Every Precious Thing lh-2 Page 6

  When it rang the sixth time, she was still in bed but awake, feeling the weight of another day ahead of her. The sound had been faint, almost imperceptible, but after so long in the cabin, hearing all the noises the walls and the surrounding woods made, the ring was like a fire alarm.

  She jumped out of bed, raced into the other room, and grabbed the phone off the couch, afraid she’d arrived too late.

  “Hello?” she huffed. “Hello? Hello?”

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “What do you mean? Here. Where else would I be?”

  “I’ve been calling you for hours.”

  “I…I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

  “Sara, you have to hear it.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll turn the volume up.”

  There was a pause, then her caller said, “Things are happening.”

  Sara tensed.

  “You need to be ready in case you need to move in a hurry. You remember the escape route?”

  Sara closed her eyes, her shoulders sagging at the inevitability of it all. She had hoped they’d succeeded, that she had made a clean disappearance. But…

  “I remember,” she said.

  “Good.”

  Her caller hung up.

  Sara stared at the wall. Just moments before she had been suffocating at the thought of living through another boring day of nothing. Now she would give anything for another one like that.

  God only knew if she would ever have another quiet day.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They found rooms at a place called the Desert Inn Motel, and spent most of the day either hanging out there or at the hospital, waiting for Pep to regain consciousness.

  Dev arrived just before noon, but even his presence wasn’t enough for Pep to fight through whatever drugs the doctors had given him.

  When visiting hours ended at eight, they drove back to the motel, ready to call it a night. Everyone but Logan.

  “We’ll probably put on a movie, if you want to join us,” Harp said as they approached the room he and Barney were sharing next to Logan’s. Dev’s was downstairs, at the other end of the building.

  Logan gave his dad a smile. It wasn’t hard to see from the heaviness of Harp’s eyelids and his lethargic pace that he wouldn’t make it to the end of whatever movie he and Barney were planning on watching.

  “Thanks, Dad. Think I’ll pass.”

  Harp nodded. “See you in the morning, then.”

  They hugged.

  “’Night, Logan,” Barney said, looking nearly as tired as Harp.

  “’Night, Barney.”

  The two older men went into their room, and Logan went into his.

  That afternoon, he’d left the others at the hospital while he made a visit to the police station. The first thing he found out was that while the police were still dubious about Pep’s level of involvement in the fight, no charges had been filed because there were no witnesses, and they had no idea who Pep’s sparring partner had been.

  The second thing was that Pep had been found on Thatcher Road, near some abandoned buildings, and about a block from a bar called The Hideaway. According to the cop he’d talked to, Pep had been leaning against the empty building, half conscious at best, when someone driving by had spotted him and stopped. The officer hadn’t given Logan the address, but he’d described the buildings as adjacent to some railroad tracks.

  In his dad’s room next door, the TV went silent. Just to make sure there was no chance Harp or Barney would hear him, he waited for another hour before slipping out quietly.

  Since Dev’s old Jeep Cherokee was large enough for all four of them, they’d earlier left the El Camino at the motel and used Dev’s SUV to shuttle to and from the hospital. Planning ahead, Logan had purposely parked his car far away from his dad’s room, so that as he started it up now, there was no way Harp would hear it.

  Less than ten minutes later, Logan pulled to a stop on the other side of the street from the abandoned building Pep had been leaning against when he was found. The structure looked like it was one medium-sized earthquake away from tumbling to the ground, and the same could be said for the ones on either side of it, too. The only place that seemed to be in decent shape was The Hideaway. In fact, Logan was willing to bet it was the only building still in use on the street, its parking lot filled nearly to capacity, with another half dozen cars strung out along the road.

  He climbed out of the car, and walked over to the empty building. The cop had said the fight-or ambush, depending on one’s point of view-had taken place around the side, between the building and the one next to it.

  Using the LED flashlight on his key ring, Logan hunted around until he found the spot where Pep had been attacked. It was only about a quarter way down the wide gap between the two properties, but far enough in so that passing motorists wouldn’t have noticed anything.

  There were dark smudges in the dirt where blood had soaked in then dried in the heat of the day. He did a quick three-sixty, but other than a few beer cans and fast-food wrappers, the ground was bare. If this had been a crime scene in L.A.-or even Cambria, for that matter-everything would have still been taped off. Apparently the Braden police had seen no reason to do so. That decision was backed up by the fact that, except for a few footprints probably made by investigators and by Pep and his assailant, no one else had been around.

  Logan crouched down and slowly moved his flashlight across the dirt. The area where the fight occurred wasn’t as disturbed as one might expect. The impression of a prone body, some marks that could have been knees or elbows, a few footsteps, and that was it. How anyone might think this was anything but a one-sided mauling, Logan had no idea. Pep had gone down at the start, and not pulled himself back up until it was over.

  Logan moved the light in a wider arc, revealing more spots of dried blood marking the trail Pep created as he’d struggled to get to the front of the building. Standing, Logan slowly walked farther back. There he found two sets of footprints-one leading from the rear of the building to the disturbed dirt, and one headed in the opposite direction. It was clear they were both made by the same person. The tread was heavy and wide, not a tennis shoe, more like a hiking or working boot, and by the length Logan figured the person who wore them had to be at least six feet tall. He followed the prints all the way behind the building, finally losing them on a slab of cracked concrete. He circled it, looking to see if they started up again on another side, but found nothing.

  Since Pep wasn’t missing anything, this certainly hadn’t been a robbery. A random beating? Could be. Some local thug sees an out-of-towner on his own and thinks easy target. It wouldn’t even be close to the first time that ever happened.

  The problem Logan had was separating the attack from the fact Pep had been asking around about Sara.

  With nothing more he could learn at the fight scene, he returned to the El Camino, and drove a block down to The Hideaway, parking in a recently vacated slot behind the bar. The building utilized what appeared to be the most popular building material in town-concrete blocks. But unlike the ones making up the walls of the Braden City Medical Center, there was no artistic texture to The Hideaway’s blocks, just flat gray stones holding up a flat roof.

  As Logan got out of his car, a pickup truck and an old Plymouth sedan pulled into the lot, taking the last two spots. A middle-aged couple climbed out of the truck and waited until a woman traveling by herself got out of the sedan. Logan slowed his pace, waiting until they entered the bar, then went in a few seconds behind them.

  The Hideaway wasn’t as much of a dive as the exterior had led him to believe. The bar itself was set up along the wall to the right. The rest of the space was taken up by a dozen or more tables, most of which were occupied.

  Somewhere a jukebox was playing an old seventies rock hit, “More Than a Feeling” by Boston. Judging by the look of the clientele, Logan guessed most of them had come of age when the song was released. Not an old crowd, but not a young
one, either.

  Logan snagged one of the few stools left at the bar, then caught the attention of the bartender. She gave him a nod and mouthed, “Be right there.”

  She was younger than most of her customers, probably no more than thirty. Her face was tanned and creased around the eyes, no doubt from squinting at the desert sun. She finished filling a pint of beer, set it in front of one of the other customers, and walked over to Logan.

  “Evening,” she said.

  “How you doing?” he asked.

  “Fine, thanks. What can I get you?”

  “What do you have on tap?”

  “Bud, Bud Light, Heineken, Sierra Nevada.”

  “I’ll take a Sierra Nevada.”

  “You got it.”

  She walked back to the taps and pulled his drink. “Five bucks,” she said as she set it in front of him.

  He put six on the bar.

  She smiled. “Thanks.”

  He gave her a nod as she walked off.

  Taking a drink, he scanned the room, wondering if anyone there knew anything about Sara or what had happened to Pep. Maybe they all did, or maybe no one.

  When he’d worked his way through most of his beer, the bartender returned.

  “Another?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he replied.

  A moment later, she walked back with the full glass, and Logan put six more bucks on the bar.

  “Can I ask you a question?” he said.

  She gave him a look like she knew exactly what he had in mind. “Not interested.”

  “Sorry?”

  She leaned forward, and whispered so only he could hear. “You’re not my type.”

  “Okay,” he whispered back, “but that’s not what I was going to ask.”

  Her eyes narrowed, wary but curious. “So what, then?”

  “My name’s Logan.” He held out his hand.

  She shook it, but said nothing.

  Okay, he thought. “Did you hear about that fight last night?”

  Now her curiosity turned into full-on suspicion. “Why? The bar had nothing to do with that.”

  “I didn’t say it did.”

  She remained quiet.

  “I’m not trying to cause trouble. It’s just that the guy who ended up in the hospital is a friend of mine,” Logan said.

  He sensed a sudden shift in her demeanor, a distancing.

  “Sorry to hear that,” she said.

  “I don’t suppose you know who attacked him?”

  “Attacked? I heard it was a fight.”

  “Not really. I don’t think my friend even got a blow in.”

  “Sorry, don’t know who attacked him. I don’t even know who your friend is.”

  “I think you might have met him.”

  She shrugged. “I meet lots of people.”

  A woman walked up to the bar. “Hey, Diana. Can I get another rum and Coke?”

  “It would have been last night,” Logan went on. “Not long before he was beaten.”

  “Excuse me,” the bartender-Diana-said to Logan.

  She went off and made the woman her drink, but she didn’t immediately come back over. Logan waited, leaving his second beer untouched. Finally she returned.

  “So what?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “So what if I might have met him? If he came in for a drink, yeah, I would have. Why’s that important?”

  “He was looking for a woman.”

  She snorted. “Like that never happens here.”

  Logan pulled out his phone and accessed the picture of Sara. “A specific woman.” He turned the phone so that Diana could see it. “She’s missing.”

  The bartender looked at it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I remember your friend now. He didn’t want a drink. He just showed me that picture.”

  “And?”

  “I told him I’d never seen her before,” she said. “I’m sorry about your friend, but I wasn’t paying him that much attention.”

  She started to move off.

  “Wait,” Logan said. “Did he show the picture around? Maybe piss someone off? Anything like that?”

  “Like I said, I wasn’t paying attention to him,” she said, shrugging. “Enjoy your beer, and have a nice night.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The flight arrived in Los Angeles at 11:44 p.m. Though it was on time, Dr. Erica Paskota glanced at her watch, annoyed. By the time she retrieved her rental car-with the special package that had hopefully been slipped into the trunk-waited for her two men who weren’t scheduled to arrive for another thirty minutes, then drove the three-plus hours to Braden, she wouldn’t arrive until after four a.m. at best.

  Her man on the scene had been watching the woman for four weeks, but there had been no sign she’d had any contact with the target. Erica had begun to assume it was a dead end, but had left her watcher in place because caution was the best course.

  Then there’d been the beating the previous night. The watcher had not seen the actual fight, but he had seen the man in the bar not long before he was attacked. That, in itself, wouldn’t have been enough to draw the doctor’s interest, but the picture the injured man had been showing around was.

  Someone else was looking for the same person she was. Why? Who was he? And the woman bartender they’d been watching-did she actually know something?

  Whatever the answers, this needed to end now. It had been going on way too long. Though she had other matters that required her attention, she could no longer trust this issue to anyone else. She had decided to fly out herself and lead the search. It was the only way she could be sure of a satisfactory ending.

  She glanced at her watch again, even more agitated than before. She was sure the ending she craved lay to the East, but she wasn’t getting there any faster as her plane endlessly taxied through LAX.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Four more bars and Logan found himself no better off than he’d been when he left The Hideaway. It was almost midnight when he walked into the fifth, a place called the Sunshine Room. It was in a low-slung building connected to the Sand Castle Motel just off the main drag.

  The Sunshine Room did not live up to its name. The interior was almost as dark as the desert night outside. Whereas The Hideaway had elevated itself above dive-bar status, the Sunshine Room seemed to embrace its seediness.

  It was only large enough for four tables and the bar. A handwritten sign on the wall read: RESTROOM OUTSIDE AROUND BACK. The toilet’s location didn’t seem to help eliminate the stale odor of piss and beer that hovered in the room.

  Logan walked over to the laminated bar, where a tired old man stationed on the other side looked annoyed by the fact he had a new customer.

  Instead of asking Logan what he wanted, he merely looked at him, waiting.

  Logan used his now familiar opening line. “What do you have on tap?”

  “Beer.” The man’s voice was scratchy.

  “Okay. Sounds good.” It was Logan’s seventh beer that night, but beside the first one, he’d only taken a sip or two of the others so he didn’t really care what the man brought.

  The bartender filled a glass with something that almost looked like water, and set it on the bar. “Four fifty.”

  Logan pulled out a ten.

  When the bartender returned with his change, Logan pulled out his phone and turned it so the man could see the screen. “Did a guy come around last night and show you this picture?”

  The bartender glanced at Sara’s photo, then looked at Logan through narrow eyes. “You a cop?”

  “No.”

  “You kind of look like one.”

  “Army,” Logan said. “Once.”

  “That could be it, I guess.” The man jutted his chin at the phone. “So what’s the deal?”

  “My friend got beat up last night near The Hideaway. I think it was because of this.”

  The man shook his head, said, “I don’t know nothing,” and started to turn away.

/>   It was clear, though, that he did know something. “What did you tell him?”

  Swiveling back, the man said, “Didn’t tell him nothing. Nothing to tell.”

  “So he was here.”

  The bartender frowned. “I guess. So what?”

  “My friend wasn’t doing anything wrong. There was no reason for him to get beat up like that.”

  “Then that makes it all the worse, don’t it?”

  This time, the old man did walk off, not stopping until he reached the far end of the bar, where he started wiping down the counter. After a moment, Logan got up and walked over.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Already told you. Nothing.”

  Logan stared at him, his face immobile.

  The corner of the man’s mouth twitched. “Maybe you should leave.”

  Logan remained silent.

  The man opened the cash register and pulled out a five-dollar bill. “Here’s your money back. I don’t want it. Now get out.”

  Logan heard a chair behind him scrape across the floor. He didn’t know if it was someone coming to the bartender’s aid or heading for the exit, but there was no need to find out.

  “Sure,” he said. He took a step back, leaving the money on the bar. “Thanks for your help.”

  Logan’s alarm went off at five minutes to two a.m. Though the El Camino’s seat wasn’t exactly the best place to sleep, it was better than the metal truck bed in back.

  He was in a parking lot behind an insurance office across the street from the Sunshine Room. He got out and walked over to the corner of the building and peeked around it at the bar. The lights were still on, and a few cars remained in the lot, but they wouldn’t be there for long. Two a.m. was closing time in California.

  He watched patiently as people trickled out and drove away. Finally there was only an ancient VW Bug left, so he guessed it must belong to the bartender. He climbed back into the El Camino, and pulled out onto the side street, his lights off.