Gone Forever Page 10

  DEA agents raided his coastal compound on the Gulf of Mexico and found it empty.

  Then 24 hours later one of Tega’s secret locations was discovered, too late because it had been burned to the ground.

  The article said that the men who were already arrested in connection to Oskar Tega had called the locations granjas.

  My Spanish wasn’t very good. I knew people who spoke perfect Spanish and I had taken some classes in high school, but I didn’t recognize the word.

  Maria came by and smiled at me.

  She dropped off the red plate with the cheeseburger, she placed a bottle of ketchup in front of me, and then she asked, “Can I get you anything else?”

  I asked, “Do you speak Spanish?”

  She looked at me and her smile turned to a look of disappointment.

  She said, “Oh baby, you aren’t like these racist idiots that live here, are ya?”

  “No. No way,” I said.

  She smiled again.

  “I’m just wondering if you speak Spanish.”

  She said, “Sí. I remember most words. I’m not from Mexico. I’m from Texas, but my grandma and I used to speak Español. My mom, she only spoke in English, but she understood it just fine.”

  I handed her my cell phone after I enlarged the section with the word that I wanted translated and then I asked, “Can you tell me what this word means?”

  She grabbed the phone gently with one of her hands, leaned in toward it, and studied the text. Then she said, “This word means farms. Oh I heard about this. This guy Tega is some kind of drug kingpin. He escaped capture and they think that he fled to Cuba. But his men are here in the U.S.

  “They’ve been visiting all of his farms and taking their product out and then they leave no witnesses. There was this town in Texas. Tega’s men went there a few days ago and they took back whatever drugs were there. Then they murdered all of his employees and left half of the town on fire.

  “It’s like what the Germans did in World War II.”

  A puzzled look must have fallen across my face because she immediately responded.

  She said, “You know? Like when the Russians would raid German villages and instead of finding prisoners and supplies, the Germans had burned everything to the ground and left their ruined homes behind. They made it impossible for the Russians to use any of their supplies.”

  I said, “That’s called scorched earth and it wasn’t the Germans; it was what the Russians had done to the Germans.”

  She said, “Yup. That’s it. Well, enjoy your burger.”

  I nodded.

  She walked away from the table.

  I continued reading about Oskar Tega.

  Police thought that he was in Cuba and they weren’t sure how he’d gotten out of Mexico without them noticing. They guessed by boat or possibly he’d chartered a plane or that he already owned one. There was a large docking space at the end of a pier on his property. They figured that he’d cast off in a yacht possibly days before. The DEA assumed that he had bribed his way past SEMAR, the Mexican Navy, or possible Tega had gotten past the U.S. Coast Guard on the outer perimeter. Tega was a well-connected man. Now no one knew where he was.

  I took two big bites from my hamburger. One. Two. It was more than halfway gone. I had a big appetite and was hungry. Hitchhiking and tourism were hard work.

  I put the burger back down on the plate and clicked on the top Internet search bar. I typed missing girls from Mississippi.

  The circle icon rotated around and around indicating that the browser was searching and then several results came back: missing children, missing girls, murders, and so on.

  I added the word north in front of Mississippi and clicked the search button again.

  The web browser searched and came up with links to articles like FBI baffled at missing girls in North Mississippi.

  I clicked on one link and it took me to an article about five years old. I skimmed through it. It told the same story that Jill, the college student from yesterday, had told me. Missing young girls. Most of them driving along the freeways and highways. All of them had left one destination and were expected at another, but never made it.

  Sheriffs, local police, and the FBI had all been involved. The investigation never went anywhere and remained open.

  Some reports claimed that the girls were abducted by hitchhikers, but this was nothing but speculation.

  Some of their vehicles had been found abandoned, left in ditches or in shopping mall parking lots. In my experience, one thing that a young girl never did was leave her car behind. The reports went on to say that some of the girls’ vehicles were never found.

  I took two more bites of my cheeseburger and finished it. I slid the plate away and drank some water. The coffee cup remained untouched.

  I turned off the phone and put it back into my pocket.

  The local story about these missing girls was interesting, but I wasn’t going to solve a case that the FBI couldn’t solve in five years. Besides it had nothing to do with me. Nothing at all.

  Maria returned to check on me.

  She grabbed the plate off the table and said, “Do you want anything else?”

  I said, “No thanks. Just the check.”

  She slid the check over to me and winked. As I reached for it, her index finger brushed against the top of mine like she was purposely trying to touch me.

  I looked up at her and smiled.

  She walked away.

  I flipped the check over and saw that below the total she had written her phone number with a smiley face underneath.

  I smiled. I placed a twenty dollar bill on top of the check, a generous tip, but well worth the service. I committed her number to memory.

  I got up from my booth and left the diner.

  Chapter 10

  Before I returned to my motel room, I walked around the town for two more hours. I wanted to get a good look at the nightlife. I stopped at a couple of dive bars. One was a country western bar. It was fun. There was a band playing. They played a few rock 'n' roll songs, only they made them country sounding. They weren’t too bad, some local band that I had never heard of and would never hear of again.

  The second bar was a juke joint filled with aging hipsters. Both bars were busy, not completely packed, not wall-to-wall people, but busy.

  I never once got carded. Probably because of my size and facial stubble. I was rather unkempt. The last time that I had shaved was when my mother was alive a few days before. The expression baby face wasn’t something anyone would say about my features.

  I looked like a grown man. I could have easily passed for early 20s. Maybe even mid-20s, but I was only 18 and a half. My birthday was in November. So I seized the opportunity and ordered a single beer at the hipsters’ bar, no shots, no hard liquor, just the one beer. I didn’t want to push my luck.

  After I left the bars, I walked down to the lake and gazed over the calm water. I felt the breeze blow warm, soft air across my face and neck.

  Jarvis Lake was a man-made lake and man-made lakes were generally calm lakes. No reason for high wave activity.

  I stared out over the water. Across the lake I saw various lights from the houses and cars. A few boats were peppered across the lake. Tiny lights blinked, indicating where they were, telling other boats that there was a boat right there.

  Nearby, a dock was loaded with plenty of nighttime fishermen. I heard voices and laughing in the distance. I looked to my left and saw the Eckhart Medical Center. I walked toward it, curious as to what went on there.

  The town of Black Rock was a relatively poor town. The buildings were old, taken care of, but definitely used. Not too many of them were newer than ten years. Most of the newer businesses were probably old remodeled buildings.

  The Eckhart Medical Center was the one exception. The buildings were nice—expensive. They were painted white with closed green shutters on every window, a fresh-looking paint job.

  None of this was really all tha
t unusual, but the security was something that troubled me.

  I walked closer to the perimeter of the complex. I got as close to it as I could without raising suspicion. It wasn’t like it had a posted guard or anything, but there was tall barbed wire fencing all around it except at the front. The only places where the security was lacking were the two entrances. One of them was a dark entrance with a small glass doorway with no visible markings or signs. Staff entrance, I guessed.

  The second entrance was a double automatic door with a flat, black rubber mat in front. The sign above the door read: 24-Hour Community Clinic.

  According to Hazel, the waitress, this was the town’s main source of health care.

  Both Hank and Hazel had said that animal research went on there. That was the explanation for the extra security measures—animals. But what kind of animals required security cameras and a barbed wire fence?

  Maybe the security was more to keep activists out rather than keep the animals in.

  Something else dawned on me. Maybe it was because I had seen both the daytime people and the nighttime people, but I hadn’t seen any minorities, not a single black person, no Asian people, no foreigners, and only one Hispanic. Black Rock was a small town, but there had to be a few thousand people living here. How could they all be white? This was 2014, not 1955, but Maria was the only minority that I had seen. Every bar, diner, café, store, or street where I had walked so far I had seen only white people. The South, especially Mississippi, had a bad reputation for being racist and segregated. That might’ve been the case 40 or more years ago, but in my experience, Mississippi people were as tolerant as anyone else was anywhere.

  Still it was odd.

  I shrugged off my curiosity about the Eckhart Medical Center and turned and headed back to the motel.

  Back in my room, I sat down on the bed and realized that I had forgotten to buy new clothes. Guess I was going to have to wear the same clothes tomorrow. I didn’t want to sleep in them again and I didn’t want to wake up and wear dirty clothes. So I decided to take them off and wash them in the sink. I’d never tried it before, but I figured that it’d work as well as anything. For thousands of years, mankind, or more precisely womankind, has washed clothes in streams and rivers.

  I washed my jeans first. I used shampoo out of the little bottle from the shower. I used nearly the whole bottle on the pants. I wasn’t sure if it would make a good detergent, but it had to be better than sleeping in them again.

  I rolled the jeans in a towel to soak up some of them moisture and then tossed them over the shower rod and left them to hang there and dry. Next I took off my shirt and rinsed it in the sink. I decided to use hand soap for the rest of my clothes and save the remaining shampoo for my hair.

  The shirt was much easier to wash than the jeans. The fabric was cotton and soaked up the soap faster than the jeans.

  I let the hot water run and lathered up both sides of the shirt with hand soap. I rinsed and then I wrung it out and stretched the ends in opposite directions so it didn’t shrink as it dried. I hung it up next to the jeans. Next I cleaned my socks and left them on the side of the tub. I washed my face off in the sink and decided that I was beat. I wanted to sleep. I could take a shower in the morning and put on clean clothes, although they may not be completely dry. That would suit me just fine.

  I decided to discard my underwear. No reason to clean it and I certainly didn’t want to wear it again. So I took it off and threw it in a wastebasket in the bathroom.

  Before I went to bed for the night I looked in the mirror and smacked my head.

  Great, Reacher! You forgot to get a toothbrush!

  Guess I had a lot to learn about the nomadic life. My father had a lot to teach me. Even without being with me, he was already teaching me lessons.

  I went to the bed, pulled the covers back, and slid in. I reached over and clicked the button on the lamp.

  The lights shut off.

  I closed my eyes and pictured my father’s graduation picture from West Point.

  My mind was powerful. When I pictured something, I saw it in vivid detail. I had more than a photographic memory; I had a photographic imagination. I could visualize anything and everything. Every sliver of color, every single star from the American flag behind my father was accounted for. I thought of him until I was asleep.

  I woke up at 1:37 in the morning. I knew this because I checked my cell phone before I got up and out of bed to see what all the noise was. That was when I met Dr. Chris Matlind and the three guys who wanted to do him bodily harm.

  I heard voices and shouting and what sounded like roughhousing through the wall.

  Some of the dialects were so thick that they sounded like muffled cartoon voices.

  I wasn’t sure what was going on at first.

  I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and grabbed my pants. They were still pretty damp. With no source of heat to dry them I didn’t expent them to be dry enough to wear yet, but I had to put something on. I couldn’t go over and confront my neighbors wearing no pants.

  I slipped the jeans on and buttoned and zipped them. No belt. No shoes. No shirt. I was getting too angry to bother putting them on. I didn’t even check to see if my shirt was dry.

  I got a glance at myself in the mirror. I was still half asleep. My face looked groggy. My legs and thighs were now damp from my jeans. I had gone to bed with my hair down. So now it hung down across my face in what my ex-girlfriend from high school had called whacked bedhead.

  With my hair hanging around my face, I looked like something out of a nightmare. I looked like a caveman with one idea on my primal brain: kill.

  I stormed out of my room, barefoot, and over to room 13 next door.

  The door was halfway open. Before I reached it, I heard the voices more clearly.

  One guy spoke articulately, even sounded educated, only his voice was nasal like he was pinching his nose.

  He said, “Please, don’t hit me again. You fractured my nasal bones.”

  Another voice said, “You broke his nose, Daryl.”

  A different voice, a deeper voice said, “I know what he meant, Jeb. Now grab his arms. This city boy is going in the truck.”

  The nasal voice said, “I only want her back. Please don’t hit me again. Just give her back to me and we’ll leave.”

  A third voice, a new voice said, “Daryl, let me hit him with the bat.”

  Daryl said, “No, Junior. I think that Pa is gonna wanna talk to him without broken bones. ‘Sides, we ought to put him in the truck instead of carr’n’ him.”

  Jeb said, “Yeah, Junior, he is cohop’ratin’. No reason to hit him with the bat. Not yet.”

  The word is cooperating, I thought, reactively, like an old grammar teacher.

  Before I even opened the door, I heard the frustration from the guy whom I assumed to be Junior, an audible expression, like a loud sigh from an ungrateful child.

  Then I kicked the bottom of the door with my left foot, not hard and not soft. Just enough to swing the door open slowly in a kind of dramatic scene when the door in a haunted house creaks open and the occupants stop and stare. A big part of dealing with potentially violent situations is using tactical strategy—something that my mom had beat into me, literally. She had taught me to always fight with my head first and then if all avenues of theatrics, of diplomacy, of cerebral tactics had been exhausted, I always had the other way of handling a potentially violent situation.

  The door creaked open. I hadn’t surveyed the scene as well as I should have because it wasn’t until the door was all the way open, when I was committed to the plan, that I realized these guys might have had guns.

  Stupid Reacher, I thought. Rookie mistake.

  Then I could see these guys completely and I felt better. They didn’t have guns. They didn’t have knives, not in their hands. If they had had guns they would have pulled them on me.

  Then again, they would have pulled them on the poor guy whose nose gushed blood. Ri
ght then and there. Why threaten him with fists and a baseball bat when you can pull a gun on him?

  If they had had knives then they would have pulled them on me for sure.

  They were still, frozen with fear. I knew the look of fear on a man’s face. I had frightened many opponents myself. Mostly schoolyard bullies, even rednecks. These three most certainly would’ve fit into that category like a bad cliché.

  They wore clothes that were practically interchangeable. Blue flannel. Green flannel. Sleeves torn off. One white, grease-stained t-shirt. One trucker hat. All wore work boots. All wore dirty, ripped jeans.

  These guys were rednecks. No doubt. Their smell could only be described as stink.

  One of them, the one called Junior, held an ancient-looking Louisville slugger. The end was stained and partially splintered. It had been used before.

  On whom? I wondered.

  I didn’t know the answer to that question, but I did know that it wasn’t going to get used on me. That was for damn sure.

  They looked alike except that one was missing all of his teeth, except for one that dangled in the front like it wouldn’t be much longer before he lost that one too. One guy was fatter than the other two, but they all looked like they had won their fair share of hotdog-eating contests.

  The guy on the left-hand side was obviously the leader because the other two looked at him for some kind of order. Maybe he was the oldest brother, Daryl. If they were brothers. They might have been cousins.

  Small gene pool.

  The guy in the third position was Junior, no doubt about that because he held the bat and had only the one tooth. He must have been the lesser brain, the Curly of the bunch.

  The guy standing behind the victim had to be the one called Jeb. The victim was a short, wiry guy. Short brown hair. Looked to be in decent shape, not much of a fighter though. He had that kind of gym look like he worked out, but had never had a real fight in his life.

  A pair of glasses lay on the floor near his feet. One of the lenses was shattered and cracked. I guessed that they had hit him hard in the face. Once to shatter his glasses and knock them off his face and then again to break his nose or fracture it.