The elderly motorists motorized slowly down the lane. Louise-Marie turned to beam encouragement at her reluctant pupil. “You see how easy it is? And it’s never too late to learn.”
As it happened, they were approaching Too Late Creek.
At the very instant the front tires rumbled onto the bridge, the hound licked Louise-Marie on her right ear.
The startled lady squealed. “Haaa-eee!”
The Olds responded to a vigorous twist of the steering wheel, sideswiped the sturdy pine railing.
Daisy grabbed for something to hold on to, prayed to God to save her from a plunge into the cold waters.
They passed over the bridge with nothing more than another dent on the fender.
On the other side, the driver chuckled. “That dog sure did surprise me.” Almost as much as in the fifth grade, when Elmer Hooper kissed me in the cloakroom. I wonder whatever happened to Elmer after he went off to barber school—
Daisy slapped her hand on the dashboard. “Stop the car!”
Louise-Marie pushed the brake thingy to the floor. “What?”
“Get out.”
“But why—”
The Ute woman was already scooting across the seat. “Because from here on out, I am doing the driving.”
Earlier, when Louise-Marie LaForte had passed by the foreman’s residence on her way to the Columbine headquarters, Dolly Bushman had been running the noisy vacuum cleaner. This being the case, the foreman’s wife was unaware that Daisy had a visitor. The worn carpet was moderately clean now, and Dolly had other chores on her mind. For the last few minutes, she had been stalking a hyperactive fly. Now it was on the window screen. Got you this time, you nasty little fiend…now hold still while I lower the boom. She was about to swat the grown-up maggot into oblivion when she noticed something coming down the lane from the Too Late bridge. The black car was going so slowly that she was certain it was going to stop. Who in the world could that be? For the moment, she forgot about the pesky insect. Though the Oldsmobile was moving in an odd, jerking fashion—as if it might expire on the spot—it did not stop. Dolly watched as the vehicle lurched uncertainly by her house. Well I declare, I must be seeing things…that looks like Charlie’s aunt at the wheel. Oh, Lord—what is she up to now? The practical woman made an instant decision. Well, whatever’s going on, I don’t want to know anything about it. She closed her eyes.
The fly executed a tight figure eight, came to sit on the swatter. Then on her nose.
28
Soul Mates
Though the captain of the hijacked Oldsmobile was beginning to regret having yielded her ship to this mutinous old pirate, Louise-Marie LaForte remained outwardly placid. From time to time, she offered helpful words of encouragement. “For someone who’s never drove a car before, you are doing fairly well.” When the lurching of the vehicle began to make her feel nauseous, she offered thoughtful instructions. “It isn’t actually necessary to pump the gas up and down to get the fuel to the motor. Just try and hold it steady.”
By the time they were approaching the highway end of the miles-long ranch lane, Daisy’s confidence was increasing. I think I’m getting the hang of the thing. The speedometer indicated that she was going slightly in excess of twenty miles per hour. The intersection with the paved road was coming up fast. She turned her head to look at the white woman’s patched eye. “Now tell me again, how do you slow this thing down?”
Louise-Marie shrieked: “Look out!”
The driver turned her face back to the windshield, discovered that the sneaky machine had decided to head off in another direction. Directly in front of the hood was something like a tree. Only it wasn’t. It was one of the massive redwood beams that supported the arch over the Columbine entrance. Instinctively, Daisy jerked the wheel. Her instincts were not well seasoned. She had jerked it the wrong way. As they plowed through a fence, two strands of barbed wire scraped over the hood, up the windshield, over the roof. The old car bumped along, dived into a shallow ditch, surfaced on the other side.
Her jaw set like stone, Daisy held on to the steering wheel. Closed her eyes.
Louise-Marie was screaming something about Judgment Day and Lord Have Mercy.
Having never enjoyed such sport, the hound was howling a joyful note.
When Daisy opened her eyes, she was astonished to see the blacktop highway stretching out in front of her. A sign on the shoulder informed passersby that Granite Creek was sixty-two miles away. Well, that wasn’t so bad. And it sounds like the motor’s still going. She pressed her foot on the accelerator. The car gave a wheezy cough, started moving.
The French-Canadian woman had collapsed on the seat. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, oh. What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Daisy snapped. “I just took a shortcut.” What a prissy old sissy.
Louise-Marie raised herself, opened the eye that was not patched. “Oh, look—my poor hood is all scratched!”
“Don’t worry about it,” Daisy piped back. “When we get to town, I’ll buy you a brush and some paint. Red, maybe.” Daisy imagined Louise-Marie painting the old black car red. Red like a woodpecker’s head. Daisy sang the words out loud. “Red like a woodpecker’s head—red like a woodpecker’s head—la la la!”
Louise-Marie turned her head a full ninety degrees, fixed an uneasy stare on the driver. It has finally happened—she has completely lost her mind.
Daisy began to cackle. Life in this tired old world was what you made it. Go by the recipe they gave you, it could turn out to be pretty flat. But add enough salt and pepper…This is going to be a fine day.
Though Daisy was not aware of it, not so far down the road a kindred spirit waited.
If she had known about this other soul (whose name rhymed with “Rocks”) she might have put the Oldsmobile in R and backed up all the way back to the Columbine. What she did know was that the road was smooth and long and straight. It called to her. Roll on, Mamma. Daisy rolled. Not too slow. Not too fast. But as the bald tires sang a siren’s whining song on the blacktop, the Detroit City automobile put the miles behind it.
As they were approaching the outskirts of Granite Creek, Louise-Marie opened her mouth to speak. “Daisy, dear—I think you’d better pull over. I need a few minutes to do something.”
The driver was in no mood to slow down, much less stop. “Whatever it is can wait till we get there.”
“Get where?”
Daisy loved a mystery. “Where we’re going.”
“I can’t wait that long.”
“You got to pee?”
“No. My sugar’s going up.”
She is more trouble than a sack full of skunks. “How do you know that?”
“I just know.” There were the usual signs. Louise-Marie had a slight headache; little green-and-yellow spots floated in front of her eye. She assumed a forceful tone. “Now you pull over and stop, so I can give myself a shot.”
The Cops
On the very best day of their lives, Officers Eddie “Rocks” Knox and E. C. “Piggy” Slocum were not among Granite Creek’s finest. As they motored along in the GCPD black-and-white, they were not even close to the median.
Though fearless to a fault, Knox had no sense of balance. He was, in a word, reckless. In another word, dangerous.
Slocum was a sweet, guileless man who would go out of his way to help an elderly lady cross a busy street. Whether she wanted to go or not. He did not even slightly resemble the hard-eyed heroic type. It was as if he had absorbed all of the fear that would not stick to Knox.
Together, they did not compensate for each other’s shortcomings. Combined, they were a menace of misguided energies and misconceptions. Chief of Police Scott Parris was well aware of this pair of personnel problems. More than once, he had placed Knox with a sensible partner who (it was fervently hoped) would keep him out of trouble, and Slocum with an officer who had plenty of common sense. It never worked out. No one could work with either of them longer than a few days. And so t
he misfits were destined to ride in the same unit.
It was Piggy’s day to drive, his partner’s duty to procure necessary refreshment. Knox had visited the Mountain Man Bar and Grille to purchase half a dozen Lead Life Savers, which was what the manager of that establishment had dubbed the one-pound, deep-fried, sugar-encrusted doughnuts. These tasty pastries were a favorite of cops, long-haul truckers, and backsliding dieters who were determined to commit caloricide. Having just returned from this errand, Knox was opening the passenger door of Unit 144 when he saw the classic automobile pass by. He slipped inside, dropped the bag of delectables on the floor, pointed. “Follow that car.”
Piggy’s little eyes were focused on the greasy doughnut bag. “Why?”
“Don’t why me, Pig—just get after that old heap.” Knox fastened his shoulder strap. “But you can take it from me, those are bad guys.”
The driver countered in a petulant whine. “First, can I have me a doughnut?”
Knox hated whiners. Especially chubby whiners. “The city’s work comes before your belly.”
Though he considered this a totally absurd thing to say, Piggy pulled 144 out onto the highway.
“Look,” Knox muttered, “it’s already slowing down. They’ve spotted our black-and-white. I told you these was bad guys.”
The doughnut-deprived cop hoped not. He hated confrontations. Especially with motorists who were likely to be armed. Such folk were not afraid of you, might even be spoiling for a fight. “You want me to switch on the emergency lights?”
“Negative on that.” Knox had a demented glint in his eye. “We don’t want to spook ’em. Just stay back fifty yards or so.”
Piggy’s face twisted with concentration. “How much is that in car lengths?”
Why do I have to spend five days a week with a dimwit? “Half a football field.”
“Oh, right.” He slowed. “Hey, look, Eddie—I think it’s going to stop.”
Knox did his lopsided C. Eastwood grin. “Close in a little bit.”
Piggy moved in on the Olds, squinted at the suspect vehicle. “Eddie, that looks like a Messican plate to me.”
“Hah—what’d I tell you. It’ll be some Juarez dope pushers.”
The driver did not like the sound of this. “It might just be some tourists—”
“Tourists my ankle bone—you watch what happens when I call in the plate.” Eddie Knox thumbed the microphone button, forwarded the alphanumeric information to dispatch.
Dispatch keyed the data into a Sun Microsystems terminal, clicked Retrieve with the optical mouse. The response flashed on the screen in four seconds flat. The FBI data bank—which contained every current license-plate number in the Western Hemisphere and most of Europe—had no such plate listed. Not in Mexico. Not in Lithuania.
Knox grinned at his partner. “What’d I tell you?”
“Golly, Eddie. I don’t see how anybody could have a plate that wasn’t on the computer.”
“Well, it’s clear enough to me—these slickers made that plate themselves. Which proves they are outlaws of one kind or another.” He unholstered his service revolver, checked the cylinder, snapped it shut again. “This could be something big, Pig. Maybe they’re not Mexicans at all. Could be a crew of rag-head terrorists that slipped over the border into El Paso. Or Chinese spies scoping out our air-force base. Or a Colombian drug kingpin and his armed-to-the-teeth driver.” Knox preferred the latter. Drug dealers were what floated on sewage. Either way, the end of the thing was likely to be a bloody shootout. He echoed Daisy Perika’s sentiment. This is going to be a fine day.
Piggy was gripping the wheel with white knuckles. “Listen, I think we should—”
“This is no time for thinking.” There was a flinty edge to Eddie Knox’s voice, a flat rattlesnake look on his face. “This is a time for action.”
The driver gulped. “What should we tell dispatch?”
“Forget dispatch, Pig. We can handle this business all by ourselves.” Knox switched off the communications console.
29
Close Encounter of the Worst Kind
Daisy Perika pulled the Oldsmobile off the pavement, onto a graveled space in front of the Ford dealership. “Where is that brake thing you step on?”
Louise-Marie LaForte’s head was pounding now. “It’s right to the left of the gas thingy.”
Daisy frowned at the floorboard. Right to the left? But she found it. Put her foot on it. The car came to a halt.
“Now put the gear gizmo in P, which is for Pause.”
“Put what gizmo where for what?”
Louise-Marie was searching her purse for medical supplies. “The lever with the little white knob on it—push it up from D to P.”
Daisy did this. That wasn’t hard. I should’ve learned to drive years ago. She rested her hands on the steering wheel. I could save up part of my Social Security. Why, in no time flat, I could buy my own car and—
There was a sudden tapping on the window.
Startled, Daisy turned her head to look.
A big, ugly face looked back at her. A policeman’s face. He made a rotating motion with his finger.
What does he want?
She heard his bullfrog voice through the glass. “Roll the window down.”
This was an automobile without buttons to push. It actually had a roll-down window. Daisy found the handle, performed the operation flawlessly.
The cop gave them the eye, felt a pang of disappointment. Just a couple of old biddies. But there was something funny about that Mexican license plate. He grinned at the dark-skinned woman. I wonder if she speaks any American. “Good day, señora. Could I have a look at your driver’s license?”
Hardly knowing what to say in a situation of this kind, the driver did not respond.
She probably don’t talk nothing but Mexican. The better to bridge the language gap, he shouted in her ear: “I need to see your operator’s license!”
Daisy jumped. “Don’t you yell at me.”
She sounds more like an Indian than a Mexican. Knox lowered his voice to its normal stone-shattering level. “Your driver’s license, please.”
Fast thinking under stress was the Ute elder’s specialty. “I am a citizen of a sovereign Native American nation—I don’t need to show you my license.” One fabrication led to another. “Just last year, our ambassador to Washington, D.C., worked out a deal with the President of the United States; none of us Indians has to worry with things like driver’s licenses or paying taxes or doing jury duty.”
The old babe has brass, you gotta give her that. Knox’s mouth split in a happy grin. “Soon as I have a spare minute, I’ll check with the White House. But for right now, I’ll have to ask you to shut off the engine and give me your ignition key. And then you’ll have to get out of the vehicle, ma’am.”
Daisy clenched the steering wheel. “No.”
The tough cop was not used to hearing this obnoxious word. He repeated it. “No?”
Daisy’s mind was racing for an excuse. “I don’t have to take no orders from you—I have diplomatic immunity.”
Knox laughed. Wait till the boys back at the station hear about this.
The member of the sovereign Indian nation did not like being made sport of. Daisy had swallowed that dose which is widely known as “just about enough.”
Maybe I can talk some sense to the passenger. The better to see inside the car, the lawman lowered his head.
Because the police officer had approached on her blind side, Louise-Marie had not seen him coming. Though vaguely aware of the presence of the public servant, the diabetic had more urgent business to attend to. She was busy injecting her arm with insulin.
The grin slipped down to his chin, then fell right off Knox’s face. I don’t believe this. His tone was stern. “Shut off that engine now. And I want both of you old hens outta the car.”
There was another bark—this one from the rear seat.
The policeman was momentarily distracted b
y the hound’s toothy muzzle, which appeared over the driver’s left shoulder. It was as if the old woman had magically sprouted a second head.
Knox’s right hand instinctively went for his sidearm.
Daisy’s right hand went for the gear-stick gizmo with the little white knob on the end. She pulled it down to D for Depart, stepped on the gas thingy.
There was a hail of gravel behind the Olds, an angry shriek from the cop.
Louise-Marie still had the needle in her arm. “Daisy—I’m not done yet. What are you doing?”
Having given the rearview mirror a glance and seen the matukach doing a one-legged dance, the Ute elder set her face toward the Shining Mountains. “I’m leaving my troubles behind.”
Piggy Slocum watched his partner hip-hop away from the suspect vehicle. The bad guys have run over Knox’s foot—and they are making a run for it! He switched on the emergency lights, toggled the siren switch, pulled forward to get his injured partner.
Knox, still bopping around on his good foot, waved him on. “Don’t let ’em get away, Pig! Go—go—go!”
Daisy Perika heard the siren wail. It was loud and getting louder. She could see the red and blue lights in the mirror. Under different circumstances, she might have pulled over and stopped. But the Ute elder was furious with the ugly matukach cop who had laughed in her face, and she assumed he was driving the police car.
Piggy swerved across the center line. His intention was to pull up beside the fleeing bad guys, let them know what a hopeless spot they were in. He prayed they were not armed.
Daisy saw the police car coming up fast on her left. Over the years, she had watched her share of chase-scenes on the television screen. If the cop tried to force her off the road, why two could play at that game! Once he gets up beside me, I’ll just give the steering wheel a quick yank, run him right into the ditch.
Shadow Man Page 18
