Page 68 of A River Red With Blood
“Pittsfield.”
“Nobody goestoPittsfield.They drive through it on their way to somewhere else.”
“I like to buck trends, and I’m easily amused.”
“And what are you doing in Pittsfield to amuse yourself?”
“Sitting at a gas station, waiting.”
“You’re not selling me on the hidden joys of Pittsfield.Waiting for what?”
“A BMW to come out of a lot so I can follow it.”
“Who does the BMW belong to?”
“I don’t know.That’s why I’m going to follow it.Duh.”
“Duh yourself.Is this still the Spero thing?”
“I think so.At least, it’s the Spero, but it may not be the same thing.”
“Messy, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.You free tomorrow night?”
“Unless I find another gas station to hang out at, so you’ll have to make a tempting offer.”
“I’ll get naked.”
“I don’t know.Some of these gas stations have pretty good hot dogs.”
“I’ll also pick up barbecue from Wilson County.”
“Hot damn,” I said.“Sold to the nekkid lady with the fried chicken.”
“Clown.And don’t get shot in the meantime, or hit in the face with another block of wood.I don’t want to overorder.”
She hung up.What a thing it is to be loved.
Chapter 66
To his credit, Teal didn’t panic when Kenney told him about the undercover DEA agent they’d killed, but not unexpectedly, he wasn’t pleased about it either.Already he was working through the implications and, as Kenney had done, going back over their interactions with Cotter, from abduction to disposal.
“Her cell phone will lead them to Fishkorn,” he said.
Cotter had been carrying a Samsung phone, which Teal destroyed as soon as she was safely in the car.He’d put the phone in a cloth bag and used the heel of his boot to smash it to pieces before tossing the battery and SIM card out the window at intervals.As far as Teal could establish, the DEA would be able to trace its last-known location to the general Fishkorn area, if not the specific street from which the woman was taken, although they might get close enough depending on the distribution of the local cell towers.But they’d need a warrant to obtain that information, which would take time.As for Teal and Kenney, neither had brought phones with them that night, not even burners; they were too practised to make that kind of mistake.To track them, the police would have to knock on doors looking for eyewitnesses—Teal wished them good luck in Fishkorn—and try to access footage from fixed security cameras or any dashcams that might have been in the area that night.He and Kenney would have to ride their luck on that score, but they’d ridden it before and come away unscathed.The main complication was that the searchers wouldn’t give up, not with Cotter being a federal agent.But for the present, they’d be operating on the assumption that she might still be alive.Cotter was a missing person, not a murder victim.
All of this he and Kenney went through as they sat in theirrespective vehicles, each with the driver-side window down, Teal’s hood pointing toward the storage units, Kenney’s outward, so they could speak softly and still be heard.
“If they find a body,” said Kenney, “we’re screwed.They won’t ever stop.”
“I wonder what she was working on,” said Teal.
“If she was a decoy, they’d have been on us before she hit the ground.”
“So she was working alone, and then they let days go by before they lit the beacons.Must have been something, or someone, big.”
“Meaning that’s where they’ll start,” said Kenney, “with the target of the investigation.I’d say that it buys us more time, but it’s not like we can do anything with it.All we can do is hope.”
“What about the Saint?”
