No Man's Land

by G. M. Ford

  42

  Special Agent Ronald Rosen held the towels at arm’s length, as if he’d unexpectedly been handed a turd.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he began. “You’re trying to tell me that these towels are proof positive that Timothy Driver has arrived here and has kidnapped your girlfriend and her producer and is now holding them hostage somewhere locally.”

  He waited a beat. “Is that it?”

  “Yeah,” Corso said. “That’s about it.”

  Rosen thrust the towels back in Corso’s face. “What the hell is the matter with you? “ He didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re out of your mind. You know that? You called us back here over this? You told me Driver was here.”

  “I told you he’d been here.”

  “According to who?”

  “The RV’s gone.”

  Rosen and Westerman laughed together. “Maybe your charms weren’t all you thought they were, Lothario,” Westerman said with a smirk. “Maybe they just dumped your ass and headed back to La La land. You ever think of that?”

  “Naked?”

  “I’m betting they had fresh clothes in the motor home. The stuff he left behind in the room was a mess.”

  “He left his cell phone and the rental car.”

  Rosen shrugged. “In a hurry. Trying to get lost before you got back. Nothing there that can’t be paid for or replaced.”

  “Driver’s here. I’m telling you.”

  Rosen made a rude noise with his lips. “Bullshit,” he spit.

  “What you need to do, Mr. Corso, is to go back to wherever you came from and get to doing whatever it is you do. That way you can leave Mr. Driver and his friends to us and stop making an ass of yourself.”

  He turned on his heel and walked away. Westerman lingered for a moment.

  “What he said,” she offered before turning and following in his footsteps.

  Corso stood and watched them leave. He took deep breaths, trying to control his temper. He watched as Rosen got into the passenger seat and Westerman slid behind the wheel. Equal opportunity. All very PC these days. Inside the car, Rosen buckled himself in and turned to Westerman. “Check with the units at either end of the highway,” he said. “Tell them to let us know when that RV comes by.”

  “If they’re headed for L.A., they must be driving west.”

  Rosen checked his watch. “It’s forty-five minutes from here to the bottom of the western slope. Unless they stopped for something, they ought to be rolling by there sometime in the next fifteen minutes. Tell them I want to hear about it.”

  Westerman reached for her phone. “Get the unit with the transponder,” Rosen went on. “Send them down the western slope. See if they don’t pick up the signal from the RV. Once they get out of the mountains, they ought to come through loud and clear. I want a location on that damn thing. Yesterday.”

  A moment later, the driver’s door opened and Westerman stepped out. She wandered about, removing the cell phone from her ear now and then, moving in one direction and then another, looking for service like a dog looks for a place to pee. She eventually settled on a spot in front of the right headlight, whence she made three rather animated phone calls.

  Corso waited until she got back in the car and started the engine. As soon as the Lincoln began to roll, Corso started walking back toward the rooms, bypassing Melanie’s, then his own. Continuing all the way up to Marty’s, where he grabbed the rental car keys from the table, turned off the lights and made sure the door was locked on his way out.

  Wasn’t until he was about to drive out onto the highway that all of a sudden he had a spasm of lucidity . . . a moment of clarity so powerful it brought him to a standstill.

  In that dark insular moment, Corso realized he had absolutely no idea where he was going or what it was he should do next. Ray Lofton had been to the promised land. He’d been to the mountain. All the way to the summit, where he’d picked up the trash and started back down. The old truck had barely made it to the top. The temperature needle had just crept into the red zone when he’d pulled into the summit. From here on it was all downhill.

  He shook the Elk Creek Dumpster one last time and eased the lever back, setting it gently on the ground, before rolling it back into its little alcove in the blackberry bushes. On his way past the truck he reached in and turned off the engine. Might as well shoot the breeze with Kenny for a while, he figured . . . What with the trip all the way up to White Lake, hell, the morning was gone anyway. So he slammed the door and headed into the store.

  “Hey, big fella,” Ray shouted as he came through the door.

  “Ray Ray . . . I thought I heard you grindin’ away out there.”

  Before Ray could open his mouth, Kenny asked. “You seen this on the TV?”

  Ray walked around the end of the counter. A Stay-Fresh Maxi Pad commercial was on the tube. “You seen anything about those cops killers runnin’ all over Nevada?”

  “Yeah . . . yeah . . . ,” Ray chanted. “Ones where one bunch rescued the other from the cops.”

  “That’s it, bro.” He waggled a hand at the TV. “They just busted into the program for like this bulletin about them and like they had this picture of this guy who was like kidnapped by them a few days ago but got away . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “That guy came in the store here last night.”

  “No shit.”

  Kenny crossed his heart with a long finger. “Swear to God,”

  he said. “He stood right there on the other side of the counter. We talked about being tall and all.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “Gas and a map.” Kenny pointed up at the TV. “Here . . . here . . . here . . . It’s coming back on,” he said. Across the bottom of the screen . . . photos of Driver, Kehoe, Harry and Heidi. The voice-over was doing the usual armed and dangerous routine. Then a picture of Corso.

  “Him,” Kenny said. “That’s the guy right there. He don’t have the ponytail anymore, but that’s him for sure.”

  Ray Lofton’s face was the picture of stupefaction. He pointed up at the TV.

  “Wait,” he said. “Bring it back.”

  “It’s regular TV, man. I can’t roll it back.”

  “The first guy.”

  “What about him.”

  The TV returned to its regular programming. Montel.

  Ray rubbed the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. “Swear to God I saw that first guy.”

  “Give it a break man,” Kenny scoffed.

  “No . . . swear to God.” He pointed at the screen again. “He shaved his head and grew a little beard, but I swear that’s the same guy I gave a ride to this morning on the way up.” Before Kenny could respond, Ray went on. “Crazy bastard. Just sat there mumbling to himself the whole way up the damn hill.”

  Kenny waved him off. “You’re jamming with me, man. You can’t stand it . . . I seen something and you didn’t.”

  “No, man . . . I’m telling you . . . this is for real here . . .”

  “You was always like that, Ray Ray. Somebody’s family had a baboon, yours had one too.”

  “That’s cold, man.”

  The door opened. Kenny leaned down to greet the customer. Corso walked into the store. Kenny’s face lit up like it was Christmas.

  “Man . . . you won’t believe what this retread’s been trying to tell me,” Kenny said. “He’s been . . .”

  43

  Melanie Harris sat straight and rigid in the driver’s seat, hoping some passing truck driver might notice her nakedness and call the authorities. Then, of course, there was the matter of how she looked in the nude. Bad enough to be kidnapped naked, let alone slouching and allowing one’s attributes to tumble and sag into an amorphous bag of flesh. No way that was going to happen. Bad enough her Brazilian was partially grown out, leaving her mound with the look of a sugarcane field after a typhoon. She had an appointment for a waxing next Thursday. Sometime in the morning. The exact hour
escaped her at the moment. She wondered if she’d be charged for the appointment even if she was dead.

  Brian had liked the Brazilian at first. Later he came to see the procedure as a California affectation and heaped upon it the same degree of scorn he used for anything overtly Hollywood. Started out, she’d done it as a lark. It was a couple of weeks after she’d had her eyeliner tattooed on. Melanie figured, “What the hell. It’s a week before Valentine’s Day; it’ll make a nice surprise.”

  Go figure. She’d discovered she liked it. It made her feel not G.M. Ford only cleaner, but in some odd way allowed her access to the vestal maiden she’d left so far behind so many years before. Allowed her to feel like a girl again, as it were.

  She threw a quick glance over at Driver. He was reading the map Corso had bought at that little store last night. The barrel of the shotgun was pointed directly at her right breast. She felt the blood rise in her cheeks. There she was . . . sitting stark naked, no more than five feet from him and he wasn’t paying the slightest attention to her. She again gave thanks to God. No matter what might transpire here, at least she wasn’t going to be raped. Even if he killed them both, at least she wouldn’t have to bear that frightful indignity. She returned her eyes to the road and resumed her prayers.

  44

  “See,” Kenny said. “This is the dude right here.”

  “Hey, man, I just saw you on the tube, ’cept you had long hair in the picture they was showin’,” said Ray. “You was like captured by those guys the heat are lookin’ all over for, huh. That musta been a trip.”

  Corso allowed as how the experience had indeed been “a trip.” “You got another one of those tourist maps?” he asked Kenny.

  Kenny shook his head. “Sold you the last one the other night. Only one I got left is the one we use to order from.” He pointed at Ray. “You know what Ray Ray here has been trying to tell me?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ray Ray been trying to tell me he give one of those guys a ride up the mountain this morning.”

  Corso stiffened. “Which one?” he asked as calmly as he was able.

  “Big guy with a shaved head.”

  “Was he carrying anything?” Corso held his breath.

  “Couple big gym bags. Black Nike bags. Had the little swoosh on the sides of them.”

  Corso’s knees nearly buckled. He put a hand down on the counter to steady himself. “Oh Jesus,” he whispered.

  “You okay?” Ray asked.

  “I been half-hoping I was wrong,” Corso said. He took a deep breath, then pushed his way past Ray and out the door. He pulled Marty’s cell phone from his pants pocket and waited impatiently for it to come alive. When the little tone told him the phone was ready, he dialed Rosen’s number. Beep, beep. Busy. Hoping maybe he’d made a mistake in dialing, he tried again. Same, beep, beep, busy. “Shit,” he screamed at the top of his lungs. He ran back into the store.

  “You callin’ the cops?” Ray asked.

  “Where could you hide a motor home around here?” Corso asked.

  “You mean here on the mountain?” Kenny asked.

  “Why would anybody wanna do that?” Ray wanted to know. Corso thought it over. “The RV is also a remote satellite rig. You can broadcast from it. I think maybe he wants to broadcast something . . . something where he gets to tell his story, then goes out in a blaze of glory.” He slapped the side of his head. “I’m just guessing. His motivations are mostly lost on me, but that’s as good a guess as any.”

  “Where’d he get a motor home? When I left him off, he was hoofin’ it.”

  “He stole it from some friends of mine. Kidnapped them and I’m guessing at some point he’s going to kill them.”

  “This the guy shot them guards?” Kenny asked.

  “The very same. That’s why we gotta find him. Right now. Yesterday.”

  “Best place to hide something that big would be”—Kenny waved a hand—“you know, other than in somebody’s yard or something . . . the best place would hafta be somewhere on the old highway.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Everywhere,” said Ray. “It’s old route 180. It winds around the mountain about six times before it gets to the top. Then winds back down.”

  “Crosses the new highway . . . what . . . a dozen times or so on each side.”

  “ ’Cept they try to keep it all blocked off, of course,” Ray added.

  “Who tries to keep it blocked off?” Corso asked. Kenny shrugged. “You know . . . the Forest Service, the Road Department. It’s like a game of cat and mouse. They lock ’em up. The locals bust ’em open. Mostly they’re open, cause there’s way more of us than there are of them,” he said with a grin.

  “He’s got that map you sold me last night.”

  “Then you’re just gonna have to check all the gates . . . see if you can’t find where they went through.”

  “That’s presuming they’re still up on the mountain,” Kenny said.

  Corso shook his head. “If they’d gone down either side, the FBI would have had them by now. And if the feds had them, it would be all over the tube.” He pointed up at the TV where Montel Williams was massaging the forearm of an enormously overweight woman in a wildflower print dress. “The feds never miss a chance to look good,” Corso said. “Never.”

  “Everybody around here knows about the old highway. It’s where most of them hunt during deer and elk seasons.”

  “It’s where most of us used to take girls back in high school,”

  Kenny said.

  “Two things everybody up here owns are a snowmobile and an ATV,” Ray said. “Both of which work just fine all over the old highway.”

  “Thanks for the info,” Corso said, reaching for the door handle.

  “You ain’t gonna find ’em all on your own,” Kenny said. A glum silence settled over the room.

  “I’d show you where to look, but I gotta finish my route. I don’t finish . . . my ass is grass and the company’s the lawn mower,” Ray said.

  “He’s going to kill them. Just as sure as God made little green apples, he’s going to kill them.”

  With that, Corso yanked open the door and strode outside. He had the rental car open and one foot inside when Kenny appeared. “I’ll show you where,” he said. “Gimme a minute to close up.” He inclined his head toward the truck. “We probably better take my rig.”

  Corso slammed the door and pulled out his phone. Beep, beep, busy.

  Rosen’s ear was beginning to sweat. “Okay . . . okay . . . thanks,”

  he said before breaking the connection. He ran both hands over his face. “Nothing,” he said.

  “Really?” Westerman was genuinely surprised. “Not a peep?”

  Rosen first pursed his lips, then covered them with his rigid index finger.

  This gesture was one of the few Rosenisms Westerman was yet to interpret reliably. Sometimes it meant “Be quiet; I’m thinking.” Other times it meant she was supposed to come up with an alternative. At that moment, she was hoping like crazy it was the former rather than the latter, because the only thing she had to say was almost guaranteed to piss Rosen off to the nth degree. It had bothered her for most of the past hour. Nothing in the facts. Mostly, it was just her read on Corso. Aside from his adolescent rebellious streak, she’d been quite impressed. Not only was he about as good-looking as guys got, but there was no denying this was one smart cookie. Ruthless . . . to be sure . . . even uncaring . . . to a fault perhaps, but nonetheless, one sharp cookie. What if Corso was right? What if Timothy Driver had indeed kidnapped a well-known TV personality and her producer, stolen them right from beneath the FBI’s nose . . . in a big old motor home . . . one the Bureau had a bug on but now can’t locate, because they never factored mountains into the surveillance equation? “Jumpin Jesus,” she thought. Mercifully, today the gesture meant “Be quiet; I’m thinking.”

  “Alright . . . ,” Rosen began, “. . . let’s start with the obvious. The motor home an
d its occupants are, in all probability, still up here in the mountains somewhere.” He counted off on his fingers. One “I’ve got units on either end of Route 196 as it crosses what’s generally known as Jenner Peak. The RV hasn’t come past either of them.” Finger two. “Electronic surveillance is picking up nothing. Ground surveillance reports the RV is nowhere obvious.”

  Finger three. “Ms. Harris and Mr. Wells are not in contact with their colleagues in Los Angeles, which I am led to believe is a most unusual circumstance.” He paused and snuck a glance her way. He closed his mouth. The muscles along his jawline tensed. He started to speak but stopped himself.

  “So?” she said.

  Rosen heaved a sigh. “So . . . perhaps we give a little consideration to the possibility . . .” He waved a hand. “. . . to the possibility that Mr. Corso was correct. To the possibility that Driver is indeed here.”

  “How much consideration?” Westerman asked.

  “To start with, let’s get everyone we’ve got up here looking for that motor home,” he said. “Then get me the Forest Service on the line.”