“Well, it shows. I wish some more of my reporters had the discipline and the organization that the military teaches so well. Anyhow, Reed Wells was in the forefront of the fight against the drug. He’s your dynamo type. To the accompaniment of much publicity, he has acquired a helicopter from the army on some kind of Justice Department grant that passes surplus material on to police agencies. He’s organized a first-rate raid team, all very gung-ho. You know, guys in black with hoods and machine guns. He searches for the labs from the air most days, then coordinates with ground, then he hits ’em from above just as the ground team hits ’em from two sides. Very commandolike. Nikki said she felt like she was in Vietnam, though I don’t know how she could know anything about Vietnam.”
“Maybe she saw some old books,” said Bob.
“But here’s the thing. Johnson County leads the region in the number of meth labs raided, the number of arrests, the number of prosecutions. But the odd part is, the price of meth in Johnson hasn’t gone up, it’s stayed the same.
“Now why would that be? If the supply is drying up, the price would rise. Yet Nikki had discovered from someone in an abuse program that the stuff is just as plentiful and just as economical. That means that either a) outside sources were bringing it in, or b) there were a lot more meth labs than anybody thought, or c) there was some kind of superlab, capable of taking up the slack, that nobody had discovered yet. Finding the superlab: There’s your Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, and there’s your ticket to the Washington Post.”
“I see,” said Bob. “Tell me, if I wanted to figure out what she did the last day before the event, what would I look for? What does a reporter carry? A notebook, I’m guessing.”
“She had a notebook, yes. Most reporters today have laptops that they carry with them. Then they can plug their notes straight into our computer system, and it saves copying and reduces mistakes. So there should be a computer, too. And of course a cellphone. It might have numbers registered that she called that day. The police would have recovered all those things from the accident site, though of course they may be damaged or whatever. Or they may be temporarily impounded, as a part of Thelma’s investigation. But Thelma’s a decent person; if you want your daughter’s things back, I’m sure she’ll cooperate.”
“You must have some sort of list of names and numbers out there-people involved in the meth business, I don’t mean dealers, I mean all the social services people, the drug rehab programs, that sort of thing. She might have talked to them.”
“I can get you an official list. I’ll talk to Bill Carter, he did cops before Nikki got here, and I know he gave her access to his Rolodex. I’ll get a list from him.”
“That would be very helpful.”
“Mr. Swagger,” said Jim Gustofson, “I can certainly appreciate your anger at the inability of the sheriff’s department to bring this thing to a close quickly. But I’m wondering if you really want to go up there on your own and start demanding answers and kicking in doors.”
“I can’t just sit around. It’s not my nature, sir.”
“With all due respect, sir, I see where Nikki’s aggressive nature as a reporter comes from. But I would caution all my reporters not to take chances and I have to say the same to you. The people up there don’t like strangers, and they have, as has been noted, violent proclivities. You could find yourself in a lot of trouble fast. I’d hate to see a tragedy become a double tragedy and you end up on the front page of our newspaper.”
“Good advice, sir. I wish I could follow it. Most would. But sorry to say, I can’t.”
Bob called the hospital to check on Nikki, called Idaho and saw that Julie had already left for the trip to Knoxville, and then started the drive out to Johnson County but soon found himself ensnarled in traffic. He pulled over, got out a map and investigated various alternative routes, but all seemed to take him too far to the west and then back around. He decided to bull through straight down Volunteer Parkway on the premise that once he passed the speedway, traffic would lessen considerably and he could make up for lost time and still get out to Mountain City by midafternoon, where he’d begin with Detective Thelma and maybe even get a chance to meet up with the hero, Sheriff Reed Wells, Silver Star winner and reformer.
The traffic crawled along, and the closer he got to the speedway, the more festive Bristol turned. He felt like he was at some gathering of clans or tribes or something. There was a feeling of celebration in the air and no shortage of alcohol to fuel the glee. Pennants hung across the road, all the street lamps had been festooned with portraits of blasting Chargers or Fusions or Camrys roaring through clouds of dust, blazing bright with primal colors, looking for all the world like fighter planes hungry for the kill. Flags of a hundred colors flapped and danced in the wind against a bright blue sky. Every lawn bore a sign offering parking, and the cost increased hugely the closer he got to the speedway. The far hills were carpeted with Rec-Vs, SUVs, and tents, as a whole new population of occupiers and spenders moved in. They were like the Lakota Sioux just before the Little Big Horn, only in vans and sleepers instead of wikiups. Crowds thronged the walkways, and seeped into the slowed traffic. Everywhere, entrepreneurs had erected booths or tents, offering souvenirs of the fun, blankets, hats, posters, rental radio sets for eavesdropping on the chatter between driver and crew chief, food of every sort, drink of every sort-no problem with liquor licensing down here, everybody just sold whatever they wanted-straw hats after the famous beat-up Richard Petty configuration, neckerchiefs, sweatshirts, T-shirts charting the rise of the Confederacy. Damn, these folks knew how to party. No wonder they called it a nation. It was a hootenanny combined with Oktoberfest with an office party with a safe return from thirteen months in the land of bad things with a Chinese New Year with a hoedown with a rock concert and, oh yeah, the VJ-Day feeling his old man must have had after surviving-if barely-five invasions on five islands across the Pacific.
He shook his head at the frenzy of it; the intensity seemed to have increased three-or fourfold since his visit with USMC Matt and his crew chief, Red Nichols, a few days earlier, and he saw that dropping by to see them now was all but an impossibility; they were sealed off by crowds and madness as the big day approached.
Finally, he topped a low hill and saw his principal obstacle just ahead. It loomed gigantically, dominating all that was before or around it, and he saw it was situated a couple of hundred yards to the left of Volunteer Parkway. He would have to pass it to get beyond. The Bristol Motor Speedway looked like some kind of huge ship from space that had crash-landed in this part of the Shenandoah. It had a kind of familiarity to it he could not again place, but then it flashed clear. Some movie with Will Smith as a marine fighter pilot, but that wasn’t but a small part of it. It was about an invasion from space, and these huge ships came down and dominated the earth. The F-15s fired their Mavericks at it, and the missiles just popped on the perimeter because of some kind of magic shield. It was stupid, he realized, and wondered why on earth he’d wasted the time and money. Maybe the USMC fighter-pilot thing, but now he recalled after Will and the boys had put the old USMC boot up the ass of the whatever-they-weres from wherever-they-came, the big ships crashed and burned. That’s what it looked like, a giant space ship, all chrome and sleek streamline and immense scale and circularity, some kind of man-structure, too regular by far for nature, crashed and burning askew in some place where it didn’t belong, a green valley with whispers of blue mountain ridges to the east and the west.
In fact, it looked like nature had somehow been scrubbed from the scene by the thing, so dominating was the man-made structure and so active the little city that had grown up in its shadows. But then he noticed, almost as an afterthought, a high foothill, carpeted in forest, rising above the speedway. It was about a mile off, on his left, separated from the speedway by a plain now peopled with a frenzied mob, where booths and exhibits and tents had been set up. Hell, you hardly noticed the hill at all-this big lump of verticality was all but banished from vision and notice by the hugeness of the speedway and all the frenzy it sustained. He thought, Wonder why they haven’t knocked that old pile of rocks and trees down and put condos in right there.
Anyhow, he struggled down through the thick stop-and-go of Volunteer Parkway until he reached its closest point to the speedway itself, and saw that here too, everything was on an upswing. The grinding buzz of the cars qualifying inside-maybe his new pal Matt MacReady was on the track now, sailing along at about thirty-five degrees at 185 per-filled the air, giving every physical thing, including Bob’s rental car and his eardrums, a kind of vibration. Baby sister, the boys were burning rubber and high-test today!
What was new today was that some kind of trailer park had been constructed in the immediate vicinity of the structure itself and proudly wore a kind of midway carnival banner that said NASCAR VILLAGE.
It was all jammed up with pilgrims of the faith. He saw that it was a little neighborhood composed entirely of trailers, trucks, and vans that had the specialized capability of converting to retail outlet by opening up into a kind of high counter. From behind that counter, dozens of men and women, all in NASCAR regalia, sold yet more souvenirs, most all of it driver oriented, worshiping the cult of the guy that pressed the steel around the oval at speed and
