One of the men, probably in his thirties, sounded skeptical: “Well, what’s up, doc?”
Lucas looked at Letty, and she took it: “We have a friend named Skye. I talked to her four days ago down in St. Paul—we met in San Francisco in June, when she was going through. She was traveling with a guy named Henry Mark Fuller, from Texas. They were out in Sturgis at the motorcycle rally, and Henry disappeared. Somebody—she said another traveler—told her that he’d seen Henry here in Duluth, and she came up here to find him. But Henry was murdered near Sturgis. They just dug up his body. We’re worried that the people who killed Henry might try to hurt Skye. They know her, she doesn’t like them, and they might try to shut her up about Henry.”
Another stir rippled through the group; a man said, “Shit, somebody killed Henry?” and one of the women said, “We know Skye. We knew Henry. I haven’t seen them since we were in Eugene, but we were going to meet up in Hayward, Wisconsin, next weekend. There’s a Juggalo Gathering. We’re all going to that.”
Lucas said, “You’re Juggalos?”
One of the men said, “I am, these guys are just freeloaders—”
“Hey!” said the woman. “This isn’t funny.”
Lucas: “You didn’t see her here?”
They all shook their heads: “We just got here yesterday. We were going to hang around until we left for Hayward.”
One of the men said, “You know, she could have gone up to Two Harbors. I ran into Ranger yesterday when I was coming in. He said a bunch of guys were going up there. There’s a county fair going on, it’s supposed to be pretty good, you can get a job.”
“Bet she went there with them,” the woman said. “She knows Ranger, for sure, and he’s a safe guy.”
They had no other ideas, but one of the men asked, “Who do you think killed Henry?”
Lucas said, “We don’t know anything for sure, but there’s this guy who travels in a caravan . . .” He told them what he knew about Pilate and his group—none of them knew the name—then ripped a page from his notebook, wrote his cell phone number on it, and said, “Could I give my number to somebody? If you see her? Or if you see Pilate?”
A couple of the men shrugged, and Lucas asked, “How about if I wrap it in a fifty?”
“Shouldn’t take money for trying to help Skye,” the woman said. “Give me the number. If I see her or hear from her, or about her, I’ll call you.”
“You can get phones at bus stations . . .” Letty began.
The woman said, “My mom gave me a cell phone. I don’t call anybody but her, but I got it, and I keep it charged up.”
“Good,” Lucas said. “Listen, the people who killed Henry . . . they are bad people. They might be killing people for the fun of it. Travelers are natural targets. Nobody knows where you’re at, and if you don’t show up, nobody worries, because they figure you’re out traveling. Take care, until we figure out what’s going on here.”
They all nodded and one of the men said, “We’ll tell other people we know. If we get enough of us, we ought to be able to spot this guy.”
“Call us, but don’t mess with him,” Lucas said. “You could be dealing with the worst kind of crazy.”
? ? ?
LUCAS LOOKED AT his watch as they walked away, and said, “Two Harbors is only a half hour from here. Maybe we can catch her there.”
On the way north, Letty asked, “Have you run into any Juggalos?”
“I prefer Aerosmith.”
“So you know who they are?”
“Sure. Followers of the Insane Clown Posse,” Lucas said. “Most of the Juggalos are okay—unusual, even strange, but okay. They have meetings around the country that they call Gatherings. The feds say some Juggalos have formed themselves into a criminal gang. I don’t know about those.”
“I didn’t know the gang part. I’ll look them up,” she said, taking out her iPad.
? ? ?
AT TWO HARBORS, they found three travelers, including the one called Ranger, working with a county fair cleanup crew. Ranger said, “Yeah, I seen her down in Duluth yesterday. She asked me about Henry. Nobody had seen him and she was talking about going back to the Black Hills. She thinks he might be sitting on a bench at their backup spot.”
Lucas told them about Henry. They were visibly shocked, but when he told them about Pilate, Ranger said, “Hey, that guy was in Duluth. I seen that guy. They were peddlin’ puss . . .” His eyes clicked over to Letty: “No offense . . .”
She shook her head.
“. . . out of that RV, up on the hill by the big mall. Tony and me—”
“Who’s Tony?” Lucas asked.
“Just . . . Tony. He’s one of us guys. We were walking through there, and this guy seen us, and said we could get some puss for seventy-five dollars. They were workin’ it out of an RV. We didn’t have seventy-five dollars, and if we did, I wouldn’t have spent it on that skanky chick he had. I said no, and we kept on walking. But it was like he knew who we were. I mean, travelers.”
“Where’s Tony now?”
Ranger shrugged. “He was planning to go over to Hayward for the Juggalo Gathering. If he got some money, he could’ve gone back to the mall. He’s kind of a puss hound.”
“You think these women could have baited Henry in?” Lucas asked.
Ranger shook his head. “No, Henry was a nice guy, but he was kinda gay.”
“Gay?”
“Yeah. He didn’t really do nothin’ about it, but we all knew,” Ranger said. “You know, he was like from Texas, cowboy boots and jeans, but sooner or later, he was going to find out . . .”
Letty looked at Lucas and said, “Skye kind of hinted at it when I was talking to them in San Francisco. I didn’t pick up on it, though.”
Lucas asked Ranger, “You think they might’ve run into Skye?”
“I can’t tell you that,” he said. “She was dragging around town, looking in all the places that we hang out. We do go up to that mall, sometimes, and she probably would have gone up there, sooner or later.”