R. Jagger - A Way With Murder

All he could hope for is that it had an outside phone booth.

Ten miles.

That would take him two and a half hours.

A mile down the road he wandered into the terrain for fifty steps and threw the shovel away, far enough that it wouldn’t be associated with the buried bikers.

The night was black but the road was detectible.

Every so often he turned the flashlight on and shined it around.

The topography was always the same-dirt, rabbit brush, prairie grass and rocks.

Half an hour farther down the road when he flicked the light on, something unexpected happened. A red reflection came from something off the road.

As he got closer, the reflection took the shape of a taillight, two taillights actually.

He headed that way, shining the light on the ground and keeping a lookout for snakes.

A car came into view.

His car?

It looked like it.

He picked up the pace.

Damn it, it was his car.

What the hell was it doing out here?

He trotted to it and got in.

January wasn’t there.

The keys weren’t in the ignition.

They weren’t on the floor or up in the visor or in the glove box or anywhere else.

He slammed his fist on the dash.

Goddamn it!

Then he heard a muffled sound from somewhere outside. It turned out to be a weak voice coming from inside the trunk.

“Help me …”

“January is that you?”

It was.

“River, help me …”

The lid was latched solid.

He shined the flashlight on the ground and found no keys, not there or all the way around. The passenger side door and front fender were smashed in.

He grabbed a rock the size of a gorilla’s fist and beat on the latch.

Wham.

Wham.

Wham.

It dented in but didn’t unlatch.

He beat on it more but still couldn’t bust it.

Then suddenly on the last smash something broke and the lid popped.

Inside was January. Her dress was filthy and ripped to shreds. Her panties were gone. Dried blood was on her face and her eyes were raw and wet. As soon as River bent down, the woman wrapped her arms around him and held on with the strength of someone being pulled from the grave.

Day One

July 21, 1952

Monday Afternoon

Wilde’s worst fearmaterialized when he got back to the office. The door was wide open, no one was inside and the map was gone. He’d screwed up before but never this badly. This was a new personal best. Suddenly the toilet flushed in the adjoining room and Alabama walked in. She looked at his hat, still in hand, not yet thrown at the rack and said, “What’s wrong?”

“There was a map on my desk.”

She scouted around.

“Is that it?”

She pointed to a piece of paper on the floor.

Wilde picked it up and smiled.

Then he tossed his hat at the rack, forgetting to aim to the left. It flew out the window, not a corner of the window, either, smack dab center-nothing but air.

“Ringer,” Alabama said.

“Can you run down and get it for me?”

“Me?”

“Please.”

“I don’t type, I don’t fetch hats,” she said. “We settled that on day one.”

Wilde could argue but he’d lose.

He ran down, got it and brushed the dust off on the way up, stopping at the door and taking aim for the rack. This time he threw to the right. It curved left, grabbed the rack by the edge and stuck.

Alabama was sitting on the desk wiping spilled coffee off the map.

“That’s better,” she said.

Wilde lit a Camel,put the map in his top desk drawer and said, “So how’d it go with the clothes?”

“You got me a sexy red dress,” she said. “You spent more than I wanted you to, but there was nothing I could do to stop you.”

Wilde frowned.

“I’m talking about Secret. Was she in when you got there?”

Alabama nodded.

“She was.”

“And?”

“And, wow. I didn’t know they built them like that on this planet.”

Wilde pictured it.

“What’d she say about the clothes?”

“On that front, I have some good news and some bad news,” she said.

Wilde’s chest tightened.

Bad news.

Damn it.

Bad news was never good.

“Tell me the good news first,” he said.

“Well, the good news is that she absolutely loved the clothes. She changed into them right in front of me. That woman has a body like you can’t even believe. The clothes fit perfectly, thanks to my incredible shopping abilities. I told her you wanted to pick her up at 7:30 and she told me to tell you she was looking forward to it.”

She stopped to sip coffee.

Wilde wrinkled his forehead.

“So what’s the bad news?”

“The bad news is that you’re a good looking guy, Wilde, but you’re not good looking the way Secret is,” she said. “You’ll never land her.”

“That’s the bad news, that I won’t be able to land her?”

She nodded.

“We’ll see about that.”

“I can already tell you, it won’t happen.”

“We’ll see.”

“If you had a better personality, that might get you up to a one in ten chance. But you’re you and you always will be. Therein lies your problem.”

He smiled and blew smoke, then told Alabama about his conversation with Michelle Day, the bartender at the El Ray Club. “She’d never seen this guy before, the one who looks like Robert Mitchum and even has the same first name. I’ve never seen him around either.”

“It’s a big town.”

Wilde shook his head.

“It’s not that big,” he said. “The guy’s a player. If he was from here I would have bumped into him by now.”

“What are you saying, that he’s from out of town?”

Wilde nodded.

Exactly.

“Here’s your next assignment,” he said. “Go to every hotel in town and see if he stayed there this past weekend. Get a name and find out where he’s from. I doubt that he’s still in town. It sounds like he came in specifically to do what he did. Just the same, be careful. If he’s still checked in, get a room number but don’t do anything stupid. Repeat-don’t do anything stupid. Come straight back here.”

“Yes master. Do you want me to model the dress you bought for me? It’s in the other room.”

Wilde pulled up an image.

Alabama scrubbed up pretty nice when she had a mind to.

Under different circumstances he might take a run at her.

Right now the circumstances were what they were.

They worked together.

“No.”

She ran a finger down his chest.

“It’s going to happen sooner or later,” she said.

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is.” She paused and added, “I want to show you something.”

She got a rubber band from the drawer and stretched it out to show it was straight. Then she popped it in her mouth. Ten seconds later she pulled it out.

It was in a knot.

She tossed it to him and left without looking back.

Wilde set a book of matcheson fire and watched Alabama through the flames as she swaggered down Larimer. Suddenly she turned to see if he was looking.

He tried to duck back but it was too late.

She saw him.

Day One

July 21, 1952

Monday Night

Su-Moon came upwith an idea back at the scooter, just as the fog turned to a cold drizzle-“Let’s hang around and see if the woman leaves. We can get her license plate number.” They headed back to the parking lot and took cover in the shadows on the dry side of a van. Waverly couldn’t get the spanking out of her head.