Strangers (17 page)

But I was not about to say any of that to her. I said, “You must know someone outside of Mineral Springs. Friends, relatives in Truckee?”

“No. I've been here too long. They're all gone.”

“The woman friend who moved away three years ago?”

“To Mexico, with her husband. I couldn't live in a foreign country. And we've lost touch anyway.”

“No one in the Hatcher family you're close to?”

“Glen's and Matt's father is the only one still living … in a care facility in Reno, suffering from dementia. We didn't get along anyway.” The sardonic smile again. “The Hatchers aren't exactly a nurturing family even among themselves.”

What I was thinking must have showed in my face. Cheryl said, “Yes, that includes my late husband. I'll be honest with you—it wasn't a very good marriage.”

“I'm sorry to hear it.”

“Oh, we were happy enough the first couple of years. After that we just … drifted apart. Glen's work was all that really mattered to him. He had metallurgy and mining and I had Cody. The last year or so before his heart attack we didn't have each other in any way at all, if you know what I mean.”

I knew what she meant. Again I said nothing.

She sighed. “I'm talking too much,” she said, “telling you things you really don't want to hear. Beer does that to me sometimes. And you're an easy man to talk to.”

Beer and the easy-man-to-talk-to were handy excuses. The real impetus for her candor was loneliness and the barren state of her life compounded by the strain she was under.

“Don't apologize,” I said. “I'm a good listener. I just wish things had been better for you.”

“Well, they will be if you help clear Cody and bring him home to me. That's all that really matters to me now.”

But even if Cody was cleared and did come home, she wouldn't be able to convince him to stay; we both knew that. He'd be gone within six months, to Reno or California or wherever, and she'd be completely alone. And when that happened, what was left of her spirit might well shrivel and die under the hot desert sun and cold desert winds. It hurt me to think of a woman like her, a woman I'd once loved and who had once loved me, suffering such a fate—the more so because there was not a damn thing I could do about it.

*   *   *

I left her as quickly and considerately as I could, and drove over to Alana Farmer's apartment. It was after eight by then, and there were lights on, but the chubby young woman who answered my ring was someone I'd never seen before—the roommate. Former roommate, I soon found out. No, Alana wasn't there, Alana didn't live there anymore. Where had she gone? The chubby girl didn't know and didn't care, but she knew who I was and I'd better not come around bothering
her
anymore. And once more I had a door slammed in my face.

At the motel, I repeated the previous two evenings' transfer of laptop, GPS and Bluetooth devices, and .38 revolver from the car into the motel room. I called home first thing; after the depressing session with Cheryl, I needed some telephonic cuddling with my family. But I did not tell Kerry about the desert shooting, a little white sin of omission; I hadn't exactly put myself in harm's way by going out to Lost Horse, but I didn't want to risk her taking it that way. Then I hooked up the laptop, dialed up an Internet connection that seemed to take even longer tonight and wasn't worth the wait. Nothing from Tamara. No other e-mail worth answering.

I took a long, hot shower, and got into the lumpy bed. Turned on the TV, flipped through the half-dozen channels the Goldtown offered, all of which came in fuzzy, and switched the thing off again. Read for a while, and that made me sleepy, but lying in darkness I couldn't seem to get my mind to shut down. Thoughts of Cheryl and her pathetic existence; other thoughts, too—facts I'd gathered to date, questions I still needed answers to, possibilities—that kept dodging around and bumping into one another. It was a long time before I finally dozed off.

For awhile I slept fitfully, until some sort of commotion woke me up—noises in the parking lot, somebody shouting. I sat up, peered groggily at the bedside clock. 2:10. Another shout, this one right outside the door to my room: “Come back here, thief!” That woke me up, drove me out of bed and into my pants. The .38? No. Only a damn fool grabs a loaded gun when he's half-asleep in the middle of the night in a strange town.

I got the chain off and the door open. The parking area lights outlined a man in a cap and fleece-lined denim jacket just coming to a halt fifteen or twenty yards from my car; beyond him, I saw a dark-clothed running figure a couple of ticks before it disappeared into darkness at the far end of the lot. I moved ahead to the car. The man in the jacket saw or heard me and came loping back. His cap had a trucker's insignia on it.

“Hey, mister. This your car?”

“Mine, yeah.”

“Some bastard was trying to jimmy the driver's side door. Good thing I spotted him.”

“Get a clear look at him?”

“No. Took off like a jacklit deer when I yelled.”

I bent to look at the driver's door. Whoever the prowler was, he seemed not to have gotten very far in the jimmying; there were no marks on the door lock, no fresh scratches on the door panel. The keys were in my pants and I unlocked the door to make sure it hadn't been damaged.

“He didn't get in, huh?” the trucker said.

“No. You got here just in time.”

“Lucky for you I come back from the whorehouse when I did. Wonder what he expected to find in an old car like this—no offense.”

Nothing, I thought. If he'd gotten in, he'd have rummaged some and then probably have destroyed the ignition wiring, ripped up the upholstery. Another act of vandalism, only this time the target was me and mine. Mindless destruction the only intent? Or another warning by somebody who thought I might be getting a little too close to some unpleasant truths?

 

16

Alana Farmer remained elusive on Saturday morning. She was not at the Sunshine Hair Salon. The stylist with the frizzy orange hair wasn't happy to see me again, and even less happy with Alana. The place was busy, with a couple of impatient-looking female customers waiting their turn, and before the proprietress as much as ordered me off the premises I gathered that Alana was supposed to be at her station, hadn't given any notice as to why she'd failed to show up, and would not be a Sunshine employee much longer. I didn't ask her where Alana was living now; even if she knew, she wouldn't have told me.

Next in line: Jimmy Oliver.

A dark blue Dodge Ram 4x4 was the only vehicle in the lot at the Church of the Divine Redeemer; it was drawn up along the side wall, tailgate down, the door of a tool box attached to its side hinged open and bearing a can of paint and a couple of brushes. Between the pickup and the church wall a pair of collapsible sawhorses had been set up. When I parked behind the Dodge and stepped out, I saw what was laid flat across the sawhorses: the wooden crucifix that had been propped behind the church lectern on Wednesday. Oliver had been working on the carved image of Christ, smoothing off rough edges with sandpaper preparatory to touching them up with fresh gold paint; he'd stopped when I pulled in, stood shading his eyes as I approached him. The sun was out again today, pale in a cold, glary sky.

“Oh, it's you,” he said. He didn't sound particularly happy to see me. “How'd you know where to find me? You didn't bother my mother…?”

“No. Pastor Raymond mentioned you'd be working here today.”

“I'm pretty busy. What do you want?”

“Just a few more questions. I won't keep you long.”

“I told you everything I know out at the ranch.”

“Not quite, maybe.” I looked down at the crucifix. It was a more realistic and pious representation than you might expect from a twenty-year-old. “You make this yourself?”

“Yeah. My mother asked me to.”

“Nice job. You have a knack for wood carving.”

“Well, thanks. But it's a lot of work.” The faint disgruntlement in his tone said that he wasn't being paid for it. “I'll be here most of the day, finishing up. Pastor Raymond wants it mounted inside in time for services tomorrow.”

“So he said. You a member of his congregation, too, Jimmy?”

“Sort of.” Meaning at his mother's behest, not by choice. He leaned over the crucifix again, began carefully sanding an edge on the crown of thorns.

“Shame that somebody stole the bronze crucifix,” I said. “You have any idea who could've done it?”

“No. Some jerk. Probably sold it for scrap.”

“Same person who's been breaking into cars and stealing from houses and businesses, you think?”

“I don't know … maybe.”

“Lot of that kind of theft here recently. Small amounts of money and valuable items that can be easily resold elsewhere. Add it all up and it comes out to a fairly large sum.”

“I guess so.”

“Where did Cody Hatcher get his spending money, Jimmy?”

“You asked me that before. I don't know.”

“The two of you are friends. No idea at all?”

“No.”

“I really need to know.”

“Mister, I can't help you. I don't know where he got his money!” His tone was defensive, but he kept his head down and he'd stopped sanding the crown of thorns.

“He paid cash for that new Marlin rifle he bought from Gene Eastwell,” I said, stretching the truth as I knew it a little. “Cost him five bills. Cash for the electric winch for his Jeep, too. Lot of money for somebody who's been out of work for five months to be throwing around.”

“His mother … his uncle…”

“Uh-uh. Neither one. Come on, Jimmy, he must have said something to you about where it came from.”

Long silence while Oliver resumed his sanding. Trying to think up a plausible lie, or deciding whether or not to be honest with me. Finally, because he was a decent kid: “All he said was he'd stumbled into a good thing.”

“That was the word he used, stumbled?”

“Yeah. A good thing that'd get him out of here pretty soon, out to California. But he wouldn't tell me what it was.”

“When was this? How long ago?”

“Last month. Four or five weeks.”

“And that's about the time you first noticed he had money to spend?”

“About, yeah.”

“What did you think this good thing was?”

“None of my business.”

“Not what I asked. How tight was Cody with Max Stendreyer?”

“You asked me that before, too. I told you the other day he wouldn't have nothing to do with a guy like Stendreyer.”

“He bought pot from the man,” I said.

“Yeah, but that's all. And not very often.”

“Maybe he was doing a little dealing himself,” I suggested.

“No way. And his money didn't come from those rapes, either,” Oliver said vehemently. “Cody's not a rapist!”

“Not a rapist, not a drug dealer. How about thief? You think he's capable of that?”

“No. Listen, I thought you were trying to help him, not get something else on him.”

“I'm trying to get at the truth, the whole truth.”

“Yeah, well, those thefts … they've been going on a lot longer than five or six weeks. Cody never had much cash until last month, even when he was working out at the mine.”

Maybe not, but it didn't absolve him. He could have been stockpiling the proceeds. But Cody's use of the term “stumbled into a good thing” indicated other possible scenarios.

I said, “Did Cody take a lot of day trips or overnight trips by himself?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Just what I asked. Out-of-town trips before or after he started free-spending.”

“No. Why'd you ask that?”

“If he was stealing, he'd have to take the stolen items someplace to sell.” Or somebody else would, somebody with connections. Somebody who was buying and selling marijuana, for instance. In that case, Cody's true relationship with Stendreyer would have been strictly on the q.t.

“Well, he hardly ever went out of town,” Oliver said. “Ask his mother if you don't believe me. Ask Alana. They'll tell you the same thing.”

“I'll ask Alana when I can find her. You haven't seen her the past couple of days, by any chance?”

His mouth took on a disgusted twist. “Yeah, I saw her. Last night.”

“Where was that?”

“The Hi-Lo Club. I'm not supposed to go there, my mother says it's a den of iniquity, but they have some pretty good live music on Friday and Saturday nights and they don't check IDs too close as long as you don't drink anything but beer.” That last came out in a spurt of youthful defiance. “Alana was there with that jerk-off Zastroy.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Having a big time while Cody's rotting away in jail. I'm telling you, mister, Zastroy's the one you ought to be talking to about those rapes.”

“I already have. He seems to be in the clear.”

“Just because my uncle says so.”

“No. But he told me Zastroy has alibis for two of the rapes, not just one. One alibi is easy enough to fake; two is a whole lot harder.”

Oliver still wanted to believe Zastroy was guilty, but he didn't push it any further. “Yeah, well,” he said, “Alana shouldn't be with him again. She's supposed to be Cody's girl now.”

“You say anything to her last night?”

“Not with her hanging all over Zastroy. She—”

He broke off as an old black Chrysler came rattling into the parking area from the street. Pastor Raymond was at the wheel. Instead of continuing around to the rectory at the rear, the preacher pulled up alongside the Dodge and emerged wearing the kind of stern expression he probably used to deliver his Sunday sermons.