Nightcrawlers

27

JAKE RUNYON

Five minutes in Nevada City, and you knew two certainties about the place. The steep streets, narrow lanes, old and false-fronted buildings, and business and street names told you it was an old mining town dating back to the California Gold Rush. And the bookshops, antique stores, boutiques, restaurants, saloons, and bed and breakfasts told you the rich ore being mined there nowadays was the tourist dollar. It was the kind of place Colleen would’ve liked; she’d shared his interest in history, and she’d loved to prowl bookshops and antique stores. He didn’t have an opinion one way or the other. Now that she was gone, it was just a place like all the other places.

They pulled into the center of town a couple of minutes past seven. Two hours to kill, so Runyon found a cafe that was open on a side street off the main drag and they went in there and crawled into a booth. He was tired, gritty-eyed, but not as bad off as Bill. Hollow-cheeked, bags under his eyes, beard stubble stark against a splotchy pallor. They both needed about ten hours’ sleep. Caffeine and something in their stomachs would be enough for now.

“Just coffee,” Bill said when the waitress brought the menus.

Runyon said, “Better eat something.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Just the same. Obvious reason.”

“Yeah. Guess you’re right.”

Runyon ate two bear claws with his tea. Bill broke a doughnut into little pieces and nibbled down about half of it. Neither of them said much; there was nothing left to say until they pinpointed the location of Parcel Number 1899-A6.

Eight o’clock. “Let’s roll,” Bill said. “I can’t sit here anymore.”

They rolled. Mick Savage had provided the location of the Nevada County Administrative Center; it was off Highway 49 on the northern edge of town, easy to find. Big, newish complex-county offices, county jail, main library. The recorder’s office was in the main building, so that was where they parked, as close to the entrance as they could get.

Bill couldn’t sit still there, either. He wanted to be out and moving, so they prowled the landscaped grounds-circling each of the buildings three times. On one circuit of the jail, a county sheriff’s cruiser passed by and the officer inside gave them a long curious look, but he didn’t stop. Just as well. As amped up as Bill was, any sort of conversation might have made the deputy suspicious and then they’d have had to waste time smoothing it over.

At a quarter of nine they waited around in front of the main entrance. “They better open on time,” Bill said once. Talking mostly for his own ears. Runyon still had his engines on idle, but still he could feel the thin blade of tension himself. Getting close to it, now. No guarantees that Lemoyne had taken Tamara and the child up here, but you developed a kind of precognitive instinct when you’d been in police work a long time; he had it now and he sensed that Bill did, too. Parcel 1899-A6 in Rough and Ready was where they were, where some if not all of this business was going to finish.

A woman came into the lobby and opened the doors at nine straight up. Runyon asked her directions to the recorder’s office; two minutes later they were in there and Bill was giving the clerk Mia Canfield’s name and the parcel number and asking for maps to pinpoint the exact location. It took the clerk a few minutes to look it up, bring out a big book of area maps, find the one that showed 1899-A6.

Bill studied the map with Runyon looking over his shoulder. The parcel was a couple of miles outside Rough and Ready, on Old Stovepipe Road. Looked easy enough to find: follow the Rough and Ready Highway through the village, left turn on Bugeye Mine Road, left turn on Old Stovepipe and a quarter of a mile down. The parcel itself was rectangular, half again as deep as it was wide, with a creek running through it lengthwise along the south borderline; the creek and the mileage ought to be all the landmarks they’d need.

Five minutes and they were back in the car, another ten and they were taking the Highway 20 exit off 49. They still weren’t talking, but only because words were unnecessary. They were a single-purpose unit, had been all along. Bill was the emotional type until push came to shove; then he was like a rock. Plenty of proof of that last Christmas, if any was needed. He sensed that you couldn’t ask for a better man to partner with in a tight situation.

As they shot downhill toward the Rough and Ready turnoff, Runyon glanced over and saw that Bill had his piece out-a. 38 Colt Bodyguard-and was checking the loads. In his cop days, when Colleen was still alive, he might’ve told him to put the gun away, it wasn’t safe riding with a loaded revolver in your lap. But he wasn’t a cop anymore, and Colleen was gone, and Bill knew what he was doing; he didn’t say anything. If their positions had been reversed, he’d probably have been doing the same thing.