“Like, totally,” she said.
We hit a corner bistro for dinner, where we encountered Mose Walsh. He was decked out in his evening hunting kit and sitting at the bar looking suitably inscrutable. For once there were no women hanging around. We invited him to join us at a table. I ordered drinks.
“So where’s all the action tonight, Chief?” I asked him.
“It’s early,” he said, looking around just to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone. “You guys connected to the big shootout over at the sheriff’s cabin?”
“Us?” Carrie and I said, almost simultaneously.
Mose chuckled. “Yeah, you,” he said. “All of sudden we got feebs and state guys right here in River City and some pretty dramatic rumors flying. Too bad about Bill Hayes, though. He was a good guy.” He saw me frown and asked why. Carrie gave me a warning look.
“Bill Hayes got himself entangled with some of the shit M. C. Mingo was into,” I said. “He kind of redeemed himself at the end, but there are some desperately loose ends still out there.”
The waiter brought us our wine and Mose another scotch. “Not what I’m hearing,” he said. “What I heard was that it all was over. Bureau suits on the courthouse steps declaring that the incident was wrapped, strapped, and ready for transport. Robbins County has an interim sheriff, the Carolina SBI is shoveling shit as fast as they can, and we’re due for an interim election pretty soon.”
Carrie gave me an I-told-you-so look, silently reminding me of her cynical prediction that the feds would cap it off and declare victory. I drank some wine, then told Mose what had happened out there at Hayes’s cabin and detailed our most recent seance with Grinny Creigh.
“So you’re sayin’ that Nathan Creigh is out there in the backcountry somewhere, with six little girls? And the Bureau is aware of this?”
“I can’t speak for what the Bureau knows and doesn’t know, but I sent them a background report, as did Carrie here, and the SBI sure as hell has been informed.”
“Then why aren’t they acting on it?” he asked.
“I give up,” I said. “Maybe they are, and we’re just out of the loop.”
“So you guys are gonna do the reasonable thing and step aside, right?” He was looking at Carrie when he said that. There was more than just a glimmer of direct male interest in those dark eyes, and I actually felt a momentary pang of jealousy. With that face and his determination to score at least once a night, I’d wager he had himself quite a track record. Carrie shook her head.
“No fucking way,” she declared quietly. “We are most definitely not letting go, not until I know those kids are safe-or dead. That’s why we’re going back to that cabin. In fact, I was just thinking: You must know that backcountry pretty well. Care to take on an unscheduled guide job?”
Mose raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “No, ma’am, I do not,” he said immediately. “You’re talking about getting on the trail of Nathan and possibly Grinny Creigh in the deep woods of Robbins County.”
“That idea make you nervous, Mose?” I asked. I was going to rain on his parade, too.
“Tracking them?” he said. “No. It’s what might happen when we caught up with them that worries me. To quote the lady at the table, no fucking way.”
“Six little girls, Mose? In the hands of that monster?”
He shook his head again. No way meant just that.
“You really have lost your taste for it, haven’t you?” I said. Carrie patted her pockets and then produced a vibrating cell phone. She got up to go find a better signal.
He gave me a neutral look. “I absolutely have,” he said. “I lost my taste for it when I finally realized that there’s an unlimited supply of evil assholes out there. Unlimited. Unending. A storm surge of them. And for some unknown reason, they’re being allowed to breed. Their spawn comes out worse than they were. I gave that shit up over ten years ago. Working homicide was like standing at the outflow of a city waste treatment plant and putting your fist in the pipe-about the time you got used to the idea that your hand was eternally covered in shit, the tank would overflow on your head.”
“So that’s it?” I asked. I couldn’t really justify goading him, but I was. Maybe it was the image of six little girls in chains in some damned cave. Or the way he had been appraising Carrie. Or the way she’d seemed to not mind all that much.
“So now you’re down to sitting in bars, chasing loose women, and taking the occasional walk in the pretty woods?”
He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. He really did look like those pictures of Sitting Bull when he did that.
“Down to?” he said. Then he smiled. “You can’t provoke me, Loo. I have fully clarified my life. I work an honest and productive job during the day. Then I go out at night, have some scotch, and chase those terrible loose women, as you called them. The chase is always fun; catching them is usually fun but always comforting. Having a cup of coffee with a new and totally relaxed woman in the morning is pleasant. Knowing that she’s gonna go home in an hour is a daily relief. I’ve never married, because I don’t think I’ll live long enough to need the care of a good woman when I start to drool. So, yes, it’s one day at a time, and for the most part, every one of them is both wonderful and ten times better than my best day on the Job.”
He looked like he was getting ready to push back from the table. I reached out and held his wrist. “Six little girls,” I said. “Sold by their so-called mothers to a pig-eyed Gorgon on Spider Mountain, who packs them into Marionburg at night, gets them spayed, and then ships them into a life of slavery in some fucking Arab’s tent? Six little girls? Who are now happily ensconced in something called the glass hole?”
His eyes widened when I said the words “glass hole,” but then he looked pointedly at his wrist, which I realized I was gripping pretty hard. I let go and sat back. He wouldn’t look at me now.
“Unlimited supply,” he recited. “Endless. A fucking red tide of evil bastards. And I never made even a dent in it, and neither can you. The difference is, I already know it.”
Carrie was coming back to the table, so I gave up. “Okay, Mose. Sorry I pushed. Go get lucky.”
He got up, gave me a quick, sad grin, shot me with his thumb and forefinger, and went back to the bar. Carrie sat down.
“What was that all about?” she asked.
“I was hoping to shame him into helping us find Nathan up there,” I said.. “Because, otherwise, I think we’re dead in the water.”
She shook her head. “We’re only dead in the water if we quit,” she said. She took a deep breath. “First,” she said, “I need a nice big rare steak. Then we’re going back out there to the Creigh place and we’re going to take another look.”
“Tonight?” I said.
“Yes, tonight. In about two hours, to be exact.”
“We can’t do that, Carrie-they’ve got that place secured. They’ll run our asses right out of there.”
She patted the pocket with the cell phone. “Not according to Bigger John,” she said.
19
Deputy or Special Agent John-I wasn’t sure which-greeted us when we drove up to the Creigh cabin. He’d been reading a book in his cruiser. Bobby Lee Baggett would have had his ass for that. Anyone could have snuck up on him in the dark. It wasn’t until we’d gotten out of the Suburban and walked up to the cruiser that we saw the second cruiser, with Big Luke inside, shotgun and all, artfully concealed in some trees. Luke waved.
The cabin itself was not decorated with miles of crime-scene tape as I would have expected. Perhaps this was because no one had detected any crime there, unless you wanted to count the shotgun booby trap.
“Where’s everybody gone to?” I asked John. The moon was up, so there was ambient light in the front yard, but the cabin was dark. I left my shepherds in the Suburban.
“Bureau showed up this morning,” he said. “Made Sam King’s day, long about nine. Been downhill since then.”