No Man's Land

by G. M. Ford

  “How do we know it’s her?” he asked.

  Despite her best efforts, Westerman could feel the blood rising to her cheeks. “She and Warden Romero had a little something going on the side. Cruz had been telling people Romero was going to leave his wife and marry her. Looks like it didn’t turn out that way.”

  Rosen raised a thick eyebrow, sipped at his coffee. Westerman continued.

  “Once the bloom was off the rose, she peddled the stuff to American Manhunt for something like seventy thousand bucks, then took Alaskan Airlines flight ninety-eight from Phoenix to Guadalajara yesterday morning.”

  “A well-earned vacation,” Rosen quipped.

  “No sir. She made arrangements to have her furniture shipped.”

  “Ms. Cruz had quite an eye for an exit.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Not much to come back to.”

  “Seventy grand goes a long way in Guadalajara.”

  “Especially since Asuega and Romero got fired this morning,”

  Rosen said.

  “It’s worse that that, sir.”

  “What’s worse than that?”

  She gave him a twisted grin. “Romero doesn’t know it, but he’s about to get served with divorce papers this morning. Seems the scorned Ms. Cruz sent his wife a letter on her way out of town. According to our information, Ms. Cruz thoughtfully included a number of compromising photographs.”

  Rosen blew air across the top of his coffee. “You’re right, Agent Westerman. That’s worse. Take it from a man who’s been thusly served. What else?”

  Westerman took a deep breath. “So we’ve got our mystery, sir. The letters come from the Prineville, Oregon, post office. We’ve got a clerk who remembers seeing the letters and a match on the postmark machine. Quantico ran the DNA on the stamps, compared it to what we got from Driver’s prison blood samples. It’s either a mother or a father or a sibling. Since the father’s dead and he’s an only child . . .”

  Rosen’s eyes were hooded. His nose was in the coffee cup.

  “That leaves the mother. It’s her. Five hundred million to one, Quantico says. No doubt about it.”

  “So?” he said again.

  “So she’s got somebody in Prineville mailing them for her.”

  “Which tells you what?”

  “Which tells me we need another field of inquiry if we’re going to figure out where Driver’s headed.”

  A couple more sips of coffee jogged something in Rosen’s mind. “How long have the letters been coming from Pineville?”

  “Prineville,” she corrected. “Hang on.” She rummaged around in her briefcase and came out with a sheaf of papers, used her thumb and forefinger to move through the pile backward.

  “Since ninety-seven,” she said. “Before that she was like a camp follower. Hawaii, San Diego, Bangor, Washington, Bremerton, Washington, Long Beach, California. Wherever her son was stationed, that’s where she moved to.”

  “Some devotion.”

  Westerman raised her eyebrows in agreement. “I guess.”

  “Almost scary.”

  When Westerman didn’t disagree, Rosen posed a question.

  “Why’s a senior citizen like his mother need a mail blind?” He was almost talking to himself. “I mean it’s not like they’re hard to organize. We do it all the time for witnesses, for undercover officers stuff like that. Why does somebody’s mother need one?”

  “No idea,” Westerman admitted.

  “And who showed her how to do it?”

  Because she hated admitting she didn’t know, Westerman kept silent.

  “Shit,” said Rosen, slamming the cup down hard enough to send coffee spilling out over the rim. “What year was it Corso wrote the book about Driver?”

  Westerman pulled yet another file from her briefcase. Then another and a third.

  “Ninety-seven,” she said. She looked over at Rosen, who was cleaning up his mess with paper napkins. “So you’re thinking . . .”

  “Find Mr. Corso,” he said. “Don’t pick him up or anything. Just find him. I’ll bet dollars to donuts Corso—”

  He never got it all the way out. His pager went off. He pulled the unit from his belt, eyeballed the text message, then pulled his cell phone from his inside jacket pocket.

  “Rosen here,” he said after speed dialing. He listened for the better part of two minutes, said, “You’re sure,” and listened again before hanging up.

  “We’ve got two officer fatalities. Southern Utah. A pair of Nevada Staties who were transporting those Texas teenagers . . .”

  “Gibbs and Spearbeck?”

  “Yeah. Both cops shot dead at a rest area in Utah. Gibbs and Spearbeck conspicuously missing.”

  As if that weren’t bad enough, she could tell there was more.

  “And?”

  “And Clarence Kehoe’s thumbprint was found on both the sink and the flush handle in the men’s restroom.”

  Her mouth hung open. She didn’t care. “They’re sure?”

  “Hundred percent.”

  • • • Corso used his napkin to wipe his lips. He thought about throwing it on top of his plate but remembered where he was and changed his mind. Instead, he folded it twice and placed it to the right of his unused coffee cup, all nice and neat-like.

  “What flavor was that sorbet again?” Melanie Harris asked.

  “Clementine.”

  “Which is?”

  “Darling.”

  She laughed again. “Really.”

  “I have no idea. I just ordered it so you’d think I was sophisticated.”

  “You are sophisticated.”

  “Comes from spending lots of other people’s money.”

  She staged a mock toast with her decaf coffee. “To life’s little joys.”

  “That’s my acid test for when something is way too expensive,” Corso said.

  “What’s that?”

  “When my publisher is paying for it, and I still object to the price.”

  She nodded knowingly. “I take it you didn’t grow up with things like clementine sorbet.”

  His turn to laugh. “I grew up in Georgia. Macaroni-andcheese was considered haute cuisine where I came from. What about you?”

  “I’m meat-and-potatoes Michigan. The closer to Sunday you get the better the cut of meat. That’s about as fancy as it got.”

  Corso raised the last of his aperitif. “We’ve come a long way, baby.”

  Her eyes suddenly grew serious. She made no move to join his toast. “For the better you think?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder.”

  They’d allowed two hours between the time they’d checked in and when they’d agreed to meet for dinner. The results were impressive. Melanie had come up with a particularly striking version of what women generally refer to as a “little black dress.” Either she’d called in the show’s makeup department or the people from the spa had spent the past couple of hours in her room. Whatever . . . she was easily the best-looking woman in a room full of good-looking women.

  Corso’s situation had been more dire. The clothes he’d arrived in had survived a prison riot, a shoot-out, a cross-country flight to avoid prosecution and a couple of nights as pajamas. Oscar, the concierge, had assured Corso he’d get everything dry-cleaned and shipped back to Seattle. In the meantime, he sent one of his minions down to Fashion Square with Corso’s measurements in hand. A hour and a half and three grand later, Corso was outfitted with a black silk shirt, a black cashmere blazer and a nice pair of gray slacks suitable for dinner at Mary Elaine’s. For occasions less formal, Oscar had provided a couple pair of jeans and two black silk T-shirts. Apparently, Oscar also enjoyed spending other people’s money.

  Corso surveyed her disconsolate face. “Something I said?” he inquired.

  She waved him off. “I’m a little off my feed lately.”

  “You’re on every channel. How bad can it be?”

  “I meant personally,” she said, staring down
into her coffee. Silence settled over the table like a cloak. Across the room, a well-turned-out older couple had recognized Melanie. They’d found their cell phone and were in the process of sharing their Hollywood moment with somebody more distant and thus less fortunate than themselves.

  Her eyes found his. “You’re not going to ask me, are you?”

  “If you want to tell me, you will.”

  He watched in silence as she had a conversation with herself. She gave him a wan smile and pushed back her chair. “You’re right,” was all she said.

  She tried again and managed a better smile the second time around. “This was lovely. Thanks for sharing it with me.”

  “Thanks for the rescue.”

  “My pleasure,” she assured him.

  He looked around for the waiter.

  “I already took care of the check,” she said.

  “Other people’s money again.”

  “Is there any other kind?”

  He reached for her elbow. She let him take it as they wound their way back to the restaurant entrance and out into the elegant lobby.

  “You must be bushed,” she said.

  “It’s been an interesting few days,” Corso hedged. They stammered their good-byes and plans to meet for breakfast in the morning with all the smooth assurance of backward seventh graders.

  She could feel his eyes on her all the way down the hall to her room. Before stepping inside, she snuck a peek. He made no attempt to hide his gaze. She gave him a little “toodles” wave goodbye with her fingers. He smiled, then turned and walked out of sight.

  31

  She’d been talking for two hours. Her life story. Pretty much from birth to the present, but not necessarily in that order. Heidi was not what you’d call a linear thinker. She tended to go off on tangents so long and complicated as to make the listener altogether forget what the original story line had been. The minute she’d started, Harry had pulled his jacket around his ears and scrunched down in the seat. Kehoe had lasted a half hour before leaning his head against the window and eventually beginning to snore.

  “So anyway, when I first met Harry it was down at the bowling alley. Sharps Lanes they call it. Anyway, I used to bowl on Thursday afternoons with the girls from my church group. Harry had him a job there behind the counter. I mean it wasn’t like love at first sight or nothing. Heck . . . I didn’t think much of him at all when I first met him. I thought he was all stuck-up on himself. The way he stood back there passin’ out shoes and flirtin’ with all the girls. But then later on I come to see how he had a pure heart and I could see through that silly James Dean thing he had going on about himself. And then he bought me that box of chocolates. You know the kind in the gold box where they got all the names of the candies listed on the inside of the cover so’s you’ll know No Man’s Land what it is you’re getting ahead of time and won’t taste somethin’ you don’t like.”

  “Give ’em a break, darlin’,” Harry growled from the backseat.

  “It wasn’t like we had anything to do or anyplace to go. I mean I was livin’ with my daddy and Harry was livin’ with his aunt. We didn’t have nothin’ to do but hang around town. Maybe go over to Redlands to the movies once in a while whenever we could scrounge up a ride. So anyway, that’s when we decided to make us a place of our own. Harry knew this little patch of woods between the highway and the railroad grade. Said he used to play there as a kid and that nobody ever went there so’s we could be pretty sure of being left alone. Harry built us this little tree house. You know, up off the ground so’s we could keep away from the bugs and the critters . . . someplace we could, you know, like be alone.” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “I don’t want you thinkin’ bad about me, mister. I’m not a bad girl or nothing. Harry was my first . . . you know, boy my age.” She hesitated. “I mean, you know, I let Wesley Miles put his finger in it back in the seventh grade and I mean did we ever get in trouble for that. You’da thought the world come to an end the way everybody carried on.” She shook her head. “Never for the life of me could figure out why Wesley would tell his mama about a thing like that.

  “Anyway, after Harry got promoted to assistant manager, he figured it was time to ask my daddy about getting married.” She made a clucking noise. “Isn’t like I didn’t know what was gonna happen. I told Harry straight off my daddy wasn’t gonna to be listenin’ to anything like that. I mean . . . who was gonna take care of him if I was gone? Who was gonna do the cookin’ and the cleanin’? Who was gonna . . .”

  A wavy red line appeared on the near horizon.

  “What in hell is that?” Driver asked.

  Heidi closed her mouth with a snap.

  Kehoe used the power lever on the seat to push himself upright. “A wreck maybe,” Kehoe said after rubbing his eyes. He pointed up toward the blanket of clouds overhead. In the distance, just over the rise, pulsing lights could be seen bouncing off the dark clouds. Light bar lights. Red and blue and yellow. Another quarter mile and they found themselves queued up behind a battered red Toyota Corolla, sporting a peeling Bush/Cheney sticker. Maybe ten cars separated them from seeing what was going on over the crest of the hill.

  “I don’t like it,” Driver said.

  Kehoe reached beneath the passenger seat and pulled out a tattered Rand McNally atlas they’d found earlier in the day. Kehoe snapped on the overhead light and found the page he was looking for. “We’re comin up on the junction of eighty-three where we was gonna head north again,” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ else around here, Captainman, less we wanna get out on one of these secondary roads.” He used his fingernail to trace on the page. The cars in front moved up. Driver followed suit.

  A pair of headlights bobbed over the rise and began coming their way. Driver pushed open the door and stepped out into the oncoming lane of traffic. The approaching pickup slowed and then, when it became obvious Driver wasn’t going to step aside, braked to a stop.

  Driver walked over to the window. “What’s going on up there?” he asked. The driver leaned out the truck window wearing a green John Deere baseball cap.

  “State cops got them a roadblock up there at the junction of eighty-three,” the guy said. “Looking for a bunch of escaped convicts.”

  “No kidding,” Driver said.

  “No need to get yourself in a lather. They’ll get you through pretty quick.”

  Driver took the hint and stepped out of the way. “Thanks,”

  he said.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Driver got back into the Mercedes and buckled himself in. Harry was alert now, sitting up and patting at his hair.

  “What did he say?” Kehoe asked.

  “It’s a roadblock. Looking for us.”

  Another truck passed, going in the opposite direction, this one full of bales of hay. The line of cars in front of the Mercedes had moved up three or four car lengths. The driver behind them tooted his horn. Kehoe growled at the sound.

  Driver spun the steering wheel to the left, going as far as he could without running into the ditch, then backed up and spun the wheel a second time, completing the one-eighty with only inches to spare.

  “Somebody sure as hell gonna tell the heat we pulled a uey.”

  Kehoe offered. “They gonna send somebody out to find out why.”

  “Nothing we can do about that,” Driver said. “Check that map of yours and see how soon we can get off this road.”

  Driver took it easy for as long as they were in sight, then put the pedal to the metal, sending the big car careening down the two-lane road at nearly eighty. They passed the truck with the hay within the first mile or so. The other truck had disappeared. Probably turned up one of the many driveways and farm access roads they were passing at warp speed. “ ’Nother mile or so,” Kehoe said. “On your left. Provisionary road two twenty-nine. Looks like it winds through the mountains and runs into a pretty goodsized little town namea Drake about twenty miles north of here. Looks like maybe it ain’t paved all th
e way.”

  “We’ll have to take our chances,” Driver said. Kehoe pointed. “There,” he said.

  Driver gave the brakes all he had. Miraculously, they didn’t lock up and skid. He fishtailed the Mercedes ninety degrees to the left, then used the accelerator to straighten the car out. First thing he did after regaining control was to turn off the lights.

  They were tearing up a one-lane road toward a pair of jagged buttes looming in the near distance. “Got cop lights on the highway,” Kehoe announced. Driver kept his eyes on the road. “Let me know if they come this way.”

  Kehoe unsnapped his seat belt and turned partway in the seat.

  “Comin’ up on the turn,” he said. “Comin’ . . . comin’ . . . he’s past. He thinks we went the other way.”

  Driver slowed the car but left the lights off. “Sooner or later he’s gonna figure it out,” he said. “We need to make it to the highway before it gets light.”

  The road narrowed as it began to ascend a series of low hills. Every half mile or so little graveled turnouts allowed drivers just enough room to pass. The high desert of the valley gave way to the layered sediment of an ancient seabed. The road seemed to sink beneath the layers of shale and limestone until they were driving along a series of boulder-strewn switchbacks, winding back and forth across the face of the steep butte; finally, after negotiating a particularly steep section of road, they crested the valley, very nearly becoming airborne as the car slammed back to earth just in time to take the sharp left necessary to prevent crashing into the canyon wall. And then they were headed down again, knifing back and forth across the face of the canyon, braking for corners so narrow and steep, the car had nearly to be brought to a halt at the apex of each turn. Driver accelerated and snapped on the lights. Mule deer. Three of them standing rigid in the road. Mesmerized by the furious glow of the headlights. Never so much as twitching as the Mercedes plowed into them.