The Outlaw Stinky Joe (Baer Creighton Book 4), page 16
Lester could find fault with any man he ever encountered, appraise his worth and calculate his fate. But Lucky was different.
“I’ll miss you,” Lester said.
He stopped at a hip-high boulder and, for a moment, lost sight of Lucky. Opening his mouth to call, he spotted him twenty yards to the left of where he saw him last. Lucky’s held his nose close to the earth and his backside shook back and forth. The dog’s excitement translated through distance fragmented by twigs and branches. Lester hurried.
Up there, Lucky found it.
Whatever it was.
Chapter 33
FBI shouldn’t be hard to find. Shirley sat on her sofa, thinker pose.
She smelled bacon. Probably grease residue between her little toes. Her feet sweated, though she wore wool socks. They were cold.
She went to the kitchen. Opened the refrigerator and pulled out a package of bacon.
With appetite, origins didn’t matter. In a good person, all desires were healthy. Pizza. Ice cream. Orgasms. Football.
Dissect a bad man and find his appetites, they’re black and wormy. Even if he craves ice cream, he has a nefarious plan. He wants to let it melt so he can drown babies in it. Or kittens.
Knowing herself a good woman, she obliged her cravings.
Standing in front of a stove burner with sizzling bacon in the pan, Shirley resumed thinking about how to destroy Lester and the moron El Jay.
She couldn’t walk up to the FBI and say, here’s this dirt I got on a drug dealer. Goodbye.
They would ask about her identity. Not only her name. They would dig into her past. Her character. Find out her involvement. Maybe get her to say something she didn’t mean to say. Send her to jail because they could.
You couldn’t trust the FBI any more than you could have confidence in any other bunch of men with infinite power and money. No, if you wanted to engage them, it’d better be at a distance, with as much air space as possible.
Thought completed, the convenient thing about the FBI at the moment: Flagstaff crawled with agents. As evidence of divine intervention on behalf of the little people, they were easy to identify. They wore the same clothes and looked like city people standing in a corn field, eyes glazed and never making contact with the cornstalks.
Flagstaff was about hair, whiskers, hippies, ranchers. Denim, leather, and pastels. Guns and anti-guns. But not law-and-order, black suits and shiny shoes. White shirts. No one but federal law enforcement agents and life insurance salesmen wore white shirts.
“Damn! Double damn!”
A few months ago, in the dead of January, she opened her trailer door after a serious knock followed by a hesitant knock—almost like door-whimper. Before her stood a young FBI man, acne-scarred and short haired. Glasses that seemed to wear wing tips.
“I ain’t done shit,” she said.
“Uh, Miss Lyle?”
“Mizz.”
“I’m sorry. Mizz Lyle?”
“Yes?”
“I’m ... Joe.”
“Joe.”
“Uh. Yeah. Joe Smith.”
She laughed. “Yeah. I met your brother. John.”
He nodded. She surmised his feeble will from his weak eye contact and down-angled head. Smart enough to hold a low opinion of himself. But he wore a black suit—the law enforcement uniform—like all the other recent invaders from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“You here with the FBI crew chasing that mass murderer and his dog?”
“No—I’m a ... I’m a college student.”
She snorted.
“I’m sorry.”
“Lord would you quit with the sorry? All right, college student Joe Smith, what do you want? Why are you here?”
“I would like to maybe, uh, engage your services?”
“What services?”
“A person I met at a breakfast house recommended your services. Tom Davis.”
She squinted at him, wondering why the next governor of Arizona sent a lawman to her.
Of course, Tom Davis wasn’t his real name.
She met him a few years before, when a bunch of anti-government rebels got together to drink beer and complain about taxes. She’d been in a growth stage with her business, after deciding to increase her income so she could save more for retirement. That didn’t happen—but she’d started listening to men when they said things like, you oughtta go to such and such a place, lotta guys there like girls like you.
So she took his invitation and met a surly lot of bikers and assorted charlatans. Nice folk. She made a few connections and acquired a few clients—one still paid dues, regular.
Then a year ago, news broke that the governor of Arizona, Virginia Rentier, was resigning. She’d been tangled in a bunch of conspiracies, murders plots, the usual.
The funny thing: Tom Davis, the ringleader of the secessionist crew where she ate burgers and brats, was not really Tom Davis. His real name was Nat Cinder, and he was the mastermind who brought down the governor. Now half the state wanted him to run for office, and he kept putting out smoke signals to keep the rabble excited.
So what the hell was Tom Davis, aka Nat Cinder, aka future governor of Arizona, doing sending an FBI man to her doorstep?
“Get your ass in here before you freeze. Didn’t they teach you to wear a coat at the FBI school?”
“I’m not—”
“Oh shush.”
He entered the trailer. She closed the door behind him. Retreated to her sofa and sat. Let him stand there, nervous.
“You said Tom Davis. What’d he say to you?”
“He said you’d recognize his name, and that ought to be good enough to vouch for me.”
“Even with you being in the FBI.”
He turned part away from her. “You seem kind of fixed on that.”
“You think?”
“Well, the FBI doesn’t prosecute prostitution. Not one-by-one, as it were, per se. They only go after big fish. Big crimes. You understand, headlines.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s what I read.”
“So what can I do you for?”
“Isn’t that my question?” He smiled.
“Two hundred.”
“That much?”
“So isn’t that funny? You a lawman, pretending to be a college student. Me a prostitute, pretending to be a soccer mom. We negotiated two hours of pure sexual ecstasy for a price of two hundred dollars. Is that right?”
He nodded. Took off his suit jacket.
And Shirley was reminded to add a word to her Pretentious folder.
Per se.
The problem with having a contact in the FBI, was he didn’t want to be her contact in the FBI. He’d visited at least bi-weekly for several months, but she never learned his real name.
After his first session, he always secured his appointments by telephone. She added him in her cell under the name Joe Smith #7.
She tilted the frying pan of bacon and propped the handle on a block of cutting knives, letting the grease drain to the low side of the pan. Turned off the burner and fetched her cell phone.
She dialed Joe Smith #7.
It rang and rang and rang. Shirley ended the call. Maybe he was in a wam-bam super secret FBI meeting.
She dialed again, and the line answered.
“Who is this?” A woman’s voice.
“Uh. Mizz Shirley. Where’s Joe?”
“Who’s Joe?”
“Isn’t this his phone?”
“Yeah. Joe got hisself a payphone.”
Click.
Ergo ... Joe had used a pay phone along with a fake name. Not his real phone and name. Per se.
Shirley ate a piece of bacon. Burned her mouth—but it was good. Out of habit, she sat on the sofa and turned on the television. Maybe there’d be something about Clyde showing up murdered somewhere.
She endured fifteen minutes of a Jeopardy rerun, and then the news broke in.
Video played in small area on the screen, while the newsreader’s pretty upper half filled the rest.
The hunt continues for a feral dog accused of murdering a Flagstaff man last night at a Hardees restaurant. In the bizarre footage now showing on your screen, captured by a security camera from an adjacent building, the man is seen carrying a chain. It’s thought he was trying to somehow assist the dog, which had gotten trapped inside the cement block area containing the garbage dumpster. The dog can be seen after the assault running toward the forest on the other side of the road. If you have information about this dog—can we show the blow up image of the dog—thank you—the dog appears to be a pit bulldog or one of the fighting breeds. If you have seen this animal, or have information about its location, please call our News4 Hotline—
Shirley’s mouth parted.
That Hardees was a quarter mile away.
After slashing Clyde Munsinger, the dog went on a rampage. That poor man with the chain—probably wanted to tie up the dog, to protect it, until the dog people could arrive.
Horrible.
Some of the footage showed the man on the ground, his face blurred, but with blood surrounding his head area.
Shirley closed her eyes. Her brain felt different when pregnant with a key insight.
The dog!
It was white.
It was a pit bull.
It was marked up like it had been in fights.
Shirley chewed bacon and stepped backward in a daze, considering the ramifications.
She’d given a bath to the outlaw pit bull on the run from North Carolina with a serial killer.
That was why the FBI was here. They would want to learn about the dog, right? She’d slip in the information about another man who was also looking for the dog, Lester Toungate, because he believed it carried a USB device with evidence exposing his drug money laundering activities.
“Why does he believe that?”
“Because I told him.”
“What exactly are you trying to hide, Miss Lyle?”
“Mizz!”
No. You don’t go direct to the FBI.
Unless ...
“Screw this.”
Shirley turned on her computer. Ate more bacon. Searched for the FBI, Flagstaff.
There was none. Only the office in Phoenix. Okay, if that’s the game they wanted to play. Fine. She dialed.
“You have an agent who told me his name is Joe Smith. I want to give him information. About that dog. You know. The serial killer and his dog. Well, I gave the dog a bath.”
“A moment, please. Let me see if I can raise him on his cell phone.”
“Who?”
“Agent Smith.”
“Is that his real—uh, thank you.”
The line clicked as if the call was broken. About to press END, Shirley hesitated.
Dial tone.
Ringing.
“Hello?”
“Agent Joe Smith?”
“Yes, who’s this?”
“Mizz Shirley Lyle. Flagstaff.”
“Oh, uhm. Has it been a month already since I helped you move? Did you still need help hanging that wall mirror?”
“What the—” Shirley swallowed. “I’m not calling about that. You guys have been hunting a serial killer from North Cackalackee all year.
“Um, yes.”
“You assigned to that case?”
“Not any more. I was, uhm. I consulted on some of the technology.”
“Okay. Well, I know where the dog is. The serial killer’s dog.”
“How?”
“I drugged him. Gave him a bath. Then he ran off. Say, where are you?”
“Phoenix.”
“You seen the news?”
“What news? I mostly work with computers. I don’t pay attention to—”
“Well, you can see the dog on the news too.”
“What? How?”
“He killed a guy. Ate his face or something. They won’t show the full video.”
“What channel?”
“Four—but you can’t get four from Phoenix.”
“Give me a minute.”
“Besides, it won’t be on there right now. They switched to Jeopardy reruns.”
“I’m going to the website.”
Shirley stood. Walked to her window and looked outside at the trailer resort office. How much should she tell? She said too much already. She had to work it right, or risk being investigated with everyone else. Clyde’s blood was probably still on her wall, in a micro sense. They could connect her to his disappearance by spraying that magic stuff from CSI.
“Holy mackerel. That guy was reaching out with the chain, maybe to put it on his neck. Did you see this?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you gave that dog a bath?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I have to go.”
“Wait!”
“What?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, that looks like the dog associated with an unsub wanted for crimes in Arizona and North Carolina. We’re going to find the dog.”
“How?”
“Shirley—”
“Mizz”
“Mizz Shirley, I need to go.”
“Wait! I want to tell you more!”
“What?”
“Another man is looking for that dog. He’s supposed to be the biggest drug dealer in north Arizona. He’ll be out there too.”
“What?”
“Yes, he will. I told him the dog has information he wants. I lied because I don’t want to be involved. So I thought I could give the information to you, and you could put it on the dog when you find him, and then arrest the man before he comes back here to kill me.”
“Wait a minute, Shir—Mizz Shirley. What are you ... Let me digest this.”
“Get your ass to my place, and I’ll give you what you need.”
Chapter 34
Lester stood at the center of a small arena in the middle of the woods. The ground was flat—an oval about twenty feet in diameter. Not far from a stream. A couple of boulders on the perimeter. Above, open to the sky.
Lucky shook with excitement. Nerves, maybe.
The hair on Lester’s neck remained on end. It tickled. Though the temperature was chilly, after exertion, his dress had proved too heavy. The skin on his back was cold, and the muscles twitched. He became aware of himself, looking out through his eyes. Aware that the thing he called Lester, his self, was looking out through eyeballs at the woods. Almost as if the thing that was Lester was removed from the whole affair, the weird scene that had the dog freaking out, but to Lester looked like so many wind-blown leaves.
He turned, taking it all in, then again, with his gaze above, in the tree limbs. Once more, easy, looking between trunks as far as they’d let him.
If something was there, its disguise was perfect.
Lucky wagged his tail hard enough to shake his body. Lester looked to the ground where Lucky sniffed. Stooped, twisting a little to put the extra pressure on the left side of his lower back. Maybe make that joint pop.
Blood.
Enough he wouldn’t have needed to bend to see it.
The leaves were smeared in reddish brown. Here and there, clumps of hair stuck to their surface. He observed scrapes made from a clawed foot, leaving parallel trenches. Lester placed his hands on the ground where they seemed to not interfere with the scene. He studied the terrain and saw what Lucky smelled and intuited.
This place had seen an epic fight. The leaves were overturned in places, wet on top. Clumps, as if sporadically tilled. Long drug claw marks, and blood sprinkled throughout, as if flung, not dripped.
Hallowed ground, where the strong battled the strong.
Lucky moved off, attracted by new smells, at the side of the arena, near tree trunks. He planted his nose in the leaves. Clawed away dirt.
Looking at Lucky from a lower angle, Lester perceived what he had missed: a trail of overturned leaves, many standing in lumps, partly on edge, that extended from the center of the bloody mess below him, into the woods. The path seemed to end near a clump of shrubs.
Only one animal that he knew of dragged away dead prey.
Mountain lion.
“Ahhh.”
Commence tingling neck, all over again. Now he smelled the robustness of the earth, overwhelming like bread just pulled from the oven, but dank, not sweet.
He looked at Lucky—then to the trees, again studying a circle. Even a dog so great as the German shepherd was no match for an adult mountain lion. They liked to perch in branches and leap on deer, biting the skull base, paralyzing, and killing faster than a man with a bullet. Then they’d drag off the animal and bury it. Come back when hungry, like swinging into the drive-through at a burger joint. Meals ready and waiting.
Spend much time in the woods in Arizona, you’ve likely been studied by a mountain lion. They blend with just about any terrain, stay hidden and motionless, and always know more about their turf than the beast passing through. You don’t sit long as an apex predator without certain traits, Lester knew.
So what had happened here?
The big cat followed the white pit bull’s scent here. There’d been a hell of an altercation. Then what? Mountain lion drags food off through the trees.
The way mountain lion hunt, though, you wouldn’t expect to see such a tore-up battlefield. Pit bulls had a lot of fight, sure, but not against an adult cougar. They were different classes of monster, all together.
But if the lion killed the dog, it was most likely right over there, under some leaves and a little dirt. If Lester had the balls to walk into a lion’s fast food joint and rob it.
Lester pressed up with his arms, then helped himself erect. Now that he’d seen the trail of overturned leaves, he could spot it from standing up. Meanwhile Lucky was sniffing out another location, a couple yards off.
Lucky started digging.
Again, Lester looked to the lowest tree limbs above. He lifted his .30-06 and placed his hand on the bolt handle, but recalled he’d already double-checked it. He moved the safety to fire. Wouldn’t make sense to die jiggering a switch.
He stepped to Lucky and saw the dog had exposed an animal. Certainly not a white pit bull. Lester knelt. Petted Lucky. “Let me in, boy.”
