Ghost Road Blues pd-1

by Jonathan Maberry

  “In a nutshell.”

  “How do we know that we can trust you?”

  “I guess you just have to,” Ruger said, and then he smiled his serpent’s smile, white teeth gleaming, eyes twinkling like cold and distant stars. “Besides, why would I lie?”

  (4)

  “Hey, what’s that?”

  Officer Rhoda Thomas slowed the cruiser and rolled to a stop. She flicked on the searchlight and directed it where Officer Head was pointing. The black stretch of A-32 glowed a dark charcoal in the harsh white light, and the yellow lane divider gleamed, but cutting right through the dividing line and across the road itself were long black smears, intensely black even in the light’s glow. “Just skid marks,” observed Rhoda. “Nothing.”

  “No, wait, they look pretty fresh.”

  “So?”

  “So, let’s check ’em out.” Head jerked the door handle and stepped out. Puzzled and reluctant, Rhoda followed suit. They walked over to where the skid marks began and stood looking at the road. With a totally reflexive action, Head unsnapped his pistol and jiggled the butt to loosen it in its leather holster. Rhoda watched, copied the movement though it was the first time she had ever performed that particular ritual, but she didn’t want to appear as raw as she knew she was. She was fascinated by him. She thought he looked like Samuel L. Jackson with more muscles and a shaved head.

  They were an incongruous pair: the petite Rhoda in her pale gray chief’s department uniform with the six-pointed star gleaming as brightly as all her buttons and fittings; and Head, older, bigger, heavier, though not at all fat, in his blue Philadelphia Police Department rig, numbered shield on his breast and all of his equipment showing signs of eleven long years of hard use on big-city streets. Rhoda looked like an extra in a cheap movie, and Head looked unpretentiously real. He had hard eyes that had seen it all, a harder mouth that was drawn tight, and the posture of a predator. Beside him, Rhoda looked like a child. It wasn’t a sex thing: Head’s partner, Maddie, was as serious and seasoned a cop as he was, and she was buddied up with Officer Jim Polk farther up A-32. No, this was a reality check for Rhoda, and she knew it.

  “These are from tonight,” he said, squatting down and running his fingertips along the smear of burned rubber. “Take a look. They veer right off the road.” He clicked on his own long-handled flash and swept the beam along the path of the skid marks. “See? Right there, they leave the road and go off into the field.” He moved to the very edge of the verge and shone his light into the corn. The light showed them the smashed-down corridor of stalks. “Bingo.”

  Rhoda came up behind him. “You think they had an accident?”

  “Be nice if it was that easy,” he said, then smiled thinly and added, “Be really nice if they totaled the car and themselves.”

  “You think that’s likely?”

  His smile became a grin and he shook his head. “Nah. Accident, maybe, but if they wrecked their ride, then they probably hightailed their asses out of here hours ago.” He stood and rubbed the skid mark with the toe of his shoe. “Could have been a blowout, who knows?” He turned and shone the light up and down the road, reading the scene. “Looks like a big car traveling in one hell of a hurry went off the road here and right into that field.”

  She looked from the tracks to his face and then into the cornfield. The flash struck small splinters off chrome and glass way back in the field. “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed and drew his sidearm, laying his gun arm across the wrist of the hand holding the flash so that the beam and the barrel tracked together.

  “You think they’re still in the car?” Rhoda whispered.

  “I doubt it.” He listened to the night. Distant rumbling thunder, the caw of a night bird, traffic on the highway miles away. Head sucked his teeth.

  “What do you want to do? Should we go check it out?”

  “Uh-uh, honey. I’m not going anywhere near that car until we get some backup.” He nodded at her sidearm. “You any good with that?”

  “I suck,” she said.

  “Swell.”

  “I’m better with a shotgun,” she said hopefully. “Can’t miss with a shotgun.”

  “Yeah. Got one in the unit?”

  “In the trunk.”

  “Get it.” Together they backed up to their unit. Rhoda popped the trunk and Head kept the barrel of the pistol trained on the smashed corridor of cornstalks.

  Rhoda removed the pump-action shotgun from the clips that fastened it to the underside of the hood. It was a Mossberg Bullpup 12 with a pistol grip and thirty-inch barrel. With a hand that even in the darkness was visibly shaking, she worked the pump and blew out a puff of air that had soured in her lungs.

  Head glanced at it out of the corner of his eye and his eyebrows went up. “That’s a lot of shotgun for a small town.”

  “The chief likes ’em.”

  “How about you?”

  She shrugged. “As long as it doesn’t knock me on my behind, I don’t much care one way or another.”

  Nodding, Head indicated the crash site with his pistol. “Point that cannon right there. I’m going to call for backup.” He reached into the unit and lifted the handset. “What’s your call number?”

  “Unit Two.”

  “What’s the call-in protocol?”

  “Just ask for Ginny.”

  Head smiled and shook his head. Gotta love small-town America. Clicking on the mike, he said, “Unit Two to, um, Ginny. Unit Two to Ginny. Over.”

  “Who’s this?” a woman’s voice demanded sharply.

  “Officer Jerry Head. I’m in Unit Two with Officer Thomas.”

  “Oh, okay. What can I do for you?”

  “Is Detective Sergeant Ferro there?”

  “Yes. He’s having coffee.”

  “Can you put him on the line, please?”

  “He’s in the conference room with…oh, well, really, Mr. Wolfe, I didn’t say that…. I was just about to…no, I…” The conversation on the other end suddenly became agitated as Ginny and at least two other voices lapsed into an argument. Then a new voice came on the line. “Unit Two, this is Ferro. Over.”

  “Sergeant, this is Jerry Head. Officer Thomas and I are on A-32, approximately fourteen miles from the center of town, on the eastern stretch.”

  “Copy that.”

  “We’re Code Six investigating skid marks indicating a vehicle recently gone off the road and into some cornfields. It looks like a single-vehicle accident, possibly a blowout, though the tracks are clean with no rubber debris.”

  “Have you located the vehicle itself?”

  “Negative. Request backup so we can check it out.”

  “That’s affirmative. Hold for backup en route.”

  “Copy that.”

  “Ferro out.”

  “Out.” Head tossed the mike onto the seat and turned to Rhoda. “You heard that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We’ll wait. You know who we’re after. I didn’t wake up this morning as John Wayne and you probably aren’t Annie Oakley.”

  “I have no idea who Annie Oakley is, but I get the point.” She grinned. “Waiting here is good.”

  They stood on the far side of their unit, using it as cover. Head took a foil pack of Orbit gum out of his pocket and popped one through the blister; he offered the pack to Rhoda but she shook her head. His dark brown eyes had a gunslinger squint to them that Rhoda found intimidating.

  She said, “You must think we’re a bunch of backwoods dumb-asses.”

  He chuckled as he chewed the gum. “Actually, no. Just be happy you don’t deal with this kind of freak every day. It juices you for about the first year on the job but it damn sure gets old after a while.”

  She nodded, cradling the shotgun in her arms.

  Head grinned. “Tell you the truth, I’d switch jobs with you in a heartbeat. I love this town. I bring my kids up to the hayride every year. We were up here two weeks ago, and I’m probably going to bring my youn
gest and his Cub Scout pack up here closer to Halloween. My wife, Tracy, and I come up here Christmas shopping every year. Kind of a ritual. We always have breakfast in that place on Salem Street, what’s the name…? Auntie Ems?”

  “Yeah, that’s a great place. I waitressed there some when I was still in high school.”

  “Yeah? Be funny if maybe one of those times you waited our table.”

  “Could have. The place is always packed.”

  “Yeah, but man, they make the best breakfasts. I love that one they do, the omelet with Granny Smith apples and cheddar cheese? With a little cinnamon on top.”

  “The Scarecrow.”

  “Right, right. Man, I love that one. And Tracy really likes the Irish oatmeal with honey and milk.”

  “Yeah, all their stuff’s good.”

  He blew a stream of blue smoke into the night.

  In the far distance they could see red and blue lights racing along A-32.

  “That’s them,” he said.

  They stood in silence, their guns still pointing at the darkened field, but their eyes flicking toward the approaching lights.

  “Officer Head?”

  “Jerry.”

  “Jerry. Does this stuff — everything they’re saying about the suspect, about Ruger — doesn’t that scare you?”

  “Me? Naw. He chopped up some defenseless old folks. I’ve faced down his kind before.”

  “So…you’re not scared? Really?”

  “Hell no!” Head laughed. “This guy scares the living piss out of me.”

  Relief flooded her face. “God! Me too. You know, we only have a couple of full-time officers here in town. Most of us are law students doing this part-time as a kind of co-op thing. I mean, we get some academy training, but they know that we’re not career, so they don’t really drum it into us. And stuff like this never happens.”

  “So that’s why we are going to do this just exactly the way Sergeant Ferro said, by the numbers and very tight, like professional law enforcement officers. No John Wayne shit. If that is Ruger’s car back there, and if he’s there, we are going to handle him as if he is armed, dangerous, and every bit as crazy as they say he is.”

  “Jeez,” she said softly.

  Head thought, If it is Ruger and he so much as farts too loud I’m going to send his evil ass home to Jesus quick as think about it.

  The second unit pulled up to a fast stop as both doors popped open at the same time and two officers stepped out. Jimmy Castle, tall and slim, with straw-colored hair and smiling eyes, stepped out from behind the wheel, and from the shotgun sidestepped Coralita Toombes. She was a stocky black woman with a face as harsh and unsmiling as Jimmy’s was lighthearted. She wore a Philadelphia P.D. uniform and had a Glock in her strong right fist, barrel pointed to the sky.

  “Where do we stand, Jerry?” she asked as the four officers drew together in a huddle by flashlight.

  Head filled them in and together the four officers moved to the shoulder. “Toombes, you and me’ll take point. One of you two can watch our asses.”

  Toombes said, “Jimmy here used to be on the job in Pittsburgh.”

  “Street or clerical?”

  “Street,” said Castle. “Four years. Then my wife’s company transferred out here, so—”

  Head cut him off. “Cool. Okay, let’s do it this way. Rhoda, you stay back here by the unit. I want you actually holding the mike the whole time. Give Sergeant Ferro regular reports, even if it’s to say that there’s nothing to report. Okay with you?”

  “Fine with me,” she said meaningfully.

  “Keep that shotgun handy,” he said, then added, “But be careful where you point it.” He turned to Castle. “You have a vest?”

  “Yeah. First time I’ve worn it since Pittsburgh, though.” He rapped his knuckles on his chest.

  “Let’s do it like a dark-house search,” murmured Toombes. “Check, call, and clear.”

  Head nodded. “Everyone cool with that?”

  “Cool as a Popsicle,” said Castle, but he wasn’t smiling anymore. His usual open and ingenuous face had taken on that hard cop look as he drew his Glock and slowly worked the slide.

  Toombes also drew her weapon. “Let’s do it.”

  They did it.

  Chapter 13

  (1)

  It didn’t take long for Ruger to get things rolling. He had Val tie Mark and Connie up, overlapping the multiple turns of rope with strips of duct tape to keep them from wriggling the knots loose, and Ruger checked the knots to make damned sure she hadn’t pulled any fast ones. The two of them sat side by side on the couch, glaring fear and impotent hatred at Ruger. Meanwhile he had ordered Guthrie to knock the pins out of the hinges on the kitchen door and drag it into the living room. It was a lightweight panel, but sturdy and would serve well enough as a stretcher. Throughout this phase Val made occasional eye contact with her father, trying to see if he was planning something, but the elder Guthrie’s face was careworn with concern for his children and when he finally caught Val’s look, and her cocked eyebrow, he gave a single terse shake of his head.

  Twice since Ruger had arrived she felt her cell phone — always set to vibrate — start shivering in her jeans pocket, but as before she couldn’t do anything about it. It had to be Crow calling to say he was on his way, and she prayed that he would hurry.

  “Okay, kids,” Ruger said as Val and her father stood with him by the front door, “now here’s the way it’s going to go. First we’re going to fetch a wheelbarrow, and then you two are going to come with me and help me fetch my friend and some of our gear from the field, and bring him back here. Then I’ll watch as Val ties you up, Mr. Guthrie. Once that’s done, you, my little broken-nose chickie, will do your Florence Nightingale on my buddy. Then I’ll tie you up and me and my buddy will be out of your lives. Except for fixing your front door and filing an insurance claim for your Bronco, you won’t be much worse for wear. How’s that sound? Fair enough? This is a simple one-two-three sort of thing. Anyone gets creative and everyone comes out losers. Everyone but me, that is.” He looked at them each in turn. Val nodded first, then her father. Mark and Connie, bound and gagged, could only stare. “Cool. Then let’s go. I’m getting a little tired of this Early American decor anyway. Christ.”

  Guthrie bent and picked up one end of the door, and Val the other, and together they hefted it. Ruger carried his pistol in one hand and a heavy flashlight in the other, with the length of the clothesline slung over his shoulder. They left the house and descended the porch steps.

  “Okay, set it down,” Ruger said and they laid the door on the ground. “You,” he said to Val, “go get the wheelbarrow.” Val felt her pulse jump when she thought of all the bladed tools in the barn — and the phone — but Ruger placed the barrel of his pistol against the back of her father’s skull. “Just the wheelbarrow, sweet cheeks. You read me?”

  “Yes,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper but well below freezing.

  “Okay. Down on your knees, Pops, until our gal Val gets back.” Guthrie slowly lowered himself to his knees, and at Ruger’s direction, laced his fingers together on top of his head. Ruger closed his strong white hand over Guthrie’s gnarled sun-browned fingers and squeezed mildly, but even so the grinding of his fingers made Guthrie wince. Val saw the flicker of pain on her father’s face, as Ruger had intended. “Yes, indeed, it hurts,” said Ruger. “It’ll keep hurting until you get your ass back here with the wheelbarrow. C’mon, bitch, time is money.”

  Val turned and ran for the utility shed. True to his word, Ruger kept the painful pressure up until Val came running back behind a bright red wheelbarrow that was spattered with mud. Her father’s face was pinched and his lips drawn thin and tight against his teeth.

  Nodding with appreciation, Ruger released Guthrie’s hands and stepped back.

  Guthrie rose, opening and closing his hands to restore blood flow. His fingers rang with pain.

  “Pick up the door and le
t’s get rolling.” He had procured a flashlight from the house, and shone it on the backs of father and daughter as they walked along the path that ran beside the vast cornfield. The Guthries laid the door sideways across the wheelbarrow and Val hefted the handles while her father steadied the door. Ruger walked three paces behind them, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other.

  As they retraced the route he’d taken since leaving Boyd, Ruger watched them with something approaching pleasure. He actually liked the old fart and his daughter. They were both tough and Ruger respected tough. He was on the fence as to whether he would kill them or not. Probably not, he mused. What would be the point? Identifying him to the cops wouldn’t exactly be a news flash.

  Ruger did wonder how Val would be in the sack, though. Feisty. Probably very feisty, and if things weren’t so damned pressing he might have taken the time to get to know her. See if he could tame the filly — not that it would be easy, he thought. Val didn’t seem the type to get a case of the vapors. She’d fight him all the way, and he just didn’t have that kind of time.

  Now the Stepford Wife on the other hand. Yeah, she was a sweet piece. Stacked in a country sort of way, and certainly pretty enough. He might just have the time to show that one a thing or two. Just a quickie, but it would set him up right and ease some of the tension that had been knotting his neck muscles all day. Ruger liked the idea and it made him smile. He didn’t believe that Connie was as completely inane or prissy as she appeared — Christ, who could be? — and he wondered what kind of fire lay beneath the surface. Maybe all she needed was a little incentive to make her show her true colors. Her stick-up-his-ass husband probably didn’t have what it took to get much mileage out of her.

  They walked down the lane between the tall walls of ripe corn, the beam of the flashlight keeping the Guthries in a globe of dancing yellow.

  Ruger — you are my left hand!

  The memory of those words and that voice came again and he missed a step and almost tripped. All the time he was in the house it had kept echoing in his head.