from his family since he was twenty-three years old, but had made intermittent contact over the years, according to his mother, ‘looking for money or sympathy’.
Wilson had worked different jobs since he left home, mainly in factories, on farms and in manufacturing. He had moved to Breckenridge one month before his disappearance …
Ren slumped back in her chair. It was amazing what people would commit to in a legal document, what awful words they would allow to be attributed to them. Mark Wilson – a tragic man, a troubled drunk, did not deserve to have his disappearance described, she read, by his family as ‘another pathetic stunt’.
The windscreen wipers did little to help the visibility. Ren drove a thin line between patience and urgency. Adrenaline and a can of Red Bull were pumping through her. Main Street was like the ghost town it had never become. The lights twinkled brief joy before the dark roads ahead. She passed a handful of cars on the way to the Filly. She pulled in behind the green, filthy truck she was hoping she would find there. The reverse-Minotaur guy. She glanced in the window and saw a mess of papers, coffee cups, a box of NoDoz, some hair gel. She moved on.
He wasn’t there when she walked in. But he walked out of the men’s room not long after Jo.
‘Another pitcher, please, Billy,’ Jo called out across the bar. ‘Hey,’ she said, waving to Ren. ‘How’ve you been?’
‘Good,’ said Ren. ‘Good. How you doing?’
‘Super.’
Ren went to the bar. Billy was sitting behind it reading a book.
‘Working hard?’ she said, smiling.
He smiled back. He put the book down. ‘I have to be here to take care of the kegs that have just come in. And I have not sat down all evening until about five minutes before you came in.’
‘Oh, OK, then,’ said Ren.
‘I actually love my job,’ said Billy.
‘Do you?’ said Ren.
‘Yes, I do. Do you?’
‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘I did different things when I was younger that didn’t suit me, but now, I know I’m in the right job.’
‘Yup, because you have no life,’ said Billy.
‘I … do have a life,’ she said. ‘I’m just wondering exactly where it is.’
Billy smiled. ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t very nice.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘So, what are you reading?’
‘The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon.’
‘That is one of my favorite books.’
He nodded. ‘Me too. It’s just so strange. And so beautifully written.’
‘Show it to me.’
He frowned. ‘OK.’
He walked toward her and lay the book on the bar. Ren leaned in to look at it, but whispered to him: ‘Could you take our friend’s beer bottle, so I can run his prints?’
‘Sure,’ said Billy. ‘Now?’
‘Well not, like, right now, no.’ She smiled. ‘But yes – tonight.’
‘Sure.’
After finishing his beer, the guy finally left. Billy waited a while, then went to his table. He put a napkin around the top of the bottle and took it into the back room behind the bar. He stayed back there a while. Ren started flicking through the book. When she turned around, she realized the bar was empty. She could hear Billy rolling kegs of beer somewhere. She caught a glimpse of him through the doorway. The last confidential informant she’d dealt with had been an ever-moaning man – five-foot nothing and fought the world to gain a few more inches in height.
‘Are you OK out there?’ Billy shouted.
‘Yes. I’m fine.’
‘I’ll be out in a little while,’ he said.
Why am I still here? ‘OK.’
She wandered around the bar, looking at the photos on the wall, the madam’s ‘girls’ dressed up to look older and primmer than they may have been. She started to read the yellowed newspaper cuttings about them being run out of Boston to Denver and finally settling in their famed out-of-town spot by Quandary Peak. Billy came down to join her when he was done.
‘Can I ask you about Mark Allen Wilson – the missing guy?’ said Ren.
Billy frowned. ‘Sure.’
‘What happened the Saturday night between him and Terrence Haggart?’
‘Wilson came in here in the afternoon and started drinking. A couple of hours later, Terrence Haggart came in – he was a regular.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Terrence Haggart thought the world owed him a living. He’d get aggressive with lottery tickets that didn’t have the right numbers printed on them.’
Ren smiled.
‘He was always disagreeing with people about sports or work or women. He would just pick the opposing view of whoever he was talking to. I’d see it played out in front of me every time. I used to hope he’d meet someone who would take him from his bar stool to a booth, so I wouldn’t have to listen to his bullshit. He was ignorant.’
‘Can I guess that you served him hard liquor?’ said Ren.
‘What – as opposed to soda?’
‘No. I just heard he was charming, depending what kind of alcohol was coursing through his veins.’
Billy rolled his eyes. ‘Sure, whatever. I guess in the early stages of an evening, yes. But it was the later stages that left the lasting impression on me. I mean, he had a party guy rep, but he’s not the kind of guy I’d want to party with.’
‘And what was Mark Wilson like?’
‘A heavy drinker, but a harmless one, from what I saw. He’d only been here once or twice before the night he disappeared.’
‘So what happened that night?’
‘I got the impression they knew each other. So it was all friendly until Haggart had one of his lottery-ticket meltdowns. Wilson started laughing at him. Haggart went ballistic and said if Wilson hadn’t owed him so much money, he wouldn’t have been in such a desperate need of a lottery win.’
Ren rolled her eyes. ‘God, alcohol sucks people into the most petty bullshit.’
‘Tell me
