“Bingo,” Molia said, reading an entry halfway down the first page. “Knock-Me-Stiff Saloon. Gold Creek, California.”
Sloane copied the address and pasted it into a different search engine. “It’s twenty-two miles down Highway 88.”
“What else did the note say?” Molia asked.
“Eight o’clock.”
“As in tonight?”
“I don’t know.” He looked to Molia.
Molia shrugged. “It’s not like we have any other dinner plans.”
F
RESH
S
TART
Y
OUTH
T
RAINING
F
ACILITY
S
IERRA
N
EVADA
M
OUNTAINS
It hadn’t been much, just two pieces of bacon between dry toast, but Jake wolfed the food down in between classes. It wasn’t easy with his lips still chapped and cracked. He had to chew until he’d worked up enough saliva so that he could swallow, and after the last bite his jaw hurt, but he didn’t care. He hurried off to a class on math, which was basic algebra.
Situated near a dirt parking lot with boulders as parking curbs and separated by the chain-link and barbed wire fence, the school building allowed the teachers and other personnel a separate door into and out of the facility. The residents filed into the classrooms through one long corridor, and the teachers entered and exited the classrooms from doors on the opposite side of the room. From what Jake could
tell the teachers and counselors spent no time with the inmates other than in class and had no access to the rest of the facilities.
In class the inmates were grouped by age, and the teachers provided a daily lesson, with each student working at his own pace in workbooks. Jack had learned the algebra equations his freshman year. His other classes—American history, language arts, science, and a class on reading comprehension—were conducted in the same manner. After school, from three thirty to four fifteen, they had study hall. Since Jake had finished his work in class he had nothing to do, but heeding Bee Dee’s advice, he kept his head down. Atkins seemed ever present, like a shark waiting for that drop of blood to hit the water.
After study hall the guards released them into the yard for fifty minutes of structured recreation time, in this instance, dodgeball. What followed recreation time was something called Life Skills Group, fifty minutes of sitting in a circle discussing social settings and how they might properly react to unexpected situations. Jake tried to appear interested though he was bored to tears and starving. When the counselor, a man with a head of curly hair and a bushy beard, asked for a volunteer to discuss something he would like to change about himself no one raised a hand. Jake wasn’t about to raise his either until he saw Atkins step quietly into the back of the room.
“I guess if I had to change something,” Jake started, but the counselor stopped him and asked that an eight-inch carved stick be passed around the circle.
“That’s the talking stick, Jake. If you wish to share with the group you raise your hand. Only the person with the stick can talk.”
“Sorry,” Jake said. “I didn’t know.”
“That’s okay. What is it you wanted to share?”
“Well, you asked what we would want to change about ourselves, and I was thinking that… I don’t know, maybe I’d like to not be so angry all the time.”
The man leaned forward, notepad in his lap. “What makes you angry, Jake?”
“Everything.”
“And what happens when you get angry?”
“I usually get in trouble.”
The others laughed.
The counselor asked, “Can you be more specific? What types of conduct do you engage in when you get angry?”
“Well, I drink too much and I smoke pot. And I don’t like people telling me what to do. So I guess I also say shit—I mean, stuff—that I shouldn’t.”
“And do you see how this behavior can be self-destructive?”
“I usually end up in trouble.”
“And does it make you feel any less angry?”
“No, usually I’m angrier.”
“So can you see how getting angry is counterproductive?”
“I guess so.”
“What is it that makes you angry?”
“People don’t listen to me. They assume they know what’s best for me, but they never ask me. Like when my father sent me to California to live with my other father after my moth—” Jake caught himself.
“What about your mother, Jake?”
“After my mother and father got divorced.”
“And that made you angry that no one asked you where you wanted to live?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you think of some behavior that might be more productive than taking drugs or alcohol?”
“Maybe asking them to ask me what I want instead of just assuming they know what I want. Maybe talking to someone about it.”
The counselor nodded. “It’s a good start, Jake. Something concrete we can work on.” He directed his gaze to the others. “Who else can think of self-destructive behavior we engage in when we get angry?”
Another kid raised his hand and Jake passed the stick. “I fucking swear a lot,” the kid said, which caused everyone, including the counselor, to laugh.
Out of the corner of his eye Jake watched Atkins slip silently from the room.
After Life Skills they had ten minutes to clean up before dinner.
On the walk to the mess hall Jake noticed a dramatic change in the weather. The temperature, which had hovered near a hundred, had dropped significantly, and a strong wind rustled branches and caused the tops of the pines to sway. Ominous dark clouds rolled over the mountaintops, banding together and eliminating more and more of the blue sky.
“Thunderheads,” Bee Dee said, walking beside Jake. “We get them when it gets really hot down in the valley. One minute it’s baking and the next it’s pouring rain.”
Inside the cafeteria, Jake and Bee Dee got in line. With each step Jake expected Atkins to appear and find some excuse to keep him from eating, but he reached the serving station without interruption. He slid his tray along the metal bars and the servers handed him a bowl of salad with a single red cherry tomato and a sprinkling of carrot shavings, and slopped macaroni and cheese on his plate. At the end of the line he chose a banana, a carton of milk, and a square of white cake with chocolate frosting.
As much as he wanted to rush to the first available seat, Jake took a moment to make note of Big Baby and T-Mac sitting together at one of the tables. He gave their table a wide berth and picked a table on the other side of the room, sitting across from Bee Dee. When he set down his tray the conversation quieted. The others at the table gave him furtive glances, apparently still upset over the morning breakfast they didn’t get to eat.
“This is Jake,” Bee Dee said. “He’s cool.”
It seemed to break some invisible seal. The others introduced themselves in between bites of food and bits of conversation. Jake’s focus, however, was drawn to the food on his tray, his first real meal in forty-eight hours.
“They do that,” a boy named Jose said with a Spanish accent. “They keep you awake and don’t let you eat. It fucks with your mind.”
Jake grunted his responses, eating greedily, using a spoon instead of a fork to scoop up the starchy noodles swimming in melted orange cheese. Try as he might, he could not force himself to slow down. When another kid joined their table complaining about macaroni and cheese, Jake offered to trade his banana and ate a second helping. His stomach cramped, but the only time he
stopped eating was when a pulse of blue light lit up the room and a clap of thunder shook the windows and rattled the silverware.
“Shit,” Jose said.
“It’s just a storm.” Jake said.
“The rain messes up the yard; now we’ll have to stay in.”
Jake didn’t care. He shoved the last bit of cake into his mouth and washed it down with his milk. The yard sparked with another blue flash, and a second blast of thunder sounded, this one so loud he thought it might rip the metal roof off the building. Everyone looked to the windows at the first sounds of rain splattering the glass. When Jake returned his attention to the table he noticed everyone had grown silent.
“What, haven’t you guys been in a thunderstorm before?”
Bee Dee’s eyes shifted. Jake glanced to his right and saw the khaki uniform.
“You get yourself a good meal, Inmate Stand-up?” Atkins stood with hands clasped behind his back, a crooked grin hanging from the corner of his mouth.
The bench, attached to the table, did not slide back, preventing Jake from standing. “Yes, sir, Officer Atkins.”
“Well that’s good, because you’re going to need your strength.”
“Sir?”
“You will meet me on the obstacle course in precisely three minutes.”
“My schedule says I have group therapy at seven, sir.”
Atkins placed his palms flat on the table, bending down so that his face was inches from Jake’s. “Schedules are subject to change without notice, Inmate Stand-up. Yours changed after I received an interesting bit of personal information about you today.”
Jake’s eyes shifted. “Interesting, sir?”
“It seems, Inmate Stand-up, that you have not one, but two fathers.”
“Yes, sir,” Jake said feeling flush.
“Two fathers,” Atkins said.
“That’s right, sir.”
“But no mother.”
THIRTEEN
K
NOCK
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E
-S
TIFF
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ALOON
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OLD
C
REEK
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ALIFORNIA
T
om Molia circled the block a third time, alternately glancing in the rearview and side mirrors. Sloane focused on the cars parked along the sidewalk and the few tourists hurrying to get out of the unexpected rain splattering the boardwalk along Gold Creek’s Main Street. As far as Sloane could determine, they hadn’t been followed, and the way Molia had driven from Tristan they would have known if they had been. Molia set out in the opposite direction for a good three minutes then made an unexpected U-turn on a straight patch of road. He made a few other random turns before reaching Gold Creek then drove through the town twice.
They had a lot in common, Sloane and Molia. They had been trained to question people’s motives, to look for holes in their explanations and to consider everything that could possibly go wrong. It was a hell of a way to go through life, thinking the worst of people, but if a lawyer made a mistake the worst that could happen was he lost a case. If a detective made a mistake, people could end up dead.
Neither wanted to take a chance.
Molia parked across the street from swinging shuttered doors and watched people enter and exit the Knock-Me-Stiff Saloon, which was adjacent to the Gold Creek Restaurant and across the street from the Gold Creek Hotel, an ornate three-story structure with two carved balcony railings draped by red, white, and blue bunting. Old-fashioned street lamps lit the boardwalks, though lightbulbs replaced flames.
On the drive they had decided it best for Sloane to enter the bar alone, with Molia watching the door from the car. If the handwritten note was a setup, Molia did not want both of them vulnerable. Sloane had a different concern. If the person who scribbled the note had intended it to be a message for Sloane alone, bringing someone with him could make the person reticent to follow through.
“Okay,” Molia said. “Punch in my number.”
Sloane entered Molia’s ten-digit number.
“If you get in trouble, just hit the send button, and if you can’t use your hands lean up against something. If I hear it ring, I won’t wait to answer it.”
Sloane slid the phone back in his pocket, stepped out, and hurried across the street using an arm to keep the rain out of his eyes. He ascended the steps to the boardwalk and pushed through the swinging doors. Much like the Winchester Courtroom, the next step was back a century, to a place with brick walls, round wood tables, spoke-back chairs, and a polished wood bar with a brass foot railing that ran the length of the south wall. Liquor bottles behind the bar reflected in mirrors that also caught the light from an ornate, glass bead chandelier. Wood paddle ceiling fans stirred the warm summer night. Only flat-screen televisions, one mounted on each side of the bar, broadcasting motocross broke the ambiance.
Sloane took a spot at the bar and considered the faces of the patrons eating and drinking at the tables and sitting on the other bar stools. No one looked familiar. No one made eye contact. No one looked poised to approach. He checked his watch. When he looked back the bartender was placing a beer with a head of foam on a coaster in front of him.
“We’re serving two specialty brews tonight,” the man said before Sloane had time to tell him he hadn’t ordered. He pushed the frames of his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. “The second beer is on the other side of your coaster. Just flip it over.”
The coaster advertised a beer called “Gold Digger
.”
Sloane flipped it over and read the reverse side. When he looked up the bartender had gone about his business, serving a young couple
seated a few stools to Sloane’s left. “Can you point me in the direction of the bathroom?” Sloane asked.
The bartender nodded to a hallway at the end of the bar. “End of the hall.”
The door to the ladies’ room was first, the men’s room beside it. Both doors were unlocked, both rooms were empty. The third door, at the end of the hall, was not marked. Sloane turned the door handle, his other hand on the phone in his pocket, pushed the door open, and stepped into muted light.
Tom Molia bit the nail of his index finger, a nervous habit he’d never quite conquered. Like a reformed smoker, the temptation never went away, and when he got anxious the temptation became harder to resist. Unlike a smoker, he didn’t have to drive to a store to buy a pack of cigarettes. The fingernail was readily available and all too easy to gnaw on. Most times Molia didn’t even realize he was doing it. Maggie usually scolded him.
Their conversation that afternoon had gone better than the one the day before. Maggie continued to sound distant, but it was born more from a mother’s worry and fatigue than from anger. She asked how Molia was holding up, if he was doing okay. He told her he had moments when the loss felt crushing, but he pushed through those to focus on doing everything he could to get T.J. released. He explained what had happened in court that morning, refrained from telling her about the appeal taking two weeks, and said they were taking another tack, looking into Judge Boykin’s background to see if there might be something more motivating his actions. He knew it didn’t sound like much, but it was something for Maggie to hold on to, which was better than the alternative. An awkward pause followed. Then Maggie said, “I’m sorry, Tom, for what I said about you not coming home.”