I picked up the keys and jangled them. “Wouldn’t think he’d go far without these,” I said, as though they were some sort of clue.
On the far side of the kitchen was a narrow hallway that led down the left side of the trailer. There were four doors off it-two small bedrooms, a bathroom, and a larger bedroom at the tail end. The smaller bedrooms had been turned into storage rooms. Empty stereo boxes, clothes, tools, stacks of Penthouse and Playboy magazines, and others raunchier than those, filled each of them.
I didn’t, at a glance, see any boxes of counterfeit electrical equipment.
The bathroom was about what you’d expect of a single guy. Just one step above an interstate highway gas station restroom. And the large bedroom was an explosion of work clothes and boots and tossed covers.
“You ever stay here?” I asked Sally. It wasn’t a question about her sex life. I just couldn’t picture her tolerating this mess.
She shuddered. “No, God. Theo’d sleep over at my place.”
“When you guys get married, you moving in to your house?” I almost called it her father’s place.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Anything look funny here to you?” I asked.
“Just the usual horror show,” she said. “Where would he go?”
“Would he have gone out with a friend? Maybe someone came over and they went out for a drink or something.”
Sally pondered a moment. “Then why didn’t he take his keys and lock up when he left? He’s not going to want someone to steal his truck.”
“Did you try his cell?” I asked.
She nodded. “Before I came over. And his phone here. Both went to message.”
I thought. “We should give it another try.” I walked back up the narrow hallway and picked up the phone on the kitchen counter. “Hang on,” I said. “Let’s check the history. If somebody called him on his landline, invited him out, we’ll see who it is.”
I found Sally’s number on there, but nothing else in the last several hours. “Just you,” I said.
“Maybe he called somebody,” Sally suggested.
“There’s an idea,” I said, and hit the outgoing call list. It showed not only the last number called, but the last ten.
There were three calls out in the last eight hours. One was to Sally’s cell, another to her home phone, and the third, the most recent, to a number I knew well.
“He called Doug’s cell,” I told Sally. “Looks like maybe an hour after the last time he talked to you.”
“He called Doug?” Sally said.
“That’s right.” I suddenly had a bad feeling. If Theo really hadn’t known those parts he’d installed were bad, and believed Doug Pinder was responsible, he might have been inclined to have a face-to-face meeting.
But then again, Theo’s truck was still here. Could someone else have picked him up and taken him to see Doug? But then we were back to why he hadn’t taken his keys with him. You want to lock up, and you don’t want to leave your keys so someone can steal your truck.
“I wonder if I should call him,” I said.
“Who?” Sally asked. “Doug or Theo?”
I’d been thinking Doug, but if Sally hadn’t tried Theo in some time, it made sense to try him again.
I moved through the kitchen to the door, looked outside, hoping maybe we’d see Theo coming up the driveway.
“Try him,” I said to Sally.
Sally got out her cell and hit a button. She put the phone to her ear. After a few seconds, she said, “Nothing.”
I wasn’t sure, but I thought I’d heard something. “Try it again,” I said.
I went out onto the step and stood very still, holding my breath. Nothing but the sounds of night. And then, off in the woods, I was pretty sure I heard a phone.
Sally came outside. “I tried it again, but still no answer.”
“See if there’s a flashlight around,” I said. I had one in the truck, but didn’t want to have to run all the way down to the road.
Sally went back in, returned a moment later with a heavy-duty Maglite.
“Stay here,” I told her, getting a grip on the flashlight. “Keep trying the number.”
“Where are you going?”
“Just do it.”
I went down the steps, walked across what passed for a yard out front of the trailer, and approached the edge of the woods.
“Did you dial it?” I shouted back to the trailer.
“I’m doing it now!”
Ahead of me, to the right, a phone rang. After five rings, it went off. Theo must have set it to go to voicemail at that point.
I walked through some tall grass, casting the flashlight beam back and forth.
“Again!” I shouted.
A few seconds later, the phone began ringing again. I was getting closer.
There was a cluster of trees to the right. The ringing seemed to be coming from the other side of them.
The phone stopped ringing.
I moved through the grass, continued to wave the light in front of me.
“What do you see?” Sally called to me.
“I think he must have dropped his phone out here,” I called back. “Do it again.”
This time when the phone rang, it made me jump, it was so close. Behind me, and to my right. I whirled around, and the flashlight beam landed on where the noise was coming from.
The phone was probably still in one of Theo’s front pockets. The ring tone must have been set pretty loud, which made sense, considering that Theo worked noisy construction sites. Otherwise we never would have heard it, because Theo was lying on his stomach.
His arms reached out beyond his head, and his legs were splayed awkwardly. In the flashlight beam, the puddles of blood on the back of his shirt gleamed like oil.
FORTY-THREE
I didn’t realize Sally had come up next to me, and when she started to scream I nearly jumped out of my skin. I put my arms around her and turned her back to Theo’s body so Sally couldn’t see it. And now, with the Maglite pointing up into the trees, she wouldn’t get a very good look at him even if she could peer around me.
“Oh my God,” she moaned. “Is it him?”
“I think so,” I said. “I didn’t get real close, but it sure looks like him.”
She clung to me, shaking. “Oh my God, oh my God, Glen, oh my God.”
“I know, I know. We need to get back to the trailer.”
It occurred to me, suddenly, that whoever had done this to Theo might still be close by. We could be in danger in this isolated spot. We needed to get away from here and call the police. I wasn’t convinced that being back in the trailer was the safest place to do that from.
“Come on,” I said.
“Where are we going?”
“My truck. Come on. Quickly.”
I hurried her along, out of the woods, across the yard and down the rutted lane to my truck. I got her into the passenger side, giving her a boost up to the seat, then ran around to the driver’s door. The whole time I was scanning the surroundings, as pointless as that was a couple of hours before the sun came up, wondering if whoever murdered Theo now had us in his sights.
I didn’t know for sure Theo had been shot, but it was my best guess. Out here, in the country, you could fire off a shot or two and it was unlikely anyone would hear it, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t do anything about it.
We were sitting ducks right now, even in the truck. Sally was still muttering “Oh my God” repeatedly as I keyed the engine and dropped it into drive.
“Why are we leaving?” she asked. “Why are we running away? We can’t just leave him there…” She started to cry again.
“We’ll be back,” I said. “After we call the police.”
I tromped my foot onto the accelerator, kicking up gravel as I pulled away from the shoulder. The back tires squealed as they hit pavement.
Maybe a quarter mile on, doing sixty, something caught my eye in the rearview mirror.
Headlights.