Smiley Read online

  The only two girls working the parking lot today had beaten a quick retreat when they first saw Garrett and LaSalle. They sat inside and watched the men with hooded eyes.

  Hank the Hammer climbed down from his cab. A portly man with a penchant for wallets with big chains, he didn’t look happy to see Garrett. “Hey, Chief. Little outta your jurisdiction, ain’t ya?”

  “Little bit. But this isn’t official, Hank. This gentleman’s looking for a missing girl.”

  Hank eyed the flier, then LaSalle. “Gentleman, huh? What’s this got to do with me?”

  “Do I really need to answer that?” Garrett said.

  Sometimes Hank liked to pick up a girl and take her to the motel in town, rather than cram into his sleeper for his fun. He’d been Garrett’s first arrest as Chief last year, after he got drunk and kicked a girl out into the snow buck-nekked.

  “All we want to know is if you’ve ever seen her hanging around,” LaSalle said. “I’m not the police. I’m just a man looking for a girl whose family misses her.”

  Mention of a family missing their kid bled the confrontation out of it for Hank. He blinked at the photo, probably seeing her as a young girl at a birthday party for the first time.

  “Maybe... Yeah. Long while back, year, year and a half. I remember her. She had this tattoo—“ Hank stopped short.

  Garrett would have pounced on the guilty hitch, but LaSalle’s voice stayed low and reassuring. “I don’t care how or why you saw it. But that tattoo is one way I have of knowing if I’m talking to someone who really knew her. It’s not on the flier.”

  “She told me she was eighteen, you know.”

  “And she would’ve been, about the time she met you,” LaSalle said. Still smooth, but Garrett’s practiced eye could see it. The tightening around the eyes, the slight lean in. LaSalle had been looking a long time for this, clearly the first positive thing he’d heard in ages.

  “It said, Daddy’s Girl in flowery letters on her butt cheek,” Hank said.

  “That’s the one. You said over a year ago? Do you remember exactly when?”

  “No. I do remember it was the end of summer, still warm, you know? I told her I’d drive her the rest of the way to Texas, if she wanted to go. But she asked me to let her out at the rest stop up on Forty-Five.”

  “Why would she do that?” LaSalle said.

  “Some girls do,” Garrett said. “They’ll work the guys up there if it’s busy, then hitch with one of them back here if they can. New customers are usually through here by then.”

  “Right,” LaSalle said. Flat, no emotion.

  Hank the Hammer licked his dry lips. “Look, I just drive cross-country, man. Sometimes I pay a girl for her company. But I don’t ever hit on ‘em, or dump ‘em out on the highway like some do. In fact, I tried to talk her out of the rest stop. That place is just bad luck, if you ask me.”

  “Why?” Garrett said. “I lived here all my life and I never heard that.”

  “Girl got cut up somethin’ horrible. This woulda been about seven years back or so. I’m sure your daddy heard about it from the State Troopers. I’m surprised he didn’t tell ya.”

  “We didn’t talk very often,” Garrett said.

  “What happened?” LaSalle said. “With the girl?”

  “There was an old timer named King who used to come through, play with the girls before he got too old to care. Hauled seafood in from the East Coast. He’s the one found her. Florida Girl, they called her. On account of how she had the shape of Florida tattooed on her thigh. Some sick bastard cut her face up so bad, they couldn’t put out a picture of her.”

  Hank shivered, but it had little to do with the fresh snow starting to fall.

  “So King found her...” LaSalle goaded him to continue.

  “Yeah, anyway, after he ate his dinner, old King lit out up the mountain, but realized he left his wallet back at the truck stop. He slipped into the rest stop to turn around, late at night, the only guy there, ya see? Whoever did it must’ve seen his headlights coming and skedaddled. Poor girl was still steaming.”

  LaSalle’s passive mien broke. “Did he get a description of a car, a truck, anything?”

  “Hold on,” Garrett said. “That’s seven years ago. I’m sure it has nothing to do with your missing girl.”

  “Why are you sure?” LaSalle said.

  Good question. Garrett thought on it for a bit. “One murdered girl seven years ago doesn’t tie into every girl who goes missing in this area. For all we know, some trucker got crazy, cut the girl up, and never came back.”

  “Don’t matter, either way,” Hank said. “Old King never saw nothin’. He just started screaming into his CB.”

  “You suppose he’s still around?” LaSalle said.

  “Nah, he passed years back. Heard he just went in his sleep in his cab one night.”

  LaSalle raised an eyebrow at Garrett. “I don’t suppose, for argument’s sake, you have any records of that case?”

  “No, that’d be State Trooper territory.”

  ***

  “I shouldn’t be showing you this stuff,” Clancy said.

  “I know,” Garrett said.

  He went to high school with Clancy Parker, had been drinking buddies, even. Once, when Garrett came back from LA for Christmas, Clancy got a little too drunk and sobbed about being jealous of Garrett going to a big place like LAPD when Garrett never even wanted to be a damn cop in the first place. Clancy grew up thirsting for it like a fine wine he couldn’t wait to taste on his twenty-first birthday.

  Heavier now, jowly and putting a little strain on the buttons of his uniform shirt, Clancy moved his mouse around, sifting through file folders. He glanced over his computer screen at LaSalle but spoke to Garrett. “Not enough you’re not even on official duty, but you gotta bring a...civilian in here?”

  They sat at a cubicle in the Records Department and Garrett saw some of the strange looks cast toward the hulking black P.I. with the bad knuckles and thick neck.

  LaSalle simply smiled back.

  “Here she is,” Clancy said. He clicked on a slideshow of catalogued crime scene photos. Neither Garrett nor LaSalle spent much time looking at the screen. Not enough to be violated and slashed like she was, but he left her there, legs splayed, showing the world what he did. No modesty in death.

  “How much do you know about this one?” Garrett said.

  “Not much.” Clancy had to clear his throat. Reading official words somehow gave his voice strength. “Bit of a party girl, trace amounts of ketamine and cocaine found in her blood. Victim a known prostitute, but never positively identified. No match on dental records. Genetic material, not her own, recovered from under her fingernails, and a partial tooth impression found on her right knuckles.”

  “She was a fighter,” LaSalle said.

  Garrett nodded. “Seems so. ‘Known prostitute.’ Tells me why I never heard any gossip on this. Wasn’t anybody local, so best to just not talk about it. They ever get anything from the scrapings under her nails?”

  Clancy scrolled through a few pages. “Skin from a white male, B negative blood.”

  “All the makings of a generic peckerwood,” LaSalle said. “I seen one or two of them around lately.”

  Clancy escorted them back through the polished tile hallway and rode the elevator down with them. He waited until they got to Garrett’s Mustang, his hands tucked into his puffy Statie jacket, looking like a dark green teddy bear.

  “Sorry to hear about Tom. I happen to know the investigator’s gonna clear you for duty by Monday. But, you know...” Clancy said.

  “I didn’t hear it from you,” Garrett said.

  “Exactly.”

  LaSalle held out a big mitt. “Thanks for your help.”

  Clancy’s hand came out of his pocket a little slow. Could have been the cold. “Anytime.”

  On the way out of the parking lot, over the rumble of the Mustang, Lassalle said, “I appreciate you doing this. You’re probably right.
This is just some poor girl who got killed. But I only have one client. I have time to check everything.”

  “Don’t blame you. I like to be thorough myself,” Garrett said.

  Clancy appeared from between two parked cars, waving them down. Garrett hit the brakes and the Mustang’s fat tires slid on the snow. Clancy’s hands slapped the hood when the car finally stopped.

  Garrett rolled the window down. “Holy shit, Clance. Are you trying to get run over?”

  “Sorry, sorry. I just remembered something. About three years back there was a running joke around the station. Some people put Wanted posters in the locker room. ‘Be on the lookout for jungle tribesmen kidnapping white women.’”

  “Say what?” LaSalle leaned over the gearshift.

  “No, no, seriously. Some girl whacked out on speed said she got dropped off at the rest stop, did a couple of tricks, and went into the ladies room to uh, freshen up.” Clancy laid a finger alongside his nose and sniffed.

  “When she comes out, she swears up and down some kinda dart hit the tree next to her. Like one of those blowguns the jungle guys used in Indiana Jones, you know?”

  Garrett exchanged a look with LaSalle.

  “Our guys went out and looked around. No darts in the tree trunks, no jungle tribesmen. But still...weird thing to say, huh?” Clancy said.

  “Yeah,” Garrett said. “Weird thing.”

  4

  Smiley took his time putting the tranquilizer gun back together. He worked in the kitchen, preferring the bright overhead light now that his eyes were getting worse. On the counter across the room, a clear plastic container writhed with dermestid beetles. He liked to watch them clean the bones. The bone they were currently packed around came from the latest trophy’s foot. Soon enough, all her remaining flesh would be beetle shit.

  The sweet smell of Neetsfoot Oil on old leather gaskets pleased him. It smelled like order, cleanliness. Respect. Like Papa always said, “A man who cares for his tools is showin’ respect to the man who made ‘em.”

  The man who made this old dart rifle in the late ‘60s probably didn’t give half a damn that Smiley still kept the leather gaskets supple and took care to store the rifle properly instead of keeping it in a damn gun rack, so’s the barrel didn’t warp over time. But it was the principle.

  A heavy crystal tumbler of Jim Beam sat at his elbow. No ice. He didn’t want the glass sweating a circle on the flawless oak surface of his table. He’d made it from separate oak planks, dovetailed together so tight the table looked like a high-end machine had made it. Most folks would glue the wood, but the painstaking process of cutting and fitting the dovetail grooves appealed to Smiley’s meticulous nature. A threadbare towel kept the gun parts from scratching the table as he worked.

  The highly shined toe of his cowboy boot tapped the linoleum in time to Hank Williams. Senior. Not his damn rock star kid.

  By the time Smiley got the air rifle back together, the needle started the hitching scratch at the end of the album. He had a CD player, of course. He was no backward hillbilly. But he only used it when Misty brought little Angela over. She played her songs from one of those dang puppet shows all the kids loved and just had herself a high old time. The stupid songs didn’t really grate on his nerves as much when her laughter rang like a clear crystal bell.

  He lined up his silver darts and checked each needle carefully. Years back, he made the mistake of using one with a dull tip. The little whore’s leather pants partially stopped the dart and she didn’t get a full dose. He’d had to fight her, and wound up leaving her there with her throat cut and her face slashed when someone drove up the hill. Scared the hell out of him. He didn’t take another one for almost a year.

  Tires crunching the gravel out front gave him a start. Misty was dropping Angela off early. Probably so she could see that idiot Bradley Wentz before she went to work.

  With quick steps, Smiley gave his place the once-over. He scooped up the tub of hard working beetles and put it under the sink. Angela knew the cabinet was a “No-No Zone.” Everything else in the kitchen looked pretty much the same as the day his momma died. Clean, orderly. Out of step with this century.

  He met them on the front porch of the farmhouse. Misty wore a denim jacket not meant for this cold. The eight-year-old perpetual motion machine named Angela Heideman was stuffed into a pink snowsuit. She leapt out of the truck, blonde locks flying out around the edges of the hood.

  “Smiley!” The little girl ran to give him a hug and hit him like a playful dog that doesn’t know better. Oofed his air out and everything.

  Misty’s folks had lived down the road from Smiley since both Smiley and her dad were in diapers. When her parents both took jobs working on a highway project, Smiley babysat Misty when she was just a little girl herself. Now with her dad passed on and her mom crawling farther into a bottle by the month, Smiley had come to be a lifesaver, always available to babysit Angela in a pinch.

  Misty handed a bag of clothes to Smiley. “She’s been looking forward to this. Something about ice cream sundaes if she answers all her safety questions right?”

  Smiley looked a little guilty. “I hope you don’t mind the ice cream. Just seemed like a good way to get her to listen. Here, watch.”

  Smiley spun Angela around to face her mom. He put his hands on her shoulders like a proud teacher. “What do we do if a stranger talks to us?”

  “Run away and call the police. One scoop for me,” Angela said.

  Misty laughed, which she didn’t do very much. It made Smiley’s heart feel good.

  “What do we do if somebody tries to touch somethin’ that ain’t none of their business?” Smiley said.

  “We shoot him in the No-No with Smiley’s gun.”

  “Uh...” Smiley gave Misty a sheepish grin. “No, no. The other one.”

  “Oh. We run away and tell Chief Evans or one of his officers. Two scoops for me.”

  Misty laughed again, but her eyes danced toward her pickup. She’d be late for her date. “Thanks so much, Smiley. I’ll pick her up by midnight, I promise.”

  Sometimes Smiley would tell her not to worry about it and pick up Angela in the morning. But not today. He knew where she was going, and Misty couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Angela, honey, why don’t you go inside and get warm? I need to talk to Smiley for a sec,” Misty said.

  “Okay. Love you, Mom.” A quick squeeze and the pink dynamo charged into the house. Within seconds, yammering animated dragons or some such had commandeered Hank Senior’s status as entertainment for the evening.

  Misty had money in her hand. Smiley pushed it way, of course.

  “I been doin’ okay, Smiley. With tips and all,” she said.

  “Have ya? Bradley helping you out with groceries and such?”

  “I know you don’t like him, Smiley, but he’s a different guy now. He’s putting together a business deal in Oklahoma, and if it goes through, we can buy a house out there.”

  A boy who could barely spell his own name without looking at his ID had a big deal going? Any business he put together would no doubt be outside the law.

  “That sounds like a good plan.” Smiley smiled and patted her arm. “You have a good shift at work and don’t you dare hurry to pick her up. Can’t have you slidin’ all over the roads.”

  “Thank you, Smiley.” She gave him a chaste kiss on his leathery cheek and he watched her hurry back to her warm pickup.

  His pale blue eyes followed her as she turned around and drove back up the half-mile gravel track to the main road. The chilly wind cut his cheeks and made his eyes water, but he stood like a statue. This kind of discipline made him strong when the Hunter had work to do.

  ***

  Chester LaSalle traveled with a lot of clothes. His grandfather always said a man who wants to be taken seriously dresses seriously. He didn’t have to say the part about a black man having trouble getting respect even then.

  LaSalle flipped through the shirts on the motel
closet rack, checking the creases, noting any fuzz or loose threads. Nothing out of place, of course. This just served as his version of white noise, background music, what have you. The muse came to him best when his conscious thoughts were occupied.

  He’d been to a lot of places looking for Britney Santini. Heard a lot of stories about girls disappearing into thin air, sold on the foreign sex market, taken by aliens. The poison dart bullshit had just been an excuse to work a jungle tribe story in there, but the girl murdered at the rest stop had him thinking.

  He remembered a case in California where a few girls had been murdered over the course of several years. Turned out to be a Highway Patrol officer who worked a certain stretch of deserted highway. Maybe this Clancy guy wanted to throw them off his own trail with the dart story. LaSalle didn’t necessarily believe it, but it sent his mind down certain paths, exploring the possibility of someone who knew the area well taking a girl who no one knew at all.

  He stepped over to the suitcase on his bed. He planned on taking a ride to the rest stop tonight and he wasn’t about to fall into the clutches of some inbred family in the woods. Maybe he’d seen one too many cable movies in motel rooms, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

  The suitcase contained four more shirts, folded with cardboard inside them, two extra pairs of shoes, a variety of colored socks, and a Browning Hi Power nine-millimeter pistol. Not the new shit, either, but the original version from Fabrique Nationale in Belgium.

  There were newer, better combat guns out there, but the Browning pointed so natural, so smooth, it felt connected to his brain somehow. Balance, baby.

  He tucked the gun inside his belt on his right hip without a holster. Mexican Carry. He had a second barrel for the pistol hidden in the trunk of his rental car. The barrel extended about an inch beyond the slide when installed, with threads that accepted the suppressor LaSalle had built himself. But those were the tools of a killer. He didn’t need those tonight.

  Tonight, he needed the tools of a private investigator. He picked up a few fliers in case there were some truckers up there.