Three Sisters (32 page)

The was a slight pause before the psychic responded. “Oh, no. I enjoy driving alone. It gives me some quiet time.”
You no-good, lying lowlife bastard!

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
It’s a trap. You’ve sold me out.

“Will I see you before the show?”

“You can count on it.” Moxon’s grin split his face. “Drive carefully.”

“I will.”

“Goodbye, Cassie.”

Scott Parris glanced at his passenger. “Well?”

Cassandra’s tone, like her expression, was flat. “He said he’d see me before the show.”

“That’s great.”
I guess.

“But it was rather strange….”

“How so?”

“I’ve known Nicky for years. I’m familiar with all of his little habits.” A hint of a smile played with her lips. “Like whenever we finish talking on the phone, he always says something like ‘Catch you later, kid’ or ‘See you tomorrow.’”

“So?”

“This time he said ‘goodbye.’” She could not suppress a shivery shudder.
Nicky knows.

So it’s goodbye, is it?
Parris cursed his bad luck.
Moxon won’t keep his appointment with Cassie. The bastard’s gonna make a run for it.

The chief of police was right, and wrong.

Also wrong, and right.

Nicholas Moxon cranked the V-8 engine to a throaty rumble, put the comically oversized pickup into reverse. As he backed the hijacked vehicle out of the thicket and onto the forest road, the machine flattened a clone of aspens with snow-white trunks as thick as his wrist. Oblivious to the unfortunate fate of a few innocent, teenage trees, the driver glanced down at his inert passenger, grinned. “Hang on,

Tiger—you and me are about to go for the ride of our lives—I hope you’re game for it.”

The mortal residue of Eddlethorp “Tiger” Pithkin voiced no objection. His lifeless face was a dusky blue, the smoky hue of an antique apothecary bottle discarded after all the snake oil was used up. The glassy eyes stared blankly at whatever it may be that dead men see.

Scott Parris was pursuing a dangerous activity. Thinking.
Cassie’s scared of Moxon and scared of ending up behind the walls. Now’s the time—I’ve got to strike while the iron is hot.
The village blacksmith raised his five-pound hammer.
Bam!
“Moxon never showed up at the attorney’s office—he
lied
to you, Cassie.”

“Yes,” Cassandra Spencer murmured. “He certainly did.”

Far from being a hot iron, the potential star witness was cool. No, make that cold. Parris’s frown deepened.
Cold as a well-digger’s butt.
Yes, butt. With a lady present, he watched his thought-language. He was about to make the point that every minute Cassandra hesitated to help the authorities nail her business manager, the guiltier she would look.
Now
was the time to make the righteous choice. But just as the chief of police opened his mouth to speak, the object of his verbal assault posed a question of her own.

“But
why
did Nicky lie to me about being with Mr. Boxman?”

It occurred to Parris that she had raised an interesting point. Which suggested another one: Why had Moxon bothered to call Cassandra when she was at Daisy Perika’s home—and again a couple of minutes ago? Under ordinary circumstances, the answer would simply be that he was in the habit of checking on his client when she was on the road, by herself. And since Daisy was supposed to appear on the psychic’s TV show tonight, why hadn’t Moxon directed Boxman to prepare the contract for the Ute elder’s signature?

The answer was suddenly, blindly obvious.

Whatever Moxon’s plan is—it doesn’t include Daisy being on Cassie’s show. Or signing a contract. Or showing up in Granite Creek!
His thoughts hurried forward.
How would he prevent that from happening?
Parris imagined himself in Moxon’s shoes.
He’d do it on the road. At some lonely spot.
Mentally, so as not to alarm his passenger, Parris dope-slapped himself on the forehead.
Like right here.
The skin on his neck prickled. Which settled the issue. High probability was transformed to dead certainty. His gaze darted left and right.
Moxon could be somewhere up there on the mountain, with a rifle. He might have us in the crosshairs right now.
The policeman knew his duty and was perfectly willing to do whatever was necessary to protect his passenger, but he felt only a slight reassurance from the cold, hard presence of the Smith & Wesson .38 Special snugged into the holster under his left arm. Unaware of the state-police unit a mile behind him, he came to a sensible decision:
I’ll call for some backup.
As they entered a steep-walled canyon, the chief of police removed the cell phone from his pocket. Turned it on. Watched the readout. Got the dreaded message:
OUT OF RANGE.

The Real Mccoy

As Scott Parris fiddled with the useless cell phone, the professional psychic slipped into a genuine
altered state of consciousness.
These inexplicable experiences, which occurred perhaps three or four times in a year, were the basis of her chosen vocation.

Having more than sufficient issues to keep his mind occupied, the lawman took no notice of Cassandra’s silence, her glazed, glassy stare. If he had, Parris would have not been alarmed. From his reference point, she was only “away” for a few heartbeats.

Cassandra Spencer blinked twice; her lithe body quivered in a minor spasm. She was back from
wherever. Whenever.
Her face had never been so pale, her soul so filled with fear. But Miss Spencer knew what she had to do. Clenching her hands, she said his name aloud: “Scott…”

The driver kept his gaze glued to the road. “What?”

She drew in a deep breath. “I have seen the future.”

A hard line to follow, this. The best he could do was: “Is that so?”

The lady pursued her semimonolog. “I am going to die.”

Parris set his jaw. “Sure you are. So’m I. But not tonight.”

The psychic echoed herself: “I am going to die.”
Very soon.

“Don’t worry about Moxon.” He shot her a stern look, said with more confidence than he felt, “You’re under my protection.”

She seemed not to hear. “I wish to make a full confession.”
For the sake of my soul.

Hardly able to believe his good fortune, the chief of police managed to keep from grinning. And understanding the fragility of the moment, said not a word.

Cassandra did the talking. She spoke of many things. But not of cabbages and kings. The TV psychic spun a sordid tale, detailing precisely how Nicholas Moxon had communicated sensational events to the star of
Cassandra Sees
while she was on the air. It was, she explained, really quite straightforward. “For voice communication Nicky would call me on his BlackBerry.” Each of her earrings (for redundancy) concealed a microminiaturized receive-only cellular telephone. Twice, as the technology advanced, the resourceful man had provided his client with a new, improved set—most recently, a lovely pair of cameos. But the general operation remained the same. To alert the psychic, the ornaments on both earlobes would vibrate. One buzz indicated that Moxon was about to speak to her. Two buzzes would direct her to video data about to be transmitted. “Nicky used his BlackBerry or laptop to send pictures to my computer, which was routed to the TV monitor under my coffee table.” The scam had produced sensational program content. But the occasional report of a plane crash or an assassination that Moxon picked up off the Internet during the show was not enough to sate her audience’s increasingly voracious appetite. It became “necessary” for her business manager to generate sensational items by direct action. And once he crossed that line, there was no turning back. Convinced that she had no time to waste, Cassandra passed quickly over the arsons. The repentant TV personality went directly to the killings. The victims, she informed her audience of one, were citizens who would not be missed. Nicky had assured her of this, and subsequent media reports had verified his claims. One of the lowlifes was a car thief, another a known child molester who had moved into a nice south-Denver neighborhood—just across the street from an elementary school! And the so-called trucker Nicky shot dead was a loathsome drug pusher. Surely his removal had been a service to society. Even so, Cassandra admitted that she did feel some guilt in exploiting their deaths to advance her career. It was, she said, gratifying to get this burden off her conscience. With that, her confession ended.

The seasoned, cynical, middle-aged policeman had thought he’d seen it all in his time, heard it all. But this confession took the cake. For a fleeting instant, Scott Parris had the oddest sense that he was caught in an eerie, surreal dream. Any moment now, the classic Cadillac would rise up from the highway…float away. The alarm clock on his bedside table would ring him back to the light of day.

The Attack

Nicholas Moxon was not an outright fool. Far from it. He was a man who planned. But he was also a stubborn fellow who, once he had made a bold decision, never had a second thought. Now, foot on the accelerator pedal, both hands on the steering wheel, he and the owner’s corpse and the big truck were moving resolutely downhill, toward a coupled destiny. Under the hood, eight pistons pumped,
thumpity-thump.
Worn valves clicked,
thrickety-thrick.
Hurricane Hazel was picking up speed. Mass times velocity is not a product to be taken lightly.

State police officer Elmer Jackson was not a born hero. Far from it. But he was that sort of man who sees his duty and does it, without considering what the consequences for his health and safety might be, much less his longevity. With the speed control set to match the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham sedan’s leisurely pace, two fingers resting lightly on the steering wheel, he listened to the new tires underneath his unit hum. And hummed along with them. The words of the familiar hymn sang back to him:

What a friend we have in Jesus…

Relaxed? Yes he was. But Officer Jackson was not asleep at the wheel.

He was aware of the big profile behind him.

Coming up fast.

Dummy don’t know I’m John Law
. Jackson grinned.
Soon as he figures that out, just watch him step on the brake!

Coming up faster.

The grin turned upside down.
He ought to have spotted me for a cop by now.

Rolling along like a cannonball!

Maybe the yahoo’s drunk.
Or worse, high on something or other.
Looks like the moron’s gonna pass me. When he does, I’ll switch on my emergency lights and siren, and pull him over and put such a big ticket on him that he’ll have to hock his overgrown truck just for the down payment.

An Exhilarating New Experience

It was Nicholas Moxon’s intention to pass the cop. But he intended more than this. When he was even with the state-police unit, just as the lights began to flash and the siren emitted its first yelp, he gave the smaller vehicle a nudge. Not too much—a gentle, experimental prod. And was surprised that was all it took.

One Down

The state-police cruiser lurched off the highway, over the rocky shoulder, bounced off a two-ton boulder, tumbled end-over-end down the slope, crashed sixty-three feet below in Granite Creek.

Elmer Jackson’s final prayer, which never quite made it out of his mouth, was,
Oh, God Almighty!
But these silent words were heard.

The mangled vehicle, the broken body, would not be found until dawn. It was all right. Elmer had no further need of either of them. This good pilgrim’s long, difficult journey was over.

Instant Replay

It is odd, how quickly a notion becomes accepted by the mind as a fact. When Scott Parris glanced at the Cadillac’s rearview mirror and saw the profile of the truck, he was still picturing Nicholas Moxon on the mountainside. With a rifle. Crosshairs on Cassandra’s classic Cadillac.
That big rig’s coming on awfully fast. I’d better pull over onto the shoulder, give the knucklehead plenty of room to pass
.

But as the monster pickup closed, it stayed in the same lane.

What in hell…?

As it happened, Parris had phrased his question well.