Page 11 of Small Town Hunter

THREE

CRASH

There she is.

Real as life.

An old Crown Victoria, Virginia Plates, formerly the property of the Florin PD before they retired the line for the Chargers and those damned stupid electric trucks. After a fourteen-hour speed run across state lines, the old girl looks no worse, except for the thick coat of grime that dusts just about everything in Oklahoma.

Car like that, you’d think the owner was just another broke son-of-a-bitch who crawled into the Serenity Motel to get high and possibly entertain one of the fine ladies standing on the corner. But of course you don’t judge a cowboy by his hat or corn hooch by its bottle, and in fact the owner of that Crown Victoria could buy the motel, the ladies across the street, the whole damned gas station and all the gas in it.

I’m here to change that.

This extraction job is what you might call a hair in the butter situation. I am a licensed bounty hunter in Virginia. That means I catch bail jumpers and take them to jail. Sometimes I do work under the table when I need fast money and I don’t personallyobject to the job. Of late, the money situation has lowered my threshold of personal objections.

Since I’m not in Virginia, and McCall is not legally wanted for anything, what I’m doing here is illegal. I’ve done illegal before, of course. These days that’s most of what pays. But seeing as I don’t know these parts or the powers that reign over them, I have to move careful and especially quick.

One more thing of interest to me in this heap of dust is a certain strigiform species. My buddies at the Southwestern Virginia Ornithologist Association would be hay-green over my being here, if I was allowed to tell them.

I do find there’s an owlish look to the folks of Tippalonga. Perhaps an owl that’s flown into a building a couple times. Big round white faces and dark eyes blinking real slow from the dust.

My Uncle Cotton used to say,An Okie is slick as an eel in gravy but dumb as a catfish.

I park at the gas station, acknowledge the ladies, light up and casually walk over to the Crown Vic parked outside the motel.

I’d been warned not to underestimate McCall. He did time in Appalachia State Correctional for the attempted murder of my cousin Mully Walker. Seven years, exactly. I reckon the judge took the McCall name into favor when he handed down that delicate sentence, but since I was in Iraq at the time fighting for my country I couldn’t say.

I can count on McCall to stand his ground in a fight. He’ll bring the fight, come to that. But sustained pressure will break him, make him paranoid and impulsive. The goal here is a trap, not a gunfight.

A touch of the hood tells me the engine’s cold. I stop and lean casually on it, staring with exaggerated indifference at the surroundings. McCall must have parked overnight. The sunhasn’t come up to bake the steel hood just yet. I drive irons into the back tires and get back to my vehicle.

As I’m sitting there, in short order, one of the prostitutes makes her way over.

She and her friends have been staring at the junction in the road with eagle-eyed attention. This one’s the prettiest and she’s wearing next to nothing. She’s got dark hair and big hips and moves like a ripple on the water.

“Hey Virginia,” she says in a sugar-pie voice, leaning in my window.

“Hi Oklahoma.”

“You want to have some fuuun?”

“Sorry darlin’, I’m at work.”

I don’t see a pimp, but I wouldn’t, anyway.

“My name is Jada. What’s yours?”

“Crash.”

Jada opens the door and folds herself into my passenger’s seat. “I’m working too, shug. Been here since five in the morning,” she sighs. “It smells good in here. Do you use air freshener?”

“Maybe you could help me out, Jada.”

“Yeah?” she purrs.

I pass her a twenty and she takes it delicately between her fingers. “I’m listening, big man.”

“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” I tell her. “Tall, redheaded. Mean look. Drives a Crown Vic.”

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