A Deadly Shade of Rose

by Douglas Hirt

  “He’s a peacenik. One of those better red than dead crowd. That march on STE, afterwards, Senator Stratterford said he’d shut down Rocky Flats if he could. Get rid of atom bombs, he shrilled. Make a good will gesture to Soviets. Gutless bastard. A damn lot of crazy liberals voted for him. Colorado going to shithouse, Ga-Ganger. Bunch of whiny Californian hippies moving into the state. Make me sick in my stomach.”

  “Too much whiskey produces the same symptoms.”

  She glared at me. “You never said where you stood. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this?”

  “I don’t discuss politics or religion, especially with young women who know judo.”

  “Go to hell,” she said softly, her eyelids drooping and then closing. I went to the window again. The road beyond remained dark. I really didn’t expect visitors, but I was keeping an eye out for headlights just the same. I turned back. Marcie’s head lay to one side, her breathing slow and even. She’d put down the liquor in a serious manner tonight on top of two days in the mountains alone, on the run, cold, probably sleepless. I was surprised she lasted this long. Marcie Rose was cut from some pretty tough cloth.

  Sleep is what she needed right now. I went to the bedroom, pulled back the covers, and then collected Marcie into my arms. She didn’t stir. Looking down at her, she didn’t look so formidable now. She was a woman with many secrets and I had the feeling some would prove to be very dark indeed, but for now she was just an exhausted young lady who’d had too much to drink and not enough sleep. She would pay for it in the morning.

  I deposited her on the bed and tackled the dirty clothing, most of it still damp from tramping around in the dark. She needed pneumonia on top of all her other problems, so I just removed everything. I started to pull the covers up over her when something caught my eye. I moved the table lamp over her left breast. Beneath it and an inch to the left was a dimpled scar of pale white flesh. A second dimpled pockmark was three inches to the right of her naval. I spied a third, high up on the inside of her right thigh. I gently rolled her onto her side. A much larger and uglier scar marked her pink rump, just where I suspected it would be. Exit wounds always made a nasty mess.

  There was no mistaking what had caused them. I raised a pant leg and looked at the old wound, nearly identical to the ones that marked Marcie. It had been made by nine-millimeter bullet fired from a Makarov pistol. The soldier who’d pulled the trigger discovered, to his startled last-breath dismay, that a .45 ACP fired from a nineteen-eleven was a more effective weapon. I grimaced at the memory, covered Marcie and turned the electric blanket on low.

  The stove needed stoking. I fed the firebox with as many logs as it could hold, then retrieved the pistol I’d liberated from the gent back in the woods and locked it in a drawer in the small desk where my typewriter sat. The automatic’s larger caliber may have offered somewhat of an advantage, but I preferred something I’ve shot a few thousand times. With the little Smith I was fairly certain I could hit whatever I was aiming at. I hoped I wouldn’t have to aim at anything tonight.

  I grabbed a box of twenty-twos off the bookshelf, filled the cylinder, and dumped a handful of the diminutive cartridges into my pocket. Before I left the cabin, I peeked in on Marcie. She’d checked out for the night and would keep until morning.

  Locking the cabin’s door behind me, I climbed back into the stolen station wagon.

  Chapter Eight

  An all-night service station on the south end of Woodland Park provided the promised tank of gasoline. A dark Texaco station north of town provided an alleyway that faced Highway 24 more or less in the direction of the restaurant where I’d left my truck.

  Rolling down the window let the cold March air into the car. With it came the occasional hum of tires from the highway. Once in a while a headlight struck up the alley, not far enough to reach me sitting in the dark car. I glanced at my watch. Ten-to-one. I played with the radio a while but couldn’t find anything on this late except preachers and country and western music, so I shut it off and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. Waiting in the dark was not something I enjoyed. At one time I’d been pretty good at it. Nowadays, a couple hours in a deer stand, or on a riverbank tempting reluctant fish are about all I’m good for.

  My truck sat alone in a dim pool of light; the restaurant having been closed for a long time now. Beyond the deserted parking lot rose the dark stand of trees from where a few hours ago Marcie and I had watched Alexander and his men stomp around in the cold. Nothing had moved down there for over an hour. If they had my truck staked out, they were professionals who knew their business. If Alexander had connections in high places, they’d have my New Mexico license plate run through the DMV in Santa Fe in the morning and find my name attached to it. It wouldn’t take long after that for them to connect my name to a Thomas Granger who owned real estate in Florissant, Colorado.

  Reclaiming the truck would be risky, but so would be driving around in a stolen car. Cops would be looking for it. I grimaced, switched off the car, fiddled with the overhead light so that it would stay off when the door opened, and slipped out in the cold, leaving the keys under the mat as promised. Hitching my collar to winter’s sharp teeth, I strode casually down to the highway. A little way up the road an empty grocery store parking lot stood brightly illuminated to no one’s benefit except maybe a local rural electric company. I steered clear of it, crossed 24, took a gravel road past the Timber Inn Restaurant and cut into the trees where Marcie and I had done damage to a couple of Alexander’s thugs.

  I climbed the ridge we’d found earlier and hunkered in the dark. Below, the old truck sat with one fender half illuminated. Nothing moved. No smell of cigarette smoke in the air. No errant flash of light.

  I started down, stepping carefully, stopping from time to time to study the parking lot from different angles. There might have been men with rifles hidden in the shadows. A tingle shivered my spine, a familiar sensation from a long time ago. Okay, so here it was cold instead of steaming, and the vegetation needle leaf pine instead of broad leaf monsoon forests. Beyond that there really wasn’t much difference. It might as well have been 1966 again. Another recon. Troops and slicks waiting just over the ridge. I tried to shake off the past but was having more trouble doing so than usual.

  I moved on through the darkness, through a haze that spanned more than seventeen years. A whole lifetime to those two lovers back in the woods, I mused, suddenly feeling very old. At the edge of the trees I stopped, leaned against a dark trunk and discovered I was breathing hard, and sweating. Sweating out here in the middle of winter! I took a breath and let it slowly out. My truck was fifty yards away, the sky above clear and cold and frosted with a million tiny lights on black velvet. Familiar stars shining in familiar skies through familiar trees. The past receded and the warning-tingling that had begun earlier receded with it. With a sigh that may have been from relief or just plain exhaustion, I sat on the cold ground, leaned against the tree, took a Snickers from my pocket and quietly peeled the paper wrapper.

  Marcie Rose was a liar, I decided, sitting there eating the chocolate bar and watching my truck. Marcie a liar and her dearly departed Carl a thief. It seemed reasonable that the people who wanted to get their hands on her were at least as unsavory.

  What had I gotten involved in?

  Well, whatever it was, I was there; I was going to have to find a way free of it all. Sitting here worrying about it wasn’t going to get the job done. Fishing the keys from my pocket, I got back to my feet and walked out into the parking lot, into the light, hairs at the back of my neck bristling. No one leaped from the shadows. No bullet in the back. No sound but the crunch of my footsteps on the gravel. The door gave its squeak when I opened it and slid behind the wheel. The engine coughed reluctant awake and fell into a familiar, reassuring, rough idle.

  I pulled onto the highway and took the road north toward Denver by the back way. I seemed to be pretty much alone, and that worried me a little. The rearview mirror showed
the occasional headlight that never stayed with me very long. Playing rotation? No reason to for hide and seek games unless they suspected I was good at spotting a tail, which wasn’t one of the items on my curriculum vitae.

  An endless forest unraveled in the truck’s high beams. I’d fished a creek back here a week ago and was familiar with a topo map of the area. At Westcreek, I turned off highway 67 onto an unpaved road heading more or less south. Here at least I was certain no one was following me unless they were driving with their lights off. Not likely. A bumpy half an hour later the truck crawled back onto highway 24 near the little village of Lake George. East four miles returned us to Florissant, and a couple more turns had me back at the cabin, jockeying the pickup out of sight of the road.

  The stove wanted to be fed, but first I checked in on Marcie. She hadn’t moved, her breathing slow and peaceful. I collected an old flannel robe, a heavy terry towel, and a bottle of shampoo from a cupboard where my brother kept such things, and placed them on the foot of the bed, and closed the door. The stove got tended to next, and then I turned out lights and curled up on the old couch that used to sit under the front room window in our parent’s house.

  Marcie stirred and gave a soft groan, probably wondering who’d stuffed her mouth with cotton. I set down my coffee and knocked on the door. No answer so I peeked inside. She was laying on her back, an arm over her eyes fending off the onslaught of sunlight through the east-facing window. She lifted it briefly to look at me, and groaned again, lips grinding, trying to work up some moisture.

  “What time is it?” she asked, her voice about two octaves lower than a frog’s croak.

  “Nearly ten.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Generally speaking, at this latitude the sun doesn’t shine at ten o’clock in the night.”

  “Ha, ha.”

  “Coffee’s brewed and breakfast can be ready in fifteen minutes if you think you’re up to eating anything.

  “What happened last night?” Her tone carried a larger question than just those simple words. I grinned.

  “Nothing of any great importance. You did a lot of drinking and talking, and then passed out.”

  She lifted her arm again, staring. “You sure?”

  “Fairly.” I knew where she was heading.

  She covered her eyes again and smacked her lips a couple times. “I might not be totally with it this morning, Granger, but I’m aware enough to know I’m completely naked under this blanket. Is there something I ought to know about?”

  I laughed. “I prefer my ladies scrubbed and combed, and responsive. You’re naked because I removed your damp and dirty clothes and tucked you under a nice, warm electric blanket so you wouldn’t come down with pneumonia. Don’t worry, your virtue is intact . . . oh, and by the way, you must have been mistaken when you said you didn’t wear panties.”

  She smiled briefly. It’s seemed to pain her parched lips. “You had to find out for sure, didn’t you?”

  “Think of it as research. There’s shampoo and a towel and the cabin has hot running water.”

  She glanced at the pile on the bed. “Such luxuries. Real twentieth century convinces way out here.”

  I closed the door and puttered in the little kitchen getting breakfast together. The bedroom door opened a few minutes later, the bathroom door closed, and soon the shower was running.

  I had the table set—pancakes, maple syrup—the real stuff—butter and bacon—when Marcie emerged from the bathroom wrapped about in my brother’s robe. She made her way over carefully and sat quietly, taking a sip of water that waited for her there. She gently set the glass back on the table.

  “Coffee?”

  Her head barely nodded. Probably all she could manage without it hurting too much. “That awful whiskey of yours,” she said.

  “I recall you claiming something about being a big girl.”

  Marcie made a face. “Hope I didn’t make a fool of myself. No striptease in the middle of the living room floor?”

  “Nothing so entertaining, unfortunately.” She either really didn’t remember or she was testing me? I decided to find out. “You did tell me who you really worked for.” Okay, so I was a liar too.

  She stared at the pancakes a moment, then smeared butter on them. “Did I?”

  “You did.” That was about all I dare say without tipping my hand.

  She drew in breath and let it out, her eyes curiously fixed upon me, her voice cautious. “So I let the cat slip the bag.”

  I took a bite of pancake to keep from having to answer.

  “Hmm. So, what’s your opinion of female reporters who go undercover to get a story?”

  “I have no opinion,” I said figuring that was a safe answer.

  A quick smile flashed to her lips. Just as quickly her expression went flat. “Did I tell you why I wormed my way into a job at STE?”

  I crawled out on a very shaky limb. “Something about investigative reporting.”

  “Investigative reporting? Did I really call it that in my drunkenness? You got a cigarette? No, of course you don’t.” She looked about. “Where’d I put that pack?”

  I retrieved the crumpled pack from the bookshelf. She fumbled a cigarette from it and took a light from a stick match. Tom had left a box of them to light the propane stove.

  She puffed her cigarette and seemed to relax. “Actually, it was an exposé.” Her voice was no longer hesitant but confident. “The Gazette got wind of a story and pulled some strings. Next I knew, I was being hustled into STE to ferret out the truth of it. Did I tell you that?”

  I didn’t like the direction this was taking, and I didn’t like having to lie to get at what she’d been hiding. It felt too much like I was playing Marcie’s game, and in some odd way, Carl’s too. I shrugged. “You weren’t very lucid toward the end.”

  She lingered a while with the coffee, and then moved a piece of pancake about in a smear of syrup. Maybe she was debating how far to go with this story. Or maybe like me, she was making it up as she went along. “Sten Cockran has a checkered past. Hardly the sort of person who could pass a background check for the security clearance he had at STE. Did I mention that?”

  “You did.”

  “I have a big mouth when I drink. What else did I—” she stopped abruptly, her head snapping around at the knock at the door; a light, rapid tap that I recognized instantly and brought on a sudden wave of panic.

  “It’s all right,” I said quietly motioning to the bedroom. “Make yourself scarce.”

  “Who—” she mouthed.

  “Later,” I whispered, and gathered up the dishes and deposited them in the sink. “Be right there,” I called, took a calming breath, waited for the bedroom door to latch. I stuck a hand casually in my pocket and went to the door.

  “Paul, darling.” Bundled in her furs and kid leather, brown eyes smiling warmly, Sherri flashed an orthodontic-perfect smile. She wore her usual lipstick, Morning Frost. I didn’t particularly care for the color. When I’d mentioned it once, she told me it had been recommended by some fashion stylist, and that settled the matter. It made her lips look cold, but when she stretched to kiss me, those cold lips burned with passion.

  It was a short kiss and she hurried past me. “Close that door, darling, you’re letting in all the cold.” She drew off her gloves and pushed pink fingernails through her shiny brown hair, “I didn’t really expect to find you back so soon, but it was Saturday, and that dreadful meeting at the Club was postponed until April, so I decided to drive up and take a chance.”

  Sherri unbuttoned her coat. “I almost drove right past without stopping when I didn’t see that old truck parked out front. Luckily, I saw it in the mirror at the top of the hill. You parked it behind the cabin. Why did you do that?” Before I could answer she changed subjects. “I think the stove needs wood, darling, it’s frightful in here. Well, aren’t you happy to see me? Why are you so closed-mouth?” Sherri threw her arms around my neck and kissed me again. She s
topped, sniffed the air and said, “Coffee smells delicious.” She headed for the kitchen.

  “You don’t want to go in there. The sink’s a mess,” I said taking her hand and turning her toward the couch.

  “That never bothered you before.”

  I grinned, “Maybe I’m beginning to feel self-conscious about my sloppy bachelor ways. I’ll get coffee. Make yourself comfy on the couch. I’m going to have to be leaving here shortly anyway.”

  “Leaving?” Morning Frosted lips pouted.

  “I have to see a fellow down in the Springs at the university about some research material.” I was lying again, and I didn’t like it. It was for her safety, I told myself, and that was partly true. Whatever I’d gotten myself entangled with; I didn’t want Sherri to be a part of it.

  “You’re supposed to be on vacation, darling.”

  I laughed. “It’s called a sabbatical and I’m supposed to be working. That’s why the university gives them. They expect a publication out of me in some prestigious scientific journal, with their name prominently mentioned, of course.”

  “Wish I’d known,” Sherri said dramatically. “Does that mean we can’t be together today?”

  “I’m disappointed too.” I carried a cup of coffee to her.

  “I had Klaus take the top off this morning. I was hoping it would be warm enough this afternoon for a brisk drive in the mountains. With you sitting beside me.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to be home, remember? Fortunately, I remembered the appointment when I did and cut the fishing short.” I grinned at her pout. “Anyway, a drive with the top down will mess your hair.”

  “Well there is that.” Sherri played with the pearls about her neck. “If not today, then when?”

  “I’ll be tied up getting all the data together at least until Wednesday. You know how I’ve been putting off compiling those population density graphs.”

  “Wednesday is half a week away. You should buy yourself one of those little Apple thingys. You’d have your old graphs done at a push of a button, and then we could spend time together.”