But Smitty might.
He hadn’t responded to the voice mail message Crawford had left last night, which was a dead giveaway that he knew something he didn’t want to share. But before Crawford could wrangle information from him, he had to find him.
Strip clubs looked desolate in the early hours of the morning, particularly a dreary, rainy morning like this one. He started with Smitty’s establishment that was closest to town, but found the place dark and uninviting without its lurid flashing neon. The parking lot was empty. At Tickled Pink, the same. And the next one he checked was also deserted.
The fourth he’d never been to before. It was even more disreputable looking than Smitty’s other clubs. This was a place for down-and-outers who had hit rock bottom. Its opaque windows, low roofline, and dirt parking lot, now dotted with puddles of muddy water, weren’t inducements for fun-seeking people.
Crawford drove around to the rear of the building, which was situated right on the edge of the forest. The trees and underbrush seemed to be encroaching on the squat structure with the intention of eventually overtaking it, perhaps to put it out of its misery.
Near the back door was an ugly gray car. Crawford rolled Holly’s car to a stop, got out, and looked inside the other vehicle. A lot of trash, stained fabric upholstery, but nothing else.
He slid Joe’s pistol from his holster. He’d already checked the cylinder, knew that there was a .38 bullet in each of the five chambers. Stealthily, he walked to the metal door. The doorknob was loosely fitted and had a standard lock. Crawford didn’t even have to try hard to pop it using a credit card.
The door opened out. He pulled it toward him, creating a gap only wide enough to slip through, then closed it quickly, realizing that his silhouette made a large target even against meager, watery daylight.
Inside, the air was as dank as that of a locker room and smelled of booze and stale cigarette smoke. The darkness was absolute, forcing him to give his eyes time to adjust. He stood perfectly still and listened. He could hear the rain dripping off the eaves outside. Other than that, nothing.
“Smitty?”
His voice was absorbed by the darkness as though the building had swallowed it. Louder, he called the name again, without response. Turning on his cell phone was a risk he had to take. Without a light, he couldn’t see his way any farther into the building.
The glow of the screen provided just enough light for him to make out his immediate surroundings. Dead ahead, liquor crates were stacked against a concrete block wall. An industrial mop bucket occupied a corner to his left. The mop was dry and covered in cobwebs. To his right was a narrow passageway. He started down it.
The first door he came to was ajar. Just as he drew even with it, the cell phone’s screen blinked off. Heart thumping, he waited in the stygian darkness, and when nothing happened, he turned the phone back on and gave the door a push with the short barrel of the .38.
His was the only image reflected in the mirror above the dressing table that ran the width of the room. He backed out and moved along the hall past a second door that opened into a phone booth–sized restroom with a disgusting toilet and a stained sink.
The third door belonged to an office that resembled the others in which he had ambushed Smitty over the course of their association. The cramped room had a littered desk, beat-up file cabinets, overflowing trash cans, and walls papered with pornographic pictures.
And Smitty was there. On the floor.
Crawford hissed, “Son of a bitch!”
It was a familiar scene—she in her living room being questioned by Neal Lester and Matt Nugent. Only a few hours after she’d seen them off and joined Crawford in her bedroom, the detectives were back, and Crawford’s whereabouts was once again the subject under discussion.
Neal asked, “You have no idea where he was going?”
“You’ve asked me that twice already,” she replied. “If I knew where he was going, I would have told you when I called.”
She had alerted him as soon as she reached her back door and confirmed that her car was missing. “I caught a glimpse of taillights as he turned left out of the driveway of the main house. That’s all I know.”
“You didn’t know he planned to take your car?”
“Only moments before he left. He must’ve gotten the keys earlier from the pocket of my jeans.”
“How’d he manage that without you knowing?”
She looked at Nugent. “I wasn’t wearing them.”
“Oh.”