Jack Stone - Wild Justice (9 page)

N
ever to be seen again.

Sixteen.

Stone reached the junction where the road from Windswept met the highway without seeing anything that might be a clue to the disappearance of the two local girls. Then walked the extra distance to
Lilley’s diner, and came through the door with red dust on his jeans and over his boots.

There were three customers in the diner; a young couple sitting at a table by the windows, holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes like maybe they were on their honeymoon, and a middle-aged man wearing denim overalls. He was at a table on his own, with farming brochures spread out across the counter-top. Lilley
was leaning over the man’s shoulder, pouring him a coffee refill from a stainless steel pot.

She looked up, saw Stone in the doorway, and her face went through a whole rush of emotions, from delight, to embarrassment, to concern, and finally back to delight again.
Self-consciously, she tucked a loose tendril of hair behind her ear, set the coffee pot on the table and wiped her hands on her apron.

“What are you doing here?” she came to him, drew him to one side of the counter.

“I went for a walk,” he said. “Have you got a Coke?”

She frowned. “You walked all the way here for a Coke?”

“No. I walked all the way here looking for leads on the roadside that might be connected to the disappearance of your two local girls. As a separate issue, have you got a Coke?”

She handed him a can from a low refrigerator that was concealed behind the serving counter.

“Did you find anything?”

Stone opened the can and drank thirstily. “Not a thing,” he admitted. “Not yet.”

“That sounds ominous, Jack Stone.”

Stone shrugged. “The last man to see the girls alive was the guy who owns the bar. I think I’m going to pay him a visit.”

“Hank Dodd?”

Stone nodded. “You know him?”

Lilley shook her head. “Not personally, but I know of him. He’s one of the town’s most influential men. He has connections, Stone.”

“Connections? You mean with the police?”

“I mean with his brother-in-law, the sheriff.”

Seventeen.

Stone borrowed Lilley’s Chevy on the promise he returned to pick her up at 6pm.

He drove back along the turnoff road doing a steady fifty, getting accustomed to the big car’s spongy brakes and vague steering. It wasn’t a great car. It had seen better days – but it was a lot better than walking. He cracked the window down, and didn’t pass a single car all the way to Windswept’s outer limits.

He slowed speed through the town, taking elaborate car
e because it wasn’t his car, and when he went through the intersection of West and Main Street, he kept on going. ‘Stan’s Bar’ disappeared into his rear-view mirror. So did the police station opposite. Stone blew through Windswept’s outer limits and kept on driving north.

O
utside the town limits, maybe a mile down the road, he saw a sign on a pole by the roadside.

‘Rapture Arizona. Population 13,886. 11 miles.’

Stone checked the fuel gauge. He had three-quarters of a tank. He put his foot down, and the Chevy gave a growl as the speedometer crept up to sixty.

The road
was the same two-lane blacktop. But there was more traffic as he drove further north. Stone passed a couple of trucks, and a couple of cars – enough to be considered peak-hour chaos back in Windswept.

Dotted in the distance on either side of the road, Stone could see occasional buildings. He wasn’t sure if they were farms, homesteads or storage sheds, but each building seemed to be marked with a battered old
mailbox, and a dusty rutted trail that branched off the road at right angles.

He kept driving.

The town of Rapture appeared gradually, first as intermittent roadside houses, vacant lots of dry brown grass, telegraph poles and trees – but gradually filling in as he drew closer. The houses became suburban streets that intersected the two-lane. Then he hit his first traffic light, and a couple of semi-trailers appeared from a road on his right, joining the steady flow further north.

Drab green and grey industrial sheds
and motor home parks became neat residential areas – until finally he hit the town’s business district. Here the traffic was more constant. Shop fronts and bright advertising signs on high poles announced the next motel, the next fast food outlet and the next discount department store. Stone slowed, eyes working left and right as he edged into Rapture.

Stone parked up and spent several hours in the town, walking the business district, and quartering the streets looking for motels and overnight accommodation, watchful for a blue SUV. He found nothing, and by 4.30pm he’d felt he had discovered everything he could. He slid back behind the wheel of the Chevy. The seat was hot, the air stuffy from being too long under the direct baking sun. He turned the car around and headed back towards Windswept.

The neon sign in the window of ‘Stan’s Bar’ was glowing red and green when Stone cruised back into Windswept. He nosed the big car into the gutter out front of the police station and walked across the road.

The door was open, jammed back with a timber wedge. Stone walked in, looked around.

The bar was one long narrow room that was partitioned out back by an open archway, beyond which were restrooms and a door marked ‘Office’. The bar itself was on the right side of the room with a row of stools set in front, and clusters of tables on the left. The lighting was low and gloomy. The television above the bar was off. The jukebox was off.

There were three men sitting on stools, all of them grimy and dusty, all of them big brawny types in dirty clothes from a hard day’s work. Two more men were sitting at one of the tables, d
rinking beer from long-neck bottles. At the end of the room, in a corner, three women were sitting back in their chairs, laughing too loudly and chattering over the sound of each other. The tabletop between them was scattered with empty glasses and bottles. One of the women had a white veil pinned into the hair at the back of her head.

Stone stood in the entrance, eyes adjusting to the gloom after the bright glare o
f daylight. Stood there for maybe thirty seconds, just a big solid shape in the doorway. Everyone in the bar turned their head and was looking at him.

Stone ignored them. Went to the bar, but didn’t sit down. He chose a place between two of the men and leaned comfortably against the polished timber.

The bar was dark red. Stone didn’t know his timbers. It could have been teak, oak or pine for all he knew. But it was different to the walls, which were lined with some kind of grainy panel board.

Stone looked at the guy to his left. The guy was staring back at him. He had a beer in his hand, and another empty glass at his elbow. He was wearing a black t-shirt, stained under the armpits by sweat and dust. He had a big beefy
bearded face, framed by sideburns, and huge arms. He was heavy, solid, but without muscle tone. Stone nodded to the man. The man ignored him. Stone wasn’t surprised or bothered.

The guy to Stone’s right
had a head full of springy black hair under a dirty Dodgers baseball cap. He was wearing some kind of a grey work shirt, like a uniform of some type. The shirt-tail was hanging out the back of his jeans. He was tall and wiry – not skinny. Stone could see there was muscle definition under the man’s shirt and in his shoulders. Maybe he worked construction, or maybe he just worked out. He had a bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Stone nodded. The man turned his head away.

Stone shrugged, and looked along the bar.

The bartender was handing the last guy at the end of the bar a fresh beer. The bartender was a big guy, almost bald, with just a few remaining wisps of grey hair around his ears. He had a big nose and dark sunken eyes. His face was pale and splotched. He saw Stone but didn’t acknowledge him.

Stone waited.

The bartender scooped up a handful of coins then turned, thumped the cash register with the palm of his hand, and dropped the money into the till. He nudged the cash drawer back shut with his hip and wiped his hands on a towel. Stood there for a moment, like he wasn’t sure what to do. Then he came from behind the bar and disappeared into the office in the back corner of the building.

Stone pushed himself away from the bar and went down the corridor. Went through the archway and into the restroom. When he came back a minute later the Office door was still closed. Stone came back out into the bar area and went over to the jukebox.

The women at the nearby table were watching him. They were all in their early twenties. One of them turned in her chair and appraised Stone with open interest. She had glossy black hair down to her shoulders.

“Well look
who we have here,” she said slowly to her friends. “A man.”

The two other women moved. The one wearing the veil suddenly pushed at her hair with one hand and tugged at the hem of her skirt, while the other’s face sp
lit into a bright red lipstick smile as she sucked in her tummy and crossed her legs. They were all young, had drunk too much, and gave off the unmistakable aura of small town boredom.

Stone glanced at them, said nothing.

The woman with the dark hair was the prettiest of the group. She was watching Stone intently, with an unfathomable expression – maybe contempt, or dry amusement, or maybe something much more dangerous. For an instant Stones eyes met hers, and then she turned her head away, her attention drawn to movement behind Stone’s shoulder.

Stone turned round. The bartender was coming out of the office. He pulled the door closed behind him, bent over the handle and fiddled with a lock, taking elaborate care. Then he
straightened, saw the imposing shape of Jack Stone standing by the jukebox.

“Can I get a Coke?” Stone asked.

The bartender stared at him, but didn’t reply. He edged past Stone, went back behind the bar and poured Coke into a tall glass. Set it on the counter without a word and stood there.

Stone crossed the room, and pulled a couple of bills from his wallet. Put them down on the counter beside the
glass and then picked it up.

“You’re the owner, right? You’re Hank Dodd.”

The bartender stared. “Maybe.”

Stone frowned. “You mean you don’t know your name?”

“I mean maybe it’s my name, and maybe it’s none of your business.”

Stone set his Coke down. “I’m not looking for trouble,” he said, keeping his tone conciliatory. “I’m trying to find the two girls who went missing from around her
e last week. I wanted to ask you about a blue SUV.”

“You some kind of investigator?”

“No.”

“Then why do you want to get involved?”

“Because my sister went missing three years ago. I know how the families must feel.”

The bartender said nothing. He glanced down at his watch, then back at Stone.

“We don’t need your help,” the man said. “We don’t like strangers around here. This is the town’s business, and we take care of our own.”

Stone raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Really.” Dodd looked down at his watch again. Stone started to sense the man’s growing anxiety, and he didn’t think his questions were the cause.

Instinct.

Stone turned towards the door then, turned slowly. Not like he was startled or surprised, just turned with a sense of knowing.

In the doorway of the bar were two tall, solid silhouettes. Two men, standing shoulder to shoulder, their bodies held tense
.

It was the two men
Stone had confronted in the diner yesterday. The two men in the dark blue SUV. The two men he had been looking for.

Stone gave H
ank Dodd a long weary look. Dodd was watching him with bright little eyes with a detached and clinical interest like a scientist studying a specimen in a laboratory. Stone pushed himself away from the counter.

In a split second he assessed the threat. He had no weapon, but the bar stools weren’t bolted to the floor. They were steel-framed with a solid timber seat. Useful. The chairs around each table were timber, so they lacked weight. Stone discounted them as an option. But there was also the glass in his hand.

More than enough, he figured.

The two men came into the bar and stood blocking the doorway with their hands on their hips. Stone gave them to the count of five. Neither of them moved.

From the periphery of his vision, he saw two of the men who had been sitting at the bar suddenly get to their feet and cross the room to stand behind the two strangers. The third guy hadn’t even turned round. He was hunched over his beer, paying no attention.

Okay, Stone
figured. Four threats, unless Hank Dodd had a weapon behind the counter and decided to get involved. But Stone didn’t think so. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who did dirty work. Then his mind jumped to the next realization. He figured Dodd had phoned these men. When Stone had entered the bar, Dodd had gone into the back office. That told Stone two things. These men knew Hank Dodd, but maybe not well – and these two men had been somewhere nearby, somewhere within six or seven minutes of the bar. That meant they couldn’t possibly be staying in Rapture. It was too far away. They had been hiding up here in Windswept all along.