Bluetick Revenge (14 page)

“Dogs offer unconditional love,” she responded. “Karlynn wasn’t getting that from anyone else. She might look for another
dog when she gets to wherever she is going.”

“Any other insights?” I asked.

“Don’t bring her back here,” she said. “You’ll be sentencing her to prison. She’s not going to testify against her husband.”

“Thanks,” I said. “If you hear from her or have any other thoughts on where she might be headed, please call me. She’s out
there alone and doesn’t have much money.”

“She took quite a bit of money from her husband. That’s one reason she’s so afraid of him.”

“She doesn’t have the cash on her,” I said. I thanked her again, gave her my cell phone number, and said good-bye.

“Does the former Miss North Dakota have anything to offer?” Scott said.

“Yeah, in addition to checking truck stops, we need to be checking health clubs, schools offering instruction in skydiving,
and all the animal shelters.”

T
WO DAYS LATER
, on a Wednesday afternoon, we were still headed west, just passing the Great Salt Lake. We’d had a half-dozen calls since
beginning our journey from people who had seen Karlynn or thought they had. Our last confirmed sighting had come yesterday
from a truck stop waitress in Rock Springs, Wyoming. She sounded credible. We hadn’t found Karlynn yet, but at least we were
headed in the right direction.

We were listening to Hank Williams and looking at the lake when the
Mister Ed
theme song sounded. I picked up the cell phone and said, “Pepper Keane.”

“Yeah, uh, are you the fella looking for that girl?”

“Yes.”

“I seen her ’bout two hours ago.”

“Where?”

“What about the reward?”

“Give me your name, address, and phone number. If we find her, we’ll take care of you.” I motioned for Scott to find a pen
and take down the information as I repeated it.

“It was just outside of Twin Falls. Two hours ago.”

“Idaho? Was she with anyone?”

“Don’t know. She was using the bathroom at a truck stop. I wasn’t paying attention. Didn’t see your poster until I stopped
at the weigh station just now. She looked okay, though.”

I asked a few more questions and assured him we wouldn’t forget him if we found Karlynn. I hung up, turned to Scott, and said,
“Dig out the map and find the quickest route to Twin Falls.” The map was in his lap. He unfolded and studied it.

“Bad news,” he said. “We have to backtrack. Gotta head back to Salt Lake City and pick up Interstate Eighty-four. It heads
north into Idaho. So much for getting her ass to a warmer climate.”

Three hours later we were at the Pride of Idaho truck stop in Twin Falls. We handed out lots of posters and asked lots of
questions to lots of people. She was headed north. Wearing black boots, jeans, a white T-shirt (probably one of mine), and
a black leather jacket. Possibly with a trucker out of Arkansas. A trucker out of Arkansas—that really narrowed it down.

The temperature dropped when the sun went down. It was dark and cold. We were tired. I felt bad that the dogs had been more
or less confined to the back of my truck for three days. We stopped at a motel that looked reasonably clean. We walked into
the lobby and took our place in line behind a family that was evidently making a cross-country journey, and a man in a suit
who was probably in sales.

The girl behind the counter was in her early twenties and was having a tough time getting people registered because the phone
kept ringing. From what I could tell, some callers wanted to make reservations and some were guests needing one thing or another.

She finally got the family registered, but that had taken nearly ten minutes. The phone rang as the salesman had started to
say he wanted a room. I rolled my eyes at the salesman and he nodded in agreement. Scott stepped out for a minute. About two
minutes later the girl behind the counter was still on the phone. She said, “Hello? Hello?” and then hung up. “The line went
dead,” she explained.

The salesman got his room and we got ours—a nonsmoking room with two queen beds. On the top floor so we would not have to
put up with noise from anyone above us. I registered us as David Hume and Rene DesCartes, paid cash for the room and the pet
deposit, parked the truck, and let the dogs run around while Scott carried our gear upstairs.

After the dogs had done their thing, I led them up to our room, where Scott was in a chair, casually cleaning his fingernails
with his pocket knife. “Kind of funny how the phone went dead just when we really needed the clerk to focus on getting us
a room,” I said.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” he said.

“And sometimes He works through your pocket knife?”

“I’m just His instrument,” Scott said with a smile. I sat down on one of the beds and started taking my shoes off.

“Besides,” Scott added, “I’m tired of waiting in lines because businesses are too cheap to hire enough help. All I did was
shift the cost created by inadequate staffing back to the owner. Instead of us paying the cost by waiting in line, he can
pay the cost by having someone come out here and fix his phone line. That’s how the free market is supposed to work.”

I turned to the three dogs on the floor and said, “There you have it.”

Y
OU MIGHT AS WELL
come home,” Matt said. “The deal is off. The grand jury indicted her for bond jumping. The judge signed the warrant two hours
ago. Karlynn is a fugitive, and my credibility with the FBI is shot.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them the truth. Adrienne Valeska called me after lunch and asked if I had any idea why Karlynn hadn’t shown up at
the marshal’s office. I told her Karlynn had ditched you Monday and you’d been looking for her ever since.”

“How did that play?”

“Not well, but what can they do? I had no obligation to tell them Karlynn was missing.”

“They know I was babysitting her.”

“So what? There was no crime until she failed to appear, and you were working overtime to find her and get her back here on
time.”

“What did you tell them about my efforts to track her down?”

“Nothing. I told them I hired you on behalf of Karlynn as part of our defense team, and they can’t compel you to say a damn
thing.”

“Is that true?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got a kid researching it.”

“They’ll be looking for me, hoping I’ll lead them to Karlynn.”

“Come home. Get back to your life. It’s not your problem now. Karlynn screwed herself.”

“She left a few things with me,” I reminded him.

“Bury it. We’ll reassess in five years.”

“Let me think on it,” I said. “Maybe I can find Karlynn and still make it back to Colorado by the time Jayne returns from
China.”

“What are you going to do if you find her, make a citizen’s arrest?”

“Maybe I can help her disappear.”

“That would be a federal crime.”

“Only if I get caught.”

“Speaking of getting caught,” Matt said, “what are you going to tellBugg?”

“I’ll tell him I can’t find her. Last time anyone saw her she was in the Greyhound station in Biloxi, Mississippi. The locals
think she might have been eaten by a gator.”

“Works for me,” Matt said.

“Say hi to the guys for me. I’ll call you in a few days. You’ve got my cell phone number if you need it.” I ended the call
and put the cell phone down on our table.

It was Friday. The day Karlynn was supposed to enter the Witness Protection Program. The day Prince was supposed to enter
the Witness Protection Program. It was just past six. We were at a seedy bar and grill outside Boise. It had a good jukebox,
a few pool tables, and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on tap. We had spent two days talking with everyone we could meet between Twin
Falls and Boise, but the trail had grown cold.

A waitress in jeans approached our table. Scott ordered a strip steak.

“You want fries with that?” she asked.

“You use Idaho potatoes?” Scott replied.

“I’m sure we do,” she said. No sense of humor.

“I’ll have the filet,” I said. “Make mine rare.”

“Fries?”

“No, thanks.”

The music stopped, so I walked over to the jukebox and fed it three dollar bills. It was a country kind of place, but that
was all right because I love old country music as well as old rock ’n’ roll. I don’t like the new country sound much, though.
It all sounds the same to me. I prefer the old, twangy country. My three dollars would buy us twenty-one songs by artists
such as Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard. And if that didn’t satisfy us, we had more money out in the truck,
ably guarded by Buck, Wheat, and Prince.

I walked back to our table. “You want to hit the road tonight?” Scott asked.

“No, I need a good night’s sleep.”

“I figure we could make Denver in one long day, if the weather’s good.”

“No use killing ourselves,” I said. “We can spend tomorrow night in Rock Springs or Rawlins and drive on into Denver on Sunday.”

“I love this music,” Scott said. “It’s a shame nobody plays it anymore. I’ve got to think we aren’t the only ones who enjoy
it.”

“I would have loved to be a disc jockey in the forties and fifties,” I said. “Just sit around some small-town radio station
drinking coffee and playing good music.”

“That would’ve been a good life,” Scott agreed.

The steaks took longer than they should have. I decided to call Bugg and give him the bad news. When he answered his phone,
he just said, “Bugg.”

“Pepper Keane,” I said.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Idaho,” I said.

“Any leads?”

On the theory that you should never tell a bigger lie than necessary, I decided not to tell him Karlynn had been devoured
by an alligator in Mississippi. “We know she passed through here,” I said. “She was catching rides with truckers. She told
one of them she was headed to Seattle.”

“Seattle?”

“Yeah. Any idea why she’d go there?”

“No clue.”

“You want me to keep looking?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I don’t care what it costs or how long it takes; you find her. And the dog, too.”

The steaks arrived. Mine was rare, just the way I like it. I am ambivalent about eating meat, and I struggle with the morality
of breeding animals just to kill them, but this wasn’t the kind of place where I was going to be able to get a plate of fettuccine
Alfredo.

“What happened to being eaten by a gator in Mississippi?” Scott said.

“We’re in Idaho. Telling him she was headed to Seattle seemed more believable.”

“But there are no gators in Seattle,” Scott said. “You blew any chance of us ever using the gator story.”

“Could be a stray gator,” I said. “Got lost. Made it across the Panama Canal. Didn’t like California. Swam up the coast to
Portland, then decided to head up to Seattle to drink coffee and listen to grunge.”

“Does Bugg want us to keep looking?” Scott said.

“Absolutely.”

After supper we ordered a pitcher of beer, enjoyed the jukebox, and talked about nothing in particular. The crowd got a little
rougher as the dinner hour passed and the hardcore drinkers and pool players trickled in.

“So, what’s up with you and the therapist?” Scott said.

“Nothing’s up,” I said.

“Okay.”

“She’s someone I might be interested in getting to know better if I didn’t have Jayne.”

“Okay.”

“Jayne will be home in a week,” I said.

“And when she leaves?”

“C’mon, at least let me enjoy the holidays with her before I start thinking about where the relationship is going and all
that.”

“Just making conversation,” he said.

“What are you and Bobbi doing for Christmas?” I asked.

“Hadn’t thought much about it. Probably hit the slopes once or twice. Other than that, I’d be happy to sit around and watch
football the whole time, but I’ll probably get dragged to the Nutcracker ballet somewhere along the way.”

The beer remaining in our pitcher was warm, and rather than finish it off, we ordered a new pitcher. Someone else had managed
to slip a few bucks into the jukebox when I wasn’t looking, and we were now being subjected to some of the new country music.

Four young skinheads wandered in around eight-thirty, wearing mostly black. They snagged an empty table and ordered some beer.
At about the same time the members of a band started to appear and set up their equipment behind a small dance floor. “Friday
night in Boise,” Scott said.

Seeing the skinheads made me start thinking about the death of my cousin Hal. I thought about the anonymous man who had called
a radio station the next day proclaiming that Hal’s death should serve as a warning to white cops that protect niggers and
faggots. Paul Krait had told police the caller sounded like a man named Skull who had narrated a hate-filled audiotape making
its rounds in the skinhead community. On the tape Skull had touted an Aryan Resistance camp in Idaho. And I remembered how
Krait had answered when I had asked how anyone was supposed to get in touch with Skull: “I don’t know, man; I guess you just
had to head up to Idaho and ask around.”

I was in Idaho. I was a few feet from some skinheads. Why not ask around? I walked over to the skinheads, leaned over their
table, and in a real friendly voice said, “You guys are skinheads, right?” I was being a smart aleck, but I figured God wouldn’t
have given me that talent if He didn’t want me to use it.

The biggest of the four, who wasn’t that big, said, “What’s it to you?” He was the leader.

“I’m trying to find a guy named Skull. He’s a skinhead. Heard he was in Idaho. You guys are skinheads. We’re in Idaho. Thought
you might know where I could find him.” I smiled.

“Never heard of him,” the big one said. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old.

“He runs some kind of paramilitary camp,” I said.

“You’re in the wrong part of Idaho,” another one said. He had the Nazi SS symbol tattooed on the side of his face. “Those
fuckers are all up north.” The bigger one shot him a look that said “shut the fuck up.”