“But they might be related,” I said. “Desperately poor mountain families, staggering under a meth jones, might be tempted to sell a child to either sustain their habit or pay down a drug debt.”
“No mother would do that, not even an addict,” Carrie said. Even as she said it, I could see that she was remembering that woman we’d seen at the trailer. It was, in fact, entirely possible.
“There are some so-called menfolk in these parts who’d do it in a New York minute,” Greenberg said. “We’ve arrested some pretty sorry-assed dudes up in them there hollers. And when you see some of the kids…”
“What do you mean?” Carrie asked indignantly.
Baby threw up his hands. “I’m talking some truly damaged DNA here,” he said. “Yes, they’re innocent children. But their chances of succeeding amongst the human gene pool are minimal, at best.”
At that moment, the lodge’s duty manager approached our table. “Gentlemen, lady,” he said, and then looked at me. “Mr. Richter?”
I said, yes, that’s me.
“Last night the sheriff’s office told our security people they’d have a patrol car in our parking lot at random intervals, for your protection?”
“Okay,” I said. “Problem?”
“Well,” he said, looking around and then lowering his voice. “One of our waitstaff came in for the night shift a few minutes ago. She said there was what she called an old muscle car out in the parking lot with some ‘bad-looking dudes’ inside. She thought she saw shotgun barrels. Said the car looked like something a moonshiner would run. Said they were just sitting out there in that car, like they were waiting for someone. Bad-looking dudes. Should I call this in?”
“You bet,” I said. “Call the sheriff’s office and tell them what you’ve got. Especially the part about guns. They might be setting up to do a holdup, okay? Call 911 and ask for deputies, plural.”
His expression told me that I’d just confirmed his worst suspicions. I had also, hopefully, taken my name out of the equation. He hurried out to make the call.
“What do you think?” I asked Carrie. “Mingo’s black hats?”
“Or you’re right, they’re out there working up the courage to rob this place,” she said. “I can’t imagine Mingo would be so brazen as to send a hit squad over here.”
“Nathan might,” I said. “Rue Creigh was special to him, probably in ways you don’t want to think about. And Grinny has a motive, too.” I looked around at the crowd of diners and bar patrons. “I’d feel a whole lot better with guns and dogs at hand,” I said.
“I can help with half of that,” Baby said helpfully, patting his suit coat. “But life would be a whole lot simpler if you both took Mr. King’s advice.”
“Funny how so many people want us out of here, isn’t it?” Carrie said to me. We finished dinner, and I signed the bill. We went out to the lobby to see what was happening. The manager gave us a signal that he’d made the call.
“Where’s the vehicle?” I asked.
He parted some heavy curtains and showed us. The lot was pretty full, and I actually couldn’t make it out. But just then three Carrigan County cop cars came swinging into the main parking lot. They’d come fast, dark, and quiet, but now they lit up their light bars and at least one tapped his siren. They swept down from the main road and then made a beeline for what looked to me like an old Dodge Charger, which was sitting all by itself out in the lot. They were parked closer to my cabin than to the main lodge, I realized.
The cruisers went right at it. One stopped nose to nose with the Dodge; the other two swept along either side and screeched to a halt, one flat alongside, the other at an angle, thereby preventing anyone in the Dodge from opening a door. We moved to the front door and stepped outside to see what happened next.
What happened next was that all hell broke loose. The deputies in the side-block cars jumped out of their vehicles with guns leveled across their vehicles’ hoods and started yelling at whoever was inside to show their hands. The nosein cruiser had his high beams and door spot on, which surely should have blinded the guys inside. Instead, the driver of the Dodge, who’d apparently fired up his trusty 318 when he saw cops swooping in, slammed it into reverse and, tires screeching and smoking, backed up at about ninety miles an hour-smack into a forty-foot-high parking-lot light standard.
The collision was forceful, and the tall aluminum pole jackknifed onto the top of the Dodge. The sodium vapor light fixture exploded in a blue-white flare of sparks on the pavement, which in turn ignited the fuel vapors that were streaming out from under the Dodge’s crumpled back end. This produced a brilliant carpet of fire, followed seconds later by a really big boom. Guy must have been running on racing fuel, because the second explosion was a real crowd-pleaser. The light pole had put a pretty big crease in the top of the car, enough to have given everyone in the Dodge a headache. And to jam the doors.
The deputies, who had been left standing fifty feet back, scrambled for shelter behind their cruisers when the gas tank went up. Finally one of them stood up and began to approach the burning Dodge. He quickly backed up when there were two loud booms from inside the fire as someone’s shotgun cooked off. There was some more of this, but by now the vehicle was settling on melted tires and entirely engulfed in hot orange flames. A muscular column of glowing black smoke was pumping into the night air, and it was clear that no one was going to come out showing hands or anything else.
Baby started humming that tune with the refrain about “another one bites the dust,” which provoked a horrified look from a woman who’d come out to gape at the burning car.
“Those were genu-wine bad guys, ma’am,” he explained pleasantly. “Who just discovered the express lane to hell.”
She put a hand over her mouth and stepped back into the hotel.
“You better boogie,” I told him. “Sheriff Hayes is going to show up soon. No self-respecting feds would want to be here.”
“You got a point there, judge,” he said. “Thanks for dinner. And the entertainment. You think those were Mingo’s people?”
“It’s going to take DNA to find out,” Carrie said, as the car finally bottomed out and fire engine sirens could be heard. “But I’ll bet Sheriff Hayes will have an opinion.”
It took Sheriff Hayes about an hour to discover that we’d been at least tangentially involved in the mess up front and come knocking on my door. He did have an opinion, as it turned out.
“This was because of you,” he announced as soon as we let him into the cabin. He was carrying a briefcase and looking agitated.
“We were having an innocent dinner, Sheriff,” I told him. “The manager thought those guys were fixing to rob the place.”
“Who’s we?” he asked.
“Carrie and I,” I told him.
“Manager said there were three of you,” he said.
“Oh, him,” I said.
Hayes waited a moment for me to elaborate, and when he saw I wasn’t going to tell him, he shook his head and sat down wearily in an armchair. He still didn’t look well. We probably weren’t helping with that.
“That car was registered in Robbins County,” he said. “They had at least three shotguns, and containers of some kind of fuel or accelerant in the trunk.”
“Any ID on the toasts?” Carrie asked.
“Are you kidding?” he said. “Humans. We think. But one of’em had this.” He produced a clear plastic evidence bag from the briefcase. Inside was a badly charred SIG. 45 semiautomatic pistol. It wasn’t impossible that a bunch of black hats would have a SIG, but it also wasn’t the kind of gun they normally would use.
“Mine?” I asked.
“We’ll soon find out. But didn’t you tell me Nathan Creigh relieved you of one of these up in that cave?”
I nodded. He put the bag back into the briefcase and leaned back in his chair. “I think they were here to exact revenge for what you said happened to Rowena Creigh. They were probably going to shoot you with your own piece.” He looked over at Carrie. “You well enough to travel, young lady?”