“Yes, dammit. I have to move. I can't stand this place.
We have to find some new place. Will you look for it with me?”
It seemed excruciating to him. It would be horrible. He hated the new-marrieds aspect of it—checking for shelves and views—and he felt so indecent. But he said, 'Of course I will. Sure I will.”
“Oh, Bud,” she cried.
“I knew you would. Oh, Bud, I knew you would.”
“Now, sweetie, I got to go.”
“When will I see you?”
“Soon, I swear. We'll start looking soon.”
Oh' Bud I love you so much!”
Feeling relieved, Bud drove over to the City Hall Annex, an old office building, hastily reconfigured to its new purpose.
On the first floor, in a wide-open bank of rooms, a few Texas Rangers hung around. There was a phone bank and a slew of operators, and a radio receiver, just like at the highway patrol shop, and a filing cabinet, as well as the by now regular complement of computer terminals with civilian clerks. And who seemed to be running the show but his old friend LT. C. D. Henderson of the OSBI, who looked spryer than Bud had ever seen him. For once, the whiff of booze didn't cling to him. A smile even came across the creased old face.
“Howdy there, Bud. They told me you was coming back on as an emergency investigator.”
“Yes sir, I am,” said Bud.
“Figure I can pound on doors as well as anyone.”
“Well, there's many a door needs pounding. Bud, we've already got 'bout six men out there, but with close to four thousand names, the more the better.”
“So where'm I heading?”
“Well, let's see, many of ’em are in Lawton, where we've sent most of our men, and another hotbed is way out in Ardmore. But let's work you in from the country side.
You won't get as much done, since there's some space between ranches, and you may get sick of looking at cattle, but it's got to be done.”
“Great,” said Bud.
He was issued a stack of computer printouts bearing addresses and car registration data for Tillman, Jackson, and Cotton counties, in the southeast sector of the state, about two hours' ride. He was told he'd probably end up heading out to Greer and Harmon and Kiowa counties, too, in the next few days.
“Your truck got a two-way?”
“No sir, it don't.”
“Okay, we'll issue a Motorola portable unit, you won't have no problem.
It'll be pre-set to our net, forty-four point nine. You ten-twenty-three each stop and ten-twenty-four afterward, just in case.
We always want to know where you're at. I hope you ain't lucky again.”
“I hope I ain't either.”
“You got it, right? You just tell ’em we're doing a criminal investigation involving a motor vehicle and investigating is elimination and we want to check them off the list.
You find the car, then you check the tires. If you get the right tires on the right kind of car, then you call it in, wait for what the computer kicks out, and sit by until we decide to raid or stake out.
That's all. If you should bump into anybody nasty, you do not want to be in it without backup.
You're even more on your lonesome now.”
“I get that. I'm looking at cars and tires, not to make arrests. I told you, I don't want to cross with old Lamar again.”
“We got a heavy-duty SWAT team—Rangers, troopers, and an OSBI supervisor sitting out at Fort Sill airfield, with army pilots.
Anybody gets in a jam, we can have twenty men there in a few minutes.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Ten-four, Bud.”
Bud picked up his radio unit and a map, and headed back to the truck.
It took him a few seconds in the cab to get the electronic gear set up.
Then it crackled to life.
“Dispatch, this is six-oh-five, I am ten-seven, outward bound to Tillman county.”
“Ten-four, six-oh-five.”
“ Bud took 44 south of town, followed its straight shot south to the toll plaza at Oklahoma 5, then got off to follow 5 into Tillman's vast and empty flatness. It took him about two hours to find his first stop.
“Dispatch, this six-oh-five, I am ten—twenty-three at Loveland, Route 5, the Del Rio farm, looking for a 1991 Red Tercel, that's license plate Oklahoma One-fiverninerninerroger-Mike.”
“Ten-four, six-oh-five.”
Bud got out at a decaying farmhouse and began what would become his routine for the next two days. He knocked on the door, showed his badge ID, introduced himself, and went into his song and dance. It was amazing how cooperative people could be. Most Americans just love to help the police.
“Why, sure. Officer, it cain't be me or mine,” they'd say, or some variation thereof.
In Loveland, a gnarled Hispanic grandfather took him out back and showed him the car; it hadn't been driven in a year, and rested in rotten splendor atop a quartet of cinder blocks. And so it went: Sometimes the cars were chan, sometimes beat-up. Sometimes they'd been recently sold, and the name of the buyer or the dealership was gladly provided. Sometimes Bud had to wait for a man to come home from the plant or the bar; sometimes it was a boy, returning from town or chores or the Dairy Queen. But sooner or later, the car would turn up, he'd examine it, steal a look at the tires, and pass on it.
Twice, in the first two days, he found the right set of Goodyear radials on the right car, itself no crime. One was down near Cookietown in Cotton County, owned by the town's Southern States Grain and Seed branch manager, a florid redhead with blemishy skin and a belly as large as the outdoors. It seemed unlikely, but maybe the man's son or brother or something had some connection with… Bud called it in, but the computer produced no evidence of previous criminal activities associated with Mr. Fuerman or his wife, no other family members in existence according to records. Then, on the Cherokee reservation near Polk Lake in Tillman, he came across a run-down one-story government tract house, half its shingles flapping in the dry wind, and as he walked to it, he felt a hundred eyes on him.
Cops always have a feeling for such a thing but don't let it go too far, or it just plain flat ruins them. Bud conquered the little whisper of fear and knocked on the door to find a woman with a face that looked as if it had aged in lava for a century or two, as if she had worn away all her teeth gnawing on bones. Finally, after he explained in English what he wanted, she said for him to go out back.
He found the thing, a beat-to-shit Hyundai Excel, once yellow, now nearly rusted out. And only one of the tires was a Goodyear 5400-B, and it was as bald as a rock. Maybe that one and only that one had been the track the detectives had picked up near the Red.
He felt the eyes on him again and looked up at the house, wondering if even now Lamar Pye weren't squinting over a gunsight at him. But he quelled the feeling, walked back to his truck, and called it in. Half an hour later, the response came: The car, registered to a Sonny Red Bear, could not be linked to criminal activities, and no trace of criminal records, either local or federal, could be found for either Sonny Red Bear or any of his family. Just then the door burst open, and Bud saw what had scurried so mysteriously behind the doors of the little house: It was a mess of kids, squalling and seething, led to the car by a handsome woman. The children crammed in any which way, and she got in and drove off.
Bud played a hunch.
“'Dispatch, can you ten-forty-three the name Red Bear for a State of Oklahoma daycare license?”
“Got you, six-oh-five.”
He waited and then it came back that, yes, one Carla Red Bear had applied to the state for just such a daycare license, though its issuance was pending.
“You got a violation to report there, six-oh-five?”
