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THE BUS WAS COLD, AND I was too big for the seats even though they were like captain’s chairs. Two to a row. And they reclined a hundred fifteen degrees.
I had my own row, which was good because I had leg room, but I was still too tall for the seat. I couldn’t recline because an older couple sat behind me. I didn’t want to be right in their faces. So I just stayed upright.
I pulled out my phone and checked the battery. It would die soon.
I started thinking about Ann Gables. I wondered if it was my responsibility to solve a cold case. Then I thought, What was the connection between her and Faye Matlind?
The bus had Wi-Fi onboard. So I pulled up the Internet and did a local search on Ann Gables in the news. Images came up of her high school yearbook pictures and her Facebook, and I found stories about her and the other missing girls. The FBI had thought she was one of the victims. If she was, then so was Faye. No doubt about it.
I searched for a few minutes, and then I stopped. I realized that these stories weren’t going to tell me anything. I started to look through other news, just the headlines. Then something caught my eye. It was about the manhunt for the criminal, Oskar Tega. I shrugged. Might as well try to read about something else since I was on a bus out of Mississippi and had no plans of returning to Black Rock.
I clicked on the article and skimmed it. Tega had eluded authorities, escaped by sea, and was thought to have come to Texas and burned one of his farms to the ground. Nothing I didn’t already know. The end of the article said that it was thought he hadn’t escaped by boat but by seaplane.
My brow furrowed, and I stared at the screen. Seaplane?
Hank, the old guy, the airplane mechanic from two days ago, had talked about a seaplane. He had explained the difference between a seaplane and a flying boat. The flying boat was also called a water bomber, those planes that fly over a forest fire and drop tons of water over the flames. I thought back to what he had said. He had driven from Jackson to Jarvis Lake to refuel “some rich guy’s seaplane.” But actually, it had been a flying boat. He had said the guy was flying his rich friends in for some fishing.
I thought back to my conversation with Maria. What had she said about Texas? Oskar Tega had visited Texas, taken back his product, and then murdered his employees. And the thing that stuck out was that he had used a scorched earth policy. His men had set fire to the farm and most of the town. They had destroyed the evidence, but the police knew it was them.
So why cover your tracks and hide that you were even there when it was so obvious that it had been Tega? I couldn’t understand why anyone would go through all that trouble to destroy evidence when it hadn’t changed the fact that everyone knew it was him.
I read some more, but there was nothing new in this article. I moved on.
What was the name of the town in Texas?
I was sure Maria had told me, but I couldn’t recall, and that was rare for me. I usually remembered everything. I returned to the home screen on my phone and dialed Maria’s number from memory. The phone rang and rang, and I got her voicemail. I hung up and left no message. A few seconds later, I received a text.
“Who is this?”
I replied, “Widow. Can you talk?”
She texted, “At work. ‘Sup?”
I texted, “Battery dying. What’s the name of the town in Texas with Tega’s farm?”
She replied, “?”
“Granjas?” I texted.
Time passed, and I figured she had gone back to work.
Then she replied, “Crosscut.”
I texted back, “Thanks.”
I went back into my Internet browser. The low battery warning popped up again. I ignored it and searched for Crosscut. The phone searched and offered several results. I scanned them until I found what I was looking for. Crosscut was a small town in west Texas, far from any major urban areas. It was nothing but desert and tumbleweeds, the perfect secluded place to hide drug manufacturing in the US.
In the case in question, there had been no evidence of the product left behind. There had been no evidence of any drug manufacturing. Therefore, I reasoned that it was logical to question how the DEA knew that he trafficked drugs. I researched and sifted through articles and old clippings about Tega, as fast as my eyes and mind could process them—and that was pretty fast. But I found nothing. No evidence to conclude that Oskar Tega was a drug dealer. The only connections that the cops had made between his operations and drugs were from his known associates—drug cartels—but there was no evidence that he himself manufactured anything.
Then I had another idea. I searched for missing girls in and around Crosscut. Sure enough, the county had had numerous reports of missing girls—travelers mostly. Same as around Black Rock.
An alarm went off in my head. That was the connection—Tega.
I dialed Grady again. The phone rang and rang. I heard a beeping noise, and then Grady answered.
“What?” Grady had known that it was me calling.
“The guy in the news, the drug lord.”
Grady asked, “What guy?”
“Oskar Tega.”
“Tega? What about him?”
I said, “He’s not selling drugs.”
“What?”
“Tega isn’t in the drug business. He’s not dealing drugs.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I said, “Oskar Tega isn’t dealing drugs. The Feds have him all wrong.”
“What the hell does he have to do with anything?”
“I rode into Black Rock with this old airplane mechanic. He said that he was meeting a rich guy on the lake. The rich guy had a seaplane.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
I said, “Oskar Tega escaped from the DEA from his beach house in Mexico. He escaped by seaplane.”
Silence on the other end. I took the phone away from my ear and checked the screen. A red battery symbol flashed, but the connection was still there.
“Grady?”
“Are you saying that he’s coming here? But why?” Grady asked.
“Look up Crosscut, Texas.”
He said, “I know about Crosscut. It’s been on the news.” Another pause. Then Grady asked, “You think that he’s making drugs here? In my town?”
“I don’t think that he’s in the drug business at all. Think about the missing girls, Grady. Girls from all around your county. And the neighboring counties.”
“Yeah.”
“Enough missing girls to raise suspicion but spread out over four counties so that no one can pinpoint an exact location that might be connected to them.”
He wasn’t making the connection.
I said, “Think, Grady. They’re spread out to hide the fact that they’re all going to the same place.”
Silence.
Then I said, “Think about why Tega torched his own compounds in Crosscut after he left. What was the point? The DEA figured they belonged to him anyway. So why torch them for no reason? And what difference would it have made if the cops connected the farm to him? He had already cleared it out and was long gone.”
Grady stayed quiet.
I said, “And the Mexican hitman. Why send him? Why try to kill me? Why kill Matlind? What was the point?”
Why’d he kill my mom? I thought. Because she was getting close.
Silence, but I could hear Grady breathing. I could picture the expression on his face as he was trying to figure out what I already knew.
He said, “I don’t know.”
“To shut me up. He sent the hitman to silence both of us.”
“So he didn’t want either of you talking? But why? What did you know?”
“It wasn’t what I knew. It was what one of us or the cops would figure out later.”
“What’s that?”
“Tega isn’t a drug dealer. He isn’t destroying evidence and killing witnesses to hide who he is. He’s destroying evidence and killing witnesses to hide what he is. He’s coming to Black Rock, and he’s going to kill everyone involved and burn your town to the ground just to keep his secret.”
“What secret? What is—?”
Then silence—not dead air, not static, but cold silence—fell over the phone. No sound.
I waited a long moment, and then I shouted, “Grady! Grady!”
I looked at the phone. It was dead.
Shit!
Oskar Tega was going to Black Rock—or he was already there—and he was going to leave the town in ashes.