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Connie gave me all the passwords I needed, so I used her computer and her email account to construct a message to send to the Austin Police Department. It included details about the Chinese kidnapper Connie had described, along with his white Cadillac SUV in its Nevada plates. Last, I edited and then transferred the most damning parts of my surreptitious digital recording from my phone and onto Connie's laptop.
The sound bytes from Connie didn’t amount to a whole lot, but they’d whet the appetite of detectives:
“I can’t say anything.”
“You have no fucking idea what you’re dealing with.”
“That still isn’t proof!”
“Fuck you! I’ll never tell anybody jack shit!”
I attached the audio files to Connie’s email, addressed to Austin PD.
Signed, Your Friendly Neighborhood Samaritan.
Send.
I carefully wiped off the laptop and its keyboard. I gathered the pizza box and the remaining cheese pizza inside along with the paper plate I’d used, my red cup, the zippered bank bag, and the Pilot and Plane magazine.
From the front door of her house, I spoke coldly to Connie. “I expect the next time I see you, you’ll be in jail.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m a loose end now.”
I opened the door with my handy paper towel covering the knob, pizza box under my right arm, and bank bag in hand. As I pushed my way through the exterior storm door, ready to close up behind me, Connie had something more to say.
“Thanks for not hurting me.”
I nodded once and replied, “Sure,” then tried to leave again.
But she continued, “Hey. Hugh—whatever your name really is—if you find her, do me a big favor.” Her expression was grim. “Kill the bastards.”
Connie Winter sat there hog-tied on her own couch—tied by me—knowing police would be on the way to arrest her soon, and what did she want? For me to kill the very people who had been paying her, that got her into the whole horrible business in the first place.
I was walking into a world of fucking trouble.
“I’ll consider it. Bye, Connie.”
I closed the doors and left.
***
IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT by the time I got home. There was no girlfriend to greet me when I walked in. No dog or cat. Not even a roach scuttling across the floor when I flipped the lights on.
I was fine with all that. Silence was what I needed most. I was coming down from an insanely stressful day that had answered a lot of questions and replaced them with new ones, given rewards and threatened to take them all away in a flash.
My apartment is neat and spartan. I spend too much time touring—and money is always tight—so like most working musicians in Austin, I get by with just the basics and I could barely afford those.
But of course, the deal with LMG was bound to change some of that.
I tossed my keys, the LMG contract, and the bank bag onto the kitchen counter, then put the remnants of the pizza into the fridge. My red cup and paper plate I pulled out of the bag to toss into the trash can under the sink, grabbed that can, then headed outside to the dumpster.
While I dumped the garbage, the first quarter moon overhead tugged at me, and I stared up into the night sky. “So, have I gone completely nuts, Mr. Moon?”
There was no reply. Thankfully. I laughed quietly. I wasn’t crazy then. Not completely anyway. Not yet.
Back inside my apartment, I took the bank bag into my bedroom and pulled the piloting magazine out of it and tossed it onto my bed. I carefully hid the bag—and the thumb drives inside it—under a milk crate in a corner of my closet.
“What is hip?”
The text was from Pack: Dinner set for tomorrow 7 PM, will call in morn with directions
I replied: Thx, talk soon
Pack: K
I set my phone on the nightstand, stripped naked, headed for the shower, flipped on the bathroom light, and started the water running. My face in the mirror was a sad sight. I looked stretched and tired but knew it was more from stress than fatigue. I needed a shave as usual. I ran one hand through my hair while rubbing at my bloodshot gray eyes with the other.
Showers can be transformational, and that evening I needed it. My mind kept lapsing to Vicki’s face, and I pushed back tears as I scrubbed down and cleaned up.
The feeling of powerlessness. It’s shit. Not having any idea where to strike next to help Vicki threatened to overwhelm me. I’d done what I could. I knew that. But the guilt remained.
My reasoning mind told me to sleep it off. It’d been a crazy day, and I had to stop thinking.
I put on some boxers, brushed my teeth, flipped off the bathroom light then crawled into bed—just a frame and mattress on the floor. I thumbed through the Pilot and Plane mag for a minute, but nothing stood out, and I tossed it onto the nightstand before turning off the lights.
Sleep came quickly.
I dreamed heavily, but when I awoke, I’d forgotten all of it. All except for a flying red horse.
Most people would think little of this—push it aside—but I’d learned over the years to not ignore my dreams, especially those that left me with a symbol intact in the morning. Given the strange psychic events at Connie’s house the previous night, I desperately held onto Pegasus. I was sure it wasn’t just some random image conjured out of my subconscious.
I was convinced it was another ‘precognitive dream,’ a snapshot of something from my future. I’d had them before. I know that’s a lot to take in, to believe we might exist on a linear time stream that could allow us to sometimes view future events in stark clarity, but my déjà vu was often of a sort that felt more like I was looking at a photograph or a repeated segment from a video. So, I couldn’t logically deny the possibility that such visions were, in fact, real.
The journal in my nightstand was for such dreams, and I quickly jotted that one down. Sign of a flying red horse, on wooden wall (or fence?) Mobile gas?
I stretched by the side of my bed, then walked into the bathroom to do my morning rituals. It was the search. Day number two.
I don’t own a TV. I simply have no real interest in most of the crap on cable—and definitely nothing from the lying media. So when I do have the need, I point my computer to the right websites.
New information was hopefully coming to light about Vicki’s disappearance, especially considering my gift to the police. I sat down at my computer desk in my bedroom, then searched up local Austin news feeds and visited all the major networks.
News sites all had headlines about Vicki’s disappearance. The hottest report was about a suspect turned in by a vigilante, but identities were being withheld. Naturally, that part I’d expected.
What I’d forgotten to anticipate though was family.
Vicki’s family had appeared in Austin, and YouTube footage of her parents delivering pleas to her kidnappers was on just about every front page. It was hard stuff to press play on, but I did it.
Vicki’s mom was almost a mirror image of her daughter. Petite, redheaded, with an abundance of freckles, only the crow’s feet at her eyes and a few wrinkles in her forehead the telling differences. Her mother held herself with courage when she spoke, while Vicki’s taller, gray-haired dad stood stoically nearby. I’d never seen either of them before.
Memories of Vicki flooded into me. Her freckled nose. Her almost unnaturally perfect smile. Her laughter mingled with mine, us sitting on the grass outside a college library.
Firecrackers. That damned terrible day at Marquis Hall.
It turned out to be too much.
I looked away from the monitor, stood up from my computer, then went into the kitchen. I was out of milk and Cheerios, so I made do with some nuked oatmeal. While my cereal cooked, I put water and green tea into my one-shot brewer. If you haven’t guessed yet, I drink a lot of caffeine.
Once breakfast was ready, I sat at the kitchen counter and contemplated my next move.
Perhaps I’d hit a dead end. I wasn’t a police department. I didn’t have the resources of a private investigator. I was simply a talented amateur. Smart and resourceful, with a penchant for improvisation, sure, but working miracles wasn’t on my résumé.
None of that stopped me.
I recalled what Connie had told me about the Methodist Church being the trade-off spot to the kidnapper. It was a long shot—to guess there might be a clue there—but I had nothing else to go on without stopping by the police department or hiring somebody. And considering how little I trusted those options, especially after finding Connie—realizing that there had to be other conspirators at work—I knew if Vicki would have a chance in Hell of being found alive, I was her best shot. In fact, I felt that I was her only shot.
That’s what I told myself, anyway. Call it naïve, call it love. When you’re in the thick of it, you’ll believe just about anything.
I grabbed my backpack and prepared, loading it up with my iPad, charger, a real paper notepad, pens, and whatever else useful I could fit inside. There was a traveler’s first aid kit I’d brought with me on the road before. I pulled on blue jeans, a green t-shirt (plain—with no snarky remarks on the front or back), and my black sneakers, then grabbed my keys, Ray-bans, backpack, and finally my phone.
And I was almost out the door—when I stopped myself.
I walked back into the bedroom closet and with a press of my left index finger, opened my gun safe. I removed my 9mm Glock, checked the magazine, stashed two more mags inside pockets of my backpack, and strapped on a holster and gun belt under my t-shirt. I balanced the belt with two additional magazines because I could.
When walking into a world of shit, better walk in armed to the teeth.
I’ve got a concealed carry license good in Texas and most other states. States that don’t honor the Texas carry aren’t a big surprise. California, Illinois, New York, and a handful of others, but the most notable problem spot for me was Nevada. From the look of the way things were going, I’d have to be extra charming there, and soon.
Hopefully, I wouldn’t need to even pull my Glock, but better safe than—well, yeah, you know. I didn’t have time for ‘sorry.’
Last, and to take my mind off the gun tucked into the small of my back, I slid one of my blues harps into a rear-end jeans pocket.
As I was about to exit, my phone sang out again.
It was a text from Lois: Are you OK?
I replied: Y sorry I’m out the door again. But thanks for worrying :)
Lois: News reported some strange things. I don’t want to know do I
Me: I have to go Lois. I’ll be fine. Promise.
Lois: OK but u are crazy u know?
I laughed.
Me: So people keep telling me. Hey would you like to sound engineer our gig this weekend?
Lois: Really? Yes!
Me: Great. I’ll make sure you get paid well. Get you more gigs later. I can do shit like that now
Lois: Yes I can tell people I know Lochlan Nohr! :p
Me: Hah. Bye, must jet
Lois: Kk Please be careful!
Me: Always
I have to admit, even as independent as I am, it was a good feeling to have somebody watching out for me. I was getting in over my head and knew it.
I reached the front door, but got hit by that nagging you’re forgetting something feeling. My LMG contract was still on the kitchen counter. Nice one, idiot. I grabbed the contract and stuffed the thick stack of papers into my backpack.
Finally, I shouldered my pack again, locked up the apartment, climbed into the Bomber, and aimed downtown—to Vicki’s last known location.