American Crow (8 page)

‘What the...’ Tug muttered under his
breath, as Blackie leapt in the air like a deer and looped the cuffs underneath
him.

I sat there admiring the biker’s
athleticism as the cops and Tug made chase, then stared at the officer
opposite, wondering if he’d fire the gun that he’d just pulled out from his
holster.

Oblivious to the danger, Blackie ducked
and darted between some parked cars at the far end of the lot, then out of view
for a second before resurfacing again in front of another squad car that had
just screeched to a halt in front of him, blocking his path.

I watched as the biker’s momentum carry
him over the bonnet in slow motion, then winced as he hit the ground hard with
what must have been a sickening thud. Seconds later, Tug and the other officers
had arrived, hauled him up by his hair, re-cuffed him, then were frog-marching
him back towards me regardless of injuries.

I tensed as the group headed straight for
Tug’s car then watched in disbelief as they stopped and threw him hard onto the
bonnet to loosen him up some more.

Instinctively, I covered my face with my
splayed fingers hoping the biker wouldn’t recognize me through his bloodied vision
or the tinted glass. Then I felt the car rock again as the biker was lifted up
and thrown down once more for good measure by the cop he’d barged out of the
way.

Finally, they led Blackie to one of the
other cars where his pyro friend was already sat placidly in the back. A few
seconds later, Tug swung opened the door and fell heavily into the seat next to
me.

‘Sorry about that, Blake. Did you see
that chicken-shit? Thought he could get the better of us. Well he was wrong,
huh?’ He sighed. ‘I can drop you off at the gutter punks’ house now. I’m sure
you don’t wanna tag along to see the burnt out shell of some haulage truck.’

‘I just hope no one was in it at the
time,’ I said casually, as if unconcerned, ‘Were they trying to steal some of
the load?’

‘Naa, the morons just wanted some fun. It
was only carrying construction materials luckily.’ Tug sighed. ‘They just had
nothing better to do, so they thought they’d wreck someone else’s livelihood.’

As we finished the journey I stared out
of the windscreen deep in thought, while Tug chatted away about his faltering
marriage, the Viking’s poor season, and good wheat beer from Wisconsin.

I murmured my continuing interest as I
mused how close I’d been to getting cremated, then pondered over why Finch had
been so nervous around me back at the gallery and why I’d been tailed from
there by some third rate bozo.

As we worked our way through the
shape-shifting neighbourhoods I thought about the clothes and possessions I’d
lost in the fire too, before another realisation slammed into me like a
baseball bat. My wallet had been in the truck as well. I’d shoved it into my
hold-all for safe-keeping. All I had now was what was left in my pockets...

I groaned silently and pulled out the
rest of the money then counted it slowly in my hands. Seven dollars and
fifty-three cents...That wasn’t going to get me very far, and certainly
wouldn’t get me any closer to Olivia Deacon, wherever in the hell she was by
now. And that was almost certainly going to be further away…

Chapter Ten

 ‘the activists’

‘R
ing me if you need anything, okay?’ Tug
said through the open window. ‘Anytime...’

I nodded politely, thinking how unlikely
that was going to be and that for a cop, he wasn’t such a bad guy…I watched him
drive to the end of the road and turn, then headed off towards the activists’
house, passing a bustling timber-clad café on the way, where some grungy-type
had just pulled up on a bicycle two frames high, looking as if he’d escaped
from an apocalyptical circus.

I watched him skilfully dismount, then
turned my attentions back to the emerald house a few doors down, where I could
see a cluster of similar people milling around outside.

‘Alright lads?’ I said chirpily as I
neared.

‘Yo man, what’s happening...’ a dreaded
guy announced from a faded swing chair to my right, a battered guitar in hand.

‘You know, trying to stay out of
trouble...’ I said, clocking the guy with the rigid Mohican, eyeing me
suspiciously from the steps.

‘Look, I was wondering if you guys might
be able to help me out?’

The guitar man stopped strumming and
placed it to one side. His hooded friend sat next to him, drew a hard on his
cigarette and continued listening to his MP3 loudly as if uninterested. Two
others drifted inside.

‘Fire away bro,’ the guitar man said,
enjoying the spring sunshine that was now bathing the frozen porch.

‘I’m looking for a lad called, Ethan.
He’s supposed to hang out here sometimes...’

He hesitated for a moment then looked over
at the guy on the steps as if requiring his approval.

‘No one here of that name,’ the Mohican
man interrupted, tapping some ash from his rollie onto the ground.

I eyed him carefully again. He looked
like the sort of guy who would throw the first brick on a protest. I decided to
work on him, sensing he was the key to getting any further, especially if Tug
had been around already getting on their backs. If they were engaged in direct
action or low-level drug dealing too, as Finch had suggested, then they were
bound to be cagey with newcomers.

‘Look, I’m not a cop, a private
detective, or anything of that sort, okay...I’m a friend of Olivia Deacon’s.
You know, the British girl who met Ethan at the Longfellow Gallery in Whittier?
All I’m trying to do is find out if she’s okay while I’m in town.’

‘She’s okay...plain and simple. So now
you can head back to wherever you came from, mister, and tell that asshole of a
father of hers that she’d doing fine without him.’

I liked the punk’s style, almost admired
it, but not the lack of helpfulness.

‘Thing is, I need to see her for myself,
to know for sure that she’s alright...’

I flashed him a smile that conveyed
enough of a tangible threat lying within it to get him to respond again.

‘Look man, Jessica took some photos of
them before they all left together, three of four weeks ago. Maybe she could
print a copy off for you. Then you’ll have what you’re looking for, right?’ He
pointed a thumb in the direction of the house and looked away coolly. ‘She’s
inside watching the film. If you’re polite, she might even help you out. She’s
the one with the purple streaks in her hair.’

The guy on the swing chair started
playing again sensing the atmosphere had eased enough to do so. I eyed the
Mohican guy a final time to show him that I hadn’t been intimidated, nodded in
gratitude then went inside, feeling the first real spark of optimism since
taking the case on.

Inside, the house smelt of cigarettes and
exotic incense. I wandered down the narrow hallway between boxes of flyers piled
up to the ceiling and plastic crates filled with recycling, scanning the
various posters covering the walls outlining strikes and protests of the past
and future. I stopped at the first door I came too. It was closed. From behind
it I could hear a television blaring out and some low
conversation.    

Gently, I eased the handle down and
fanned it open. On the other side was a mass of grungy denim and skin-tight
leather, shaved heads and dreadlocks lying around on beaten up sofas and
tattered beanbags, looking like a band of extras from a Mad Max film.

I peered through the clouds of resinous
smoke at the twenty or so activists and was greeted by an array of wary
glances. I raised a deft hand of apology then sat down at the back next to a
tall guy in a poncho with a black ponytail that ran down to his belt.

Slowly, everyone’s attention returned to
the film.

‘Is Jessica here?’ I whispered to the
poncho man when everything had settled.

He glanced at me as if slightly annoyed
then nodded over to a girl sat on the far sofa. I cursed under my breath. A
whole heap of bodies lay between us. I’d have to squeeze through most of them
just to speak to her...

I rested my head against the wall and
sighed. I was going to have to sit through the whole damned film or otherwise
cause a scene, and that was going to get me nowhere fast.

Deciding to play it cool, my attentions
drifted back to the television. The film seemed to be about the impact of coal
mining in some mountain range somewhere, an army of yellow bulldozers ploughing
their way through huge swathes of forest to dramatic music, as men with
gargantuan chainsaws felled tree after tree leaving a wasteland behind them.

After a good few minutes the footage
finally switched to some lone cabin, where an old guy was sat in a rocking
chair on the porch, with an even older gun resting across his lap, talking
about how he’d fought off the developers single-handedly as well as the police.

‘I told ‘em, plain and simple,’ the
pensioner said loudly, staring directly into the camera like he was telling a
story in some backstreet bar. ‘Someone is gunna get shot if they takes a step
closer.

“Now you just put the gun down old timer
and there won’t be no more trouble,” Sherriff Hawkins said to me through his
megaphone.

‘I said back to him. I ain’t a movin,
never, so if you want me out the way then you is just gunna have to fire those
pistols of yourn.’

The old-timer paused and smiled at the
camera revealing an array of crooked teeth, proud defiance etched across his
crinkled face, before he became serious again and leaned back in his chair
seemingly melancholic.

‘Eventually they all went away. We
thought we’d won...until two weeks later, when a massive mudslide took the
house, the dawg, and most of the town with it...’ He sucked some air through
what was left of his lower teeth and shook his head. ‘Took the whole damned
house...ttt,’ he repeated, glassy-eyed.

I looked over at the girl with the
purple-streaked hair, desperate to get on with the job in hand, trying to get a
better feel for her character. She seemed better nourished than some of the
others around her, her thick tresses looking shiny, her cheeks full and flushed
with colour, complementing the colourful dragon tattoos that worked their way
up her arms.

I watched her dab a tear away with her
cuff as the film took a different direction, then stared mindlessly at the
television myself, knowing for the moment, that was all I could do. 

Now the screen was filled with shots of
former mountains taken from the air from a swooping helicopter, their peaks
having been removed, making them look like some massive out of scale BMX track.

Then the scene changed again, to some
blonde scientist talking about the rate at which the mountains and the pristine
forest were disappearing, and how futile the mining companies’ attempts were at
re-foresting. ‘How much is enough?’ she said several times. ‘How much is
enough?’

The film cut suddenly to a digger-driver leaning
against the enormous tracks of his bulldozer giving an alternate version on it
all. The guy had a large square face which looked like it had been carved from
granite and a paunch that matched the size of his machine.

‘God wouldn’t create all this beauty if
there wasn’t enough to go around,’ he announced assuredly, as if his words had
been spoken by the very god he followed. ‘We all have to live on this planet
and use these resources for the good of man and future generations. Everything
will grow back in time. We always re-grass what we take out. I don’t know what
peoples’ problems are. Coal creates jobs. Coal sends kids to schools and builds
hospitals. We’re lucky to have these precious resources and need to use them.
That’s what I think.’

The documentary cut to a map of the
Appalachians employing a string of red dots to show every mountain that had
been levelled. I wondered who was right and who was wrong as I shuffled
uncomfortably on the floor then thought about Olivia again. I was desperate to get
on with the case now I felt I was getting somewhere; that of finding an
innocent eighteen year old who’d been missing for far too long and whose father
was sick with worry.

Eventually, seeing the credits go up, I
stood in tandem with a couple of others and squeezed my way through the
compacted bodies to where Jessica was still sitting, staring numbly at the
screen.

‘The name’s Blake. I’m from England,’ I
said extending a hand.

She offered an intrigued smirk, then
looked me up and down.

‘Nice to meet you, Blake from England.
Did you like the film?’

‘Thought it was very insightful,’ I said,
trying to sound interested.

‘How so?’ she asked, as if she knew I
wasn’t like the rest.

‘My daughter was all into nature and
that. Me, less so, if I’m honest, but it makes you think doesn’t it, the
film...’

She laughed softly. I wasn’t sure if she
was mocking me or not. She knew I wasn’t there for the documentary as soon as
I’d walked in. Maybe she just wanted to play with me for a bit for her own
personal amusement before blowing me out.

‘So, how can I help?’

I lifted my gaze from the outline of her
nipples, pressing through her tight maroon jumper and got to the point.

‘I’m trying to locate a missing girl. Her
name’s Olivia Deacon. She disappeared whilst over here on a work placement.
She’s from London like myself. I’m a good friend of hers and her father’s.’

‘Okay…’

I sat down on the arm of the sofa.

‘He’s seriously concerned about her, and
just wants to know that she’s safe. I’m not here to give her grief or drag her
back home. I just want to check that she’s still got a pulse while I’m passing
through Minneapolis on business.

‘The guy with the Mohican told me that
you may have taken a photograph of her while she was hanging out here a few
weeks ago. I’d be real grateful to have a look at it if you did...’

 She eyed me up and down again as if
mulling over her response.

 ‘Well, I didn’t know her that well,
having met her only a couple of times. Only knew that she was interested in
art, that she’d met Ethan at the gallery, and was trying to escape some
tyrannical father who you now claim to be helping out.’

‘He’s a bit protective I know...but he
lost his wife recently and is scared of losing the one person left in his life
who means something to him. She’s his only daughter, you see...’

‘I didn’t know that,’ she said
thoughtfully.

‘Henry’s a good guy really,’ I said, as
if I knew him well enough to vouch for his character. ‘He’s just frightened,
that’s all. You can understand that can’t you, Jessica?'

‘Look, come up to my room and we’ll see
what I can do,’ she said, her defences softening.

I followed her out of the sweat-infused
lounge, up a creaking flight of stairs, along the landing to a darkened room
that smelt strongly of sandalwood. I waited respectfully at the door as she
went in and switched on the light.

‘Please...’ she said, beckoning me in
with a smile.

I stepped in and scanned the room
carefully. There was an old sofa to my left covered in Moroccan style fabrics
and a bed with a throw just as colourful. The walls were busy too, covered in
an array of nature photographs that looked artistic and pretty professional. I
assumed she’d taken them herself, judging by the expensive digital camera sat
on the side.

She bid me sit down at her work desk,
then leaned over and opened up an old laptop in front of me, leaving her
cleavage hovering dangerously close to my face. I shifted my attentions to the
screen as the photographic software loaded up, trying to ignore the flirtation.

If Jessica did indeed have a picture of the
girl, I could email it directly to Lenny, and that may be good enough to free
up an initial payment from Henry and put the smile back on Baxter’s face too.

Within a few scrolls of Jessica’s
alternately painted finger nails we arrived at the photo the Mohican guy had
mentioned. It was a shot of Olivia and another guy, who I deduced was Ethan,
sat arm in arm on a sofa, next to an older lady whom I presumed was Tug’s wife
from the pictures I’d seen back at the cop’s house. The photo was taken in the
downstairs living room judging by the furniture and the other activists caught
in the background.