[h3]Montana[/h3] [b]Chinook 7:39 PM[/b] Charlie Braddock hurried out of the Blaine County courthouse with Vic trotted in his wake. The square around the courthouse was deserted, only Charlie and Vic's cars were parked in front of the place this time of evening. Charlie's battered truck sat beside Vic's Ford. Both vehicles had a large star on the door with the word's BLAINE COUNTY SHERIFF stenciled inside of it. "I'm driving," said Charlie. "C'mon, boss," pleaded Vic. "I'd like to get there in one piece." "You still aren't used to the roads here. You might get us lost." "Bullshit." "That's insubordination, Deputy Klein. Remind me to write you up when I get back." They climbed into Charlie's truck and sped through Chinook. The town was quiet, as Charlie expected it to be. There were only a little over two thousand people that lived in town, most of them family folks who went home for dinner after they were done working. Those that didn't went to the roadhouses out in the county for drinks and dancing and whatever they needed. Vic reached into the glovebox and pulled out the glass bubble with the magnetic bottom. He reached out and slapped it on top of the truck's roof. Charlie flipped a switch on the dashboard and the bubble on the roof flashed blue lights. Vic put on the radio and they listened to a station out of Billings that played big band music. The reception was spotty and crackly. Charlie reached over and changed the dial to a Canadian frequency out of Saskatchewan that had a better transmitter, but it played western music. "I don't wanna listen to that shit kicker music, boss," Vic huffed. Charlie chuckled and turned it up. Deuce Hopper and his Oklahoma Orchestra were in the middle of a set, broadcast live from somewhere. They were playing "Shame on You." Charlie beat time on the steering wheel with the song as Deuce crooned and played the fiddle. Vic crossed his arms and looked out the window as Chinook's small town faded away and the plains opened up. Montana sat on the edge of the Great Plains, but Blaine County was smack in the middle of it. Buttes and small mountain ranges helped break up the monotony, but for the most part it was that large, empty expanse that seemed so big that it could swallow entire towns whole. Vic perked up when they passed a sign on the side of the highway that announced Tony Strafford's campaign for Blaine County Sheriff. Vic shook his head and looked over at Charlie. "When are you gonna but your signs up, boss?" "I'll get around to it," he said with a shrug. "We still got almost six months until the election. Easy enough for Tony to put up signs when he works for the highway patrol. Nobody gives a rip about the election until summer's passed anyway." Vic grunted, his way of disagreeing without disagreeing. Charlie ignored him and went back to listening to Deuce and the boys. It was after dusk when they finally reached Jordan's Crossing. Deuce was in the middle of "Cotton Eyed Joe" when Charlie turned the radio off. Chinook was a small town and looked like a small town was supposed to look, houses laid out in grids and a main street with businesses. Jordan's Crossing was a nightmare of progress. Hastily built houses lined dirt roads that needed to be paved, liquor stores on damn near every corner, and Dixon Oil signs as far as the eye could see. Even the main street was named after the company. Late in '58, they had struck oil in this part of Blaine County. In the year and two months since, this small patch of the county had been turned into a boomtown complete with all the problems that came with boomtowns. Migrant workers from all over the US and Canada flooded the place, guys looking for work or looking for an escape or maybe both. They would get liquored up on payday and in a town where men outnumbered women ten to one, fights up ensue. A bar fight was the reason they were out here now. "What's the place again?" Charlie asked. "Mac's, I think it's on Third Street, just off Dixon Way." Charlie found the place a few minutes later. Mac's was a Quonset hut with a door and two windows. A wooden sign with "Mac's" scrawled on it hung above the door. Charlie and Vic got out and went in. Either a bar fight or a tornado had occurred in the small place. There were overturned tables, broken chairs, blood on the floor. Vic immediately pulled out a notepad and pencil and started sketching the scene. Charlie walked up to a group of people by the bar. There was the bartender, looking pissed. Along with two other men. "I'm Sheriff Braddock, what happened?" "Son of a bitch Crowder, is what happened!" the bartender spat. "He always starts trouble in my place, I always gotta kick him out. Tonight he went too goddamn far." "He pulled a knife," said one of the men. "He fucking stabbed Matt Relford six times. A bunch of the guys in the bar loaded Relford up in a truck and took him to the hospital." "Where's this Crowder?" Charlie asked. "Being looked for," said a voice from behind. Charlie turned and saw a man in a very expensive suit walk through the door. He was about Charlie's height, so six feet even, with gray hair and gray mustache to match. Patrician would be the word Charlie would have used to described him. He had a Roman nose and oozed money. He was flanked on both sides by musclebound men in black fatigues carrying rifles. "My security staff are combing Jordan's Crossing and the outskirts looking for Jason Crowder." "Appreciate the help,' said Charlie. "But that's our job, Mister?" "Dixon," he said without offering his hand. "Bob Dixon. The Dixon in Dixon Oil. Sheriff, you and your deputy here can rest easy. We've got this under control. The security staff here are made up of ex-police and military officers. So, take it easy." Charlie chuckled to himself and looked back at the bartender and the witnesses. They didn't know what to do or say now that the man who was responsible for their livelihood was in the room. "Vic," Charlie said after a moment of silence. "Get statements from these three men here. Same with Mr. Dixon and his two friends." Charlie walked passed Dixon with a friendly nod. "This is a sheriff's department investigation, Mr. Dixon. I appreciate your cooperation. Charlie squeezed between the two security goons on his way out the door. "Where are you going, sheriff?" Dixon asked. Charlie paused and looked back over his shoulder. "Going to do my job," he said before walking out the door. ---- [h3]Los Angeles[/h3] [b]The Voodoo 12:12 AM[/b] The Voodoo was made up in witch doctor chic. Candles provided the lighting for the place, they were mounted in tiki torches around the club. Tribal masks, bones, and voodoo dolls hung on the wall alongside fake shrunken heads. The dance floor of the nightclub moved and shook, filled to capacity with young, black men and women dancing to the band onstage. Front and center was a young black man with an electric guitar, dancing as he played a loud and fast-paced riff. His kinky hair had been straightened and done in a large pompadour, he wore a bright purple suit and gaudy rings on his finger. Behind him, a drummer, bass player, and two horn players tried to keep up. The words 'T-Bone & The Bone Patrol' were stenciled on the drumkit. T-Bone slung his guitar behind his back and grabbed the microphone in front of him. The crowd cheered and the band went into a holding pattern as he half-sung and spoke the verse. "Man, I came home the other night and all my shit was out in the front yard. I said there couldn't be one thing going wrong, that crazy ass girl of mine. Let me go over here and see what's wrong with her this time." The crowd, the men in the crowd at least, cheered at the words. "Went up in the house and she's sitting looking all crazy I said 'What's wrong baby?' She said 'You don't love me.' I said 'You know I love you.' She said 'No you don't. You stay out all night with yo friends, drinking and carrying on and you don't even think to call and let me know where you at' I said,'Well hold on a minute baby. Let me tell you one more time and maybe you'll believe me', so I told her something like this:" T-Bone whipped the guitar back around and started playing a furious riff that sounded like a mix of the old blues standards and big band, but big bad music was never this fast or this aggressive. He kept his face close to the mic as he howled the chorus. "I said I love you baby until the day that I die! I Spell it L-O-V-E. C'mon girl why you do this? You know I love, I love you, I love you! You know I tell you!" In a flash, the guitar was back around T-Bone's back and he was clinging to the mic while the crowd erupted in cheers. Sweat was pouring off his face as he spoke again. "I said c'mon baby let me back in the house. You know I love you. She said 'You don't even buy me presents' 'Yeah, I did. I bought you a box of chicken but I ate it on the way home.' She said, 'You don't even know my name!' I said yeah it's Melissa. She said 'No dumbass, it's Roxanne. Spell it out for me' Damn, man. Hold on. So I had to tell her something like this:" This time, T-Bone danced to the beat in a strange duck-hop as he went into a guitar solo. He ran from one side of the stage to the other as the crowd went wild. He returned back to the mic, throwing his head back and slinging sweat across the stage, to belt out the chorus. "I spell it R-O-X-A-N-N baby! Her name is Roxann and she's rocking my world. You know I love her, I love her, I love her, I love her, and so I tell her!" More claps and whoops and T-Bone wiped the sweat from his face. "She said 'Alright, you know I love you. I can't say no to you. You can come in the house.' I thought we was going to make some love but I heard a knock at the door... I was like, 'Goddamn. Who is it man?" White man said, 'I apologize for knocking so hard. This is Houston PD, we're looking for T-Bone Harris.' I said 'Hold on. He's in the back. Let me go get him for you.' So I went to the back of the house, man my woman's sitting there and says 'Where you going?' I said 'I gots to go!'" T-Bone picked his guitar and played furiously as the song came to a climax. "I started running! I started running for this white man take me away. She said 'Get yo shit and get outta here boy!'" The song ended suddenly and the crowd thundered its applause. Harris waved his hands and bowed. The band followed his lead. "Thank y'all," he said into the mic. "Y'all too kind. We gonna take a break, but we'll be back in about twenty or thirty minutes." Harris set his guitar down on a stand by the stage and followed the rest of the band out in the back. A Petey Peterson tune came on the sound system, a fast-paced number that got the people on the dance floor moving once again, although plenty headed back to their tables during the lull in live music. Elliot Shaw watched all of this from the Voodoo's bar. He nursed an old fashioned and watched the comings and goings of the club goers. Except for himself and a Mexican pachuco in a baggy suit, the rest of the club was all negro. No showing of Claire Beauchamp so far. An hour in and Sidney Applebaum's tip looked to be worthless. He lit up a cigarette and thought about prowling by Beauchamp's pad when another white man came through the door. He was tall, close to six foot six, with a baggy suit and dark blonde hair in a crew cut. Elliot made him as a cop right away. The suit helped hide his piece in a shoulder rig. If he was the type of cop Elliot figured him to be, then he would have a drop piece and a sap somewhere on him. A negro followed him into the bar. He was tall, but not quite as tall as the white man. The negro's suit wasn't as baggy, so Elliot could clearly make out the service weapon in his shoulder. LAPD had a handful of negro cops, but he had no idea there was one working plainclothes. He turned away as the two cops found a table. They didn't so much find one as the white man flashed his badge at a couple sitting at a table and made them leave. The Petey Peterson number ended. Following it was a slow Little Sadie Hamilton song that cleared the floor for slow dancing. The white cop stood and walked up to one of the cocktail waitresses. She wore a low-cut purple dress that showed off legs and cleavage and the cop was staring hard. He took her by the hand and walked her out to the dance floor. "Motherfucker," Elliot heard the bartender muttered over his shoulder. "Fuckin' Hoyt." He turned around and saw the man giving the dancing couple the stinkeye. "He do this often?" he asked the man. "Shit yeah," he said with a shake of his head. "Always coming in her with his token nigga Detective Thomas, getting free drinks, fucking my girls, and shaking me down for money. You okay, man. You been nursing your drink, which I don't car for too much, but you been keeping to yourself. So many white men come here and walk around like they're the fucking mayor of South Central. Imagine if I went into a white club. Not strutting, just going in for a drink. They'd lynch my ass." Elliot nodded in sympathy and killed his drink. "Another old fashioned." "That's what I like to hear," said the bartender. He turned to look back at Hoyt. The big man had his hands on the girl's ass as they danced. He saw several men at tables staring at them, glaring was more like it, as they moved across the dance floor. For his part, Thomas paid little attention and was staring at a notebook on the table. Elliot polished off his second drink and paid the bartender for the two drinks, a hefty tip included. "For your Hoyt troubles," he said as he passed over the money. "Much obliged, mister." With two drinks under his belt and no sight of the girl, Elliot was preparing to leave when he saw a man bolt on to the dance floor from the back room of the club. "Somebody call the police!" he shouted. "There's a dead body in the alley!" Murmurs broke out and people started to hurry towards the side exit of the club, the two cops taking the lead. Elliot was one of ones going towards the door. He muscled his way through the crowd and came out in front just at the exit of the club. He saw blonde hair tangled on the ground and a white woman in a red dress laying on her side. Hoyt and Thomas were above the body, Thomas squatting down to brush the hair from the body's face. It was Claire Beauchamp with a neat little hole in the middle of her forehead.