I nearly jumped out of my skin, which is an expression I hate but understand better now. I was surprised my hide wasn’t lying in folds on the ground.
But the shock wore off quickly and there we were, together in the night, sharing the weirdness of the backhoe headed away from us, taillights looking like the eyes of a vampire bat. For a moment I had the eerie sensation that Ignacio and I were pals, sharing this unlikely apparition.
“Dunno,” I said after a few deep breaths to get my voice right. “What time is it?”
Vince checked his watch. “One fifteen.”
“That Lexus is gone. Guy who was in the end room.”
“I heard it start up. Half an hour ago. Didn’t see which way it went.”
I shrugged, a gesture Vince didn’t catch in the dark. The Lexus wasn’t my concern. We stood there another five minutes, watching, not talking. The backhoe was out about a half mile, well beyond Jo-X’s helicopter shed, no longer moving away. Its lights were small in the distance. The diesel engine revved up and down. No doubt it was digging, but why?
“Kinda strange,” I said.
“Probably putting in an outhouse.”
“That’d be my guess. Long walk to go potty, but it would keep the smell down, so, yeah—outhouse for sure.”
“Whatever it is, I’ll bet it’s nice to get the work done when it isn’t a hundred twenty degrees out.”
“That’s a thought.”
More silence. Finally, he said, “I’m not really a bad guy, Mr. Angel. I just, you know, work for a tabloid. I know they suck if you have half a brain, and my job is pure trash to most normal people, but I’m good at it and it pays really well. Like twenty times better than waiting tables, which I’ve done.”
“How’d you figure out Celine? And when?”
“Two weeks after she first showed up on Xenon’s arm. She got lonely or something and drove up to Tonopah to visit that other girl, Danya, who’d driven down from Reno to be with her. I followed Celine up there. She left Xenon’s place as a black girl and ended up in Tonopah pure white. They stayed the night at a motel, then Celine went back to Vegas. She was black again. I didn’t know anything about that other girl, so I followed her. She went back to Reno. I found out where they live and did some checking, found out Celine’s real name is Shanna Hayes and that she married Danya Fuller in April. Then I went back to Vegas to stay on Celine, see what else I could find out.”
“You kept all of that to yourself the past two weeks?”
“Had to. Break a story too soon and you lose the best part of it forever. Things shut down. Other people move in on it. I had that happen a few years ago, lost the best half of a big story. The only way I would break this one before I’ve got it nailed down is if someone else was about to. I keep a close watch on things, but no one’s been on Shanna’s tail except you, and all you do is find dead people, so I figure I’m the only one near it so far.”
A finder of dead people. Catchy. Something to have carved on my headstone. I would have to get that in my will.
“You think there’s more to Celine’s story than what you’ve got now?” I asked.
“Sure. She’s married to that girl, Danya. So why was she with Jo-X? What was that all about? My guess is that’s the real story. I don’t want to let out what I’ve got before I get all of it.”
“How are you following these people?”
“Just . . . practice. It’s what I do—following people. Well, one of the things. I’ve been doing it for years.”
Good at it, too. The sonofabitch oughta work for me. Or Ma.
I said, “Then Xenon disappeared, and the girls live in Reno. How’d you end up here? This motel, of all places. And Caliente.”
“Long story, sorta.”
“I’ve got nothing but time. Let’s hear it.”
“Celine was the key to the story, so I stayed on her. I mean, Xenon’s been around for years, but Celine was new, big, hot. I followed her from Xenon’s Vegas mansion a second time. She stopped off the highway for a while, finally ended up here, white, not black, and flew off in a helicopter. I didn’t know what that was all about. I watched from the highway with binoculars. I didn’t know who the pilot was or where he and Shanna were going. I waited all that day for her to come back, then finally got a room at the motel here when it started to get dark. I was tired. Nothing was happening. I figured when the helicopter returned, it would wake me up and I’d get back on Celine’s tail.
“But it never did. I woke up about ten that next morning. Celine’s car was gone and a black SUV was parked where her car used to be. So I missed her. I would’ve woke up for sure if that helicopter came back, so I didn’t know what had happened. I went back to Vegas. Two days later, Xenon missed a big concert in Seattle. Celine was missing, too, media starting to go crazy, no one knew what was going on, so I went back to Reno.
“Then that girl, Danya, spotted me at their house so she took off, but I followed her to a motel on Fourth Street. She got a room. Knew where she was, so I went back to their house to try to pick up that other girl, Shanna. The back door was unlocked so I called out names, got no answer, so I went in. Then you showed up and chased me off after roughing me up.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Uh-huh. You owe me an SD card—thirty-two gigs. Then Shanna came back. After a while you found Jo-X in that garage and
