Lost Souls

chapter 48

Deucalion would use Erika’s house as his base of operations. After Jocko proudly displayed his most treasured possessions-which included a collection of funny hats with bells on them, four Buster Steelhammer posters, and DVDs of every version of Little Women ever filmed-he offered his room to the tattooed giant. But Deucalion rarely slept and expected to get even less rest than usual in the days immediately ahead. Instead, he opted for the study because its large sofa would accommodate him if he chose to lie down, and because if he needed to do online research, there was a computer linked to the Internet via a satellite dish.

Carson and Michael would find accommodations at one of the motels in town, which at this time of the year-or virtually any other-would not be fully booked. As homicide detectives in New Orleans and as private detectives in San Francisco, they were urban animals who did their best work when immersed in the buzz and bustle of a city.

Rainbow Falls had no more buzz and only slightly more bustle than a cemetery in bee season. But in less than two hours at Erika’s house, the isolation of the place made Carson feel imprisoned. With apparent disquiet, Michael complained that if the world ended, they wouldn’t know about it until they ran out of milk and had to drive to a store in town. A front-row seat at Armageddon was preferable to the humiliation of being the last to get the news.

Before finding a motel room, they cruised the streets, getting oriented-Carson in the pilot’s seat, Michael in his historically established position. With a population of perhaps ten thousand, the town wasn’t merely a wide place in the road. But anyone not a local might be quickly noticed, and Carson didn’t see any vehicle but their own with California license plates.

“I’m not sure it would make sense for us to try a clandestine approach,” she said. “People who’ve been here most or all of their lives-they’ll smell an outsider in a minute, if they can’t actually spot one at a glance. The more we try to blend in, the more obvious we’ll be.”

“Yeah, and I don’t want to wear a cowboy hat.”

“Look around. Not everyone’s wearing a cowboy hat.”

“I don’t want to wear a toboggan hat, either. And I’ll never wear a floppy hat with bells on it.”

“Gee, I thought my Christmas shopping was finished.”

“Besides, Victor must be keeping a low profile. As an outsider, he’d have to. He’s holed up somewhere, even more than Erika. Maybe the best way to smoke him out is if he learns we’re in the county looking for him.”

Before stores closed for the day, and in respect of a weather forecast of snow, they found a sports-clothing outfitter. They tried on and purchased black Gore-Tex/Thermolite storm suits with foldaway hoods, overlay vests with Thermoloft insulation, gloves, ski boots, and-after some deliberation-the despised toboggan caps.

On the way to the Falls Inn to book a room, unload the Cherokee, and gun-up, they passed the offices of the Rainbow Falls Gazette on Beartooth Avenue. This struck them as a serendipitous development, so Carson hung a U-turn in the street and parked in front of the three-story building.

Like many structures in town, it was well over a century old, with a flat and parapeted roof, reminiscent of Western-movie hotels and saloons on which bad men with rifles skulked behind parapets to fire down on the sheriff when he tried to dart from one point of cover to another. Those buildings were usually wood, but this one was brick, in recognition of hard winters.

When Carson and Michael entered the reception area, the stained-oak beadboard wainscoting, the ornate decorative tin ceiling, and the antique brass fixtures-once gaslights but long ago converted for electrical service-seemed like a stage setting.

The receptionist-a forty-something blonde-wore cowboy boots, a denim skirt, a crisp white blouse, and a bolo tie with a turquoise slide. The triangular ID block on her desk bore the name KATIE. When Carson and Michael boldly identified themselves as private detectives from California, on a case, and asked if the editor or the publisher might be able to see them, Katie said, “I suspect they’ll both be able to see you, since they’re one and the same.”

The man who came out to see them was tall, handsome, looked more like a marshal than an editor, and was as appealing as Jimmy Stewart in one of his aw-shucks roles. His name was Addison Hawk, and after he examined their PI licenses, as he led them back to his office, he said, “The last time we had a private detective visiting-in fact, the only time that I’m aware of-he got himself shot in the buttocks not once but twice.”

Michael said, “That’s the very kind of thing we avoid at just about any cost.”

Hawk sat behind his cluttered desk, and they occupied the two chairs in front of it.

“What kind of case are you on?” the editor asked.

“Even if you weren’t a newspaperman,” Carson said, “we wouldn’t be at liberty to say. I can only tell you that it’s an estate matter involving an inheritance.”

“Someone local could get rich-is that it?”

“Perhaps,” said Carson.

“That sounds so fake to me,” Hawk said, “that I’ve got to think it might be true.”

“We’re assuming someone who publishes and edits a small-town newspaper knows most everybody on his beat.”

“I’m pretty much married to this town, and I’m not embarrassed to say I’m so much in love with it and its history that every morning seems like the first morning of my honeymoon. Some people I don’t know but only because they choose not to know me.”

From a manila envelope, Carson extracted a photograph of Victor from his New Orleans days, which she had brought from San Francisco. She slid it across the desk, and said, “Have you seen this man in Rainbow Falls? He would have come here sometime in the last two years.”

Hawk didn’t react at once, took time to study the photo, but finally said, “I get the feeling I might have seen him once or twice, but I couldn’t tell you where or when. What’s his name?”

“We don’t know what name he’s living under now,” Michael said, “and revealing his real name would violate our client’s privacy.”

“You sure do exhibit an admirable discretion,” Hawk said, with just a small ironic smile.

“We try,” Michael said.

When Hawk returned the photo, Carson presented him a computer printout of a county map that Erika had provided them. On it, she had marked in red the road from which Victor had disappeared in his GL550 Mercedes. “This twenty-four-mile loop winds through both low country and hills before it comes back to the state highway. From what we can see on Google Earth and other sites, this road serves no ranches, no houses, certainly no town, no evident purpose. It runs through completely unpopulated territory, yet it must have cost a fortune to build.”

Hawk held her gaze for a long moment, then searched Michael’s eyes. Finally he said, “That road has a number. It’s on the milepost at the start and on the one at the end, but nobody refers to it by the official number. Folks in these parts call it End Times Highway. Now I’m wondering who you really are.”