Stuart Woods: Heat

“I did it like you said, Chief,” the officer said, easing into a chair opposite Casey.

“What did you find?”

“A couple of old suitcases, some clothes, the usual toiletries, some books, mostly old novels, and what looked like a family picture.”

“Tell me about the picture.”

“Just a snapshot in a frame; a woman and three children, girls.”

“Any ID documents?”

“Nossir, I guess he must have ’em on him.”

“Any weapons?”

“Nossir.”

“What about the truck?”

“Some tapes and a bill of sale in the glove compartment. He bought the pickup in Atlanta ten days ago.”

Casey sat back and thought about this. The man seemed what he said he was, but two things bothered him: his driver’s license was new, and so was the truck, both acquired about the same time. Still, Barron had said he had the license renewed, and the sheriff had said that he had left Toccoa on a bus. It made sense that in a wreck that had killed three people, Barron’s car would have been totaled. “Hang on a minute,” Casey said.

He turned back to the computer and spent a minute and a half getting connected to the Georgia Motor Vehicles Bureau in Atlanta. In another moment, he had the driver’s license he had just seen up on his screen. He printed that out, then moved down a couple of screens to the historical record. It showed that Barron’s old license would have expired before the month was out. He went into vehicle registration and found that two pickup trucks were currently registered to Barron, the one at the motel and another, larger truck, the kind with a back seat. That would have been the one in the wreck, he thought. Nobody had canceled the registration yet. He printed out the record.

“Jim, anything strike you as odd about this man’s stuff? Anything at all?”

Jim shook his head. “Looked real ordinary to me, Chief. Except—”

“Except what?”

“Well, it’s a little thing, but the tapes in his glove compartment—”

“What about them?”

“They were classical stuff. You know, symphonies, and like that?”

Casey nodded. “You’d think a guy in a pickup would be listening to country music, wouldn’t you?”

“Yessir, I guess I would.”

“Well,” Casey said, “it takes all kinds, I guess.”

“I guess.”

“Thanks, Jim, that’ll be all for now.”

The officer left, and Casey sat and thought about what he had on Jesse Barron. He had been expecting another undercover man from the ATF for weeks and, after what had happened to the last two, he expected one with a good cover. Still, Barron’s background seemed too good to be just cover. It was the sheriff who had made the difference. He’d gotten the information, one cop to another, and that made it right.

Casey heard the fax machine ring in the outer office. He got up and walked to the machine and waited. A moment later it disgorged a sheet of paper. Casey picked it up and looked at the photograph. He was four or five years younger, dressed in a business suit, hair neatly cropped and combed; the hairline hadn’t yet started to recede. He looked a lot less beat up than the man Casey had just met, but he was the same man, no doubt about it. The picture was clipped from some sort of business directory. Underneath it, set in type, were a few lines of copy:

Jesse A. Barron, president, Barron Construction,

specialists in additions, renovations and remodeling. Mr. Barron takes pride in finishing jobs on time and on budget. Free Estimates. Member of the Chamber since 1981.

Casey walked back to his desk, picked up the phone and dialed a number.

“Yes?”

“Hi, it’s Pat. I don’t think he’s who we’re expecting.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“He checks out to a tee — background, paperwork, everything.” Casey told him about Barron’s history.

“Wouldn’t you expect him to check out?”

“Yeah, but it’s more than that. First of all, I talked to a local sheriff in Georgia who’s known him since he was a boy. It was all good, and get this — as a kid he got arrested for trying to run some niggers out of his neighborhood. I checked the back newspaper editions and found a confirming story.”

“How do you know this guy is the guy the sheriff is talking about?”

“He faxed me a photograph. It’s the same man.”

“I don’t know...”

“One more thing: I’ve known a lot of cops, and I can usually spot ’em a mile away. This guy is less like a cop than anybody I ever knew. If I’d had to guess I’d have said he was an ex-con, but I guess that’s because the injuries make him so rough looking. St. Clair didn’t seem to be his destination, either; said he was on his way to Oregon.”

“Well, if he decides to stay don’t hassle him; make it easy for him, but keep tabs on everything he does.”

“Of course. If he’s real, he sounds like he might be our kind of guy.”

“We’ll see.” He hung up.

In Toccoa, Georgia, Sheriff Tom Calley dialed an 800 number.

“This is Fuller.”

“Mr. Fuller, this is Tom Calley, in Toccoa, Georgia.”

“Yes, Sheriff?”

“The call came, like you said it would.”

“Everything go okay?”

“Seemed like it. He asked for a picture, so I faxed the thing you fixed up.”

“That’s good, Sheriff; thanks for your help.”

“Not at all.”

“And you’ll let me know if the real Barron turns up?”

“Yessir, I will.”

“And I’d like to hear about it if anybody else calls about Barron — anybody at all.”

“Sure thing.”

Jesse closed the door to his motel room and looked around. His things were, if anything, more neatly arranged than when he had left. So far, so good.

Jesse strolled down Main Street, taking stock of the town. The place was still overcast, but the light was becoming brighter; the clouds would burn off soon.

His first impression of Main Street was of something out of the twenties or thirties, and for a while, he couldn’t figure out why. Certainly, it was very clean and neat, with every storefront looking freshly painted, but that wasn’t it. Finally, it struck him. Although it was daylight, he saw that there were no electric signs, just the old-fashioned, hand-lettered kind. It was as though the business district was constructed and maintained to some very strict, but out-of-date design code.

He stopped in front of a small shop. The windows were soaped over, and above, on the facade, there were holes in the brickwork where a sign had been removed. He had noticed it because it was the only vacant storefront on the street, and at a time when most small town businesses were struggling to stay open, competing with the new malls. Some lettering on the glass front door caught his eye: “J. Goldman, Jeweler and Watchmaker,” it read.

Jesse continued his walk, stopping in the drugstore for a Boise newspaper. To his surprise, there was a soda fountain taking up one wall of the store. He hadn’t seen one since high school. A wave of nostalgia washed over him, a memory of sharing a strawberry soda with a teenaged girl — two straws. And even in those days the soda fountain had been mostly an anachronism.

“Good morning,” the druggist said as he rang up Jesse’s quarter.

“Good morning,” Jesse replied.

“New in town?” The man stuck out his hand. “I’m Norm Parsons.”

Jesse shook the man’s hand. “Jesse Barron. I’m so new I might not even be here tomorrow.”

“Sorry to hear it,” the druggist said. “We need new blood all the time. Fine place to live, raise a family, St. Clair.”

“I can believe it,” Jesse said, waving goodbye with his newspaper. He took a right at the corner and walked through a residential neighborhood. The houses were mostly Victorian or that most American of houses in the middle third of the twentieth century, bungalows. A new house was going up on the corner, and that, too, was an old-fashioned bungalow.