The Big Dirt Nap

word poof.

'That's correct,' Lucy said. Babe's example and her own successful exchange with the two less experienced cops gave her the confidence to stand up to Winters. 'I'm quite all right. Although I'm a little put out that your men felt the need to go through the bag in the trunk of my car.'

'Yeah, yeah,' Winters said. 'If you want to make a claim for damages it's form C104. You can download it from the town's Web site. Ms. Holliday, I think the sooner you and your friends leave our little town, the happier we'll all be. You ladies have a good night.'

When she was a safe distance away, Babe mouthed the word bitch. I agreed.

Thirty-six

After a full two hours of sleep, I woke up at 6 A.M. Through half-open eyes I saw Babe fully dressed and holding a cup of coffee.

'You didn't make that in the room, did you?' I'd heard horror stories that they used the same brush to clean the coffeepot as they used to clean the toilet.

'Not a chance. Got it downstairs. There's a very chatty waitress named Laurie in the coffee shop. She thinks both brothers were in on it and were trying to use Lucy as their alibi.' We looked at Lucy, curled up, still asleep on the love seat. 'The bellboy disagrees. I haven't had a chance to poll the rest of the staff.'

'?Quien sabe?' I said.

Now that Claude was in jail, I knew Lucy would want to see him, at least to say goodbye, so I suggested Babe take the Jeep back to Springfield. Lucy and I would drive back later in the day and I'd pick up my car at the diner.

'You sure?'

'Are you kidding? You saved our asses last night.'

I got up, found my bag, and fished around for my car keys. Babe rooted around in her bag, too.

'What are you looking for, a cell?'

'I'll give you a cell phone, too. Here, take mine. I have Neil's cell at home—if you need to reach me just speed-dial number 1.' She gave me her phone and I shoved it in my pocket.

'This may come in handier.' She handed me something in a leopard-print case. It was Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle, better known as a Taser, model number C2.

'Take it. You never know.'

Thirty-seven

The idea of zapping someone with a Taser made me so nervous, I didn't even want to hold the damn thing. But I thought back to the previous night, planning to defend myself with a pitchfork and a tarp like some horticultural gladiator, and I relented. I let Babe show me how to use it.

The Taser Babe owned was a non–law enforcement, consumer model and fired two small electrodes that would work as far as fifteen feet away from the intended target. After firing its one charge, it could also be used as a direct contact stun gun that could penetrate up to two inches of clothing.

'You couldn't kill someone with this, could you?'

'Oh, you mean like a pitchfork?' She had a point. You could kill someone with virtually anything, but under normal circumstances the Taser wasn't lethal. It sent a charge to the target's central nervous system, temporarily incapacitating him. She handed me two cartridges.

'Just in case,' she said. 'But once should be enough. Don't get crazy. And then run like hell. Don't hang around admiring your handiwork.' I didn't ask how she'd developed this strategy and whether she'd ever had occasion to use it, but now I knew why she wasn't afraid to be alone in the diner at night.

I left a note for the still sleeping Lucy and walked Babe out to the Jeep, which was practically hidden by a deluxe coach parked diagonally in four spaces. Maybe business was picking up at Titans.

'If you're not back by tonight,' Babe said, 'I'm calling the cops, do you read me?' I promised to check in in a few hours if Lucy and I weren't going to make it home by the time Babe closed the diner.

Babe drove off and I headed back into the hotel for my first caffeine fix of the day. Laurie in the Titans coffee shop was alone, reading the paper at the counter.

'Looks like they caught those boys.'

'Looks like,' I said. I glanced at the paper over her shoulder for a while, then she shoved it my way and moved behind the counter.

'Counterman's late. Coffee?'

'Please.'

Claude Crawford was in custody until Betty Smallwood could raise two hundred fifty thousand dollars for bail. Even at ten dollars a pop, that would take a lot of notarizing. I didn't see it happening.

According to the paper, the physical evidence found at the scene of the murder linked both of the Crawfords to the crime, but Billy's lack of an alibi at the time of Nick's death made him the prime suspect. Billy had escaped by disappearing into the hills behind the abandoned factory on Route 123, where he'd been hiding. The media took that as an admission of guilt.

'You never know about people,' the waitress said, bringing my coffee.

Apart from the occasional abduction they had committed, nothing I'd heard about the Crawfords suggested they were psychopaths. Why would they tell Lucy to talk to Nick and then kill him right before she did? Was it, as the waitress thought, just to get her as a reliable, non–Native American alibi? Or to get Nick's defenses down by having him think he was going to meet a good-looking woman instead of a man with a gun? And why do it at the hotel? There must have been a dozen less public places for the murder to happen.

Laurie sat down again and I offered her the paper back; she shook her head. 'I'm finished. Too much sad news. You just never know. Billy always seemed like the nice one. We had a homeless guy freeze to death near the Dumpster two winters ago.' She looked at me as if I should remember, so I nodded politely.

'Next week Billy shows up with a couple of cheap sleeping bags. Gave them to the old guys who scrounge around back there.'

A woman hurried by the coffee shop. Laurie said hello but the woman didn't seem to hear and kept walking, her cowboy boots clacking on the tile floor as she rushed by.

'Now there goes one of the nice ones. Jackie Connelly. She and I went to high school together. A beautiful girl. Athlete. She could have gone to the Olympics. Got in a little trouble, but, you know, righted the ship. Kept her baby girl, finished school. She worked two, three jobs for years. Even cleaned houses so that child would never want for anything. Now she's got her own little one.' It took me awhile before I realized the the baby that Laurie was talking about was Chantel Crawford.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two figures loitering by the elevator—one slim and one very large, in a leather jacket.

'Okay, that's it.' The waitress didn't know what I meant.

I folded the paper and scribbled my room number on the check. Alone, on the highway, at night, it was one thing. But in a hotel lobby in broad daylight I felt safe enough to confront them. The big one had the nerve to smile at me. He had on sunglasses and a tweed bucket hat as a half-assed disguise but he wore an enormous black leather jacket like the one I remembered from our first encounter in the mini-mart.

'Can I help you two?' I said.

The men looked at each other stupidly as if they didn't know what I meant.

'You're not very good at keeping yourselves hidden. If you're going to sneak around following people you should try to be a little less obvious. The hat and the glasses? That's like we're not supposed to know Clark Kent is Superman because of his eyeglasses.' More simpleminded looks.

'Forget it. The liquor store should be opening soon. Go get some more vodka, drink some courage, and then tell Sergei you saw me,' I said, shaking my head in disgust. 'But I want you to know I'm not scared of you. And if I ever see you again, I'll be armed,' I said, thinking of the Taser and glad that I'd taken it from Babe.