Nashville was one of those legendary American cities that I’d always wanted to visit, but when I finally got there at a quarter after one in the morning on a dark, misty night a couple of days before Thanksgiving, all I wanted to see was the lumpy synthetic pillow waiting for me on a Nashville motel room bed. I begged a Mountain Dew-distracted clerk for a five-thirty wake-up call and was in bed three minutes after I slid the plastic card into the lock on the door.
DO NOT DISTURBsign on the door. Strip, pee, meds, bed.
I slept like a dead man.
By the time five-thirty came, my car was chilly, Dixie dew coated the windshield, and preholiday Nashville was still as sleepy as I was. I walked a couple of blocks to a little convenience store to try to scrape together some breakfast. Satisfaction wasn’t in the cards. I was learning that one of the places where post-heart attack patients can’t conveniently dine is a convenience store. Breakfast choices at the gas station were limited to doughnuts-a pretty good variety, actually-or Danish, or a sad-looking egg-and-sausage thing on a croissant. I settled for a dry bagel, burnt decaf, yogurt, and a carton of orange juice and walked back to the motel with every intention of eating my ascetic meal, climbing into the Jeep, and pointing it vaguely north toward Indianapolis.
It didn’t happen.
I woke up later on only because I had to pee. The light outside my room said dusk. I used the bathroom, took off my clothes, killed my cell phone and pager, and fell back into bed. “Tired” didn’t come close to describing my fatigue. “Exhausted” wasn’t enough of a superlative.
The next change in light that registered in my consciousness was the wink of dawn. After a long shower I felt quasi-alive. In a fashion that reminded me, sadly, of Bill Murray inGroundhog Day,I retraced my steps to the convenience store of the morning before, bought the same food, and returned to the motel with the same intentions.
Practice makes perfect. The second time I pulled it off. Before Nashville was awake, and certainly before I’d had a chance to taste any of her charms, I was on my way out of town in the Cherokee.
Later on I stopped for some real food at a roadside café near someplace called Orlinda and lingered there for a while considering whether I was driving to Indianapolis, Indiana, to be a detective or to Rochester, Minnesota, to be a father. I climbed back in my car unaware that I ever quite reached a decision.
After my late breakfast some truckers and I convoyed together up into Kentucky. I figured that the long-haul drivers were hurrying to get home to their families for Thanksgiving supper, so they were maintaining a speed that was far enough over the speed limit to make me reasonably content.
The countryside south of Louisville was as pretty as a calendar. The whole thing was much better than rehab for me and my injured heart. A day asleep, peaceful landscape, uncrowded roads, strange accents on funny radio stations, and problems that seemed a thousand miles away.
Or at least five hundred.
If you look at a road map of Indiana, Indianapolis looks like the spot where an award-winning sharpshooter left his first and only pop at an imaginary bull’s-eye that had been pinned on top of the map. The state’s largest city is almost perfectly centered north to south and east to west. As you approach Indiana from any direction, you feel a sublime confidence that you couldn’t miss Indianapolis even if you fell sound asleep at the wheel. All roads may not actually lead to Rome, but in this part of the United States it sure seemed like they all led to Indianapolis.
The convoy of truckers and I were making good time as we cleared the northern boundary of Columbus. Out in front of us, Highway 65 was gleaming in the November sun like the Yellow Brick Road that was going to carry us nowhere but to Oz.
A while later my beeper vibrated on my hip, and I fumbled to find my Kmart reading glasses so I could read the little screen. I saw the 911 before the phone number and felt my heart rate jump. I reached down and shushed the volume on Faith Hill’s lament, and signaled to pull the Jeep into a rest stop. Two of the truckers blasted a good-bye with their air horns, and I honked my reply. After I exited the highway, I settled into a parking place beside a big recreational vehicle full of gray-haired women. For some reason they made me think about Sherry, which caused a twang in my heart over Simon, and I let my mind wander in that neighborhood while I allowed myself a minute or two to decide whether to return the call.
I punched in the number.
Lucy said, “Is that you?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Where are you? Don’t you ever answer your phone?”
“Just south of Indianapolis somewhere. A rest stop full of strangers.”
“Don’t bother going any farther, Sammy. Get back on 70 and keep an eye out for the mountains. Just before you run into them, that’s home. The Julie Franconia mystery is solved. We got that one cold, I think. There’s nothing for you to do in Indiana.”
“Yeah?”
“A body was found in some woods outside Martinsville-that’s just south of Indianapolis-three or four days after our Ms. Franconia disappeared. It was hers. The local police had originally cleared the thing by attaching the homicide to a serial killer who was traveling about that time from Chicago to Texas. He was one of those guys who maintained he’d killed scores of people since he was, like, eleven. You know the ones. Cops and reporters fromDatelinefollow him around the country with shovels and backhoes as he points out all the places he left bodies. I have his name somewhere; you want it?”
“Not unless it’s relevant.”
“It’s not. A close comparison of the VICAP reports on the serial killer’s known victims-there are six or seven; the guy was a killer for real even if he’s a little boastful about the numbers-shows that our girl doesn’t belong in his group. MO of her death wasn’t really anywhere close to his known MO. Circumstances of her disappearance aren’t right, either. Personally I think somebody around Martinsville was looking for a cheap clear. They got it. Anyway, that body was found. They’re going to reopen now.”
“Cause?”
“Single gunshot to the base of the skull.”
“Front or back?”
“Back. They think a nine-millimeter.”
“Mutilation?”
“No.”
I grumbled at the news. That wasn’t the work of any garden-variety serial killer. The feds would be working overtime to tie the case back to Sterling Storey. I had been hoping to do something useful in Indianapolis. As soon as I heard Lucy’s news, I knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Lucy said, “You can come home, Sammy. Start now, and you’ll be here in time for Thanksgiving dinner.”
“What about Augusta?”
“No body discovered down there yet. But it turns out that some clothing that might belong to that victim-the locals have soft ID on a shoe from a girlfriend of hers-was found dumped outside town in a place called the Phinizy Swamp around the time of her disappearance. Police still have the clothing, fortunately. They’re revisiting the forensics.”
“Revisiting” was a Lucy word. “This swamp-a good place to dump a body?”
“That’s what I hear. Alligators live there.”
“Yuck. What about West Point?”
“Progress there, too. Previously unsolved murder. But the pieces are fitting the Sterling Storey puzzle.”
“Nothing actually ties any of this to Storey, does it, Luce?”
“Opportunity, opportunity, opportunity. Records from his network show that he was in the right place the day each woman disappeared. What are the odds of that, Sam? The same guy being in each town when the vics go missing? Those are bad facts, come on.”
“Yeah? What else?”
“Means is easy. I bet we can end up proving he knew these women, you know, carnally. And motive? As far as I’m concerned, the motive for serial killers is always just smoke.”
“Evidence, though? Back when I was a real cop, convictions tended to take evidence.”
“Everybody’s only been on this for a little more than a day. It’ll develop. You’re not going to be of any help to anybody in Indiana, Sammy. The local cops and the feds are all over these cases. You’re not going to get anywhere close to the principals. Come on home.”
“Georgia cops find Sterling’s body?”
“No. In fact, they called off the search yesterday afternoon. A searcher found a hat with his network logo about a mile downstream. For all intents, he’s presumed dead.”
“That’s convenient. Cops all over the country get to close old cases and blame it all on a Good Samaritan who disappears in a river in Georgia. No trials, no appeals. Everybody ends up looking good. This is fairy-tale stuff. I smell a documentary cooking on this one.”
“Don’t be snide. It’s not good for your heart. One more interesting thing, though. Brian Miles-remember him? Sterling’s friend in Albany, Georgia? The one he was on his way to visit? FBI went by to interview him again. Gone. Neighbors are baby-sitting his dogs. He apparently didn’t tell anybody where he was going.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Coincidence?”
“Yeah, right.”
“Sammy, come home.”
“I’ll consider it.”
What I was really thinking was that Rochester, Minnesota-which was where my son and his grandfather were hanging with my sullen wife-was closer to Indianapolis than Boulder was. Sherry wouldn’t be thrilled to see me, but Simon would. We could watch the Lions’ Thanksgiving game together on TV.
“Heard anything from Reynoso? Is she bagging it and going home to California or what?”
“I haven’t heard anything since I heard she was going to Georgia. But I don’t think I would, necessarily. I’ll ask a few questions and let you know next time we talk.”
“Yeah.”
“You feeling okay, Sam?”
“Like a million bucks, Lucy.”
“That means what-I shouldn’t ask? I’m worried about you. You should be home resting, watching football, getting ready for your turkey dinner. You shouldn’t be out there alone.”
“It’s true, I’m fine. Maybe a little tired. But I got another call coming in, so I have to go.”
“Call me when you know what you’re going to do.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m serious. Promise me.”
“Okay.”
“Sam-”
I killed the call. Lucy was sweet, and her heart was in the right place, but nobody knew what I should do next. Not her. Not me. Nobody. Anyway, the truth was, my pager was going off again. Another 911: Alan.
I was really tempted just to get right back on the highway and find my way to Rochester and ignore his call. But if I did, I’d ruin Angus’s Thanksgiving for sure. And Simon would have to watch his mom use all her willpower not to kill me for showing up uninvited.
So I didn’t. Although I doubted that whatever Alan wanted warranted a 911, there was always the possibility that Lauren had gotten worse, or something bad had happened to somebody, you know? So I called. Within seconds I wished I hadn’t.
“Sam?” he said.
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“I’m at work, and, uh… I’m here with a woman-she’s a security specialist-who just swept my office for listening devices…”
I thoughtThat’s pretty goofy. Alan had paused at that point like he was thinking that I was supposed to take over from there or something. I wasn’t feeling terribly cooperative, so I just waited him out.
“… and it turns out she found one.”
He paused again once he’d succeeded in getting the entire sentence out of his mouth. It was becoming apparent that he was planning on telling his story in fits and starts. Me? I was standing in a highway rest area next to a bunch of old ladies who had set up a card table outside their motor home to play bridge. At that moment they were finding something hilarious about diamonds and the women’s rest room across the way.
Although I was mildly curious about the odd fact that my friend had a bug in his office, I wasn’t feeling particularly patient with his storytelling pace. I didn’t know what help he wanted from me, but I hoped he got around to asking for it before moms and grandmoms all over America started taking turkeys out of their ovens.
“Sam, did you put that bug in my office?” he asked.
I screamed, “What?”
The old ladies scattered away from the little card table. They were moving so fast, I was afraid one of them was going to fall down and break a hip.
“What the hell are you accusing me of?” I yelled, even louder.
The women reacted to my outburst by scrambling back into their Winnebago clone as though they were thirty years younger.
“I just asked a question,” Alan said, smug as shit.
Yeah, right.“You’re lucky you’re a thousand miles away from my fist.”
“I take it that’s a no.”
“I don’t believe you, Alan.”
“I guess the feeling’s contagious,” he said.
I hung up on him.
The old ladies were peering at me through the windows of the motor home. They had fear in their eyes. One of them had tossed her cards in the air before she ran for the safety of the RV. I picked the cards up, dusted them off, scanned them, and placed them back on the card table. She’d had a damn good hand. I smiled up at the women and mouthed, “Four spades.”
Then I took my pulse. One-twenty. Too high.
I reminded myself that I had choices.
I considered heading to Albany, Georgia, to have a chat with Brian Miles, but that felt like a dead end. And I admit I was briefly tempted to find my way back to Ochlockonee for a holiday date with a pair of twins and a turducken. I even thought about a long drive to Colorado to be with Gibbs. But the strongest pull? The due north on my emotional compass?
Simon.
I climbed back into the Cherokee.