by Neil Mcmahon
But soon after he'd sold the ranch to Balcomb, Kirk had approached him respectfully and asked for ownership of a particular one, in an area called the Sweet Grass Hills. It was a pretty spot beside a creek, with a shack on it. He claimed that he'd gotten interested in prospecting and wanted to fix the place up and nose around.
"I didn't much buy it," Reuben had said. "There used to be some gold mining up around there but it got picked clean years ago, and he knew it. He never gave a hoot in hell about anything like that, anyway. I figured more likely he was hoping to convince me he was finally amounting to something, so I'd start cutting him some cash."
Still, Reuben had signed the place over to him, and arranged to cover building materials and other expenses. He hadn't tried to explain why to me, but I understood. With all the anger, guilt, and grief that had pervaded that family, with Pete's suicide and Kirk's worthlessness, it was Reuben's last-ditch attempt to salvage Kirk as his son and himself as Kirk's father.
We hadn't talked about the obvious implications, either. The place was only a few miles south of the Canadian border, deep in a region that was barely populated and virtually roadless. The official crossing points were at least fifty miles apart, with no settlements in between. Border agents didn't have nearly enough manpower to patrol it all effectively, and the only barrier across the vast empty fields was a standard barbed-wire fence. It was so vulnerable there had even been a public-service TV commercial urging ranchers to keep a watch for terrorists, who, as a friend of mine had put it, could skip across in their jockstraps.
You couldn't ask for a better setup to run contraband.
The Victor didn't have a rearview mirror, but I was careful to keep tabs on what was behind me with quick, frequent glances over my shoulder. Traffic was light tonight, and nobody tried to pass me until I got a few miles east of town, out beyond the reservoir. Then I realized that a vehicle was gaining on me fast.
My first thought was that I'd been spotted by a cop. But it didn't turn on flashers, and as it got closer, I was able to see that the headlights were high and far apart, like on the oversize pickups called duallies. With somebody driving that kind of rig in a hurry and me without even a taillight, I was asking for it. As soon as I spotted a place to turn out, I hit my brakes and skidded into it.
The other vehicle roared past a few seconds later-a tow truck, probably driven by a guy who'd had to handle a wet Sunday evening emergency, was grumpy about it, and wanted to get back to his nice warm house.
The road was mostly straight for the next couple of miles, and while the tow truck gained a comfortable lead on me, its taillights stayed in sight. I didn't pay much more attention to it at first-just assumed that it would turn off. But it kept on going toward Canyon Ferry. I started to get puzzled. I hadn't gotten a good look at its logo, but I was pretty sure there was nobody living out this way who ran a tow operation. Maybe there'd been a freak wreck. Maybe the driver had a girlfriend out here.
Maybe Kirk's Jeep had been found.
That thought hit a lot harder than the worry about a cop. But it was next to impossible. The water was deep enough at that spot so you couldn't see the bottom even in clear daylight. In this weather the surface was choppy and murky, and the Jeep was black besides. There were hardly any people around at all, and for sure no swimmers. Searchers could have found it by dragging, but there was no reason to look there.
The last stretch of road before the lake came into sight was hilly and twisty. In spite of my rationales, I braced myself for coming over the final rise and seeing a cluster of flashing lights on the far shore.
Everything was dark over there. I exhaled with relief.
But the tow truck was still moving in that direction, approaching the bridge. Queasiness rose in my guts again-the fear that something else had turned up to arouse the suspicion of the authorities. I couldn't imagine how a tow would figure in, but this was too unsettling to just brush off.
The curves were slowing the big truck down. I knew that road almost literally well enough to drive it blindfolded, and the rain had pretty well let up by now. I switched off my jerry-rigged headlight and sped up. The truck came in and out of sight through the tight curves beyond the village. Without hesitating, it passed the place where Kirk and I had fought, and, a half mile farther, the submerged Jeep. Relief washed over me again. The driver was probably headed to Townsend or White Sulfur Springs or some other place east of here.
But when the rig got to Stumpleg Gulch the taillights brightened suddenly-braking. The bright amber cab-top flashers went on and it turned up the road toward my cabin.
This time I got a jolt of flat-out alarm. None of my few neighbors would ever call for a tow-they had their own heavy equipment and mechanical skills. There hadn't been a wreck up there throughout my entire lifetime.
I followed at a careful distance. As I got close to my place, I started to see more lights pulsing faintly in the night sky. It was eerie, like an alien spacecraft had landed in there.
The new lights were red and blue.
A sheriff's cruiser was parked at my gate facing the road, in position to intercept anyone who came along. I could see at least one more flasher through the trees, near my cabin.
I pulled the bike off the road and cut the engine.
The deputy at the gate got out and walked to the tow truck. In the headlights, I recognized the tall lanky shape of Gary Varna. He talked to the driver for half a minute, then stepped back from the window. The truck drove on toward my cabin. Gary got back in his cruiser, made a one-eighty, and followed.
I stayed where I was, poleaxed by the realization of what was happening.
They were impounding my pickup truck.
The implications came fast and hard. Along with the fact that Gary himself was here, it meant that they'd come up with a serious cause, and it had to have just happened. But what in hell could have triggered it at nine o'clock on a rainy Sunday night? All I could think was that they'd received new information-say, from somebody I'd talked to, who'd told them I'd been nosing around about Kirk. Not Elmer or Reuben, for sure. Doug, maybe, but I doubted it-besides, he hadn't even seemed to know I was under the gun.
That left Josie. Lights in my head started blinking on. Gary Varna had mentioned that she had a couple of drug charges pending. I could just see her picking up the phone as soon as I'd left her place and calling the sheriffs to cut a deal-ratting me off in return for special consideration with her own problems.
And then she'd probably stuffed my fifty bucks into her supposedly not-so-little bra and burned ass out the door to buy some crank.
A rush of anger at her and shame at my own stupidity heated my face. I squeezed my eyes shut and clamped my teeth together, trying to throw it off. What mattered right this minute was what the fuck I was going to do right this minute. This new turn of events was a different order of business. I'd known in an abstract way that it was on the horizon, but I hadn't let myself believe it could happen so soon.
I had to think that if Gary was going this far, he was planning to arrest me, too-have his deputies keep checking the place tonight, or leave a man here. The straight-up thing to do would be to ride on through the gate and cooperate respectfully with the powers that rode herd on human life. Maybe I was wrong and he'd leave me free, and I could keep on bluffing. There was still a chance I could dig up enough information to bolster my claim of self-defense or at least mitigate my sentence. But if not, my bail-if there even was one-would be astronomical, like Bill LaTray had said. With that and legal fees, I could kiss everything I owned good-bye, including my place, and I was back to the scenario of being up against Balcomb's lawyers.
Or I could become an official fugitive-go someplace far away and take on a new identity. But I'd been hopeless enough at that years ago, when I'd been younger, more malleable, and not wanted by the law. At this point in my life, I just couldn't see myself inventing a radically new Hugh.
There was a third course. I could sneak away and stay free t
ill morning-pretend I hadn't known they were looking for me and I'd spent the night someplace else. It was silly, like a kid trying to dodge an inevitable disciplining. But I couldn't see that I had anything to lose, and it would give me a few more precious hours of freedom.
Only minutes ago, I'd been anxious to get someplace warm and dry. Now I wished I could wander through the rainy night woods forever.
35
After Gary's cruiser and the tow truck disappeared into the woods toward my cabin, I swung the Victor around and started pushing it back downhill through the trees. They were probably out of hearing range by now, but the bike made a pretty good growl starting up, and Gary might even have a lookout posted. The grade steepened in another fifty yards-I could hop on and coast, then kick it into gear when I was ready and let gravity turn the engine over quietly.
But just as I was about to jump on, I heard the drone of another motor behind me.
The bare-wire nerves I'd been running on took over. I shoved the bike a few steps into some brush, laid it down, and dropped flat beside it. Even as I hit the ground, I realized that trying to hide was idiotic. The sheriffs had spotted me, and this was one more nail in the lockbox of guilt that was forming around me, a nail I'd driven myself.
But no lights showed-no flasher, no searchlight, not even headlights. Still, the engine's sound got louder.
I sighted the vehicle a few seconds later-an unlit silvery shape on the road, at first barely visible in the darkness, then coming more into focus as it neared. Confusion overlaid my panic. It wasn't a sheriff's car or anything else that registered with me. As it passed, I made it out as some kind of SUV, a fairly new model. I started thinking it must belong to an off-duty deputy or maybe a volunteer.
But the pale blur of the driver's face seemed to be fixed straight ahead, not scanning to the sides. And something-not details I could see clearly, but the posture and the way the hands gripped the wheel at ten and three-gave me the strong sense of a woman.
A connection clicked in my mind, one that was so absurd I dismissed it as fast as it appeared. But as I stared after the fading silvery shape, it came back and stayed.
Laurie Balcomb in her new Mercedes toy.
I heaved the bike upright and stomped on the kick-starter-the hell with caution, although part of my brain screamed that there was no way it could be Laurie, it was a sheriff, and not only was I about to throw myself in jail, I was going batshit.
The SUV was creeping along with an occasional brief flash of brake lights, feeling the way down the tricky, night-bound gravel road. I came in behind it close and fast, hunched low over the handlebars, hoping I could identify the make without being seen. If it wasn't a Mercedes, I'd fade again. I had to wait for the brakes to give the taillights their next red glow before I could get a glimpse.
Sure as hell, the emblem on the rear door was that trisected circle. I'd never seen another vehicle like that around here. Certainly no cop could afford one.
What with the darkness and the high seat headrests, I couldn't get a good look inside. But I couldn't let it go. I swung around to the left, goosed the bike's throttle, and pulled up beside the driver's window.
For just a second, like when I'd seen Laurie on horseback yesterday, I got that prickly sense that I was looking at Celia.
Laurie swiveled toward me, her mouth opening. She looked scared to death-I must have seemed like a disembodied head appearing out of nowhere.
I called out, "Pull over." But the window was closed and she didn't seem to hear me-just kept staring.
"Stop, goddammit, you're going to crash," I yelled, and thumped the window with the heel of my hand. She jerked away as if that snapped her out of her daze, and she braked so hard I had to drag my left foot to stop along with her.
Her window slid down. If she recognized me, it hadn't calmed her any. Her eyes were huge, and she seemed to be trying to say something that wouldn't get past her lips.
"Take it easy, it's Hugh," I said. "What the hell are you-"
I shut up. She wasn't just stuttering, she was mouthing a word. Like, maybe, run.
The edge of my vision caught a movement on the backseat floor, like a restless black dog squirming around.
I thought it was just a shadow until a man came lunging up out of there. He jammed a rifle barrel through the window behind Laurie's head, pointed at my face.
I stared into it, with my body and brain both locked.
Then Laurie screamed, a sound so piercing and charged with rage that it was like a spike through my ears. The other man flinched, and he raised his right fist like he was going to club her. But before he could, she ripped the key out of the ignition, whirled around in her seat, and stabbed it at his eyes, a movement as quick and vicious as a viper's strike. He reared back away, dropping the rifle and clapping his hands to his face.
Laurie seemed frozen, like she couldn't believe what she'd done. But her scream started my blood moving again. I yanked open the SUV's door and managed to get hold of her arm and drag her toward me, shouting at her to climb on. There came a few wild seconds of thrashing around while she squeezed outside and onto the bike behind me, and I fought to keep the son of a bitch from dumping and make sure she was still hanging on.
The opening door had tripped on an interior light. This time it was easy to see the man in the backseat, swinging the rifle toward us again. I popped the clutch so hard the front wheel came off the ground, and cut the handlebars hard to the right, passing in front of the SUV so the gun's muzzle couldn't follow us. We jumped over the road-edge hump into the woods.
I yelled at Laurie over my shoulder, "Hide your face!" She pressed hard against my back with her arms wrapped around me like I was a spar in a shipwreck. I ducked my head low and powered on through the trees, whipped by low-hanging branches and raked by stumps.
I couldn't even guess how any of this had happened and I didn't give a rat's ass. The only thought in my head was to get out of there as fast and far as I could.
36
After Laurie and I had gone about a mile, it started to sink in that we were intact and not being followed. My panic eased off some, and I slowed the bike along with it. I knew where we were, not far north of the lake. I kept on going until we came to the top of a ridge that gave a view of that long stretch of water and the highway that skirted it. Everything out there looked as dark and still as when I'd followed the tow truck in.
By the clock, that had been several minutes ago. In my head, it was a lifetime.
I stopped and cut the engine, thinking that Laurie would let go of me. She didn't, and now I could feel that she was shivering hard. That was no wonder after what had happened. But when I unlocked her fingers from around my waist and eased us both off the bike, I realized that she was wearing the same light turtleneck she'd had on earlier today, with just a shawl over it. The rain had thinned to a mist up in the woods, but the night was still chilly and damp. Along with shock and fear, she must have been freezing. I was just the opposite by now, heated up and sweating from wrestling the bike around. When I pulled off my coat and wrapped her in it, the cool air was welcome.
"What the hell is going on?" I said.
Her hands clenched my shirt again, her face pressed tight against my chest now.
"That man's a killer, a torturer," she said through chattering teeth. "He's here to kill you."
I stared at her, trying to get my mind around that. Something else was starting to sink in-the sense that I'd seen his face before.
"How do you know that?" I said.
"I recognized him-from before."
"From before?"
She kept gasping out words, the bits of information coming in like punches, wild but fast and hard enough to stagger me.
"No, I don't mean I know him. I only ever saw him once. I don't even know his name-I call him John Doe. But I saw him with Wesley today, and Wesley gave him that rifle. I followed him to your house. He hid there and waited. But then the sheriffs came, and I guess he was running aw
ay, and he found me."
"What were you doing there?"
Her forehead butted against me in a way that was still agitated but oddly shy.
"I was hiding, too," she whispered. "I had to tell you, and there wasn't any other way."
I stroked her hair, trying to calm myself as much as her. This woman who barely knew me had come up into the cold dark woods, knowing that a hired killer was nearby, in order to save my life.
Then it came to me where I'd seen him. He was the man who'd delivered Balcomb's twenty-five hundred dollars this afternoon. I remembered him hesitating at my gate like he was thinking about coming up to the cabin. He must have decided to play it safe-just check the place out and come back after dark. But his disguise would have taken me in. If he'd approached politely, he could have shot me dead before I raised my rifle.
"I guess the sheriffs found out about him," she said, her words still muffled against my chest. "I don't know how. I didn't call them."
"They're not looking for him. They're after me. I'm a suspect for killing Kirk."
Her face lifted swiftly, eyes wide with alarm. I put my finger to her lips. This wasn't the time to trade stories.
"Let me think a minute," I said.
She nodded, although doubtfully, like she didn't have much faith in my abilities along those lines.
Neither did I. The rug had been jerked out from under me all over again, and I was more brain-fried than ever. But a few things stood out clearly-first and foremost, that I didn't have to wonder anymore whether Balcomb would keep his promise to back off.
