“Sure, darlin’.” His smile faded as he realized Graham was with her. “Just got in from Denver, I’m beat, but go ahead, show me your pictures.”
The cowboy looked at the updated photos and scratched his whiskers.
“Now, tell me again. Who’s asking and what’s this about?”
“I’m his wife and he’s with our son. I need to talk to him.”
“Whoa. I don’t want to get involved in no family spat, you understand.”
“Sir,” Graham said, “no one’s asking for that. Please, have you seen him?”
“And you would be?”
Graham told him.
“Police?” The man handed the picture back. “I’m not so sure.”
“Sir, this lady’s just trying to find her little boy.”
“I’ve seen that man in your picture,” another voice said.
Maggie, Graham and the cowboy turned to the clerk,
386 Rick Mofina a girl in her twenties with a small diamond stud in her pierced right nostril.
“Sorry,” she said, “I overheard you and peeked.”
“You saw Jake Conlin?” Maggie was hopeful.
“His name’s not Jake. It’s Burt Russell.”
“How do you know that?” Graham wrote it down.
“That’s him in your picture. I held truck magazines for him a couple of times. He said his name was Burt Russell. He comes in every couple of weeks.”
“You have anything with his name on it, a credit-card receipt, check, an order, anything with proper spelling or an address?”
“No, he’s a cash customer.”
“Any idea where he lives?”
The girl shook her head.
Encouraged by the lead, Graham used a public landline phone to call Reg Novak, his friend in D.C., to query Montana Highway Patrol and the FBI’s National Crime Information Center.
“Can you run the name Burt Russell, and variations on the spelling, through state motor vehicle records. He might be the RO of a large truck.”
“Give me some time to make a request,” Novak said. “You’re running up a big tab with me. Going to cost you Flames tickets if I ever get out your way.”
“You’ve got a deal, Reg.”
Graham and Maggie found a booth in the restaurant.
After they ordered breakfast, Maggie went to the restroom. Waiting alone, Graham glimpsed morning headlines about that day’s papal visit to Montana.
As the sun rose, a new concern dawned on him.
What if Ray Tarver’s conspiracy story was re motely valid?
What if Jake Conlin and the pope’s visit to Montana were linked?
Graham paged through his notes from his interview in Washington with Tarver’s reporter friend, Kate Morrow. Before he died, Tarver’s ex-CIA source had told him about intelligence out of Africa on plans for a “large-scale attack being planned for a major target.”
But the information was vague, like countless other threats.
Walker, the Secret Service agent protecting the pope, knew all about Tarver’s theories. Graham kept turning pages. Walker said Tarver “lived in a fantasy world with other conspiracy nuts.” Walker had chased Tarver’s leads, which in the end, “turned out to be jackass theories.”
Yes, but given today’s events, shouldn’t he pass his info to Walker? Walker’s card was in Graham’s note book. He tapped it, wondering if Arnie Danton had applied luminol to Tarver’s campsite yet. Graham needed to know the result.
If the Tarver deaths were truly an accident, then his boss, Stotter, was right.
He’d been traveling the U.S. on a wild-goose chase.
Graham ran his hand over his face, then called Walker’s cell phone.
He got his voice mail and left a message.
Leaving the restroom, Maggie was stopped by some thing she hadn’t noticed before. Outside Barney’s, the second restaurant, the painter’s drop sheet that had covered the entrance wall yesterday was gone, reveal ing a gallery of people.
Photographs of men, women and children were tacked to a corkboard headed, Birthday Blasts At Barney’s. Maggie was drawn to scores of glowing faces and searched them until she came to a pair of eyes that pierced her.
Logan.
She gasped and touched his face.
He was smiling, but something was not right. In the same picture, she saw Jake. So different. Bald head. Goatee. A half smile. On the table before them, a cake with the words, Happy Birthday, Samara. Who was that?
A woman was also in the picture, seated with Jake and Logan. Midthirties, dark hair, beautiful. Maggie caught her breath.
The other woman.
Maggie studied her, looked hard into her eyes. They were deep, intelligent, giving off a fierce light of defiance.
Maggie leaned closer, almost squaring off with her.
67
Great Falls, Montana
Graham was concerned when Maggie returned to their booth.
“You look pale,” he said. “What is it?”
“We’re so close.”
Maggie handed him the birthday snapshot. He studied it just as the waitress brought their food. They had nearly finished eating when Graham’s cell phone rang.
“It’s Novak with your info. You got my hockey tickets?”
“Man. I owe you.”
Montana’s DMV records showed Burt Russell’s resi dence as 1023 °Crystal Creek Road, Cold Butte, Montana. Graham unfolded his state map, and drew an X on the spot east of Great Falls, between Petroleum and Garfield counties.
“A two-and-a-half-hour drive, give or take. Let’s check out of the motel and get moving.”
In the parking lot, a stranger was ducking down between their rental and another car, a white sedan. It looked like the man had been tinkering with Graham’s car.
“Excuse me. Can I help you?” Graham squinted in the morning sun.
The man stood. His attention bounced from Graham to Maggie and back. He gripped a steel tire iron in his right hand, rotated it slowly. He was Graham’s height, but thinner. Clean-shaven with short dark hair, dark eyes and an angular face that bordered on menacing, until he smiled.
“No. Thank you. I’m almost finished. Flat tire.” His accent suggested he was British, or European. As Maggie and Graham got in, Graham noticed the man’s open trunk had four plastic fuel cans. Odd, he thought.
As they pulled away, Graham turned to Maggie.
“Write this down.” He recited the stranger’s Montana plate, make, color of his car and a description of the man, time and location.
“Why?”
“A cop habit.”
