get this on wheels. You run the place, and if all goes well, I’ll be back here by two tomorrow morning.”
He walked with her out the door and down to the gated dirt road that eventually led to two-lane blacktop three miles east. The day was hot. Crickets sang in the thick woods through which the fucking kid had somehow found his way. A Ford Windstar soccer-mom van was idling in front of the gate, with Robin Lecks behind the wheel. Michelle Robertson was sitting beside her. Both women wore jeans and black tee-shirts.
“From here to Presque Isle,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “Ninety minutes. From Presque Isle to Erie, Pennsylvania, another seventy minutes. We pick up Opal Team there. From Erie to Alcolu, South Carolina, two hours, give or take. If all goes well, we’ll be in DuPray by seven this evening.”
“Stay in touch, and remember that Williams is in charge once you go hot. Not you.”
“I will.”
“Julia, I really think this is a mistake. It ought to be me.”
She faced him. “Say it again, and I’ll haul off on you.” She walked to the van. Denny Williams unrolled the side door for her. Mrs. Sigsby started to get in, then turned to Stackhouse. “And make sure Avery Dixon is well dunked and in Back Half by the time I return.”
“Donkey Kong doesn’t like the idea.”
She gave him a terrifying smile. “Do I look like I care?”
5
Tim watched the train pull out, then returned to the shade of the depot’s overhang. His shirt was soaked with sweat. He was surprised to see Norbert Hollister still standing there. As usual, he was wearing his paisley vest and dirty khakis, today cinched with a braided belt just below his breastbone. Tim wondered (and not for the first time) how he could wear pants that high and not squash the hell out of his balls.
“What are you still doing here, Norbert?”
Hollister shrugged and smiled, revealing teeth Tim could have done without viewing before lunch. “Just passing the time. Afternoons ain’t exactly busy back at the old ranchero.”
As if mornings or evenings were, Tim thought. “Well, why don’t you put an egg in your shoe and beat it?”
Norbert pulled a pouch of Red Man from his back pocket and stuffed some in his mouth. It went a long way, Tim thought, to explaining the color of his teeth. “Who died and made you Pope?”
“I guess that sounded like a request,” Tim said. “It wasn’t. Go.”
“Fine, fine, I can take a hint. You have a good day, Mr. Night Knocker.”
Norbert ambled off. Tim looked after him, frowning. He sometimes saw Hollister in Bev’s Eatery, or down at Zoney’s, buying boiled peanuts or a hardboiled egg out of the jar on the counter, but otherwise he rarely left his motel office, where he watched sports and porn on his satellite TV. Which, unlike the ones in the rooms, worked.
Orphan Annie was waiting for Tim in Mr. Jackson’s outer office, sitting behind the desk and thumbing through the papers in Jackson’s IN/OUT basket.
“That’s not your business, Annie,” Tim said mildly. “And if you mess that stuff up, I’ll be the one in trouble.”
“Nothing in’dresting, anyway,” she said. “Just invoices and schedules and such. Although he does have a meal punch-card for that topless café down Hardeeville. Two more punches and he gets a free buffet lunch. Although eating lunch while looking at some woman’s snatchola . . . brrr.”
Tim had never thought of it that way, and now that he had, wished he hadn’t. “The doc’s in with the kid?”
“Yeah. I stopped the bleeding, but he’ll have to wear his hair long from now on because that ear is never gonna look the same. Now listen to me. That boy’s parents were murdered and he was kidnapped.”
“Part of the conspiracy?” He and Annie had had many conversations about the conspiracy on his night-knocker rounds.
“That’s right. They came for him in the black cars, count on it, and if they trace him to here, they’ll come for him here.”
“Noted,” he said, “and I’ll be sure to discuss it with Sheriff John. Thanks for cleaning him up and watching him, but now I think you better head out.”
She got up and shook out her serape. “That’s right, you tell Sheriff John. You-all need to be on your guard. They’re apt to come locked and loaded. There’s a town in Maine, Jerusalem’s Lot, and you could ask the people who lived there about the men in the black cars. If you