Tracking Shot by Colin Campbell (i can read book club .txt) 📗

around for the van. If it was here it must be inside the workshop. The smell was still bothering him. Confronting a lone hillbilly wasn’t a problem, but he didn’t think Billy Bob would be alone for long. This was turning into a bad idea.

“You the mechanic or the guard dog?”

Billy Bob shivered and blew out his cheeks. His lips flapped, dripping saliva like a rabid dog. He took a deep breath, obviously not fazed by the smell. “You casting aspersions again?”

McNulty was near the edge of the turnaround now, facing the entrance road. “I’m casting for a bit part in the movie we’re making. No banjo.”

A delaying tactic that was never going to work. Coming here alone had been a mistake. Not telling someone where he was going was an even bigger one. Billy Bob surprised him. He broke into a grin and almost started yuck, yuck, yucking. He was only missing the straw hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

“In the movies? Me? Ya think?”

McNulty shrugged and tried not to breathe in. “If your boss can spare you.” He nodded toward the workshop. “D’you want to get him out here? So we can talk?”

Billy Bob shook his head, still grinning. “Ain’t nobody here. Just me.” He jerked a thumb then made the universal telephone shape. “Can get him though.”

McNulty glanced at the cabin, then looked at the workshop. If there were any telephone wires they must come in from the back. There wouldn’t be any cell-phone coverage under all this steel and concrete. “You do that.”

The simple giant turned and crossed to the workshop. McNulty watched him go, half looking at the doors and half wondering where the red van that used to be grey was hiding. Part of him wanted to see inside the workshop but the rest of him wanted a quick look around while Billy Bob was on the phone. The thing that was troubling him most though, as he was starting to put a couple of things together, was the bad smell and the mattress in the back of the van. And a shooting at an orphanage full of vulnerable children.

TWENTY-ONE

The trouble with coming from a background of abuse is that whenever you see something involving kids you tend to lean toward the dark side. You can’t escape it. Some abused kids grow up to be abusers. Some become protectors or avengers or Wrath-of-God fanatics. McNulty hadn’t been abused at Crag View Children’s Home, but he had witnessed plenty of abuse. Now anything involving an orphanage that was even faintly dodgy raised his hackles. His hackles were raised now.

The man in the bib overalls walked toward the cabin then stopped, as if he had remembered something. He scratched his head, then turned toward the workshop instead. McNulty watched the full-length doors as the simple giant opened one to go inside. It was opened only a few feet and then closed again. Not enough space to see if the red van was in the repair bay. Not enough to tell whether there was anyone else in there with him. There were no voices. There had been no violent reaction to the offer of a walk-on part in the movies. Billy Bob was just making a phone call.

McNulty went into search mode. He reckoned he had fifteen minutes at the most before the boss and his henchmen arrived to see the man asking questions about the red van; between five and eight minutes before Billy Bob came back out. That wasn’t a lot of time to search an area the size of the junkyard. He followed the same procedure as police inquiries. Start where you are then fan out. His priority was the panel van.

First rule of executing a search warrant is to get your bearings and make a quick visual examination of the search area. Soft eyes. Not focusing on anything too closely but taking in everything around you. McNulty didn’t have a search warrant but the principle was the same. He stood at the edge of the turnaround and scanned all the way around.

There were several things he could discount right away. The cars on blocks. The tractors on shredded tires. They weren’t big enough to hide the van behind. Next he scanned the carnival floats. Most were too embedded in a world of junk and spare parts to provide any free space, but there were a couple with a gap between them along the perimeter of the dusty circle—the rusty spaceship and the headless dinosaur. McNulty walked quickly and stood between the abandoned floats. Broad, deep drag marks swept out of the parking space before being lost in the dust of the turning circle. McNulty tried to see if there were any tire tracks but the dust and gravel didn’t leave any tread pattern and the marks were too wide to be the panel van anyway. He went to the back of the dinosaur and checked the space behind the floats. Nothing.

He threw one last look around the junkyard then looked for the next place to search. Choice of two. The workshop or the cabin. Billy Bob was already in the workshop.

McNulty went up the porch steps, using the edges so they didn’t creak as much, and peered through a dirty window with torn curtains. The cabin was small and dark and empty. He stood at the door and touched the handle. He’d told Alfonse Bayard, while teaching him how to act like a cop, that cops always knock at the door before forcing entry. That and a quick yell to identify yourself negated any claims later that the suspect didn’t know you were a cop. McNulty wasn’t a cop today, and he didn’t want Billy Bob hearing him in the cabin, so knocking wasn’t an option.

He stepped to one side, turned the handle, and pushed the door open.

The smell hit him as soon as he stepped inside.

The room was small and bare and wooden. A log cabin