B00NRQWAJI (17 page)

But Jaguar’s engineers hadn’t installed all these horses under the XJ8’s hood for nothing.

I shoved my foot to the floor, my car jumped with the burst of speed, and I saw the haze of sodium lights ahead. They beat down on the interchange to the interstate. A second more and I spied the on-ramp I needed arcing off to the right. I glanced in my mirror again, spotted the outline of a sedan fighting to keep pace with me. Through its windshield, the driver was nothing more than a silhouette, but I knew, given half a chance, he’d slam into me again.

Like when I slowed to take the ramp.

Or when I had to stop at the end of it.

But I wasn’t going to let either of those things happen. I accelerated along the straightaway—and without warning, jerked the wheel at the last possible moment. I sailed up and along the concrete ribbon that connected one road to the other.

I looked back, looked left. The sodium lights illuminated the car that had rear-ended me as it bypassed the on-ramp altogether. The vehicle shot into the enveloping darkness on the far side of the exchange.

I didn’t get a glimpse of the driver. I didn’t catch the license plate before it flashed out of sight, either. Then again, I didn’t need to.

In the hot light spilling from the fixtures high above, I got a good look the car.

And I was sure it was Eric Wentz’s silver Mercury.

I didn’t stop to call the State Police until my Jag and I were safely obscured behind the eatery where Marc had invited me to meet him. The dispatcher chalked up the incident to road rage. I didn’t bother to tell him the car belonged to a dead man.

But I did tell Luke Rittenhaus. At least, I told the deputy who had the misfortune to be manning the desk at Fallowfield’s Sheriff’s Office after hours. He promised to relay my claim that Eric’s car had tried to run me off the road—but I silently vowed not to hold my breath until he did.

Then, with my eyes on everything in the parking lot, I got out of the car. The rear bumper of the Jag had been smashed. The damage was cosmetic—but that was more than I could say for my sense of security. The bump-and-run wasn’t coincidental. And the fact it had been done with a dead man’s car gave me the creeps.

Obeying Deputy Dawkins’s advice to the letter, I watched my step and headed for the Roadhouse’s main entrance.

The place was a long log cabin, built in the days when two-lane routes like State Route 691 were high-traffic. Addition after addition had been tacked on over the years to accommodate hungry travelers, but from the dealership names on some of the license plate frames in the parking lot, plenty of folks from the Syracuse suburbs came here to chow down, too. Out front, across the way, the skeletal remains of a gas station glowed under a security light. But only one other establishment drew business this far from other towns. And that establishment, I noted, was the Cherry Bomb, the strip club where Barrett and his buddy Vance reportedly got soused before returning to Fallowfield to argue with Luke Rittenhaus over Eric’s well-being.

And just in case I couldn’t read the hot-pink neon letters spelling
CHERRY BOMB
on the bar’s dusky-blue rooftop billboard—or determine what goods and services were on offer inside—a gigantic neon cherry blinked across the sign, transformed into a bomb Wile E. Coyote would’ve recognized, and bounced into a curly-haired cutie outlined in argon. The dancing lights made it look like the bomb blew off her bra, exposing her magnificent fluorescent bosom. This happened over and over as I made my way toward the Roadhouse’s entrance, but the cutie didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed by this turn of events.

I left her to her exploding clothing, bracing myself in case the Roadhouse, too, turned out to be a real dive—but it wasn’t. Sure, a bar ranged down one side of the dining room, but the thick glass mugs hanging overhead, hand-painted with patrons’ names, wouldn’t have looked out of place holding root beer. An honest-to-goodness jukebox jangled in the corner, pumping out the soulful strains of Patsy Cline. And all the while, families with children laughed and dined at tables decked with red-and-white checkered cloths. Deep banquettes of navy blue vinyl snuggled under cheery stained-glass lamps—and in one of them, I found Marc waiting for me.

I slid onto the bench across from him, just as a waitress materialized at our table. With a smile as wide as Niagara Falls, she placed a chocolate martini in front of me. When Marc thanked her, I realized he’d ordered the waitress to be on the lookout for me, and to have the bartender mix the drink the moment I arrived.

“I’ve ordered appetizers as well,” Marc said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I was grateful for his thoughtfulness. As he had so often since we’d met, Marc had gone out of his way to be kind to me. Because despite his hard edge, Marc was a kind man. He was nice out of habit.

But I didn’t miss the fact that niceness was also dating behavior. And Marc had made his intentions clear in that regard. Not that trying to date me would get him anywhere.

For better or for worse, I was interested in dating someone else.

And as much as I wished I could flip a switch and shut down my feelings for that someone, I couldn’t quite figure out how to do it.

Still, I thanked Marc for his consideration, took a long sip of my martini.

“You know,” I said, and licked a bit of the luscious liquid from my upper lip, “I nearly had a heart attack when I saw you in the café this morning.”

“I was just as surprised to see you,” Marc countered, “especially given what’s been going on in Fallowfield.”

“Fill me in. What’s been going on?”

“Let’s just say it’s one little town that’s been on our radar lately.”

By
our
he meant the DEA.

Not that Marc needed to say it.

“Fallowfield’s only a couple hours from New York City,” he explained. “Boston and Philadelphia are a short drive, too. Cleveland and the Midwest are a brief ride to the west, and Canada’s just a ferry ride across the lake. In locations like that, you can buy any kind of illegal drug you want.”

“And you think drugs are flowing into Fallowfield from these larger metropolitan areas?”

“No, I think drugs have found new routes into the larger metropolitan areas
through
Fallowfield.”

With Vance McCabe and his obvious substance abuse problem in mind, as well as Charlotte’s assertion that Eric was an addict, I said, “What kind of drugs are we talking about here?”

“Mainly heroin,” Marc replied, “and I’d give my right arm to stop it.”

Heroin is a ruinous drug. Related to morphine and old-fashioned opium, it’s highly addictive and attacks everything from the brain on down. It can even make a body forget to breathe.

“Heroin’s making a comeback,” Marc told me. “Too many of our soldiers got a taste for it in Afghanistan.”

I nodded. You didn’t have to be a general’s daughter or have a father in the U.S. Senate to know portions of the Afghan population had farmed opium poppies for generations. Too often, it was the only crop that put food on the table season after season.

And Vance had been to Afghanistan. Eric had served there, too. So maybe all roads did lead to Fallowfield.

When Calvin had mentioned goons had jumped Charlotte’s cook, Rittenhaus had told me there’d been a boost in illegal drug usage in town. So Marc’s theory held water. And if Fallowfield had indeed become a pipeline the DEA intended to shut down, it meant I’d wandered into one of Marc’s investigations again.

When I admitted as much, he grinned.

And covered my hand with his.

“Actually, Jamie, I like it when you show up in the middle of my cases.”

I laughed.

And pulled my hand away.

“Don’t get used to it, Marc. It’s not intentional.”

“Well, if I
intentionally
leaned across this table,” he said, “and kissed you the way you ought to be kissed, would that guy at the bar get used to it?”

“Guy at the—”

“He hasn’t stopped staring at you since he walked in the place.”

I nearly gave myself whiplash as I turned to see who Marc meant. And there he was: a guy at the bar. Nursing a beer and a bad temper.

“He needs a haircut,” Marc said, a taunt on the tip of his tongue. “But he still looks like a jarhead.”

“He’s not a jarhead.” The nickname only applied to U.S. Marines. “He’s an army officer and a military policeman. And it sounds like you ran a background check on him after you saw him in the diner this morning, so you know it.”

“Jarhead. Army cop. Whatever.” Marc’s grin would’ve sent a great white shark swimming for cover.

Barrett, however, wasn’t a great white shark.

He scooped up his beer mug, slid from his barstool, and crossed the room to us.

It was a dumb thing to do. Especially for a man who’d seen enough trouble in recent days. And who’d said he wanted me to hit the road rather than stay by his side.

When he reached our table, Barrett piped every ounce of nonchalance into his voice to greet me. “Hello, Jamie. I’m glad to see you’re taking my advice for once.”

“Oh, really? What advice would that be?”

His advice had been an explicit recommendation to forget him, and I wanted to be sure he remembered that. But there were more important matters to worry about. Like the fact Marc and I were meeting far from Fallowfield so the townspeople wouldn’t figure out he was an agent with the DEA.

I said, “If you’re here with your buddy Vance, you should keep moving.”

“I haven’t seen Vance since yesterday. He was supposed to stick to Eric.”

But he hadn’t. And the pain of what had happened to Eric in that seedy motel room had etched itself into Barrett’s face. I tried to harden my heart to his misery—but I couldn’t quite manage it.

I glared at my cocktail, twirled the glass by its long stem. “Then you must be here because you’re thirsty, Barrett. I can’t imagine you followed me.”

“I don’t know,” Marc interrupted. “Personally, Jamie, I’d follow you anywhere.”

Barrett rounded on him like a mad dog in a fight.

“You stay out of this,” Barrett snapped, “unless you want to discuss it with me. Outside.”

“That could be arranged,” Marc replied coolly.

He leaned back in the booth, rested his arms along the top of the banquette. His black leather jacket gaped wide. And gave Barrett a good look at the firearm holstered beneath it.

Barrett’s hand fisted around Marc’s collar so fast, I didn’t see his arm move.

“Wait!” I ordered, grabbing Barrett’s other wrist.

His free hand had already balled into a fist. And his beer mug lay in a foamy puddle. I hadn’t even heard it hit the floor. But half the patrons in the place had. People at tables all around turned to stare.

Barrett, however, was oblivious to everything but Marc.

And he hadn’t let him go.

“Who the hell are you?” Barrett seethed. “And what are you doing with Jamie?”

“That,” Marc replied, “is up to Jamie. Not you.”

I tugged on Barrett’s sleeve. “You’re scaring the customers. Sit down.”

He didn’t.

He didn’t let go of Marc, either.

“Barrett,” I spat, “you’ve spent enough time in the clink this week.
Sit. Down
.”

I kept a hand on his cuff, scooted over to make room for him on my bench seat. Barrett’s pride kept him on his feet for one more moment. But then he slid onto the seat beside me, not stopping until his hip bumped against mine.

He hooked a thumb at Marc. “Who is this joker?”

“You show me yours,” Marc said, sliding his ID onto the table under the cover of his hand. “And I’ll show you mine.”

Barrett glimpsed Marc’s credentials, shot a sideways look at me.

“What’s this about?”

“This,” Marc said, “is about a heroin pipeline radiating from the little burg you call home.”

“Heroin? In Fallowfield?” Barrett shook his head. “I don’t think so. Some pot, maybe. And people are abusing prescriptions and cooking meth everywhere these days. But heroin? No.”

“Jamie says you’re an army cop.”

Barrett nodded.

“Then you know some soldiers have recently developed heroin habits overseas.”

Just like some soldiers had come home with habits from Vietnam. With the hardship of that conflict, some had self-medicated, turning to marijuana and hashish, two herbs readily grown in that climate. Through the 1970s and into the ’80s, heavy hitters like the Department of Justice blamed those soldiers’ predilection on the rising number of pot grows that had sprung up in the U.S.

But some American institutions, like the New York Academy of Medicine and the U.S. Treasury, had been knee-deep in their own marijuana research decades before the La Guardia Committee offered its report on the stuff in 1944. And for that kind of research, organizations had grown their own pot in greenhouses and even open-air fields all over the country. As a result, wild marijuana could be found in a number of states.

But denial persisted.

And Barrett said, “Soldiers in Fallowfield are pretty few and far between.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “There are some, though. Vance, for instance. You know he has a drug problem even if you won’t admit it. And Charlotte says Eric was using something illegal to ease his pain. It could’ve been heroin, Barrett.”

“I’ll believe
that
when I see it.”

“In that case, we have a deal.”

“How do you figure?”

“The medical examiner will note any needle tracks. If Eric’s got ’em, he can’t hide ’em now. And what do you think his lungs will look like if he was smoking it? I’m also willing to bet the coroner is running a standard tox screen. So we’ll see whether Eric was on drugs, all right. We’ll see it on the page in black and white.”

Barrett sat back in the seat, turned that over in his mind.

“Do me a favor,” I said, though I didn’t like the phrase. It felt too personal. “Just hear Marc out. If the drugs that ruin soldiers’ lives are flowing through Fallowfield, don’t you want to know it?”

Chapter 18

Maybe it was the notion of looking out for other soldiers, or maybe it was because Marc and I plied him with appetizers, but Barrett became willing to settle into a quiet conversation after I hit him with the news of Eric’s alleged drug use. And over the next two hours, Marc took advantage of it. He asked Barrett all kinds of questions about the folks of Fallowfield.