“Up Croak, I guess.” I peered into the gathering darkness, trying to assess his plans. “He’s going to cross the city limits if he gets down the other side—”
“Is that a problem?”
“Nah, I’m deputized for the whole county. Little arrangement between the sheriff and me.” As the Mercedes started up Croak Mountain Road, its taillights trailing red in the dark, I reached over to the dash and flipped on the little mini-camcorder. Never knew when that would come in handy.
Just as I cleared the bridge, the car ahead peeled off to the west, leaving me exposed. I let Urich get farther ahead, then followed, up the winding road towards the ridge.
“You don’t think he’s going to go to—to the scene?”
I mentally scanned the next few miles of road. The gorge where Cathy fell was another two miles up the hill, beyond the final climb to the ridge of the mountain, and a mile down on the road heading down the other side. Just inside the city limits. “That would be too incriminating, I think. He’ll probably toss it before that.”
Laura’s face was anxious in the dim green light from the dash. “But if he knows someone’s behind him, a potential witness . . .”
“Don’t worry.” I slowed until he was around the bend, and then I flipped off my headlights. We used to do this, when we were young and stupid—any boy with a car to drive and a girl to impress. Drive the mountain roads in the dark.
And it was pretty dark, for June. There was no moon, and a high cloud cover, and the lights of town were erased with the last turn of the road. But I’d driven this road enough, as a teenager and as an adult, that I knew every bend and turn.
On the right, there was nothing to worry about—just the jagged rock face the road carved out of the mountain. But on the left, I could see through the feathering of brush the sharp slope, rocky and rugged. Only a couple hundred feet here, but another half mile up, and the drop would be five hundred feet.
I felt Laura’s tension as we inched up the darkness. My window was cracked open, and I could smell the mountain laurel in the cool evening air and the musky smell of last year’s leaves. We turned a switchback and there were the taillights ahead, also climbing slower now that the danger was greater. “Can he see us, do you think?” Laura whispered.
“I doubt it. We’re far enough back, and no lights. He had his windows closed, so he can’t hear us either— think we’re okay.”
And then I saw it, the taillights swerving—into the scenic cutout overlooking French Valley to the east. I slowed, almost to a stop, and Laura leaned forward, peering out the windshield. A hundred yards ahead, there was a sudden flash of light—the dome light coming on as the car door opened. He got out of the car, silhouetted in the yellow light and the darkness beyond. I idled to the side of the road, the one against the cliff, heard to the quiet whir of my camcorder, and gave the viewer a little shove in the right direction. I didn’t know how much it would capture, but combined with our eyewitness testimony, it might be enough—
He slammed the door shut and crossed the few feet to the guardrail. He was just a dark form as he stood there looking out over the dark valley, and I thought maybe he was thinking of that other cliff, that other day, on the other side of the mountain. But then his arm rose, and something arched out over the guardrail and into the empty night.
Laura took a sharp breath, and I put a quelling hand on her arm. “Wait,” I said, low and quiet, and she settled, waiting.
I watched him get back into the car, and listened to his engine roar in the hush. “Hang on,” I said. And then I flipped on the lights, hit the siren and beacon, and jammed on the accelerator.
He was quick, I’d give him that. He had the car in gear and out into the road in seconds. But he couldn’t turn back down the mountain, not with me in the way, so he headed up to the ridge. His headlights shot through the darkness, up into the night, deflecting off the trees that lined the gorge. And his red taillights were right ahead of me, swerving to the left at the ridge of the mountain, drawing me on.
I knew this road like I knew the streets of my first beat in Bristol, like I knew the back alleys of Gemtown. And I knew over the ridge, the road stretched out for a hundred yards before heading down the other side, twisting back and forth over the river gorge.
“Do you, uh, have a plan?” Laura asked as we jammed left as the road turned.
“Plan?” I replied, like I’d never heard the word before. The exhilaration filled me and I pushed the accelerator up a notch, closing the distance between us and the car ahead. “Don’t need a plan. I know this road. And he doesn’t.”
She said in a small voice, “Okay.”
“Trust me.”
And in a slightly stronger voice, she said, “Okay,” and she gripped the armrest between us as we veered right, down the other side of the mountain.
“Call in,” I said, past a tight throat. “Tell the dispatcher to notify the sheriff— have some cars waiting over by Ellett—set up a stop.” The last thing I wanted was to take this chase into the little hamlet at the bottom of the mountain.
Laura complied, taking only a few seconds to figure the radio out, and crisply relayed my instructions to the dispatcher. If Toni was surprised to hear Laura on the radio, she didn’t give any indication. She just said, “Tell the chief we’re on it,” and left the channel open.
So we raced down the mountain, my car taking each turn with a squeal of tires that echoed in the hollow. The wind rushed in through the cracked window, and I could hear the night noises, and Laura’s startled laughter as we jammed into a switchback and she was thrown back against the seat.
The taillights slid around a curve. He was trying to outrun me, and he had the advantage of a hundred yards and a German-engineered car—and an empty passenger seat. He could take more risks. He didn’t have much choice. But I had the experience of someone who learned to drive right here—a reckless kid taught by a reckless older brother. I gunned the engine and jammed the brakes, sliding around the turn, and headed down into the darkness of the mountainside.
I just needed to keep him in sight.
But he pulled around the next curve, disappearing except for a flash of lights through the trees. I sped up, gripping the gearshift with my right hand. Then I felt Laura’s hand, hot and tight, on mine.
I pulled free of her, just to grab the steering wheel with both hands, just as we rounded the turn. My tires squealed as the car swerved into the far lane, but I righted the progress and headed down. Urich was ahead of me, taking the corners tighter and more economically in his European car. He was a good driver—I’d give him that much. And a smart one.
What was I going to do if I caught him? He’d fled from a pursuit—a minor crime, but one he could argue away. The hard drive might have some evidence, if we could recover it, but surely not of a long-ago murder. He could get away with it, more smug than ever, having beaten back the challenge.
“Don’t worry,” Laura said beside me, her voice low against the singing of the wind. “We’ll get him.”
All I could focus on then was the hairpin curve ahead. I jammed on the brakes, slewed sideways, and for a second saw the trees ahead and not to the side, and thought we wouldn’t make it. But the tires gripped, and we swung around, and we were after him again.
But he’d pulled too far ahead and I almost lost him. His lights disappeared, and for a second, I couldn’t place him. Then I remembered the old mining road that cut off to the south a half-mile before the bridge. I sped down the last road section, but I couldn’t make the sharp turn he’d made, not without slowing down. Cursing, I came to a stop in the middle of the pavement and backed up, then turned onto the rutted dirt road. I had to be careful here, more careful than he, because I had Laura with me, and she was more important than getting him. I growled as I saw his taillights swerving ahead. The road came out where? The frontage road near Lasted? Or—
“The pit,” Laura whispered, and suddenly I remembered. At the end of this road, a slag dump h
ad, over the decades, filled in with snowmelt and river runoff, and generations of kids had gone skinny-dipping there in the cold dark water, miles from the nearest authority figure. We’d done it ourselves, that summer so long ago. There was the boarded-over mineshaft on the left as the road curved right toward Lasted. But straight ahead, there was the pit, just past a flimsy chain barrier we used to drive under, and a wooden fence—
“Hold on,” I said as I caught sight ahead of the abandoned mine. I turned the lights off again, slowing down and letting my instinct direct my steering. Then the road dipped up, and I saw his taillights just ahead, bouncing up and down as he negotiated the ruts. I flipped on my brights, surprising him, and he accelerated convulsively. He missed the turn to the right and crashed through the chain, and through the fence, and the Mercedes sailed out, and flew twenty feet before crashing into the pit, sending a shockwave of water back towards the shore.
I slammed on the brakes and shoved the shift into park. Then I was out the door, the ground solid beneath my feet. The car, caught in the beam of my headlight, was sinking fast into the pit’s depths. The light glinted off the crushed frame, the broken windows. In a few seconds, the cabin would fill with water.
“Call it in!” I shouted to Laura. Then instinct took over. I kicked off my shoes and was pulling off my shoulder holster when I felt her hands tight on mine.
I pulled free. “I’ve got to go after him.”
She was beside me then. She took hold of my arm again, a firm, gentle grip. “Stop,” she murmured. “Think of your daughter. Think of me. Don’t risk your life for someone like him.”
I hesitated, and the car slipped under the surface, and Laura set my hands free. I stood there staring at the dark water, and listened to her call this in, asking for the sheriff to send a diving team up to the old mining pit.
She was right. He’d called this fate down on himself, and it wasn’t my place to get in the way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I had a nightmare that night, about drowning. Occupational hazard. I woke up, wanting to find Laura beside me—I’d gotten too used to her too quick. But I sat up in the darkness, chilled to the bone, and remembered that she was back with her family.
But the sun had hardly crested the mountains to the east when she arrived at my door. She was dressed simply, for her, in a tank top and shorts, and her eyes were tired. We’d been up late at the old mine, watching while the state police divers searched for the body and finally dragged it to shore. Now I faced a day of questions—an important man had died, after all.
We had to get our story straight, I reminded myself, and headed for the coffeemaker.
“Okay,” I said a few minutes later, when we were settled out on the porch with our coffee and our view of the ski slope. It was a startling green under the motionless ski lifts. “We were driving out that way, and saw a car turn towards the old mine, and I got concerned and followed it.”
“And we got there just in time to see him unwittingly drive into the lake,” Laura finished.
“Right.” It was . . . wrong. Wrong that I was making up this story, however close it was to the facts. This is what criminals did.
But there was too much at stake, and nothing to gain by being too candid.
Laura looked down into her coffee cup. “So does this mean that the whole Internet and murder issues stay . . . under wraps?”
I shook my head. “Depends on what’s on that hard drive. And I’m going out to look for it soon.”
Laura insisted on going along, and watched in silence as I gathered up my rappelling equipment from the back closet.
When we got out to the scenic overlook, I took my time hooking up the harness. It was a cool morning, with mist clinging to the edges of the valley. As I looped the rope around the guardrail, Laura came close. “Be careful,” she said, bending taking hold of the rope just beyond the knot, like she could by brute force keep me from falling.
“Don’t worry. It’s not a sheer drop.”
No, not a sheer drop—just a steep incline, covered with brambles and wind-stunted trees that caught at my boots and snagged at the rope. But I made my way down slowly, watching all the way for some sign of the hard drive. Once I hit the sloping bottom, I unbuckled myself and let the rope dangle as I prowled around, searching the tall grass.
And then I saw a glint of metal in the sun. Maybe just a soda can, tossed from a car— but I crossed the few yards and my hand closed on the flat cool rectangle.
I stuffed it in my shirt, reminding myself that it was probably damaged and useless. And even if it wasn’t corrupted, he would have deleted anything criminal. And yeah, Theo could say all he wanted that nothing could ever be completely deleted, but somehow he wasn’t able to recover the March expense reports that I’d managed to send into the ether last month.
But whatever was on the hard drive scared Urich enough that he wanted it lost forever. And that was reason enough to put my hands back on that rope and make the hard climb back up the ridge.
Laura held the hard drive on her lap all the way back to town. “Do you think—” she started, and then said, “It doesn’t matter, does it? He’s dead.” She gave a small smile. “You should have seen my mother’s face this morning when I told her. She was so . . . triumphant. It was better than any medicine. They’re going to send her home later today.”
“That’s good.” I thought of the tangled skeins of family ties, and said, “What about Theresa? How’d she take it?”
Laura sighed. “She was very quiet. I think all along she’d been hoping—I don’t know. That she’d find her old family, the Prices, and it would feel right, and everything would fit again. But there isn’t anyone really left in that old family, and it wasn’t even her family, as it turns out. And the truth is so terrible.”
“But at least it’s the truth,” I said. I had to make that point. The truth was better than a lie.
Laura said doubtfully, “I suppose. And she’s still got us. More than ever, maybe. And she’s got Brian. And that Mitch Price. He turns out not to be her brother, but at least he’s a connection to the past.”
“What about Ronnie?” I asked. “The other Price boy.”
Laura’s frown of concentration eased as she remembered. “Oh, yeah. Ronnie. I think he’s dead. She didn’t say specifically, only that all the Prices except Mitch were gone.”
I spared a thought for that broken boy I’d known so long ago. I could have gone that way, I knew, graduated from reform school to jail to death. But something along the way diverted me, gave me hope for something better.
As we crossed the bridge back into town, I glanced over at Laura. “So what’s next?”
She knew what I meant, but pretended she didn’t. She wanted me to speak the words, I realized. All she said was, “I guess it depends on what’s on this hard drive.”
“Yeah.” I took the long way around to the courthouse square, but it wasn’t till I was pulling into my reserved slot that I could speak with the appropriate casualness. “So when are you headed out?”
She kept her gaze down on the gray metal of the hard drive. “I don’t know. I need to get Mother settled. She’ll need a nurse’s aide, I’m sure. But—” Her mouth quirked in a wry smile. “I left a hundred thousand dollar remodeling job in the Hamptons, so I probably ought to get back there.”
“And renew acquaintances with your architect.” I couldn’t help myself. I had to say it.
She gave me a quick glance as we got out of the car, but all she said was, “I probably ought to make sure that he didn’t run off with all my money. Or put a fountain in my living room.”
She was waiting for me to say something. I was waiting for her to say something.
We stood on the sidewalk in front of the police building. Then she handed me the hard drive and said, “I’ll just walk home and check on everything. Let me know if you find anything interesting there.”
She headed down the sidewalk. And it was all still unspoken, whatever it
was between us.
But then, just as I turned to go in, she came back. In front of all the interested citizens there in the courthouse square, she threw her arms around me and whispered fiercely, “He ran. It was his own fault. Not yours. You just tried to stop him.”
“Yeah,” I said, and kissed her. No need, I supposed, to discuss that high-speed chase, the adrenaline rush of danger, the triumph—we both understood. That was our secret.
That was why she wanted me, after all. And why, probably, I wanted her.
I looked up the steps to find the interested regard of two young officers. “Don’t you have streets to patrol?” I said, and pushed past them into the building.
When I arrived at the Wakefield house that afternoon, the front drive was full of cars. I recognized Tom O’Connor’s black jeep next to his wife’s Audi. I’d been married long enough to read the cards there— he’d gotten tired of waiting for Ellen to give in, so he figured he’d better come back and give in himself. Women, even the most congenial ones, could be a lot more stubborn than any man, and the sooner a guy learned that, the better.
Next to the jeep was the kid’s beat up sedan, and beyond that a nondescript Ford with rental plates. I pulled in beside Laura’s Porsche, and got out, carrying the manila folder.
In the front parlor, Mrs. Wakefield was sitting straight up on the couch. She looked fragile and pale, but that was apparently no excuse for slouching or for putting her feet up on the coffee table. Her youngest daughter—or her granddaughter, I supposed—was in the armchair next to her. They didn’t seem comfortable together. Too much to adjust to too quickly.
“Mrs. Wakefield,” I said. “Maybe we could get everyone together.”
Theresa left to gather the others, and Mrs. Wakefield gave me with a sharp glance. ‘You handled this very efficiently.”
I assumed she meant that as a compliment. “Thanks. It would have been simpler if—” No use finishing that sentence. Mrs. Wakefield wasn’t going to learn any lesson from me. She thought things had turned out well. “How’s Theresa taking it?”
The year She Fell Page 43
