“Clyde’s Stop-In,” said Reel, reading the sign as they drove into the parking lot in front of the convenience store. It had gas pumps out front, a pay phone against one wall with the phone receiver missing, a freezer box with ice inside and a padlock on the door, and dirty windows, along with a general air of a place barely staying alive. There were no other cars in the parking lot, and the store was off a winding road with the nearest town ten miles away.
“I wonder how you wake up one day and decide to build a store in the middle of nowhere,” said Reel.
“This whole place is the middle of nowhere,” noted Robie. “I’ve seen more population density in an Iraqi desert.”
They climbed out of the Yukon and pushed open the door, causing a bell to tinkle. The interior of the space was as dilapidated as the outside. The shelves were only half full, and what was on them looked like it had been there since the seventies. An ATM machine was set against one wall with an OUT OF ORDER sign taped across its front. A door marked RESTROOM was on the back wall next to a refrigerated unit full of beer. A rack of newspapers was against another wall; a modern-looking soda dispenser stood against the far wall, and a shelf with automotive products, condoms, and packaged foodstuffs was next to it. On the front counter was a warming machine containing rows of hot dogs and slices of pepperoni pizza; the commingled smells permeated the place. The cash register was fronted by bulletproof glass, and entry was gained via a thick door with a deadbolt lock on it. Like in a bank, one had to slip the cash or credit card into a slot under the glass.
With the tinkle of the bell a tall, lean older man in a stained cowboy hat emerged from a back room. He had long, scraggly gray hair and a bushy beard.
“Can I help you folks?” he said.
“Are you Clyde?” asked Robie.
The man shook his head. In addition to the hat, he was dressed in faded dungarees, worn leather boots with silver toe caps, a jean shirt, and a hand-tooled belt with an Anheuser-Busch buckle cinched tightly around his narrow waist.
“Clyde’s been dead, oh, twenty years now. I’m his son.”
“How long has this place been open?” asked Reel.
“Sixty years. Nearly as long as I’ve been alive. Name’s Sonny Driscoll. Not too complicated the reason why. My old man didn’t have the best imagination when it came to names.”
He grinned and held out a big, weathered hand. They took turns shaking it.
“That’s a long time to be in business,” said Robie.
Sonny looked around his store. “I know it don’t look like much, but we get by. Mostly truckers gassing up. We got truck diesel here. Or them needing to take a leak or wanting something to eat. People who are lost—there are a lot of those—and they usually buy something just so they don’t feel bad asking me for directions for free. And some folks from Newton, the little town back down the road there. And on Fridays during high school football season folks come in here and clean the place out. Keeps me going through the winter. I don’t need much to get by. Now, what do you folks need? Gas? I got the credit card reader on the pumps. Or you can just pay in here after you finish up.”
“Ever have any trouble here?” asked Robie.
In answer Sonny pointed to the fortified counter. “What does that tell you? Get some strange dudes coming through here. Late at night, you can’t be too careful. You got trouble and call 911, they’ll get here in the morning to take your body away.”
“We’re actually here for some information on one of your former employees,” said Reel. She took out her ID and so did Robie.
Sonny studied them with a frown. “Which employee?”
“Clément Lamarre.”
“Shit, is he in trouble again?”
“Why would you think that?” asked Reel.
“Because Clément was always in trouble. Meth head. Stole from me. I didn’t press charges ’cause he must’ve been out of his damn mind when he did it. He stole some beer, a can of motor oil, and a box of Ho Hos. And he knew how to open the damn cash register and didn’t take a single cent from there. I mean how stupid is that?”
“Pretty stupid,” agreed Robie.
“Serves me right for hiring somebody with a name like that. I think he was French or something. I’m not into foreigners, don’t care who knows it.”
Robie said, “He was from Canada. That’s not really so much of a foreign country. Right on our border.”
Sonny shrugged. “I guess Canadians are okay. Weird name, though.”
Robie said, “When Lamarre was in rehab he told someone about something he’d seen, maybe while he worked here.”
Sonny’s tufts of eyebrows knitted together. “What’d he say he saw?”
Robie studied him for a moment. “People in distress.”
“Hell, half the people who live round here could be said to be in distress,” scoffed Sonny.
“I meant people being held against their will. Tied up and with hoods on.”
“What?” snapped Sonny. “You mean like they were prisoners?”
Robie nodded. “That’s what he said.”
“And you believe a meth head?” Sonny’s look turned suspicious. “Your IDs say you’re Feds. Why are you interested in this?”
“If people are being held against their will, it’s a crime,” pointed out Reel.
“Well, yeah, I get that.”
“Can you think of anything that Lamarre might have meant? Even if he was mistaken about it? The person he told said he had a great many details about it. And he wasn’t on meth at the time. He was clean.”
Sonny took this all in, leaned against the counter, and rubbed at his beard.
“Look, we got some seriously effed-up people hereabouts,” he said slowly.
“Neo-Nazis, we know about them,” said Reel.
“Not just them. You keep going along this road for another twenty miles you’re going to see an encampment of white supremacists. They got the sheets and the hoods and a big-ass Confederate flag you can see from fifty miles away.” He paused and stroked his beard. “About six years ago two black fellows were found hanging from trees about ten miles from here. They had the N-word carved on their foreheads. Everybody around here knew who’d done it, but the law couldn’t prove nothing, so there you go. Them pricks are still around. And then you got assorted pockets of antigovernment types, vigilante groups, religious zealots, motorcycle gangs, and folks just generally pissed off that their lives suck or that in their minds the country’s going to hell. And they all got guns, lots and lots of guns. And some of them traffic drugs, stolen guns, and other shit, anything that’ll make ’em a buck. If you want to get out of the mainstream, this is a good place to come. We apparently welcome any and all nutcases equally.”
“And what about you? You belong to any of these groups?” asked Reel.
Sonny cracked a grin. “Nah. I’m just a businessman. You see, if I hooked up with one of them groups, the other groups would come here and burn down my store and shoot my ass. I keep a shotgun under the counter and I got a Dirty Harry Smith and Wesson forty-five at the small of my back, but I couldn’t fight those guys off night after night. So I call myself Switzerland, see, neutral. All them bad boys come here to get their gas, beer, hot dogs, and condoms. And because I don’t swear allegiance to any of ’em, none of ’em touch the place. I mean where else they gonna get their fuel, alcohol, and rubbers? And it was pretty bad when my daddy was running this place, so he had the same philosophy and passed it along to me.”
Reel said appreciatively, “So I guess that’s the other reason you’ve stayed in business so long. Pretty smart.”
Sonny grinned, swept off his hat, and gave a mock bow. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Back to Lamarre and what he saw,” interjected Robie.