The Grid (14 page)

- CHAPTER THIRTY -

The sunlight hits Sarah’s eyes as she leaves the bar.

It’s the noon hour.

She squints and puts on a pair of Dior sunglasses, not the cheap ones she uses when she meets a horndog.

Her head buzzes from the Bloody Marys, eyes half blind from the light.

She staggers into the parking lot, holding her cell phone.

Someone is accessing RockyRoad’s account.

The voice of her grandfather rings in her skull:
They’re looking for you, girlie.

The phone feels hot against her palm, like all of the sun’s energy is being directed into that tiny chunk of plastic.

You really think you could kill a lawman and get away with it?

“Shut. Up.” Sarah squeezes her temples with one hand.

Even I never shot a damn cop. In Texas, at least.
The old man cackles.
Louisiana, now that was a different story.

“Please, just be quiet.” Sarah wanders across the parking lot to the sidewalk by the street.

The bar is behind her, the hospital across Gaston Avenue. Traffic whizzes by.

A homeless guy with a grocery cart stares at her. He pushes the cart into the gutter to avoid an encounter.

How’s your letter to Dylan coming?

Sarah sinks to her knees, the dirty concrete pressing against the artfully faded material of her True Religion jeans.

You’re telling her all about me, aren’t you? About her great-grandpappy?

“What do you want?” Tears stream down Sarah’s face.

I want to keep you out of prison. What the hell do you think I want? One grandkid going to the joint is enough, dontcha think?

She stares at the screen. Her profile page is being accessed again, this time by someone called “Admin.”

“The phone.” Sarah jumps up, frantic. “They can track me through the phone.”

“You okay, lady?” The homeless guy is still staring at her. He’s a few feet away, a concerned expression on his face underneath all the grime.

She realizes how she looks. She’s wearing a white silk blouse, $300 jeans, and Jimmy Choo pumps. An Hermès purse that costs as much as a used car hangs over one shoulder.

And she’s crying in front of a bar so sleazy even the cockroaches are on parole.

“I’m fine, thank you. Everything’s okay.” She sniffles, backs away from the homeless guy.

A store that loans money on car titles is on one side of the bar. A taco stand is on the other. Between the taco stand and the bar is a strip of asphalt leading to an alley.

Sarah dashes away from the street, toward the anonymity of the alley.

The area behind the bar is shaded with trees and smells like old garbage, rancid grease, and human feces. It’s full of overflowing Dumpsters, split trash sacks, and eight zillion crushed beer cans.

But no people. And she’s not visible from the street.

Sarah heads to the nearest Dumpster. She smashes the cell phone against the corner of the trash receptacle.

Nothing happens. The screen doesn’t break. The website is still visible.

She drops the phone on the pavement. Stamps it with her foot.

The device remains in one piece, screen still illuminated. The thin pumps she’s wearing pack very little punch.

A wave of panic swells in her throat.

How fucking hard can it be to trash one fucking phone?

A pile of debris lies across the alley. Cast-off building material. Lengths of two-by-fours, pieces of broken plywood, a half-dozen bricks.

She strides across the alley, grabs a chunk of brick, returns to where she left the phone. She kneels, slams the brick into the middle of the screen, and is rewarded with a crunching sound as glass cracks and electronic parts scatter.

Relieved, she tosses the brick.

From the side of the alley closest to the street comes the sound of feet shuffling and metal rattling, somebody pushing a grocery cart.

Sarah looks up.

The homeless guy is back. And he’s brought a friend, another street person. The second guy is wearing a dirty Dallas Mavericks sweatshirt with the sleeves torn off. He’s got a shaved head and one eye the color of milk.

The first one, the person Sarah saw on the street a few minutes before, has matted dreadlocks. He’s shirtless, wearing only a tattered navy blazer and dirty jeans.

Dreadlocks says, “You sure you’re okay, lady?”

Sarah doesn’t reply.

His buddy, the one with the milky eye, says, “How come you’re smashing your phone?”

Before Sarah can say anything, Dreadlocks flanks out, moving away from his friend to the other side of the alley. His position blocks Sarah from running away.

“You got any money?” Milky Eye says. “We need to get a ride to the VA.”

Silence. Sarah swivels her head, looking at each man in turn.

“My meds ran out,” Dreadlocks says. “I don’t feel so good when I don’t take my pills.”

“Leave me alone, please.” Sarah lets her voice sound weak and timid.

“What’s wrong?” Milky Eye cocks his head. “You got a thing against veterans?”

“How about I give you twenty bucks?” Sarah says. “Each.”

“Your purse,” Dreadlocks says. “How about you give us that?”

Sarah doesn’t react. She evaluates her options. Adrenaline burns off some of the alcohol in her system, and she feels a calmness wash over her.

“Maybe you could show us your tits, too?” Milky Eye rubs his crotch.

Sarah touches the Spyderco knife in her waistband, the lockback with a three-inch serrated blade that she used yesterday to free the naked girl from the serial killer’s van.

When she’d been twelve years old, her grandfather had told her to never leave home without a weapon of some sort. As an example, he’d shown her the Python he always carried under his denim work jacket.

At fifteen, her grandfather had hired an ex–Green Beret to teach Sarah how to take care of herself on the streets. At seventeen, she’d been in a beer joint in Texarkana when a man had tried to rape her. She’d used a pool cue and what the Green Beret had taught her and broken the man’s pelvis and both of his arms.

“Twenty bucks each.” Sarah slides the knife from her waistband. “That’s what I’m offering. Take it or leave it.”

“What’s that?” Dreadlocks points to the Spyderco.

“It’s a knife.” Sarah flicks open the blade. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”

“Shit.” Milky Eye laughs. “Look at this bitch, thinking she’s tough.”

Sarah’s still kneeling by the remains of the phone. The brick lies about a foot away.

“We’re gonna have a good time with Miss Richie Rich.” Dreadlocks moves toward her. “Wonder if she’s ever pulled the train before.”

The Green Beret used to talk about the heightened sensitivity you’d feel if you knew that trouble was coming.

Sarah can hear their ragged breathing, smell their unwashed bodies. She sees the individual specks of dirt on their faces.

Without warning, she rolls to the right, away from Dreadlocks, and scoops up the brick with her free hand. She stands.

Milky Eye is about eight feet away. He’s moving slowly toward her, arms out.

She throws the brick at his face, not putting a lot of power into the toss. It’s more about accuracy, and her aim is true.

One corner of the brick hits the man in his good eye.

He falls to the ground, screaming like somebody punched him in the balls.

Dreadlocks’s mouth hangs open.

Sarah rushes him, the knife held in her right hand, blade down.

Dreadlocks raises his left arm to block her attack, his right reared back to strike.

Sarah knocks the left arm away with her left hand and punches toward the man’s neck with her right, slashing his throat with the blade.

Dreadlocks’s eyes go wide. He stares at the blood gushing from just below his chin.

Sarah stands a few feet away, catching her breath.

After a long moment, Dreadlocks stops looking at the blood arcing from his throat. He turns to Sarah. He reaches for her. Then, he falls to the ground, dead.

Milky Eye is still screaming like a girl.

Sarah runs to where he lies.

His hands are pressed to his damaged eye, throat exposed.

She stares at the man, the enormity of what has occurred in the last few seconds dawning on her. Her life is a wreck, and deep in her heart she understands she is the only one to blame.

In the distance, a siren sounds. Either an ambulance on its way to the emergency room or the police about to apprehend her.

The injured man at her feet screams louder.

“Fuck this,” Sarah says. She slices through the cartilage and other tissue that forms Milky Eye’s windpipe.

The screaming stops. Blood jets and then pools on the ground.

Good girl.
The voice of her grandfather.

- CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE -

In the parking lot of the McCarty Creek Generating Facility, I sent Whitney Holbrook a text requesting a list of Sudamento plants that had lake houses as part of the grounds. I asked if it was possible to mark those that had separate access.

Every power plant had to have a body of water to act as a cooling agent. How many of those bodies of water had lake houses and how many of those houses had separate access was anybody’s guess.

The more I thought about it, the more the presence of a lake house seemed like a factor worth investigating. Like a fever indicated a cold was coming on, I had a hunch that a lake house might be a sign that a plant was prone to attack. A comfortable shelter that was rarely checked, near the target, a place for the attackers to hide while fine-tuning the assault.

Whitney didn’t respond.

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel.

The old drunk from the VFW hall—the man who might or might not have witnessed my deputy’s killer steal a car—lived in Italy, Texas. The town, located forty or so miles north of Waco, had about as much in common with the country in Europe as did an Olive Garden. But it was only about ninety minutes away if I used the lights and siren.

The next closest Sudamento power plant was an hour south, the opposite direction. The list Whitney had given me indicated that the facility had a smaller generator, only three hundred megawatts compared to Black Valley with fourteen hundred. Hardly worth visiting, in my opinion, especially since I didn’t know if it had a lake house, the presence of which was as close to a theory as I had at the moment.

Thirty seconds passed. No response from Whitney.

I dropped my phone on the console, activated the red and blue lights in the grille of the Suburban, and headed to Italy.

Seventy-five minutes later, I stopped at a Quickee Mart just outside the town limits and bought a burrito, which I ate while filling the SUV with gas. When the tank was full, I drove to the address Whitney had given me.

The guy from the VFW hall lived in a double-wide trailer a couple blocks from the high school. His name was Delbert G. Littlejohn. DOB June 12, 1946. According to the local appraisal district, the owner of the trailer was Susan Marie Littlejohn, a daughter I guessed, since she was born in 1969.

The Littlejohn domicile appeared well tended. The lawn was mowed, the beds full of flowers. A late-model Kia was parked in the driveway, behind an elderly Ford pickup with two bumper stickers—Made in the USA and Vietnam Veteran.

I parked across the street in front of a vacant lot overgrown with weeds.

It was a little after noon, and the temperature gauge read ninety-nine degrees. I fastened the Peterson County sheriff’s badge to my belt, got out, and walked across the road.

On the porch, hand reaching out to knock, I heard raised voices from inside, a man and a woman shouting.

I knocked anyway.

Footsteps.

The door opened, and a woman in her midforties appeared. She wore blue medical scrubs and had shoulder-length hair dyed the color of wheat.

I introduced myself. “Is Delbert Littlejohn at home?”

She swore under her breath and turned to the interior of the trailer, yelling, “Are you happy now? The damn police are here.”

Unintelligible shouts in return.

The woman turned back to me. “What’s he done now?”

“Nothing. But I need to talk to him. May I come in?”

She sighed wearily and opened the door.

The interior of the home was tidy, the air smelling of pine disinfectant and bacon. Gray sculpted carpet that was freshly vacuumed, wood-paneled walls adorned with framed prints of mountain scenes. A leather sectional sofa in front of a flat-screen TV.

“I got a shift at the dialysis center in Waxahachie,” the woman said. “Starts in thirty minutes. I can’t stay.”

Waxahachie was a town on the interstate about twenty-five minutes away.

In the doorway on the other side of the room stood an old man in a bathrobe. He looked like death was knocking on his door, but he was too tired to answer. His face was blotchy where it wasn’t pale, his hair greasy. A swollen gut, broomstick legs.

“Don’t be conned into getting him something to drink.” The woman picked up her purse from the dining room table.

“Is he all right to be by himself?” I said.

“Hell no.” She walked to the door. “But we’re not exactly full up with options.”

“Is there anything I can—”

The door slammed shut. The old man and I looked at each other.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Yesterday at the VFW hall. You saw a car get stolen.”

“You got any beer?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Silence.

Delbert Littlejohn shuffled into the kitchen area. He turned on the tap at the sink, filled a glass, and sucked it down in one long gulp.

“You had anything to eat today?” I asked.

He shook his head. “There’s a bar in town that makes a good burger. How about you give me a ride? She hid the keys to my truck again.”

“That’s not gonna happen.”

“Then you can leave.” He drank another full glass of water.

“I can’t do that, Mr. Littlejohn.”

He wobbled over to the couch and sat down.

“Based on my observations,” I said, “you appear to be a danger to yourself.”

He looked up, his eyes forming slits.

“I’ll have to take you to the hospital for a seventy-two-hour psych hold.”

“You son of a bitch.” His face turned red. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

I smiled. “I’m the guy who’s gonna throw your ass into an alcohol-free environment for the next three days.”

He swore again and then turned on the TV with a remote. A daytime talk show appeared on the screen.

I walked over to the sofa. Pulled the remote from his hand. Turned off the TV.

“They’ll give you an IV full of vitamins and minerals,” I said. “It makes the detox a lot easier.”

A few moments passed.

“What do you want to know?” He slumped his shoulders, defeated.

“Everything you can remember about the woman who took the car.”

A long pause.

“I was pretty drunk,” he said.

“Yeah. I gathered that.”

“Charlie, he never loans his car out. She tried to tell me she was borrowing it.”

“What did she look like?”

“White girl. She was pretty.”

“How about her age? How tall was she?”

He licked his lips and frowned, clearly trying to dredge up the memories. “Maybe, uh, twenty. Average height.”

The woman I’d talked to for a few seconds behind the motel was in her thirties at least. I wondered if this had been a wasted trip. Thousands of cars got stolen every day in Texas, more than a few of them by women, some of whom no doubt wore ball caps.

“It was hard to tell what she looked like on account of she was wearing these big sunglasses and a hat.”

“What kind of hat?” I asked.

He rubbed his chin but didn’t answer.

“A Stetson? Or a sombrero?”

“A ball cap.” Delbert looked proud of himself. “A Washington Redskins ball cap.”

I tried not to look disappointed. It wasn’t the same person. Pretty hard to misidentify something like that. The Cowboys’ colors were blue and silver, Washington’s red and gold.

“She was good-looking. Did I tell you that?”

I nodded. Glanced toward the door, thought about the long drive back to the office.

Delbert said, “And I bet she had a body underneath that rain jacket.”

I turned away from the door. “What rain jacket?”

“She wore this ugly raincoat kinda thing.”

“Like something you might buy at a dollar store?” I asked.

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“And a Washington Redskins ball cap?”

“I remember the cap clearly.” He nodded. “Thanksgiving, 1974. Drew Pearson caught a fifty-yard pass with thirty seconds to go. Cowboys beat the Skins, twenty-four to twenty-three.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Never forget that day,” Delbert said. “Me and my little girl Susan. Her mama had just died.” He paused. “That’s how I remember the woman who stole Charlie’s car was wearing a Cowboys ball cap.”

I stared at his eyes. “I thought you said it was a Washington Redskins cap?”

“Did I?” He looked confused.

“Yeah.”

He shook his head, the expression on his weathered face that of a lost little boy.

“So what kind of cap do you think it was?” I kept my voice soft. “Think real carefully.”

“I . . . I don’t know.” Tears welled in his eyes.

“What else can you tell me about the woman? Anything at all.”

He shook his head and started to weep for reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom. Alcoholic mood swings, low blood sugar, a lifetime of bad choices?

I went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and found a box of leftover pizza that didn’t look very old. Pepperoni and sausage. I brought the box to the living area and set it down in front of Delbert. He jerked open the lid and devoured what was there like he’d just been released from the gulag.

When he was finished he closed the box and said, “It was definitely a Cowboys cap.”

I nodded. “Anything else you remember?”

He stared off into space. “She wasn’t a Monte Carlo kind of girl.”

“What do you mean?”

“Not sure why, but I didn’t get the impression she was boosting the car for the money.”

A set of disjointed images flickered through my head. The woman in the ball cap and shapeless coat. A narrow hallway in a motel on the interstate. The Buick LaCrosse, an inexpensive automobile.

After a moment, I realized the woman I had seen didn’t belong in that hallway or driving that car. She gave off a different vibe. Like she was used to better things.

“Did she seem like a rich girl?” I asked. “You know, playacting at being something else.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “That’s a good way to put it, now that you mention it.”

We were both silent for a few moments.

I stood up to leave. “You gonna be all right if I go?”

He didn’t reply, brow furrowed.

I headed to the door.

“One more thing,” he said. “It was really strange.”

“What?”

“Seemed like she was talking to somebody who wasn’t there.” He shook his head. “Sounded like it was her . . . grandfather?”