Chapter 20
Returning to the house, Colly and Avery found Russ pacing the entryway, his Stetson in one hand and his phone in the other. Sounds of a children’s cartoon emanated from the living room.
“What the hell?” Russ demanded when they entered. “I hear you sent Avery to interrogate the workers at the turbine plant without checking with me first?”
“Why would I need to check with you? That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“The last thing we need—”
“Satchel can hear you,” Colly hissed. “Go outside—I’ll be right there.”
Russ glared at her, then banged out of the door.
Avery started to follow but instead said, “Can I use your bathroom?” and trotted up the stairs without waiting for an answer.
Colly went into the living room. Satchel was on the sofa, balancing his ant farm on his knees and watching TV.
He looked up. “Is Uncle Russ mad at you?”
“Everything’s fine. We’re going to talk outside. Stay here, okay?”
“It’s scary by myself.”
“I’ll be on the porch. Tonight, we’ll have pizza and a movie, just me and you.”
“No, we won’t. Something’ll happen.”
Colly ruffled his hair. “Not this time, buddy. I promise.”
When Avery came downstairs, the women went outside. Russ was sitting in a wicker armchair, balancing his hat on his knee and drumming his fingers impatiently on the crown.
He jumped up when he saw them. “Y’all want to tell me what the hell’s going on?”
“You said to run the investigation as I see fit,” Colly said.
“Yeah, but I thought you’d have some common sense about it. The turbine plant—”
“You never said the plant was off-limits. Denny hung out there. It had to be checked. I thought I’d streamline things and send Avery while you and I went out to the bluffs.”
Russ turned to Avery. “Get anything useful?”
She shrugged uneasily. “No one would talk to me out there.”
“Well, okay. But it would’ve been nice if y’all had asked me first, that’s all.” Russ’s shoulders had relaxed, but his voice was still peevish. “The company’s had enough bad press lately. If word got out—”
Colly lost patience. “Oh, for God’s sake, Russ, let me do my job, or send me home. I don’t have time for PR bullshit. You drove all the way out here to gripe about this ?”
Russ sighed and scratched his jaw. “No. Brenda phoned a few minutes ago. Carmen Ortiz called her, hysterical. She ran some errands, and when she got back to the Hoyers’ trailer, Jolene was unconscious. Looks like she took a bunch of pills and washed them down with a bottle of vodka. Carmen was scared to call 911, afraid we might change our minds and arrest Jolene for assaulting you. Brenda talked her into it, but Jolene’s in rough shape.”
“Will she make it?”
“Don’t know. She’s being medevacked to Abilene.”
“I’ll get the car—we can be there in an hour and a half.” Avery started down the porch steps.
Colly checked her watch. “I can’t, I promised Satchel.”
“What if she dies? You said yourself she was hiding something.”
“Jolene’s unconscious,” Russ said. “No point going tonight.”
“We could talk to Carmen.” Avery looked at Colly. “Can’t you get a sitter?”
“Carmen won’t be in a fit state. Hopefully, Jolene will be awake tomorrow.” Colly turned to Russ. “Any word on Jace?”
“Nothing yet. I alerted the Abilene police, in case he shows up at the hospital.”
“He might go home. Let’s set a guard on the Hoyers’ place,” Colly said. “And see about getting a search warrant. Maybe there’s something on the property that’ll tell us where he went.”
Colly awoke the next morning to a dull headache. A strange, ruddy light filtered through the bedroom curtains. She stumbled, bleary-eyed, to the window. Over the farmhouse scudded dark, ragged clouds, stained blood-red with the coming sunrise.
“Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning,” she murmured. It was part of a rhyme her grandfather, a marine in World War II, had taught her as a child. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. The sky had looked like that on the day Randy and Victoria died.
“It’s just atmospheric particles and light waves,” she told herself, turning away from the window.
After dropping Satchel at school, Colly permitted herself the minor indulgence of a detour to Starbucks for a flat white before heading to the police station. Raindrops began to pock the dust on her windshield as she pulled into the parking lot, where Avery and Russ were waiting.
Russ looked annoyed. “You’re late.”
“Too bad I’m doing this pro bono, or you could dock my pay.” Colly swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Good morning to you, too, by the way.”
“Sorry.” Russ scratched his cheek. “Your eye’s looking better. Feel okay?”
“Bit of a headache.”
Avery, who had begun to fidget, now threw up her hands. “Can we get to work?”
“What’s our status?” Colly asked.
“Jolene’s awake—for now, at least,” Avery said.
“And we’re cleared to search the Hoyers’ place,” Russ added.
“The warrant came through?”
“Don’t need one. I called Carmen. Turns out the trailer’s half hers. She gave consent. She’s pissed as hell at Jace and wants us to find him.”
“Still nothing on his whereabouts?”
Russ shook his head. “How should we do this?”
Colly thought quickly. Despite her growing doubts about Russ, she couldn’t afford to alienate him until she knew more.
“Jolene used my skull for batting practice yesterday—I doubt she’ll talk to me. You go to Abilene. Avery and I’ll take the property search.”
Russ frowned. “If you figure out where Jace is, don’t confront him on your own.”
A thin drizzle was falling as Colly and Avery turned into the Lonestar Estates. They found a squad car in the Hoyers’ drive. Inside it, Jimmy Meggs was asleep with his forehead on the steering wheel and a rope of drool dangling from his lower lip.
Avery rapped on the window, and Meggs jumped. “You scared the shit out of me,” he gasped, wiping his mouth on his sleeve as he opened the door. “Are you my relief? I been on watch all night.” He clambered stiffly out of the cruiser and stretched.
“On watch?” Avery said. “Hoyer could’ve come and gone ten times, for all you’d—”
“We’re here to search the place,” Colly interrupted.
Meggs brightened. “I can go home?”
“Sorry, we need the backup. Hoyer’s armed. Can’t run the risk he’ll surprise us.”
“Can I take a leak?”
“When we’re finished.”
“And stay awake, numbnuts,” Avery added.
Grumbling, Meggs climbed back into his car. Colly handed Avery a pair of nitrile gloves.
“I’ve never done this before,” Avery said.
“We don’t have the time or personnel to do it right. We’re just doing a quick scan for clues to where Jace might’ve gone. Grab some evidence bags from the car. I’ll start with the house. You take the garage.”
“Great—you get the air conditioning, I get the rotting hog?”
Colly laughed. “Fine, we’ll stick together. Garage first.”
Rounding the corner of the trailer, they were struck by an odor so foul that it seemed to have physical mass. As a homicide detective, Colly had gotten used to the smell of death, but as they neared the humming, fly-shrouded mound in the garage, Avery went pale and covered her nose and mouth.
“Breathe normally,” Colly said. “After a while, you won’t smell it.”
Their eyes watering, they edged past the carcass. Inside, Avery found the wall switch, and two banks of fluorescent bulbs winked on.
“You start at the back. We’ll meet in the middle,” Colly said.
With the furious drone of the blowflies buzzing in her ears, Colly moved slowly along the wall, surveying the shelves of tools and other equipment. Jace Hoyer seemed to have left in a hurry. The butcher table was littered with knives and cleavers, shreds of desiccated meat still clinging to their blades. Hoyer’s leather apron lay in a heap on the floor.
“Empty gun safe,” Avery called from the rear of the garage. “Big enough for six long guns. Not much else of interest. I’ll check the bathroom.”
Colly grunted and glanced into the utility sink. A stiffened shop rag and grimy bar of Lava soap suggested a hasty cleanup.
Suddenly, she heard a gagging noise. Avery emerged quickly from a door in the rear wall. “Hoyer’s not coming back—didn’t even bother to flush.”
“Thoughtful of him to leave the mess for Jolene.” Colly was examining a set of utility shelves, bare except for some bits of trash and a few dead insects. “Something big was here.” She swiped a gloved finger across the surface. “Till recently, too.”
Avery stopped rooting through a barrel of garden tools and joined her. “Truck box or storage bin, maybe?”
Colly looked up. “What do people keep in storage bins in the garage?”
“Stuff they don’t use much. Christmas decorations, things like that.”
“I can’t picture Jace getting sentimental over a box of ornaments.”
Avery reached for something on the shelf that Colly had taken for a scrap of paper. “What’s this?” She flattened the object on her palm.
It looked like a miniature sack the size of a wine cork, open at one end and made of fine, white mesh.
“Bag it up,” Colly said. “Maybe Meggs will know.”
Avery complied. “There’s nothing here. Let’s try the house.”
“Hang on.” Colly moved towards the chest freezers on the opposite wall.
“Seriously?”
“I found thirty grand and a dead chihuahua in one of these, once. Owner was a bank robber.”
“That doesn’t explain the dog.”
“It was his mother’s. The guy said he got sick of the barking.”
Three of the freezers contained nothing but packages of meat, neatly wrapped in white butcher paper and organized by date and type of cut. The packages in the fourth, however, looked as if someone had hurriedly rummaged through them. Wedged between two bundles labeled “tenderloin” was a torn manila envelope.
Colly picked it up gingerly. Empty.
“I bet that was the ‘insurance policy’ Lori Lambreth mentioned—the one Jace printed at the plant,” Avery said.
“Maybe.” Colly tucked the envelope into an evidence bag.
Back at the trailer, they found Jimmy Meggs’ squad car abandoned, its doors unlocked. “I bet that moron’s off taking a piss,” Avery muttered, locking the car. “At least he didn’t leave his gun laying on the seat.”
Colly sighed and turned towards the trailer. “How do we get in?”
“Carmen said there’s a key on a nail under the top step.”
The trailer, like the garage, showed signs of a hasty departure. Groceries were scattered on the floor just inside. A vomit-stained pillow and a knitted throw lay beside the couch; several prescription bottles and a nearly empty fifth of cheap vodka littered the coffee table nearby.
“Damn,” Colly murmured.
“Got a grape?” a tinny voice shrieked. From his perch in the corner, Fred the parrot cocked his head and bobbed excitedly.
“Poor guy’s alone,” Avery said.
“We’ll call Animal Control. Search here. I’ll check the bedrooms.”
“Get lost, dumb bitch!” Fred chortled as Colly started down the hall.
In the master bedroom, both the floor and the unmade bed were strewn with men’s clothes, footgear, and wire hangers. Colly picked up a boot and examined it, then opened the closet. Not much was inside. On a high shelf sat an empty handgun case.
When she returned to the living room, she found Avery inspecting a side-table drawer. On her shoulder, Fred was preening a strand of purple hair and mumbling, “Pretty feathers, pretty feathers.”
“New BFF?” Colly asked.
Avery looked up. “I gave him a saltine from the kitchen, and now he won’t leave. Anything in the bedroom?”
“Looks like Jace packed some clothes and a Glock 19. He wears a size-eight shoe.”
“I found this.” Avery handed her a slip of paper. “Receipt for a burner phone—purchased last April.”
Colly examined it. “Did Jace disclose this to the Rangers?”
“Nope.” Avery closed the drawer and stood. “No sign of the phone itself.”
“He must have it with him, wherever he is.” Colly moved towards the door.
Avery reached for the bird on her shoulder, but Fred squawked and lunged for her fingers.
Colly laughed. “He wants more quality time with your hair.”
In the end, they used a broom to force the parrot back onto his perch.
“Poor guy’s lonely,” Avery said.
When they emerged from the trailer, the drizzle had stopped, though a faint rumble in the distance indicated more rain on the way. Jimmy Meggs was leaning against his squad car, smoking a cigarette.
“You were supposed to watch our backs,” Avery snapped.
Meggs reddened. “Sorry, I was about to bust.”
“Never mind.” Colly handed him the evidence bag containing the white mesh object from the garage. “Any idea what this is?”
Meggs flicked the butt of his cigarette into the gravel and held the bag up to the light. “Mantle for a propane lantern.”
Colly and Avery exchanged looks. Colly reached for her phone.
“You at the hospital yet?” she asked when Russ answered.
“Almost.”
“Looks like Hoyer’s taken his camping gear—he may be roughing it. Ask Jolene and Carmen where he’d most likely go.” She hung up before Russ could reply.
“Have you checked the lease?” Jimmy asked. “Jace and some other guys from the plant went in on a hunting lease over in Coke County, on Whitebone Creek. I went out there with Toby Peterson once—bagged a ten-point buck.”
Avery threw up her hands. “Dammit, Jimmy—Jace has been missing since yesterday and you’re just now telling us this?”
“How was I s’pposed to know he took his camping gear?”
“Forget it,” Colly said. “Draw us a map. Then get Animal Control and Solid Waste Management over here—there’s a parrot and a dead hog to deal with.”