“Wouldn’t pick up flesh and bone, huh?”
“Nope. Obviously, since it didn’t.”
Second time she’d used that word, putting bullet holes in my gravitas.
“Packages in a drop box are paid by a FedEx account or credit card, is that right?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Which was it?”
“Credit card. Visa. We mark out the number with special ink after we run it and it clears, so it doesn’t get sent all over where people can see it.”
“Do you know who the card belonged to? Do you get that?”
“Nope. I ran it. To me it was just a number. I bet those agents know, though. They could’ve backtracked it off the shipping number from our computer system at corporate.”
If they got anywhere with that, they would’ve already swooped down on the guy and it would be all over the news. J. Edgar’s boys would be crowing like roosters if they’d caught him, so that name had no doubt sent them straight into a brick wall.
“How many drop boxes are there in this town?”
“Just one. It’s on the main street, south of here.”
“I saw it. Do you know when the box was unloaded? I mean, when it had that package in it?”
“It was the morning drop, the seven o’clock. We got that off the label—the time we processed it through.”
Worst time possible, since the package could have been put in the box at midnight or two in the morning. Just the way I’d do it.
“Anything else?” Cathy asked. “I gotta get back.”
I couldn’t think of anything more. “Nope. Thanks for talking to us.”
“Yeah, just don’t tell anyone I said anything.”
“Our secret.”
She left.
Sarah and I went out to her car. “Now what?” she said. “Can we please start looking for Allie again?”
“One last thing, then we’ll head back to Gerlach and get on that.”
“What’s that?”
“I gotta look at that drop box again. I saw it last night. Mile or so south of our motel.”
The box was still there. Good thing, too, because if it wasn’t, tracking it down would’ve been a bitch.
I stood on the sidewalk wearing the dirty-blond wig, hair half over my ears, no dumbass moustache, and looked around. A bunch of stores were nearby: Ace Hardware, variety, a real estate office, sewing machine sales and service. But at a diagonal across the street, I saw a two-story house with a few missing composition shingles, a gutter in need of repair, three buckled wooden steps leading up to a deep, screened-in porch.
Sarah and I went over. She was trying not to laugh at my wig, and I was trying not to deck her. The porch was in shadow, but close up I could see an elderly man sitting in a glider, staring at the street. An old dog was lying at his feet, asleep.
I went up two steps and rapped on a post holding up the porch roof. The dog twisted its head and looked at me, didn’t move otherwise.
“Hep you?” the old guy asked through a screen door. He looked to be in his seventies. He had bushy white eyebrows and needed a shave. His chest was sunken and he had on baggy jeans, a flannel shirt, and bright red suspenders.
“I was wondering about that FedEx drop box over there.”
“Lot of folks wonderin’ ’bout that box these days.”
“Oh?”
“Federal guys. FBI. The hand of that sonofabitchin’ liar was sent from there.”
“Well, you got his character right.”
“No big trick. They’s all goddamn liars. Career sons of bitches lookin’ out for number one. My name’s Fred, in case you want to know who you’re speakin’ with. You oughta come on in so we kin talk proper-like, ’specially since you ain’t alone.”
I opened the door and Sarah and I went onto the porch. Fred sized us up, especially Sarah. Old fellow had a good eye. Hope I end up like him.
“Nice to meet you, Fred. I’m Earl. I got a few questions, if you don’t mind. Do you see people put packages in that box?”
“Sure do, all day long. What you wanna ask is, did I see who dropped off the package with that liar’s hand in it.”
“That’s the question.”
“Answer’s no, same thing I told the Feds. How the hell would I know who put it in there? I see twenty, thirty people a day drop stuff off. None of ’em mean a toot or a whistle to me.” He leaned forward and looked at Sarah. “You’re an almighty pretty girl. What’s your name, hon?”
“Sarah.”
“Sarah. That’s a lovely name. First girl I ever kissed was named Sarah. This here gent with you’s one hell of a lucky man, I’ll tell you what.”
“He’s never kissed me. How lucky is that?”
“Well, then he’s a blamed fool.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Earl,” Fred said. “You’re a blamed fool, ain’t cha?”
“Most of the time. So those Feds didn’t learn a thing from you?”
“Fact is, they did. I told ’em Reinhart was a lying son of a bitch and got what he deserved, so you betcha they learned a thing or three. They learned that Fred Meyer ain’t no fool. Not like them anyways, since they took my fingerprints. Tole ’em I’ve never in my life touched that box over there, and I didn’t kill that lying son of a bitch and ship off his hand, either, but you know Feds.”
I didn’t know what else to ask. Fred didn’t know anything. I was about to turn away when I remembered our search for Allie and the million-dollar question popped out: “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a green Mercedes SUV around here, have you?”
He looked off in the distance for a moment, then said, “Fact is, I have. Huh. Fact is, an SUV like that—green, too—stopped at that box a few days back and dropped off a package. Damn funny, you askin’ that. You don’t see a lot of SUVs like that around here. Worth more than my house here, if’n I wanted to sell it.”
My heart rate went up a few beats per minute. “Did you see
