Free Jack Stone - Wild Justice by Vivien Sparx Page B

opened the can and drank thirstily. “Not a thing,” he admitted. “Not yet.”
    “That sounds ominous, Jack Stone.”
    Stone shrugged. “The last man to see the girls alive was the guy who owns the bar. I think I’m going to pay him a visit.”
    “Hank Dodd?”
    Stone nodded. “You know him?”
    Lilley shook her head. “Not personally, but I know of him. He’s one of the town’s most influential men. He has connections, Stone.”
    “Connections? You mean with the police?”
    “I mean with his brother-in-law, the sheriff.”
     
    Seventeen.
     
    Stone borrowed Lilley’s Chevy on the promise he returned to pick her up at 6pm.
    He drove back along the turnoff road doing a steady fifty, getting accustomed to the big car’s spongy brakes and vague steering. It wasn’t a great car. It had seen better days – but it was a lot better than walking. He cracked the window down, and didn’t pass a single car all the way to Windswept’s outer limits.
    He slowed speed through the town, taking elaborate car e because it wasn’t his car, and when he went through the intersection of West and Main Street, he kept on going. ‘Stan’s Bar’ disappeared into his rear-view mirror. So did the police station opposite. Stone blew through Windswept’s outer limits and kept on driving north.
    O utside the town limits, maybe a mile down the road, he saw a sign on a pole by the roadside.
     
    ‘Rapture Arizona. Population 13,886. 11 miles.’
     
    Stone checked the fuel gauge. He had three-quarters of a tank. He put his foot down, and the Chevy gave a growl as the speedometer crept up to sixty.
    The road was the same two-lane blacktop. But there was more traffic as he drove further north. Stone passed a couple of trucks, and a couple of cars – enough to be considered peak-hour chaos back in Windswept.
    Dotted in the distance on either side of the road, Stone could see occasional buildings. He wasn’t sure if they were farms, homesteads or storage sheds, but each building seemed to be marked with a battered old mailbox, and a dusty rutted trail that branched off the road at right angles.
    He kept driving.
    The town of Rapture appeared gradually, first as intermittent roadside houses, vacant lots of dry brown grass, telegraph poles and trees – but gradually filling in as he drew closer. The houses became suburban streets that intersected the two-lane. Then he hit his first traffic light, and a couple of semi-trailers appeared from a road on his right, joining the steady flow further north.
    Drab green and grey industrial sheds and motor home parks became neat residential areas – until finally he hit the town’s business district. Here the traffic was more constant. Shop fronts and bright advertising signs on high poles announced the next motel, the next fast food outlet and the next discount department store. Stone slowed, eyes working left and right as he edged into Rapture.
    Stone parked up and spent several hours in the town, walking the business district, and quartering the streets looking for motels and overnight accommodation, watchful for a blue SUV. He found nothing, and by 4.30pm he’d felt he had discovered everything he could. He slid back behind the wheel of the Chevy. The seat was hot, the air stuffy from being too long under the direct baking sun. He turned the car around and headed back towards Windswept.
    The neon sign in the window of ‘Stan’s Bar’ was glowing red and green when Stone cruised back into Windswept. He nosed the big car into the gutter out front of the police station and walked across the road.
    The door was open, jammed back with a timber wedge. Stone walked in, looked around.
    The bar was one long narrow room that was partitioned out back by an open archway, beyond which were restrooms and a door marked ‘Office’. The bar itself was on the right side of the room with a row of stools set in front, and clusters of tables on the left. The lighting was low and gloomy. The television