Two Bits Four Bits (14 page)

Driving to Abilene, I
almost convinced myself that she had only agreed to meet me to get
me off the phone. But, when I got there and told the waitress at
the El Hombre Restaurant inside the mall that I was there to meet
someone, Monica was already there waiting, sitting at a table in
the back of the room sipping a frozen margarita.

After introducing myself,
I mentioned my background in law enforcement and my private inquiry
into Russell Chilton’s death. Our waitress came and I ordered a
margarita on the rocks and Monica asked for another frozen one. We
agreed to share a platter of nachos.

“Do you think Eva is in
some kind of danger?” she asked.

“I really don’t have
anything that indicates that. I’m just trying to locate her because
she stopped coming to work right after Russell Chilton was
murdered, and I haven’t been able to reach her at her house. When
did you last hear from her?”

“Oh, gosh, I bet it’s been
almost a month. We try to keep in touch, but we both stay pretty
busy with our own lives.”

She lowered her voice a
bit.

“See, my husband has never
met Eva. Eva and I were very close when we were younger and in a
bad situation together.”

“What kind of a bad
situation?”

She toyed with the straw
in her drink while she chose her words.

“I made some mistakes when
I was growing up.”

“Didn’t we all,” I
said.

“Oh, I bet I’ve got you
beat,” she said. “Mine were pretty bad.”

I shrugged.

“Everybody’s situation is
different,” I said. “We all have different things to react
to.”

“That’s true, and some
women might put the blame on their surroundings, but I was as much
to blame as anybody. I started hanging out with the wrong people.
Older boys, men really, and they took advantage of me. They were
wrong to do so legally, but I went along with it.”

“I’m not following
you.”

She looked up and her
clear, blue eyes met mine.

“I was a prostitute. Eva
and I both were. We started turning tricks when we were sixteen
years old.”

She watched for my
reaction.

“Eva and I went through a
lot of shit together, and we helped each other survive and we left
that part of our lives behind. But, Frank doesn’t know anything
about all that. And, I don’t want him to. That’s why I’ve never
introduced him to Eva. It would lead to too many questions about
the past.”

“Where did all this take
place?”

“Odessa. There was a strip
club there and we heard we could make some money, but they told us
we were too young to dance. They told us we could make plenty of
money if we were willing to spend time with whoever they set us up
and give them what they wanted. We had run away from home together
and needed money, so we agreed, figuring we’d be standing on the
street corner in mini-skirts or something. Instead, they gave us a
two-bedroom apartment and sent the men to us.”

She shook her
head.

“You wouldn’t believe how
many respectable-looking men would do just about anything to have
sex with a sixteen-year-old girl. I could tell you some stories
that would just curl your hair. Anyway, that went on until it was
legal for us to dance and we were too old to get the pedophiles
excited. So, we danced for tips and turned an occasional trick when
we had to.”

“Do you mind if I ask who
you worked for?”

She smiled.

“Oh, you can ask all you
want to, honey.”

“Sandy Doyle?” I asked.
The name had been coming up again and again, and I knew he had ties
to Dayton Clark based on what Angie had told me. And if Dayton
Clark’s name was on the companies Eva was making cash deposits for
I figured Sandy Doyle might fit in there somewhere too.

Her smile faltered a
bit.

“I was afraid he was the
one that sent you,” she said, her eyes suddenly red and her lip
trembling.

“It’s been eighteen years
since I last saw that son-of-a-bitch, but I swear to God some days
I just know he’s going to drive up and knock on my door and drag me
back to that hellhole I left behind.”

The waitress arrived with
drinks and nachos. We ate and drank without speaking for a few
minutes. When she finally spoke again, she sounded much
calmer.

“I’ve been trying to think
about where Eva might go if she was in trouble,” she said. “Trying
to figure out where she might feel safe. I was remembering this one
time, not long after we started dancing in the club. Back then,
Sandy always had trouble keeping a manager to run the club. They
either would steal from him, or get busted for drugs or something.
Anyway, this one time, the manager was a real asshole who thought
he could get a free piece of ass from any of the dancers any time
he wanted it. Of course a lot of the girls went along with it,
thinking he was the big man or something. But, I didn’t take any
shit off him, and neither did Eva.”

“So, one night he decides
it’s time for me to come across and I refused. He made me wait with
him in his office until everybody else left and then he beat the
shit out of me. I went home bawling my eyes out and Eva and I
decided just to get the hell out of Dodge. Except we didn’t have
anywhere to go. So, we ended up going to stay with Eva’s
grandmother down in Pecos. She was the only one in the family that
ever cared about Eva and she took us in without batting an eye,
even though she knew exactly what sort of life we were
living.”

“Is that when you left
Sandy Doyle behind?”

“No, after a couple of
weeks we talked about it and decided that if we could dance for a
little while longer we could get enough money together to get a new
start. So, Eva called Sandy and told him what happened to me. Sandy
took care of the problem—probably had the guy killed or
something—and we were back dancing in the club a few days
later.”

“Now see, I could never
have called Sandy Doyle on the phone like Eva did,” she continued.
“I was scared to death of him then. I guess I still am. But there
was some kind of connection between the two of them. I know it
sounds sick, considering how he turned us into little whores like
that when we where so young, but it was almost like a
father-daughter relationship.”

“Do you think Eva has kept
in touch with Sandy?”

“My guess is that she has.
She won’t ever talk about it because she knows how much I hate him,
but I think they still talk. There’s still something
there.”

I got Monica to write down
the name of Eva’s grandmother in Pecos and thanked her for being so
candid with me about her early years with Eva.

“If it helps Eva it’s the
least I can do,” she said. “God only knows if I could have survived
all that without her being there for me. Just tell her to call me
when you find her, so I’ll know she’s okay, would you?”

The sun was low on the
horizon by the time I got within a few miles of home, making the
pumpjacks, communications towers and scattered buildings I passed
appear in black silhouette against the glowing orange and violet
hues that painted the sky. At that moment, with the countryside I
had grown up in lining the highway, I was truly content. I might
eventually miss the trees and hills of Austin if I moved back to
Elmore for good, but I sure wouldn’t miss the traffic and the
claustrophobic feeling of the city.

* * * *

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN

Sunday morning I went out
for a run alone. I knew Ray Garcia would have welcomed the chance
to escape from Melba’s list of Honey-Do’s, but I needed some time
to think about Russell Chilton and how his murder might be
connected to the disappearance of Eva Trout. And, I needed to think
about Eva’s possible connection to Sandy Doyle and what looked like
a drug money laundering arrangement.

But, it wasn’t the kind of
thinking you could do sitting at a desk and staring at names on
note cards and relationship diagrams. It required a specific lack
of focus that often came when doing something physical, like mowing
the lawn or painting a fence, or running. Running was one of the
best ways I’d found to think about something without really
thinking about it in the typical sense. A few miles on the road
alone would give the unconscious connections that I wasn’t even
aware I’d already made in the case to bubble to the
surface.

I also needed to spend
some time thinking about Angie Robbins, something I’d been
subconsciously avoiding. Although neither of us had acted on it, I
felt there was a growing attraction between us. I knew that it was
unethical for Angie to develop an intimate relationship with one of
her clients, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to complicate things by
letting that happen, even if she was willing to throw
professionalism out the window.

I started jogging slowly,
down the dirt driveway to the highway. Then, instead of turning
towards town I turned west and ran along the edge of the asphalt,
facing oncoming traffic, of which there was none. It was warming up
quickly and I had a good sweat going by the time I finished the
first mile.

Although there wasn’t a
tree in sight anywhere on the horizon, the fact that the road rose
and fell slightly as it shot straight as an arrow towards the New
Mexico state line provided some variation in the scenery. Except
for my footfalls, the road was quiet and the only other movement
was an occasional spooked jackrabbit tearing off across the dry
landscape of mesquite bushes and wild grass.

Two miles west of the
house the highway intersected with a farm-to-market road that
eventually wound around to meet Highway 385, which ran north and
south through Elmore. I felt pretty good, so I turned onto it,
committing myself to the loop that would put my entire run well
over ten miles. I didn’t have any other plans for the day, and I
knew I could always walk home if I ran out of steam.

A few minutes later, I was
replaying the previous day’s conversation with Monica Kendricks
when I realized a vehicle was approaching from behind. I glanced
back and saw that it was a large black Cadillac Escalade SUV and it
appeared to be driving well under the speed limit. I maintained my
pace, but moved a little closer to the edge of the asphalt just in
case the driver wasn’t paying attention and drifted across to my
side of the road.

As the SUV pulled
alongside me, I could see there were two men in the front and two
more in the back. The driver, large and with a shaved head and
tattoos visible along the side of his neck stared out at me from
behind a pair of wraparound shades and nodded at me as they rolled
past. He fit the description of the man who had given Beth Ann a
case of the willies at the bank a couple of days earlier. I could
see the other three men in the vehicle looking my direction as they
passed, but I couldn’t make out their faces through the dark tint
of the rear windows.

I readied myself to react
if the SUV stopped, but it kept rolling along at the same slow pace
until it was a hundred yards ahead of me, when it suddenly sped up
and disappeared quickly over a rise. Its slow pace gave me plenty
of time to commit the license plate number to memory. I spent the
next several miles trying to decide whether my visit to Odessa had
brought some of Sandy Doyle’s boys out of the woodwork or if I was
just being paranoid.

The rest of the run was
uneventful, but after I’d gotten back home I called Norris Jackson
and asked if he’d run the plate number for me. The SUV came back as
registered to Doyle Finance with an Odessa address.

“What the hell did you do
to get Sandy Doyle’s attention?” Norris asked.

“Just did a little
sightseeing around his stomping grounds,” I said.

“Well, be sure to let me
know if things start heating up,” he said. “There are plenty of us
around that would like to catch that son of a bitch with a charge
that would stick.”

“I’ll be in touch, Norris.
And, you’ll be the first one I call if anything happens. Thanks for
the information.”

“No problem, Buddy.
Remember, I’ve got your back if you need it.”

* * * *

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

Early Monday morning John
Donnelly called me and told me that detectives Bob Clemmer and
Reese Puckett wanted to meet with Kandy again. Donnelly said the
detectives wanted to discuss a few details and asked if I could sit
in on the meeting. I agreed to join them at the Elmore Police
Department at ten that morning.

I got there first, and Bob
Clemmer offered me a seat in his office while we waited for John
Donnelly and Kandy to arrive. Reese Puckett stepped into the room
and nodded at me coolly before launching into the conclusion to a
story he had been relating to Clemmer before I arrived. Apparently
it was about a bar fight Puckett had been involved in at some point
in what I’m sure was a long string of confrontational victories. It
only took a few seconds for me to realize that his performance,
with all of the pantomimed jabs, relating of verbal exchanges and
smacking of his fist against his palm, was really designed to
intimidate me. It was embarrassingly juvenile and I could see from
Bob Clemmer’s reaction that he felt the same way I did. Had Puckett
forgotten that I’d spent more than two decades as a cop? Scarier
guys than Puckett, including some fellow cops, had thrown every
kind of intimidation technique there was at me during that
time.