AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But the sweatshirt bothered her. She still wasn’t sure why. It had something do with that rogue thought in the back of her mind that she couldn’t quite pin down. The one that had been born after spending hours on StoryJot. Round and round went the carousel of her mind.
Kayleigh. Felicia. The story. The Woodsman. Henry Thomas. Asher Jackson Jenks. The kids in Montour and Lenore Counties. The traps. Games in Danville and Fairfield. Savannah’s favorite scrunchie. The handprint. The sweatshirt. The wildflowers.
Gretchen’s voice interrupted it. “I don’t understand why we’re asking Morris Lauber about this, and not the kid you saw at Henry Thomas’s cabin.”
“As soon as I left the cabin, I ran the plate,” Josie said. “That kid is twenty-five and we’ve already arrested him a dozen times on drug charges. He’s a regular under the East Bridge.”
Denton’s East Bridge was the hub of most of the drug activity in the city.
“Maybe we should be talking to Zeke,” Gretchen suggested.
Larry Ezekiel “Zeke” Fox—or “Needle” as Josie had nicknamed him as a child—was a lifelong drug user and dealer who lived in a shack near the bottom of the East Bridge. When Josie was a child and the woman she thought was her mother needed a fix, she called Zeke. Whether he meant to or not, he’d saved Josie from some of that woman’s worst abuse. In adulthood, on the job, she’d come to a grudging truce with him. Then, he took a bullet for her. Josie wouldn’t call them friends, but nowadays, she made sure Zeke had what he needed in terms of food, clothing, and shelter and in return, he answered all her questions honestly.
“Zeke isn’t going to tell me what I need to know,” Josie said. “I already thought of that.”
“And Morris Lauber will?” Gretchen said.
Josie could hear the skepticism in her voice.
“Nobody knows Henry Thomas better than Morris Lauber,” Josie said. “And Morris Lauber is more afraid of the law than he is of Thomas. We can get this out of him.”
Josie and Gretchen found Morris behind the counter of the parts department at the back of the store. The moment he saw them, his mouth dropped open. Then, regaining his composure, he turned to his coworker and mumbled something. Before Josie and Gretchen could reach the counter, he was already around it, heading directly toward them. The flaps of his bright red work vest slapped against his sides as he walked.
“What are you doing here?” he whisper-shouted once they were in earshot of one another.
Gretchen said, “Mr. Lauber, we need to ask you some more questions about Henry Thomas.”
“No. Not here. Come on, can’t you wait till I’m off work?”
Up close to him, Josie smelled beer on his breath. “Do you think Kayleigh Patchett’s parents can wait for her to be found?”
He rolled his eyes and pointed to his left. A door was nestled among the shelves that displayed various types of tires. Over the top of it a sign read “Exit” in glowing red letters. “Can we at least go outside?”
Josie stepped aside and gestured for him to lead the way. The door opened on to a narrow parking lot alongside the store. Just outside it was a standing ashtray. Morris fished a pack of cigarettes out of his vest pocket and lit one up. “I don’t know what you could possibly need from me now,” he complained. “You two damn near took my whole life apart the other day. Darcy still isn’t convinced that I did nothing wrong. She thinks I’m hiding something.”
“Are you?” asked Gretchen.
“You wanna know the truth? I got a couple of gambling debts I don’t really want her to know about, but that’s it. I told you, I ain’t done nothing wrong.”
Josie said, “We’re not here about you, Mr. Lauber.”
He flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette. “I know. Henry again. Well, I ain’t talked to him since I last saw you, so I don’t know what you want from me.”
“You’ve known Henry pretty much his whole life,” Gretchen said. “You know a lot about him.”
“So?”
“What can you tell us about his conviction?” asked Gretchen.
Lauber shook his head. “You’re kidding me, right? You’re the cops. You don’t know?”
Josie said, “We know that he held a young woman at gunpoint. Henry forced her into the basement and held her there against her will. Henry told us that her boyfriend owed him some money and that’s why he was there. What we don’t know is why he would hold his friend’s girlfriend up for money.”
Lauber said nothing.
Gretchen said, “You’re friends. You think Henry would ever hold Darcy at gunpoint if you owed him money?”
“No. He’d never do that to me.”
