Witness Rejection Read online

  Crockett chuckled and thumped her on the ribs a couple of times. “You’re the best dog in this whole bus,” he said, and headed back to take a shower.

  From his position on the couch, Nudge owled his ears and lashed his tail.

  Crockett liked Zona Rosa even less than he liked The Plaza. Deliberately designed to be both trendy and eclectic, Zona Rosa was a combination of narrow twisty streets, deliberately bad parking, blatantly irresponsible pedestrians, and miscellaneous conflicting architecture. Created to compete with Kansas City’s famous Plaza and Westport, it failed miserably, highlighting the worst of both and the virtues of neither. He took I-29 south from 152, and found a lucky parking space amid the customary throng of SUV fashion statements in front of Victoria’s Secret, or Vicky’s, as he and Ruby had called it a lifetime before. He walked into Cheese Please ten minutes early. It was, thankfully, cool and dry. A young woman smiled at him from behind the convoluted counter, and then ignored him. Crockett looked around and began to graze on an incredible selection of cheese, cracker, and sauce samples exposed for that very purpose. He was so engaged, savoring some truly amazing Parmesan, when the contralto voice from the phone call pulled him out of his culinary reverie.

  “Hello, Crockett. Good of you to come.”

  Some younger than Ruby, Carson Bailey was tall and sleek. Her hair was loose and fell to her shoulders in gentle waves of butterscotch highlighted with light blond streaks. She wore tiny diamond studs in both ears and a small diamond solitaire at the hollow of her throat on a chain so delicate he could barely see it. Under a blazer in dusky pale purple was a light gray silk t-shirt over dark gray pleated slacks. Her low heels matched the jacket. She wore no rings or nail polish, light pink lipstick, undetectable makeup, and her eyes, under perfect brows, were gray. There was a small scar just off center near the bottom of her strong chin. Her teeth were not quite white enough to be phony. He tried not to stare.

  “Hi, Carson,” he said. “My pleasure.”

  Obviously nervous, she plunged ahead. “I promised you lunch. Do you like Italian?”

  “I’ve always admired Sophia Loren,” Crockett said.

  Carson smiled. “Then we should go.”

  “We should, before I finish the rest of all these samples and have no room to gorge myself at your expense.”

  Carson turned to the girl behind the counter. “Sally?” she said. “Everything all right?”

  “Sure. Go ahead. Have fun.”

  Carson took Crockett’s arm and steered him toward the door. “It’s just across the street past The Hereford House,” she said.

  Crockett opened the door for her and, suddenly, it was ninety-five degrees with seventy percent humidity. And not even noon, yet. In spite of the heat, a young man with short hair, sunglasses, and wearing a light brown suit was standing in front of the ice cream shop next door, eating a single scoop vanilla cone. His shoes were plain, black, and polished.

  The restaurant’s name was Bravo. Italian in scent and unforced in décor, it was roomy and pleasant. Carson asked for the only table in the bar area, a tall three-spot with high stools and some privacy. The lunch rush had yet to arrive. A waiter materialized with menus immediately and Crockett asked her to order for both of them. Shortly thereafter he was enjoying a nicely dry pinot noir and a wonderful mixed green salad. Carson drank her wine, but only picked at the greenery.

  “Okay,” Crockett said. “Now that you’re on the hook for lunch, what’s going on?”

  “I think I’m being watched,” she said.

  Crockett smiled. “I’ll forego any number of reasons why you’re extremely watchable and assume that you feel threatened by this feeling. Correct?”

  Carson nodded.

  “Why would someone be watching you?”

  “I can’t think of any reason at all, except for maybe my ex-husband.”

  “You have an ex-husband?”

  Carson nodded again.

  “Why would he watch you?”

  “He wouldn’t. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure he even could. But if he found out where I was, he could have someone do it for him.”

  How long since you’ve seen him?”

  “Twelve years. A little more, actually.”

  “Back to the question. Why would he watch you?”

  “He probably wants to kill me,” Carson said. Her eyes were shining.

  Crockett took a sip of wine as he stalled for time. “And why does he want to kill you?”

  “It was my testimony that sent him to prison.”

  “He’s in prison?”

  “He’s supposed to be,” Carson said. “He got twenty-five years without parole. He threatened me before he went away. Said he’d kill me. He’d find me and kill me.”

  “And you think he’s having someone watch you now?”

  Carson nodded. “I don’t know how he could have found out where I was.”

  “It’s hard to be anonymous,” Crockett said. “No matter what we do or where we go, we almost always leave a trail.”

  Carson shook her head. “But they promised me that I’d disappear. That he could never find out where I was.”

  “They? Who is they?”

  “The people in the witness protection program. They said I’d be safe. But I’m not, Crockett. I know I’m not.”

  “You’re in the witness protection program?”

  Carson nodded.

  “Contrary to popular opinion and contemporary fiction,” Crockett said, “the witness protection bunch is good. When those guys hide you, unless you’re stupid, you stay hid. Were you stupid?”

  “No. I have done everything they said I should, and nothing they said I shouldn’t. Until today, that is.”

  The waiter arrived with Lasagna and fresh bread. When he’d gone, Crockett turned to Carson.

  “Eat,” he said.

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “Eat anyway. And smile from time to time. Laugh occasionally if you can. You’re enjoying my company and having a wonderful lunch. This meeting is not serious. We’re having fun.” He grinned and nodded. “If they’re watching you, they need to think we’re old friends out for lunch, nothing more. Just remember how bright and witty I am. A fountain of masculine charm.”

  Carson grinned. “How could I deny the truth?” she said.

  “Good. Now eat some of your lasagna, drink wine, and enjoy yourself.”

  They ate quietly for a few moments before Crockett spoke up. “There was a fair maid from Nantucket,” he said, “with her dead lover’s parts in a bucket. Then one fine day, she threw them away and said ‘I hate to lose the bucket but…’”

  “All right,” Carson interrupted, laughing. “I get the message. Enjoy myself or you’ll barrage me with gross limericks.”

  “You got it,” Crockett said. “There once was a hermit named Dave, who kept a dead…”

  “Stop it! Enough! I’ll be good. I promise.”

  Crockett grinned. “How ya doin’?”

  “I’m a lot better, thank you,” Carson said. “And I do thank you. Ruby told me once that it was nearly impossible not to feel safe around you. She was right.”

  Crockett followed a bite of pasta with a chunk of bread.

  “Talked to Ruby lately?” Carson asked.

  “There was a young woman named Hatch,” Crockett said. “Who shoved a pickle up inside her…”

  “Never mind! I’m sorry. I won’t bring Ruby up again.”

  Crockett chuckled and continued. “By carefully jerkin’ upon the sweet gherkin, she found pleasure none other could match.”

  “Oh, Jesus!” Carson giggled. “Quit it, will ya?”

  “Sorry,” Crockett said. “I just made that one up and I couldn’t stop.”

  Fifteen minutes later Crockett handed her a small slip of paper, and they walked out of the restaurant. He grasped Carson’s hand.

  “Hold hands with me,” he said, noticing the man in the light brown suit and sunglasses, window shopping at Vicky’s
. “When we get to the store, give me a friendly kiss goodbye and watch me walk across the street to my truck. Say something about it being good to see me, and be sure to stop by the next time I’m in town. In an hour, call the number on that slip of paper from a regular phone, a landline, not a cell. And not your business phone. Go someplace else where you can make a private call. We need to talk. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Carson said.

  They were in front of Cheese Please. She put a hand behind Crockett’s head and kissed him briefly and squarely on the mouth. With their lips still nearly touching, she whispered, “How’s that?”

  “Remarkable,” he said, and turned away to cross the street.

  Carson waved. “Don’t be such a stranger, Don!” she shouted. “Next time you’re in town, we’ll have dinner and drinks. Call me!”

  Crockett waved back, got in his truck, and pulled away, trying to remember how to find his way out of the Zona Rosa maze.

  His ears were warm.

  On the way out of town, Crockett noted a dark gray Ford behind him on a couple of occasions, but lost sight of it on I-29. He arrived home, let Dundee out, popped the cap on a Guinness, lit a Sherman, grabbed a legal pad and pen, and flopped on the couch beside Nudge. The cat “myrrphed” at him and began to purr, the vibration resonating to the floor. His phone rang.

  “Hi, Carson,” he said.

  “Crockett, it’s Car…oh, hi.”

  “You someplace safe on a landline?”

  “Yes. The day manager at the Hereford House is a friend. I’m in her office.”

  “Good,” Crockett said “What’s your ex-husband’s name?”

  “Phillip Metzger.”

  “You testified against him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Federal trial, I assume.”

  “Uh-huh. The FBI was involved.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He was an attorney.”

  “I mean, what did he go to prison for?”

  “Oh. Ah, money laundering, racketeering, some RICO stuff. I forget exactly. I was gone before the trial was even all the way over.”

  “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday mornings I go to the stable.”

  “The stable?”

  “Yes. I have a horse.”

  “Okay. Make arrangements to take some time off work. Go to the stable in the morning as usual. Bring some clothes and necessities with you. Do you have a tack bag or duffle of some kind?”

  “Yes.”

  “Use that as luggage so it appears as something you might take with you to horse around. I’ll meet you there and sneak you out. You are being watched, kiddo. Is there someplace under cover at the stable where you could leave your car?”

  “I think so. Bill and Joy are the owners. They’re friends. They’ll work something out for me, I’m sure.”

  “Good. Don’t tell them why, talk to them only in person, and swear them to secrecy, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you have any house pets?”

  “No.”

  “Good. That makes things simpler.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “My place for right now.”

  “Oh, wonderful. Limerick central.”

  Crockett chuckled. “What time do you get to the stable?”

  “Around seven, so I have some time in the outdoor arena before it gets too hot.”

  “Anybody else around at that time?”

  “Bill is cleaning stalls and stuff, but nobody else usually gets there until after eight.”

  “Get there early tomorrow and set it up. You’ll probably be followed and watched. Is there someplace we can load you up without being seen?”

  “The big barn has a indoor arena. The doors will be open so Bill can get the tractor and stuff inside. Just pull your truck right in. Early in the morning it’s dark and gloomy in there. I’ll be inside with my bags.”

  “Great. Gimme directions, and I’ll see you around six-thirty in the morning.”

  She did. Crockett called Cletus Marshal.

  “Jesus Christ! Crockett! How the hell are ya?”

  “Clete. I don’t have time to jaw. I need a favor and I need to get moving. We can talk later, okay?”

  “’Sup?”

  “Phillip Metzger. An attorney sent up by the Feebies about twelve years ago. Racketeering, RICO, stuff like that. I need anything you can get me on the guy, and I need it yesterday.”

  “Phillip Metzger. Got it. May take me a day or two, bein’ the F, B, and I.”

  “Fine. When I talk to you again, I’ll explain. I just don’t have time right now.”

  “You runnin’ from somethin’ or to somethin’?”

  Crockett grinned. “Maybe both, Texican. Give my best to Stitch, Goody, Ivy and them.”

  “How ‘bout Ruby?” Clete asked.

  “She already took my best,” Crockett said, and hung up.

  He perused the phone book for a few minutes, found a Rent-A-Wreck and a Fastsigns company in Liberty, and hit the road again. It was nearly dark when he returned home, driving an elderly, beat-to-hell, black Ford Explorer. Before he went inside, he installed a magnetic sign on each of the rear doors and one on the tailgate, proclaiming the business of HORSESHOEING in fat red letters, followed by a fictional telephone number.

  Back in the bus he warmed up some three-day-old macaroni and cheese, opened a Coke, and flopped on the couch.

  Jesus.

  How did he get into these things?

  CHAPTER NINE

  Carson Concealed

  Crockett was up early the next morning. He put on his reinforced leg, his ratty old canvas barn coat, a wide-brimmed oilcloth slouch hat, his worst blue jeans, and scuffed hiking boots. The Smith & Wesson 686 went on his belt just in front of his right kidney, and a speed loader of extra .357 Black Talons in his coat pocket. It took most of what the battery had to get the old Ford Explorer started.

  He took 169 south to Cookingham Drive, then east to North Woodland Avenue, double checked his directions, went south about a mile to Staley Road, turned right, then right again on a gravel county road with a missing street sign and, in about a half mile, turned left onto a gravel lane sporting a sign that read Wright Stables. When he cleared the trees at the turnoff, he could see his destination about quarter of a mile distant.

  Closest to him was a low brick ranch house with split rail fencing and a circle drive. In the drive was a Chevy Dually pickup hitched to a six-horse gooseneck trailer. On the opposite side of the house and slightly behind it, stood a small barn with six Dutch doors down the side he could see. Four of the Dutch doors had the top portions open with a horse peering out of each into the growing light. Past the small barn was a paddock, past the paddock a board-fenced arena about a hundred by a hundred and fifty feet. On the other side of the arena at the end of the gravel lane, was another barn. It was huge.

  About twenty-five feet high at its peak, the main structure was probably seventy-five feet wide and nearly two hundred feet long. Kicking off each side of the primary building were shed-roofed additions adding fourteen or more feet to each side that ran the full length of the barn. Two tall sliding doors were open to fifteen feet at the end facing the drive. Parked in a gravel area beside the doors sat a dark blue Mercedes. Recalling his instructions, Crockett drove into the black maw of those open doors about thirty feet, shut off the ignition, and climbed out of the Explorer. The air was lightly dusty and smelled of alfalfa, molasses, and horse.

  Halfway down the right side of what he had deduced was a massive indoor arena, Crockett saw an old Ford tractor hitched to an embattled John Deere manure spreader idling in front of one of the horse stalls that lined both sides of the vast space. As he watched, loose material of some sort flew out the door and landed in the manure spreader. A few seconds later, the scene was repeated. Beside him, also on the right side of the arena, was an area the size of three stalls that was enclosed in siding up to about ei
ght feet. An open walk-through door revealed racks of saddles and tack. Beside it was a wash area with a drain in the cement floor. Cross-tied in the wash rack stood a very tall sorrel saddle bred gelding with a sorrel and white braided mane and a mostly white tail that flowed nearly to the floor. As Crockett passed him walking toward the tractor, the horse nickered and threw his head. Almost without thought, Crockett whispered “Settle down, son,” and continued his walk to the open stall.

  As he reached the tractor, a large man exited the stall and threw a wide many-tined pitchfork into the manure spreader. He was about forty with short dark hair graying at the temples. He wore jeans, work boots, a red flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up over considerable biceps, and leather gloves. His hands were massive. He looked at Crockett and blinked.

  “You him?” he asked.

  Crockett smiled at the directness. “Him who?”

  The big man clambered onto the tractor and rolled it forward about fifteen feet. When he got down, he looked at Crockett again. “The one that’s here to pick up a friend,” he said.

  “That’d be me.”

  The big man turned his back on Crockett and walked away toward the wash rack. Crockett trailed along. When they reached his destination, he slipped the snaps on the two crossties holding the horse in place and slapped the animal on the side. “Go home, Banks,” he said. The horse trotted off down the arena and into the freshly cleaned stall. The big man pulled off his right glove and extended his hand. “Bill Wright,” he said.

  “Crockett,” Crockett said, and took the hand. The grip was surprisingly gentle.

  “Go shut the door on that stall for me, will ya?” Bill said. “I’ll git Carson. She’s up at the house with Joy.”

  Crockett walked back down the arena, closed and latched the stall door, and returned to the wash rack. Bill was waiting for him.

  “They’ll be here in a minute,” he said. “Got a intercom in the tack room.” He looked at the signs on Crockett’s Rent-A-Wreck Explorer. “You a farrier?”