Дэвид Балдаччи - Walk the Wire

He edged around a knot of young people near the front entrance. They seemed to be holding each other up, though it was not yet ten o’clock. He didn’t want to be around these folks at midnight.

There was a live band, four guys, and a gal as the lead singer. Her hair was Dolly Parton big and swirled around her head as she danced while crooning a Faith Hill ballad to pitch perfection. The band looked like petrified wood next to her steamy gyrations. She started her next set, and from what Decker could hear, the lyrics focused principally on guys, gals, dogs, and guns, with a Chevy pickup thrown in for good measure. There was a quartet of ninety-inch TV screens on the walls, all tuned to sports channels. In one corner behind a waist-high partition was a mechanical bull, but it didn’t seem to be in operation. It just sat there looking pissed off.

He stood near the back and took his time surveying the room. On one wall was a sign with very large letters that read, BAR RULES: YOU PULL ANY CRAP IN HERE PARTICULARLY FIGHTING AND YOUR ASS IS GONE FOR GOOD. WHEN YOU ARE CUT OFF, YOU ARE DONE. ZERO TOLERANCE. HAVE A GOOD TIME.

A minute later he spotted the pair. Caroline was on the parquet dance floor flitting around a flat-footed Baker, like a hummingbird to a very large, very stiff flower. Or cactus, more like it. Baker moved his feet an inch or two from side to side, stuck his hands up, and tried to look like he was enjoying himself.

Why is she with him?

Someone nudged Decker. It was a man even larger than he was who started speaking to him in a low but menacing voice.

“Look, bud, you want to stay here you need to buy something, food or drink or preferably both,” the man said. He weighed in at about three-fifty, bald as a cue ball, and his flabby gut was overshadowed only by the muscular breadth of his shoulders. “Otherwise, you need to go. Somebody’s got to pay to keep the lights on and the booze flowing.”

Decker moved up to the bar, which spanned one entire wall. The bar stools were all occupied. He wedged next to a couple doing a lip-lock and somehow still managing to chug beer, and a well-dressed woman in her early forties who held a cocktail with about a pound of fruit in it.

The bar sported a hundred beers on tap and a similar number in bottle, many of them IPAs that Decker had never heard of. He opted for Budweiser in the can that set him back five bucks and stood with his back to the bar so he could keep watching his brother-in-law make a fool of himself.

Correction, soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law.

Caroline was now hanging off Baker, looking dreamily up into the man’s face before planting a kiss on his lips. In this stark image all Decker could see was his sister Renee and her four kids, and he had to look away before anger got the better of him. Then he caught himself. What business was it of his anyway? Why was he even here?

“You’re the Fed, right?”

Decker looked to his left. The person speaking was the fruit-chugging lady. She was slender and fit, the line of her triceps showing against the fabric of her tight blouse. She had on a wedding ring and a gold-plated pinky ring. Her hair was light brown with blond highlights and hung down to her shoulders. She wore a pair of jade earrings shaped as miniature Buddhist temples. Her features were finely chiseled and quite attractive, her eyes a light blue.

“And why do you think that?” asked Decker.

“I’m Liz Southern. My husband, Walt, just did the post on your victim. He told me you were in town.”

“But again, how’d you know it was me out of all the people here?”

“He said watch out for a guy in his forties who looks like an ex-NFL offensive lineman.”

“That would fit about ten of the guys here, maybe more.”

“You didn’t let me finish. He also said you had brooding, intelligent, hard-to-read features. That definitely does not match any of the ten or so guys in this room you were probably referring to. They’re as easy to read as a Dr. Seuss book.”

Decker put out his hand for her to shake. “Amos Decker.”

“Not a name you hear much anymore,” Southern said as she shook his hand.

“Did your husband tell you details about the case?”

“He did not breach confidences, if that’s what you were asking. But I manage the funeral home, so I am there quite a bit. Rest assured, whatever I might have learned will go no further.”

Decker took a sip of his beer and eyed the unused mechanical bull. “What’s the story with that thing? Thought it’d be popular with this crowd.”

“It was. Too popular.”

“Come again?”

“It came down to legal liability issues. You get a fracker on that thing and he breaks his leg, arm, or neck, you got a lawsuit from him or his family and another from the company that desperately needed him out in the field. I guess it costs too much to remove, so now people just throw beer cans and bottles at it from time to time.”

As she said this, one drunk young man in a Stetson wound up and hurled his empty glass beer bottle at the bull. It hit the bull’s hard hide and broke apart, its shards collecting on the floor underneath along with a small mountain of other debris while he high-fived his buds.

“They clean it up every night and the next night it just fills up. But if they’re taking their hostility out on that instead of someone’s face? That’s anger management, North Dakota style.”

Decker nodded. “So did you know the victim?”

“No. But I understand that Joe Kelly did.”

“Do you know him well?”

“Well enough. London’s booming right now, but that wasn’t always the case. Everybody knew everybody else. That all changed with the fracking. Now we have folks from all over, even different countries. Think I heard Russian spoken at the grocery store last week.” She paused and added, “But that hasn’t always been the case. We almost had to shut down our business during the last bust.”

“Surely people were still dying, even if the good times had gone.”

“Oh, they absolutely were. Some by their own hands out of despair at having lost everything. Only their families didn’t have the money to pay for our services. They’d offer to barter and such, and we did what we could, but we had our own bills to pay. Luckily, we held on and now things are fine. For now. Who knows about tomorrow?” She looked around. “Your partner isn’t with you? Walt told me you were with another agent.”

“We parted company back at the hotel.”

“Will there be more agents coming?”

Decker sipped his beer and didn’t answer. Caroline Dawson had now hung herself around Baker and was using him as what looked to be a dance pole.

“Do you know those people?” asked Southern as she glanced where he was looking.

“Sort of, yeah.”

“Any leads yet?”

“I can’t get into that.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Decker focused on her. “You have any ideas on who might have done it?”

“Me?” she said, although she didn’t really look surprised at his query. “Well, I can tell you that we do have violent crime here. Not as bad as the last boom cycle. Before we just got all guys, transients with problem backgrounds looking for a quick payoff and then they’d move on. Now we’re still getting some guys with shady backgrounds, but we’re also getting more families. People are putting down roots. They want a nice, safe community.”

“I sense a but coming.”

She smiled demurely. “ But we have places like this where young, single guys in particular come to spend their money and blow off steam. And sometimes that turns out badly.”

“Kelly mentioned an incident earlier here today.”