Warpath

“I’ll be fine. I actually have to go. They’ll be keeping me overnight.”

“Maybe I can come by and talk to you there.”

“I think it’s going to be a hard night, Mr. Buckner. I’ve been on a downhill slide for the past few days. Stress is really getting to me. They say I just need some rest. I’m hooked up to some machines—”

There is the noise again. A hollow, metal howl like a specter coming down a hall. I know where he is.

“You sound so full of life. I figure a man who is going to have such a risky operation should cough or something.”

Petticoat gives me two little squeaker coughs. “Happy?”

“Okay,” I say, heading back out to my car. “I just wanted you to know I’ve requested the DNA sample from the PD. With any luck I’ll be able to take it to a private lab that can run it against any DNA on file. I can only hope in the past twenty years the rapist has been arrested for something—anything—because then they’ll have taken a sample from him. If so, we’ll get a hit.”

“Great. Just great. I’ve gotta go—”

“And Carla Gabler was a dead-end. She says she hasn’t seen her boyfriend since they were locked up.”

“Mr. Buckner—Richard, I need to hang up now. The nurses—they’re getting on me for using a phone inside the hospital. You know. It may interfere with some of the machines and I—I need to go.”

There the noise is a third time. Motherfucker.

“Not a problem, big guy. You get some rest. Take care of that cough.” I hang up.

Dig in my trunk. I have a toolbox. Open it. Inside there is the usual stuff that anybody would have: duct tape, a drill, a straightened coat hanger, door wedges, lock-picking tools, a couple of cheap cell phones I’ve converted to listening devices, latex gloves, a couple of empty syringes I could fill with things like Drain-O or turpentine, some key blanks for bump keys, a gun. Probably some screw drivers and a hammer. Regu

lar stuff.

I smoke a cigarette and go back inside. Gloves on. Pick the lock. Enter.

Inside the office a quiescence whispers through. I, in turn, walk with silence sewn onto the bottoms of my feet. Just in case.

The haunting ghost sounds behind Petticoat were the sounds of the rail train. The echoing squeals of metal on metal as they rub their smoothed surfaces at sixty miles an hour. The lilting hum of the train passing through a tunnel. You don’t get that in a hospital room.

He’s heading to Three Mile High. The rail doesn’t run through town; it connects our two cities and that’s it. Lying about that as well.

Plot point: for whatever reason Petticoat wants me to think he’s ill. It gives him a convenient excuse to put a deadline on me. So him lying about being on the train might not mean anything by itself. It goes with the cover story. Wherever he is, he’ll want me to believe he’s in the hospital.

Of course, it might be very significant he’s heading to Three Mile High. I tuck that in my mind and scan the office.

The hallway door opens into the secretary’s space and waiting room. Nothing more than a welcome mat and a desk. By the look of the desk Petticoat doesn’t think much of his secretary. She must be ugly or he’s already fucked her. I don’t think he’s the type to hire a dude secretary. Even a homo one.

Pictures and reference letters all over the walls. Thank you notes, some from recognizable names and companies to boost his credibility. Nothing says worth-the-money like an autographed picture of a pro athlete thanking you for whatever service you did. I see four in Petticoat’s front room. A couple of photos side by side that show a brown field of flat, barren earth as a before picture and next to it an after picture with a building constructed there. Manicured lawns, landscaping, lighting. Real estate development.

There is a drafting room. Nothing more than a box space big enough for five folks to stand around a table, pointing to a blue print and feeling self-important. The walls here are covered in artists’ renditions of various projects. Schematics. Aerial views.

Petticoat’s office is locked. Deadbolt. I pick it as well. One desk, two visitors’ chairs. Window behind the desk. Blinds closed. More bragging material on the wall. One file cabinet. I search it. Filled with real estate contracts, form packages ready to be filled out, an open bag of candy, a canister of coffee, some rubbers. Ahhh. What an animal Petticoat is.

I sit down behind the desk, fire up the computer. It comes right on; no security password to boot up. Good. As far as security goes, I hope he has all his faith in the two locks that precede the room. Makes my job easier. I’m not very good at cracking passwords.

The desktop loads up and I start combing through everything. File after file, document after document and download after download. He has four video games installed on the thing, enough pirated music to open his own record store and of course, so much porn it would take an entire forensics team working in shifts to view them all, searching for underage participants.

In other words, his computer looks like any middle management’s PC except Petticoat doesn’t have a boss to answer to about any of it.

But nothing that screams next Monday or rape case.

I open up his Internet browser and look at his bookmarks. I look at his search history and there’s a lot of stuff I’d relate to his job, plus the porn. There are several maps provided by search engines. I click on one. Satellite photo. Just another brownfield waiting to be developed. There are several like this. Some are full constructions, some not. I assume he’s looking at the surrounding area, checking to see how good a location it is.

Some are here; some are in Three Mile High. All told, there’s a shit ton. I highlight, cut and paste them in an email to myself, then go back to the search history and delete that one page. I’ll comb through them later. Something tells me Petticoat is going to Three Mile High today to conduct business. I go back to the most recent Three Mile High listing he’s been looking at. Brownfield. Huge, huge brownfield in the middle of nowhere.