The Visitation Part 26

"No. And I'm sure gonna find out why."

"WELL," said Morgan Elliott over my speakerphone, "Brett Henchle isn't the only cop on the planet."

Kyle and I looked at each other across my kitchen table, the telephone between us. She had a point there.

It was the first hush-hush meeting of the JordanaShermana Elliott underground resistance movement. Kyle even parked around the block and came through my back yard to keep from being seen, which seemed a little excessive to me.

"You know another one?" I asked.

"Gabe used to go hunting with a guy who's a cop in Sandpoint, Idaho. I'm still good friends with him and his wife."

"So, you're saying a cop in Idaho can do a check on a car from Montana that's found in Washington?"

"Law enforcement people are all linked together by computer these days. Any cop can find out who owns any car anywhere, it doesn't matter."

"Well okay."

"What kind of a car was it?" Kyle asked.

"Ford LTD, probably early '70s. It was red where it wasn't covered with silt."

"Okay," said Morgan, "I'll pa.s.s that along. What about the pictures?"

Kyle answered as he leafed through the snapshots he'd just gotten back from the drugstore. "I got some good shots of Nichols's face. I'll get some extra prints made up."

Morgan asked, "So what if the car doesn't belong to Brandon Nichols?"

"That won't surprise me," I answered, "But that car went into the river during the spring run-off, and that's the same time Nichols showed up in town. That and the Montana license plate are enough to make me curious."

"Plus Brett Henchle's silence about it," said Kyle.

"You think Nichols bought him by healing his leg?" Morgan asked.

I hesitated a little, but Kyle didn't. "Absolutely. We're not going to get one bit of help from him."

"So, okay. I'll get back to you as soon as I find out something."

"Before you hang up, let's pray," I said. "I'd really like the Lord to shield us a bit. I, uh, I don't want Brandon Nichols to know what we're doing."

"TWO-TWO-ONE-ONE-TWO South Maurice . . ." Kyle flipped and folded and gathered an unruly map of Missoula as we drove on the outskirts of the town, looking for numbers, signs, anything. "I don't know. I don't think anybody actually lives around here."

The drive through Idaho and into Montana had been beautiful, weaving through mountains and along rivers. Missoula itself was nestled in a wide, flat valley, surrounded by green hills and timbered mountains. This part of Missoula could be pleasing to the eye as well, depending on how excited you got about metal buildings and cyclone-fenced yards filled with big things: tractors, trucks, farm machinery, concrete sewer and drainpipe, roof trusses. We pa.s.sed a John Deere dealer with a whole fleet of green tractors lined up along the street, and then a masonry supply company with neat stacks of concrete block, decorative stone, and a zillion different colors of brick. This was definitely the guy part of town.

"Hey, wait, wait," I said, releasing my foot from the gas pedal. "*Abe's.' The car owner's name is Abe, right? Abe Carlson?"

Kyle looked up and saw it too: a sheet of plywood painted white with big blue letters: Abe's Auto Wrecking. It was hanging crookedly next to an opening in still another cyclone fence, this one festooned with automobile wheels painted red, white, and blue. "That's it," he said, reading the numbers under the name. "Two-two-one-one-two South Maurice."

I turned left and pulled up to the opening, but took a moment to survey the place before driving in. We were looking at an acre of dead cars in long rows, their carca.s.ses dented, hollow, and vacant, picked clean of chrome, gla.s.s, mirrors, wheels, and anything else a living car might need in the world beyond the fence. In the center of it all, like an old barge floating on a multicolored sea of metal, stood Abe's big shack wearing hubcaps like sequins.

"Maybe we should have called first," Kyle suggested.

I eased the car down the long, jagged aisle toward the big blue shack.

Two pit bulls came charging out of a yawning garage door. A grisly looking character in gray coveralls came quickstepping after them, hollering their names so loudly it sounded like "KAP! FREET! GEBACKERE!!"

"Kap" and "Freet" didn't hear him. They had a mauling to attend to, circling the car, barking, growling, and waiting for either of us to stick a leg out.

"HAH! GEDOUTHERE!" This guy had to be Abe. A face and bark like his made me wonder why he needed dogs. He shooed them away, yelling and banging on the nearest hulk with a tire iron. They both scampered into a dog pen alongside the building and remained there while he slammed the gate on them. I was impressed.

He returned to our car and may have smiled, at least around the eyes. I rolled down my window. "That's Casper and Frito. They just ate a Jehovah's Witness. Whatcha after?"

"Uh, are you Abe Carlson?"

"Yeah. Who are you?"

"Uh, may I get out?"

He backed away from my door and I got out. Kyle got out too and walked around to join me. We introduced ourselves and told him where we were from.

The moment I mentioned the town of Antioch, he scowled at us. "You cops?"

"Uh, no. Kyle here's a pastor and I teach the sixth grade."

"Got a call from a cop in Antioch. Is this about that car?"

"We-yeah. If we could-"

"I got nothing more to say about it." He turned and started walking away.

I turned to Kyle. "Get the photos." He reached inside the car while I hollered after Abe, "Could you just look at a picture for us?"

He turned. "What?"

Kyle handed me the photos. I said, "Look at a picture? These pictures right here?"

He glanced thoughtfully at Casper and Frito, then walked back. I guess I got him curious.

I held up the best photo we had of Brandon Nichols, a nice shot of him preaching in Mrs. Macon's garage. "Do you recognize this man?"

He took one look and his expression turned so dark I almost backed away.

"You know him?"

He nodded. "That's Herb Johnson. Where'd you get this?"

I exchanged a glance with Kyle. "Herb Johnson?"

"He used to work for me."

Kyle asked with surprise in his voice. "He worked here?"

"Yeah, worked here for a year or so."

"We thought he worked on a ranch somewhere."

"I don't know what he did before Hattie brought him over."

"Who's Hattie?" I asked.

"My girlfriend. Herb was one of her tenants and he needed a job." He paused to spit on the ground. "Worst mistake I ever made."

"Your girlfriend owns some apartments or something?"

"She manages a building over on Myers Way. She gets some flaky characters in there. I about gave Herb that car just so he'd leave."

Bingo. I tried not to look too excited. "The, the, uh, Ford LTD?"

"Yeah."

"So, did he buy it from you, or . . ."

"I sold it to him cheap. He wanted to move on and I wanted to help him."

"But the car was still in your name."

"I've already been through all this with that cop." He started looking elsewhere.

I didn't want him getting away. "Uh, Kyle took this picture on a ranch near Antioch." Abe stood still. "Herb's working there, only he's using another name. He's calling himself Brandon Nichols."

Abe cursed. He looked scared. "I don't need to hear no more."

"But . . . did the cop tell you the car was ditched in the river? I mean, it looks like somebody tried to hide it."

Abe waved me off, shook his head, backed away. "I don't want to hear no more. Now that's it. We're through talking and you guys can just get out of here."

Kyle pleaded, "We're afraid Herb might be up to something and we were hoping you could-"

"GETOUTTAHERE!"

Casper and Frito went crazy, leaping against the fence of their pen. He headed their way with an obvious intention. I got back in the car and Kyle followed my lead. We got out of there.

I DROVE BACK into Missoula while Kyle flipped and folded and rattled the map. "Myers Way, Myers Way . . ." he mumbled, trying to find it.

"So let me think: Brett said he couldn't find the owner or the thief. But he talked to Abe . . ."

"But Abe isn't the owner. He doesn't want to be the owner."

"Right, he wants to be through with Herb and the car."

"So it's Herb Brett can't find."

"Because Herb's Brandon."

"And the car was never stolen because Abe sold it to Herb."

"Unless someone stole it from Herb."

"But Herb Johnson never reported it stolen."

"No, he just ditched it in the river." I got a hunch. "Which could make sense if Herb is trying to break all ties with his past and become somebody else. Remember when I said it wouldn't surprise me if Brandon wasn't the owner?"

Kyle looked up from his map to exclaim, "It sure scared Abe when you told him Herb had a different name."

"Yeah, like Herb Johnson might not be Herb Johnson."

"Which also means Brandon Nichols might not be Brandon Nichols."

"So . . . Myers Way . . ."

Kyle went back to the map. "Okay, turn right. We need to double back."

WE FOUND MYERS WAY, a residential street lined with well-used cars and low-cost fixer-uppers. The yards were small, many were unmowed, many populated by mongrel dogs and rusting tricycles. Aging McDonald's cups and hamburger wrappers lay fading along the street curb, and graffiti marred the sidewalks. We found four apartment buildings occupying the four corners of an intersection. We could see more multi-units farther down the street. This could be a long day.

Kyle knocked on the first manager's door. He'd never heard of anyone named Hattie.

I went across the street and knocked on another door. A young mother with an infant in her arms and a toddler in tow sent me two doors down. The manager of this building didn't know a Hattie.

By now Kyle had checked the third apartment building. No Hattie.

I went to the fourth.

"Hattie Phelps?" said the manager, a young bachelor with a cluttered computer desk in his living room.

"I don't have a last name, but she's the girlfriend of Abe Carlson."

"Yeah, sure, I know her. She manages the Crestview Apartments." He stepped outside to direct me. "Two blocks down, on the left."

The Crestview Apartments were not high-rent property. The building was a sagging, wood-frame structure that instantly made you wonder how close the nearest fire station was. From the street I could count ten apartments, six below and four above. The wooden stairway leading to the second floor was a lawsuit waiting to happen. A leaky hose bib was feeding a permanent puddle in the small courtyard. Kyle and I went to Hattie's door together, fully expecting another pit bull to answer our knock.

It turned out Hattie was a very pleasant woman, a plump little lady in a loud flowered dress who owned a cat but no dog. All we had to do was mention Abe Carlson's name and she started talking right there on her landing.

"Abe's a nice man, he really is. You just have to get to know him."

"Well, he can sure control Casper and Frito."

She laughed a loud, cackly laugh. "So you met the dogs! Oh, my word!" She then proceeded to tell us how many people had been frightened by Casper and Frito and where Abe got the dogs and how they didn't seem to mind when she came around but she would never take her cat over there. We let her talk, we laughed at her wisecracks, we told her whatever we could about ourselves when we got the chance. She could have carried on most of the conversation without our even being there.

"Well anyway, what brings you two gentlemen clear over here?"