Almost Midnight (20 page)

Tom let the remark pass. He’d heard others exactly like it in recent weeks. At any rate, he’d been too busy of late trying to clean up the mess Lloyd had left behind to think of pinning a medal on anyone.

It was quite a mess, with more blasted-out lives than Tom cared to think about. Just a few weeks earlier he and Chip Mason had spent several hours in Taney County interviewing Billie Marlene MaCrae, one of the many walking wounded in the region’s drug wars. Forty years old with brown hair and brown eyes, good looks
faded by hard mileage, MaCrae first met Lloyd in 1985 through her then boyfriend Bill Gold, a tough and raunchy guy who rode with the Galloping Goose motorcycle gang out of Kansas City. Lloyd, looking to step up production, taught MaCrae and Gold how to cook meth and helped set them up in labs at two locations in Douglas County. In late 1986 MaCrae fled the county after Gold beat her to a pulp and burned her car. Lloyd, bless his heart, put her up at a motel in Cape Fair for a stretch and then she moved in with Kendall Schwyhart in Lampe. She was visiting relatives in Oklahoma when Gold, in March of 1987, confronted Schwyhart at his home and stabbed him in the side, leaving him to bleed to death in his living room. Lloyd Lawrence, Kendall Schwyhart, and Bill Gold: three of the leading outlaws in southwest Missouri—two of them now dead, the third awaiting trial on murder charges. MaCrae told Tom and Chip that she was trying to put her life back together.

Over in Reynolds County, not long after Tom and Chip’s meeting with Billie MaCrae, Carl Watson and Doug Loring helped bust a meth lab that was being run out of a trailer belonging to Billie Dahms, a hard case known locally for his prowess at bare-knuckle boxing. The day before the bust, during an otherwise quiet evening at home, Dahms had shot his wife, Brenda, in the head. At the county courthouse in Centerville, he told investigators that he’d gotten into the crank business in 1986 when Lloyd approached him at the cockfights in Blue Eye and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He said that he’d never been to the Lawerence farm property over in Taney County and that he’d last seen Lloyd alive in January 1988. He also said that he knew Darrell Mease but hadn’t heard from him in quite some time. He had no idea where Darrell could be found.

“W
E’RE GOING TO
have to do something about Slick,” Darrell said, climbing into the station wagon and slamming the door. He’d left Slick outside, tied to a tree.

Mary started to cry.

“Go ahead and shoot him,” she said.

Shooting the bulldog had never even crossed Darrell’s mind. Whipping him, sure, maybe even abandoning him, but certainly not shooting him. But now that Mary had mentioned it, shooting him didn’t seem like such a bad idea. It had been one thing after another with Slick in recent weeks: growling at Mary, bullying Gretchen Louise, once or twice trying to attack kids in the park in Glenwood Springs. The dog had become a menace.

Slick certainly hadn’t helped his cause just now. He’d been at his defiant worst. They’d been getting ready to move on after spending the night at a creek near Rifle, Colorado. When Mary tried loading him into the car he snarled at her and held his ground. Sweettalking didn’t work; nothing worked—he wouldn’t budge. Darrell attached his leash and secured him to the tree but when he stepped back the dog came up on him fast with a murderous look in his eye.

So maybe shooting him wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Maybe at this point they didn’t have any other option.

Darrell asked Mary if she was sure. She nodded and said she wanted his collar and lead rope to remember him by.

Darrell drove down Route 6 a quarter of a mile and left Mary and Louie by the side of the road. He then backtracked, pulled up beside Slick, and shot him from the car. He buried the dog at the base of a large pink granite boulder.

Afterward, headed south toward Grand Junction, Mary sat motionless in the passenger seat, looking straight ahead, muffling sobs. Darrell didn’t know what to say so he decided against saying anything. It hadn’t been his idea, shooting Slick, though he was convinced it had been the right thing to do. He hoped it wouldn’t drive a wedge between them.

Early afternoon, sitting in a parking lot near downtown Grand Junction, down to their last dollar, trying to figure out their next move, they were approached by a bag lady pushing a shopping cart. After chatting with her a bit, Mary, who’d dabbled in witchcraft back in high school, sensed that the old woman might possess psychic powers.

“Will we be rich someday?” she asked. “Yes, you will,” the bag lady answered.

An upbeat forecast, but Darrell wasn’t able to muster much enthusiasm. Not when their immediate challenge was simply scraping together a few bucks so they could get back on the road. He knew Mary wouldn’t like it but he decided he’d try and sell some of the meth he’d been carrying with him since Missouri.

They left the car near a park across from the Greyhound station and walked down to the pedestrian mall on Main Street, a six-block stretch of Western-wear shops, bookstores, and smart-looking bistros. There was plenty of life on the mall, transients hanging out on benches, office workers chasing after a quick sandwich and beer, but for Darrell’s purposes the place might as well have been deserted. Never mind actually selling the meth: it would have been a score simply giving some of it away. He was uncomfortable approaching people and whenever he worked up the nerve the results were pretty much the same. He was rebuffed, stared off, ignored. He couldn’t understand it: back home people would have been climbing over one another trying to get a taste. Adding insult to injury, the last guy he approached before packing it in for the day gave him a religious tract.

“Look at this,” he said, showing it to Mary. “I’m out here trying to make a sale and this clown’s trying to save me.”

He wanted to throw the tract away but Mary said she’d prefer hanging on to it.

Later on, looking for somewhere to sleep, they turned onto a dirt cutaway just south of town near the intersection of U.S. 50 and 32 Road and parked behind a mound of alkali. They were awakened in the morning by the sound of bullets whizzing over the station wagon. Without realizing it, they’d spent the night on the firing range of the Orchard Mesa Gun Club. They considered themselves lucky just escaping in one piece.

No sense pushing it too far though. The stopover in Grand Junction obviously wasn’t working out. They decided they’d hit pawnshop row on Colorado Avenue, pick up some cash, and clear
out of town as fast as possible. They got two hundred dollars at Credit Jewelry & Loans for the assault rifle they’d bought in Louisiana six months earlier and another twenty dollars at a pawnshop around the corner for some binoculars. It was more than enough to give them a chance for a fresh start somewhere in Arizona.

I
N OCTOBER INVESTIGATORS
back in Missouri caught a break when Mary’s Dodge Diplomat was located at Inner Space Storage in Alexandria, Louisiana. The manager of Inner Space, wondering why he hadn’t been receiving rent money from Mary, opened the shed in which the car was stored and then called the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Department. After running the plate and scoring a hit, detectives with the department contacted Chip Mason in Taney County.

Chip flew down the next day with Tom Martin. A search of the Dodge turned up nothing, but it was by no means a wasted trip. Checking with the local Motor Vehicles office, Chip and Tom learned that Mary had purchased a blue Oldsmobile station wagon (Louisiana plate 195E178) in Alexandria on March 23. At least now they had updated information for the NCIC database.

T
HE TRIPLE T TRUCK STOP
sits right off exit 268 on Interstate 10, a few miles east of Tucson on the way to El Paso. It’s one of the busiest truck stops in the southwest, tractor trailers pulling in and out twenty-four hours a day, usually a hundred or more big rigs jamming the parking lots out back and along the side. Inside there are rest rooms and showers, a trucker’s store and gift shop, a videogame station, a barbershop, and, the main attraction, Omar’s Highway Chef Restaurant.

Outside there are fuel pumps, a truck scale and truck wash, an oil-and-grease depot, a CB shop, and a chiropractor’s trailer. There’s also the sign, perched fifty feet above the grease-stained pavement
out front: three blood-red T’s emblazoned on a white oval background, the T in the middle slightly larger than the two flanking it so that from the highway at night they resemble the three crosses of Calvary.

The restaurant is where most of the action takes place, a perpetual clutter and clatter, two big rooms, one with a horseshoe-shaped counter and a display case filled with thick-cut pies. Show up at three or four in the morning, almost any time at all, and you’ll find truckers hunched over coffee or digging into bacon and eggs. Triple T is a regular stop for many of these guys, and they’re on a first-name kidding basis with the waitresses in black pants, white shirts, and maroon aprons serving the counter and waiting on tables. Just beyond the restaurant’s inside door, at the edge of a small lounge area, there’s a metal stand containing neat stacks of dust-coated pamphlets with titles such as
What Must I Do to Become Saved?
and
Repentance: The Battle for Your Soul
.

Darrell breezed right by the pamphlets on his way in. He’d been coming to the truck stop quite often of late and he always breezed right by. Repentance and salvation weren’t uppermost on his mind these days. He grabbed a spot at the counter and ordered a Pepsi, but soon caught himself eyeing the pies. He made a mental note not to sit so close to the display case next time. No sense tempting himself with something he couldn’t afford. He barely had enough change in his pocket to cover the cost of the Pepsi. But who could tell? Maybe Roamin’ Joe would show up and his luck would change. Maybe tomorrow he’d be able to treat Mary to a full-course meal, dessert included, all the pie they could eat.

Heaven knows, he was due a change of luck. This was the eighth or ninth time he’d dropped by Triple T since they’d arrived in Tucson a month ago and so far he’d been shooting blanks. At first the place had seemed a sure thing. The biggest and busiest truck stop in the area: if he couldn’t unload some crank here, there was no telling where he could unload it. Everyone knew truckers used meth to stay awake during those long midnight hauls. But no way: with the exception of Roamin’ Joe, everyone he’d approached so far
had turned him down. Either they were born-again and had gone off drugs altogether or they’d switched from meth to something else. It was unbelievable. After so many times coming out, only one person had shown even the slightest interest. Somehow or other, he had to make a sale. He was worn to the bone by their constant money problems. And he knew Mary was, too.

Their first couple of weeks in Tucson had been the worst, scrounging around, living off handouts, selling newspapers in the street. This couldn’t have been the kind of life Mary had envisioned for herself. There were times Darrell thought he might lose her. Then she’d gotten a job at the Arby’s on 6th Avenue near Veteran’s Boulevard and their circumstances had improved a bit. At least now they had money for some necessities: groceries, rent, gas, an occasional all-you-can-eat buffet. Those buffets had been a godsend. After their long months on the road, they’d learned to milk them for all they were worth. They’d eat their fill and when they couldn’t eat anything more Mary would coolly slip some food into her bag for later on.

Their circumstances were improved, sure, but still not nearly good enough. Even with Mary working, each day was a struggle just getting by. Darrell hadn’t been able to find a steady job, the story of his life, and he’d grown increasingly miserable knowing he hadn’t been pulling his weight. So he’d started coming out to Triple T in the hope of making a quick sale. But this was it: if something didn’t go down today, he was calling it quits. He wouldn’t be coming here again.

Two nights earlier he’d gone out behind the truck stop where there was a small circular dirt area rimmed by flat-topped rocks and cactus plants. Truckers sometimes congregated back here after dark, sharing a bottle and shooting the breeze. A young guy with shoulder-length hair and tattooed arms sauntered up and said, “What’s up?”

“I’m trying to sell.” Just like that. Straight to the point.

They ducked into the shadows so the young guy could give it a sample.

“Not bad,” he said. “Listen, everybody calls me Roamin’ Joe. I’ll tell you what, come back in a couple hours and I’ll have your rent money. Any luck, I’ll have your rent for next week, too.”

Darrell came back in a couple of hours and then twice again the next day. He lurked around out back, he patrolled the parking lots, he cooled his heels in the restaurant. No sign of the guy. He thought of asking around for him but decided against it. Why risk complicating matters?

So he’d returned today for one last shot and still no sign of him. He sat at the counter for an hour or so, nursing his Pepsi, and then he took one final swing through the truck stop, checking everywhere. Forget about it, he muttered to himself. It was a hopeless cause. No way was he going to sell any of those drugs.

Five or six hours later, sitting with Mary in their tiny rental trailer, Darrell still couldn’t get over his run of bad luck out at Triple T.
I must be the least successful drug dealer in the world
, he thought.

He was sick of being broke and jobless, sick of being in the doldrums. Come to think of it, he was sick of the rental trailer, too. They’d only been living there several weeks but both he and Mary were already dreaming of greener pastures. The trailer itself wasn’t so bad, a sawed-off number tucked into a funky semicircle of a trailer park in South Tucson, almost directly behind the Paradise Motor Inn on 6th Avenue. Rather it was the surrounding neighborhood that was getting them down: Sixth Avenue this side of town was a grungy stretch of tire-repair shops, check-cashing joints, discount food and clothing outlets, bummer bars, last-ditch apartment rentals, and vacant lots. It was sometimes a challenge simply navigating the sidewalk without stumbling over the discarded needles and empty Night Train and T-Bird bottles. No sense kidding themselves: Darrell and Mary knew they weren’t cut out for this particular brand of urban living. The trailer afforded them a semblance of domesticity but most nights they probably would have preferred camping under the stars.