No Going Back

8

At first light I was on my way, skirting Indian Wells and heading for the trailer park where Scott Blackstock lived. Up this far into Navajo County Scott would be in the minority, because approaching ninety-five per cent of the population were of Native American descent. I was assuming a lot: I hadn’t seen the man, had only talked with him on the phone, but during our short discourse he had come across as poor white trash and an arsehole to boot. Then again, what gave me the right to judge him? He was simply a man whose wife had gone missing, presumed dead, so how should he be expected to greet a stranger stirring things up again?

The trailer park was on a low plateau, static caravans set around a circular compound formed of a shoulder-high breeze-block wall. Within the compound was a collection of squat buildings with tin roofs, which I guessed housed washing machines and dryers and suchlike. The caravans were huge compared to those I was familiar with back home in the UK, some of them silver bullet-shaped affairs, others square and ugly with lean-tos and porches tacked on. There was little in the way of grass or flowers or anything that would offer any beauty, and dust devils whirled across the dirt roads. Cars and trucks with a coating of trail dust were parked outside each trailer.

As I drove in, I looked at the mailboxes on poles jammed in the grit to determine which Scott’s trailer was. There was no one up and about yet, other than a couple of skinny dogs rooting in the spillage from a trash can. They stopped and watched my approach, but soon went back to tussling over a choice morsel. I continued towards the far end of the park and finally found the caravan I was seeking.

Parked outside was a battered pick-up truck, alongside a newer jeep. A small lot at the front had once held a flower garden of sorts, but it appeared that Scott wasn’t into watering and weeding. Maybe the garden had been Helena’s way of making the place look more appealing, and now she was no longer around it had been left to return to its natural state.

I parked the GMC alongside the jeep, but didn’t immediately get out. Scott’s trailer was one of the older square type, with a porch and decking, and an annex had been tacked on at the far left corner making it an L-shaped structure. There were no tyres on the hubs, and it didn’t look like the caravan had moved in many a year, nor would it for many more to come. The windows were covered by Venetian blinds, one of them hanging askew. Through the gap, I could see a face peering back at me. Then it was gone, and I got out the GMC and kept my hands by my sides.

The door of the trailer slammed open and Scott Blackstock stamped on to the porch, his face twisted with rage. I had been correct in my assumption: he was no Native American. He was tall, with blond hair and green eyes, a spray of freckles across the bridge of his crooked nose. He had a shotgun broken over his left elbow and was in the process of feeding cartridges into both barrels.

‘You’re the fuck-shit that called me last night,’ he said, snapping shut the gun and lifting it my way. ‘What do they call you again? Hunter? Well, I’m telling you, get off my goddamn property or I’m gonna be doing myself some hunting. You’ve ten seconds and then I’m gonna give you two loadsa buckshot in the ass.’

I didn’t move, apart from to lift my empty hands higher. ‘Take it easy, Scott. I’m not here for trouble.’

‘Shame,’ he crowed. ‘’Cos if you ain’t outta here in ten seconds like I said, trouble’s coming your way.’ He leaned back towards the trailer door. ‘Boys, you want to come on out here?’

There was a rumble from within the caravan, and two more rednecks joined Scott on the decking. One was taller than Scott, an older man, while the second was short and stocky, bearded and with a prodigious gut poking out from the hem of his off-white shirt. The fat one had a liquor bottle in his hand, half empty; but perhaps that was just the pessimist in me. It looked like Scott had been keeping an all-night vigil, awaiting my arrival, and had called in his buddies just in case I did show up.

This could still end up reasonably, but I didn’t think so. The older guy was holding a baseball bat, whacking it into the leathery mitt of his palm. By the look of him, he was lining my head up for a swing. He didn’t worry me: I moved right up to the edge of the decking so that he couldn’t swing at me without first connecting with the uprights holding together the lean-to porch. The stocky one chugged another mouthful of whiskey. Scott made a big deal of pulling back the hammers on the antiquated shotgun.

‘I think if you let me explain myself, you’ll want to listen to what I have to say.’ I stood looking at him.

Scott glanced once at each of his friends. He’d promised them some fun, I guessed. ‘I’m starting to count now. Ten. Nine. Eight…’

‘Quit the melodramatics, Scott,’ I said. ‘We both know you’re not going to shoot.’

‘You don’t think so?’ Scott raised the stock to his shoulder.

I pulled out the S&W and aimed it at him. ‘No. You’re not.’

Scott licked his lips.

‘Neither are you, dick,’ said the fat guy. He took a cumbersome step down off the deck and stood in front of my gun. His grip had shifted on his bottle so that he now held it by the neck. ‘Now get the hell outta here before I kick your ass all the way back—’

Before he finished his threat I slapped the butt of my gun against his temple. The man dropped as though pole-axed, his knees folding under him so that he went down on his backside. Slowly he toppled sideways and I toed the bottle away, to avoid it ending up jammed in his open mouth.

‘Hey!’ The older guy came at me then. True to form he couldn’t get a good crack at me and had to weave past Scott to gain space. By the time he made room it was too late. I shot a sidekick into his front leg, straightening his knee, and as he jerked against the pain I snatched the bat out of his hand and threw it away. A slap of the gun butt to his head sent him down so he was lying across his fat buddy.

‘Are we all done now?’ I asked Scott.

He had taken a couple of steps back, the gun forgotten in his hands. Just as I thought, the weapon was all bluff. If he’d intended using a gun, he wouldn’t have brought the two so-called hard-asses in on the action.

‘Jesus, man, you knocked them out!’

‘I don’t care for people who make threats to me.’ I allowed my words to hang in the air and Scott finally figured them out.

‘I wasn’t really going to shoot.’ He slowly placed the shotgun down by the door to the trailer. ‘Even if I wanted. It doesn’t fire, and hasn’t done for years.’

Maybe he thought I wouldn’t notice that the barrels were plugged when he pointed them at my face. Things like that don’t go unnoticed by someone who’s been on both ends of guns for the past twenty years or so. I shoved my S&W away. ‘Come here, Scott.’

‘What are you planning to do?’

‘Don’t you think we’d best get your friends inside if we’re going to talk? It wouldn’t do to leave them lying here, not with those starving dogs around.’

Scott actually looked to where the mangy hounds were rooting through the garbage, as though they were a threat to the unconscious men. Then he came and helped me haul the older guy into the trailer. It was surprisingly spacious inside, and nothing like the caravans I’d holidayed in as a lad in North Wales. We laid him out on a bunk, made sure he was breathing, then went to wrestle the fat one inside as well. It wasn’t an easy task.

I was sweating by the time I sat down next to a counter in the kitchen area. ‘Could have saved us all a load of bother if you’d agreed to talk in the first place.’

Scott sat next to me, but his eyes were on the two sleeping beauties. ‘The boys ain’t gonna be happy when they wake up.’

‘The boys should thank me for not shooting them in the face,’ I said. ‘Good job I’m one of the good guys, eh?’

Scott glanced once more at his friends, then turned and rested his forearms on the counter. He clasped his hands. ‘What exactly was it you wanted to know?’

‘The circumstances behind Helena’s disappearance,’ I said.

‘You’re a detective, surely you’ve read all about it?’

I didn’t mention that I’d only learned about Helena last night, or that at the time I’d called him I’d been clutching at straws. ‘There’s a difference between what’s reported in the papers and what really happened.’

‘You think I had something to do with her going missing?’

‘No, Scott. If that was the case we wouldn’t be having this friendly chat.’

His gaze flicked back to his friends and I noticed his fingers entwine to stop them shaking. Good. I’d finally gained his full cooperation. I dropped the tough guy act, pulling from my pocket the various pieces I’d put together. I placed the photos of Jay and Nicole down, then the poster with Helena on it. Finally, I unfolded the clipping I’d taken from the newspaper last night and laid out Ellie Mansfield’s image beside the rest.

‘You notice anything about those pictures?’

Unfolding his hands, Scott touched the one of his wife, then his fingers did a slow dance over both Nicole and Ellie’s faces. ‘They look like they could be sisters,’ he admitted.

‘Not sisters,’ I corrected, ‘but the same woman at different ages.’

To prove my point, I lined them up: Ellie, Nicole and then Helena.

He pursed his lips, studied them again. ‘Yeah,’ he breathed quietly.

Then his gaze went to Jay Walker. He said, ‘I can see what conclusion you’re drawing from the disappearance of the others, but what about her?’

The term collateral damage went through my mind, but instead I said, ‘Wrong place, wrong time. I think she was taken because she just happened to be with Nicole.’

‘Who is the kid?’

‘Did you hear about the robbery-homicide a few days ago?’

‘The one at Peachy’s gas station? Yeah, but I thought everyone there died.’

‘So did everyone else. But then Ellie’s family came forward and said Ellie was accompanying the Corbin family. It looks like the girl was snatched by whoever murdered them.’

‘Jeez…’ Scott’s hands folded again, and there were tears in his eyes. I figured that with Nicole and now Ellie going missing it meant that Helena could have been used and discarded by her abductor, and I believed that Scott had came to the same conclusion.

I felt bad for forcing the idea on him, but the more I thought about it, the more weight it held.

‘Are you taking this idea to the cops?’

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Not yet. It’s only a theory and I could be way off-track. The truth is I don’t know if any of it’s connected. That’s why I need to hear about how Helena disappeared.’

Scott surprised me by clicking his fingers. ‘Like that,’ he said. ‘One minute she was there, next she was gone.’

Our conversation, or perhaps the intrusion of the loud click, caused the stocky guy to stir. He groaned and placed a hand on his head, his blunt fingers measuring the egg on the side of his skull. He swore, but that was to be expected.

‘Gimme a minute, huh?’ Scott got up and went to his friend. ‘OK, Burt, take it easy. I had this guy all wrong.’

‘Son of a bitch got me with a sneaky punch…’ said Burt, struggling up to a seated position. ‘I see him again I’ll show him I’m not one to be fucked with.’

Then he noticed me sitting there and shut up. He looked at Scott, his eyes wide, then rolled his head to take in their other buddy who was still out for the count.

‘Rob’s fine. He’ll be OK when he’s slept it off,’ Scott said.

‘What the hell happened?’

‘Like I said, I had this guy all wrong. He’s not another parasite who’s after money.’

At Scott’s words I took a look around the trailer. Judging by the poor state of repair, the cheap TV and accoutrements, there wasn’t much in the way of cash in the Blackstock household. To think that some private dicks had tried to play on his grief and worm cash out of him made me feel a little sick.

Scott passed a mug of cold coffee to his pal. ‘When you’re done with that, check on Rob, OK? Me and Hunter are still talking business and don’t want him going off on one when he wakes up.’

When Scott returned to the counter and sat down, I prompted him. ‘You said that Helena just disappeared?’

‘Yeah, she was walking into Indian Wells to fetch some groceries. She never made it there. When she didn’t get back, I drove in and had a look around but no one had seen her.’

‘You drove in, but Helena walked?’

‘She couldn’t drive and I was sleeping off a hangover. The boys had been over and we’d been playing poker. You know how it is, man.’

‘Had you argued?’

‘First thing the cops asked. No. We didn’t argue. We were good together. Son of a bitch! You know what the cops suggested… that I was no good and Helena had finally seen the light and had upped and left me while she had the chance.’

‘They don’t seem to take missing persons reports very seriously,’ I said.

‘Same with your girls, is it? The cops just brushed it off?’

‘At first, but I spoke with a cop last night. Officer Lewin. He seemed OK.’

Burt, listening from his end of the trailer, chose then to intrude. ‘Lewin? He’s an asshole like all the other cops. He ran me in on a driving under the influence charge.’

‘Were you drunk?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, but…’

I didn’t say anything more and he finally got the message.

He lifted both palms. ‘Ignore me. I’m not here, OK?’

Just about then the other man, Rob, began to come round, and Burt helped coax him back to lucidity with a whispered warning not to try my patience again. Rob seemed content to sit cradling his head in his palms.

‘So… there was no reason you can think of for Helena to leave you? You were good together. No other guy? No other girl with you?’

Scott shook his head sadly. ‘People take a look at us, see poor white trash, and think we go round humping anything that moves. It wasn’t like that with me and Helena. We loved each other. I still love her.’

‘I had to ask,’ I said. ‘But it’s behind us now. Next obvious question… did you and Helena have any enemies?’

‘None to speak of.’

‘What about anyone giving Helena the eye? You know the type I’m talking about. She wouldn’t have to reciprocate for them to show an interest.’

‘I occasionally caught some of them Injun boys giving her the glad eye, but that was about it. They wouldn’t have done anything about it, they knew better than to mess around with me.’

Yeah, the back-up his boys offered made him a real force to be reckoned with, I thought sourly. Like they were going to put off anyone determined to catch Helena’s attention.

‘Anything out of the ordinary happen before or after Helena disappeared?’

‘What, like a ransom demand? No, nothing.’

I was floundering a little, not quite sure where to go with the questioning. I’m not much of a detective and right then I could have done with Rink or Harvey along: someone who knew how to conduct a real interview. It struck me again that I was tugging at a few loose threads — probably unconnected — and trusting too much in the coincidence that three of the missing four girls looked alike. But then again, coincidences do happen, and they often interlink to become synchronicity. And synchronicity can affect the eventual outcome of incidents in the real world. From his bunk, Rob muttered something. Scott and I looked his way, and he stood up and ambled towards us, hanging on to the trailer wall for support. ‘You’re forgetting about the Logans, Scott. Why not tell him about those crazy Logan boys?’

‘The Logans?’ I echoed. ‘Yeah, Scott, why don’t you tell me about them?’

He did.

Before he was even halfway through his story I was itching to get on my way.

The Logans — those crazy Logans — were definitely due a visit, and, judging by their local legend, I was pleased that I hadn’t wasted any bullets on Rob or Burt.