“WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE?”
“I did some checking. Fries was in the wind for a while, reappeared about five years back, and now lives outside of Locust. He’s in his eighties, probably senile.”
Offended by Galimore’s broad-brush dismissal of the elderly, I snatched up the bill. He didn’t fight me.
“You intend to question him?” I asked curtly.
“Can’t hurt.”
While digging for my wallet, I spotted the page of code I’d torn from Slidell’s spiral. I withdrew both.
When Ellen left with my credit card, I unfolded and read Rinaldi’s notations.
“This mean anything to you?” I rotated the paper.
“What is it?”
“It’s from Rinaldi’s notes on the Gamble-Lovette investigation.”
Galimore looked at me. “Rinaldi was a stand-up guy,” he said.
“Yes.”
The emerald eyes held mine a very long moment. When they finally dropped to the paper, my cheeks were burning.
Jesus, Brennan.
“Wi-Fr. That’s probably Winge-Fries. Rinaldi was curious about the contradiction between their statements.”
I felt like an idiot. I should have seen that, but then I’d just learned of Fries.
“OTP. On-time performance?”
“Seriously?”
“Onetime programmable? You know, like with some electronic devices.”
“Onetime password? Maybe the rest is a password for something.”
“Could be.” Galimore slid the paper to my side of the table. “The rest, I’ve no idea. Unless FU stands for the obvious.”
My eyes were still rolling when Ellen returned. I signed the check, collected my card, and stood.
Galimore followed me out to the parking lot.
“You’ll let me know what Fries says?” I asked in parting.
“Shouldn’t this go two ways?” Slipping on aviator shades, though the day was cloudy. “You must have something on that John Doe by now.”
Oh yeah. The ricin. The confiscation and destruction of the body. The Rosphalt. No way I could share that information.
“I’ll talk to Dr. Larabee,” I said.
“I’m good at this, you know.” The aviators were fixed on my face. “I was a detective for ten years.”
I was weighing responses when my iPhone overrode the traffic sounds coming from East Boulevard.
Turning my back to Galimore, I moved a few paces off and clicked on.
“Yo.” Slidell was, as usual, chewing something. “This will be quick. Got two vics capped, another bleeding bad, probably not gonna make it. Looks like the gang boys are unhappy with each other.”
“I’m listening.” Sensing Galimore’s interest, I kept my response vague.
“Owen Poteat.” I waited while Slidell repositioned the foodstuff from his left to his right molars. “Born 1948, Faribault, Minnesota. Married, two daughters. Sold irrigation systems. Canned in ’ninety-five. Two years later the wife divorced him and moved the kids to St. Paul. Dead in 2007.”
“Why was Poteat at the airport?”
“Going to see his madre, who was checking out with cancer.”
“How’d he die?”
“Same as Mama.”
Failed job. Lost family. Dead mother. Though far from unique, Poteat’s story depressed the hell out of me.
“Looks like I’m out on Lovette-Gamble for now. With the bangers on the warpath, the chief’s reined us all in.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll jump back aboard when things cool down.”
“Focus on your investigation. I have another lead.”
“Oh yeah?”
Moving farther from Galimore, I told Slidell about Fries.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Cotton Galimore.”
“What the fuck?” Slidell exploded.
“Galimore participated in the original investigation. I thought he might have useful information. Which he did.”
“What did I tell you about that asswipe?”
“He claims he was framed.”
“And Charlie Manson claimed he was just running a day camp.”
It was exactly the reaction I’d expected. “I don’t plan to date him,” I snapped.
“Yeah, well. Word is Galimore wasn’t exactly humping back in ’ninety-eight.”
“What does that mean?”
“That investigation went bust. Why’s that, I ask myself. I come up with no explanation makes sense. So I float a few questions.”
“To whom?”
“Cops been around the block.”
“They suggested that Galimore obstructed the work of the task force?”
“They inferred as much.”
I ignored Slidell’s misuse of the verb. “Why would he do that?”
“I ain’t his confessor.”
“Did they cite examples?”
“All I’m saying. Galimore’s a reptile. You chum with him, I’m out.”
Dead air.
“I’m guessing that was Skinny.”
Furious with Slidell, I hadn’t heard Galimore approach.
Shifting my face into neutral, I turned.
“He’s pissed that you’re talking to me.”
I said nothing.
“And ordering you to be a good girl and send me on my way.”
“He was reporting that he’d be tied up for a while.”
“So we’re on our own.”
“What?”
“Just you and me, kid.” Galimore winked. Ineffective, given the unnecessary lenses.
I dropped my phone into my purse and glanced up at him. As before, my stomach performed a wee flip.
I looked away. Quickly.
Two cats were tearing at something in a patch of grass by one corner of the restaurant. One was brown, the other white. Both had sinewy shadows overlying their ribs.
“I know you’re curious about Fries,” Galimore said.
I was.
“And Bogan.” Cale’s father.
“You’re heading to talk to them now?” I asked, still looking at the cats.
“I am.”
A zillion brain cells clamored that it was a bad idea. I waited for opposing views. Heard none.
“I drive,” I said.
* * *
North Carolina is loaded with little pockets that have managed to remain on the far side of rural. Fries had found one of them. Or someone had found it for him.
Following Galimore’s directions, I’d taken the outer beltway, then gone east on NC 24/27. Just before Locust, I’d cut north on 601, then made several turns, ending up on a stretch of gravel that hardly qualified as a road.
For several minutes we both assessed the scene.
If Galimore’s information was correct, Eugene Fries lived in the seediest trailer I’d ever seen. Its hitch rested on a boulder, keeping the thing more or less horizontal.
The trailer had no wheels, its flip-open windows were rusted shut, and a mound of debris rose halfway up the side facing us. BOLER was barely legible on its sun-fried aluminum.
A brand name? The owner’s name? A name given to the trailer itself? Whatever. I suspected Boler had been parked sometime this millennium and never again moved.
The trailer occupied most of a small clearing surrounded by hardwoods and pines. Along its perimeter I could see more trash heaps.
Behind and to the trailer’s right stood a shed constructed of haphazardly nailed two-by-fours. A dirt path circled from the trailer’s door around the hitch and boulder toward the shed. Straight shot to the can. Though gray and weathered, the outhouse seemed of more recent vintage than Boler.
To the trailer’s left loomed an ancient oak whose trunk had to be eight feet in diameter. Its gnarled limbs stretched over both trailer and shed. In its shadow, the earth was dark and bare.
Four feet up the oak’s trunk, I spotted two bolts. Clipped to each was a chain, now hanging slack. The stainless-steel links looked shiny and new.
My eyes traced the chains downward, then out across the bare ground. As I feared, each ended in a choke-collar clip.
“There might be dogs,” I said. “Big ones.”
“Yeah.” Galimore’s tone suggested he shared my apprehension.
As one, we lowered our windows.
And heard nothing. No birdsong. No barking. No WKKT Kat Country music twanging from a radio.
I sorted smells.
Damp leaves. Moist earth. An organic pungence that suggested garbage rotting in plastic.
Galimore spoke first. “You stay here. I’ll see if anyone’s home.”
Before I could object, he was out of the car. Couldn’t say I was unhappy. My mind was conjuring images of Rottweilers and Dobermans.
Galimore took two steps, then paused.
No slathering canines came charging forth.
Looking left and then right, Galimore headed across the ten feet of open space between the road and the trailer. A backward crooking of his right elbow told me he was armed.
Striding with purpose, he went directly to the trailer’s only door. His voice broke the stillness. “Mr. Fries. Are you in there?”
No response.
Galimore called out again, louder. “Eugene Fries? We’d like to talk to you.”
Nothing.
“We’re not going away, Mr. Fries.” Pounding the metal door with the heel of his left hand. “Best you come out.”
Still, no one answered.
Galimore stepped back to recheck his surroundings. And made the same observation that I had. The only path in the clearing was the one leading to the outhouse.
I watched Galimore circle the boulder and hitch, then disappear behind the trailer.
Time passed.
I checked my watch. Three-twenty-seven.
How long had Galimore been gone?
My eyes roved the clearing. The edge of the woods. The trailer.
Three-thirty-one.
I drummed anxious fingers on the wheel. Where the hell was he?
Three-thirty-four.
A yellow jacket buzzed the windshield, tentative. Landed. Crawled, antennae testing.
The tiniest breeze rustled the leaves overhead.
Three-thirty-six.
Thinking Galimore might have called to tell me to join him, I dug out my mobile. Checked for messages. Found none. Verified that the ringer was turned on. It was.
Impatient, I leaned toward the passenger-side floor and snatched up my purse.
When I straightened, the cold steel of a muzzle kissed my left temple.