Brett Battles - Every Precious Thing

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.”

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?