‘You’re talking about guys?’
It was an old chestnut of our trade. Half the missing people we searched for ended up being found in someone’s arms — or bed. But then there was my brother John. I’d actually ended up coming to the States in search of him, and we’d assumed something similar had happened. We couldn’t have been more wrong. John was on the lam after stealing property belonging to a gangster, pursued by gunmen. That was before he’d fallen into the sights of a demented serial killer and the real trouble started.
‘There doesn’t seem to have been anything funny going on here in Gallup. I spoke with a young guy at their hotel who told me they were heading off to Arizona and they were alone.’
‘When was that?’
‘Tuesday morning.’
‘A lot could’ve happened between then and now. How’d you know the guy hadn’t been in their room with them?’
‘From the forlorn look on his face when I flashed him their pictures,’ I laughed.
‘So what’s your plan, buddy?’
‘Something happened a couple hours away from here. I don’t think the girls were involved, but it won’t do any harm to talk with the local cops.’
‘What kinda somethin’?’
‘A gas station robbery where a few people were killed. It probably had nothing to do with them, but I want to check things out.’
‘And you couldn’t have done that from the office?’
‘I fancied a drive,’ I said.
‘It’s a good job I’ve got McTeer and Velasquez to pick up your load,’ Rink grumbled. ‘I’m taking a couple days out myself, brother.’
‘Going to visit the good lady vet?’
‘Yup. My boosters are due a top-up.’
‘Well, tell Rene hello from me, and enjoy yourself.’
‘How am I gonna do that with you charging around unchaperoned?’
‘Don’t worry about me. I’m a big boy. And this thing with the girls… well, what exactly could go wrong?’
‘I wish you hadn’t asked that.’
‘Go, Rink. Get yourself up to Rene’s and have a good time, and don’t worry about me.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Stop being an old lady.’
I hung up while he was still swearing at me, and watched a waitress approaching with a fresh jug of coffee. I’d been trying to cut down on caffeine lately. Allegedly I drank far too much of the stuff. Maybe it was the caffeine buzz that turned me into a lit fuse. No, my impulsive nature went deeper than that. I could feel a bubbling in my guts that had nothing to do with stimulants, and everything to do with the thrill of the hunt. I held out my empty mug. ‘Top me up, please.’
5
My flight from Florida to New Mexico came with a small drawback. In the past I’d managed to take my gun on to flights with me. On a number of occasions I’d used fake air marshal documents and on the others I’d been given special dispensation by the government, but neither was the case this time. Grabbing the first available flight, I hadn’t had the time to organise anything. I was licensed to carry a firearm in Florida, but that didn’t extend beyond the state line, so I had to lock my SIG in the trunk of my Audi when parking it at Panama City. I hadn’t even brought a knife along with me. I felt naked without them.
I had to rectify that situation, because, despite what I’d said to Jameson Walker and to Rink, I had the horrible feeling that I might need a weapon before I was finished. On occasion our mutual friend, Harvey Lucas, had supplied both Rink and me with weaponry, as Harvey had a network of contacts throughout the States, but they tended to be specialist firearms. Knives were easy to come by, but I’d have felt much better getting my hands on a gun.
There wasn’t much call for hunting supplies in that corner of Gallup, but I found a pawn shop where I picked up a sturdy lock-knife with a five-inch blade. Folded, it fit neatly into my jeans pocket. The shop also had guns, but the owner was adamant that he’d have to fill in the obligatory paperwork and I’d get the gun I wanted after a few days. That didn’t work for me, so I left with only the knife.
I headed out on Route 66, making steady progress for Arizona. By then the sun was setting and I drove towards a horizon that was on fire, while behind me it was inky black. There was no moon out, but the stars were vivid sparks in the heavens. As I drove, the rail tracks paralleled the road for a while and I had a freight train keeping me company. The clatter of the wheels had a lulling effect. I found a radio station playing old-school country, and, though it wasn’t to my particular taste, I allowed Patsy Cline and Hank Williams to drown out the railroad sounds. Mesas and cliffs built around me, monoliths of red stone that glowed like old blood under my headlights. Somewhere along the way I crossed the state border and pushed on through Lupton and a proliferation of signs indicating I was now in Navajo country. There was even a sprawling trading post set against a cliff-side pocked with caverns and cave art depicted in stark turquoise lit with spotlights. I considered pulling over, to see the sights as Jay and Nicole would have, but decided against it and continued to the junction with state highway 77 where I angled north for the Painted Desert.
A couple of miles into the desert there was a truck stop and I pulled in. It didn’t look the kind of place where the girls would have felt safe; they would likely have continued up towards Indian Wells looking for somewhere more appealing. But it suited me fine. I wasn’t intimidated by the big rigs or the rough men that drove them; in fact, the rougher they were the better for me.
Inside the diner, I showed the photos of the girls to some of the staff, but I knew I was wasting my time. These were the night shift, and if by chance the girls had been through here, a different bunch of workers would’ve been on duty then.
An elderly Navajo guy I found leaning on a broom in the washroom said, ‘Good luck, man, but you’re wasting your breath round here. People like me, well, we keep our noses outta other people’s business.’
‘Even if that means not helping someone?’
‘Some people just can’t be helped.’
At my bemused expression, he led me back out of the foyer and indicated a noticeboard tacked to a post. On it were upward of ten curling Missing Persons posters. Barring one which depicted a middle-aged white man, all the others were of females ranging from thirteen up to sixty-three years of age.
‘We get lotsa those things turnin’ up,’ the old man said, tapping the board with his broom. ‘Not so sure any of them missin’ folks get found, though.’ He glanced at the ground, ran the bristles of the brush through the dirt. ‘Not alive anyways.’
Thanking the old man for his candour, I went back inside and ordered coffee and a supper of cold meat and cheese. Sitting at a corner table, picking at the food, I thought about the old man’s words. In a country as immense as the US, tens of thousands of people went missing every year. I didn’t know the statistics, but there had to be a fraction of them that were never found again. Talking fractions kind of minimised the seriousness, because when you converted it to percentages then you suddenly had a very real figure. If one in ten never turned up again, then the number truly became shocking. People would disappear for many reasons, many of them innocent enough, but then there were the horrifying realities of kidnap, murder and abduction. How many of those who disappeared under those circumstances ever returned home to their loved ones?
I still entertained the notion that Jay and Nicole were simply enjoying their freedom and soon enough Jameson Walker would inform me he’d received word from them, but that could prove to be wishful thinking. No, on seeing those weathered posters, it had sunk an icy talon into my guts, focusing my mind on the urgency of finding them. The police speak about the forty-eight-hour rule: if a person who’s been abducted isn’t found before that time elapses, then tracking them down becomes very difficult indeed. Truth was, I’d already gone beyond forty-eight hours and was rapidly approaching the next marker. It was often believed that if abductees hadn’t turned up within seventy-two hours, then you could expect only to find a corpse.