When Billy and the two deputies disappeared around a bend in the road, Hitchens had Ruth climb into the SUV. He then drove down the pathway and into the trees. Ike stepped out from the shrubbery and climbed in. Hitchens reversed and regained the road.
“You don’t look anything like FBI,” Ike said.
“Don’t need to. Your people just have to believe we are.”
“They are not that slow, son. Next time try to look a little more rumpled. Where to now?”
“Mr. Garland will meet us at the Motel 6 down the road. I don’t know what happens after that.”
The ride to the Motel 6 “down the road” took two hours. Down the road meant somewhere around Mount Airy, North Carolina. Hitchens pulled into the parking lot and drove to its farthest end. He braked, hopped out, and knocked on a door. The door opened a crack; he mumbled something and came back to the car.
“End of the line, folks. Thank you for choosing Air America. Please do not tell your friends and neighbors about your trip.”
Ike and Ruth stepped out of the SUV and approached the half-open door. The SUV disappeared in a cloud of North Carolina dust.
“Well, come in, you two. I don’t think anybody followed you. Hitchens said you were clean, but why take a chance?”
“That’s Charlie Garland, isn’t it?”Ruth said. She did not look happy. She pushed the door the rest of the way open and she and Ike slipped in.
“Adjoining rooms,” Charlie said. “One for you two and one for the rest of us for the time being, although I do not think we will be staying here very long. We need to get you two far, far away.”
“That will be difficult,” Ike said. “Ruth can’t just drop off the map like that. People back in town will want to know why and then there is the follow-through on my death to set up.”
“Follow through? What do you mean?” Charlie sat at a desk with a laptop open and glowing in its center.
“I’m dead, remember? Either I surface or there will have to be some public acknowledgement of it—a funeral—something.”
“We can’t have a funeral, Ike.” Ruth sat and folded her hands in her lap. “A funeral is so…final. Something else, please.”
“Well we don’t have that many choices. But the point is, if Ruth disappears with no notice, more questions are going to be raised and the news media will be full of it. That could make hiding very difficult.”
“Relax,” Charlie said. “Are you hungry? I’ll have some sandwiches sent over with a pitcher of something cold and we can figure this out. The important thing is, as far as whoever is behind this knows, you’re dead and Ruth is pretty shook up. The bad guys will not be surprised if she attempts to go into hiding for a while. So we will set that up and while they chase around the country looking for her, we will triangulate on who they are.”
“What? Ike, what did Garland just say?”
“I think he said they will leave a trail of credit card purchases here and there and see who is willing to chase after you. They can then be back-traced and if they get enough contacts, calculate the starting point. You, on the other hand will be somewhere else entirely.”
“But won’t they get suspicious when I seem to be in so many places?”
“You won’t be in that many and there will be a logical sequence to them. They might wonder after a few days, but not right away.”
“Okay, I see, but that still doesn’t address the first part. What about the folks back in Picketsville?”
“The word out of the Sheriff’s Department will be that the fire at the A-frame meant you had to move to a motel for a few days. Meanwhile, the DNA has confirmed the ID of Ike. You will release a message that the body, because of the fire and explosion and so on, had to be cremated and also, because of the timing and your state of mind, blah, blah, blah, you have decided to postpone any official memorial for a few days, maybe a week, and then there will be a service at the…what’s the name of that church you don’t attend?”
“Stonewall Jackson Memorial.”
“Exactly, that one. Now, we need to plan on where to stash you while we unearth the bastard who started this.”
“I have an idea,” Ike said.
“Okay, I am all ears,” Charlie said.
“After we eat. It’s been a long day. Send for the sandwiches and instead of, or in addition to the pitcher of cooling liquid, could you order up a bottle of decent hooch? Oh, and get us a change of clothes or two. We’ll talk after we eat. I need a little time to think it through.”
***
Billy was hot. He slammed into the sheriff’s office and stared hard at his brother. “When did you plan on telling me?”
Frank looked up from the photo-spread on his desk, eyebrows raised, and put a carefully constructed look of innocence on his face.
“Tell you what?”
“Now I know why you and Sam have been acting all strange like. He ain’t dead, is he?”
“Billy—”
“Don’t you go giving me no guff about how you don’t know. Ike is alive and kicking somewhere and you knew it and didn’t say anything. So, why? I’m your damned brother, Frank.”
“Keep your voice down, dammit. Someone might hear you.”
“Well,why not?”
“Why not what? Not let people hear you or why not tell you? Here’s the why of both. If the people who tried to kill him knew they failed, they’d try again. The bomb they planted in that car was too big for just someone trying to kill a cop. There’s got to be more. Then they take a run at Ruth, see? So, that’s why we keep it on the down low. As to not telling you, Ike said if you knew too soon, you’d tell Essie and then everyone would know.”
“Essie wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“She wouldn’t have to. She’d light up like the Fourth of July and Christmas combined, and anyone who had eyes on us would figure it out.”
“That’s stupid.”
“That’s the truth and you know it. So, now that you know, you can’t tell Essie. If you do, you have to send her away for a while. Billy, we all love your wife and would do anything for her, but she is as transparent as glass. Look, since they took a run at Ruth up there at that cabin, they must have known where she was. That means they have ears in here somehow. Get it?”
Billy sat down in a heap. Frank waited for him to cool down.
“You can’t tell her, you know. Okay, what happened up on the mountain?”
“How am I not going to do that? Lord knows she’s about as shook up as if her own daddy was dead. Frank, she could lose the baby if she don’t come up out of that funk she’s in.”
“I don’t know, Billy. Look, how about this? She isn’t worth a bucket of spit around here lately anyway, so you tell her she’s on baby-sitting duty for herself and Sam. Once she’s okay with that, she can camp out at Ma’s and then maybe tell her, but be careful with that. Even out and away…who knows? And for sure don’t tell nobody else, got it? Not even Ma.”
“She might buy that.”
“She’ll have to or you’re both off the case and on vacation somewhere and I can’t lose another man. So, you figure it out. Meanwhile, what about your run up to the cabin?”
Billy filled him in on what happened at Ike’s house and how the FBI showed up and took Ruth away. He guessed Ike went with them. He did say he didn’t like the looks of the men who said they were FBI, but Ruth seemed okay with them so he didn’t say anything. Frank smiled and filled Billy in on who the men were and Charlie Garland’s role in the transfer. Billy allowed as how he was okay with the spooks, he just didn’t like the FBI, Karl Hedrick excepted, of course.
Frank couldn’t tell him just then but it was the spooks, not the FBI, who were running the show at the moment.