The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Fifty-Three

Erin paced her comfortable room in the Hyatt Regency until the restlessness building up inside her like steam pressure made her feel as if something was going to pop inside her mind if she didn’t get out of this place and do something. Part of her resented that Ben had left her stranded here in this gilded cage while he went off on his own. Another part of her was deeply concerned about him and wanted to help. She shouldn’t have let him go, damn it.

She stalked out of the room, took the lift down to the lobby and after asking at the desk was directed to a business centre with superfast broadband access for hotel guests. Settling in behind a free terminal, she ran the search phrase BIG BEAR TULSA through Google to see what came up. It was what Ben had written down after talking to Kurzweil. It had to mean something.

After some hunting around, the search led her to a website called www.Abandoned-Oklahoma.com, which gave listings of ghost towns and settlements classed as barren, neglected, abandoned and semi-abandoned. She’d never realised there were so many. From the site, she learned that the town of Adonis in neighbouring Muskogee County, de-established in 1949, had once been the nearest community to the old Big Bear farmstead, a wheat-growing concern that had gone bust some time in the fifties and fallen into rack and ruin.

‘Bingo,’ she murmured.

Google Maps helped her to quickly pinpoint the farm. The satellite image zoomed in close enough to get a blurry view of a scatter of agricultural buildings. She blinked. Was this where McCrory had kept his arsenal hidden from the FBI all this time?

‘I’m going,’ she said out loud, drawing a couple of looks from other computer users in the room. She had no idea what she was going to find when she got out there, or even how she could get to such a remote and distant place without a car. Public transport was minimal in these parts. She only knew she desperately wanted to be involved, and that every minute lost was time that Ben was on his own without a soul to help him.

Erin returned to her room to collect her things, then headed quickly out into the street. A cab was her best chance. If she had to, she’d get the driver to take her all the way to Adonis, and worry about paying the fare later.

The sun was beating down hard, and the paving was blinding white in the glare. Erin crossed East 2nd Street and hurried along in the shade of the tree-lined sidewalk in the direction of the towering Bank of Oklahoma high-rise. Please God let there be a taxi, she prayed. Please God let a taxi appear right this moment.

Her heart leapt as, moments later, precisely that happened. The yellow checker cab slowed as she hailed it, cut out of the traffic and pulled into the kerb twenty yards up the street near the entrance to the bank. Erin broke into a jog, amazed at her good fortune. But before she could get to the waiting car, an obese man in a drumskin-tight business suit carrying an attaché case came striding out of the bank, eyes front and talking on a phone, and barged in ahead of her.

‘Too bad Conroy is upset, Artie,’ he was saying in a piping voice, loud enough for the whole street to hear. ‘I want the goddamn Radisson deal closed today. We’re bleeding money on this.’

‘Excuse me,’ Erin said, catching up. ‘But that cab’s mine.’

He jerked around and stared at her in indignation. ‘Hold on, Artie. What?’

‘I said, this cab’s mine,’ she said levelly. ‘I need it.’

He shrugged, and gave her an alligator smile. ‘I just made it mine.’

‘I saw it first,’ she said.

‘What are you, twelve years old? Shit happens. Get another.’

She moved between him and the taxi door, laid a hand on his arm and gave him what she hoped was her best pleading look. ‘I have important business. Please. You don’t realise how important—’

‘Kiss my ass, lady.’ He used his bulk to push past her, almost knocking her down, then opened the taxi door and started wedging himself inside as he resumed his phone call. ‘Nah, just some stupid skank. Like I was saying, Artie. Fuck Conroy.’

Erin stared at this insolent sonofabitch stealing her taxi right out from under her nose. That was when the pressure finally went pop inside her mind.

She took her pistol out of her bag and aimed it in his face.

‘Okay, you asked for it, cheesehog. Out of the damn cab. I said, get out of the taxi, now!’

A few bystanders scattered in alarm. Someone yelled, ‘Whoa, holy shit!’

The fat guy dropped his phone and his case and put up his hands. ‘Jesus Christ. Okay! Okay! Whatever you say, ma’am.’ He plucked his bulk out of the taxi door and stepped away in a hurry, his chins wobbling. The cab driver craned his neck from behind the wheel and gaped at Erin, too stunned to move.

‘POLICE! DROP YOUR WEAPON!’

Erin froze. She hadn’t noticed the two beat cops approaching. They were just ten yards away, Glocks drawn and trained right on her.

She let her pistol clatter from her fingers and put her hands up. One cop covered his partner as he darted across to pick up her gun. ‘Against the car!’ Erin did what they said.

The arrest didn’t take long. Within what seemed like just seconds, a police cruiser screeched up with lights flashing, and in front of the gathering crowd of onlookers Erin was bundled into the back and read her rights through a wire mesh.

She was too shocked to register where the patrol car was taking her. A hand pressed to the top of her head as she got out; she was walked inside a building, handed over, processed, fingerprinted and finally banged up inside a cell. She slumped on a fixed metal bench and put her head in her hands, feeling ready to throw up out of self-disgust and anger.

Minutes went by. Then the cell door rattled and she looked up to see a craggy face leering at her through the bars.

‘Well, what have we here?’ Chief O’Rourke growled. ‘Look what the cat brought in.’