Flowers didn’t argue. “So, look, I’m going to try to run this kid down, this Phillip, and try to find that RV.” To Johnson she said, “I don’t suppose you took a cell-phone picture of it . . . one that would include the tags? Was it local? Montana plates?”
Johnson was shaking his head. “Didn’t notice and no, no picture, but I did see an advertising plate on the side. It said Luxury America Motor Tours, or something like that. I believe it was a rental: I kind of made a mental note, in case I wanted to try one out.”
She jotted the name in her notebook. “You’re smarter than you look.”
Johnson said, “I’ll have to think about that for a while.”
“I think it was a compliment,” Flowers said. “But I’m not absolutely certain.”
She ignored them. “One more thing, if there’s something going on with the girl, there are different possibilities. One would be that she’s been prostituted. The other is they’re making child porn.”
Her stomach tightened at the thought.
“Or both,” Flowers said. He, too, was grim. “But since she’s way out here, I’d say child porn is the better possibility. High-quality child porn. You’d need space, time, lights, decent cameras, plus the kids. And you might want to shoot some stuff out in the woods, as well as interiors. Sex, you could do almost anywhere. Photography, not so much. Especially video.”
“Describe Cheryl for me and Michael Drake,” she asked. “I’ll try to run ’em down.”
They did and she took notes.
“Tell you what. Since Johnson doesn’t want to get murdered, you guys could help out by scouting around up there. I can’t do that without a warrant, which would warn everyone. If you find something, just as tourists walking around in the woods like tourists do, I’ll get a warrant and we’ll swarm the place. We bust everybody in sight, and you guys are good to go fishing. While you’re doing that, I’ll find the Weeks kid and get a fix on the RV.”
“Walking around in the woods could be a little touchy,” Flowers said. “We’re not armed.”
“Maybe you’re not,” Johnson said.
Flowers stepped back. “Ah, Jesus, Johnson, you brought a gun?”
“You can’t go driving around the countryside without at least a nine,” Johnson said. To Regan he said, “Virgil doesn’t like guns.”
“And you’re a cop? Really?”
“Not your usual brand.”
“Mr. Kumbaya, huh.” She shrugged. “If you do happen to stumble across something, armed or not, I’ll be on my cell.”
“Me ’n’ Johnson will talk about it,” Flowers said and he actually seemed faintly amused at her ire.
TRUTH TO TELL, REGAN DIDN’T quite know what to think about the cop and his friend from Minnesota, but they were better help than the local deputies who were like no choice at all. And if the RV was rolling away, and if Phillip Weeks was on his way to somewhere else on a Greyhound, she had to get on it.
She started by talking with Katy and getting a physical description of Phillip Weeks, along with two pictures Katy texted to Regan’s phone. But there was little more. Everything Katy knew Regan had already heard from Flowers. Her parents weren’t any help, either, but she wondered about Jim Waller, a man who admitted to being a hunter, a man who had no trouble showing off his collection of rifles and shotguns.
But why?
He claimed to know nothing about the Weeks family or Michael Drake other than he was “a rich guy and drives a fancy car.” They’d seen RVs on the property a time or two, but had no other information, thought the vehicles probably belonged to friends or family of Drake.
With no answers she drove back to the station and thought about the case, the girl, the murder, the chance that Johnson had stumbled upon the illegal operation and someone had tried to murder him. It all seemed far-fetched, didn’t quite hang together.
Yet.
Back at the sheriff’s department she ordered a be-on-the-lookout for the RV, asked Sage Zoller, a junior detective, to track down Luxury America Motor Tours, then took twenty minutes in the women’s room to pump her damned breasts. Afterward, she placed the bottles in a pouch marked with her name in the refrigerator in the lunchroom and thought about someone finding them.
Like Blackwater. Or Watershed.
Go for it, she thought.
Blackwater would be able to handle it.
Watershed, a misogynist if ever there was one, would freak.
She drove to the Greyhound station, which had been built sometime in the 1950s and looked as if it had never been updated. The clerk at the desk, a girl all of eighteen, hadn’t been working the day before and wasn’t too interested in helping, but the manager overheard their conversation and bustled over. “I think I can help you. I remember him. Tall, thin, long hair, looked like he’d been in a fight? This was the night before last, right?” The manager had a bushy copper-colored mustache and reddish hair that reminded Regan of a cartoon character, though she couldn’t remember which one.
Ah, Yosemite Sam.
“He got here too late to catch the bus that night, so he came back the next morning. He might have slept outside somewhere, because he spent some time in the restroom washing up. Then he bought his ticket, with a full-day layover in Butte. Said he wanted to stop and see his grandma. If that’s the kid you’re looking for, he’d be catching the bus out of Butte tonight at seven o’clock, and will be in LA tomorrow night around eight.”
Good information.
She called the Butte cops and arranged to have a patrol car check for Weeks when the LA bus was loading up that night.
“Could have information on a homicide investigation,” she told the Butte desk sergeant.
“We’ll make it a priority,” he said.
Back on the road, she was driving up Boxer Hill to the upper part of Grizzly Falls when her cell phone rang. Seeing it was from the department, she clicked on.
Sage Zoller was on the other end of the line.
“Luxury America Motor Tours rents Rosestone RVs out of Las Vegas,” he said. “I could go to Vegas and check it out.”
“I’ll call them on the phone.”
“And blow a perfectly good excuse to go to Vegas?”
“Nice try. I’m on my way in. Find out what you can about a guy named Virgil Flowers. Surfer-dude type who works for the MBCA.”
“Already done. I figured you’d want background on the guy you were meeting.”
“And?” Regan asked, spying a coffee kiosk and turning in.
“He’s kind of a big deal. One of their best cops.”
“Really,” she said. “Thanks.”
She ordered two oatmeal cookies and a coffee, then zipped across traffic and ended up following the slowest pickup on record up Boxer Hill. So Virgil Flowers was a big deal in Minnesota, she thought heading up the hill.
Who would have guessed.