No driver’s license or ID of any kind.
No explanation.
Nothing, nothing, nothing made any sense.
Jack Smith was a goddamn drunken mess, passed out on my kitchen floor. Before that, he’d been babbling like he stepped out of a J.R.R. Tolkien novel.
I sat in Daddy’s chair in the living room with my gun in my lap and punched in my cell phone’s voicemail password. Nine unplayed messages since I stepped on the plane in Chicago. I hurried through them-four from Charla from prison that were all versions of “Shit, she’s not there,” two from Lyle that asked me to call as soon as possible, one from my boss at Halo Ranch, one from Wade asking where the hell Sadie and I had lit off to. Desperately punching away, I finally found what I wanted.
Hearing Sadie’s voice was like drinking in air after a punk kid held your head under water.
“Hey, Tommie. This is awful, isn’t it? I’m on my way back from Marfa now. I left Maddie with Nanette. I had to get her out of there. Hudson has promised me one of his war buddies as a companion for the next few days. Anyway, my first stop will be the hospital. Love you. See you soon.”
I stared at my hands, willing them to stop shaking. I took in the mess Jack had made: newspaper scattered all over the floor, crumbs smeared into the Oriental rug, a slice of half-eaten pizza under the sofa, what appeared to be a little throw-up on the arm of the chair. Jack was like the potbellied pig that my East Texas cousin let roam her house. My hand followed a hard lump near my butt and found a cold steel handle.
Jack’s gun was wedged between the cushion and the frame. Had he been reaching for it before I made him stand up?
I emptied the chamber, stuck the bullets in my pocket, and placed it on the mantel. Fully wired, I glanced at my watch. Ten till one.
Jack said the answer wasn’t in his Jeep. I tended to believe him. The thought of hauling those files in here and pawing through them was overwhelming. It could take days, and I’d still be nowhere.
I walked back into the kitchen and nudged Jack with the toe of my boot. Still out.
I pulled up the leg of his jeans and carefully removed his backup weapon, emptied the chamber, and stuck it in the refrigerator.
The door to the laundry room was shut.
I never left it shut.
I kicked it open and crouched down. Nothing sprang out. Jack didn’t budge.
Gun drawn, I flipped the switch in the laundry room.
Nobody.
I breathed.
I was facing the map tacked to the wall and the jagged black route I’d drawn across it.
Two of the newspaper articles began to nag at me: the one about a city councilman’s race in Norman, Oklahoma, and, of course, the tragic story of Jennifer Coogan’s murder in Idabel. They were the only two clippings from the same state and were No. 1 and No. 2 on the map going chronologically by date.
The thought slammed into me like things often do when you’ve thought too hard about them, as if it had always been there, just waiting for a lull.
The University of Oklahoma was in Norman. Jennifer Coogan was a student at the University of Oklahoma, waitressing for the summer back home in Idabel. That had to mean something, didn’t it? Was the crooked line the path of a serial killer? Why, why, why would my mother know anything about that? And how could it have anything to do with Anthony Marchetti? Or Rosalina? Or the man snoring on my kitchen floor? Or me?
I headed to the computer. Obsessively, I raked through the archives of newspapers located in the cities on my map. I searched the FBI official missing persons list, along with a number of other sites. No murders, and no girls went missing in the month before or after the dates on the clips. The city councilman in Norman was squeaky clean and long retired. His name popped up as an elder at the First Presbyterian Church.
The time on the computer screen read 3:08 a.m.
I got up and kicked Jack again, noticing for the first time that he no longer had a sling. Was that a fakeout, too?
“Ow,” he grumbled, turning over, never opening his eyes.
Back in the laundry room, I flipped off the computer and leaned in to lift the blind on the window, staring into the inkiness of the backyard. Empty, open space.
Jack R. Smith appeared to be on an obsessive quest. Like me.
I didn’t think he was my primary enemy, but how many times did the plucky heroine get that part wrong?
A half an hour later, I was creeping down the hill, Daddy’s hunting backpack slung over my shoulder, stuffed with my laptop, two pairs of my new lace underwear, a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, the Beretta, and a toothbrush.
“I need a rental car,” I told Victor when he cheerfully pulled up in his taxi to our rusty mailbox on the main road ten minutes later. “Find me one at this hour and you’ll get my undying gratitude and a hundred-dollar tip.”
“Where the hell are you?”
The fury in Lyle’s voice through my cell phone was the jolt I needed to stay awake. I was driving through a rare Starbucks-free zone, my eyes drooping dangerously with jet lag and the monotony of navigating country roads for two and a half hours with very little sleep.
“I’m in Melissa. No, wait, that was a while ago. I’m just outside of Paris. Oui, oui.” I offered up a weak laugh.
“What the hell are you doing up near the Oklahoma border?”
You couldn’t throw Lyle, not even for a second. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had every city and town on the U.S. map memorized, along with their latitude and longitude.
Paris, Texas, was a fly speck on the map, a place to grow up and leave. Its importance in the universe shot up mildly when the enterprising Boiler Makers Local #902 constructed a sixty-five-foot Eiffel Tower replica in the center of town. As I whizzed past, I noticed the addition of a large red cowboy hat perched jauntily on top of it.
“I’m going to Idabel,” I said in a small voice. “Alone.”
The deep silence that followed hurt my ears more than the yelling.
“Lyle? Say something. This is my life, you know. I’m going to lose my mind if this goes on much longer.”
He made his usual grunting sound. Good, bad, or indifferent, I couldn’t tell, but I was pretty sure he was tussling with himself. He let his reporters do stupid, dangerous things all the time in pursuit of truth and you rarely found their skeletons hanging from trees.
He finally spoke. “You’re talking to Jennifer Coogan’s parents?”
“I spoke with them a little while ago. They’re expecting me. So is the sheriff. He’s pulling the file. Very cooperative.” I hesitated. “I told them I was a journalist.”
“That’s just dandy,” he shot back sarcastically. “I expect a call as soon as it’s over. In fact, I want a call every twenty-four hours, just to know you’re all right. I’m extremely pissed off that you are doing this on your own.”
“Sorry,” I said meekly.
After we hung up, my guilt got the better of me. I dialed Hudson, knowing he wouldn’t answer because he let everything go to voicemail when he was on a job. I told him that Jack was laid out drunk on my floor with a Jeep full of documents parked out front. I said I was taking a little trip, but not to worry, that I would see him soon. It was like dropping a little bomb into his cell phone. I was glad I wouldn’t be there when it went off.
Two hours and a Big Gulp Dr Pepper later, I pulled up to a renovated green storage unit with a flashing red “vacancy” sign. A white banner stretching across the low-slung building advertised itself as the “Sunset Motel, Idabel’s Bargain Bed, Under New Management.”
The Sunset Motel sat across the street from the Charles Wesley Motor Lodge, a palace in comparison, but the Lodge was booked solid with a bunch of Eagle Scouts. Only in Oklahoma would a religious icon get his own motor lodge. Wesley wrote six thousand hymns, including Granny’s favorite, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” which she belted out a cappella.