by Kyle Mills
“I’m afraid I don’t have my checkbook with me,” Beamon said, trying to sound apologetic.
“Who am I speaking to, please?”
“Darby Moore.” Thankfully, the name was fairly androgynous.
The sound of fingers on a keyboard.
“Mother’s maiden name?”
Occasionally, the long shot came in. At this point, the other bank had told him that there was no account under that name.
“Blake,” Beamon read off the synopsis of Darby Moore’s life that he’d been provided.
“Thank you. The balance of your account is one dollar and no cents.”
That was too small and too even to be naturally occurring. It was the balance of a person who had suddenly emptied their account and not wanted it closed.
“Yeah, see, that’s not right. What do you have down as my last transaction?” Beamon said.
“Hold on.” More clicking. “It was a wire transfer in the amount of $3,456.58 on October fifth.”
“A wire transfer?” Beamon said, affecting a slight panic in his voice. “This is definitely not right. Where’d it go?”
This time it was the sound of pages turning. “It went to Davis National.”
“Davis National? Where’s that?” Beamon said.
“It’s in Conrad, Maryland. Sir, did you not authorize this transfer?”
Maryland.
Beamon bolted upright in his chair and threw the phone on the bed. He could hear the woman’s tinny voice muffled by the bedspread as he ran out the door.
Mark Beamon slammed on the brakes and sent the car skidding wildly into the space between Lori Jaspers’ house and her barn, confirming that the piece-of-shit blue pickup with temporary Maryland plates was gone. He knew it would be. Beamon grabbed his steering wheel and slammed his head into it. Too many piss-poor assumptions and too much bullshit conventional thinking. He’d taken it for granted that Darby Moore was pretty much immobile. Sure, he’d worried that someone might lend her a car, but most of the people she hung around with wouldn’t have one to spare—and probably wouldn’t want to aid and abet a suspected murderer in such an obvious way. He’d had the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department cut off her credit cards, so renting was out. And he’d thought it was safe to assume that a woman who collected cans to cover her major living expenses wouldn’t have the money to buy a vehicle.
Beamon banged his head one more time on the wheel for good measure. What the hell was he going to do now? Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem—there were all of about three roads in the entire state of Wyoming and she hadn’t been gone for more than two hours. Unfortunately, though, he no longer had the juice to call in an APB. And even if he could, his quickly dwindling bonus didn’t get paid if she was picked up by some state cop.
Beamon looked through his fogged-up side window and saw Lori Jaspers and her French friend standing on the porch of her house. They looked scared—as they goddamn well should have. He threw the car door open and jumped out, stalking toward them. “She was here, wasn’t she? The whole goddamn time!”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Shut up,” Beamon said, taking the stairs onto the porch in one long stride and brushing past them into the house.
“Hey! You can’t go in there!”
He ignored Lori’s continued protests as he marched across a small, partially furnished living room into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and pulled a beer out.
“Shit!” he yelled as he twisted the top off. Lori and her friend were in the doorway of the kitchen now but were clearly too scared to enter.
This whole thing was really starting to chap his ass. Darby Moore was God-knew-where by now, and worse, she knew he was right behind her. She’d try to skip the country—he had a strong sensation about that—but he couldn’t figure out how. It wasn’t going to be Mexico or Canada—the cops were looking for that.
“Hey, you know you can’t be in he—”
“I am in here!” Beamon shouted, then pointed at Lori with an outstretched index finger, keeping the other four tightly wrapped around the neck of the beer bottle. “Don’t talk. I’m thinking.”
He had a friend at the FAA watching for Darby’s name on foreign flights, and when he returned to the hotel he’d add Lori’s name to that. They looked a lot alike and Darby’s passport had been found in her van covered with unidentifiable bits of Tristan Newberry.
Beamon had finished reading every goddamn book and magazine that even remotely mentioned Darby; he probably knew more about climbing than any other ground- dweller in the world. But after poring over countless articles on things like keeping your rotator cuffs healthy and increasing the strength of your pinky finger, his expertise was shaping up to be pretty much useless.
So now what? The only thing he could think to do was go to Maryland—the one place he knew she wasn’t—and see if he could pick up her trail there.
Beamon took a long pull from the beer bottle. At least this little side trip had cleared one thing up. Darby Moore was not being used as breeding stock by a bunch of West Virginia rednecks. She was on the run and, most likely, was still trying to pick Tristan Newberry’s brains out from under her nails.
twenty-three
Mark Beamon slowed his rented Lincoln Towncar to thirty- five miles an hour and continued picking the filet mignon from his teeth. The toothpick was one of those fancy plastic jobs, supplied by an attractive and attentive first-class stewardess on his flight to Maryland. If he could milk his mysterious employer for a few more trips across the U.S. during this half-assed investigation, he’d have enough miles accumulated to skip the country when the FBI came after him. Fleeing American justice using frequent flyer miles, for some reason, appealed to his sense of style.
He tapped the brake again as he reached the city limits of Conrad, Maryland, and the Lincoln responded by floating effortlessly to under fifteen miles an hour. He gave a trailer surrounded by dilapidated cars a more than cursory glance but decided not to stop. While it was just the type of used car lot that Darby could have purchased that old truck from, he doubted that sweating the salesman would be particularly productive. Sitting around in a moldy trailer with a guy in a leisure suit trying to get an unreliable estimate of how much money Darby had left and what direction she’d driven off in seemed more like a last resort than a first stop.
“Hello,” Beamon said, leaning across the counter and focusing on the oldest of the four uniformed men behind it. “I’m Mark Beamon. I—”
“You’re that FBI agent,” the man said, stepping forward and pumping Beamon’s hand vigorously. “The guy who released the phone taps on those sons of bitches in Washington. Hell, son, what are you doing in Conrad?”
“I didn’t actually leak that information,” Beamon felt obligated to point out for some reason. “I just—”
“Well, hell. If you didn’t you should have.” The police chief turned back to his men for a moment. “This is the old boy who turned up those church tapes.”
The three younger men came up to the front, each shaking his hand and a few clapping him on the shoulder. Beamon hid his discomfort, accepting the attention with practiced grace. This kind of thing happened occasionally, but he didn’t seem to be able to get accustomed to his new position as folk antihero.
“All right, all right,” the chief said after a few moments. His men retreated back to their desks and fax machines with appropriately respectful bobs of their heads.
“Now, what is it I can do for you, Mr. Beamon?”
“Mark. I’m looking for a girl. Her name’s Darby Moore.”
“That girl who axe murdered her boyfriend in Fayetteville? What’re you doin’ with that?”
“Well, I’m temporarily on suspension from the Bureau….”
The sheriff shook his head and muttered, “Goddamn sons of bitches.” It had the ring of a sincere statement of sympathy.
“Anyway,” Beamon continued. “I’m just helping out on this investigation.
To keep my mind occupied, you know?”
“Sure, I understand. And I might be able to offer a little help. Davey!”
A young man sitting behind a metal desk jumped out of his chair and stood at something resembling attention.
“Didn’t you talk to someone about that axe murderer girl over in West Virginia?”
“Yes, sir. About a week ago. Some cop came around looking for her. Thought she might have come through here for some reason.”
“From the sheriff’s office in Fayetteville?” Beamon said, a little confused. If this conversation happened a week ago, it would have been just after the murder. He knew for a fact that Bonnie Rile hadn’t tracked Darby to Wyoming. Was she holding out on him? Was there something other than Darby’s bank account that connected her to Conrad?
“Nah,” Davey said. “He wasn’t from West Virginia.”
“Who was he, do you remember?” the chief said.
Davey shook his head apologetically. “You know, it was kind of a casual conversation—I barely glanced at his badge. I hadn’t even heard anything about the murder when I talked to him.” He paused for a moment to think. “State cop. Maybe from up north somewhere. I can’t remember.”
“Did you ask him why he’d be involved in a murder near Fayetteville?” Beamon said.
“Yeah. He said he was looking for her in connection with something else. That he had some circumstantial evidence that she might have come through here fleeing the murder scene….”
“No name, though, huh?” Beamon said.
Davey shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Can you remember what he looked like?”
“Sure. Late twenties, athletic, about my height—six feet or so. Real nervous kind of guy; he looked really… I don’t know … unhappy. Dark hair, but he was going kind of gray at the temples. Probably from being so nervous, huh?”
Beamon pulled a notepad from his pocket and jotted down the description. This was starting to get complicated. “You wouldn’t happen to remember what day he was here?”
The young man looked down at the counter for about thirty seconds, an expression of deep concentration enveloping his face. Finally, he looked back up at Beamon. “I can’t, I’m sorry. Maybe the end of the week or the beginning of the weekend.”
Beamon noted the annoyed look on the face of the young man’s boss and decided to do what he could to help the kid out. “Shit, I’d say that’s pretty good. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast.” He closed his notebook and shoved it back in his pocket. “Conrad’s a pretty small town, isn’t it? You guys probably know just about everybody that lives here.”
Davey nodded.
“Any rock climbers?”
“Rock climbers?” Davey looked behind him at the uniformed men who had been listening to the conversation. They all shrugged.
“Not that I know of. Pretty flat around here.”
“Okay. One more question. This one’s for all of you. Was there anything unusual going on here around the time Tristan Newberry was killed?”
“Unusual how?” the chief said.
“I don’t know,” Beamon admitted. “I’m fishing here.”
“Well, if you don’t cast a line, you can’t catch anything.” The chief walked back into the office and pulled a handful of files from a cabinet at the back.
“These are the dailies,” he said, spreading them on the counter in front of Beamon and starting to flip through them. “Nothing,” he said, closing the first file. He flipped open the second file, then quickly pushed it aside. “Nothing.” Third file. “A DUI—guy from out of town hit a tree and broke his arm.”
Beamon shook his head. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but that wasn’t it.
Fourth file. “Nothing.” He flipped open the last file. “Some shooting out by the Bosdale place. Nothing.” He closed it. “Sorry.”
Beamon leaned over and looked at the cover of the last file. “What was that about the Bosdale place?”
“Sounds more interesting than it is, I expect. We got a call about gunshots out there. Probably some kids.”
“What day was that?”
“Thursday.”
That was the right answer. According to the coroner’s report, Newberry had died on that day—though not of gunshot wounds.
“Would the Bosdales be home, you think?”
The sheriff shook his head. “Derrick Bosdale’s one of those rich city guys that likes to come out on the weekends and play country gent. Haven’t seen much of him lately, though. I guess with the economy the way it is, money’s tight for him, too.”
twenty-four
Derrick Bosdale’s farmhouse looked to be a hundred and fifty years old: all rough-hewn planks and stone. It was perched on a lonely knoll overlooking the rolling western Maryland countryside and backed up to a tall, tree-covered butte. Beamon looked around himself one more time, confirming that there was nothing and no one in sight, and tried the knob on the back door again. Still locked, just like it had been ten seconds ago. He reached into the pocket of his parka and pulled out a pair of cheerfully colored fleece mittens, sighing quietly as he put them on. If he was going to start a career in the field of breaking and entering, he was going to have to find a new pair of gloves. Something in a latex, perhaps. Anything would be more dignified than the mittens Carrie had given him for Christmas.
He balled up his fist and put it through a small pane of glass in the door, flipped the deadbolt, and slipped inside. The kitchen he entered was about what he’d expected. The Bosdale family had apparently spent a great deal of money in an attempt to keep the original turn-of-the-century feel of the house and to camouflage any modern-day necessities. Useless artifacts and antiques cluttered every wall and corner, making him feel as though he was walking through a Civil War garage sale. The air smelled vaguely of mold and earth, but it didn’t feel as dead as he would have expected in a house that had been closed up for months.
He had no idea what he was looking for as he walked quietly up the stairs, down the hall that ran the length of the second floor, and into the bathroom at the end. It, like the rest of the house, had a cartoonish antiquity to it and was devoid of personal effects. He turned a faucet handle and nothing came out.
Beamon started back down the hall, stopping in a small room that looked like it belonged to a young boy. What made it stand out was the unmistakable smell of paint and completely unmarked walls. If the local cops had been right and the Bosdales hadn’t been around for months, it seemed kind of strange that they would bother to have a contractor come and paint a single tiny bedroom…
No. He was letting his imagination run away with him. There was no evidence of Newberry having been moved postmortem. Hell, the chances that this house even figured into his case were almost nil. He was here purely out of desperation and the fact that he didn’t have anything to go home to.
After a brief inspection of the two other bedrooms, Beamon took a quick turn around the ground floor. It was similarly semirenovated and pretty much empty of anything but old furniture, with the notable exception of a small office behind the living room. It alone seemed to have been spared the ravages of twentieth-century power tools and overeager decorators. The walls were cracked and discolored, and the oak floor had been worn away in the pattern of a century of foot traffic. The furniture was modern and electronics were all state of the art.
Beamon sat down in the expensive-looking leather chair behind the mahogany desk that dominated the room and started opening drawers. Once again, nothing very intriguing—general office supplies, mostly. No documents of any kind. There was a pad of stationery on the blotter with a company name on it: Deritech, Inc. Beamon pulled out his glasses and looked at the address: Lewiston, Maine.
What was Darby’s connection to this town? he wondered, leaning back and putting his feet on the desk’s carefully polished top. It wasn’t between Fayetteville and Wyoming. And any local climbers serious enough to be friends with her would most likely be known b
y the cops.
Why would she detour here? Was it as simple as hitching a ride on the first car that would stop for her and going in whatever direction it took her to put miles between her and the murder scene? Somehow he doubted it. The further he got into this, the less it looked like the simple answer was going to be the correct one.
Why the out-of-state trooper? State cops didn’t normally do that kind of investigation. And the story that she was wanted in another state was bullshit—the information he had suggested that she had only been arrested once in her life, for disturbing the peace.
He smiled, remembering the old police report he’d read. Darby had apparently been in the habit of picking up extra cash by getting into pull-up contests with macho types in bars. Sometimes there would be a significant number of bets—that she undoubtedly couldn’t cover. She’d let her opponent go first, and then he’d have to watch that cute little thing desperately fight her way to ten or twelve repetitions, or whatever it took to win by one.
About two years ago, that little money-making scheme had backfired when she unknowingly challenged a Navy SEAL who was home on leave. He and his friends figured they’d been had when the cute little thing cranked off forty-seven to beat him. In the disturbance that ensued, Darby and a friend of hers were the only two people arrested.
Beamon turned a crystal paperweight over in his hands and went back to trying to sort out the increasingly bizarre facts of the case. Why were so many people interested in one dirt-poor girl with connections to nothing but a lover’s quarrel turned ugly? He put his full mind to that question for the fiftieth time since he’d started this thing and came up with the same result: nothing.
It was time to shift gears—he was getting nowhere. There were two people involved in this crime: a killer and a victim. What if he discarded the theory that people were interested in Darby Moore? What if it was actually Tristan Newberry who had captured everyone’s imagination?
twenty-five
