The Brotherhood of the Wheel (24 page)

Jimmie and Heck looked at each other warily.

“I don't like getting the stink eye from cops,” Heck said.

“Try to act like you ain't scooter trash for ten minutes,” Jimmie said before he walked in.

“Can't count that high,” Heck said, stepping in front of Jimmie and entering the house first.

*   *   *

About a half block down, on the other side of the street from Turla's house, Lovina Marcou sat in her Charger, sipped coffee, and took notes. She scribbled down the tag on the semi that had hissed to a halt in front of the ex-trooper's home, and the motorcycle. Both were North Carolina plates.

Russell had given her Turla's name and address as the person who had accessed the Collie girl's missing-persons file. Now he had an odd pair of guests from out of town showing up. She was glad she had decided to hang back and get a read on Turla before knocking on his front door. She'd wait, watch, and see where Bubba the Trucker and Goku the Ginger Biker led her. She picked up the phone to ask Russell to use his access to run the strangers' plates.

*   *   *

The living room and the kitchen were divided by a wall of open shelves, most of them filled with porcelain chickens of various sizes, shapes, styles, and colors. The room was dark, with only a table lamp on next to a large brown leather recliner. The room smelled of mellow pipe tobacco. The kitchen was well lit, well enough to see a sink of dirty dishes next to a dishwasher. Above the arch dividing the kitchen and the living room was a small wooden plaque, handmade with a wood-burner tool, which said, “Welcome to our kitchen: it may be cluttered but that's because it's filled with LOVE.” There was a Formica-topped kitchen table with four chairs in the center of the kitchen. A thick brown folder sat in front of one of the chairs, next to a cell phone in a cloudy, sealed plastic evidence bag. Turla busied himself at a coffeemaker and gestured toward the kitchen table.

“Have a seat,” he said. “There's the file. I got to get it back to my old partner in the next day or so. I looked up as much stuff online as I could; they never rescinded my access.”

Jimmie and Heck sat. “Much obliged,” Jimmie said. He pulled the thick folder in front of him and opened it. Heck reached for the plastic evidence bag; Jimmie grabbed at the bag and stopped him. “What are you doing?”

“Checking it out,” Heck said. “Look, you want me to graduate from being your fucking squire, or whatever, then you got to let me do my thing, too, man. Let me see the cell.” Jimmie reluctantly released the bag, and Heck began to open it.

“Don't break the seal,” Jimmie said. “Chain of custody.”

“Yeah, right,” Heck said, slipping out his buck knife and slitting the adhesive tag that sealed the baggie. “Like that doesn't get fucked with all the time, anyway.”

Jimmie looked back to Turla. The ex-cop nodded and shrugged, then went back to making the coffee and trying to find clean mugs. “We never recovered the Collie girl's cell,” Turla said, “but these belong to the other kids. We found them in the car along with all their purses, car keys, backpacks. Weird. Tell me one teenager that ups and goes off without their damn cell phone. Things are practically glued to them.”

Heck slipped the phone out and tried to turn it on. “Hey,” he said to Turla. “You, uh, you got a charger I could use?”

Turla nodded. “Yeah, there's one hooked up on the night table in the bedroom down the hall,” he said, gesturing toward the hallway past the den. “On the left.”

Heck stood and headed down the hall.

“You sure he's okay?” Turla said softly to Jimmie after the biker was out of sight. “My skell sense is going off.”

“Hey!” Jimmie said, turning to Turla. “He's my squire; you watch your mouth. He's the son of a good friend of mine—a Brother. Kid saved my life down the road, so yeah, he's okay.”

“No disrespect,” Turla said. “I just heard, you, know, how tough it's been for us to find new blood. Most of these kids out there aren't worth a damn. My son, I wouldn't even consider him for a squire.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Jimmie said. Turla was silent. The ex-trooper set a mug of hot coffee on the table next to Jimmie. He placed another where Heck had been sitting. “There aren't as many of us as there needs to be, for sure,” Jimmie said. “We're still active in a lot of countries all over the world; we ain't dead yet, but you're right—we sure could use more warm bodies worth a damn.”

“My daughter,” Turla said, “now she could hack it. She's her mother's daughter, bless her soul. Every so often I think I should tell her all this, give her the option, then I think about my little granddaughter and I … I just can't imagine…”

Jimmie nodded and raised the mug. “I hear you. Got a little girl of my own, another on the way. Hard to imagine putting them in harm's way.”

“Well, I hope this boy you got with you will make the cut,” Turla said, raising his own mug. “Seems pretty tough. Hopefully, he's like his father.”

“Stepfather,” Jimmie said. “Here's praying he's nothing like his real old man.”

*   *   *

Heck found the charger in the bedroom, next to a full hospital-style bed complete with oxygen tent, IV pole, and vital-signs monitors. The bed had a handmade pink-and-white comforter on it, neatly made. It hadn't had an occupant for some time, but there was a wooden chair next to it, and a folded paperback, a pack of Marlboros, and a half-full ashtray of butts joining the charger on the night table. The room smelled of stale smoke. Heck took the charger and waited to give the two old guys a few moments to talk him out; he knew they would. He suddenly imagined Ale in a bed like this, and saw his mom in the chair, next to him. The anger rose, flush in him, melting the ice he worked so hard to maintain. He should have been there. He could have been there. He made his pact with the anger, as he had been doing since he came home—it would get its hour to run free, to devour, and consume, and destroy. And it stilled in him—humming, waiting.

They'd had enough fucking time to critique him. With the charger in hand, he left this memorial to old pain as quickly as he could.

*   *   *

Lovina's cell buzzed, and she answered it. “What you got, Russ?”

“The bike is registered to a Hector Conall Sinclair. He's got a minor sheet—mostly assault, drunk and disorderly, possession of concealed weapon. Most of those charges came in the last few months,” Russell said. “He's a member of an outlaw biker gang called the Blue Jocks—a Scottish-American club out of Wilmington. I talked to a Wilmington cop; he said that the Jocks are pretty clean as MCs go. They bounty-hunt to pay the bills. Some minor drug and weapons charges, the usual biker nonsense, but no organized-crime stuff.”

“And the semi?” Lovina asked, as she flipped to a clean sheet of paper in her notebook.

“Registered to a Jesse James Aussapile,” Russell said. “He's an independent truck driver, lives in Lenoir, North Carolina. Not much of a record, but it's the absence of one that's actually kind of interesting, given the circumstances.”

“What do you mean?” Lovina asked. She noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye. A kid, a teen, walked slowly down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from her. The kid's hood was up, and the face was obscured. Lovina felt her hand leave the notebook and slide under her jacket for her gun. It stayed there.

“Well, Mr. Aussapile has been arrested and questioned literally dozens of times over the past two decades,” Russell said. “He's been charged with interfering with police investigations, tampering with crime scenes, trespassing, possession of concealed weapons. Get this, mind you—once it was wooden stakes and a hammer, and the second time it was an aluminum baseball bat covered in weird symbols drawn on it by a Sharpie. Oh, grave desecration, robbery, arson, and attempted arson. Every single charge was dropped, every time. But that's not the best part. His file is flagged by the Feds, Lovina.”

“What?” Lovina said, still tracing the hooded kid's laconic gait down the street. The kid looked up, as if sensing the intensity of Lovina's stare. He looked around—pimply face and normal eyes. Lovina felt her whole body relax. Her hand moved away from her gun. She was angry at herself for being so damned jumpy.

“Yep,” Russell continued in her ear. “It logged me looking at his file, as a matter of fact. He's been pulled in by the FBI several times in the last year for questioning in regard to murder investigations and missing-persons cases. Would you like to guess which task force it was that pinched him every time?”

“The Highway Serial Killings Initiative,” Lovina said, circling Aussapile's name in her notebook.

“Give the lady a Kewpie doll,” Russell said. “This fella has been associated with all kinds of bad stuff all over the lower forty-eight for years,
chère
. No one's been able to pin anything on him, though.”

“And now he's all interested in Karen Collie's disappearance,” Lovina said. “Thanks, Russ. Can you see if he and this ex-trooper, Turla, have a history?”

“It's lucky for you my girlfriend is washing her hair tonight,” Russell said. “Already on that. But, first, I saved the best for last.”

“Spill,” Lovina said.

“We got a hit off a print on the can at Dewy Rears's place,” Russell said. “He did have company, and the guy had been printed for a security-guard job about four years ago. His name is Mark Stolar, twenty-nine. No record. Last address is his parents' home. DMV has nothing on a vehicle for him, either. I have a supplemental in to get his bank info and see if we can track any activity in the last few weeks. You have this before the Tallulah PD,
chère,
but they will have it in the next twenty-four hours. I'll try to stall it, but no promises.”

“I understand, Russ,” she said as she wrote. “Don't stick your neck out for me, you hear? It's far enough on the block already.”

“Ah, Love-e-ly Lov-ina,” Russ said. “You should know by now—I am a man who loves to live dangerously! You be careful! This Aussapile and Sinclair sound like bad news.”

“It's cool, Russ,” Lovina said. “I am, too.”

*   *   *

“According to this report,” Jimmie said, flipping back and forth between the pages of the file, “these kids all knew each other, attended the same school, same clique. They hung out at each other's houses. No indications of any drug use, no records. Hell, not even a speeding ticket or caught smoking dope. Nothing. They went to the mall, to celebrate this … Mark Baz,” Jimmie said, looking back at another set of papers, “getting his license and a new car. Karen's parents told me she was sweet on Mark but she hadn't even told him.”

“Could it have been a carjacking that went bad?” Turla asked, sitting down at the table and sipping his coffee. “Or a robbery?”

“Doubtful,” Jimmie said. “The new car was found in the parking lot of the mall, like you said—keys in the ignition, the kids' purses, backpacks, tablets, and phones on the floor of the car. If it was a robbery, they kind of stunk at it. The only thing they stole was the kids.”

“What else did the ghost girl say to you, exactly?” Heck asked as he fiddled with one of the kids' phones.

“Vanishing Hitchhiker,” Jimmie said, looking up from the file.

“Whatever.” Heck swiped the screen of the phone with his finger. “What did she say about her and her friends?”

“She said … it ate her friends,” Jimmie said. “Ate their souls.”

“What ate them?” Heck asked.

“Damn if I know,” Jimmie said, closing the file. “She said it was hunting. Called it something in some language—‘
Fi-ach flyin
'—or something like that … I don't know what it was. She said she escaped it.”

“How?” Turla asked.

“A scar,” Jimmie said. “She showed me a scar, like she had cut her own throat. She said it didn't get her.”

“Her soul got free,” Heck said.

“So where's her body, then?” Turla asked.

“This is the last picture she took on her phone,” Heck said. “Sent it to a small list of her friends, including all the missing kids and a few others.” He held up the phone for both men to see. It was a picture of a young girl in a hoodie, a savage snarl on her downturned face. She seemed to be right on top of Karen as the picture was snapped. Another figure was beside the hooded girl, but only a flailing arm could be seen. “It looks like she ID'd her attacker,” Heck said. “So they were on her and the others pretty damn quick.”

Jimmie flipped through the report. “Looks like they asked her friends if they knew the girl in the photo. No one did. They eventually chalked it up to them goofing around on their phones at the mall.”

“Bull-fucking-shit,” Heck said. “Those are some lazy-ass cops, man.”

“Watch your mouth, boy,” Turla said. “It's damn easy to Monday-morning-quarterback, after the fact. Those investigators did the best they could.”

“That,” Heck said, showing the picture to Turla again, “look like goofing around to you? That girl is out for fucking blood.”

“All right, enough,” Jimmie said. “So we got multiple attackers. Teenagers who apparently jumped them as they were getting in the car. We have no smashed windows, no phone or purse on the ground. No signs of a struggle at all.”

Heck frowned and looked at the picture. He tapped the phone's screen.

“No blood, no prints, no witnesses, nothing,” Jimmie said, flipping through the pages of the file. “Was there any video of them from security cameras, do you know?”

“It was an older mall, and it was in a pretty decent area,” Turla said. “I understand they had some interior footage of them wandering, shopping at the food court, but nothing that led anywhere. They did a canvass of the mall and put the footage on the news. No leads from it, though.”