Witness Rejection Page 14

  It was Carson’s turn to stare out the windshield. At length, she swiveled in her seat to face him.

  “Need any help with that?”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Crockett said.

  Very deliberately, Carson leaned over and kissed him gently on the mouth. “You know where I am,” she said, and was gone into the growing dark.

  Carson finished the last of her BLT and polished off her short milk. “Thanks,” she said. “I really appreciate you putting up with me like this.”

  “Not a problem,” Satin said. “I haven’t had a roomie in years.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be very comfortable here. This apartment is huge.”

  “You’ll work off your share of the rent. I hate to cook.”

  Carson smiled. “The chef is in,” she said.

  Satin put the paper plates in the trash. “How you and Crockett getting along?”

  “I feel really drawn to him.”

  “That’s pretty easy. You know much about him?”

  “Very little. He and my friend Ruby were together for a while. She was gay, and then she wasn’t, and now I don’t know. I’ve only talked to her once since she was kidnapped and abused.”

  “He told me a little about that,” Satin said. “It sounded horrible.”

  “Crockett rescued her, I guess. And now he’s rescuing me. Not a lot of one-legged knights around.”

  Satin nodded. “We’re pals,” she said. “I know more about his life and what he’s been through than most people, I suppose. I’ll tell you this. He can be one nasty sonofabitch if he wants to be.”

  Carson was intrigued. “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. I was with him one night last spring when he pushed two assholes in a pickup truck out in front of a train.”

  “What?”

  “They jumped clear in time, but the train took their truck away. Then he points a gun at the two of ‘em and gives them the facts of life. He was like some kind of, I don’t know, masked avenger or something. Ruthless. It was pretty scary.”

  “Jesus.”

  “These two dumbass brothers had been givin’ him a lot of shit because he wouldn’t let them hunt on his land. Tearin’ down signs and stuff. He just kinda blew it off until one night we went out to his place and found his dog bleeding and his cat with an arrow stuck through him.”

  “Nudge?”

  “Yeah. We hustled ‘em to a vet, then Crockett was takin’ me home and we pulled up behind those two guys at the railroad crossing here in town. He pushed ‘em right out in front of a train.”

  “My God.”

  “Just wanted you to understand that Crockett won’t back down. I’ve never known anybody that I trust more than him. He’s a smartass, but he’s also very kind and loving. He’s almost a throwback in lots of ways. You can depend on him, Carson. I guarantee it. It’s like he’s got this code or something.”

  “He seems like an exceptional person,” Carson said.

  Satin smiled. “You’ll see.”

  “I will, huh?”

  “Sure. You know you will.”

  Carson felt her ears get warm.

  She didn’t say a thing.

  Crockett arrived back at the bus a little after dark, Dundee bouncing along in front of his headlights as he drove down the lane. He paused for a moment, roughing her up and playing doggie games, before he went inside. He clicked on the light, answered Nudge’s “myrrph” from where the cat lay on the couch, adjusted the air to a couple of degrees cooler, noticed that Carson had left her reading glasses on the end table by the couch, opened a can of tuna, drizzled on a little soy sauce, grabbed some Ritz crackers out of the cabinet and a short Pepsi out of the fridge, and sat at the dinette. As he lifted a forkful of tuna out of the can, his satellite phone rang. Crockett hustled back to the bedroom and retrieved it from the charger on the vanity. Cletus.

  “Yer home.”

  “Just got in, Texican. You must have some information to call on this phone. ‘Sup?”

  “Got a line on that Joe Beckner guy that set Carson up in the shitless infection program.”

  Crockett smiled. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yessir. He retired six or seven years ago. Moved to not terrible far from where you are.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Down outside Mountain Home, Arkansas, close to Lake Norfork. Only five or six hours from Kaycee.”

  “How’d you find that out? I didn’t think the Feebies would talk to you.”

  “They’ll talk to me, okay. They just won’t tell me nothin’. Got a fella I did somethin’ for once who was a Feeb an’ then did a lateral transfer to the BATF. He’s got a brother-in-law who’s pretty high up in the Infernal Revenue Service. Infernal Revenue can find damn near anybody.”

  “Maybe I should go have a chat with Mister Beckner.”

  “Sounds like good investigatory technique to me. I’ll have your new papers and badge on the way to you Monday. You should have it by mid-week. Daniel Beckett might have better luck with this ol’ boy than Davey Crockett would.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You need some company?”

  “That’s the second time you’ve asked me that, Texican. You got feathers in your feet?”

  “Naw. Just figure that if yer fixin’ to start somethin’, you might need a little help to finish it.”

  “Bored?”

  “A little. Ivy’s liquidated a lot of her assets an’ stuff. Ain’t near as much for me to do as they was a couple a years ago. Don’t get me wrong. She’s got me for as long as it takes. She’s an amazing ol’ gal. But now with Goody here, an’ Stitch, there’s just less for me to do.”

  Crockett couldn’t resist. “Well, Ruby’s there,” he said.

  “C’mon, son. Ruby an’ me are friends, but that’s all. Nothin’ like that between us no more. She ain’t the same Ruby she usta be. That mess down on the Spring River changed her some.”

  “Read any good books lately, Cletus?”

  “Goddammit, Crockett! If you’d git that case a rectal-cranial inversion fixed you might…”

  “Thanks for the info, Clete. Send me Beckner’s address with the other stuff. I’ll keep you posted.” He disconnected.

  Back at the dinette he threw the tuna in the trash, returned the crackers to the cabinet, replaced the Pepsi in the fridge, flopped in his chair and turned on the TV.

  Two thousand channels, and not a goddam thing on.

  Shit.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Threats

  Saturday morning came too soon after a restless night. By nine the mercury hovered near ninety degrees with a relative humidity level approximating the deep end of a YMCA swimming pool. Crockett took a glass of iced green tea into the screen room, lasted about thirty seconds, and retreated to the bus. He’d planned on walking to the home site and looking over the recently constructed foundation in an attempt to decide what to do with it to keep it from looking like a recently constructed foundation when his cabin sat atop it, but he had waited too long. It was going to be another oppressive day.

  He wished Cletus would leave this thing with Ruby alone. In many ways, Ruby was as much a part of Crockett as Crockett was a part of Crockett. She had, after all, restructured him after he left the cop shop and came to Kansas City. For years she was nearly his only contact with the outside world, occasionally drawing him into the light for a short time, checking on him, not letting him slip too deeply away. Over the years a professional relationship with the learned Doctor LaCost evolved into an unusual friendship with the gay Ruby LaCost, and he missed that. He missed her wiseass phone calls, her scathing wit, and cigars and single malt on crisp fall evenings.

  But all that was several lifetimes ago. Before Rachael and Rachael’s death, back when Crockett had two legs. Again it had been Ruby to the rescue, rebuilding his shattered self, eventually giving him purpose, hanging in there through his coma, sticking with him through it all. The relationship grew to cohabitation, declarations of love, even the acce
ptance of a proposal of marriage. And then the worst possible thing happened. Crockett didn’t need fixing any more. Ruby, his savior, had done her job so well, there was no job left to do. It made no difference to Crockett, but it did to Doctor LaCost. It was then that he realized nearly all of their relationship had been built on Ruby’s need to control men, and his willingness to be controlled. He could look back on their time together and see the incidents when he’s shrugged off her control, and her unreasonable response to those incidents.

  Every reconciliation had come with condition. While Crockett worked at acceptance, Ruby maintained expectation. The more he participated in life, the more she attempted to control that life. The more Crockett switched his need of her to his want of her, the more Ruby resisted. It got too emotionally expensive. Nothing is so valuable that it cannot be overpriced. Eventually, Crockett just couldn’t afford it anymore. It was a valuable lesson and, in spite of Clete’s entreaties, as far as Crockett was concerned, it was over. In a strange way, he found it both liberating and depressing.

  Overburdened with self-examination and bored with sitting around, Crockett grabbed the keys to his truck, locked Dundee and Nudge inside the bus, and headed for Lowman’s Café in Smithville. There is almost no level of self-pity that cannot be cured by good biscuits and gravy.

  The waitress refilled Crockett’s coffee and took his plate away. He added a couple of those little things of cream, leaned back, and waited for the gray-headed man in the dark blue suit sitting alone at the far end of the room to get to the point. After ten minutes or so of being studiously ignored, Crockett couldn’t take it anymore. He got up, grabbed his cup, walked the length of the space, and sat across from the object of his interest.

  “What do you want?” Crockett said.

  The man smiled. “A few moments of your time, Mister Crockett.”

  “You got ‘em. Here and now. Not later. Nowhere else.”

  “My name is Charles Boster,” the man said. “I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Would you care to see some ID?”

  “Naw. You look like a Feeb. It’s one of the few things I’ll take your word for. Sorry, that was incorrect grammar. It is one of the few things for which I will accept your word.”

  Boster paused for a moment. “You have a very antagonistic attitude, Mister Crockett.”

  Crockett grinned. “I know,” he said. “I struggle with it every day of my life.”

  “Carson Bailey,” the Feeb said. “Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “Carson Bailey.”

  “Never heard of her. Kleffner know you’re here?”

  “Kleffner?”

  “Head of the local office. You bother to notify him when you blew into town?”

  “I function independently of local support, Mister Crockett.”

  “Must be lonely for you,” Crockett said. He took out his cell phone, punched in local information, and asked for the number of the Kansas City office of the FBI. Boster shifted in his seat.

  “All right, Crockett,” he said. “That’s enough.”

  Crockett ignored him. “Special Agent Kleffner, please,” he said.

  “You can hang up, now.”

  “Agent Kleffner,” Crockett said. “How are ya? David Crockett here. You might remember me from the spider kidnapping of Ruby LaCost last year? That’s right. Not a thing personally, I just wanted you to know that you have an agent named Boster following me around. Although the Feebs shouldn’t be involved, he’s snooping around the witless dejection program. Uh-huh. Boster claims he works independently of local support. I guess that means he doesn’t want anything to do with you and your guys. I just thought you oughta know you got a spook flittin’ around without bothering to tell you he’s in town. Sure. He’s across the table from me right now. Wanna talk to him? No? Just trying to do my civic duty. You and I got along pretty well. Figured you might like to know there was a shoofly in your kitchen. Ha! Don’t worry ‘bout me. He doesn’t look that dumb. Great. See ya, Kleffner.”

  Boster had wadded a paper napkin up into a small ball. He glared at Crockett. “You’re a funny man, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a laugh riot,” Crockett said, slipping the cell phone back in his pocket.

  “You’re fucking with the FBI, little man.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m fuckin’ with you.”

  “I don’t believe you appreciate the gravity of your situation,” Boster went on. “Withholding information is not in your best interest.”

  Crockett looked across the table. His manner softened. “Look,” he said. “I’d be a fool to antagonize the FBI. I know it. You know it. So let me say this. Blow it out your ass, Boster. And don’t follow me around. It’s not in your best interest.”

  Boster’s face flushed. “You were seen with Carson Bailey last Tuesday, one day before she dropped from sight. Now where the hell is she?”

  “Last Tuesday?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where?”

  “In Zona Rosa. The two of you went to lunch at an Italian restaurant called Bravo.”

  “Carson Bailey?” Crockett asked. “You got the wrong guy. I don’t even know any Carson Bailey. I was in Zona Rosa, all right, but I went to lunch with Mary Lou Shaffer. She’s an old friend I knew years ago in Kalamazoo. You better get your facts straight. I even tried to call her yesterday, but she’s not at that cheese store of hers. Nobody there knows where she is. Why don’t you guys get ahold of the Marshal’s Service and find her, for crissakes! She might be in trouble or something.”

  Boster sagged back in his chair and peered at Crockett. “So that’s how it is, huh?”

  “Pretty much,” Crockett said. “And tell that kid in the light tan suit that he needs to sharpen his skills a little. He’s about as inconspicuous as a kangaroo in an outhouse.”

  “You’ve been warned, Crockett.”

  “It’s a bitch when they give you a rookie like that, huh?”

  Boster whipped up his most intimidating stare. It was good. Most people would have succumbed. “I have a lot of ways to get to you, asshole. I can shut you down, Crockett. I can put your life on hold. Or maybe I should call my friends at the IRS.”

  Crockett smiled. “C’mon, Boster. That’s bullshit. You don’t have any friends. Why don’t I just meetcha outside the saloon on Main Street at high noon, guns a-blazin’. The one left standin’ gits the girl.”

  Boster shook his head. “Are you just stupid, or what?”

  Crockett lifted his coffee cup and smiled at Boster. “I got half a cup left here,” he said. “In about five seconds, I’m gonna slip and spill it down the front of your shirt. Say goodnight, Gracie.”

  Boster did not say goodnight, but he did leave. Crockett, suddenly a little shaky, leaned back in his chair and stared at the tabletop. Aw, hell. He finished his coffee, took out his cell phone, turned it on for the first time that morning, and punched in the Hartrick Cop Shop’s number. Instantly, he had second thoughts, closed his cell phone, went to the pay phone in the vestibule, and tried again.

  “Dale, I need a favor.”

  “What?”

  “I need a bunch of things transferred to your name.”

  “What kinda things?”

  “ My gas company account, electric, phone, trash service, that kinda stuff.”

  “Crockett, I love ya, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna pay your bills. We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

  “I got an FBI asshole on my butt. He can shut me down if he wants to, and I think he wants to. Can you do that for me?”

  “Who do you think you’re dealing with?” Smoot said. “Can and will. I’ll pull a few strings, get it done, and warn some people to keep their mouths shut. Get off the phone so I can get busy.”

  “You know who to call?”

  “Shit. This is a small town, Crockett. We all get everything from the same places. Hang up.”

  Crockett broke the connection, got change for a dollar, and call
ed Satin.

  “Hello?”

  “You know who this is?”

  “Ah, yeah.”

  “No questions. Just listen. Quick as you can, meet me at the main office of the Platte Valley Bank in Smithville. Okay?”

  “Sure, uh…fine. Be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “You’re a doll. See ya.”

  Crockett rummaged in his wallet for a moment until he found the number for Higgenbotham Realty. The phone was answered on the third ring.

  “Morning, Lyle,” Crockett said.

  “This here Crockett, ain’t it?”

  “Yep. I need a favor in a real big hurry. You interested?”

  “What can I do ya for, boy?”

  “I need to sell my place just as fast as I can.”

  “Hell, Crockett. I’ll be glad to list it for ya.”

  “Don’t need it listed. Just need it sold. This morning, if possible.”

  “You got a buyer?”

  “I will have in the next thirty minutes or so. This has got to happen in record time, Lyle.”

  “What’s the buyer’s name?”

  “Satin Kelly.”

  “Satin? As in Satin?”

  “Yep. I can have her in your office before lunch.”

  “Yer title search an’ stuff is all current. I’ll git started on the paperwork. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so. How much gittin’ for the place?”

  “How ‘bout fifty grand.”

  “Your place. Your price. A hundred would look better.”

  Crockett smiled at the complicity. “You got it. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Crockett hung up and headed for the bank.

  “You want what?” the assistant manager asked from his position behind the counter in the Platte Valley Bank.

  “I want all of my money from both accounts, except about a thousand dollars that will remain in checking to cover current outstanding transactions, in cash. On this counter. Now.”