The Travelling Man (5 page)

He showered efficiently as was his way with most of life’s chores. He was a neat man who believed in structure and routine. He dressed in his freshly pressed uniform and sat down to a late afternoon well-balanced breakfast. He neatly consumed eggs and bacon with whole-wheat toast and freshly squeezed orange juice. After he’d eaten, he carefully placed his cutlery and crockery into the sparkling dishwasher and wiped the kitchen counter tops down until they were gleaming.

He had an hour before he was due on duty and it was enough time to spend on studying for his forensic science exam. For as long as he could remember, he had wanted to be a detective. Not a gun toting cop kicking in doors and holding fire fights with bad guys; he wanted to be a detective. His bookshelves were cascading tributes to the cerebral thinkers of fiction. He wanted to test his mettle against nefarious shadowy masterminds who pushed their pawns around the board with contemptuous ease. He wanted to piece together the shattered remains of a person’s life and ultimate death. He was drawn to the puzzle and there was no greater prize or challenge than that of murder.

Originally raised in Springhouse Falls, a neighboring town, he had joined the police force in Granton as a stepping stone on his way to becoming a great detective of his time. It was through the department that he had access to the kind of courses and qualifications that he was going to need, and with Granton’s meager crime rate it gave him perfect access and opportunity to study.

He had studied psychology as part of his underpinning structure, but he hadn’t needed the course to tell him just what drove his passion.

His mother had been unfortunately typical of her surroundings and upbringing. No matter how far you tried to run, you could never escape your genes. His mother had liked a drink a little too much and liked to boost her flagging self-esteem in all the wrong ways. Tom had never known his father and his mother had never spoken of him. They were a two person self-contained unit but his mother wasn’t opposed to the frequent company of strangers, come the dark lonely hours of a Friday night.

Tom had never seen the man’s face or even heard his voice. His mother had tucked him into bed on Friday evening before she’d headed out and he had woken up early on Saturday morning to a strange coppery smell in the air and the buzzing of flies.

The police had come after a neighbor had spotted the then 8 year old Tom wandering aimlessly around on his front lawn looking confused. The investigation had turned up nothing of note at first. The huge cops with their broad chests and large handguns had stomped through the crime scene without care, dismissing his mother as yet another drunken slut who picked up the wrong guy. It was only when the detective had arrived that everything took on a more intellectual approach.

The young Tom had watched as the methodical man had pulled on a pair of gloves and begun combing the scene for clues. This man was slender and thoughtful and far removed from the large noisy beat cops. It was the detective that had discovered a tiny trace amount of white powder on the kitchen floor. A study of the talc had found it to be common in the use of specific surgical gloves. Within a month, the detective had traced the doctor responsible not only for his mother’s death but that of three other similar women. Tom had been hugely impressed by the carefully constructed thought processes of the officer even at his own tender age and a seed was planted. A seed that said brains would always win out over brawn, and for a boy growing up willowy in a world that worshipped size and strength, it was a promise of a bright future and a calling. 

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Ellie Wheeler made sure that Grandma was asleep before she flipped the page over in her sketchbook and set to work on her real project. The front pages were all full of butterflies and unicorns, the usual sort of thing that adults were happy to see a child of 11 drawing. The latter pages were dark and disturbing and she didn’t want her mother or grandma thinking that there was something wrong with her, or at least something other than the
Leukemia. She knew that they both worried about her and she couldn’t blame them. She tried to mask her tiredness as much as possible but the aggressive bouts of chemotherapy had been brutal. She may have only been 11 but she understood that these things did not come cheap.

Her eyes lowered to her work and her hands, as ever, drifted across the pristine white surface of the paper with a mind of their own. Soon the snowy white landscape was filled with dark and twisted images drawn in black charcoal. Her thoughts were clear as she worked; small beads of sweat tickled her forehead as they ran free from her long blonde hair, but she didn’t notice.

She didn’t know where her images came from but it had only taken one viewing from her mother’s watchful glare for talk of therapists to enter the conversation. Ellie knew that she wasn’t deranged in any way; she just had a dark side in stark contrast to her sunny outward disposition.

   Her eyes closed as her hand raced with increasing energy and voracious appetite. The man’s face began to take on shape, emerging from the page shrouded in darkness with vicious stabbing lines as her gentle hand clenched into a fist around the pencil. Gouging and tearing replaced her artistic drawing and when she came back to herself after a few minutes, she stared down in shock at the ruined pad. Amidst the scrawling, she could just make out a pair of eyes above a smart tie and topped off with a nifty hat.

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Harlan watched as the guy on the dirt bike drew closer and finally joined them. The man wasn’t wearing a helmet, only a pair of large goggles; sensible, considering the terrain.

The bike pulled up gently to a halt and Harlan’s brain started ticking over immediately. The guy drove carefully and without the showing off of an immature mind. He pulled his goggles up on top of his head. His face looked tanned with a maturing beard. Harlan guessed his age at somewhere in his thirties, probably late, but he did have a boyish glow. His hair was a dirty natural blonde and hung shaggily about his face.

“Hello there,” the man said cheerily.

“Can I help you?” Harlan asked, matching the man’s pleasant tone.

“No thanks. I’m doing fine.”

“Well, actually you’re not doing that fine, son. You’re trespassing,” Harlan said, not breaking his smile.

“Really?” the man replied with a seemingly honest expression.

Harlan was an expert in perfecting a false face to fool the world around him. He had been doing it for a long time and right now he didn’t trust this guy one little bit. “I’m afraid so,” he said, still keeping his friendly manner intact.

“I’m so sorry, I had no idea.”

Harlan watched the guy’s face and thought,
yeah, I just bet you didn’t
.

“Name’s Kravis. Matt Kravis,” the man said, introducing himself.

While Harlan’s interior radar was starting to crank into the red, the guy didn’t smell like a cop or at least not yet. “Harlan Harris, and may I ask just what you were doing out on my land?”

“Really? Your land?” Kravis said surprised. “I couldn’t find any registered ownership documents for out here but if you say so. I’m really sorry,
Mr. Harris. I genuinely had no idea that this was your land. I’m afraid that much of my work is confidential and I can’t really talk about in much detail. Suffice to say that this particular area of the desert shares certain…, characteristics with a location that my employers are looking to use during preparations.”

“Preparations for what?” Harlan asked intrigued.

“I’ve probably said too much already,” Kravis said, looking sheepish.

“Whoa man!” Bud said from behind, overhearing the conversation. “He means Mars, don’t you?”

Harlan momentarily forgot to be mad at Bud for interrupting. “Mars? Are you for real?” he asked, addressing Kravis.

“Look guys I really can’t talk about my work. I shouldn’t have told you that much; not that I’m confirming anything, you understand,” he added hastily. “But I suppose if I am trespassing on your land,
Mr. Harris, then I owe you some sort of explanation.”

Harlan tried to sum up the situation in his mind as quickly as he could manage. While it was true that he did own some of the immediate surrounding land, it wasn’t in his name due to the illegal activities committed out here. But he had just told the guy that it was his land and had even relished telling him so. He was starting to wonder if he should start digging another hole in the ground out here, possibly an extra one for Bud while he was at it, when Kravis suddenly kicked the bike back into life.

“I’ll get out of your hair, Mr. Harris. I’m afraid that I didn’t find a suitable site out here anyway. You’ll just have to accept my apology for stepping on your toes but hopefully no harm done. Say, either of you two know of a place to stay in town?”

“
Mrs. Fiorentino over on Maple,” Bud chimed in helpfully. “She runs the boarding house.”

Harlan waved politely as Kravis loaded the bike onto his trailer and pulled back out towards the main road. The man was an enigma to him and he hated puzzles. While he didn’t get a “cop” feel about the guy, he didn’t for a second believe his story. But at least he knew where the man was going to be if he needed to get his hands on him.

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Cassie pulled into the parking lot at the station and tried to still the pounding in her head. She had trucked all over town all afternoon trying to piece together Davey Mackie’s last known movements but was coming up short. His watering hole was The Oasis Bar but Mal Reynolds, the owner, had called Davey conspicuous by his absence. Cassie didn’t know what she found more surprising: the fact that Davey hadn’t been in the bar for several consecutive nights, or that Mal knew the phrase “conspicuous by his absence”.

Granton was a small town and most of its residents rarely ventured beyond her borders. She found it hard to believe that there was a corner in town where Davey could hide without being seen.

It had been over 5 years since there had been a suspicious death and over 10 since there had been a confirmed murder. Her mind naturally wasn’t full of possible crime, only a missing person. But she still couldn’t shake Susie Mackie’s deep assurance that something had happened to her husband. Cassie instinctively knew that Susie was right; she would know if something had happened to Ellie.

“Night, Boss,” Kevin said as he heaved himself out of the car.

“Yeah, night, Kev,” she responded distractedly.

“What do you think happened to old Davey?” he said, pausing in the early evening setting sun.

“I don’t know,” she replied, shaking her head. “Maybe he left town, maybe he’s sleeping one off somewhere, maybe Susie finally lost her temper.”

“You really think that she could have…, you know.”

“No, not really,” Cassie sighed. “Somehow I just can’t picture that woman wielding a killing blow.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We keep checking. We’ll monitor the hospitals, keep asking about town and if he doesn’t show up in a day or two then maybe I’ll just take a look in Susie’s back garden to see if she’s got any freshly dug holes.”

Her deputy left her with morbid thoughts as he headed over towards his waiting car. Cassie guessed that he was on his way to the gym to work out some of his frustrations. She wished that her own were that easy to get rid of.

She headed into the station to check on the rest of the day’s business. She found Jeanne waiting for her before heading home.

“Any news?” the radio operator asked.

“Nope, not yet,” Cassie replied wishing that she had better news. “Anything happening around here?”

“Same old, same old,” Jeanne shrugged. “Linda Jarvis is complaining about Mrs. Fiorentino’s boarders making too much noise again. Glenn Jordan wants the rest of the Town Council to let him add more parking bays outside of the diner and he thought that you might put in a good word. And Cora Cohen says that there is a new guy in town, some kind of scientist or something, supposed to be pretty cute though.”

Cassie sighed, wishing that Jeanne would stop trying to marry her off. “Maybe
you
ought to take a run at him then, Jeanne,” she said, meaning to gently tease but her tired voice sounded a little terse. “Oh shit. I’m sorry Jeanne, I didn’t mean to snap.”

“That’s okay,” Jeanne smiled warmly. “But I won’t stop trying.”

“Home!” Cassie said, pointing towards the door but with affection in her voice.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Jeanne replied as she left with a grin.

  Cassie went into her office. The room was small and she spent precious little time in it. The décor hadn’t been altered since her father had been Sheriff and the office radiated him. He had been a big man about town and she often took comfort from the sense of him that still lingered. It was silly, she knew, but she always kept the doors shut to prevent any of his essence escaping.

She leaned back in the chair and put her boots up on the desk. The seat was well worn and she sank into the grooves to think before she headed home and her mind became full of her daughter again.

CHAPTER 4

expanding horizons

Marshall Dinkins wandered his route aimlessly. The shift at the mine was a security job in name only so that the insurance stipulations were covered. It was a shitty gig and was more often as not used as a punishment by Lesnar whenever anyone got on the Troll’s bad side.

Al Draper was snoring his head off back in the break room but Marshall was restless and couldn’t sleep, even when it was his turn to do so. Hopefully, Al would sleep through until morning and stay out of his hair for the duration.

The mine was deserted at this hour with even Jim Lesnar, the big boss man, staying within the confines of his luxurious apartment on site. Marshall hated that he was stuck in a dead end job while a troll like Lesnar owned the whole damn place and everything that they dragged out of the earth. God only knew what the man was worth and yet he seemed to have no imagination as to how to spend his vast wealth. It had always seemed like a cruel joke to Marshall that such bountiful gifts were bestowed upon the undeserving. His own mind was full of mooring yachts in Monaco decked with bikini clad beauties and never-ending sunsets. He would own property and people in equal measure and he would sit upon the throne of the power and they would all crawl, begging at his feet. Marshall understood that money bought you stuff, but true wealth bought you power.

He stood by the huge cavernous wormhole and stared downwards into the very centre of the earth below. The metal fences ringed the hole with care and precision. There were staggered walkways that led downwards into the hole and a cage that was lowered electronically. The area topside was low key and relatively harmless to the natural area. Marshall knew that, despite the jobs and economy boost, there were still those more obsessed with the protection of varieties of small reptiles than of working men.

Marshall kicked a rock over the edge of the hole and listened as it bounced its way into the blackness. There were large spotlights that were permanently on to illuminate the dangerous area around the hole. Above him, on the walkways down, the shadows were long and the steps were dark as no one was supposed to be here except the occasional security walk-by.

He was pondering his crappy lot in life when a voice spoke out of the shadows above him and he almost screamed.

“It does give one pause for thought, does it not?”

Marshall spun around quickly, looking up for the man who’d spoken. The accent was some fruity European one but he couldn’t see the guy in the dark. “Who’s there?” he barked with more authority than he felt.

“I’m sorry, my boy, I do hope that I didn’t frighten you?” the man replied.

Despite the lack of light, Marshall was sure that he could hear the man smiling. He suddenly remembered that he was carrying a large flashlight. He pulled it from his belt and flicked the switch. The powerful beam blasted through the darkness and hit a man full in the face. Despite the strong light, the man didn’t shield his eyes or even blink. Marshall watched in fascination as the man’s eyes merely reflected the light and danced like a nocturnal animal illuminated in a sudden flash. He was dressed wholly inappropriately for the setting in a smart suit and tie and dapper hat. In spite of the air being full of red dust, the man’s clothes appeared pristine and untouched by the environment.

“I know you,” Marshall said, trying to remember where he’d seen the guy before, all security aspects of his job momentarily forgotten.

“It’s quite possible,” the man smiled.

“You were outside my apartment the other night, watching me,” Marshall said, feeling more curious than angry.

“I’m a careful man and I always like to research any possible new clients.”

“I’m Marshall,” he said introducing himself, somewhat unnecessarily he couldn’t help but think, but it seemed like the proper thing to do in the circumstances.

“I’m well aware of you,
Mr. Dinkins. My name is Gilbert. Gilbert Grange.” The man smiled.

“Can you help me?” Marshall asked, having no idea why he would ask this stranger, but at the same time instinctively knowing that the man could.

“I must confess to giving it serious consideration,” Gilbert Grange replied. “But I am very selective about my clients, Mr. Dinkins.”

Just then, the large spotlights on the stairwell came on, banishing all darkness all the way up to the top of the walkway. Marshall found himself standing alone and talking to no one.            

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Delores Fiorentino watched on strictly as the men trooped by on their way out of the door, no doubt off to drink away their pay checks. She was a proud and stern woman of 63 - straight-backed and chin up was how she faced the world, as though demanding a challenge to her authority.

She had bought and run the boarding house ever since her husband had passed away, brought down by a premature heart attack. Thomas had been a large man of voracious appetite with little time for doctors or their advice. Delores had married young, latching onto a man with a head for business and a desire for a wife to run the home and raise the children. Unfortunately, there had been no children for them, not for the lack of trying. Delores had lain with her husband, as was her duty at the time, enduring his sweaty weight and panting breath, but all to no avail. There had been no sired heir and after a while they had mercifully stopped trying. Delores needed no poking and prodding by intrusive young men in their white coats to tell her where the problem lay. She knew in her heart that it couldn’t possibly be with her. She was a strict woman who moved through life like an arrow, indivertible from her course. The idea that there was something wrong with her internal system was simply ludicrous.

Thomas had left her alone in the bedroom department and she had been grateful for small mercies. Instead, he had slaked his thirst with a revolving office door of secretaries that Delores knew about but took no real interest in. Their door had never been darkened by a bastard offspring and so she cared little for his nocturnal activities.

When he’d finally passed away, she had been mortified to discover that, despite her careful managing of their finances, Thomas had been far more deceitful and resourceful than she’d given him credit for. She knew now that she should have realised that such an ugly man wouldn’t have been able to slake his thirst on looks alone.

The accountancy business that he’d run for over 20 years had been riddled with debt. She’d found, to her horror, that there had been multiple loans secured on the business and two remortgages that she’d known nothing about. Thomas had used his drinking buddy connections to secure financing on their home without her knowledge, forging her signature and faking bank statements. She had been forced to sell their large impressive home to service the debts that Thomas had run up. She had been forced to purchase a large but rundown property in one of the worst areas of town, but she had done so with an interminable spirit and an iron will. She had never let any problem stand in her way and she had merely tightened her grim expression and pushed forward.

The boarding house had now almost finished off clearing her husband’s debts. There had been other money men who had tried to tell her that there were ways to avoid paying what she owed, but it was not her way. She was a Fiorentino and Thomas’ debts were in her name also.

She ran her business with an iron fist that accepted no drop in standards of her boarders. They abided by the rules or else they were out of the door. She cared little that the majority of them were hardened miners, thick with a seemingly permanent coating of red dust and coarse language. There was no swearing on the premises, no loud boisterous
behavior in her home and meal times were strictly adhered to or else you went hungry. She had a neighbor, Linda Jarvis, who was a small and petty woman often bothering the police with complaints about excessive noise coming from the boarding house. Delores had tried on multiple occasions to try and get to the bottom of the woman’s beef as it clearly was an unsupported complaint. Her boarders came home on tiptoes and whispering for fear of breaking the rules and finding themselves homeless.

She currently had a new guest to break the miners’ monopoly. He was a quiet and shy young man by the name of Matt Kravis. He was studious and kept to himself, paid in cash, and barely made eye contact, which was how she liked her boarders. He was also hardly ever there it would seem, which, as far as she was concerned, was another bonus.

She heard the sound of Kravis’ truck pull up outside and she watched from behind her neat floral curtains in her private sanctuary of a bedroom. She knew every sound of every vehicle that parked outside. Most of the miners were shipped out to the Lesnar mine in large noisy people carriers supplied by Jim Lesnar himself. Kravis drove a new looking truck with a trailer for a motorcycle of some description behind him. Whenever she saw the young man, he was always carrying a bag of one kind or another and when she had surreptitiously spied upon him in the evenings, he’d always had his face buried in various papers and books.

She slipped silently from her room and glided down the long winding staircase to “bump” into her new lodger as he entered.

“Oh, good evening, Mr. Kravis,” she greeted him formally, as was her way

“Hello,
Mrs. Fiorentino,” he responded politely.

“Long day?” she asked, while carefully eyeing him up and down. His clothes were dusty and his face was blotchy and red from the sun and heat. Whatever he was up to, it had been out in the desert.

“Long enough,” he joked lightly with a tired smile. “Tell me something, Mrs. Fiorentino, do you ever get used to the heat?”

“Of course, my dear, just give it about 20 years or so,” she smiled slightly, forgetting her usual stern approach. For some reason, the young man seemed different from her usual clientele and she couldn’t help but feel pleased at the change of pace.

She moved aside and allowed him to pass, watching carefully as he stomped the dust from his boots on the doormat before taking them off and lining them up neatly as per her first day instructions with all new boarders. “Have you eaten?” she found herself asking, despite the scheduled meal hour having long since departed.

“No,” he shrugged wearily.

“Well, after you’ve washed up I’ll set something out for you,” she said primly but with just a touch of springtime thaw.

“Thank you,” he replied gratefully before dragging his tired bones up the stairs to his room.

As he left, Delores Fiorentino suddenly had the most strange and fleeting thought flit through her mind. She wondered if this would have been what having a son would have felt like.

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Glenn Jordan locked the diner door and stretched the day’s stress from his back and heard the bones crack with relieved tension. It had been a long hot day as per usual, regardless of the air conditioning’s constant icy blast. It seemed like every day was getting to feel longer and longer these days.

He was a middle-aged man of 53 with a frame that was starting to stoop a little too much after a lifetime of standing over a grill. He had straight black hair and a skin weathered by generations of desert dwellers. His eyes were hazel and his face was smooth but warm and open.

He looked around his domain with pride. It may not have been a global behemoth, but it was his and built from the ground up with his own two hands. He had been pushing the rest of the Town Council to allow him to start expanding, starting with the insufficient parking outside, but as usual things in the desert moved slowly as though beaten down by the heat.

Granton was a pleasant enough town and he was making money all right in a world that was struggling to keep a roof over its head, but he wanted more. He wanted more than a greasy diner servicing oafs from the mine with beer and onion rings. What he really wanted was to open a restaurant on the other side of town, a real restaurant where patrons bought wine with dinner, not frothy pitchers. He wanted linen napkins instead of paper ones and he wanted to welcome his guests at the front door after they had made reservations over the phone.

“All done Glenn?” Becky called from the kitchen as she finished mopping the floor.

“Sure, Becky, you can take off now,” he called back. She was a good girl and he liked her a lot. He hoped that if he ever got the place off the ground then she would come over and help him manage the place. The girl had entirely too much about her to be dodging ass grabbers for the rest of her life. He knew that she was unhappy here and he didn’t blame her; it was surely no one’s dream job, his least of all.     

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Harlan’s mind was racing with thoughts about Davey’s body which he had buried in the desert. He had lied to Kravis when he’d told him that he owned the land where the man had been sniffing about. He didn’t know what the guy was up to and he was nervous. When he’d got back to the store, his phone had been flashing appropriately red with messages from the Sheriff about Davey. Everyone knew that Davey worked at the hardware store and Harlan was starting to realise that people just couldn’t disappear, even in the desert. If that bitch of a Sheriff was anything like her old man, then she wasn’t going to stop looking until she found Davey.

He couldn’t believe that his carefully constructed world was about to collapse on top of him, all for a little slip. That’s what it was: just a little slip, but he might be ruined. His anger started to boil again at the thought of the injustice of it all. If Davey was here right now, he’d probably kill him all over again.