End Game

  “So she vanished, reappeared, and vanished again. All in the middle of nowhere,” said Robie.

  “Seems so,” snapped Malloy. “And just so you know, I want to find her as much as you do!”

  Reel stared at her. “I hope that’s the truth. Because if it isn’t, you’re in a shitload of trouble.”

  “Don’t try to intimidate me, Agent Reel. I don’t break easily.”

  “So I’ve heard so many say.”

  Robie broke in. “You said you had gotten her help. Where was that?”

  “There’s a rehab facility about an hour from here.”

  “Give us the address.”

  “Why? She’s not there anymore.”

  “Just give us the address. And the names of the people in charge of her care.”

  Ten minutes later Robie and Reel were on the road.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Reel as Robie drove.

  “I’m thinking we have to get traction on this case. You’re right, all the other crap we’ve stumbled on here has nothing to do with why we’re here.” He paused. “Until it does have something to do with it.”

  “I don’t think I understand what you mean.”

  “Someone put that note in my jacket pocket. Maybe it was Holly or maybe whoever she hooked up with put it there. But it seems to me that those words could be interpreted as her having known what happened to Blue Man, and that was why she was sorry. And that means it’s a lead we have to explore.”

  “Do you think Blue Man is dead then?”

  He glanced at her. “Like I told you before, no, but you knew that was always a possibility with this.”

  “Yeah, I knew.”

  “He told me it was never about luck.”

  She shot him a look. “What?”

  “My mission in London. He sent an e-mail. He told me he would have wished me good luck, but he wasn’t going to because it was never about luck.”

  Reel did a quick intake of breath.

  “What?” asked Robie.

  “He wrote me the same e-mail before I deployed to Iraq.”

  Robie nodded. “Two peas in a pod. Well, he was there for us in Mississippi.”

  “There for you, Robie. And I was there because Blue Man ordered me down to clean up your mess.”

  “I thought you came down on your own volition.”

  “Well, you thought wrong. I was just following orders. Just like we’ve both been trained to do.”

  “You haven’t always followed orders, Jess. Not that long ago you pulled the triggers on people you were never authorized to kill. And I had to come in and clean up that mess.”

  “So I guess that makes us even.”

  “I guess it does,” replied Robie.

  Chapter

  21

  “SHE LEFT HERE about a week ago,” said Brenda Fishbaugh. “Her sister came and picked her up. She’d completed her treatment here. That’s the last I saw of her.”

  They were seated in the office of the director of the rehab facility where Holly Malloy had gone to address her addiction issues.

  “When I asked her name, she said it was Sheila,” said Robie.

  “She would occasionally tell people her name was Sheila,” admitted Fishbaugh. “Sort of like a defense mechanism. That was when she first came here and was pretty suspicious of everyone here. She was a bit paranoid, actually,” she added quickly. “She was here for about three months. As I said, she went through our program. And successfully completed it. Or so we thought.”

  “She might have stayed clean. When I saw her she wasn’t strung out on drugs, but she was with a skinhead.”

  Fishbaugh nodded sadly. “Luke Miller. He came to visit her here often.”

  “We understand that they knew each other,” said Reel.

  “Yes. Holly was here voluntarily, although rehab was part of her parole. We couldn’t stop her from talking to Miller. Her sister actually got her into our program.”

  “But it seems that fraternizing with a skinhead would run afoul of her parole,” observed Robie.

  “Miller didn’t have a criminal record.”

  “We know that,” said Robie. “I took a picture of his license plate. We ran a check on him. He’s clean. Except for the fact that he’s running around with some pretty bad people.”

  “To tell the truth, I don’t think he really was ever a neo-Nazi. He just liked tattoos and riding around on motorcycles and belonging to something.”

  “Well, since they were coming to kill him last night you might be right about that,” said Reel.

  “I do think he loves Holly,” said Fishbaugh slowly. “I mean, he showed her great tenderness, and he would inquire as to how her treatment was coming.”

  “Sounds like a real sweetheart,” said Reel sarcastically.

  Fishbaugh looked at her. “This is a very tough place to live in. People like their independence, and they tend to rely on themselves and not the government. They join groups that represent what they believe in. Sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes it’s not, with the skinheads being a case in point. But if you want my critical opinion on Luke and Holly, it’s that they were two lost souls looking for something. And maybe they had found it in each other.”

  “So why not get married and live happily ever after?” said Reel, shooting Robie a quick glance that he did not notice.

  “Maybe that was their plan. But Luke could never do that while he was with the skinheads. They wouldn’t have allowed it. And I doubt Luke would have wanted Holly anywhere near those people. They are bad news.”

  Robie said, “Maybe that’s why they came for him. Because he told them he was leaving the group so he could start a new life with Holly.”

  Reel said, “That actually makes sense. Too bad we don’t know where either one is so we can ask them. The police let Luke go and he’s disappeared.”

  “Did Holly have any other visitors?” asked Robie.

  “Her sister, Valerie, on a regular basis. A couple of young women she knew. Her parole officer also visited regularly, of course. But Luke came more often than anyone else. Now, let me see if there were any others. We keep records of all of them.”

  She turned to her computer and clicked some keys.

  “Yes, there was another person.” She glanced at the name on the screen. “Roger Walton.”

  Both Reel and Robie tensed.

  “When did he come by?” asked Reel.

  Fishbaugh clicked some more keys. “He came by only once.”

  “When was that?”

  “Five days ago.”

  “So, shortly before he disappeared. Did you talk to him?”

  “Briefly. He seemed to know this area well. When I asked him he said he had been born in eastern Colorado.”

  “Did he say why he wanted to talk to Holly?” asked Robie.

  “He said he was a friend and just wanted to see how she was doing. Holly voiced no objections to seeing him.”

  “Were their conversations monitored?”

  “Well, we had someone in the visitor’s room, because that’s part of our procedures, but we don’t record conversations, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Did anyone else here have interactions with him?”

  Fishbaugh thought about this for a few moments. “Probably the nurse on duty.” She clicked some keys. “Laura Boyd. She might have spoken with him.”

  “Can we talk to her?” asked Reel.

  “She’s on duty now. I can get her for you.”

  They met with Boyd in an empty office. She was in her fifties with brown hair streaked with silver, a compact build, and alert green eyes.

  “Brenda said this was about Holly Malloy?”

  Robie nodded. “That’s right. She had a visitor, Roger Walton?”

  “Yes. He came once recently. I escorted him back, and he and Holly spoke.”

  “Did he talk to you at all?” asked Reel.

  “We chitchatted while I walked him back and waited for Holly. He was an interest
ing man. Just from our brief conversation you could tell he was highly educated and had traveled extensively. I had mentioned wanting to take a trip to South Africa and he told me places to stay and things to do while I was there.”

  “Did he ever say why he wanted to talk to Holly?” said Robie.

  “He was a friend, I think he said. I can’t remember if he said he was her friend or a friend of a friend.”

  “But let’s say he was a friend of a friend,” said Robie. “Why would Holly have agreed to talk to him if she didn’t know him personally?”

  “Oh, I see what you mean. He would have had to say what the connection was, or else why would Holly want to see him?”

  “Right,” said Robie.

  “Well, come to think of it, he did say he was a friend of a friend.”

  “And did he name the friend?” asked Reel.

  “Just give me a second, it’ll come to me.”

  They watched as she thought it over.

  “That’s right, I remember now. He said that he and Holly had a mutual friend. When I told Holly the name she said that she’d meet with Walton.”

  “Don’t keep us in suspense,” said Reel sharply.

  “His name was JC Parry.”

  Chapter

  22

  “WE SHOULD HAVE known that from the start,” said Robie angrily as they drove back to Grand.

  “Known what?” asked Reel.

  “That there was something fishy with this Parry guy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he told Malloy that he was at Blue Man’s cabin to act as a guide when he found him missing.”

  It took Reel a second to get his meaning. “And at least two people have told us that Blue Man didn’t need a guide because he knew the area so well.”

  “And Zeke Donovan was one of them, and since he’s a guide you’d think he’d know. That’s the inconsistency I was talking about before. So why did Parry lie about being Blue Man’s guide and why did he want him to visit Holly Malloy.”

  “We need to find Parry and ask him.”

  Robie picked up his phone and called Malloy. “We need to talk to JC Parry. Where does he live?”

  “But did you find out anything at the rehab facility?”

  “Can you just give me the address?”

  She did so and Robie clicked off.

  Reel looked at him. “I sense you want to wall off the good sheriff from our investigation.”

  “Right now, I want to wall off everyone except you and me. Things are way too convoluted to know whom to trust.”

  “Let’s hope that Parry can enlighten us. But I doubt we can trust him, either. Why do you think he was at Blue Man’s cabin?”

  “Maybe to check on him.”

  “So if he discovered that Blue Man had gone missing?” said Reel.

  “He’s going to be scared for himself.”

  They reached Parry’s home about forty-five minutes later. It was, like all the homes around there, isolated and hard to get to.

  As they cleared a slight rise in the ground the house came into view. It looked like it had been built from odds and ends and scraps of secondhand wood. There were several outbuildings, some chickens clucking behind fencing, and they were greeted by a mutt of a dog that came out from a crevice underneath the front porch.

  A dusty pickup truck sat under a lean-to.

  Robie put the Yukon in park and they climbed out.

  The dog started to growl menacingly.

  Robie put a hand on his gun but Reel dropped to one knee and beckoned the dog to her. It approached cautiously, and then, sensing that Reel was showing neither aggression nor fear, it ambled over and let her scratch its ear and stroke its head.

  “What’s your name, cutie? Huh? Does that feel good?”

  Robie watched in amazement as arguably the most lethal person of his acquaintance gently made friends with the beast.

  She stroked its flanks and looked at its muzzle.

  Then she looked up at Robie. “This dog hasn’t eaten in a while, Robie. You see its ribs showing. And you see how it’s swallowing and panting like that? No water.”

  She looked around, spotted a dog bowl next to an outdoor tap, and filled the bowl up and put it down for the dog, which instantly started gulping water. Reel picked the bowl up before the dog was finished. “Don’t want it to get sick. We need to find its food.”

  “We need to find JC Parry,” he reminded her.

  “That’s sort of my point. The dog’s fur is well maintained and it otherwise looks healthy. I don’t think Parry is the sort to mistreat animals. He’s got water bowls for it and you see that dog bed over on the porch.”

  Robie looked around. “So you’re saying Parry hasn’t been around to take care of his dog.”

  “Right.”

  “Didn’t know you were such an animal lover.”

  She glared at him. “I had dogs growing up. They were my only friends. You know the rest of that story.”

  “Let’s hit the outbuildings first and then the house.”

  He touched the hood of the pickup truck perched under the lean-to. “Cold. You think he has another vehicle?”

  “I think it unlikely. This doesn’t look like a two-vehicle sort of residence.”

  They searched the three outbuildings and found lots of junk, hunting and fishing gear, and no sign of Parry.

  They entered the front door of the house, which was unlocked.

  Now they both had their weapons out.

  Reel had left the dog outside.

  The house was only one story. The front room was cluttered but the furniture, while worn, was in good shape. There was a blackened-face fireplace. Beyond that was a small kitchen that was neat and clean.

  “No plates or cups in the sink,” said Robie.

  The bathroom was tiny.

  “No used towels, toothpaste, wet washcloths,” noted Reel.

  “That leaves the bedroom,” observed Robie.

  They approached the door down the short hall. Robie motioned to his left and Reel took up position there and crouched with her gun pointed at the door. She nodded.

  Robie touched the doorknob with his hand and then withdrew it.

  He nodded at Reel, slammed his foot against the door, and it flew open.

  They swarmed into the room, with Reel clearing the area left and Robie the right and their guns meeting up in the center.

  The room was empty and the bed made.