Skeets indicated Ernie Sandoval. “Because that’s what he told Mabel. That there was a reward.”
Ernie Sandoval, a CTU/DENV investigative agent in his mid-thirties, was short, chunky, moon- faced, with close-cropped dark hair, dark brown eyes, and a thick mustache. He’d been doing some good old-fashioned legwork all morning, canvassing stops along some of the back roads in the Red Notch area. He’d found a possible lead at the Pup Tent, a greasy spoon diner located on the Dixon Cutoff, a pass between Mount Nagaii and Mount Zebulon that was used by local drivers and long- haul truckers.
Jack Bauer, Armstrong, Sandoval, and Skeets were standing in the parking lot of the Pup Tent, a roadside eatery on the north side of the east-west running Dixon Cutoff. The diner was a white wooden- frame building that looked like what it was, an overgrown hot dog stand. A hand- painted marquee on the roof depicted a cartoonish hot dog in a ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots firing off a pair of six-guns. The legend beneath it read: “Ask about our famous foot-long Texas Wieners!”
The structure sat in the middle of an elongated gravel parking lot, extra-sized to accommodate big-rig trucks whose drivers wanted to grab a bite on this side of the mountains. There were no big rigs in the lot now, just Armstrong’s Mercedes, the Toyota pickup that Sandoval had been making his rounds in, and a couple of cars belonging to diner patrons and personnel.
Sandoval had warm brown eyes and an engaging smile. He said, “That’s not entirely accurate, Mr. Skeets. What I told your employer was that we are prepared to pay a modest sum in the event that the information you supply helps us to locate the people we’re looking for.”
Skeets said, “That’s a reward, ain’t it?”
“Call it what you like. The information has to be verified and significantly useful in discovering the whereabouts of the persons of interest. In other words, if your tip pays off, we pay off.”
Skeets licked his lips. “How much?”
“That depends on how useful the information is. We won’t be able to assess that until it’s been properly evaluated and followed up on.”
“A couple of thousand bucks?”
“A couple of hundred bucks, maybe.” Sandoval was starting to get irritated. “We’re not exactly buying the plans for an atomic bomb here, we’re just trying to find some missing persons.”
Skeets got a shifty look in his eyes. “Well, I don’t know about that. I had to come down here on my time off. I work nights and I ain’t had my proper sleep. Could throw off my recollection, that is if I did see anything at all.”
Jack, impatient, decided to play bad cop to Sandoval’s good cop. He said, “Maybe a stretch in jail will improve your memory.”
Skeets tried to tough it out. “You got no call to arrest me. I ain’t done nothing. I got my rights!”
“You’re a possible material witness who’s impeding a Federal investigation. That’s grounds for holding you in custody for forty-eight hours. For starters.”
Skeets’s eyes bulged and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Now hold on a danged minute— ”
Jack had an inspiration. “Maybe you know a state cop named Miller Fisk?”
“Who don’t? Everybody around here knows him. They ought to, he throws his weight around enough. He’s a real mean SOB.”
“A session with Fisk might help you get your mind right. Why don’t we give him a call and tell him to come on down?”
Skeets held up both hands palms-out in a gesture of surrender. “You don’t have to do that! It’s all coming back to me now.”
“Okay — give.”
Skeets said, “I’ll tell you what I told Pedro.”
“Who’s he?”
“The dishwasher on the night shift. We was both working on Wednesday night. Thursday morning, actually. Mabel, she goes home at midnight, so there’s just me and Pedro holding down the fort. I do the cooking and he does the cleaning and we get by. Don’t get many customers between midnight and dawn, ’cept for some long- haul truckers and night owls with a load on who want to get something in their bellies to help them sober up. So the two of us is plenty.
“Anyhow, pretty late in the shift, it was dead quiet so I went out for a smoke. Mabel used to be a heavy smoker but she quit and now she don’t allow no smoking inside nohow. Not the customers or nobody. She knows if anybody’s been smoking in the diner when she ain’t there, she’s got a nose on her. I tried it once or twice and sure enough, as soon as she comes in, first thing at six o’clock in the morning, she wrinkles up her nose and sniffs around and says, ‘Cletus, you been smoking.’ She told me off but good both times and after you’ve been told off by Mabel, you’ve been told. So when I want a smoke I go outside, which is what I done that night.”
Jack said, “What time was that, Mr. Skeets?”
“Well, I went out a couple of times, but the time we’re talking about was four-thirty in the ay emm. I remember that ’cause I looked at the clock and said to myself, Just another hour and a half to go and I’m out of here. I went outside and sat down on the front stairs and lit up.
“No sooner do I fire up a smoke than I seen a pair of headlights coming. There ain’t much traffic at that hour and I said, Dang, don’t that beat all? Soon as I take a break, a customer rolls along. Figured it was a customer because there ain’t hardly no traffic at all at that hour.”
“Which direction was the vehicle coming from, Mr. Skeets?”
“East, from the east. Only it wasn’t no vehicle, it was a bunch of them. A regular convoy. A pickup truck, a couple of cars, and a bus, all riding together in a line. They didn’t stop, neither, but kept right on going.”
“They went west?”
Skeets nodded. “Yep. West, toward the pass. I wouldn’t have thought nothing much about it, ’cept for the bus.”
“Why is that?”
“It was a school bus. Just struck me funny somehow. I mean, here it is the middle of summer. Ain’t no school in session. Summer school, maybe, but they don’t need no bus for that and even if they did, they don’t run at four- thirty in the morning. Ain’t even no schools around here, for that matter. Sure ain’t none west of the pass. So I said to myself, What-all do they need a school bus for in July?”
Skeets went on, “Another thing that struck me about it was the color. It was a funny color. Every school bus I ever seen was yellow. Not this one, though.”
“What color was it?”
“Blue. It was blue. The diner’s all lit up at night so truckers can see it from a long way off and they’ll have plenty of time to slow down their rigs and pull in. So I could see the bus nice and clear and sure enough, it was blue.”
“Did you notice anything else unusual about it?”
“Nope.”
“Were there any people inside it?”
Skeets shrugged. “Danged if I know. It was dark— the bus, I mean. I couldn’t see inside it.”
“What happened then?”
“It drove by, along with the rest of the convoy.
They was heading west, toward the pass. That’s all I know. I finished my smoke and went inside. I told Pedro what I saw. It’s funny to see a school bus in summer, a blue one at that. Shoot, you can’t get these no-account kids today to go to school even when it’s in session. They’d rather be going off skylarking and cutting up capers… I went back to work and didn’t think no more about it. Not till today, when I got roused out of a sound sleep by a phone call from Mabel telling me to get my butt down here to talk to you folks. Which I have now done.”
Sandoval said, “And we appreciate it, Mr. Skeets.”
“Any chance you could show that appreciation with some folding green?”
“If your information proves to be instrumental in locating the missing persons, there may be some financial remuneration forthcoming.”
“I don’t suppose you could let me have a couple of twenties now, just on account, say?” Sandoval shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way, Mr. Skeets. Sorry.” Skeets looked glum but resigned. “Reckon I got to trust you folks then.”
