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Authors: Bill Pronzini

Strangers (10 page)

BOOK: Strangers
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Educational reading, all in all, but none of it germane to the job I was trying to do here.

And still no callback from Eastwell.

I tried Cheryl's phone numbers again. Still no answer at either one. Restlessness prodded me into my coat and into a walk up Main Street through the cold, neon-lit darkness to the Lucky Strike. She wasn't there. Hadn't been, one of the other waitresses told me, since her shift ended at five.

That didn't have to mean anything was amiss, but just the same I felt a little wriggling worm of concern; images of last night's rock-throwing and arson incidents were still vivid in my memory. In the room again, I tried her cell once more. If she didn't answer it or her landline this time, I'd take a run out to her house to see if everything was all right there.

But she did answer, sounding tired and wary, as if afraid of another threatening call even though the others had all come on her landline. She must not have had caller ID because she didn't know it was me until I identified myself.

“I've been trying to call you,” I said. “Everything all right?”

“Yes. I just got home. I … had some things to do. Did you find out anything today?”

“Nothing worth mentioning yet. Still feeling my way.”

“It'll take time, I know.” The weariness still dulled her voice; a touch of apathy, too, that hadn't been there last night or this afternoon at the restaurant. Stress-related, I thought. “I see that you brought the Jeep back.”

“Yes, but I kept the keys. I'll need it again tomorrow, if that's all right.”

“Of course. Did you see Max Stendreyer?”

“Not yet. Saving him until I have more information.”

“Jimmy Oliver?”

“Yes. A couple of others, too, from Sam Parfrey's list.”

“What did you think of him?” she asked after a short pause.

“Parfrey? He seems competent enough.”

“Competent enough to get Cody acquitted if there's a trial?”

I said carefully, “That's hard to say, based on a single meeting.”

“But it's not likely, is it?” In that same dull voice. “I wish to God there was somebody else, a lawyer I could have afforded. But there isn't. There's only Sam Parfrey. And you. You're Cody's and my only real hope.”

There was nothing I could say to that that hadn't already been said. I kept silent.

I heard her sigh. Then, tentatively, “Do you want to come over tonight? I'd like the company.”

Something in her voice made me ask, “There haven't been any more incidents?”

“No. Well, another phone call.”

Damn all the vicious, self-righteous hypocrites in the world. If there is a Hell, a special hot corner ought to be reserved for them. “I'm not so sure it's a good idea for you to be there alone at night. You really should think about staying with a friend.”

“I can't, even if I wanted to. There's no one I could ask.”

“No one? No close woman friend?”

“No. The last one I had moved away three years ago.”

“You could get a room here at the Goldtown,” I said, “or one of the other motels.”

“I can't afford it.”

“I'll loan you the money—”

“No, I'm going to owe you enough as it is.” Her voice sounded stronger now. “But if you're really worried … well, you could always give up your motel room and stay with me while you're here. You could sleep in Cody's room, or I could make up the couch for you.…”

“Cheryl, no, I'm sorry, but that would only be inviting more trouble for both of us.”

Another sigh. “Yes, of course you're right. A bad idea. Good night, Bill.”

“Good night.”

I went to bed. And to sleep pretty soon, even with Cheryl's problems on my mind and even though it was still early. I function best when I've had at least eight uninterrupted hours of sack time. I'd gotten eight the previous night, and I was going to need eight or better this night as well. Tomorrow promised to be another long and anything but stress-free day for me, too.

 

9

Thursday morning was a bust.

For whatever reason I still couldn't find Alana Farmer; she wasn't at or expected at the Sunshine Hair Salon, nor did anybody answer the door at her apartment. Gene Eastwell didn't call, and he wasn't at the mining company offices; I couldn't get past the receptionist this time, and all she'd say was that Mr. Eastwell was busy at the main mine today. Neither of the first two rape victims would talk to me. They both knew who I was and why I was in Mineral Springs before I approached them, Estella Guiterrez at her home and Margaret Simmons in the auto parts store where she worked; the Simmons woman was openly hostile, accused me of trying to “free a filthy rapist so he can terrorize other women,” and threatened to call the sheriff if I bothered her again. The third victim, the widowed Shoshone crafts maker, Haiwee Allen, wasn't home.

I'd skipped breakfast, so I went to the Horseshoe restaurant for a hot and not very good lunch. No sense in intruding on Cheryl at her job and causing any more tongue-wagging. Afterward, I made another pass into Haiwee Allen's neighborhood. Still nobody home at her trailer.

Out to Cheryl's house, then, and another exchange of my car for Cody's Jeep. It was nearly one-thirty by then. Lost Horse and Max Stendreyer? A run out to the Eastwell Mine? Try to track down Derek Zastroy? Stendreyer was the most tempting prospect, but I still didn't know enough about him and his relationship with Cody to make bracing him feasible just yet. Zastroy was due at the Saddle Bar at four o'clock; trying to chase him down before that would only add more frustration to the day if I couldn't find him. The same was true of Eastwell, but at least I could have a look at the mine and either get in to see him or find out if he was ducking me.

The two-lane road out there was paved all the way, though the asphalt was pocked and broken in places from the passage of ore trucks and other heavy equipment. I passed one of the trucks on the way, a massive vehicle that roared like a beast and made the Jeep shudder as it came lumbering by. There was no other traffic on the road, and the only thing I saw moving on the lumpy, serrated desert flanking it was a jackrabbit bounding through big clumps of gray-green sage.

After about eight miles, I came on a fork. The left one, paved, leading into low foothills, bore a sign that said E
ASTWELL
M
INING
C
OMPANY
in big black letters, and below that, P
RIVATE
R
OAD—
A
UTHORIZED
V
EHICLES
O
NLY
; the section I was on became what appeared to be a little used dirt track that curved off to the right and petered out in the desert flats. I took the left fork, climbed up and down for a ways, and then up again and over a rise, and from there I had my first look at the mining operation.

Not that there was much to see. The road ran up through a wide cut between two large hills, where it was blocked by a guardhouse and bar gate. Beyond, you could make out portions of what was an even larger operation than I'd expected—a huge mill, at least two other buildings, ore dumps, men and equipment moving on a network of roads and narrow-gauge rail tracks, the top of a towering gallows frame that would contain the hoist mechanism for raising and lowering miners' cages into the depths of the mine. The mine openings themselves were invisible from this vantage point.

The closer you got to the gate, the more warning signs there were. P
RIVATE
P
ROPERTY
. A
UTHORIZED
A
DMITTANCE
O
NLY
. T
RESPASSERS
W
ILL
B
E
P
ROSECUTED
T
O
T
HE
F
ULLEST
E
XTENT OF
T
HE
L
AW
. As I rolled up, a brace of uniformed men came out of the guardhouse and stood side by side like soldiers on sentry duty. Both wore holstered sidearms and carried two-way radios. There'd be more armed guards inside the grounds; security was bound to be tight for any large gold-mining operation, particularly one that produced a million ounces per year.

When I stopped and lowered the side window, one of the guards came over and asked if I had a pass. I could barely hear him for the loud machinery noises coming from inside and outside the mill. I said no, I was there to see Gene Eastwell on a private matter. And no, he wasn't expecting me. The negatives didn't set well with the guard. He demanded ID, studied my California driver's license for a good minute before he returned it, and then demanded to know why I wanted to see Mr. Eastwell. I said it was in regard to a Marlin rifle he'd sold a couple of weeks ago and the person he'd sold it to. The guard obviously thought Mr. Eastwell would not want to be bothered with something like that while working, but he couldn't be sure and he was not about to risk his job. He told me to pull off onto the side of the road, and when I did that, he went into the guardhouse to contact the mine office. The other guard stayed where he was to keep an eye on me.

As I sat there waiting, there was the distant hollow boom of an underground dynamite charge; the ground literally shuddered when it went off, the way it does in the first few seconds of an earthquake. A minute or so after that a massive ore truck appeared on the other side of the gate; the watching guard opened up just long enough for the truck to come rumbling through.

The first guard came back pretty soon and confirmed that I'd wasted my time driving out here. As if reciting from memory he said, “Mr. Eastwell says to tell you he sold the rifle through a newspaper ad and has nothing to say about the person he sold it to, now or at any time. He doesn't want to be bothered again. Clear?”

“Clear enough.”

The guard offered up a parting shot as I started the engine, maybe original with him but more likely quoting Gene Eastwell again. “Have a nice trip back to where you came from,” he said.

*   *   *

The offices of the
Mineral Springs Miner,
appropriately enough, were on Quartz Street downtown. The building was at least seventy-five years old, built of sun-bleached adobe brick. Venetian blinds covered the two plate-glass windows flanking the front entrance. The cluttered interior looked more like a downscale real estate or insurance operation than a newspaper office: two employees, a woman and a man, working at computers behind beat-up desks, framed historical photographs on the walls, no sign anywhere of newsprint or new or antiquated printing equipment.

If either of the two occupants was the paper's editor or one of its inquisitive reporters, I would probably have been recognized by sight or inference and subjected to a bunch of questions. As it was, they directed incurious glances my way. I asked the woman if I could look at a month's worth of back issues; she said no, sorry, but she would be happy to sell me copies. That figured. I said okay, and she went into a back room to get them. The man continued tapping away on his computer keyboard without looking at me again. A hard-bitten, old-fashioned small-town journalist like William Patterson White would have thrown a fit if he'd found out two of his employees had as little noses for news as this pair.

Outside in the car, it took me all of three minutes to find what I was looking for in a three-week-old section of classified ads. The ad read:
For Sale. Marlin Winchester 30.30, nearly new, w/case. $495.00. Gene E.
followed by a local phone number.

So much for the Eastwell connection. But at least now I knew what Cody Hatcher had paid for the Marlin—a hell of a lot more than a kid five months out of work ought to be able to afford.

*   *   *

Haiwee Allen was home now. An old VW Beetle squatted in the packed earth driveway next to her trailer, a nondescript oblong box set on blocks in a cul-de-sac. Poor neighborhood: empty lot on one side, a boarded-up ramshackle house that ought to have worn a “condemned” sign on the other, the fenced-in back end of a pipe yard across the street. The closest occupied residence was almost a full block distant. Perfect setup for a violent male with rape on his mind. Even if Mrs. Allen had had time to scream before or during the attack, nobody would have been close enough to hear her.

There was a small outbuilding to one side and behind the trailer. At first I took it to be a single-car garage, with one of its double doors standing open. As I walked up the drive past the VW Beetle I could hear faint sounds from inside the building, but the sounds stopped when I neared the open door. The interior was lit by a string of overhead bulbs, letting me see that it had been outfitted as a workshop. I took a step into the doorway—and came to a fast standstill, a sudden hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The woman standing a few feet away, unseen until I moved into the doorway, was pointing a shotgun at me.

I lifted both hands shoulder high, palms toward her, and said as pleasantly as I could, “Mrs. Allen?”

Long, flat stare. She was a large woman with long, coarse black hair in braids that extended halfway down her back. Wearing a bright beaded vest over a dark-colored shirt, black Levi's, beaded moccasins. Behind her, on shelves and racks and a long workbench, were more vests and moccasins as well as what looked to be rawhide carryall bags in various stages of completion. A variety of tools and rows of jars filled with multicolored beads and buttons gleamed in the overhead lights, but not as brightly as the silvered barrel of the shotgun.

Pretty soon she said, “I don't know you,” in a voice as bereft of expression as her heavy features. “What you want here?”

“Five minutes of your time. I mean you no harm and I'm not selling anything.”

The shotgun barrel held steady. “Trespassing,” she said.

How to handle this? No easy way; just take the plunge, politely, and hope for the best. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I can understand why you're leery of strangers, after what happened to you.”

BOOK: Strangers
9.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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