Chapter 11
“What did you mean back there?” Lafayette Johnson asked on the way to their cars. “You’ve helped out more than you know? Seemed to me that guy wasn’t any help at all.”
The younger deputy hitched up his gun belt and hustled across the parking lot to keep up. For someone with relatively short legs, Cutter moved like a man on a mission. Because he was. Always.
“He won’t read anything into it if he’s got nothing to hide,” Cutter said. “If he’s holding something back, a phrase like that could have him second-guessing what he told us, make him think he slipped up. Maybe make him slip up again.”
The kid appeared to chew on that for a time, then said, “Watts stopped the truck on his own. Goddard had a lockpicking set. Now Foster’s a suspect. Are you saying they’re all suspects?”
“Son,” Cutter said. “This is a homicide investigation. Everyone is a suspect but me—and I’m not even sure about me. Lord knows five million in diamonds would come in handy about now.”
Johnson chuckled and started toward his patrol car. Cutter whistled him back.
“Go ahead and hop in my car,” he said. “We’ll come back for your rig after a while.”
“What are we gonna do now?” Johnson asked. “We don’t have any leads unless you heard something in there that I didn’t.”
Cutter took off his hat and clipped it in the spring-loaded wire rack mounted on the headliner between the sun visors.
“I’d like to sit down with the lead supervisor from TexSafe.”
“Moffit,” Johnson said. “Gerald Moffit.”
It was good to know the kid was paying attention.
“Right,” Cutter said. “He assigned the guards to this particular run.”
“Say he doesn’t have any more than Foster,” Johnson said. “Or, even if he does but decides not to talk to us?”
“Silence gives us something to work with.” Cutter turned the ignition and checked in with the dispatcher, letting her know he and the kid were clear of the hospital and operating as a two-man unit.
He hung up the mic and turned to face Johnson, finishing his thought.
“In my experience, if you rattle around in the field long enough, the fugitive gods are bound to put something in your path.”
“The fugitive gods?”
“Luck, karma, whatever you want to call it,” Cutter said.
“My point is, good things happen when you’re wearing out boot leather.
We keep picking away at what we do know, sooner or later we’ll find new threads to pull.
” Hands on the wheel, Cutter turned and stared out the side window.
“You ever hear that old saying about the horseshoe nail?”
Johnson followed Cutter’s gaze to the west as if the answer might be out there somewhere in the parched grass. He scrunched his nose. “No horseshoe-nail sayings come to mind.”
Cutter began to recite, almost whispering.
“For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost … All for the want of a horseshoe nail.” Cutter shrugged.
“It’s a long way of saying we should pay attention to the little things—”
Nikki, the dispatcher, came over the radio again, cutting him off. “Parker County 62.”
Johnson grabbed the mic.
“Go for 62.”
“Six-Two, call or come by the Sheriff’s Office at your earliest convenience. I have something I need to pass along reference your recent request.”
It must have been sensitive information if she didn’t want to give it out over the air. Scanners were not hard to come by at RadioShack. Everyone and their dog had one these days.
“We’re still in the hospital parking lot,” Cutter said. “I’ll run back inside and call you. Give me two minutes.”
“Ten-four.”
“What’s that about?” Johnson asked.
“Nikki’s running down relatives and associates of the armored car personnel for me, along with everything she can find on Vincent Millner. Sounds like she found something workable.”
“A thread we can pull,” Johnson said.
“Hope so.” Cutter grabbed his hat and got out.
Johnson opened his door to follow, but Cutter raised a hand.
“You write up the notes from our interview with Foster. I shall return.”
Cutter was back behind the wheel of his Caprice five minutes later.
“Here’s the deal,” he said. “We know Vince Millner did a five-year hitch in Huntsville. Nikki hasn’t found a connection to any of our armored car guards yet, but prison logs at the Eastham Unit show dozens of visits from a woman named Gloria Blaisdell.
Her criminal history shows multiple arrests for prostitution and narcotics.
The most recent was a week ago during the day at a place called the Show Pony, a strip joint off I-20 just over the line in Tarrant County. Looks like she works there.”
Cutter looked at his watch. “It’s still early, so we’ll take our time—run out to my place and grab my personal rig, then stop in at the office before we head to the county line. I want to check in with Morton and Garza, see if they’ve turned up anything useful.”
“The Show Pony? You mean, we’re actually gonna go to a titty bar?”
“That’s the plan,” Cutter said. “We might get lucky. Blaisdell was working dayshift when Ft. Worth Vice got her last week. It’s not like we can call ahead and make an appointment.”
“A titty bar,” Johnson said again, blushing.
“I imagine you think this will be exciting,” Cutter said. “I’ll admit it likely will be at first. If you told me when I was twenty-one that I’d get tired of the sight of a naked woman, I’d have called you a liar—”
“But you are?” Johnson said, incredulous. “Tired of it, I mean.”
“I’m as red-blooded as the next man,” Cutter said. “But the kind of naked gal we’re about to run into—they’re … I don’t know … nothing short of tragic.” Cutter gave a slow shake of his head. “And all that tragedy, well, yeah, that makes me tired.”
“I’m just fine looking at naked women.” Johnson grinned. “And we’ll be getting paid for it, too.”
Cutter sighed, wondering if the kid had heard a word he said. He pulled out of the hospital lot to head down Santa Fe Drive, following it across the Fort Worth Highway where it turned into Spring Street before curving around to pop out on North Main beside Carter Ivy Hardware.
Johnson broke the silence again when they’d passed Sixth going up the long hill at the north end of town.
“What’s the point of going to get your personal car?” Johnson asked. “Why not just use the Caprice and let the county pay for the gasoline?”
“Two things are bound to happen if we leave a marked patrol car out front of a place like the Show Pony. One, we’d probably get a beer bottle through the windshield, and two, we’d hurt their business.”
“But my mother would say hurtin’ a strip joint’s business would be our spiritual duty.
” Johnson gazed out the side window. “Norris and me arrested a lot of whores when I was on field training. He made me fingerprint every last one of them. Told me he didn’t want to catch the mgambo or some such.
I’m fine to look at naked girls, but those whores were pretty damned gross. ”
Cutter shook his head. “Mgambo is a kind of tree in Africa, not a disease.”
Johnson turned and looked at him, slack-jawed. “How in the world would you know something like that?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Cutter said. Most of his Special Forces operations were classified, and he wasn’t enough of a storyteller to want to expound on the things that weren’t. He glanced at Johnson to be sure he was paying attention. “You need to adjust your windage and elevation, kid.”
“Huh?”
“Your sight picture,” Cutter said. “Your aim—the way you look at the world. First thing, knock off calling women whores, and I mean any woman, even the ones who prowl the truck stops.”
Johnson grinned. “Lot lizards, then.”
“I’m serious,” Cutter said. “Strike the word whore from your vocabulary. Ms. Blaisdell will see it in your eyes if you charge in there swinging your sword of righteous judgment. It’s not our mission to make a point about her questionable morality.
We want her to talk to us. Do your best not to think of her as a stripper.
Someone who sees you’re looking down your nose at them is bound to clam up.
Now, make no mistake, if she runs, we’ll chase her.
If she tries to hurt us, we’ll protect ourselves.
Other than that, it’s good policy to treat folks like human beings, no matter what they happen to be wearing … even if that’s nothing at all.”
Cutter had assured his wife when he’d called that he would switch vehicles and be gone, but she came outside as soon as he drove up.
The two cur dogs paid no attention, but both sprang to their feet and stretched at the creak of the screen door.
Lucy tossed them each an old piece of corn bread and they trotted happily down the steps to flop in the cool dirt under the shade of the raised porch.
The red dog eyed Johnson while it ate the treat.
Lucy had dispensed with the terry-cloth turban she customarily wore when the pastor stopped in to check on her, leaving her bald head exposed to the sun.
Johnson took off his hat when he saw her. He shot a nervous glance at Cutter, as if he needed permission to speak.
Lucy leaned against a porch post and smiled softly, squinting in the dusty brightness of the day, fanning herself with a TV Guide she’d brought from inside. She had a way of calming nervous people and stray dogs.
“Good to finally meet you, Deputy Johnson,” she said. “I apologize if my appearance startles you. Wigs are just too scratchy in this heat.” She nodded toward Cutter. “And besides, I had hair when I needed it to snare this handsome guy. Hope he’s not being too rough on you.”
“I’m … I mean … he’s just fine, ma’am,” Johnson said.
“Did he spring the horseshoe nail maxim on you yet?”
Johnson nodded. “He did.”
“He must like you if he dusted it off this early,” Lucy said. “It’s a worthwhile lesson.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Cutter transferred his war bag of essential gear to the El Camino and then stepped up on the porch to give his wife a kiss.
“See you sometime this evening,” he said. “I plan to swing by the Ericksons and put a new set of shoes on their mare if the kid and I get all our leads run down in time.”
“Be safe,” she said. “And watch your heading.”
Johnson tipped his hat. “Good to meet you, ma’am.”
Cutter caught the kid’s eye. There were going to be questions when they got back in the car, questions Cutter just didn’t feel like answering.