Lost Souls

chapter 41

Frost and Dagget had walked to the park by different routes. Having decided to work more directly as a team, they left together.

Dagget was staying at one of the town’s four motels-Falls Inn-on Falls Road just north of Beartooth Avenue. The inn stood near the river with a view of the natural wonder after which Rainbow Falls had been named.

Over a distance of five hundred feet, the river stepped down six times, providing cascade points across its entire width. The highest falls measured only twelve feet; the lowest, seven. The cumulative effect stirred pride in the hearts of the members of the Chamber of Commerce. The spectacle was a must-see if you were already in town, but it didn’t warrant a weekend stay and a memory stick full of photographs.

In his motel room, Dagget could hear the falls 24/7 even with the windows closed. He said it was a soothing sound, as effective as a lullaby.

“Still sleeping well?” Frost asked as they drew near the Bearpaw Lane entrance to the park.

“Like a baby, even though the sound makes me get up for the john six times a night. I know the route from the bed to the pot so well I don’t really need to wake up even halfway to answer the urge.”

21st-Century Green Incorporated, dedicated to viable alternative sources of clean energy, had rented a small furnished house for three months, which was where Frost bedded down. The company didn’t exist, except on paper, and Frost wasn’t its property scout, as he claimed to be, but the landlord had been paid in full in advance, which was as real as anything got in contemporary America.

Green was the perfect camouflage these days. If you worked for a company with green in its name, you were assumed to be responsible, compassionate, farsighted, of high moral character, one of the good guys-which was ironic, because Frost was one of the good guys even though he worried not at all about his carbon footprint.

“If I were a serial killer,” Frost said, “I’d travel the country pretending to be an environmental activist, wearing clothes made from soybean fabric. Women wouldn’t just throw themselves at me, they’d also give me the hatchet to chop them up with.”

“I don’t need soybean clothes,” Dagget said. “I have the natural pheromones that women can’t resist.”

“Yeah? You have them in a spray can or a roll-on stick?”

The house rented by 21st-Century Green was on Bearpaw, across the street from the park.

Frost said, “Come on over. We’ll check the computer, see where Chief Jarmillo is, then maybe do some surveillance on him.”

The two-bedroom bungalow was furnished as if austerity had been proclaimed the new glamour, but at least it was clean.

As they passed through the living room and dining room to the kitchen, where Frost’s laptop and scanner were set up, Dagget said, “This makes Shaker furniture look decadent. Does the place come with a bed of nails?”

“No, but there’s a complimentary selection of woven bramble scourges if you’d like to whip yourself.”

“Maybe later. While you’re checking on Jarmillo, I’ll call Moomaw, see if the whistle-blower has turned up anything more about this. I don’t mind flying backward and upside down, but I don’t like flying blind, too.”

Maurice Moomaw was their superior in the Bureau. No one dared make fun of his name, even though Maurice was his middle name and his full name was Saint Maurice Moomaw. His father had been a black activist who changed his surname from Johnson, and his mother had been a devout Catholic who insisted on naming him after one of the few black saints. Maurice Moomaw had skin, hair, and eyes all pretty much the same shade of mahogany, and he stood as big as a tree. He had a law degree from Yale, and though he would never say a cross word to a subordinate in front of anyone else, in private he could cut you in half with words faster than a chain saw could do the job.

As Frost booted up the laptop and checked on Jarmillo, Dagget spoke with Moomaw by satellite phone, using the word sir a lot. When he terminated the call and came to the table, he said, “Moomaw says word is the Moneyman is coming here tomorrow.”

Frost was surprised.

“Well, not to this monk’s cell of yours,” Dagget said, “but he’s coming somewhere in the Rainbow Falls area, they don’t know where. He’s coming in by chopper from Billings.”

“Why?”

“They don’t know why. Probably to see what his money’s buying.”

“This is big. Moomaw thinks it’s big, doesn’t he?”

“Moomaw now thinks it’s huge.”

“This is dirty business of some kind. Why would the Moneyman risk being tied to it?”

“Dirty business is his favorite kind. Maybe you’ll get a chance to ask him why.”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Frost said.

“Except it’s pretty much certain, if you ask the question, you’ll get a bullet for an answer.”