Gibson and Swonger drove into Niobe along Tarte Street, which ran parallel to the Ohio River. Niobe was one of those towns whose reason for existing had long since passed into history, and its century-long contraction had left a swath of shuttered, abandoned buildings to mark high tide. According to their map, this was the center of Niobe’s historic district, but to Gibson most of the town looked like history at this point. Tarte Street was a stretch of brick buildings, some open, most closed permanently—windows bricked over like bandaged eyes. One bank, one hardware store, one drugstore. Three antique shops all in a row, possessed of a liberal definition of “antique” judging by the junk piled up in the windows. Four churches. A police station with one lonely cruiser parked in front. A dollar store and a Food Lion. A defiant liquor store called Niobe Spirits. Away to the right, the remnants of a bridge that once spanned the Ohio River rose into view, a grand old relic, beautiful in the way that American ruins could be.
A group of teenagers stood outside a service station that had been converted into a sandwich shop, not doing much of anything but waiting for someone to suggest somewhere else to stand. The lonely migration of small-town kids with nowhere to go and nothing to do when they got there. Swonger maneuvered around a beat-up mail truck double-parked outside what might be America’s last surviving video store. The mail truck caused something to click in Gibson’s head. The question wasn’t where Merrick had invested his money; it was how. If Merrick was managing investments from prison, he would need a computer. Gibson didn’t know if inmates had Internet access, but even if they did, Merrick couldn’t risk the prison network, which would certainly be monitored. So either he had a computer . . . no, that was stupid. Where was he going to hide a laptop in a prison? Even a tablet would be next to impossible. Gibson thought back to his time in jail, awaiting trial—how many times did the guards conduct random searches? There were only so many places to hide things in a cell, and the guards knew all of them.
What about a cell phone? No pun intended. Maybe. It was smaller but still a huge risk to take, and Merrick had a lot on the line. In his mind, Gibson drew a question mark next to it, but until he had a very good reason to believe otherwise, he was discounting the possibility that Charles Merrick had hidden a cell phone and charger for eight years without getting caught.
That meant Merrick had help. If Merrick couldn’t manage his accounts from the prison, then someone on the outside was executing transactions on his behalf. So how was Merrick communicating with them?
When you thought about it, it was bin Laden but in reverse.
In fact, Charles Merrick and Osama bin Laden had a lot in common. Both were prisoners. The only difference was bin Laden had built his own prison. Like Merrick, bin Laden couldn’t travel and couldn’t risk using modern communications technologies. Instead, bin Laden had relied on a sophisticated, low-tech courier network to communicate with the outside world. The United States knew what was being communicated and with whom; it just didn’t know how. It had taken years, but they had tracked bin Laden to Pakistan through those couriers.
In this instance, Gibson knew the location of his subject. Merrick was fixed and unmoving behind bars. That was the known. The unknowns were what was being communicated, with whom, and how. So who were Merrick’s couriers? How was he getting information in and out? As with bin Laden, it was probably a low-tech human network. If Gibson could find it and break into it, he could trace it back to the money. He smiled to himself. In this case, the money was the “bin Laden.” To find it, all he had to do was locate Merrick’s confederate on the outside.
Swonger pulled into the parking lot behind the Wolstenholme Hotel and threw the car into park.
“What are you grinning about?” Swonger asked. “Oh, you having one of them epiphanies. Whatcha got for me?”
Gibson waved him off. “I got nothing for you,” he said. “You’re here strictly in an observational capacity. Understand?”
Swonger rolled his eyes and made a lemon-sucking face. “This where we staying?”
“It’s where I’m staying. Did you make a reservation?”
“You an asshole, know what?”
The hotel rose five stories, but the dilapidated black fire escape that ran up the back of the building went only as high as the third floor. Gibson could see damage to the hotel’s exterior wall where the top two levels of the fire escape had wrenched loose of their moorings and collapsed. How did a hotel pass inspection with half a fire escape? Well . . . safety first.
Gibson carried his bag around to the front of the hotel and looked up and down Tarte Street. He didn’t trust a town without a diner. Across the street stood, or rather leaned, a windowless clapboard bar. Above its green door, a hand-painted sign read, “The Toproll.” Out front in the parking lot, a woman with a weight lifter’s build was having a serious heart-to-heart with a deliveryman. The deliveryman wanted no piece of her.
Inside, the hotel’s lobby had the run-down feel of a neglected museum, but it must have been grand in its day. Gibson didn’t know a thing about architecture, but even he could see that much. A vaulted ceiling soared twenty feet overhead, where a massive ceiling fan, like the propeller of a ship, chopped through the air. Crystal sconces glittered along dingy marble walls, although several were either cracked or missing entirely. Off to the right lay an oval sitting room, dark wood paneling the walls, with a fireplace, overstuffed chairs, and several chessboards. Through an archway to the left, he could see a shuttered dining room with chairs flipped upside down atop the tables. Somehow Gibson doubted his room included a complimentary breakfast.
Behind the counter stood an older man in a three-piece suit. He smiled in delight at the sight of them. Not even Swonger plopping the trash bag that served as his suitcase onto the counter could dampen his enthusiasm. He greeted them warmly and introduced himself as Mr. Temple, owner and proprietor.
“But call me Jimmy.”
Gibson liked him immediately and shook his hand over the counter. The same could not be said of the young woman who had been talking to Jimmy Temple. As he’d walked in, Gibson had the impression that the two were wrapping up their conversation, but now she lingered at the counter, watching him with hard, unwelcoming eyes. He didn’t much care for it and turned to face her. She didn’t seem to care for it either and held his gaze. She didn’t strike him as the kind of person who ever looked away first.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Was going to ask you the same thing.”
Jimmy jumped in to intercede. “Ah, no, that would be my department. Lea, thanks for stopping by. I’ll talk to you soon.”
She didn’t take the hint and instead leaned against the counter defiantly like she was planting a flag. One hell of a welcome committee. And why is there Christmas music playing?
Gibson told Jimmy that his reservation had been on the fifth floor and asked if he could be moved down to three.
“As it turns out, the fifth floor is entirely booked,” said Jimmy. “We’ll be happy to find you a room on three.”
“All booked?” the hard-eyed woman asked. “Since when?”
“Just this morning. The four gentlemen. Isn’t it fantastic?”
“They needed a whole floor to themselves?”
“Well, they needed peace and quiet, so they took every room on the floor. I think they’re on some kind of retreat. They said some colleagues may be joining them. Whatever business they’re in, I want in,” Jimmy said with a conspiratorial wink.
“How long are they staying?” she asked.
“They left it open-ended but at least a week.”