After lunch, I got on the road to Canborough. I figured I could be there by midafternoon. I didn’t expect to find Trixie there, but I thought I might learn more about what it was that prompted her to disappear.
Canborough first came into view as I came over the hill on Highway 17, a couple of church spires, a water tower poking up through the trees. It was a small city, and there had been attempts of late to revive and trendy up the downtown, which had taken a hit after the local auto parts factory shut down a few years back. But Canborough still had other, lesser, industries to keep it going, plus a college on the north side of town, and there were some year-round tourist dollars it could count on. The river that ran through the center connected with a few nearby lakes that were crowded with cottages and, in the winter, there was skiing.
I’d been up here a few times, not just for that disastrous book signing for one of my SF novels. (When you’ve had the sort of book signings I’ve had, you start to feel that the modifier “disastrous” is implied.) A few years ago, Sarah and I had been invited for a weekend at another couple’s cottage, and we’d driven into Canborough to shop and wander around.
I drove straight into the downtown, and decided not to look for a place to stay right away. First of all, I didn’t know for sure that I’d learn enough to keep me from continuing on to Groverton, and second, some of the places where I hoped to get information might be closed in another hour or two.
The public library was my first stop.
I’d been able to find a story or two in the Metropolitan’s database about the biker massacre, but I figured the local paper would have more about what happened before, and after, that incident.
The library, an old brick building flanked by modern glass additions, sat across from a wooded park. I found a place on a side street to leave my car, walked back to the library, and approached the information desk. A wiry young woman told me the library had the Canborough Times on computer going back six years, and if I knew what I was looking for, it could be found pretty quickly.
She set me up at a terminal, showed me how to operate their system, and set me loose. “If you need anything, just ask,” she said sweetly.
I conducted a number of searches using a variety of keywords, in particular “Gary Merker” and “Leonard Edgars.” Also “Kickstart,” the hotel where the three bikers had been shot to death. And “Slots,” the name of the gang Merker and Edgars supposedly belonged to.
And of course, “Trixie Snelling.”
That last one brought up absolutely nothing.
But the other entries produced a wealth of stories.
Going back six or seven years, there were at least two gangs known to local police. Neither on the scale of Hell’s Angels or Satan’s Choice or any number of other major biker gangs, although they were believed to have some loose affiliations with the larger organizations. One, which was run by Gary Merker, current stun gun merchandiser, was known as “the Slots.” The other group went by “the Comets,” which had a very fifties ring to it.
The Slots had maybe half a dozen to a dozen real members, and maybe another dozen hangers-on. Not a lot of people, but enough to bring in drugs from the big city and across the border and market them to the locals. Merker, also known as Pick, and his crew made enough money from illegal activities to acquire a controlling interest in a local bar, Paddy’s, which they renamed the Kickstart. They made some changes. The entertainment, which up to then included not much more than darts and a wall-mounted television to watch games, now included strippers. The small stage, which had occasionally featured a local country-and-western or blues singer, now featured a pole. Some of the girls who wrapped themselves around it were not opposed to providing more-personal performances in the rooms upstairs.
The Comets had similar business interests, although not an actual establishment like the Kickstart. They owned a large house on the city’s outskirts, which they’d fortified with concrete blocks to discourage drive-by shooters. They’d had a few, presumably members of the Slots who didn’t approve of attempts by the Comets to muscle in on the drug and prostitution trade. The Comets offered drugs, and had a small stable of hookers they could send to clients’ houses, or put into rooms in the city’s seedier hotels. But the Slots had a distinct advantage by running the Kickstart. As a semi-respectable business, they were able to attract large numbers of the public and, once they had a pitcher of beer in front of them, spread the word that other services were available, for a price.