The padlock on the shack door was old and rusty — which fit in with the camouflage — but one of the two keys slid in easily enough, and the lock sprang open with a quarter turn. Wardell lifted it off the catch and creaked the door open. The deep scent of fifty-year rot crept out to meet him. And more recent smells too: oil and powder and gasoline and leather. The floor space inside amounted to not much more than that of the cell Wardell had occupied at Marion. That was all right, because it was clear that the shack had never been intended as a dwelling. It had been merely a storage space for a hunter.
It was still a storage space for a hunter.
There was a ragged hole in the roof in the left-hand corner nearest the door. Diagonally opposite, at the far corner, was a shape roughly rectangular: four feet wide, two feet high and about the same deep, and covered by a green tarpaulin. The tarp was made up like a bedsheet, the excess tucked neatly beneath the shape.
Wardell crossed the interior space in two strides and pulled the tarp off to reveal a large steel trunk. The second key opened the single padlock on the trunk, and Wardell took another moment to savor the anticipation before he swung the lid back on its hinges.
He stood back and surveyed what lay within with approval.
30
I’ve been to a lot of places in my time. Some of them you’ll have heard of, others not. I’ve worked on every continent. I’ve worked in countries that don’t exist anymore. I’ve slept on sheets of silk in a Paris penthouse, under sheets of cardboard in a Somali ghetto. I’ve been all over. But until this job, I’d never been to Nebraska. In fact, just about the only thing I’d known about the state prior to this visit was that it was the title of my favorite Springsteen album.
I kind of wished I had that album to listen to as I crossed the wide, deserted Nebraskan landscape. The title track had strange echoes of the case in hand: a story-song about a spree killer awaiting execution, able to give no excuse for his crime other than, There’s just a meanness in this world. That made me remember Mosul again: the smell of blood and the killer’s eyes. A meanness in this world. That was the truth, all right.
My thoughts turned away from the Boss and back to the red van; the fact that it had been found so far south had taken me by surprise. That there had been two independent eyewitnesses to his departure back in Fort Dodge suggested Wardell had indeed been the man driving the van, and now it looked like he was hundreds of miles away, presumably getting ready to strike again. With an effort, I pushed that thought aside; there was nothing I could do about it now. If nothing else, finding Nolan would tie up a loose end. And if I was lucky, it might even provide a solid lead. Something that would at last allow me to get a grip on this phantom.
The traffic was light to nonexistent on I-80. The vast plains were occasionally interrupted by hills and canyons, but for the most part the country was flat and featureless. The cloud-streaked blue sky above seemed to have more personality.
Even as the hour advanced and I joined Route 183, the company remained sparse. It was early yet. But rush hour will come, the voice at the back of my head whispered, and it wasn’t concerned about traffic.
It was eight forty-five when I reached the town of Allanton and pulled into the gravel parking lot in front of Jimmy’s Bar and Grill. As I’d expected, it was closed. As I’d hoped, there was a sign of life: a blue Dodge pickup parked in the bay nearest an unmarked metal side door that looked as though it could lead to an office.
I rapped on the door and waited. No answer. I tried again. After a minute, I heard a lock click and the door opened a few inches, revealing a heavyset woman aged somewhere between thirty and sixty. Her hair was a copper dye job, and her blue-mascaraed eyelids hung at half-mast, giving her the look of a kid’s doll that had been turned halfway between vertical and horizontal.
“We don’t open till eleven,” she said, and moved to close the door.
I put a hand up to stop it and smiled. “Actually, I’m looking for someone. I wondered if you might be able to help me.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed still further. “There’s just me.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean here. I’m looking for a friend of mine. We were supposed to meet in the bar last night, but I had some car trouble”—I pointed back in the direction of the Cadillac—“and I forgot to charge my phone. He told me he comes in here a lot. Name’s Eddie, Eddie Nolan.”
The woman examined me from between the mascara for a long moment. “You a cop?”
Bingo. When somebody doesn’t know the guy you’re looking for, they tell you so. They don’t ask if you’re a cop. I shook my head and grinned good-naturedly. “No, ma’am. But knowing Eddie, I can understand why you’d ask me that.” I paused, looking her up and down as if trying to remember something, then said, “It’s Brenda, right?”
Brenda did not confirm or deny. I could see that she was calculating what benefit this conversation might hold for her. Then she nodded slowly. “Eddie might have been here. Might have mentioned somebody might come by looking for him, as a matter of fact.”
I opened my mouth, and she cut me off quickly.
“But he said to expect a tall guy with fair hair and blue eyes. He said not to talk to anybody else who might be asking about him. You’re tall enough, I guess, but you don’t have fair hair. And if those eyes are blue, I’m Frank Sinatra.”
I sighed, but only for effect. I put my hand in my coat pocket, and when it appeared again, it was holding a folded fifty. “Are you absolutely sure about that?” I asked.
Brenda took the bill without changing her expression. Her little eyes were still calculating. “Okay, so you’re fair now. Still not sure about those eyes.”
I looked at the fifty in her hand for ten seconds, like I was considering taking it back. Long enough to make her uneasy. Then I shrugged and produced another bill of the same denomination. I made a mental note to find an ATM later.
“How about now?”
Brenda’s head bobbed up and down, a relieved look on her face. “Ol’ blue eyes is back.”
31
The log cabins were set on the lower slopes of a ridge a mile outside town, overlooking a small lake. They were evidently built for summer living, which meant they were lying dormant at this time of year. I left the Cadillac at the last blind corner on the entrance road and made for the row of cabins on foot, circling around and climbing the slope, to approach them from the thick woods that lay behind them.
From what Brenda had told me, the cabins all had names: Green Gables, Ocean Breeze, that kind of thing. Some of the owners left a spare set of keys at Jimmy’s because they operated a basic spring cleaning service as a sideline. She hadn’t known the name of the cabin that could be accessed by the key she’d given to Nolan for a nominal fee, but she’d described it well enough. It was the one with the big front porch and the red door. From the way she’d imparted the information, it didn’t sound like Eddie Nolan was the first person she’d sublet to on the quiet.
In any case, I could have picked out the cabin I wanted without any direction from Brenda. It was the only one that didn’t have shutters on the windows. I stopped at the edge of the tree line and watched for a few minutes, looking for signs of life. Seeing none, I walked quickly down the slope to the back door. Not hurrying, not creeping. If I was observed, I wanted to look like I had every right in the world to be here.
I reached the door, unholstered my Beretta, and paused for a second to consider my approach. I decided against knocking and tried the handle first. The door was unlocked.