Buried Biker (21 page)

We continued on the gravel road and finally turned onto the blacktop, where the ride settled down a bit. As we went around a curve, we met a group of bikers coming in our direction who took up most of the road. Aaron veered onto the shoulder, and they swept by us.

Carissa was still crying and shaking. I turned up the heat in the truck, but she still must have been freezing. I suppose the gallant thing to do would have been to offer her my jacket, but I couldn’t see what good that would do. Besides, she’d gotten herself into that fix.

“Where’s your car?” I asked her. A coat and a shoe I could see abandoning, but if her car was somewhere up at the clubhouse, she’d have to retrieve it some way.

She sniffed. “I left it at the park.”

“Which park? One in town?”

She didn’t answer.

I tried again. “The one where we were the other day?”

She nodded, sobs choking her voice. “Yes. I figured it was a good place to look for some of the Predators.”

That was probably true. The park was well known as an open air drug market, and while the Predators probably would not involve themselves in street-level sales to people they didn’t know, it would come as no surprise to find out they were major suppliers of meth to the dealers who hung around there. Aaron knew which park we were talking about. Without saying anything, he turned in that direction.

“How’d you get up to the clubhouse?” I asked.

Carissa sniffed. “When I saw one of the bikers, I went over and asked him if I could go up and see it. At first he didn’t want to take me, but I told him I was looking for you.”

“Why’d that convince him to take you up there?”

“I told him that you’d said there’d be a big party up there and I could go if I wanted.”

“Then what’d he say?”

“He asked if I wanted to party.”

“And?”

“And I said sure, that’s what I wanted to go up for. So he made a few calls on his cell phone and said there’d be a party up there later today.”

Closing my eyes and sighing, I said, “I
told
you I didn’t hang out up there. And I told you a party at a biker clubhouse wouldn’t be something you’d like.”

She tried to pull a simpering look, but it was a lot less effective with her mascara streaking down her cheeks. And when she gave her head that little toss, her matted and tangled hair didn’t do its little flip. “I thought you were just saying that to scare me.”

Why would I want to scare her? I said, “Then what happened?”

“He asked if I
really
wanted to party. I said sure. He asked how much—I didn’t really want to
pay
him to get a story, so I just asked if he could tell me how to get there. He said he’d give me a ride, right now, and I could just stay up there until everybody else got there, so I got on his bike.”

I shook my head. “He figured you were out whoring and was trying to find out how much you would charge for a gang bang.”

She sat up straighter. “What?”

“They’d be willing to pay something, either in cash or more likely drugs, but it’s not a deal you’d be likely to want to take.”

“I never said I’d
sleep
with any of them.”

“What do you think their definition of a party would be? They thought that’s what you were offering.”

“Well.” She tossed her head. “I won’t say I’d never put out for a story—it can give you a really unique perspective—but they were
hurting
me. They were awfully rough.”

“They tend to be.”

We arrived at the park, and Aaron pulled up next to the puke-green car. Carissa and I got out.

Willis climbed out of the bed, his face pale and his hands shaking. “Thanks, Jesse,” he said. “I think maybe I’ll go see if my mom will let me stay for a few days while I look for a regular job.”

I nodded. “Good idea. Otherwise try the Rescue Mission.”

“Maybe I’ll do that.” He turned and made his way down the street.

Aaron leaned out the window. “You guys gonna be okay?”

“Yeah. And thanks for the ride.”

“You don’t think the Predators are gonna be mad at me ’cause I brought you and Willis up to the clubhouse, do you?”

I thought for a few seconds. “My guess is that those guys aren’t going to say anything about it. They seemed pretty wasted. And they let Carissa go. When they think about it, they won’t want to admit they handled it so badly. Including letting me and Willis see the operation.”

“Hope you’re right. I never thought of it like that,” he said. If Aaron had ever been capable of coherent thought, the drugs had pretty much addled that ability right out of his mind.

“So don’t
you
say nothing about it,” I said to him, although I knew he couldn’t be trusted.

“Okay.” He rolled up the window and slammed the truck into gear.

Carissa stood there, tilting to the side where she didn’t have a shoe. She patted the sides of her dress, a stricken look on her face. “My car keys are in my coat pocket.”

I sighed. “I hope you didn’t leave your purse up there.”

“No. I took my keys and a twenty dollar bill and stuck them in my pocket. I didn’t think I wanted to have my credit cards and checkbook with me. Just my smartphone in case I wanted to call somebody. But it wouldn’t work.”

Not bringing her purse with her was maybe the first intelligent thought she’d had.

“What am I going to do?”

I sure wasn’t going to try to break into her car. “You got somebody you could call?”

“Yes.” She was still holding the phone and tried to punch in a number.

“This doesn’t work.” She looked at it in dismay.

“Maybe it got knocked around too much.”

“Maybe. Can I borrow yours?”

“Don’t have one,” I said.

She looked like she didn’t believe me. “
Everybody’s
got a cell phone.”

“Guess I’m not ‘everybody.’”

A car pulled around the corner and stopped next to us. A black Lincoln. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. This was not likely to go well.

Montgomery and Belkins both got out.

I looked around. No way to get out of here.

Belkins tore the unlit cigar out of his mouth. “Just what the hell is going on here?”

Carissa gave him a calculating look, then tried to flip her tangled mop of blond hair off her face and launched herself at Belkins, tears flowing freely again.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” she simpered. “I’m so scared. And cold.”

Belkins actually got a tender look on his face. He put his arms around her and said, “There’s a blanket in the back of the car. Shall I get it for you?”

“Yes,” she sobbed.

Montgomery and I both stared as he opened the back door and pulled the blanket out, wrapping it around her. “It’s cold out here. Don’t you have a coat?” he asked.

Pulling the blanket close around her, Carissa collapsed onto his chest. “I
asked
him to get it for me.” She gestured toward me. “But he wouldn’t. Or get my shoe. And now I don’t have a car key. It was in my coat pocket.”

Belkins glared at me. “Too much trouble to get the lady’s things for her, was it, Damon?”

To Carissa, he said, “Did he do this to you, beat up you up like this?”

I didn’t think she was really beaten up too badly, but her makeup was a mess.

“No. But he wouldn’t help, either.”

Montgomery jumped in. “What did happen?”

She sniffed a few times. “You know I’m a reporter for the
Rothsburg Register
? I was working on a story. Up at the Predators’ clubhouse.”

“You were up at the Predators’ clubhouse?”

“Yes.”

“Did Damon take you up there?”

“No. He’s the one who brought me back here. Him and a few of his friends. But my
stuff’s
still up there.”

Montgomery belatedly stirred himself. “Jesse. Hands on your head. Fingers interlaced.”

I followed his directions, and he did a half-hearted pat-down, but didn’t remove my wallet and keychain.

“What were you doing up at the Predators’ clubhouse?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “Somebody told me my girlfriend was up there looking for me. I thought they meant Kelly.”

“That’s not a smart place to be when you’re on parole.”

“Tell me about it. It’s not a smart place to be even if I’m
not
on parole.”

“You know, it’s no secret that we’ve been keeping an eye on that place.”

No surprise there.

“You can take your hands down,” Montgomery said. “How’d you get up to the clubhouse?”

I thought for a minute. I didn’t want to throw Aaron under the bus after he’d been the one who gave us a way out of there. But I was pretty sure Aaron was one of the ways they were keeping an eye on it. Unless I was sorely mistaken, he was a police informant. Of course he’d tell them all about it. I’d better be careful, or I’d tell them all kinds of conflicting things. They’d catch me on all of them.

So I said, “Aaron gave me a ride.”

“In his truck?”

“His truck was up there, and we came back in it. But he was driving a blue Audi. He put that in the garage.” I was pretty sure I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know or wouldn’t find out anyhow.

“Anything you want to tell me about what was going on up there?”

“Not really. Just some miscommunication. I thought I’d find Kelly, not Carissa, up there. And Carissa was up there ’cause she wanted to do a story on the Predators. I don’t think she had any idea what she was getting herself into when she said she’d like to party with them.”

Belkins turned toward her. “Of course not. How could she? She’s just a young kid.”

Montgomery followed his gaze. “Looks like she was getting more than she bargained for.”

I nodded. “I’d say that’s a safe bet.”

We watched as Belkins tucked Carissa in the back seat of the Lincoln and wrapped the blanket around her. The cell phone was still held securely in her hand.

Montgomery adjusted the angle of his hat. “Looks to me like we’re going to take her home to get another car key.”

I nodded. “Didn’t know Belkins had a helpful side.”

Montgomery smiled and said, “I don’t think you’re likely to ever see it yourself. But he’s got a soft spot for little blonde girls in trouble. You know he had a daughter who was murdered?”

“I’d heard something about that.”

“And she was killed by a serial sex offender who was released on parole before his sentence was up.”

“Is that why he’s so sure I shouldn’t have been paroled?”

“Big part of it.”

“I’m not a sex offender. And the victim in my case was a male drug dealer, not a girl.”

“Don’t think it makes much difference to him. A killer’s a killer.”

I saw no point in saying I hadn’t actually killed anybody myself. My conviction spoke for itself.

And made me a prime suspect whenever there was an investigation of a crime that touched anyone around me.

Chapter 13

A
FTER
T
HE
S
HIFT
B
ROKE
on Friday morning, I had to wait for Jim, the foreman, to bring my paycheck. Almost everybody else had direct deposit. Someday maybe I’d open a bank account, when I could be sure I could maintain a minimum balance so they wouldn’t take a service charge every month. Until then, I dealt in cash with the occasional money order.

When I stepped out the gate into the watery winter sunlight, the other workers on my shift had all left, but a distressingly familiar black Lincoln was parked next to the fire hydrant.

I closed my eyes and sighed. Pulling my hands out of my pockets, I stopped and waited.

This was the third time in a week somebody’d been waiting for me to get out of work. Maybe I needed to start leaving through the truck yard or something.

But they’d just find me another time.

The car doors opened. Montgomery and Belkins stepped out and approached me.

Belkins spit on the sidewalk. “You know the routine, Damon. Assume the position.”

I glanced at Montgomery. “The wall or the hood of the car?”

Montgomery laughed. “The wall, I think. The car’s still got a dent in the hood from the last time.”

Turning and putting the palms of my hands on the dirty bricks of the factory wall, I spread my feet and leaned onto my hands, looking under my arm to try to keep an eye on them. Especially Belkins.

He sauntered over and lifted a foot toward mine, as if he were going to kick my foot further back. He stopped, glanced at my steel-toed work boots, and took a step back.