Runner, p.22
Runner, page 22
“Then why ask him to look for Ramona?”
“I would have asked Satan himself to keep an eye out. All hands, remember? Martini’s got eyes and ears out there. I needed those eyes and ears, but that’s the extent of it. We’re not drinking buddies.”
“He’s been keeping tabs,” I said. “Seeing how far you got in finding her.”
“Where’s Ramona?” Hogan was angry, not listening. Not connecting the dots.
“I can’t tell you,” I said. Hogan geared up, ready to let me have it, but I rushed in with the rest of it before he could. “Because I don’t know exactly. I know who she’s with; I know she’s safe for now. I have a way of contacting her if I need to. That part of it is done, but there’s more. You have a key to it in your hands.”
Hogan stood, sneered at me, as though I were something that had just crawled out of a sewer. “We’re done. Bring that kid to me by nine, tomorrow morning. If she’s not there, I’m locking you up.”
“For what?”
He leaned over, his eyes burning hot. “Kidnapping. Gun running. Arson. Pissing me off. Wasting my time. I don’t give a shit, I’ll find something that sticks.” He straightened up. “You know, looks to me you and Martini are cut from the same cloth. A couple of crazy outliers trying to play cop. You bring me that kid, then you stay out of my district.”
I watched him storm out of the shop, and then sat there, my eyes closed. The necklace match nudged us closer to identifying the body in the can. I knew it. Hogan knew it. Who killed Tonya? Who would be next?
Chapter 29
At nine Saturday morning I was supposed to be standing in front of Hogan with Ramona by my side; instead I’d been on the road since eight headed to Pittston, 150 miles south as the crow flies. It’d take me almost three hours to get there in this weather. It had begun to snow just before I started out, and it hadn’t let up yet.
I didn’t think Hogan would actually come to arrest me when I didn’t show up with Ramona, but maybe he might. He could be standing at my front door right now with a couple of uniforms itching to put me in handcuffs. He’d been angry last night. Truth was, I couldn’t blame him. I’d have behaved the same if our positions had been reversed. I didn’t think he’d pay much attention to the drive or the ledger, given his state of mind, just on principle—just because I was the one who gave them to him. His main concern was finding Ramona. I’d found her, and now wouldn’t give her up, only I had good reason. I had to keep going, staying ahead of Hogan and Martini and Vine.
I cranked up my radio and zoned out a bit, watching the lines on the highway, checking behind me for Lenny Vine. Before I left home, I checked my car again for trackers; luckily, there weren’t any. That didn’t mean Lenny had moved on. I knew he was still in it, Martini too. It just meant they were laying low, coming up with another way to tackle the thing, tackle me. There were three more messages on my phone from Martini wanting to know how things went at the park. Bogus, of course. He knew how things went. He had been there. With a gun. I had no intention of calling him back. Let him stew.
It was just after ten-thirty when I turned off I-57 and eased onto Pittston’s quiet main drag. There wasn’t a car anywhere, except for mine. The snowy wide street, with sleepy shops on either side, looked like a quaint, friendly little Christmas town, with tinsel and wreaths and cardboard cutouts of smiling snowmen and happy angels in practically every shop window. It was a little freaky, everything too clean, too orderly, too cute, like I’d just landed in Stepford, but all the wives were inside baking bread or sewing Christmas stockings. Driving slow, I checked the street, searching for the ice-cream shop Ramona remembered, and I found it right in the middle, fronted by a red-and-white striped awning with ice-cream cones and bags of candy drawn on the front window in colorful paint. Sally Sweet’s Sweets.
I didn’t stop. First I wanted to see if I could find the farm on my own without stirring up too much attention. I didn’t know this town, but I was confident there weren’t a lot of people who looked like me living way down here, where corn, and whatever else they grew, had to outnumber the humans a million to one. I was a black woman driving around farm country in the dead of winter. I couldn’t have been more conspicuous if I’d painted my car hot pink and affixed a megaphone to the top of it announcing my arrival.
I drove right through town and quickly out of it, taking a single lane road west past flat, fallow fields, and around doglegged bends, looking for the main house of the farm. It took more than an hour of driving, up jutted roads and looping back around, until I found it.
* * *
I pulled up and stopped at a metal gate covered in NO TRESPASSING signs, with two stone lion statues on either side. I peered through the windshield at the long road beyond it that cut through a stand of trees with naked branches heavy with snow. Ramona said the road led to a white house. There were no tire tracks or footprints on the road that I could see, and the snow looked deep. Even if I could have gotten past the gate, I would likely not have been able to drive all the way through and up to the house without getting bogged down. No name on the battered mailbox out front, no numbers on the gate. Maybe they didn’t do that out here in the sticks. Maybe it was like Cheers. Around here, everybody knew your name. Yet, visitors, trespassers, were not encouraged, as the gate signs made clear.
I got out of the car and walked up to the gate. It wasn’t that high, maybe four feet. It was just a low metal closure, more like a barrier to entry than a sentry post. I wanted to get a look at the house to see if anyone lived there, but I couldn’t do that from here, and I’d come too far to turn back unsatisfied. After one final look, up and down the road behind me, I hopped the gate and started trudging through the high snow.
It was slow going, my boots getting sucked into the wet, heavy snow as I went. The only sound was that of my heavy breathing and country birds chirping above my head. I stopped for a second to listen and to make sure I didn’t hear footsteps behind or ahead of me, then started again.
It took about five minutes before a two-story white farmhouse with black shutters came into view. It stood on a slight hill, unlit. The farm. Off to the side, yards away, was a red silo that looked a little worse for wear and a corral with weathered fencing surrounding it, also a decrepit gray barn that looked like it hadn’t been painted or seen to in quite some time, its wide doors standing open.
The cameras at the front door threw me. Old farm, not much happening on it, from what I could see, but security cameras at the door. No front bell. No door knocker. How did you announce yourself? Maybe that’s where the cameras came in? I waited for a good length of time, but nothing happened at the door, even after I knocked a few times.
There were no cars parked around, no evidence that anyone was here or had been here recently. Maybe this was someone’s summer home? Abandoned in winter? If so, I couldn’t blame them. It was brutally cold out here with nothing but winter trees shivering in the bitter wind to protect the house from gusts as strong as a freight train. I walked around the side to where the outbuildings stood. I didn’t see any horses, no livestock of any kind. So, apparently, not a working farm. I stopped to stare at the woods along the back of the property. They looked deep and would likely provide good shade and coolness in the summer, but they felt a little creepy now—with no one around and just the trees watching. I couldn’t imagine venturing in there when the trees were full and the heavy canopy shut the sun out, let alone now when it looked foreboding and haunted. Ramona said there was a lake beyond the trees somewhere. I’d take her word for it. I shuddered, some from the cold, but mostly recalling all the horror movies I’d seen that had dumb teenagers running through the woods chased by an ax murderer. It was a no-go on the woods.
The flashing blue police lights were an unwelcome sight as I rounded the final bend in the road to see a Pittston PD SUV parked behind me at the gate, right next to the NO TRESPASSING sign I’d blithely disregarded.
I plastered a friendly smile on my face and waited for the local law at my driver’s door, my hands out in the open, my keys in my pocket. Two people emerged from the vehicle; on the driver’s side, a white guy in a shearling jacket and a black skullcap with a Pittston PD emblem on it. On the passenger side, a white woman in her late twenties, maybe, in a dark blue police uniform and matching jacket, the town’s crest on the front, blond hair stuffed under a similar cap.
Both walked over to me, working the flank. I kept real still, kept the smile going, kept my hands where they could see them. I was a stranger in a strange land, a trespasser on private property, a black woman miles from anyone who knew me.
“Your car?” the man asked.
He’d likely already checked. I had no idea how long they’d been blocking me in. Had they been alerted by someone inside the house? Or maybe this was what the cameras were for?
“It is.”
He had gray eyes, sharp, steady. He was about the business, making no attempt to be folksy or polite. “Car trouble, is it?”
“No, actually.” I cleared my throat, which gave me just enough time to work up a lie. “I wanted to take a closer look at the house. I’m in the market, and it looked like a nice spot, away from the road, plenty of open space, not too close to town. You wouldn’t happen to know if it’s for sale, would you?”
Neither of them said anything for a moment. “Can’t really see the house from the road,” he said.
“I got a quick glimpse through that stand of trees. Like I said, I’m in the market. You know the owner?”
He glanced behind his shoulder toward the empty road. “Kind of off the beaten path for you to see it in the first place.” He turned back to me. “Must’ve been looking for this place, special. Were you?”
“Just got turned around. None of these roads are marked. I’m used to street signs, landmarks. I saw the lions first. Hard to miss them. The house was a happy surprise, you might say.”
The woman spoke up. “You could’ve stopped in town and asked about property for sale at the realty office. Guess you missed it when you drove through.”
How’d they know I’d passed through town? “I kind of wanted to take a look myself,” I said. “It’s a nice Saturday drive. Small town. Not that many roads. But, like I said, I got turned around. Signs would be helpful.”
“You some kind of reporter?” he asked.
“No.”
“What do you do, then?” the woman asked.
“I’m a podiatrist.” I said it with a straight face, too. Score one for me.
The two exchanged a look.
“We don’t get many podiatrists down here,” he said. “They mostly stay up north with all the other podiatrists.”
By the way they both stared at me, I could tell we weren’t talking about podiatrists, but I went with it. “I’m a different kind of podiatrist. I go wherever I feel like going.”
Our eyes locked. He said, “Yeah, well, we’re gonna have to ask you to move along. This is private property, as you see from the signs. No Trespassing means just that.”
“Very well,” I said.
The blond woman slid her partner a look. “We catch you out here again, we’ll do something different, understand?”
It was the cutest little thing the way she tried to act all Dirty Harry when she was all of five feet tall with rosy cheeks. Maybe to impress her partner, maybe just trying badass out to see how it fit her; it didn’t much. She’d have done better sticking with good cop.
I said, “Completely. Is that it?”
He let a beat pass. “Got ID on you?”
Slowly I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my wallet, which I’d tucked there in case I came up shot dead for trespassing by some unreasonable farmer with a hunting rifle. My fingers slipped past my PI license, my FOID card, nope, nope, I handed over my driver’s license. He looked it over, looked me over again, then handed it back. For a moment, he said nothing. “Long way from Chicago. Heckuva drive, especially in this weather. I guess you’ll be headed back that way now.”
I slid my license back in the slot, my wallet back in my jacket. “Actually, I thought I’d stop back in town, get some ice cream, then head out.” I patted my pocket, faced them. “That okay with you two?”
“Kinda cold for ice cream,” the woman said. “More of a summer thing, I’d think.”
I shrugged. “I like it year-round. What’s good there?”
Stern faces looked back at me, a couple of humorless gargoyles. I didn’t know anything about Pittston, only the little I’d seen of it from the car, but if these two were representative of its residents, I couldn’t imagine a more depressing place to live. Neither cop answered the question. Instead, they walked back to their SUV.
The woman stopped at her door, her hand on the handle. “Rocky road’s always a good choice.”
“Get it to go,” her partner added. “Wouldn’t want you to get lost around here after dark.”
After dark? It was barely three PM, but the warning couldn’t have been clearer. I was being told to git, hightail it out, vamoose, before nighttime found me here. It brought to mind those racist signs in Southern sundown towns years ago that warned blacks not to stop or tarry within their borders. “Don’t Let the Sun Set on You in—” It didn’t matter the name of the town. No place was safe.
Was that what this was? Or was I being warned away because I was paying attention to this house specifically? Had they been monitoring the security cameras? I watched the SUV pull back and go slow in the direction of town. Maybe they got so few visitors, they didn’t know how to be hospitable. Or they had a thing about podiatrists from Chicago.
I glanced back at the gate. This was not a place that said, Y’all come! Yet, Deloris Poole, black, had brought her girls here, also black, for summer outings and ice cream. Why? What was her connection to this place? I got back in the car and, curious, Googled the town’s demographics. Not surprisingly, the town of four thousand or so was 97.75 percent white, 2 percent Asian, and a whopping 0.25 percent black.
I checked the rearview, got the car in gear. “Time to git.”
Chapter 30
The Pittston PD SUV was parked across the road from Sally Sweet’s Sweets when I pulled up in front, the same two cops inside the vehicle clocking my every step as I went inside. That’s when Christmas smacked me full-on across the face. Everywhere I looked, there were Christmas trees and wreaths and stockings, tinsel and ornaments, holly and ivy. Even the air smelled like Santa slept in the back room, everything vanilla and cinnamon, pine trees and nutmeg. Beneath it all, there were white café tables with matching chairs, and walls painted baby pink and white, like an ice-cream cone, like summer on a boardwalk somewhere . . . in the early 1900s.
The sweets were displayed in glass jars sitting on doily-lined shelves along the walls; each large jar had a scooper in it and bags at the ready. The counter up front topped a long freezer case filled with tubs of all kinds of ice cream. Waffle and plain cones stacked on top. Behind it, a white woman stood, dressed as Mrs. Claus, silver spectacles and all. I stopped in my tracks. Watched her. She watched me back, smiling.
“Help you?” She looked about my age, and unlike tiny cop sitting outside in the cold, the red at her apple cheeks was rouged on.
I walked over to her, carefully, trying not to pick up any yuletide glitter. “Ready for Christmas?”
She chuckled. “We’ve got a party coming, in a couple hours. A woman down at the senior home. Loves Christmas. Ninety-six she’s turning—so, why not give her a thrill, right?”
I looked around the place, where even a look might lead to diabetes.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the woman said. “But she’s ninety-six. Let her have her chocolate.”
I glanced over the display, mindful of the cops outside. “How about a plain vanilla cone, one scoop.”
Mrs. Claus’s lips twisted. “Not very adventurous, are you?”
I shrugged, feeling cop eyes on my back. “Not with ice cream.”
She picked up a scoop and opened the display. “We don’t get a lot of strangers this time of year, or, well, anytime, really. What brings you to Pittston?”
“Just driving through.” I turned around casually, to check on the cops. Yep. Still, there. Looked like they were going to stay until I went. Distrustful bastards. “Nice farms around here.”
“I guess. Most of them owned by the same families that started them generations back. Can’t say it’s an easy life, and the town’s shrinking every year, but Pittston’s still kickin’.” The way she said the last part sounded like she wished it wasn’t. She read my curious look. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay, just a little . . . confining. Not for everybody.”
“Speaking of farms, I passed one that looked like no one was living there. Out far, east from here. There were the cutest stone lions sitting out in front of it.”
“That’s the Whittier place. Another of our long-timers, but there haven’t been any Whittiers since old Harold died almost ten years ago.” She handed me the cone. I took it. “Harold never married, so there weren’t any heirs. He left the farm to the town, God bless him.”
I licked my cone. “And nobody’s been up there in ten years?”
“Not to live.” She ran a red towel along the case, keeping it clean. “I don’t know how it all works, but there are all kinds of events and such there during the summer. The craft festival was there last July, and there’s the Apple Harvest fair in September. Sometimes the church rents the grounds for their Sunday school picnics. All kinds of things.” She folded the towel, slid it aside. “Where you from?”
“Up north. Chicago.”
“Chicago,” she said wistfully, like I’d just told her I hailed from the Emerald City. “I always wanted to see Chicago. Never got there.”
