had every night for her whole life, which hadn’t been that long. And that was the other reason why I knew these guys weren’t my suspects—because the waitress behind the counter wasn’t Kara. Not the Kara that John Martin had requested for me to help.
She wasn’t Kara, his witness from twenty years ago, because she was too young. The girl behind the counter had that self-confidence like she’d worked there for years, but those years must’ve all been teenage ones because she wasn’t even twenty years old. No way.
I walked toward the counter and looked around and the girl who wasn’t old enough to be Kara walked over to me with a smile on her face. She was an attractive woman. Nice smile. Blond hair that was shaved on one side, a style I’d seen before. And I kind of liked it. It was rebellious yet not overboard.
She had a tattoo that took up the length of the bottom part of her forearm. It was writing. Some kind of cursive font that I couldn’t read because she moved her arms too much. Like maybe she couldn’t keep them still, which made sense because she was at work.
Tattoos weren’t meant for others even though they were displayed to others, to external eyes. They were meant for the wearer, that’s what I thought. Like clothes. You go out. You shop around. And you pick clothes you like. And you wear them. Sometimes they could be to impress others. And sometimes they could be meant for certain occasions. But that was where tattoos differed. They were for all occasions—even ones they weren’t meant to be in. That was the point of tattoos. They weren’t for someone else, not the good ones. Tattoos were for the wearer.
She looked back at me and said, “Hi there.” It was in that kind of hometown accent that had a hint of genuine concern.
I smiled back at her and said, “Hello.”
“Have a seat anywhere you’d like.”
I nodded and walked over to a back corner booth. Sat down. Back to the wall.
She walked over to me after a moment with a menu in her hand that was about as simple as could be. It had one printed side. Eight by ten.
I laid it down in front of me and looked down at it.
She asked, “Anything I can get you, honey?”
“You got fresh coffee here?”
She said, “I wouldn’t say it was fresh. But it’s good. Best in town. Better than the coffee shop.”
I found that hard to believe, but I took her word for it.
“I’ll take a cup, please.”
The waitress with the tattoo went back behind the counter and walked over to her coworker and made some comment. He looked at me and then returned to his dilemma of trying to figure out whose check was whose or whatever his problem of the moment was.
After a moment, the waitress with the tattoo returned to my table with a piping hot cup of coffee. She placed it down in front of me.
She said, “I’ve never seen you here before.”
I said, “I’ve never been here before.”
She said, “So what brings you in?”
I said, “I’m just passing through.”
She said, “Not a lot of people come through here unless they’re lost.”
I said, “Surely, people stop here late at night. After a long night of driving. Tired. Probably ready to sleep.”
“Sometimes. But that’s mostly because they think they’re lost. The next town is much bigger, and Albuquerque isn’t that much further. Most people stop and ask if they’re lost, and then they get directions and drive away.”
I stayed quiet.
She said, “Of course, when I was a kid, that happened a lot more. Nowadays everyone has Google Maps. But a lot of older people still stop. They don’t like to use their cell phones. Or they forget about them. Or they don’t know what they can do.”
I said, “So you’ve lived here a long time?”
She said, “Since I was a little girl. Don’t remember much before that.”
I looked her over quickly. She was birdlike in a way. Long arms. Long legs. Small waist.
In the place where I thought a nametag should’ve been, there was nothing.
I said, “So what do people call you?”
She looked down at where her nametag was supposed to be. Habit I guessed. And she made a face like she had forgotten it. I wasn’t sure if it was real or fake like she didn’t want me to report her to her boss for her deliberately leaving her nametag off.
She said, “The name’s Kara.”
She smiled and then she turned and walked back to the counter. Back to work.
Chapter 7
I WASN’T SURE WHAT TO THINK AT FIRST because there was no way that this Kara was the Kara that John Martin was talking about. She was too young. A witness who had seen a crime twenty years ago would surely be at least in her forties by this point. But her name was Kara, and she was a waitress at the only diner in forty square miles.
Then, as Kara walked away, I realized how tired I must’ve been to not have seen the obvious. This Kara was the daughter of the witness, also named Kara. Had to be. It was the only explanation that made sense.
I studied the room again. The counter was a long, off-white thing that was very clean but fading from age. Soon it would lose all traces of having once been white at all. There were five chairs at the counter. One had a black garbage bag covering it as if to signal that the chair was out of order. Probably broken or perhaps too torn up to leave out for people to see.
The two guys sitting at the counter weren’t seated together although they were only one empty chair apart and occasionally spoke to each other. Both were middle-aged guys, drinking coffee. No food or plates or silverware in front of them.
One guy faced the kitchen, his back to me. The other was diagonal across from the first, around the corner. Both wore trucker hats and were most likely truck drivers. Acquaintances, not friends. They probably knew each other from the road. Maybe they even had similar routes. Maybe they both stopped here every so often at the same time like a friendly meeting with a colleague. And in the back of the parking lot, I had seen one big truck without a rig attached. Perhaps it belonged to one of them and the other had parked his truck somewhere else. Like down the street at one of the closed businesses. Maybe he had a trailer on the back of his and couldn’t fit it into the diner’s parking lot.
Whatever the case was, these two guys were not my suspects.
The other patrons in the diner were finally paying their checks. The young black guy had gotten it all straightened out and was at the register, tending to his customers.
Afterward, they all piled out of the front entrance like it had been feeding time for everyone, but now it was time to go.
The black guy looked relieved and went over to Kara and talked for a moment out of earshot, and then he walked back through the kitchen. He returned after a moment, wearing a windbreaker, and he had a pack of cigarettes in his hand. He went out of the front door and nodded at Kara once more and disappeared around the side of the building.
The only people left in the diner were me, Kara, the cook, the two truck drivers, and maybe a dishwasher or manager in the back, or both.
Kara talked with the two truck drivers for a moment, and then she came over to my booth. S
he leaned on the tabletop with one hand, not really putting her weight on it. She held an old brown service tray down by her side.
She said, “So honey, where ya headed?”
I said, “Nowhere in particular.”
Kara said, “Are you lost?”
I said, “No. Just not really going anywhere. No plans. Just going.”
Kara tilted her head and her eyes looked down at my empty coffee mug.
She said, “Wow! You really like coffee.”
I said, “Yeah. It’s my drug of choice.”
She smiled and said, “Wish I could say the same.”
I wasn’t quite sure what she meant because it could’ve been a joke or it might’ve been literal. In which case, did she mean she was a recovering addict? And if so, recovering from what? It could’ve just been a reference to smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol or stealing things.
She walked away for a minute, stopped again by the two truckers at the counter to check on them. Then she walked over to the coffeepot that sat on a burner and picked it up and returned to my table.
She said, “There’s plenty of coffee, so don’t be shy.”
She refilled my cup and rested the pot on my table and propped one knee on the empty seat across from me like she’d probably done a million times with a million other strangers. A waitress’s way of both being extra friendly and working harder for tips.
And I hadn’t really talked to anyone in days, so I didn’t mind. Plus, I needed to watch over her. Not really my job, and it wasn’t like I had promised John Martin anything, but who else was going to do it?
I could hang out and wait at least until Moreno figured out where I was and sent a deputy here. At that point, I supposed it wouldn’t be my problem anymore.
I decided not to tell Kara anything about John Martin.
“So what do you do?” she asked.
