Think Twice

“I’m fine. I’m waiting for the doctor to see me, but it’s a broken nose, that’s all. I’ll be fine. Look, I’m not keeping things from you, but I’m not telling you everything either.”

“About?”

“About your mother.”

“What about her?”

“She’s okay most days. And she’s at her best when she’s on the phone with her children. She has anxiety. She’s scared a lot, Myron. I don’t want her scared, okay?”

Myron swallowed. “Okay, Dad.”

“We keep this between us for now, understood?”

“Understood.”

“And don’t come down, Myron. Your mother reads you like a book. Always has. It’s why you never got away with anything when you were a kid. I assume this all involves something you and Win are working on?”

“Yes.”

“So protect your mother and get on with it. Don’t get distracted.”

“Already taken care of,” Myron said. “What happened after they hung up?”

“Allen that rat bastard — by the way, I’ve been in fights. I grew up in a tough neighborhood. I had the factory in Newark. Anyway, I saw the gun coming. I turned my head and rolled with it. So really it’s not so bad, okay? Trust me on that. It’s just the nose. I didn’t get dizzy or anything.”

“Okay, thanks for telling me that.”

“So anyway, after Allen hung up, he just held the gun on me. He was waiting for something to happen.”

The same thing as the old woman who called herself Ellen.

“Any idea what they were waiting on?”

“Someone called him on the phone. Allen mumbled something about letting him know if they find him and then he said something about a shanty.”

Myron felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “A shanty?”

“Yeah, I didn’t get it either.”

But Myron did get it. Shanty. The bar where Bo/Brian/Stevie worked in Montana. Myron nodded to himself, seeing it now. Turant’s people knew that Myron had flown to Montana. They’d sent men there, started canvassing where Myron had gone, maybe asked around, maybe there had been a tracker on Myron’s rental car, whatever. They’d somehow found out where Bo was at the same time as they were threatening Myron’s dad. So they held up, kept the gun on Dad, waited until...

Joey’s people must have found Bo.

“Doc, I’m talking to my son. Okay, I’ll hang up now. Myron, I’ll call you later. Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

Click.

Myron quickly googled the Shanty Lounge in Havre, Montana. He hit the link and heard the phone ring. Three rings later, someone picked up and said, “Who is this?”

“I’m looking for your bartender Stevie.”

“And I asked, who is this?”

Myron didn’t reply right away.

“We see your phone number on the caller ID. Why is someone with a New Jersey number calling?”

The voice was a deep, rich baritone.

Like Cal the Cowboy’s.

“You’re Cal, right? My name is Myron Bolitar. I was there the other night.”

“You promised we’d be safe.”

Myron’s grip on the phone tightened.

“He even asked you,” Cal continued.

“Am I really safe staying here? Cal and I, we can move on if not.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

Myron swallowed. “What happened?”

“You sold us out, that’s what happened.”

“Cal, where is Bo?”

“They took him, you son of a bitch. They came in here with guns and took him away.”

When Win arrived, they moved into Myron’s office. Myron closed the door.

“Turant’s people got Bo,” Myron said.

“I have people watching your parents as a precaution,” Win said. “But now that they have Bo, your parents should be safe.”

“What do we do about Bo?”

“Nothing. He isn’t our issue.”

“We revealed where he was.”

“That doesn’t make him our responsibility. For that matter, Greg isn’t our responsibility either. If we have a task in all this — and I’m not sure we do — it is to help PT apprehend a serial killer.”

“So we just, what, wash our hands of it?”

“In terms of Bo? Yes.”

“We don’t even contact the authorities?”

“He has family. He has loved ones and friends. They will call the authorities if they believe he’s in danger. We need to think this all the way through for a moment. An hour ago, PT informed us that there may be a serial killer out there.”

“Okay.”

“He also informed us that this particular serial killer has covered his tracks by implicating someone else — a scapegoat, if you will — as the killer. The only connective tissue they’ve found so far...” He waited.

“Is Greg Downing,” Myron finished for him.

“Precisely. He connects the Callisters and Jordan Kravat,” Win continued. “Ergo, if Kravat was a victim of the same killer as the Callisters, who is the innocent man serving time for that murder?”

“Joey the Toe.”

“And who was the witness who helped put Joey away?”

“Are you saying Bo Storm lied on the stand?”

“Bo lied to you. He lied about Greg having cancer. He lied about Greg dying.”

“And the other evidence found at Jordan Kravat’s murder scene,” Myron said. “The DNA or whatever. That fits into this serial killer’s MO.”