Nightzone (27 page)

The damn fool who was Miles Waddell's companion at the moment whispered back, “I just want to check. You should wait in the truck.” I didn't smell the lingering aroma of a campfire, or the dense tang of burning diesel if someone had fired up Finnegan's old heater in the Quonset. I didn't smell aftershave or deodorant or sweat or marijuana. No one snored, no one coughed, no one sniffled. I reached around and turned the volume of my radio all the way down. “Turn off your phone,” I whispered. He wasn't headed for the truck, even though he wanted to be.

The front of the Quonset was a hundred feet ahead and I stayed away from the tracks that led directly to it. Miles crept along immediately behind me.

In front of the door, I could see a haze of what must have been a cluster of shoeprints—I didn't turn on the big flashlight again, but for now the moon was enough. I felt down the right side of the door frame and found a large hasp swinging free, its padlock hanging loose. I stood quietly, sorting through memory files. The last time I'd been at the Finnegans' was more than five years ago. I'd driven by a couple of times since then, but never stopped. I had no idea whether the door had been open then, ajar, closed, or locked.

Making my way toward the corner, I saw that the man-door was a third of the way down the Quonset's forty-foot length. I was about to take a step when it opened.

Chapter Thirty-three

A dark figure appeared, vaguely tent-shaped, and stopped half in and half out of the Quonset. “I don't need a flashlight,” she said to someone still inside. “The moon's perfect.” It
was
perfect, and if she turned a bit, she'd see me. She didn't turn, though. Confident in her solitude, she stepped carefully away from the Quonset, angling toward a fat old juniper that had been trimmed up by cattle to look like a giant lollipop. I could see that she wore a blanket draped over her shoulders. Her legs were bare and white, but she'd shoved her feet into a pair of something. Perfect mid-winter attire. As she padded away, Miles and I faded back, around the corner.

“So,” I whispered. They, whoever “they” were, apparently hadn't heard my SUV. Ah, young love. I pondered some options. Charlotte and Dick Finnegan had never had children, so this wasn't a case of kids or grandkids visiting the old homestead. Hunters, maybe, except nothing was currently in season. I could think of a host of places more romantic than sleeping in the musty old building, half full as it must be of the junk that Dick Finnegan had considered his treasure. The tracks had set my imagination in gear, though. Heavy, deep tracks for the electric company's utility truck. Motorcycle tracks for Elliot Daniel's getaway bike. And the light car tracks? Certainly for the girl. I was hooked.

I heard a low grunt behind me—Miles Waddell shifting position, trying to come to terms with the spot in which I'd put him. But at this point, I was simply incapable of pussyfooting backward, slipping away into the darkness without disturbing the nighttime peeper or her companion inside. My companion was right—I
should
have pussyfooted backward and used my phone to call for backup. The reason I didn't do that was one part curiosity and one part timing. Deputy Pasquale, lead-foot that he might be, was still half an hour away at best. That seemed like an eternity.

The dark shadow that was the relieved girl made her way back to the Quonset's people door. No flash of light escaped when she ducked inside, and the door closed with a squeaky clunk. I didn't hear the additional rattle of a deadbolt or hasp.

I had taken a step forward when a strong hand settled on my shoulder.

“Don't,” Waddell whispered, “you don't know what you've got.”

I don't know why that jerked me to a stop. He was right. I
didn't
know what I had inside the big Quonset. The struggle between the two alternatives was much like the cartoon showing a small devil on one shoulder, an angel on the other. The angel knew my weak spot, dredging up videos of me lecturing rookie deputies: “There is no such thing as a
routine
traffic stop. We don't need heroes—we need good, solid arrests. Take time to
think.
At the end of the shift, what we want the most is to go home to our families.
”

And on and on as I squirmed under the decision. If Elliot Daniel was inside, he was armed. He was a killer, and would not hesitate to do so again. Whether or not the girl was an innocent party, who knew…except if innocent, she picked damn odd times and places to play nookey.

I turned and nodded at Miles, and his relief was palpable. Stepping with the utmost care, we made our way back to the SUV. When we opened the doors, the dome light didn't come on—I'd fixed that little nuisance the day after the truck left the showroom floor. We were parked seventy-five yards from the Quonset, partially behind two dead elm saplings and a mound of creosote brush. The Quonset's door was closed. With exaggerated care, we pulled the SUV's doors shut, the faintest of clicks.

While Miles Waddell worked his way through the world's largest sigh, I was finding the auto-dial on my phone. Ernie Wheeler answered on the second ring, and I cut off his greeting.

“Ernie, this is Bill Gastner. What's Pasquale's twenty?”

“Just a second, sir.”

A
second?
I didn't have a second. Maybe he hadn't clearly heard my low, gruff near-whisper.

“Where are you?” This time it was Sheriff Robert Torrez, and he sounded impatient.

“We're parked at Dick Finnegan's. There's a party going on inside his old Quonset. One truck, one motorcycle, probably one compact car. At least two occupants, one of them a girl. A young woman.”

Torrez made the connection instantly. “You got someone with you?”

“Miles Waddell.”

“You're in your vehicle at the moment?”

“Yes. We parked under some trees just beyond the house and driveway.”

“Stay there, then.”

“Your best approach is right up forty-three,” I said, and the sheriff didn't bark that he
knew
what the best approach was.

“I'm headin' up that way. Pasquale will be westbound on Seventeen in just a minute. Wallace is just comin' off the interstate and he'll be right behind me.”

“We'll wait.”

“Damn straight, you'll wait,” the sheriff said. “Sit quiet. And don't go shootin' anybody else.”

Anybody else.
Funny man, that sheriff. He disconnected before I could think of an appropriate response. Waddell watched as I reached down and made sure the radio was off.

“Put your cell on vibrate.” I glanced over at Waddell. “Feeling better?”

“Much.”

“Bobby is coming up, with Drew Wallace right behind him. Pasquale is headed our way on the state highway. So we're all set.”

“Wallace is one of the state cops?”

I nodded. “So much for his quiet night on the interstate.”

“Quiet nights are a good thing,” Waddell said. “Hey…” He pointed. Sure enough, a sliver of light shone out past the big rolling door. I pressed the button on my watch and saw one a.m. coming up.

I thumbed my phone. “Ernie,” I said when dispatch picked up, “we have some lights on in the building now. I don't know what's up.”

“Ten four, sir. Everyone is underway.”

“We'll hang tight.” The clock slowed, each second taking a full minute. Just a few of them had dragged by when the girl appeared from the side door. Too dark for details, I still could recognize that lithesome shape as she walked purposefully to the big door and leaned against it, driving hard with her shoes kicking rocks as she pushed. The door rolled smoothly enough, with a minor symphony of squeaks, groans, and deep roller rumblings.

With a smooth roar of diesel power, the Posadas Electric Cooperative one-ton utility truck appeared, its front end looking more massive in the darkness than Ford Motor Company intended. It wasn't until the truck had covered fifty yards toward us that I could see enough of the crude modification. Thanks to Richard Finnegan's vast estate of junk, eight feet of railroad tie was lashed to the heavy front bumper, spanning the width of the truck, a black mustache of creosote-soaked oak. I didn't have a lot of time to admire the handiwork.

I caught a glimpse of the girl scampering back into the barn, and then the truck was on us. The driver knew exactly what he intended, and executed with precision. He drove directly into the right front fender of my SUV, the blow crashing us sideways across the narrow lane. Tissue paper-thin metal crumpled hard against the tire, and Miles Waddell's head cracked against the passenger window.

Wasting not a second, the truck backed away, and I could see the railroad tie in the bounce of lights.

“You son-of-a-bitch!” I roared, and yanked my door open. But by the time I was clear, the power company's truck had spun around and was raising clouds of dust, running up through the gears. I yanked out my revolver, steadied it against the door frame, and pulled off five shots, accomplishing nothing more than punching holes in the darkness. The fifth round hadn't finished ringing in my ears before a goddamn Prius bolted out of the Quonset, moving faster than I thought possible. She didn't crash into me. Instead, she followed the truck, dust cloud tiny and defiant.

“Shit,” I said. The shotgun was lying on the floor of my SUV, no good to me now.

I raced around the front of the SUV and looked at the bashed headlight, fender, and bumper. “Miles, give me a hand!” We pulled and strained, and finally, with the help of a length of one-inch pipe that once had been part of the front step handrail into the Finnegans' house, yanked crushed metal away from the tire.

As we remounted and accelerated away, the SUV didn't feel just right. I hadn't seen bash marks on the wheel itself, but it felt as if the crash had treated me to an alignment job.

Fighting the wheel with one hand, I snapped on the radio and fumbled the mike. “Three oh eight, you've got a white power company truck and a silver Prius headed your way. They just bolted.”

“Ten four.” Mr. Excitement.

“I shot at the truck five times after he bashed into me.”

“You okay?”

“Yep. Miles has a sore head where he cracked the window.”

“You up and running?”

“After a fashion.”

“Ten four. Stay well back.”

“You bet. Oh…he's lashed a railroad tie to the front. Makes an effective ram.”

“Ten four.”

Elliot Daniel…that's who I assumed drove the battering ram…didn't remain on County 43 for long. The road swept through a series of graceful curves and then forked, the right path a ranch road that led west past a series of stock tanks and windmills on its way along the north side of Cat Mesa. The truck's dust trail headed that way, but the Prius swerved east to stay on the wider, smoother county road toward town.

“Bobby, they've split. The Prius is headed right at you. She's just coming up the back side now.”

“Ten four.”

The truck's billowing clouds caught the moonshine and looked picturesque, if art had been on our minds.

Every time my SUV jounced, the steering wheel juddered, followed by an odd noise like someone's sacroiliac being thrown out.

“They're headed toward Forest Road 26,” I radioed to whoever cared to listen. Like so many interesting, out-of-the-way places, the old down-east expression applied: “You can't get there from here.” But Daniel had been well coached.

“He can link with County 14 up here.” I had the uneasy feeling that the vehicle I'd seen from the chopper the day before had been the son-of-a-bitch practicing. Waddell had one hand braced on the grip above the door, the other clutching the center console as I took a sweeping corner much too fast, broad sliding the Durango and confusing the hell out of all its fancy computer systems that were designed to discourage just that sort of aberrant behavior.

Up ahead, the fleeing white shadow had slowed. “He's taking it carefully,” I said. “That's not a good sign.”

“Why not?” Miles said. “I'll accept slow.” We were rocketing as fast as I dared, and the SUV's flabby and pranged suspension was protesting.

“Because. Careful means that he's not panicked. Careful means that he knows where the hell he's going, and he thinks that he's got time to get there. He didn't have time to tie on that railroad tie just now. He had it all prepared. That means he's got plans.” The narrow dirt lane swept left around a massive outcropping of limestone, wound through a little spread of black lava, and then started to curve uphill, skirting the western end of Cat Mesa. I knew that our single headlight was no longer visible in Daniel's rearview mirror, and I accelerated, hoping to gain ground.

“He's going to smash my gate,” Miles said matter-of-factly.

“For what? There's nothing up there.” I counted on his dust plume to lead the way, and I lifted my foot a little as I crested a sharp rise. Even slowed, I could not stop in time. The big white utility truck blocked the narrow road, turned around so that the massive front fortress of railroad tie gave me a hell of a good target. He'd picked his spot well. With rocks on both sides, I had no where to go. The ABS breaking system shrieked, groaned and shuddered as my Durango slid straight into the truck. By the time we made contact, we were moving less than fifteen miles an hour, but the impact was still enough to jar the teeth and crumple more metal. My air bags didn't think it was serious enough, and stayed quiet.

I didn't have time to pull the SUV into reverse before a dark figure appeared near my door. “Hand me the keys,” the soft voice waivered. Even scared as he obviously was, Elliot Daniel was a resourceful little creep. He stepped from the deepest shadows into a bit of moonlight, a large handgun pointed at my ear. He moved half a step away from my door and transferred his aim to Miles Waddell. “If you do anything foolish, I'll shoot him. Then you. But him first.”

“What the hell do you want?”

“I already told you. Hand me the keys.”

I eyed the gear selector. I could jam it into reverse and hope that something mechanical up front remained operable. But all of that took a hell of a lot longer than a simple pull of the trigger.

He snicked back the hammer of the double-action automatic. “Just do it. This is no time to think about bein' a hero.”

He was right in that. Moving like molasses, I switched off the idling SUV and pulled out the fat plastic dingus that was the modern replacement for an old-fashioned ignition key.

“Drop it on the floor.”

Far, far in the distance, I heard a police siren. The gal in the Prius had finished her end run. If the sheriff's department couldn't catch a damn hybrid, then they might as well hang up their badges. If Daniel heard the distant wail, he gave no sign.