by Susan Dunlap
Connie had turned. Kiernan followed before she realized the road was gravel. The truck rattled so loudly, she couldn’t tell if the engine was coughing. Irritably she slowed the truck, checking for four-wheel drive, finding none. Pebbles spit at the sides. She was hanging on as much as steering. To her right, pine trees not much taller than the cab grew close to the road. To her left she could see the outlines of small, rough-looking plants, the type that would spike you if you fell on them.
Maybe Jeff was hiding out back here. “If I get ahold of him,” Kiernan muttered. The man wasn’t just a liar. What he’d done made no sense. Why was he so desperate to cover up the woman’s death? Why not just bury her?
A gust of wind sent the truck half off the road. Kiernan braced her elbows against her chest and held steady.
Jeff had called her here. Connie had gotten her out. And Fox? No question why the locals were edgy around Fox. But what had encouraged the man to this desolate area? There was beauty here, all right, and the wild openness appealed to Kiernan. But Fox was not the kind of guy to choose a small town like Gattozzi. Fox, Jeff Tremaine, Connie, and the dead woman—what had drawn them together?
The road shifted back and forth, never cutting through a hummock if there was the possibility of a wide loop around it. Connie’s lights were blinked by the land. If she had a homestead ahead, no building was visible. There was no turning back, no possible place to turn. It was like driving into a sock. She crested a summit. Wind broadsided the truck. She wedged her hands harder on the wheel—would a little regular auto maintenance have killed Jesse?
Irrationally she had expected something at the summit—what? The Top of the Mark, with maybe a revolving bar?—but the road was the mirror image of what she’d just traversed, now headed down. Trees clumped closer to the road, the surface smoothed out, and as if she realized Kiernan had hit the good road, Connie shot ahead.
Feeling back in her own element for the first time today, Kiernan pressed on the gas pedal. The old truck lurched forward, gasping for a moment until the wheels caught up with the engine.
A clearing materialized before her. She couldn’t tell where the road was. She needed to slow down, but she couldn’t chance losing Connie. The truck lurched to the right. She yanked the wheel, loo late. The hood was going down. She smashed the brake pedal to the floor as the wheels spun. Then the truck stopped dead.
Kiernan sat, still gripping the wheel. In front of her was a hole that hadn’t existed a minute earlier. Bracing her feet against the floorboard against the angle of the cab, she peered down the line of the headlights into the ground. Was it ten feet deep? Fifteen? Twenty? She turned off the headlights and peered into the dark. The hole had to be forty feet wide. It wasn’t a sinkhole, the kind that erode at a gentlemanly pace. This had to be an abandoned mine. The roof had caved in leaving a huge underground hole. The truck’s front wheels were poised on the edge.
CHAPTER 32
CECIL MCGUIRE WANTED TO pinch himself. The whole thing was like one of those dreams you can’t get out of. He’d never had the college dream his educated friends laughed about, but chasers, he’d had plenty of them at night, like the one where he went to meet a new client and opened his door and found himself in an alley that smelled of shit, with rats big as rottweilers, and he kept running around the alley trying to find the door he came in, but all he could see was plain brick wall a million feet high. This case, following the baby dick Tchernak, was getting like that. When Adcock told him they were headed north on 93, it was like the door out of the alley. Action, instead of this pussyfooting around here. And now, Tchernak ignores the freeway like he’s a city bus or something and here he is pulling into Grady Hummacher’s driveway again.
Was the guy such a novice he was knocking off for the night? Did he think this was a nine-to-fiver, with maybe an hour off in the afternoon to go to the dentist?
More to the point—the Weasel groaned—did this mean he was in for another night slumped behind the ’Cuda’s steering wheel? Tourists pictured Vegas as sun and sand and air-conditioning and tropical strolls between the casinos and maybe a moonlight swim in the palm-rimmed pool. Here in November he’d have been better off sitting over a subway grate.
Inside Hummacher’s house the living-room lights were on. Tchernak was probably settling in with a beer from Hummacher’s fridge and the late movie on the tube.
The Weasel shifted. He could use a beer, a movie, a burger, a leak. He eased out of the car, not letting the door close completely so that there’d be no sound. Tchernak was watching out for him. Keeping the car and the house door in sight, McGuire slipped into the bushes and took his leak.
As he zipped up, he made a decision. The phone was three blocks away, but what the hell, he knew where the baby dick was supposed to be going. He slid into his car and started the engine. The blue BMW across the street, was it the same one? He hesitated, then drove off. If he spotted it again, he’d worry.
He checked again when he pulled into the 7-Eleven lot, and once more as his call went through. “Adcock,” he shouted over the recorded message, “I’m calling you from a pay phone. It’s three blocks away from where the action is. I can’t hang around here waiting for you. Pick up, man.”
Louisa Larson was not cut out for this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Bad enough she’d had to run two red lights following the thug across town, all to end up at Grady’s place, but then the thug ups and leaves. And leaves her to guess what it is that he knows so well that he can dismiss the whole business and go make a phone call. She had to guess and guess fast. She’d learned that when she’d worked the ER. There you don’t get a second chance. She’d learned to make her move and not look back. And if it was the wrong move, she figured she’d do it differently the next time. That’s how it had been when she saw the boys last week. The symptoms they’d presented were consistent with hepatitis. She had given them the standard treatment, and mostly to calm the neighbors she’d brought them into the office.
When had she realized she’d guessed wrong?
It was a serious mistake, one that could be devastating. But not if she took charge. She had good judgment; she had to trust it. Stay at Grady’s with the new gold Cherokee like the one at Las Palmas? Follow the thug? Which way would get her to the boys? She went with the thug. Now she was sitting down the street eyeing him at a pay phone. Should she stay in the car? Try to get closer to him and not get beaten to a pulp for the effort?
Who was it who said you should never avoid taking the chance because you’re afraid? Eleanor Roosevelt? Well, Eleanor’d be proud of her now. Was Eleanor the one who talked about turning lemons into lemonade?
The thug’s back was to her as she made her way around the corner. He was leaning his grungy little body into the phone cubby, his head almost enclosed, like a terrier barking down a hole. She reached the apartment next door and kept watch on him—he could put down the phone anytime, turn around, and be staring her in the face. She was out of cover. There was nothing to do but head for the shrubs. Forcing herself to take long, silent steps, she moved across the dry, prickly grass till she was five feet from the guy.
“Pick up, man,” he was yelling.
“McGuire, what the hell are you calling about? I don’t have time—”
“Then don’t waste it complaining, Adcock. Do you want me to sit and watch your bab—Tchernak—relax in Grady’s flat all night?”
“What’s Tchernak doing there?”—
“You don’t know?”
“Hell, no. Listen, McGuire, forget Tchernak and whatever he’s screwing around doing. He found Grady’s contact up Ninety-three, and that’s where the action’s going to be. I’m flying up there now. Meet me.”
“Where?”
“There’s only one place open up there this time of night. Called the Doll’s House. Then we’ll go on to Gattozzi.”
“Gattozzi?”
“Little town beyond the Doll’s House.”
McGuire nodded. He knew the Doll’s House. “Tw
o and a half hours up Ninety-three.”
“Make it two hours. Grady’s already had time to move on.”
“Word I got is those boys of his are sick, Adcock. Maybe they slowed him down.”
“Or maybe he dumped them.”
“Is that what he’s like?”
It was a moment before Adcock admitted, “No. The guy’s got a soft spot. Me he’d screw, no question. But those kids …”
Reston Adcock had turned off the phone before he said, “Jerk.” He could have had the Weasel take care of Tchernak before he left. Tchernak was a disaster. And now what was the guy doing at Hummacher’s? Was Tchernak onto something there he needed to know about? Maybe it was just as well he hadn’t sicced the Weasel on him. He’d need to cover that base and make sure Tchernak had left no thread hanging before he made a final decision.
Louisa Larson pressed herself so hard against the apartment building, she was sure the stucco pattern was imprinted on her back. She watched as the thug strolled to his jalopy and rolled off like a guy who’d picked up a six-pack and was heading home for the night. She watched till he was out of sight, then pulled herself off the wall and hurried into the 7-Eleven. She hit the bathroom, grabbed food, considered coffee, and realized caffeine was something she was definitely not going to need. She knew where she was going. She’d been up that way often enough to know where Gattozzi was. Now the question was where in Gattozzi the thug was headed.
CHAPTER 33
KIERNAN CONTROLLED THE DESPERATE urge to leap out of the sinking truck. In the black of night she couldn’t tell how far into the mine hole the front wheels were. Too far. She eased out onto the step. Icy wind slapped her face. As the truck swayed, the temptation to leap to safety was almost overwhelming. But that could be the added force that would send the vehicle careening into the hole, and her with it. She turned from the hole and looked toward solid ground. Holding on to the side wall of the bed, she stretched till her right foot was on the tire, slid her hand along the truck, brought her left foot back, shifted her hands to the tailgate, swung herself behind it, and leaped onto the ground.
The truck rocked forward and then back. She exhaled so hard she thought for a moment it was the force of her breath that had moved it. Despite the cold wind she was sweating. She stared at the miserable truck. She was stranded.
As many unfenced, unmarked deserted mines as there were in this area, wouldn’t you think a decent driver—even Jesse—would have a winch? Did he? Nooooo.
The mines were supposed to be off the road, not where the road would have been if it hadn’t curved abruptly to the left. The front wheels were definitely over the edge of the hole. She looked down into the hole and gasped. It was as big as the Gattozzi bar and twice as deep. It was just dumb luck that she wasn’t lying at the bottom with a broken neck. She was shaking hard as she stepped back away from the hole and dropped to the ground. She sat there, shivering with cold and fear, her mind devoid of thought.
Slowly her fear shifted to anger. What kind of government leaves a hole this size right by a curve in the road? How was she to know the road cut right? Only locals would know …Connie would know.
By now Connie would have realized the headlights following her were gone. She hadn’t circled back to see why.
Kiernan’s breath caught. Had Connie intentionally led her into the hole? Was she willing to kill her? Why?
But there was no time for speculation. She pushed herself up and assessed the truck. The front wheels hung over the crumbling edge of the mine hole. It was a situation meant for a tow truck, a huge one. But even if she could roust one in the middle of the night, she wouldn’t know where to tell it to come. It was a moot point anyway. Her cell phone was in the cab.
She bent down by the rear of the truck and stared at the ground. The right wheel was solid, but under the left there was nothing but loose dirt. Two front wheels nearly into the hole didn’t matter. The truck would have rear-wheel drive. But would someone like Jesse have plunked down extra for limited slip differential? Or would a guy with limited cash figure he’d be lucky enough never to be in a spot like this?
She stood staring down into the mine hole. If the truck went careening down there, it would end upside down, like a broken bottle on the barroom floor. It would be crazy to get back in that truck.
And if she didn’t try? She had done a postmortem once on a hiker who had died of exposure. The clothes she’d cut off him had been way warmer than hers were now. Taking a breath, she climbed onto the side of the truck, moving carefully until she was standing on the tire. Then she eased her foot forward. The toe of her shoe caught at the doorframe. Slowly she moved her hands forward. The truck lurched; she swung her weight back. She froze, trying to feel whether the truck had stopped moving. Gusts of wind smacked her and there was no way to tell whether the movement she felt came from the truck or the wind. No way to know if her next move forward would jerk the already loosened vehicle into the shaft. No way—
She blanked her mind as she had done those days years ago in gymnastics, and moved forward, bracing her feet, reaching for the door handle.
Again she felt the truck shimmy. Too late to go back. She wedged open the door, and when no lurch followed, slid her foot inch by inch along the side of the truck until it was in the door opening.
Then the truck lurched. She froze. It wasn’t the wind this time. The truck was moving. Kiernan forced herself to stay still, to wait till the movement stopped.
The back wheels are on the ground, she reminded herself. She swung herself carefully forward and into the cab, slipped the gearshift into reverse.
In her mind she saw the engine starting, feeding power to the back wheels evenly, the back wheels taking hold, and the truck rolling gracefully back onto the road.
She turned on the engine and eased up on the clutch. The truck groaned.
“Goddamn you, Jesse, you cheap bastard!”
The truck lurched again. She could hear the shriek of the wheels as they spun backward, the dull groan as they dug into the ground. The truck jolted back hard. The engine stalled.
The last jolt had brought all four wheels onto firm ground.
The fear and panic she had pushed aside engulfed her. She sat, heart pounding against her chest wall, chest wall banging into air that felt like cement. She reached for the handle to roll down the window and cool herself off and almost had the pane lowered before good sense returned. She wasn’t going to die in a desert mine shaft, but on the other hand she was still in the middle of the desert on a road that was leading nowhere. She had almost forgotten about Sheriff Fox and her escape from him at the mortuary. This was still his territory and he’d still be looking for her. In the open, empty land the sound of her engine would reverberate for miles.
Jeff Tremaine had vanished. “Jeff’s in deep enough,” Connie had said. Deep in something connected to the dead woman? Connie wanted her out of town to protect him. Were the stakes high enough for Connie to kill her? She would find that out face-to-face, or die trying.
She turned on the engine and headed in the direction Connie had taken.
CHAPTER 34
“IT’S LIKE LOOKING FOR a pebble on the track while you’re sprinting to the finish line,” Reston Adcock grumbled. He could barely hear himself over the noise of the Cessna’s engine. Any other time he’d be so caught up in flying, he’d feel the roar flowing over him like air over a wing. He loved the whole gestalt of soaring over mountains small as the ridges on his knuckles and men too tiny to see, the cool, round feel of the throttle giving way to his hand, the instruments responding to attitude and altitude. Takeoffs posed the most danger, but landings were the real challenge, and that first notch of the flaps was when he really came alive. Oil exploration used to be like that. But now the big challenges were financial. He wasn’t driving through the forests gauging the spot to set the explosives, he was driving to the visa office greasing the palm to get his operatives into the country. He wasn’t watching for poisonous snakes ready
to drop from branches, he was looking over his shoulder for spies from Sunoco, BP, Phillips, Nihonco. Now if he flew the Cessna at all, it was likely to be over the flats to Oklahoma City or Houston, as exciting as driving an empty freeway with cruise control.
Even this flight would have been a no-brainer if it weren’t for Simkin.
He keyed the mike to activate Simkin’s runway lights. As soon as he spotted the two strips of light, he pulled back on power and when his air speed was within flap range, put on the first notch. All thoughts of Simkin were gone now as he focused on the sequence of bringing the plane down on the dim, rough dirt.
But as soon as he had shut down the engine and pushed open the door, it was Simkin who was on his mind. And there he was, running like a bullmastiff toward the plane. Adcock had barely lowered himself to the ground when Simkin clapped a thick arm around his shoulder. Simkin’s breath was coming in huffs. “Come on, we’ve got to move fast. There’s been a problem. Car’s over there.”
Adcock looked around. The strip lights had run their time limit and gone out. There was no light in any direction, and he knew he could spot one miles away. “Problem, how could there be any—”
“Navy. I told you this was their land, right?”
“Near their land, you said.”
“Well, see, normally they don’t care. They’ve got close to a million acres here. Don’t need more than a city block for their office and barracks. Not like they can dock a destroyer or a nuclear sub here.”
Simkin was wandering. Adcock had forgotten that infuriating habit of his. The guy lived alone. He could talk to himself all day, as much as he loved hearing the sound of his own voice. If Adcock didn’t cut him off—“So what’s with the navy now?”
