“You’re not losing it at, you know, the pumps? Uh, the rigs?” Letty was unsure of the nomenclature.
“Nawp,” he said, a Texas cross between “naw” and “nope.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“If we are, I can’t figure out how. A couple of guys here wonder if there’s a phantom pipeline cut somewhere, where somebody takes the oil out before it gets to the tanks. But that’s . . . nutso. I can’t even think how in the hell you could do that, with nobody seeing it. My personal opinion is, if we’re missing oil, it’s paperwork somewhere along the way. Somebody’s accountant is stealing it.”
“Blackburn?”
Grimes stood up. There was only one window in the office, behind his desk, a high, thin slit whose lower edge was chin high on Grimes. He turned and peered out at a slice of blue sky, then said, “I’ve known Boxie for twenty goddamn years, since we were both working outside. I can’t believe he’s stealing it, but . . . where is he? Where’s Marcia? We can’t find either one of them.”
“Talk to the police?”
“Yeah, but they’re not too interested at this point. They’ve gone out to his house, they say both of his cars are gone. Can’t find them, but they’re gone. They think he and Marcia took off for somewhere. Either for good or evil.”
“Would you mind if we poked through Mr. Blackburn’s office?”
“Yeah, I’d mind, and so would he, but given what Vee’s said, and that you’re government people, and the fact that we can’t find Boxie or Marcia . . . go ahead,” Grimes said. “The door’s unlocked, I was in there this morning.”
“What about his computer . . . You think it’s protected?”
Grimes sat down again, reached across his desk for a scratch pad, and jotted some numbers and letters on it: 71Boxer73. He pushed the note across the desk and Letty picked it up.
“That’s his password. He was born in 71, his wife in 73. Clever, huh?”
Kaiser asked, “Do you have any idea why he might have taken off? Okay, maybe he’s gone shopping, or maybe he’s behind the oil thefts and decided to take off. But maybe . . . he figured something out and said so to the wrong people . . .”
“Like he might be dead?” Grimes’s eyebrows scaled up his forehead.
“Gotta ask,” Kaiser said.
“I’ll tell you guys, there’s been some rough shit happened out here in the Permian over the years,” Grimes said. “I’ve known people got killed on the job, even one guy who got shot, murdered—but there’s never been any mystery about it. That’s what’s got me scratching my head: the mystery. Where in the hell are they? If Boxie shows up tomorrow morning and says he and Marcia been out hunting jackrabbits, I’ll kick his ass up around his ears. So to answer your question, no, I got no idea where they are, or why they’re gone.”
A call came in and Grimes checked his phone and said, “I gotta take this,” and Letty said, “We’ll be across the hall.”
They left Grimes’s office as he was saying, “Marky? What the hell are you doing out there? Where’s my fuckin’ shale shaker?”
* * *
Blackburn’s office was the same kind of no-frills box that Grimes worked from, family photos on the walls, a woman and two boys and a girl, a full-sized American flag on a side wall, a bookcase stuffed with manuals of some kind, plus miscellaneous nonfiction books and a row of filing cabinets. Letty reached out and tapped one: heavy steel.
The computer was an older Dell. Letty turned it on as Kaiser rattled the filing cabinet drawers, which were locked. The desk drawers weren’t, and Letty pulled out the center drawer, hoping to find the filing cabinet keys.