“Wherever you like.” Her voice was raspy, like a country singer.
They took a table against the wall. Flynn sat down facing the door. Hutton and Beth sat side by side opposite him. The waitress wandered over and handed them each a laminated sheet. The menu. Not overly complex. Not the menus Flynn found in the city, as thick as the King James Bible. He liked simplicity. Choice was highly overrated.
“Can I get ya a drink to start?”
Beth and Hutton both ordered coffee. Flynn took water. The waitress nodded and walked away.
Hutton tapped the table. “So, is there a plan in there somewhere?”
“Find the farm, find the bad guys. Finish it.”
“Good plan.”
Beth leaned in. “I think we should call the police.”
“You weren’t convinced by the cleanup at the house?”
“I don’t know. But what we are doing? Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“That depends on your definition of right and wrong.”
“Hurting people is wrong.”
“What about stopping people from hurting other people?”
Beth wrapped her arms around herself again. “If you sink to their level, you’re just as bad as they are.”
“Really? You believe that?”
“Of course I do. I’m a lawyer. I believe in the law.”
Flynn said, “The law allows your clients to hide millions of dollars abroad so they don’t pay tax. But a single mother in Oakland pays a fifth of all she earns for roads and schools. I believe in the rule of law too. But the law is a construct of mankind, and nothing mankind does is perfect. Sometimes the bad guys get away with it. And I don’t like that.”
“And you’re the judge, jury and executioner.”
“Not today.”
The waitress dropped off their drinks and wandered away again, and Flynn waited before he continued.
“Today you’re the judge and jury. You decide. You saw the assault, you saw the cleanup. You were the one abducted. You spent time with this woman. So you tell me. Do you think the police will be able to prove anything? Against an assault team we don’t know? And do you feel okay with that, knowing guys who wanted to kill you are out there, above the law, with you still a loose end?”
“That’s not fair. That’s exactly why we don’t allow victims to be jurors.”
“Let me put it this way. Is the woman who took you a bad person?”
“Yes.”
“Are the guys who turned up with the automatic machine guns bad guys?”
“Of course.”
“But you’re okay with them out and about, free as birds? To do bad all over again?”
“You don’t know that.”
“No?” Flynn turned to Hutton. “What does Cameron Dennison’s rap sheet look like?”
“Long, and ugly.”
“And the guys with the guns. What did they do in Iraq?”
“We suspect they murdered two families, women and children, to cover their tracks.”
“Suspect,” said Beth.
“I’ll give them a chance to defend that one,” said Flynn. “But they’ll keep doing it. Unless someone stops them. Sometimes the law isn’t enough. Our own government acknowledges that.”
“I don’t think they do.”
“Did the president admit to killing Osama bin Laden?”
“He was a terrorist.”
“Yes, he was. But he never faced a court of law.”
Beth sank silently into her seat. The waitress returned and asked what they would like to drink.
Each of them looked at their drinks and then at the waitress.
“We’re good for drinks,” Flynn said. The waitress patted down the hair on the side of her head. A reflex action.
“Good,” she said. “So what’ll you eat?”
Beth said she wasn’t hungry, but this time Flynn told her to eat while she could. She ordered soup, Hutton a burger. Flynn asked the waitress what she ate. She was a fan of the country stew. The secret was in the chuck beef and the parsnips. Flynn said that was for him.
When she walked away, Flynn leaned across the table to Beth.
“I know this is way out of your comfort zone. We’ll find the farm, take a look. If it doesn’t look good to you, we’ll go find the cops.”
Beth kept her arms folded but looked at him. “You’ll do that?”
He nodded. She nodded. Flynn glanced at Hutton, who said nothing.
The waitress returned with food and refills. Flynn told her the stew was pure gold, and he wasn’t lying. He thought the real secret was in the bacon pieces, but he kept that to himself. She smiled and poured more water.
“We’re looking for a place around here,” he said.
The waitress said, “Uh-huh.”
“The Dennison place. You know it?”
The woman stopped pouring. A frown crept onto her face. “Yeah, I know it.”
“Is it nearby?”
“You friends of theirs?”
“Not yet.”
“Looking to get some tires?”
Flynn looked puzzled.
The waitress touched the side of her head again, like it was suddenly itchy, and pulled away from the table.
“Turn right past the town. Stay on the road. It’s not marked. But you’ll know it when you see.”
They finished their meal. No one ate dessert. Flynn paid the check at the counter and gave the waitress a nice big tip. Business wasn’t exactly booming in Bent Pines, Pennsylvania. She thanked him but didn’t look at him.
They stepped out into the late afternoon. The sun had dropped below the crest of a mountain and threw golden light and deep fingers of shadow across the hills to the east. Bent Pines was getting dark.
Flynn said, “Let’s see what we can see, while we still can.”
He got in the passenger side and let Hutton drive. He might have been as good at it as the next guy, but Hutton was better. She backed away from the diner and turned right, onto a small road that wound into the mountains.
Chapter Twenty-Six
They drove on surrounded by a mix of pines and naked oaks, the road like a tunnel. Then without notice, the pines fell away and the landscape opened up into fields. Wide expanses of green grass. No cattle, no crops. As if the space had been cleared for no other reason than something to do. The Appalachian version of make-work. But Flynn expected the diner and the church and the feed store had been built out of the trees that had been cleared. Perhaps that was reason enough.
There were mountains either side of them. Not mountains in the Himalayan sense, or even the French Alps. Flynn figured them for somewhere between hills and mountains. He didn’t know if there was a technical measure that defined one from the other. But their size was not the point. Their aspect was the point. They ran more or less north-south, with a slight leaning to the northeast-southwest. They were a real physical barrier to east-west travel. And the sunlight that came from the west. All the crests were lit like bonfires, all the valleys were dark.
Which made it difficult to discern what they saw as they approached. From a distance it looked like a fort. High turrets and wide walls. But it was ill-defined, edgeless. Like a painting Flynn had once seen, where the artist was illustrating the permanence of a castle against the illusion of permanence itself. He painted a stronghold that morphed into the surrounding countryside, no defined sides, just gradual change. That’s what they saw. A big structure, broad and bold, but bleeding into the shadows. Hutton slowed as they approached.
“It’s a black castle,” she said.
“It looks like an evil witch’s lair,” Beth said from the rear, craning between the front seats.
It did look evil. And black. Firelight burned around the perimeter. Flynn was reminded of Dante’s circles. He would have thought this the gates of hell, the entrance to limbo. And the fires at the gates of hell were the last thing Flynn wanted to think about. He took a long slow breath that he tried to keep quiet, and he c
losed his eyes hard. Pressed Dante into another compartment to be dealt with later. Then he opened his eyes again. They got closer to the castle.
“It’s not a castle,” said Flynn. “They’re tires.”
The two women strained hard to see. He was right. What they were looking at was tires. Some stacked neatly one on top of another, high into the air like turrets. Between the turrets the tires were more of a pile, thrown in a huge mound as if discarded. Hutton slowed again, but kept moving. They motored past the property.
It looked like a farm. There was a long driveway leading to an old farmhouse on the right. Weather-beaten and in need of a paint. Further back on the left was a huge barn. It was newer than the house but not particularly new. The paintwork was windblown red. It was too large to be a milking shed, but the land behind it seemed too undulating for large farm machinery to be practical. In between the two buildings was an open space. Hard-packed dirt and gravel. The tire fort stood behind the open space, and to the right, so part of it was behind the house when they drove by the driveway.
Hutton kept driving. She left the farm behind and continued on up the mountain. A long, slow climb. She drove for ten minutes. Then she stopped. She didn’t pull over. She just hit the brake in the middle of the road and left the headlights on.
“Thoughts?”
“I don’t like it,” said Beth.
“We need a closer look,” Flynn said.
Hutton said, “What’s with all those tires? There must be thousands.”
“It’s a lot of retreads.”
“I don’t like it,” Beth repeated.
Flynn looked at Beth and then back at Hutton. “You should go. Both of you. Drop me off and drive away.”
“Not happening,” said Hutton.
“You said it was my call,” said Beth. “I’m saying we call the police.”
“What police? There are no police out here. County sheriff is probably hours away. And what do we say? You were abducted in Washington, DC, and taken to New York and now we think the perp is in a tire fort in your county? No, we haven’t seen anybody, but can you come look?”
“I don’t like it.”
Flynn said nothing. He looked at Hutton.
Hutton said, “We can’t see anything. We don’t know who, we don’t know how many. We don’t have a lay of the land and we have no idea what we’re walking into. I agree with Beth. I don’t like it.”
Flynn nodded. “Then let’s retreat and regroup. Come back tomorrow. See what we can see.”
Hutton did a slow, careful U-turn and headed back toward Bent Pines. There had been no sign of a hotel in an hour, but perhaps the waitress at the diner could point them in the right direction.
The team leader watched the headlights pass. He was too far away and it was too dark to know if it was the same vehicle that had driven by twenty minutes before. But the spacing of the lights and throaty beat of the engine told him it was another big vehicle. An SUV or a pickup. A mountain country vehicle. The headlights didn’t stop or even slow, but he watched the glow on the trees as the vehicle went below his position, and he kept his eye on it until the lights disappeared from view. There had been no other traffic all afternoon. There was really nowhere to go. The darkness had become absolute under the canopy of trees. Out above the farmhouse the stars burned in the sky and the fires burned on the ground. He took his MRE and ripped it open. He would eat while he could. Then he would sleep. He had the feeling the dawn would bring movement, and he wanted to be ready.
The waitress watched them walk back into the diner. She offered a frown rather than a smile.
“Dessert,” said Flynn.
“We’re about to close.”
He stepped to the counter and put a twenty on the laminate. “We won’t stay long.”
The waitress nodded. Business was slow in Bent Pines. You took the work when it came. She couldn’t say no to a twenty.
“The cook’s gone home.”
“What can you do?”
“Coffee and pie.”
“Three. Thanks.”
Flynn sat at the counter. Hutton and Beth stepped forward from the door and joined him. The waitress made the coffee fresh. Not a big carafe, but enough. While it brewed she wandered into the kitchen and came back out with three plates. Apple pie and ice cream. Vanilla. Then she poured the coffee.
“Good pie,” said Flynn. “What’s the secret?”
“Mix Granny Smiths with Jonagolds,” she said, leaning against the counter.
Flynn nodded. “I’ll remember that.” He took another bite. “You know of a motel around here anywhere?”
“Nothing like that around here.”
“Not a B and B, or a guesthouse?”
The waitress shook her head. “No one stops around here. No one passes through. Except you.”
“What’s happening at the Dennison place?”
“I thought you was friends of theirs.”
“No, ma’am. Never met them.”
“You find it?”
“The farm? Yeah, we did. Lot of tires.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What do they do with them all?”
“You delivering?”
“No, ma’am.” Flynn ate some more pie.
“What’s your business there?”
“Don’t have any yet.”
“You mind if I make a suggestion?”
Flynn nodded.
“Go home. Don’t come back.”
“Is that the county’s tourist motto?”
“Do what you want. But they’re bad people.”
Flynn watched her. It wasn’t a line. She believed it. She touched her hair again, a nervous tic, perhaps. But her eyes were filled with fear.
“I know they are,” Flynn said.
“Then you’ll be finishing your pie and leaving.”
“Perhaps some more coffee.” He hadn’t taken a sip of it, so he did.
The waitress turned away and grabbed a filter paper from a stack and opened up the machine. Then she saw the glass carafe underneath, still half-full. She grabbed it and warmed their coffees.
“You lived here long?” asked Flynn. It was a diner kind of question, on a slow night in an otherwise empty place.
“All my life.”
“You know the Dennisons, then.”
“Yeah, I know ’em.”
“The parents died, I understand.”
“You could say.”
“Suspicious circumstances.”
“Nothing suspicious about it.” The waitress shifted her look along the counter. From Flynn, to Hutton, to Beth. She settled on Beth. Her pie and coffee remained untouched. Her arms folded, her face ashen.
“What happened?” the waitress asked. She kept her eyes on Beth.
Beth looked up, surprised to be spoken to. “Pardon?”
“I said what happened?”
“To whom?”
“To you.”
The two women looked at each other. Unspoken communication. Not ESP, not exactly. But no transfer of actual words. Just the acknowledgment of common ground. Beth breathed in deeply.
“She abducted me.”
The waitress offered no surprise. She just nodded, as if she had been told that a bad driver had just been in another car accident.
“You okay?” she said.
Beth nodded.
The waitress turned her eyes to Flynn. “Why would you bring her here?”
Flynn wiped his mouth with a napkin and placed his fork on the pie plate. He looked at the waitress. She wasn’t old, but she was beaten down.
“To finish it.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The waitress closed up shop. She threw out the dregs of coffee and wiped the counter one more time and turned out the lights. She locked the door and stepped down from the wooden patio onto the dirt parking lot.
“Follow me,” she said.
Hutton drove up onto the main road. Not to the right. Straight away to the west, winding through the da
rkness for twenty minutes. Until the taillights turned off the road. Hutton followed, her headlights showing them a small cottage painted yellow. Empty flower boxes in the windows, a rocking chair on the porch.
The waitress unlocked the door and lit a lamp on a table and they followed her in. It was a small place, a living room with a large puffy sofa and a TV and a fireplace. A door to a kitchen, and another door to a bedroom and a third door to the outside rear. A cat sauntered in and jumped up onto the armrest of the sofa, looking to be petted or fed or both.
“Sorry it’s not much, but it beats sleeping in a car.”
“It’s nice,” said Hutton. “Very homey.”
The waitress went into the bedroom and came out with a pile of sheets and blankets. She dropped them onto the sofa.
“The sofa sleeps two.” She looked at Flynn. “And we can put some cushions on the floor.”
“Thanks, you’re very kind.”
“Would you like something? Coffee, water. I think there’s a beer in there somewhere.”
“We’re good, thank you,” said Hutton.
“Well, I don’t want to be rude, but it’s been a long day.”
“Not at all,” said Hutton. “And thanks again.”
The woman turned to the bedroom.
Beth said, “Excuse me, but why are you helping us?”
The waitress stopped. Her head bowed, and then she turned. She looked at Flynn.
“Because you seem capable. And I’ve got nothing to lose.”
They stood in silence. The waitress looking at Flynn, everyone else looking at her.
Beth spoke softly. “What happened to you?”
The waitress let out a long breath, like she was exhaling a cigarette. Then she stepped toward Beth. She stopped and turned and put her hand to the side of her head. The nervous tic. Then she lifted her hair away and flopped it over the top, showing the side of her scalp.
A long jagged scar ran the length of her head. From the temple to past the ear, and around toward the back. They all looked at her without words. She held her hair up for a moment. Then she let it drop. She looked at Beth.
Burned Bridges Page 22
