THE OK CORRAL SALOON.
It was big, loud, and assuredly hopping.
The lights blazed from every window and Decker could hear the music blasting out of the place. It was country, with a dash of rock and roll, at least to his ear. It shot through the air like a sound cannon.
He stood outside and felt his skin slowly begin to pucker with the humidity that had returned after the storm.
After he cleared the outside bouncer checking IDs, Decker opened the door, and the heat and comingled smells of sweat and spilled alcohol hit him like a tank round. Either they had no AC or it was having a struggle to keep up with the warmth thrown off by the waves of swaying people. And from what Decker could see, he might have been the only sober customer in the joint.
He edged around a knot of young people near the front entrance. They seemed to be holding each other up, though it was not yet ten o’clock. He didn’t want to be around these folks at midnight.
There was a live band, four guys, and a gal as the lead singer. Her hair was Dolly Parton big and swirled around her head as she danced while crooning a Faith Hill ballad to pitch perfection. The band looked like petrified wood next to her steamy gyrations. She started her next set, and from what Decker could hear, the lyrics focused principally on guys, gals, dogs, and guns, with a Chevy pickup thrown in for good measure. There was a quartet of ninety-inch TV screens on the walls, all tuned to sports channels. In one corner behind a waist-high partition was a mechanical bull, but it didn’t seem to be in operation. It just sat there looking pissed off.
He stood near the back and took his time surveying the room. On one wall was a sign with very large letters that read, BAR RULES: YOU PULL ANY CRAP IN HERE PARTICULARLY FIGHTING AND YOUR ASS IS GONE FOR GOOD. WHEN YOU ARE CUT OFF, YOU ARE DONE. ZERO TOLERANCE. HAVE A GOOD TIME.
A minute later he spotted the pair. Caroline was on the parquet dance floor flitting around a flat-footed Baker, like a hummingbird to a very large, very stiff flower. Or cactus, more like it. Baker moved his feet an inch or two from side to side, stuck his hands up, and tried to look like he was enjoying himself.
Why is she with him?
Someone nudged Decker. It was a man even larger than he was who started speaking to him in a low but menacing voice.
“Look, bud, you want to stay here you need to buy something, food or drink or preferably both,” the man said. He weighed in at about three-fifty, bald as a cue ball, and his flabby gut was overshadowed only by the muscular breadth of his shoulders. “Otherwise, you need to go. Somebody’s got to pay to keep the lights on and the booze flowing.”
Decker moved up to the bar, which spanned one entire wall. The bar stools were all occupied. He wedged next to a couple doing a lip-lock and somehow still managing to chug beer, and a well-dressed woman in her early forties who held a cocktail with about a pound of fruit in it.
The bar sported a hundred beers on tap and a similar number in bottle, many of them IPAs that Decker had never heard of. He opted for Budweiser in the can that set him back five bucks and stood with his back to the bar so he could keep watching his brother-in-law make a fool of himself.
Correction, soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law.
Caroline was now hanging off Baker, looking dreamily up into the man’s face before planting a kiss on his lips. In this stark image all Decker could see was his sister Renee and her four kids, and he had to look away before anger got the better of him. Then he caught himself. What business was it of his anyway? Why was he even here?
“You’re the Fed, right?”
Decker looked to his left. The person speaking was the fruit-chugging lady. She was slender and fit, the line of her triceps showing against the fabric of her tight blouse. She had on a wedding ring and a gold-plated pinky ring. Her hair was light brown with blond highlights and hung down to her shoulders. She wore a pair of jade earrings shaped as miniature Buddhist temples. Her features were finely chiseled and quite attractive, her eyes a light blue.
“And why do you think that?” asked Decker.
“I’m Liz Southern. My husband, Walt, just did the post on your victim. He told me you were in town.”
“But again, how’d you know it was me out of all the people here?”
“He said watch out for a guy in his forties who looks like an ex-NFL offensive lineman.”
“That would fit about ten of the guys here, maybe more.”
“You didn’t let me finish. He also said you had brooding, intelligent, hard-to-read features. That definitely does not match any of the ten or so guys in this room you were probably referring to. They’re as easy to read as a Dr. Seuss book.”
Decker put out his hand for her to shake. “Amos Decker.”
“Not a name you hear much anymore,” Southern said as she shook his hand.
“Did your husband tell you details about the case?”
“He did not breach confidences, if that’s what you were asking. But I manage the funeral home, so I am there quite a bit. Rest assured, whatever I might have learned will go no further.”
Decker took a sip of his beer and eyed the unused mechanical bull. “What’s the story with that thing? Thought it’d be popular with this crowd.”
“It was. Too popular.”
“Come again?”
“It came down to legal liability issues. You get a fracker on that thing and he breaks his leg, arm, or neck, you got a lawsuit from him or his family and another from the company that desperately needed him out in the field. I guess it costs too much to remove, so now people just throw beer cans and bottles at it from time to time.”
As she said this, one drunk young man in a Stetson wound up and hurled his empty glass beer bottle at the bull. It hit the bull’s hard hide and broke apart, its shards collecting on the floor underneath along with a small mountain of other debris while he high-fived his buds.
“They clean it up every night and the next night it just fills up. But if they’re taking their hostility out on that instead of someone’s face? That’s anger management, North Dakota style.”
Decker nodded. “So did you know the victim?”
“No. But I understand that Joe Kelly did.”
“Do you know him well?”
“Well enough. London’s booming right now, but that wasn’t always the case. Everybody knew everybody else. That all changed with the fracking. Now we have folks from all over, even different countries. Think I heard Russian spoken at the grocery store last week.” She paused and added, “But that hasn’t always been the case. We almost had to shut down our business during the last bust.”
“Surely people were still dying, even if the good times had gone.”
“Oh, they absolutely were. Some by their own hands out of despair at having lost everything. Only their families didn’t have the money to pay for our services. They’d offer to barter and such, and we did what we could, but we had our own bills to pay. Luckily, we held on and now things are fine. For now. Who knows about tomorrow?” She looked around. “Your partner isn’t with you? Walt told me you were with another agent.”
“We parted company back at the hotel.”
“Will there be more agents coming?”
Decker sipped his beer and didn’t answer. Caroline Dawson had now hung herself around Baker and was using him as what looked to be a dance pole.
“Do you know those people?” asked Southern as she glanced where he was looking.
“Sort of, yeah.”
“Any leads yet?”
“I can’t get into that.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
Decker focused on her. “You have any ideas on who might have done it?”
“Me?” she said, although she didn’t really look surprised at his query. “Well, I can tell you that we do have violent crime here. Not as bad as the last boom cycle. Before we just got all guys, transients with problem backgrounds looking for a quick payoff and then they’d move on. Now we’re still getting some guys with shady backgrounds, but we’re also getting more families. People are putting down roots. They want a nice, safe community.”
“I sense a but coming.”
She smiled demurely. “But we have places like this where young, single guys in particular come to spend their money and blow off steam. And sometimes that turns out badly.”
“Kelly mentioned an incident earlier here today.”
“I heard it was a fistfight between a bunch of guys that turned into something more. Joe apparently de-escalated it. But some people went to jail and some went to the hospital.”
“The guy I’m looking for is probably not in the ‘dumbass bar fight’ category.”
“I saw the body when it came in,” said Southern softly. “So I understand what you mean.”
“Not a pretty sight.”
“We’ve had some bad ones here. Not murders. Accidents. Explosions and fires from fracking gone wrong. Those were . . . challenges from a cosmetic perspective. We had to do a closed casket with a picture of the deceased in . . . happier times on top.”
“I can see that.”
She finished her drink and put the empty on the bar. “Something like this could be a real drag on the town, just when things are going so well.”
“And Irene Cramer probably deserves some justice, too,” said Decker bluntly.
She bowed her head slightly. “I never thought otherwise. Good night, Agent Decker.”
She left and walked up the stairs leading to the second story of the bar. Decker turned back to see that Stan Baker and Caroline Dawson were no longer on the dance floor. He looked around the bar space but didn’t see them anywhere. He finished his beer, braced himself, and headed back out into the heat, though he found it was cooler outside than in.
A bolt of lightning far to the west speared downward, and something seemed to explode at the spot where the slash of electricity had stabbed the earth. The sound reached them even here, and a plume of flames shot upward and lit the sky for miles around. The other people on the streets kept on walking, or staggering, as though detonations like that were routine.
London, North Dakota, was getting more interesting by the minute, thought Decker as he trudged on.
SIX A.M.
Decker flicked open his eyes and rose without the need of the set alarm on his phone. He trudged to the bathroom, showered, and changed into a fresh set of clothes. He looked out his hotel window. The sky was dark and still clogged with clouds, but he could see a seam of dawn starting to build, like a sleepy eye about to open. He looked at the weather app on his phone. It was only sixty-eight degrees but with a dew point that would make Louisiana proud. Decker thought he could actually see the air outside, it was so thick with moisture.
He sat on the edge of his bed for a couple extra seconds as he awoke more fully. Another town, another case to solve. His life. And welcome to it.
He went down to breakfast to find Jamison already sitting at a table with Joe Kelly in the hotel’s restaurant. The local detective was dressed in a dark two-piece suit, white-collared shirt, and no tie. His shoes were black scuffed boots with worn heels.
Decker sat at the table. “I thought I’d be the first one down,” he said.
“I’m a borderline insomniac, so I’m usually up by four having my first of too many cups of coffee,” said Kelly.
“And we gained an hour coming out,” said Jamison, who was looking over her menu. “So it’s actually a little late for me.”
Decker eyed Kelly. “I was out walking last night and a bolt of lightning hit something in the far distance. And there was an explosion.”
“I heard that, too,” chimed in Jamison. “Wondered what the hell it was. But nobody in the hotel seemed bothered by it.”
Kelly nodded. “It was probably just lightning hitting a saltwater disposal pond. The lightning is sort of drawn to those things, and also to the metal freshwater tanks and piping stations. The bolt hits it, it blows up, and they come and repair it. Cost of doing business up here.”
“Okay,” said Decker. He shot Jamison a quizzical look.
After they ordered and their coffees were delivered Kelly said, “Any updates on why Irene Cramer was important to you guys?”
Jamison glanced at Decker, who said, “Not yet.”
“So Feds keep things from other Feds?” asked Kelly, looking disappointed.
“These days everybody keeps things from everybody else,” noted Decker. “Anything on your end?”
“I’ve got an interview lined up for us with Cramer’s landlady. I was going to go see her when I found out you were coming to town. So I held off.”
“We appreciate that. Did Cramer have a job other than being an ‘escort’?” asked Jamison.
“She did actually, a pretty important one,” replied Kelly. He paused and said somewhat haltingly, “She worked as a teacher with the Brothers.”
“The who?” said Jamison.
“The Brothers. They’re a religious group. Branch of the Anabaptists.”
“Care to elaborate?” said Decker.
“They’re sort of like the Amish, only they can drive cars and use heavy machinery and stuff. They’re farmers and also do some manufacturing. Communal living is their standard. They take it straight from the scriptures. Good people, but they keep to themselves.”
“So an escort was employed as a teacher by a religious group?” asked Decker with a pair of hiked eyebrows. “How the hell does that work? And why didn’t you tell us that last night?”
“Well, they obviously didn’t know that she was also an escort. Plus, she was apparently a really good teacher and got along well with the kids. They’re going to be devastated by her death. I’ve already talked to Peter Gunther, the minister, though I didn’t tell him about Irene’s ‘other’ job or what had happened to her. And I was working up to tell you. I just couldn’t find the words last night. You Feds coming to town was a little bit of a surprise. I hadn’t decided how to handle it.”
“Minister? Like a preacher?” said Jamison curiously.
“No, as in the leader of the organization.” He eyed Jamison. “The Anabaptists are a male-led sect. The women do a lot of the work, including all of the butchering, cooking, cleaning, and sewing. But the men are the leaders.”
“Welcome back to the 1950s,” said Jamison drily.
“They’re good people, like I said,” replied Kelly defensively.
“How do you know so much about them?” asked Decker.
“My grandparents used to belong to the sect when I was a kid” was Kelly’s surprising reply.
“And they got tired of communal living in an age of male dominance?” retorted Jamison.
“No, but my parents did, apparently. They left after my grandparents passed on, when my sister and I were still kids.”
“Do your parents live here?”
“Nope. They retired to Florida about three years ago.”
“And your sister?” asked Jamison.
“She passed away a few years ago.”
“I’m so sorry. She was really young then?”
“Yeah. She had a rough life.”
“What else can you tell us about the Brothers?” asked Decker after a few moments of silence.
“They’re antiwar pacifists. Some of the Hutterites, the largest branch of Anabaptists in the country, were persecuted for that stance during World War II.”
Decker nodded. “So that covers her place of lodging and her work as a teacher. What about her work as an escort? You said you weren’t sure if she actually was one, even though you recognized her from the website. But are you sure it was her?”
“I am.”
“How?”
“I contacted her through the site. I made arrangements to meet with her. It was at a flophouse on the other side of town. I got there before her. Badged her when she showed up.”
“Did you arrest her?” asked Jamison.
“No.”
“Why not?” asked Decker. “You’re a cop. She broke the law. Seems pretty simple.”
“Look, I was trying to help her out. She didn’t need a prison sentence. She just needed some positive reinforcement and guidance. Only it looks like I failed on both counts.”
“But when you met with her did she confirm that she was selling sex?” said Decker. “Because earlier you intimated that you weren’t sure what she was up to.”
“She never admitted to being a prostitute, or an escort. She did say she was lonely and that while she admitted to arranging to meet men from the website, she never took any money from them. And they didn’t always have sex. Sometimes they just talked.”
“Right,” said Decker skeptically. “I’m sure they did.”
“And she wasn’t dressed like most hookers I’ve run into. Her outfit was pretty normal.”
Their meals came and they ate fast, with a lot of work ahead of them.
As they prepared to leave Decker said, “You ran her prints through IAFIS, right? To see if she had a record?” He was referring to the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
“I did, but how’d you know that?”
“It’s the only reason we’re here. When her print came through it obviously dinged some pretty high-up corridors at the Bureau. You said it was a request from the Feds that sent your reports to DC. That had to be how they knew.”
“So she was important?” said Kelly.
“They’re all important,” retorted Decker.
“But we didn’t get any hit on our submission,” said Kelly. “As far as the FBI was concerned, they had no criminal record of Irene Cramer.”
“Well, maybe they didn’t under that name,” replied Decker.
“But if they had another name in that database with those prints, they should have let us know that,” said Kelly a bit angrily. “You sure you’re not withholding anything from me?”
“Scout’s honor,” said Decker.
“Didn’t figure you for a Boy Scout.”
“I wasn’t. Now let’s go. Busy day and I’m not getting any younger. And Irene Cramer’s not getting any older. And somebody has to answer for that.”
Decker headed out.
Kelly looked thoughtfully after the departed Decker before glancing at Jamison. “Anything I need to know about your partner?”
Jamison managed a smile. “Oh, it will become readily apparent all on its own.”