The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (65)

“I’ll get it going,” Greet said.



* * *





When Greet was off the phone, Kaiser asked, “You want to know what I think?”

“Probably the same thing I think,” Letty said. “Let’s get dinner, get some bottles of water and the tent, and head out to Winks’s. See if they’re still delivering. Maybe smuggle some pillows out of the motel, get some sleep while we’re out there.”

“That’s exactly what I think,” Kaiser said. “Though, you know, in Delta we didn’t use pillows. We used rocks.”

“Of course you did,” Letty said. “I’ll take a pillow, we’ll see if we can pick up a rock for you at Costco. Or you could make do with a concrete block.”

They got a recommendation for an Italian restaurant from the desk clerk at the hotel, smuggled a couple of pillows out to the car, ate dinner, and, as it was getting dark, headed toward Winks’s property.

“There’s a spot a half-mile or so out where I can hide the car,” Kaiser said. “Not where I hid the first night out. The first night, I couldn’t come out behind them. That won’t be a problem tonight.”

They got to Winks’s in full dark, cruised it once—the building was dark—then drove a long rectangle and came out, as Kaiser said, a couple hundred yards off the road and perhaps a half mile from Winks’s, with the car parked behind a pumpjack. Kaiser gathered up the tent and pillows, and asked, “Shotgun?”

“Yes.”

“You carry it, then,” Kaiser said. “I got these fuckin’ pillows.”

They loaded the shotgun with buckshot, then walked slowly in the starlight along the road, talking quietly until they got close to Winks’s. There, they crossed the fence and Letty led the way farther into the field than she’d been the first night, so they were looking down the length of the driveway and could see both the area where the oil truck unloaded into the oil tanks and the front of the building.

They set the tent up on a flat spot in another patch of weeds, as Letty did the first night, put down the pillows, and crawled inside, tight, shoulder to shoulder. “Not bad,” Kaiser said. “Unless we have to get out of here in a hurry.”

“If we do, I’ll slide out first, being skinnier,” Letty said. “If you’ve got to, don’t worry about the tent. This net won’t slow down your buckshot.”

They settled in, watched the building in the bare illumination of the pole light, then Kaiser yawned and asked, “You want to watch first? I could sleep awhile.”

“Sleep,” Letty said. “I’m wide awake.”

“Don’t let me go more than three hours,” Kaiser said. “You need downtime, too.”

Letty spent the three hours listening to music with her iPhone AirPods, and reading her phone inside her sweatshirt. At one o’clock, she woke Kaiser: “Nothing.”

“I got it, you sleep,” he said. He yawned again. “I actually feel pretty good.”

Letty took a while to doze off, finally locked into a memory of a fishing trip with her parents to the north woods of Wisconsin, and slept. She had no idea how long she’d been down when Kaiser nudged her hard, and then, in the next instant, breathed, “Shhh.”

She’d been sleeping on her back, head on the motel pillow. She opened her eyes, carefully rolled over in place, feeling the tension in Kaiser’s shoulder as he looked out through the mesh and the weeds. A pickup had turned down into the parking lot. The driver parked at the front door to the building. An older man got out of the cab, thin, gray hair to his shoulders.

“Winks,” Letty whispered. She’d seen photos of him, but not the man.

“Think so.”

Winks stretched, dug in the pocket of his jeans for keys, unlocked the door, went inside. Lights came on and Winks pulled the door shut.

“What time is it?” Letty asked.

“Ten after three,” Kaiser said. “You’ve been sleeping like a log for two hours.”

They watched for twenty minutes, occasionally saw a flash of Winks’s red shirt through the front window. He appeared to be working at a desk, standing up, sitting down, out of sight. Twice, he stood and looked out through the window, toward the road, then disappeared again.

“He’s waiting for someone,” Letty suggested.

“Could be. Odd time to be doing paperwork. Maybe he wants to be here for a delivery?”

Then they saw headlights approaching from the south, slowing, and a tan Jeep turned in under the pole light.

“That’s Sawyer,” Letty said.

Winks stood up and looked out the window as Sawyer got out of the Jeep and walked toward the door. Winks opened it from the inside.

Kaiser: “Did Sawyer pull a gun?”

“I think he did,” Letty said. “Yo, man, you think . . .”

Sawyer walked through the open door and they heard a voice, uncertain which man, and then . . .

Crack!

“He fuckin’ shot him,” Kaiser said. He sounded astonished.

Letty already had her pack open. She pulled out the Staccato case, unzipped it, took out the gun, and jacked a round into the chamber.

Kaiser: “Wait!”

“No. I’m going.”