On inspection Huddy saw nothing unusual about the motel room. There was the bed where the two hired hands had confronted Pickett. He inspected the bathroom, the window through which the old man had escaped, the cornfield out back. The two locals who’d missed the pick-up stood near the foot of the bed and waited. They seemed competent enough… until Pickett’s name was mentioned. Then they turned surly and reticent.
Feeling slightly self-conscious without knowing why, Huddy sat down on the rumpled bed and listened while Drew spoke.
“I had the town searched half a dozen times. No sign of him. Nobody’s seen him, either.”
“How about the Tucson motels?” Huddy asked.
“Can’t say. If he’s retracing his route he’ll be hard to run down. Our people up there can only do so much, Mr. Huddy. Big-city cops get suspicious when strangers start asking the kinds of questions the police like to reserve for themselves. Even here we’ve had to be damn careful. So it’s possible he could still be here in town.”
“Okay. Keep on it.” Huddy nodded, dismissing Drew. Degrasse and Nichols moved to join him, but Huddy stopped them sharply. “Not you two. I’m not through with you yet.”
They halted irritably. Huddy let them stand there and stew in their own worries while he turned his attention to the two bath towels laid out on the foot of the bed. One supported a tiny mound of threads. They weren’t half as intriguing to Huddy as the disassembled .38 Special that was spread out on the other towel. It looked as if it had been broken down by a small-arms expert. They still hadn’t found the hollow- point shells.
He tapped the barrel. “This just fell apart, you say?”
The locals exchanged a look. Huddy prodded them. “Come on, guys. I know a helluva lot more about this old man and what’s really going down than Drew does. I’m a lot more inclined to believe anything you say than he is. Anything.”
Nichols hesitated, then said quickly, “There wasn’t any doubt about it, sir. The gun just came apart. He did it. The old man. I don’t know how he did it, but he did it. I’m not sure I’d want to know how he did it.” He was eyeing the pillows as if Pickett’s ghost might suddenly materialize to give them another demonstration.
“And after that, you panicked.”
“Hey, look …” Degrasse started to protest.
Huddy raised a calming hand. “I’m not criticizing you, just trying to establish a sequence of events. They gun fell to pieces, and you panicked.”
“Okay, so we panicked.” Degrasse still sounded resentful. “You would’ve too, if you’d been there.” Huddy didn’t comment.
“Excuse me.” A very thin young man was leaning through the open doorway.
“What is it?” Huddy was irritated at having been interrupted.
“Well sir, it’s only that…. You are the man from California, aren’t you?”
“Yes, yes. Spit it out, man.”
He stepped all the way into the room, eyed the other two men uncertainly. “I was on duty at the far end of the motel last night, when everything went down. Over by the manager’s office.”
“What about it?” Huddy didn’t like people wasting his time, especially now that he had no time to waste.
“It’s not like I actually saw the old man get on the bus, but I—”
Huddy instantly forgot about the pistol and the pieces of rag. “Wait a minute. What bus?”
“There was a Greyhound parked over at the Ramada Inn next door. I checked it out, sir. It’s the regular Benson stop.”
“That’s it,” said Huddy with grim satisfaction. “That’s got to be it. The old man has a heart condition. He’s in no shape to be running any marathons. I don’t see any tourists stopping to pick him up in the middle of the night. That’s it. What’s your name, kid?”
“Jason, sir.”
“Well, Jason, you hustle your ass over to the Ramada Inn and pick up a copy of the Greyhound schedule. Find out where that bus was coming from when it stopped here last night and where it’s going. You two.” Degrasse and Nichols all but snapped to attention, relieved to be subject to something like orders instead of unanswerable questions. “Start checking all the towns along the interstate where that bus stopped between leaving here last night and now. They’re mostly all small towns between here and Texas."
Huddy’s mind worked furiously. Of course the old man could work to confuse his trail. He could get off anywhere. Change buses, change systems, take a roundabout route; only he didn’t credit Pickett with that much imagination. From the first the old man had struck Huddy as a simple, uncomplicated type. For now, anyway, they’d proceed on that assumption.
“If he’s still aboard the same bus, then we’ve got him.”
“Yes sir.” Degrasse and Nichols moved to follow the young man out of the room. They were glad to be rid of the snooty executive from the Coast.
Alone in the room, Huddy let himself lean back on the bed. Sure, Pickett had snuck onto the bus last night. No wonder Drew’s people hadn’t been able to find him. This next time they wouldn’t charge in early in the evening. They’d wait until they were certain he was asleep. Surely he couldn’t do his little tricks in his sleep. Now where would be the best place to pick him up?
There were several maps crammed into his jacket. He found the one he now had to use. It covered the Southwestern United States. On it a number of towns had been circled in red and had code numbers inscribed next to them.
The particular map Huddy was studying showed Consolidated Chemical and Mining’s America. The coded, encircled communities boasted CCM facilities. He traced the likely route of a cross-country bus. It might veer south toward Houston, or it might go into Dallas. If it did terminate in Houston, then it would have to pass through this town, this one, then … Fort Stockton, he decided. A medium-sized city in central Texas where CCM maintained a small distribution facility. It was just large enough to have the people he’d need, yet small enough for the business to be carried out in anonymity. A good place to confront Pickett.
He’d fly on ahead of Pickett’s bus and make the necessary preparations out of CCM’s regional office in San Antonio. Ruth could join him there. That ought to please her. She’d been pestering him to get out of that coast town for days. Yes, she could replace Drew and he could send the big man down to Houston to take over her responsibilities for a while. Let the neanderthal listen to dumb household conversations. She could return to complete her “inspection” of the Matagorda computer facilities after the business with Pickett was all wrapped up. Then, the Bahamas. Somerset and himself on a deserted beach, nude and alone. He resented Pickett for putting off that vision yet again. He had no more sympathy left for the irritating old man.
Valuable old man, though, he reminded himself. Yes, Ruth would be better company in mid-Texas than Drew. He didn’t need the big man from L.A. anymore. He would be on the scene himself.
There would be no more mistakes.
XII
As always, Ruth Somerset turned heads as she strode down the corridor in CCM’s San Antonio office building. She ignored the inevitable stares, the whispered comments. Even if she’d been inclined to reply to the yokels admiring her, she was too happy to be out of that damned motel to take unbrage at the lewdest comment. San Antonio wasn’t New York or London, but it was one hell of an improvement over her surroundings of the past week.
Surveillance of the Ramirez household continued without her, under the supervision of Huddy’s pet ape, Drew. Now that the family was effectively stuck there for a while, her decision-making presence wasn’t required.
Finding Huddy turned out to take longer than anticipated. She eventually located him outside the building’s basement laboratory. The outer office was familiar. There was one beneath CCM’s Los Angeles complex that looked just like it.
He was sitting on a couch, puffing absently on one of those silly small cigars he affected.
“Hi, Benjy!” She rushed over and threw herself into his lap. He grunted, responded half-heartedly at best. She pulled back and frowned at him.
“What’s the matter? Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“That’s a rhetorical question and you know it. Of course I’m glad to see you, sweet thing.”
“I see,” she said flatly. “I don’t know how I could have questioned it. I guess I was just overhwelmed by the fervor of your greeting.”
“Sorry.” He manufactured a small smile. “I really am glad to see you, even if I’m not showing it much. What’s new at your end?”
“Nothing you don’t already know. You told me to keep the niece’s family in Port Lavaca. That’s where they are, and that’s where they’ll stay for at least a week. Drew can watch them now. We did have a little trouble. You heard?”
“Not the details.”
She sighed. “The father decided to play hero. One of our Houston people lost a few teeth, suffered a minor concussion. Nothing that can’t be repaired. They did get their job done before super-spic showed up. That van won’t be going to College Station or anywhere else for a while.”
“They only crippled the van? I thought you told me the family had two cars?”
“They do, but the other’s a VW bug. They can’t get around with the grandniece in it. Not easily, anyway. The van has a wheelchair lift and other special facilities for her.”
