Page 41 of Shelter for Martina

“Buthedoesn’t know that! I went to his house again.”

She spun and stared at Bud. “Why in hell did you do that?”

“Because I wanted to cover for Marty. I went over there and asked him where Marty was because nobody had seen him. He thinks we’re looking for Marty. That was the whole idea—to throw him off Marty’s trail.”

“Oh, great. Because Marty was at my house and you guys are supposedly looking for him, he thinksIdid something with him!”

“Well, shit. It wasn’t supposed to work out that way.” Bud sat there for a minute. Somebody had told Phil they’d seen Marty at Martina’s house. There was no other reason he would’ve shown up there. “So is your neighbor going to call the cops?”

“I hope so. I told her I wasn’t there, so she can tell them that when they get there.”

“I’m calling the post. I can send somebody over there.”

“No! Let the sheriff’s department handle it. If he and Young are in bed together, then they can handle it. If they do and he comes back, it’ll make them look ineffective and guilty as sin.”

Bud nodded. “You’ve got a good point there.”

“Yeah. I just hope she—” Her phone rang again and she grabbed it. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. Oh, nice. Okay, well, thanks anyway, Angela. You too.” She threw the phone down again. “He left before she could call the cops. Screamed at the house that he’d be back. God only knows whatthatmeans.”

Bud knew full well what that meant. It was late, so he wouldn’t call Amos and tell him about it, but he’d sure make that call the next morning. Adams was coming unhinged. He was dangerous. At least Martina was there with him. “Does he know where you work?”

“Babe,everybodyknows where I work.”

“Then new plan. I take you to work, and I pick you up. No exceptions.”

“Bud, I—”

“No. No argument. He’s dangerous, Martina. I think he’s the one who made Renita disappear, and he’ll do the same to you if he thinks you’ve got anything to do with Marty disappearing. He’ll get an ‘eye for an eye’ idea and you’ll be in danger. Do you understand?”

Martina nodded. “Yeah. I get it. My life just gets shittier and shittier.”

Those words cut Bud’s heart like a razor. “Really? Is that how it looks?”

“No.” She frowned and shook her head. “It’s better than it’s ever been with you. But seriously, this is ridiculous. Somebody needs to put that idiot away.”

“We’re working on it, babe.” But right that minute, he wished they’d work a little faster.

* * *

“So what’s the plan?Just curious,” Bud asked Amos when he saw the two KDCI agents the next morning after taking Martina to work.

Amos was sitting on the corner of a desk in the big common office area, sipping a cup of coffee. “The state drug task force gets all the data that comes in on any drug-related thefts in the state. What we noted was a disproportionately low number of drug-related arrests and convictions in this area as related to the number of thefts. The criminals simply aren’t being apprehended and prosecuted. So that’s where we come in. It’s our job to figure out what’s going on and why that’s the case.”

“Yeah. One of the things we’ll be doing is interviewing people whohavebeen convicted in this county. We’ll be asking them if they know others who’ve been involved in thefts or drug activity, if they’re willing to tell us about them, what they know about them. Just the turning over of those stones will be enough to scare the people involved in the coverup.” Alex laughed. “Never doubt—those prisoners talk to people on the outside. It won’t take long for word to get around.”

“And what about the person we’ve got in the safe house?” Bud asked.

Amos nodded. “We’re going to be talking to him later today. Right now, we just need to get our ducks in a row so everything’s above-board and nobody can say we were targeting anybody.” He snickered. “Even though we’re targeting somebody.”

“So what are you up to today, detective?” Alex asked.

“Thought I’d go talk to Mrs.Anderson’s neighbor. She got a call last night that PhilAdams was over there screaming, ranting, and raving about how she’d done something with his boy. Of course, he doesn’t know Marty’s the one in the safe house. But somebody told Adams that Marty had been over there, and I’m going to see if I can find out who that was.”

“Good luck. Talk to you later,” Amos called as Bud headed out.

He set out toward Hartford. It wasn’t too far from the post, but it also wasn’t right next door. After driving past Martina’s house a couple of times, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, so he pulled up in the neighbor’s drive. A knock at the door brought a younger woman, maybe in her early thirties, to it. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“AngelaTabors? I’m DetectiveGriffin from the Kentucky State Police. Could I speak to you for a minute, please?”

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