No Immunity (20 page)

T
HE
C
HEVY WAS NEWER
, bigger, and Connie knew where she was going. Kiernan pressed on the gas and narrowed the distance between them. She was off First Street in a dark land of small buildings set far back on lots. Connie picked up speed; her taillights were dots in the distance. Kiernan stepped harder on the gas. The truck sounded like a mariachi band. She thought of the auto club warnings about driving into the desert. Know your route. Did she even have a route? Have adequate food and water. Not. Have your vehicle checked by a mechanic before embarking on the trip. Ha! She didn’t even have a full tank of gas. But Connie was her only lead.

Suddenly the taillights were gone. In front was blackness. She was heading into a wall of dirt. A hillside grew out of nowhere. The street evaporated. She spotted tail-lights up the hill to her right before she made out the narrow corkscrewing road. Pulling the wheel hard, she took the hill in third gear. The old truck sputtered. She jammed in the clutch and slammed the gear stick back and to the left till it found its niche and the engine took a thankful breath and pulled itself uphill. Connie’s taillights flashed and were gone as she whipped around curves she had probably known since childhood. The black of the night was blacker here, devoid of even lamp glow muted by curtains. Sand and scrub pine walled in the winding road.

The engine coughed. Kiernan shifted the truck to first gear. Christ, she might as well be walking. She had to keep Connie in view. Connie’d know someone was following. In such a small town, could she recognize her friends’ trucks from their headlights? Probably some, and one as old and battered as this would be a good candidate for uneven lights. Without slowing, she leaned into a curve and then pressed harder on the gas. If she ever needed her own fine Jeep from home, this was the time.

The road leveled off, dipped, and climbed again. Surprisingly the taillights were larger. Connie hadn’t whipped through the curves like a teenaged boy. Lucky thing—unless the sheriff had spotted two sets of taillights. There was not one side road. And the road itself was getting narrower. Even if Fox was on Route 93, he would be back soon and then he’d be eyeing alternate roads. Was this one of many options leaving Gattozzi, or the only road out of town?

She crested a hill, and a sudden swatch of moonlight showed a road to the left, angling up a higher peak, then down. Connie’s taillights blinked in and out of her range of vision. Depressions could have been turnoffs, but Kiernan couldn’t spare her gaze from the taillights ahead to check. She didn’t know how long she’d been driving when the lights disappeared altogether. She floored the gas; the truck bounced and shrieked into a curve. She swung her gaze from it to the road ahead, desperately searching for the red lights.

Connie had turned. Kiernan followed before she realized the road was gravel. The truck rattled so loudly, she couldn’t tell if the engine was coughing. Irritably she slowed the truck, checking for four-wheel drive, finding none. Pebbles spit at the sides. She was hanging on as much as steering. To her right, pine trees not much taller than the cab grew close to the road. To her left she could see the outlines of small, rough-looking plants, the type that would spike you if you fell on them.

Maybe Jeff was hiding out back here. “If I get ahold of him,” Kiernan muttered. The man wasn’t just a liar. What he’d done made no sense. Why was he so desperate to cover up the woman’s death? Why not just bury her?

A gust of wind sent the truck half off the road. Kiernan braced her elbows against her chest and held steady.

Jeff had called her here. Connie had gotten her out. And Fox? No question why the locals were edgy around Fox. But what had encouraged the man to this desolate area? There was beauty here, all right, and the wild openness appealed to Kiernan. But Fox was not the kind of guy to choose a small town like Gattozzi. Fox, Jeff Tremaine, Connie, and the dead woman—what had drawn them together?

The road shifted back and forth, never cutting through a hummock if there was the possibility of a wide loop around it. Connie’s lights were blinked by the land. If she had a homestead ahead, no building was visible. There was no turning back, no possible place to turn. It was like driving into a sock. She crested a summit. Wind broadsided the truck. She wedged her hands harder on the wheel—would a little regular auto maintenance have killed Jesse?

Irrationally she had expected something at the summit—what? The Top of the Mark, with maybe a revolving bar?—but the road was the mirror image of what she’d just traversed, now headed down. Trees clumped closer to the road, the surface smoothed out, and as if she realized Kiernan had hit the good road, Connie shot ahead.

Feeling back in her own element for the first time today, Kiernan pressed on the gas pedal. The old truck lurched forward, gasping for a moment until the wheels caught up with the engine.

A clearing materialized before her. She couldn’t tell where the road was. She needed to slow down, but she couldn’t chance losing Connie. The truck lurched to the right. She yanked the wheel, loo late. The hood was going down. She smashed the brake pedal to the floor as the wheels spun. Then the truck stopped dead.

Kiernan sat, still gripping the wheel. In front of her was a hole that hadn’t existed a minute earlier. Bracing her feet against the floorboard against the angle of the cab, she peered down the line of the headlights into the ground. Was it ten feet deep? Fifteen? Twenty? She turned off the headlights and peered into the dark. The hole had to be forty feet wide. It wasn’t a sinkhole, the kind that erode at a gentlemanly pace. This had to be an abandoned mine. The roof had caved in leaving a huge underground hole. The truck’s front wheels were poised on the edge.

C
ECIL
M
C
G
UIRE WANTED TO
pinch himself. The whole thing was like one of those dreams you can’t get out of. He’d never had the college dream his educated friends laughed about, but chasers, he’d had plenty of them at night, like the one where he went to meet a new client and opened his door and found himself in an alley that smelled of shit, with rats big as rottweilers, and he kept running around the alley trying to find the door he came in, but all he could see was plain brick wall a million feet high. This case, following the baby dick Tchernak, was getting like that. When Adcock told him they were headed north on 93, it was like the door out of the alley. Action, instead of this pussyfooting around here. And now, Tchernak ignores the freeway like he’s a city bus or something and here he is pulling into Grady Hummacher’s driveway again.

Was the guy such a novice he was knocking off for the night? Did he think this was a nine-to-fiver, with maybe an hour off in the afternoon to go to the dentist?

More to the point—the Weasel groaned—did this mean he was in for another night slumped behind the ’Cuda’s steering wheel? Tourists pictured Vegas as sun and sand and air-conditioning and tropical strolls between the casinos and maybe a moonlight swim in the palm-rimmed pool. Here in November he’d have been better off sitting over a subway grate.

Inside Hummacher’s house the living-room lights were on. Tchernak was probably settling in with a beer from Hummacher’s fridge and the late movie on the tube.

The Weasel shifted. He could use a beer, a movie, a burger, a leak. He eased out of the car, not letting the door close completely so that there’d be no sound. Tchernak was watching out for him. Keeping the car and the house door in sight, McGuire slipped into the bushes and took his leak.

As he zipped up, he made a decision. The phone was three blocks away, but what the hell, he knew where the baby dick was supposed to be going. He slid into his car and started the engine. The blue BMW across the street, was it the same one? He hesitated, then drove off. If he spotted it again, he’d worry.

He checked again when he pulled into the 7-Eleven lot, and once more as his call went through. “Adcock,” he shouted over the recorded message, “I’m calling you from a pay phone. It’s three blocks away from where the action is. I can’t hang around here waiting for you. Pick up, man.”

Louisa Larson was not cut out for this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Bad enough she’d had to run two red lights following the thug across town, all to end up at Grady’s place, but then the thug ups and leaves. And leaves her to guess what it is that he knows so well that he can dismiss the whole business and go make a phone call. She had to guess and guess fast. She’d learned that when she’d worked the ER. There you don’t get a second chance. She’d learned to make her move and not look back. And if it was the wrong move, she figured she’d do it differently the next time. That’s how it had been when she saw the boys last week. The symptoms they’d presented were consistent with hepatitis. She had given them the standard treatment, and mostly to calm the neighbors she’d brought them into the office.

When had she realized she’d guessed wrong?

It was a serious mistake, one that could be devastating. But not if she took charge. She had good judgment; she had to trust it. Stay at Grady’s with the new gold Cherokee like the one at Las Palmas? Follow the thug? Which way would get her to the boys? She went with the thug. Now she was sitting down the street eyeing him at a pay phone. Should she stay in the car? Try to get closer to him and not get beaten to a pulp for the effort?

Who was it who said you should never avoid taking the chance because you’re afraid? Eleanor Roosevelt? Well, Eleanor’d be proud of her now. Was Eleanor the one who talked about turning lemons into lemonade?

The thug’s back was to her as she made her way around the corner. He was leaning his grungy little body into the phone cubby, his head almost enclosed, like a terrier barking down a hole. She reached the apartment next door and kept watch on him—he could put down the phone anytime, turn around, and be staring her in the face. She was out of cover. There was nothing to do but head for the shrubs. Forcing herself to take long, silent steps, she moved across the dry, prickly grass till she was five feet from the guy.

“Pick up, man,” he was yelling.

“McGuire, what the hell are you calling about? I don’t have time—”

“Then don’t waste it complaining, Adcock. Do you want me to sit and watch your bab—Tchernak—relax in Grady’s flat all night?”

“What’s Tchernak doing there?”—

“You don’t know?”

“Hell, no. Listen, McGuire, forget Tchernak and whatever he’s screwing around doing. He found Grady’s contact up Ninety-three, and that’s where the action’s going to be. I’m flying up there now. Meet me.”

“Where?”

“There’s only one place open up there this time of night. Called the Doll’s House. Then we’ll go on to Gattozzi.”

“Gattozzi?”

“Little town beyond the Doll’s House.”

McGuire nodded. He knew the Doll’s House. “Two and a half hours up Ninety-three.”

“Make it two hours. Grady’s already had time to move on.”

“Word I got is those boys of his are sick, Adcock. Maybe they slowed him down.”

“Or maybe he dumped them.”

“Is that what he’s like?”

It was a moment before Adcock admitted, “No. The guy’s got a soft spot. Me he’d screw, no question. But those kids …”

Reston Adcock had turned off the phone before he said, “Jerk.” He could have had the Weasel take care of Tchernak before he left. Tchernak was a disaster. And now what was the guy doing at Hummacher’s? Was Tchernak onto something there he needed to know about? Maybe it was just as well he hadn’t sicced the Weasel on him. He’d need to cover that base and make sure Tchernak had left no thread hanging before he made a final decision.

Louisa Larson pressed herself so hard against the apartment building, she was sure the stucco pattern was imprinted on her back. She watched as the thug strolled to his jalopy and rolled off like a guy who’d picked up a six-pack and was heading home for the night. She watched till he was out of sight, then pulled herself off the wall and hurried into the 7-Eleven. She hit the bathroom, grabbed food, considered coffee, and realized caffeine was something she was definitely not going to need. She knew where she was going. She’d been up that way often enough to know where Gattozzi was. Now the question was where in Gattozzi the
thug
was headed.

K
IERNAN CONTROLLED THE DESPERATE
urge to leap out of the sinking truck. In the black of night she couldn’t tell how far into the mine hole the front wheels were. Too far. She eased out onto the step. Icy wind slapped her face. As the truck swayed, the temptation to leap to safety was almost overwhelming. But that could be the added force that would send the vehicle careening into the hole, and her with it. She turned from the hole and looked toward solid ground. Holding on to the side wall of the bed, she stretched till her right foot was on the tire, slid her hand along the truck, brought her left foot back, shifted her hands to the tailgate, swung herself behind it, and leaped onto the ground.

The truck rocked forward and then back. She exhaled so hard she thought for a moment it was the force of her breath that had moved it. Despite the cold wind she was sweating. She stared at the miserable truck. She was stranded.

As many unfenced, unmarked deserted mines as there were in this area, wouldn’t you think a decent driver—even Jesse—would have a winch? Did he? Nooooo.

The mines were supposed to be off the road, not where the road would have been if it hadn’t curved abruptly to the left. The front wheels were definitely over the edge of the hole. She looked down into the hole and gasped. It was as big as the Gattozzi bar and twice as deep. It was just dumb luck that she wasn’t lying at the bottom with a broken neck. She was shaking hard as she stepped back away from the hole and dropped to the ground. She sat there, shivering with cold and fear, her mind devoid of thought.

Slowly her fear shifted to anger. What kind of government leaves a hole this size right by a curve in the road? How was she to know the road cut right? Only locals would know …Connie would know.