too babyish.
“Are you Ryan?” the cop asked. He spoke in regular tones, too, and absent the whisper, his voice sounded like one that should do movie trailers. It had that deep, gravelly quality.
“Yes, sir.” He kept his stride even as he walked a direct line toward the man.
“Well, you are a man of your word, Mr. Ryan Nasbe,” the cop said. “You said you were going to be in the woods, and you are, by God, in the woods.” He leaned on those last words, and then laughed as if he’d told himself a joke.
As Ryan closed to within a few yards, the cop raised his hand, and a bright flashlight beam nailed him in the eyes. He recoiled and raised his hands as shields. “Jesus, Mister.”
The light shifted down a little. Concentrating more on his chest than his face. “Sorry about that. I just wanted to see what you look like.” He held out a friendly hand. “Kendig Neen,” he said. “I’m the sheriff of Maddox County.”
Ryan hesitated, though he didn’t know why. His warning radar had picked up something that wasn’t right. “How come you’re not in a uniform?” he asked.
He laughed again. “You’re lucky I’m not in pajamas,” he said. “You know what time it is? Cops have to sleep, too, you know. I got the call, and these were the best duds I could find. That okay with you?”
Ryan found himself nodding without really intending to. “Sure,” he said. He accepted the handshake.
“I’m glad to hear it.” Everything about Sheriff Neen was big, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that his handshake hurt. It just went on a little too long. “You’ve got to be freezing. Let’s get in the car and have a chat.”
“We need to get my mom,” Ryan said. “She’s in a basement just down this road.” He dislodged his hand from the sheriff’s grip so he could point with it.
“Yet another reason to get in the car,” the sheriff said.
Venice rested the phone on its cradle. “Well, there you go,” she said. “No such call ever happened.”
Jonathan wished he was surprised, but he’d been listening to her end of the conversation. “That’s it? Just didn’t happen?”
“Exactly. You heard me on the phone with her. I had to soft-pedal a little around the whole illegal eavesdropping thing, but I asked her about a missing-person report, and she said that they’d received no such report. Those were her words, actually. ‘We’ve received no such report.’”
Jonathan scowled. “Theories?”
“How sure are you that it’s the right Maddox County?” Gail asked. “Are there any others within a reasonable drive of Alexandria?”
It took Venice ten seconds and a few keystrokes to do the Google search. “No other Maddox County in the whole U.S. of A,” she proclaimed.
“And we’re all sure we heard the operator answer, ‘Maddox County,’ right?” Jonathan asked.
They both nodded, and Venice added, “I’ll go so far as to say I think I just talked to the same lady that Ryan did.” She checked her notes. “Her name is Phelps.” She tapped her keyboard again, but this time it appeared to be a more complicated challenge, eating up the better part of a whole minute. “Stacy Phelps,” Venice announced. “Average grades in high school, no college. She-”
Beyond the glass windows of the War Room, the door to the cave burst open and Boxers strode into the outer office. He wore a long black topcoat over a black turtleneck with a black watch cap pulled down to his eyebrows. No one said anything until he rounded the corner and stormed into the War Room.
“God damn, this had better be good,” he said.
“What’s with the outfit?” Jonathan teased. “We interrupt you in the middle of a burglary?”
Gail and Venice both chuckled.
“Snigger away,” Boxers said. He peeled off the overcoat and revealed a tailored black suit. He looked very Hollywood-or at least like the man who ate Hollywood. “I was on a date.”
The words hung in the air like a cloud.
“What are those looks?” Boxers asked, noting their expressions of
… shock? “I go on dates just like everyone else.”
Jonathan let it go. “We intercepted a call from the Nasbe boy,” he explained. It took a few minutes to catch him up on the essentials. “Venice was about to give us details on the dispatcher who took the call.”
With that, the floor returned to Venice. She squinted as she read from her computer screen, scrolling and clicking with the mouse as she summarized. “Stacy Phelps attended John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Maddox County, followed by Oliver Wendell Holmes Intermediate School and then graduated seven years ago from Maddox County High School.”
She paused as she clicked and typed and switched to a new database. “Looks like she worked at McDonald’s for a couple of years. No, wait, that was in high school. Right, and then six months after high school she started work for the sheriff’s department at eight twenty-five an hour. She started as an assistant clerk, then progressed to clerk, and then senior clerk.”
Jonathan smiled as Venice clicked through to another page. This was Venice self-actualized. She loved nothing more than tickling restricted databases and then showing off by spouting ridiculous levels of detail. He’d let her run for a little longer, but if she didn’t get on point soon, he was going to have to interrupt.
She continued, “Three years ago, she was promoted to dispatcher, at which she’s making fifteen thirty-eight an hour.” Venice looked up. “Pretty good career track in just a couple of years.”
“Are you going to get to anything useful?” Boxers asked. His bullshit tolerance was considerably smaller than Jonathan’s, and given the circumstances, his reservoir was about empty. “Tonight, I mean. You know, within the next hour or two.”
Venice pretended not to hear. “She has a completely clean criminal record. Not even a moving violation, which is actually kind of creepy.” An otherwise law-abiding, straight-shooting model citizen, Venice Alexander was by anyone’s estimation, a speed demon. Wrapped in Glow Bird-the name she’d given to her butt-ugly blaze-orange Miata-her right foot turned to solid lead when she got on the road.
After a few more taps, Venice continued her monologue. “She lives in the Nathan Bedford Forrest Mobile Home Park, where she pays…”
Jonathan knew to wait for it.
“… three twenty-five a month in rent.”
“That’s all?” Gail gasped.
“We’re talking rural West Virginia,” Venice said.
“But I come from rural Indiana, and-”
“You ever been to rural West Virginia?” Boxers asked with a smirk. “There is no rural like rural West Virginia.” To Venice: “We’re talking coal country?”
She nodded. Then scowled. “Only coal is not the big industry there.” She used her finger to follow the words on the screen, the way other people might read a newspaper. “Apparently, the mines in Maddox County are pretty much played out. The big corporate taxpayer there now is Appalachian Acoustics. They make acoustic shells, those things that go up behind orchestras and choruses to direct the sound out to the audience.”
Boxers looked to Jonathan. “Are you seeing the relevance to any of this?”
“Intel is intel, Box. It’s like ammunition-I’ve never wished that I had less.”
The look Venice gave to the Big Guy would have been more complete if she’d stuck out her tongue, but she restrained herself. “They employ nearly two hundred workers in a factory there that makes…” She strained to read further on the page. “Wow. A hundred million a year.”
Jonathan’s jaw dropped. “On acoustic shells? A product I’d never heard of until right now?”
“Despite your love of concert halls,” Gail joked.
“They’re a big company,” Venice said, reading on. “International, in fact, with exports to just about everywhere. And they supply to the federal government. Their brochure says even the White House uses their products.”
“I’m a little lost myself,” Gail confessed. “Why is all this demographic data important to us?”
Venice started to answer, then deferred to her boss. “Go ahead,” she said. “You tell her.”
“Leverage,” Jonathan explained. “We don’t get to play with warrants and court orders, so we need to be persuasive in other ways. The more we know about the community, the more we can strategize about leverage.”
