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But she wasn’t so sure.
For a start, who stopped the recording? Marcus, in his death throes? Or his killer? But then why not take the phone?
Something about it felt wrong. Something niggled.
“I’ll need to study this again, properly,” she told Nicholls.
“Take your time,” he said, sounding smug. “Tomorrow, you can look at the body. Hopefully, that will be all you need.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
—
Barbara couldn’t take the phone with her, so she uploaded the footage to her laptop before she left Nicholls’s office to check into the Roadhouse Grill and Hotel.
Barbara suspected the “hotel” was an afterthought, and that kind of showed in her room. Not that it was a bad room. Quirky might be the best description. The ceiling sloped and she would have to duck to get into the sagging double bed. The bathroom was shared with the only other room, next door, and the ancient shower spluttered like a man trying to ask a pretty girl on a date. But the sheets were crisp and clean, the patchwork quilt reminded Barbara of her grandmother and the hosts had even left out some coffee, milk and a coffee pot.
The young girl who showed her up had given her a keyring with two keys on it. “One for your room and one for the outside door. Grill opens at ten. We don’t do breakfast, but the café across the road serves from eight.”
All in all, Barbara had stayed in worse. Much worse.
The Grill was exactly what Barbara had expected. Same place she had visited in a dozen different states across America. Bar down one side. Tables in the center and booths along the other side. The walls were decorated with antique guns, animal heads and old photos of the town and its residents. Behind the bar there were other mementoes. Large crosses, wooden stakes and a case of long, yellowed incisors. The beer pumps had handles made out of humerus bones. Antique, she guessed. Not illegal. Just distasteful.
But then, this wasn’t cosmopolitan New York or liberal California, where such things would be viewed in the same way as hanging a commemorative noose or Klan hood upon the wall. Towns like these, they had their ways. Some might call them backward. But it was more that they were stubborn, digging in their heels while progress tried to drag them forward. It would happen, eventually. It always did. But they’d resent it every step of the way.
Still, at least the menu at the Grill wasn’t too offensive (although a little heavy on wild boar and reindeer), and the food coming out of the kitchen smelt good. Barbara tucked herself into a secluded corner booth and ordered a cheeseburger, fries and a large beer from the same young girl who had shown her to her room. She was late teens, with purple hair shaved on one side, wearing a Pearl Jam T-shirt and ripped jeans (progress). She brought the beer over first and Barbara took a sip before pressing play on the laptop again.
Nicholls hadn’t offered to join her for dinner, and Barbara guessed it wasn’t just because he wanted to let her “settle in.” She was an outsider, a cheechako. He didn’t want to be associated too closely with her. Barbara’s presence here was an unwelcome necessity. On that, at least, they were agreed.
The bar was about half full. Locals. This wasn’t tourist season, and this wasn’t a tourist town. Not like Talkeetna or Fairbanks. Barbara observed an elderly couple at another booth, a family with two kids at a larger round table and a striking woman with white hair sitting opposite a teenage girl wearing a conservative blue dress at a table for two. A couple of older locals slouched on stools at the bar.
They had all looked up as she walked in. Some covertly, some less so. Generally, Barbara didn’t stick out too much in a crowd, which was a good thing in her line of work. But in a place like this she might as well have burst in doing the can-can wearing a sequined leotard and feather boa. One of the bar-slouchers had muttered something under his breath as she walked past. Barbara was pretty sure it wasn’t complimentary.
She had nodded pleasantly, “Evening, sir.”
He’d scowled, picked up his drink and thrown it back before slamming his glass down on the bar. Make mine an old-fashioned shot of toxic masculinity, Barbara thought.
It didn’t surprise her much when she saw him rise and walk, somewhat unsteadily, toward her table. In a way, she had been waiting for it. She closed her laptop, sat back and smiled.
“Can I help you, sir?”
The man looked to be in his late seventies, tall for his age and wiry. She guessed that beneath his checked shirt and windbreaker he was still defined, muscles not yet gone to flab. His face was carved with deep lines, eyes a watery blue (cataracts, perhaps), white hair thinning and cut military short.
“You the Fang Doc?” he asked.
Barbara kept the smile pinned (“Put a tack in it,” as her mom used to say) and held out her hand. “Barbara Atkins, sir. Pleased to meet you.”
He looked at her hand like it was covered in crap.
“No offense, ma’am, but you’re wasting your time here.”
And there it was. Barbara lowered her hand.
“Is that so?”
“We all know who—or what—killed the Anderson boy, and we know how to deal with it.”
“And how would that be, sir?”
