Biker (21 page)

“What for?” she whined. “Ginger and Nathan aren't in any danger. Just for a couple hours.”

“Forget it.” Was she crazy? Didn't she realize he had a job to do, that there was a maniac on the loose?

Vern's front door opened. Vern peered out like a March groundhog, saw his cousin and motioned him inside. Lester got out of the truck. He looked like a stiff breeze would knock him over. He wore wraparound sunglasses over a shirt so big it looked like a spinnaker. His long unkempt hair fell to his shoulders. Only his shoes were brand new, some kind of high zoot sneaker.

Cass and Pratt crossed the street and entered the bar. The air conditioner over the front door sounded like it was self-destructing. They paused inside the door for their eyes to adjust.

“Hey there, Pratt,” Vern said. “This here's my cousin Lester.”

Lester took off his sunglasses and turned toward them. His black hair, beak, and squinty eyes suggested Moe Howard. He smelled of tobacco, graphite and something atavistic.

Pratt moved around Cass and put out his hand. “Josh Pratt. Pleased to meet you.”

The thin Indian took Pratt's hand in a surprisingly strong grip. “Lester Lovejoy, how ya doin'.”

Vern washed glasses behind the bar. “I told Cuz about the deal.” Vern went in the back.

Lester fixed timeless patient eyes on Pratt. Pratt removed his wallet and counted out four hundred dollars. “Half now, half later.”

Lester folded the cash and stuck it in the breast pocket of his worn flannel shirt. “What is it you want me to track?”

“Wendigo.”

Lester grunted. “Ain't no Wendigo.”

“A man, Lester. I want you to track a man.”

“That's what I thought.”

“Y'all better skedaddle before the sheriff notices your truck,” Vern said.

“Doesn't he have better shit to do right now?” Pratt said.

“I'm just sayin'.”

Pratt turned to Lester. “You ready?”

Lester gazed longingly at the massed booze bottles behind the bar. “I reckon.”

They went outside, putting on their sunglasses and tugging their caps down low.

“I'll follow,” Lester said, getting in his truck.

“Be easier you ride with us,” Pratt said. He wanted the benefit of Lester's wisdom on the way in.

“All right.” Lester followed them across the street and got in the back, leaning in the corner with his legs stretched across the rear seat at an angle.

They drove east on the state highway until they came to the turnoff to Moon's valley, a wire gate between fence posts like thousands of others they'd passed. No one had repaired the cut wire. There were a lot more tire tracks than before. The truck jounced over sink-sized potholes and rocks.

What a bleak, terrible place, Pratt thought.

“We're looking for a sixteen-year-old boy who has been turned into a sort of animal man.” Pratt explained the procedure as best he could. Lester kept his eyes on the sere landscape and did not comment.

“Kid reeks to high heaven,” Pratt said.

“I ain't no dog. I don't track by smell. I track by what I can see and what makes sense to me.”

“Sure. I mean he's got problems, curvature of the spine. I wonder how far he could get on his own. He can't be too eager to change his surroundings if this is all he's ever known. I have a feeling he's hanging around, keeping an eye on the place, waiting for everyone to leave and for Moon to come back.”

Cass put a hand on his thigh. Pratt removed it. She put it back. It crept closer to his package. He removed it again.

“Casss …”

She giggled. She thought it was funny. Pratt needed all his concentration to keep the truck on the road and avoid scraping the transmission off on the rocks. Cass put her hand on his thigh. He bent back her little finger and placed the hand back in her own lap.

“OW!”

Pratt kept his eyes on the road. Cass crossed her arms and pouted. Lester stared out the side window, oblivious.

“Coyote,” he said softly. Pratt looked in time to see a shadow disappear behind a rock. Twenty-five minutes later they wallowed up and over a ridge and beheld the little valley, the Quonset hut, the well, tepee, and stand of cottonwood. Yellow crime tape had been strewn around and a Caterpillar backhoe blazed yellow in the noon sun. There were six shallow depressions where it had gouged the earth.

There was no sign of life. Robbins County didn't have the bucks to leave a deputy watching a defunct meth lab. Pratt piloted the big Dodge down the boulder-strewn trail and parked it in the shade of a cottonwood.

They got out. Pratt headed for the hut. Cass walked toward a nearby hill to show her displeasure. Lester followed Pratt. The door was open.

Lester stuck his nose in and jerked his head out. “Bad medicine,” he spat.

“Meth lab,” Pratt said, forcing himself in. Breathing through his mouth he walked to the far end of the hut where Eric had made his nest and gathered a handful of fur. Some of the bedding had been taken. The empty water bowl and another containing a crust of dog food remained. The chemicals were gone.

When he came out Lester crouched atop a nearby sandstone hummock surveying the landscape. Pratt stepped into the blazing heat and walked up the grippy stone. Sweat trickled down his forehead and back. By the time he got to Lester his collar was wet. Pratt pulled his cap lower on his forehead and hunkered down next to the tracker. He held out a tuft of fur.

“Kid sheds like a Bernese. He's got all kinds of fur: brown, white, black …”

Lester put a finger to his lips. Pratt shut up and tried to see what the tracker saw. He let his eyes slowly swivel one hundred and eighty degrees. Hills and scrub. Creosote and Spanish bayonet. To the west lay mountains covered in a green furze—Ponderosa pine. Pratt looked up. Black raptor shapes flitted against the sky. Lester rose like smoke and took off down the hill. Pratt had to run to catch up.

Lester circled the top of the next hill and proceeded to the one after that, southeast of the hut. He stood atop this hill with feet a shoulder width apart, stuck his finger in his mouth and held it up. Feeling the wind. The Indian went down on his haunches and focused his attention on the ground. The hill was covered with a stubble of straw, a wino's five-day growth. Carefully Lester reached out and plucked something from the weeds. He held it up.

A tuft of fur.

Pratt crouched nearby. Lester swept his gaze from horizon to horizon. His eyes didn't move in their sockets. His head moved. He stood and did a three sixty. He reached into his voluminous trousers and removed an Altoids tin, which he opened. Inside was a crushed leaf. Lester dumped the contents into his hand and flung them into the air. A breeze caught and fanned them out like brown confetti. Lester watched them flutter until they disappeared.

Lester crouched and stayed that way without twitching a muscle. Pratt timed it. The sun beat down. Pratt thought of Lawrence and the
Rub al Qali
. Civilizations rose and collapsed. Seas swallowed the earth and receded. Pratt was about to say something when Lester rose and turned to him. Eleven minutes.

“Give me the other four hundred dollars,” he said.

Pratt stepped up. “Half now, half when you deliver.”

“The boy went that way.” Lester pointed southeast. “He's terrified of men, of cars, especially of trucks, but he knows how to track and he knows how to hide.”

“How do you know this?”

“I just know. Something else I know.”

“What's that?”

“There's the sheriff.” Lester turned and loped off into the hills.

Pratt had that “oh shit” feeling as he turned around. The sheriff had arrived unheard in his new blue and white Dodge Charger, which exuded jackboot authority. Cass was talking to DeWitt near the car's front fender. He loomed over her like a butte. The sheriff looked Pratt's way and smiled. Cass saw him and motioned him in.

Pratt made his way to the bottom of the hill, a dried-up coulee. He was no longer visible to the sheriff. He could just ease on outta there, hook up with Cass later. He could read the sheriff's malice from a hundred yards, never mind the smile. Pratt knew the kind too well. Never had much luck with cops.

Pratt reminded himself that he had sworn on the Holy Bible to tread a righteous path, unpleasant though that might be. He'd promised Chaplain Dorgan and he'd promised God. He'd promised himself. Pratt pulled a water bottle from his fanny pack and drank it in one swallow. Over the hill, don't step on the rattlesnake and there he was, all six four of him.

“Mr. Joshua C. Pratt!” the Sheriff boomed in rotund tones. “We meet again.”

“How can I help you, Sheriff?”

“This is a crime scene, Mr. Pratt.”

“I have a job to do.”

“The only reason I don't re-arrest you for interfering with police business is sheer pity and sympathy for your ideal.”

And fear of Mason Mazin
.

“I wish you'd told me about this boy sooner, Mr. Pratt.”

“Sir, honestly, I thought Moon was going to run straight back to Wisconsin and kill Cass and my client.”

“That's a matter for the police.”

“I know.”

“Now we got the FBI involved and I don't know what all. I do have some good news for you.”

“What's that, Sheriff?”

“Moon's outta the country. FBI tracked him to LAX, where he boarded a Korean Airlines flight to Hong Kong.”

CHAPTER 39

Pratt watched the sheriff in his rear view as Cass drove up and out of the little valley. The big man stood with his legs spread, hands on hips. He didn't twitch a whisker until he disappeared from Pratt's view. Pratt tried his cell phone. Nada. It wasn't until they reached the outskirts of Hog Tail that he had service. He phoned Calloway.

Calloway answered on the second ring. “Calloway.”

“Heinz, it's Josh Pratt. Is it true about Moon?”

“That he left the country? If you believe the FBI. Why wouldn't you? They got him on camera boarding the plane. Where are you? What's going on?”

“I'm in Wyoming searching for the boy.”

“Lotta people think there is no boy. They think you're shining them on.”

“Why would I do that? Did they talk to Ginger Munz?”

“I believe you, but there are people here who look at your background, and they look at Mrs. Munz' background, and they see a pattern. Your friend's a druggie. I hope for your sake you're not back into that shit. They don't know what's going on but they're damn sure it ain't about no boy.”

“I've been straight since I got out of the joint!” Pratt declared, instantly remembering the line he'd done with the Skulls and the joint he'd smoked with Cass. Well one was part of the job and the other, well it was just a fucking joint. It was practically legal now anyway.

“Like I said, I believe you,” Calloway said. “When will you be back? The feds want to talk.”

“Sometime tomorrow if we leave soon. We have to get my bike.”

“There's another problem.”

Pratt stared out the window as they rolled down Main. “What?”

“Word is the War Bonnets are looking for your scalp. So Moon spread the word. I really don't have anybody I can put on you. Best steer clear of your usual haunts for a while.”

“All right.”

“Call me.”

Cass stopped at one of the two streetlights. “Where's your bike?”

“County impound lot. It's on the way out of town, back the way we came. We have to check out first.”

They returned to Chic's Best Western, retrieved their personal belongings and settled with the teenage clerk.

The impound lot was a quarter mile off the highway on the way out of town, two acres surrounded by a hurricane fence topped with concertina wire. Pratt's bike sat on a concrete slab next to a rat Honda 750 by the refrigerator-white trailer that served as an office.

Pratt inspected his Road King like the DEA going over a box from Panama. They'd done a nice job impounding. Although covered in dust, the Road King was blemish-free. Pratt went into the office and used his credit card to pay the $125 impounding fee. The clerk was a buzz-cut Pillsbury dough boy in Oshkosh B'Gosh coveralls.

“You know where there's a loading ramp around here I can use to get the bike in the truck?”

“You might try the Piggly Wiggly down at Ahrens Plaza. You passed it on the way out of town.”

“Thanks.”

The bike started with the first nudge. Pratt led the way back into town to the modest shopping mall anchored at one end by Piggly Wiggly. They drove around back. There was a loading dock at exactly the height of the pickup's tailgate. Pratt carefully rode his bike up the concrete ramp to the dock, then guided Cass in so that the truck bed was level with the dock. With Cass pushing down, Pratt bungeed the bike, front and rear.

On the way out Pratt sat in the truck while Cass ran into the PW for a quart of orange juice, bananas and granola. She came out and bumped Pratt from the driver's seat.

“Let's roll.”

Cass drove while Pratt tried to sleep. His eyelids kept popping open like a sprung window blind. His gaze roamed. McDonald's, Arby's, Auto Zone, Shell. Anywhere USA. Shiny franchises gave the world a happy, homogenous face. They passed through the exurbs and entered a bleak terrain of wind-smoothed rock and sere prairie.

How long had it taken Moon to achieve his desired affect? A year? Two? Was he still at it, interrupted only by Pratt's arrival? Is that why he had a mountain lion? Sioux/Chinese juju swam in Pratt's head. His desire to destroy something was almost overwhelming.

Cass jerked the wheel and the truck juked like a fullback with the ball. “Pratt, what are you doing? Stop banging the dash! You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, staring out the window at the flat, featureless landscape.