Better to plead his case to the law now, he thought, than have to explain how he came into the possession of two dead women, should Biker Girl succumb to her injuries. And as he ran through his mind exactly what he was going to say to the officer, the cruiser seemed to speed up. Validating that first impression, the Charger’s front end rose up and he heard the throaty whoosh of the engine gulping fresh air to go with the newly injected fuel.
Duncan waved again and inched further out into the one-and-a-half-lane street. The cruiser was three car lengths away, and if the officer driving saw him, it wasn’t evident. And even more troubling to him was now that the car was close enough to make out the finer details, he saw that bloody handprints, streaked and hard to make out in places, marked up the white fenders and hood from the grill on back.
Once the speeding patrol car drew even with the pick-up’s rear bumper, Duncan bellowed for the officer driving to stop and caught a good look at his face through the open window. The middle-aged cop wore a mask of grim determination. He wagged his head side-to-side as the car slipped by. And as if the motto To Serve and Protect wasn’t part of the Portland Police Bureau seal on the door, the uniformed man mouthed, “Sorry,” and then kept right on rolling—lights off, no siren, and going somewhere with a stealthy purpose.
Chapter 20
“That was awkward,” Charlie said.
Both men watched the Charger’s brake lights flare red and heard a distant tire squeal as the car hooked a hard left down a side street and was lost from sight.
“In hindsight,” Duncan added, “I’m almost glad he didn’t stop. How to explain a dead body in your truck?” he asked himself, rhetorically.
“Not to mention a shotgun on the floorboard. So what are we going to do with the girl?” Charlie asked, a tinge of worry creeping into his voice. “We can’t just leave her here.”
There was a groan of metal as Duncan hauled open the driver’s side crew door.
Charlie watched Duncan lean inside the crew compartment and come out with a red bundle the size of a shaving bag. In the next moment he was instinctively raising his arms to keep from getting beaned by said bundle Duncan had thrown at him with no warning.
Duncan said, “Patch her up and we’ll put her in back.”
Charlie shot Duncan a questioning look. He said, “Then what? You going to drive around with a cadaver in the bed and an unconscious female cyclist belted in the back seat until we come upon an ambulance just cruising the streets? What’s in that truck is already damn near a rolling capital offense, if you ask me.” He moved the bike aside and knelt next to the young woman. Then he unzipped the small first aid kit and started ripping open sterile bandages.
“I figure Tilly ought to go to somewhere that has a morgue. They’ll want to do an autopsy … standard operating procedure,” Duncan said. “I figure while we’re there”—he nodded at the unconscious woman—“we kill two birds and drop her off in their ER.”
Half-expecting the young woman to flinch or maybe even scream out in pain, Charlie dabbed an alcohol swab on the puckered neck wound. The girl groaned, but her eyes remained shut. After patching up the wound to the best of his ability, he called Duncan over and asked, “What are we going to do with the bike?”
Duncan scanned the windows in the nearby houses. Then he looked the prostrate form over. The bandage, though already dappled crimson, looked like it would hold. The cyclist’s aerodynamic garb left little to the imagination. It hugged her gymnast’s body everywhere. It also left no place to secrete a wallet or pocketbook, let alone one thin piece of identification. Finally, he said, “She’s got no driver’s license, and in her condition she can’t give us an address to take the bike. Why don’t you just wheel it up next to the house. That way if we get pulled over it won’t look like we’re covering up a homicide and a hit-and-run.”
As if he was envisioning himself already strapped to the gurney and awaiting the lethal injection, Charlie’s eyes lit up.
“Good call,” he said.
“Help me then.” Duncan took hold of the girl by her ankles.
Charlie wrapped his arms under hers and let her head rest against his sternum.
Duncan started to stand, then paused, still crouched. “Notice that?” he asked, nodding toward Hawthorne and the scene of the accident.
Charlie nodded.
Thankfully the shouting and screaming had abated. However, the raucous wail of sirens coming from what seemed like every point in the compass was now taking their place.
***
Fifteen minutes had elapsed since Duncan had taken the key from under the cacti and entered Tilly’s bungalow. Now the house was sealed up and the key back in its place. The cyclist’s high-dollar bike was stashed next to the house behind a rhododendron and she was belted in the backseat directly behind Charlie.
Duncan fired the motor over and pulled away from the curb. As the truck picked up speed, he moved his gaze from the street ahead to the girl in the back seat and then through the back-sliding glass to the jiggling lump under the yellow sheet. “Hard to believe that lady used to change our diapers.”
“If it wasn’t for Tilly, our mothers would have never met,” Charlie replied, taking a look over his shoulder before going silent.
After travelling two blocks down a street laid out when horse-drawn carriages and two-seat open-topped automobiles were the norm, Duncan hung a left on a cross-street maybe half a car’s width narrower than the previous, the vehicles lining the street crowding his truck’s wide rear fenders.
“I’ll be dipped in shit,” Duncan whispered as he eased off the pedal and edged the pick-up right as far as possible.
Two-thirds of the way down the block, parked at a shallow angle to the left-hand curb, its tail end crowding the road, was the Dodge police cruiser. Its break-down flashers were going, but the roof light bar was dark, suggesting to Duncan this was a personal stop.
Three car length’s from the cruiser, they saw that the trunk lid was hinged up and someone—Officer Unfriendly himself, presumably—had already been loading supplies into the cavernous trunk. There were bottled waters still in the shrink-wrap put on at the plant. Items made of colorful nylon, sleeping bags perhaps, were rolled up and stuffed under the rear package tray. And as the pick-up drew even with the Charger, the same officer, who was now in street clothes—jeans and a tee shirt, despite the unbearable afternoon heat—crossed the sidewalk eyeing the open trunk, a bulging brown grocery bag gripped in each hand.
“Sight of all that food is making me hungry,” Charlie quipped.
In the back seat the cyclist groaned agreeably.
After fielding a prolonged stare from the officer-cum-civilian now sporting a black pistol riding high on his hip, Duncan shifted his attention to what was inside the cruiser. Rising vertical between the seats up front, in place of the ubiquitous pump shotgun, was an AR-style carbine. Its adjustable stock was collapsed and he could see that it was fitted with a boxy optic up top and cylindrical suppressor on the business end of the barrel. The aftermarket stock, optic and front grip on the rifle was what the manufacturers called FDE (Flat Dark Earth), a light tan that stood out in stark contrast to the cruiser’s gloomy interior. Personal weapon, thought Duncan at first sight of it. And high-dollar at that.
“Food, water, weapons,” Charlie added. “Looks to me like someone is getting out of Dodge.”
“I concur,” Duncan answered. “And I think he’s expecting to go to war.”
“Or expecting a war to come to him,” Charlie retorted, casting a nervous glance at their moaning passenger. “Either way I don’t like what I’m seeing.”
Duncan peered into the back seat of the poorly parked cruiser and spied a pig-tailed girl no older than ten staring up at him. Her face was a mask of fear and her pencil-thin fingers had the brushed-metal window bars wrapped in a knuckle-white stranglehold.
“Maybe he’s punched the clock and is borrowing the cruiser for the rest of the weekend.”
; “Negative, Charlie. I have never known a municipality to let a public servant take a city-owned vehicle on a road trip to Wally World,” Duncan said. “Maybe the Water Bureau’d loan a car or pick-up. No chance the PPD would spare a police cruiser … especially with everyone on edge over the Pioneer Square thing.” With the intro to Holiday Road jangling in his head, Duncan wheeled further right and spotted a woman roughly the cop’s age coming out of the two-story Tudor adjacent to the cruiser. Forget the girl, this one’s eyes were wide and her face stretched tight as if she’d just emerged from the gates of Hell. In her arms were not only summer clothes, but also long-sleeved items, parkas, and a couple of fleece blankets. Gripped in her curled fingers, dangling by one threadbare floppy ear, and not much worse for wear than the one from the books of the same name, was the little girl’s Velveteen Rabbit.
Charlie said, “That officer knows something we don’t.”
Duncan added, “Little girl can sense it, too. That one, though … she’s wound tighter than a cheap watch. Leads me to believe he put the girl in the car and briefed the mom on the fly.”
“And now they’re in a race against time to get away from whatever it is.”
“I concur, Sherlock,” Duncan said, wondering what was really behind the hasty retreat.
“What do you make of the bridge lifts and roadblocks on the static spans?”
Traffic was moving left-to-right dead ahead on Hawthorne. Houses and shrubs and parked cars flashed by on both sides. Finally Duncan replied, “The bridges are up because they’re containing something that happened downtown. Something more sinister than a riot resulting from a rally. Did you hear an explosion … like a dirty bomb might make or maybe one of those EMP things everyone is so fearful of?”
Shaking his head, Charlie said, “I heard some gunfire. There was a news chopper hovering near the action. The marchers’ chanting was still filtering down from Broadway when the cabbie stopped to pick me up.”
Face screwed up in thought, Duncan proffered, “Phones are acting up … but the power is still on.” He stroked his mustache and steered one-handed. “That rules out the EMP part, mostly.” He slowed at a stop sign where the road they were on intersected Hawthorne at a right-hand forty-five. After looking both ways, he accelerated briskly and went on, “So I’m inclined to think this is some kind of chemical or biological thing. Sarin, maybe? Ebola? H1N1? Just whispering about any of those things makes people crazy … does it not?”
“I’ve watched a couple episodes of Doomsday Preppers … but I’m no expert on the subject.” Charlie went silent and craned around to look at the girl in the backseat. She was deathly silent, now. Her head lolled left then back again when Duncan sped up and merged in with the faster-moving traffic.
Chapter 21
By the time Duncan had wheeled the pick-up left off of Hawthorne and onto 39th Avenue, a dozen minutes had gone by and the oppressive afternoon heat was taking its toll on him.
“I’m hot as a billy goat in a pepper patch,” he said, dragging a forearm across his brow.
“What’s wrong with the A/C in this thing?”
“Just kicked the bucket this morning. A precursor of things to come, I guess.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “And did they ever.”
In the back seat, their shanghaied passenger was beginning to moan and lean forward, her dead weight straining the shoulder belt to its limits.
Charlie twisted around and saw her eyes jinking rapidly behind lids criss-crossed by bruised and broken capillaries. As he looked on, the jittery movement ceased and the lids opened to thin slits that showed very little pupil.
“I think she has a concussion,” Charlie said. “She hasn’t said a word since we dogpiled on top of her.”
“It’s not your fault,” replied Duncan, flicking his eyes to the rearview. “She was a walking head wound before your inadvertent hockey check. Hell, maybe the old coot hit her with his Taurus, too.” He zippered through traffic, relying on the truck’s intimidating size and beefy bumper and grill guard to convince the slower-moving vehicles into the right lane. The closer they got to the onramp feeding onto Interstate 84 eastbound, the slower the traffic was moving. And just as they were nearing Burnside a pair of desert tan Humvees that had been coming at them in the opposite lane slowed abruptly and turned right off of 39th. However, instead of bulling their way through the slow-moving westbound traffic toward downtown as Duncan guessed they would, brake lights flared and the pair of Humvees came to a dead stop, one broadside to the line of eastbound cars waiting for the light to turn and the other blocking access to both westbound lanes. Then horns were sounding. Long reports full of frustration. In the next beat, eight thick slab-like doors inset with pale green glass opened wide, and soldiers clad in the Army’s newfangled tan and green camouflage uniforms and brandishing M4 rifles clambered out. Moving with precision, the Humvee drivers filled in the gaps between the vehicles they’d just egressed while the dismounts split up and hustled north and south and took up station three to a sidewalk on either side of Northeast Burnside.
“Looks like the perimeter’s being extended,” Duncan said, as vehicles in both lanes, many of them loaded with families and camping gear, came to a complete halt agonizingly close to the intersection.
Cursing the Prius driver ahead of him for not proceeding through the yellow light, Duncan stopped his truck a hair’s breadth from the econobox’s sticker-plastered bumper and slapped his palms on the steering wheel.
The noise of idling engines mixed with excited voices filtering out of open car windows all around.
They sat there unmoving for two stoplight cycles. Finally Duncan craned his head right and sized up the driver behind the wheel of a dirty white Econoline Van in the next lane. The driver was grizzled and gray with sunken cheeks. A navy blue steamer captain’s hat was perched on his head. The writing on the side of his van read Johnson and Sons Fine Joinery and, judging by the man’s gnarled fingers tapping impatiently on the driver’s side A-pillar, he was likely the senior Johnson. With nothing to lose, Duncan sat up straight and said to Charlie, “Ask Mr. Johnson next door if we can cut in when his lane starts moving.”
“The hell, I have to ask?”
“Cause you’re close enough to give him a titty twister,” Duncan answered curtly. “Make like Nike and just do it.”
So Charlie did. He leaned out his open window and, actually addressing the man as “Mister Johnson,” appealed to him to let them over. In return he received a glare. Then the man who answered to Johnson cast his gaze to the Dodge’s box bed and let it linger there for a second.
The left lane started inching forward, so Duncan stayed on the brakes until the cobalt-blue Prius followed suit. Once there was enough room to get some forward momentum, he cut the wheels a hair to the right and eased off the pedal, setting the pick-up rolling slowly forward.
Johnson swung his eyes back to Charlie and said, “What’s under the sheet?”
Keeping his eyes glued to Johnson’s, Charlie locked his jaw and whispered to Duncan through pursed lips, “What do I tell him?”
“Tell him the truth. Or just make some shit up. Whatever it takes to get him to let us in.”
Charlie swallowed hard. Licked his dry lips and lied to the man. “Oh … that? That’s a borrowed CPR doll we’re taking back to the hospital.”
“Creative,” Duncan whispered.
The car directly behind them tooted its horn.
Johnson flicked his eyes to the impatient driver, then back to the young woman buckled in behind Charlie. “And her?” he asked, twirling his silver mustache between thumb and forefinger.
“That’s my niece,” Charlie said. “She had one too many Bloody Marys at brunch.” Another pair of untruths apparently delivered convincingly enough because the man stuck his arm out and waved them forward with a chopping motion like they do in Atlanta during the Braves games.
With no hat to tip, Duncan flashed a thumbs up at the man and squeezed between the Prius and E
conoline without trading paint.
Under the watchful eyes of the newly arrived soldiers, Duncan nosed the oversized pick-up into a right turn and proceeded east on Burnside. A couple of blocks removed from the jam up he released the breath he’d been holding and looked sideways at Charlie. “You’re a good liar.” Lips curling into a smile, he asked, “Where’d you learn to do that?”
“You said make something up. That’s what I did.”
“Yes you did,” replied Duncan as he cast his gaze left and right, taking in the neighborhood he hadn’t passed through in quite some time.
The four-lane wending through tony Laurelhurst was lined by mature oaks, alders, and maples, their branches meeting above the centerline and completely blotting the sun for blocks-long stretches. The homes here were mostly turn-of-the-century Craftsmen or boxy Old-Portland-style homes with large manicured yards, exquisite brickwork, and fine architectural details: dentil molding, rosettes, columns, and ornate stained glass.
The unexpected detour gave Duncan a sobering look at the kind of life he could have been enjoying had he not drank and gambled away a generous six-figure inheritance.
The light was just going red on 47th as they emerged from the residential stretch of Burnside and Duncan slipped the Dodge into the left turn lane. As a pair of ambulances sped across the intersection, jouncing on their springs and getting wobbly on their way north on 47th, he dragged his gaze from their hypnotically flashing lights to the nearby Portland Police Traffic Division building.
ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) Page 11
