Chump Change (25 page)

I began to scream as the vehicles closed on one another. Some kind of “fuck you, motherfucker” battle cry came boiling out of my chest like summer thunder. I could make out the chrome insignia on front of the other truck when the guy finally lost his nerve and swung off toward the canal.

By that point, something in me snapped. I just couldn’t let it go at that. Couldn’t go rocketing past my pursuer and allow yet another chase to begin. Just didn’t have it in me. This shit had to
end
.

I cut the wheel hard to the right and T-boned him right behind the front wheel, going better than fifty. The impact threw me violently forward. My air bag deployed, saving my life and blocking my view of whatever happened next.

By the time the roaring in my ears subsided and I managed to push the air bag out of my way, I had come to a complete stop, and the other truck was no longer in view.

I got out. Had to circle around the front of the truck because the ground was littered with broken glass, and I still wasn’t wearing shoes. I limped over to the bank of the canal and looked down. The other truck was floating, upside down. Nobody was in sight. I waited. No driver. No dog. No nothing. I turned and walked away.

The truck was still running, but had seen better days. A crack ran diagonally all the way across the windshield. Steam was hissing out from under the buckled hood. The passenger-side front tire was pointed off at an odd angle, and I was down to one headlight. No matter. At this point, I was like an old-time outlaw and his horse. Long as it had a breath of life, I was riding it.

I got in slowly. Seemed like every part of me was bruised or broken or punctured as I dropped the truck into first gear and began humping along parallel with the canal.

Quarter of a mile on, I came to another culvert and crossed the ditch.

And then another and another, until, after what seemed like light-years, I finally found myself staring at a road. I almost cried at the sight of it. I turned to the right and rolled slowly along the fence until I came to a three-rail gate. I could see the rusted lock and chain from the driver’s seat, so I looped out into the field, got a running start, and ran over it like it wasn’t there.

Had to stand on the brakes to keep from bouncing all the way over the narrow lane and ending up in the other ditch. The gate was still attached to the front of the truck as I backed up and pointed her down the road.

Turned out I wasn’t dragging just the gate, but also about fifteen feet of barbed wire fence and a couple of rough-cut wooden posts that had opted to come along for the ride.

All the bumping and scraping sounded like a car wreck as I took off down the road. A trail of sparks lit the night on either side of the truck. Half a mile down, the misaligned front tire blew. I gave it more gas. The tire began to shred itself, banging against the wheel well as, piece by piece, it tore itself from the rim and fell behind the truck.

And then I was riding on the rim, and the sparks really got hairy. I looked like a giant bottle rocket scraping down the road. I peeked at the dash. I was doing forty. The temperature gauge was pinned in the red.

Up ahead, the horizon was illuminated by the lights of Lewiston. The engine was beginning to knock. Sounded like it was about to swallow a valve, but I didn’t care.

I white-knuckled the steering wheel and gave it full throttle.

That’s when the mangled gate shook itself loose and disappeared beneath the truck. The Dodge bucked like a bronco as the gate ripped off part of the exhaust system on its way by. I kept moving forward, louder now, screeching and scraping along the road with the exhaust roaring like a fighter plane as we rolled into the outskirts of town.

I horsed the truck around two corners. Then two more. The Lewiston Police building was half a block in front of me when the engine crapped out altogether, and I clunked and smoked to a halt in the middle of the street.

Lights were going on all over the neighborhood.

I sat for a minute, collecting my wits, and then popped the door.

I’m sure that sometime in the history of the world, a stark-naked guy, bleeding from nearly every pore, must have walked into a police station somewhere at 3:10 in the morning and asked to see the chief. But from the look on the duty officer’s face, I was willing to bet it hadn’t been in Lewiston, Idaho.

“Found your rig out at the airport,” Nathan Wilder said as he slid my overnight bag across the table to me. “Been wiped clean.”

I nodded toward his office. “May I?” I said.

He nodded back.

I pulled the shiny thermal blankets tight around my naked body, grabbed the bag from the table, shuffled into Wilder’s inner office, and closed the door. I was sore as a stubbed toe all over. Took a lot of grunting and groaning to get dressed, but a set of clothes never felt so damn good. Had to take the laces out of my sneakers because my feet were swollen up like sausages, but all in all, my world-class collection of scrapes, scratches, cuts, and contusions felt better with something covering them up.

When I came back into the outer office, Deputy Fire Chief Peter Gallagher had joined Wilder in the office. His face was sooty. Great beads of sweat rolled down his forehead faster than he could wipe them off.

“Conflagrations seem to follow you around,” he commented.

“What’s burning now?” I asked.

“Warren Shotson’s old bomb shelter,” he said. “Somebody poured in about two hundred gallons of diesel down there and torched it. Got so hot it melted the containers right down into the muck. Nothing left now but a coupla steaming sinkholes out in the middle of a pasture. Probably be burnin for a week.”

“Who’s this Shotson guy?” I asked, as I repacked the bag.

“Either the last of the mountain men, or the first of the survivalists,” Wilder said with a chuckle. “Owned that property back in the forties and fifties.” He smiled. “Ol Warren was one hundred percent convinced the Russians was gonna come and get us, any day. Built him a bomb shelter so he’d be one of the survivors.”

“What about Bain and Moon?” I tried.

“Claim to have been out at the ranch all night. Got affidavits from four or five ranch hands to prove it.”

“The Indian?”

“They’re saying he had some family trouble back in Oklahoma. Had to leave real sudden. Said he’d call when it was settled.”

Wilder shrugged. “Got that info you asked for,” he said.

Not a clue. He could tell.

“The hookers from the fly-in parties.” He dropped a packet of photos in front of me. I pushed my bag aside and slid the photos from the folder. Professional glamour head shots. Beautiful young women. She was the fifth one down. Leaning on a satin pillow, looking out at the camera like she was gonna get an ice cream cone. Missy Allen . . . real name Alma Johansen. I slid Missy’s photo toward Wilder.

He looked down. “Pretty girl,” he said.

“They beat her to death,” I said. “On videotape.”

“Who beat her to death?” he asked.

“The Indian. Dexter. Rockland . . . he . . .” I found myself at a loss for words. I settled for “Rockland helped out.”

“Don’t suppose you have the tape,” Wilder asked.

I shook my head. “Shotson’s bomb shelter.”

He shrugged again.

“They beat your other victims to death too,” I said. “The farmworkers nobody bothered to report missing. That was them too.”

“Why would they do that?” he asked.

“Stress relief,” I said.

“Check out the one on the bottom,” he said.

I fingered my way through the stack. Jeannie Palmer. Five foot six. Hair: brown. Eyes: blue. Spectacularly endowed. Looked like two bald-headed men sitting close together. When I’d met her, she’d been introduced to me as Cassie Moon, Roland’s shiny new wife. “Nice to know . . . things get tough . . . she’s got a career she can fall back on,” I commented.

“One of the other girls says she still hears from Jeannie now and again. Says she’s not really married to Moon. They pretend they are for appearances. Says Moon uses Jeannie hard. Treats her like a concubine. When he ain’t happy with her, he lends her to his son, Rockland, which, according to her friend, Jeannie really don’t like.”

“She could leave,” I said.

The chief shrugged. “It’s the money, Waterman. The lifestyle. The bling. After a while you can’t do without it. It’s like a drug or something.”

I made it a point not to think about it.

I tapped Cassie’s face. “Can I have this?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said.

I got to my feet and picked up my bag. “You’ve got my number,” I said to the chief.

“Where you going?” he wanted to know.

“Gonna speak to a coupla people. Gonna buy a new cell phone, and then I’m going home.”

Conspicuously, neither of them tried to talk me out of it.

“I put your Israeli weed whacker in the car,” Wilder said. “See if you can’t get all the way back to Seattle without hurting anybody.”

I promised I’d try.

The Chat ’n’ Chew was packed to the rafters. Had to settle for a stool way down at the end of the counter, next to the kitchen door. Keith was bussing tables. Irene was working the front of the store by herself, moving from table to table like a whirling dervish. At the sight of me, they both stopped what they were doing and came over to where I was seated.

“Where you been?” Keith asked.

“Took a little detour,” I said.

“Looks like they dragged you behind the car,” Irene said. She reached out and ran her fingertips over a bruise on my cheek. “You gotta take better care of yourself, Leo,” she said. “Some of us are gettin pretty fond of you.”

I was trying not to think about how I looked or felt, so I changed the subject.

“How’s Ginny?” I asked.

“Concussion,” Irene said. “Doc wants her to stay off her feet for a coupla days.”

Keith grinned. Irene bopped him in the arm.

“Hey,” Keith said. “That’s off her feet.”

“I don’t think that’s exactly what the doc had in mind.”

She looked from him to me and back. Picked up on the fact that I had something I wanted to say to Keith.

“Gotta go,” Irene said as she hustled over to the table by the door.

“I’m gonna be gone for a while,” I said to Keith.

“What’s ‘a while’?” he wanted to know.

“Coupla, three days,” I said.

“You want to tell me about it?”

“Probably best I don’t,” I said.

He thought it over. “I’m good with it,” he said finally.

“See ya.”

“You comin back?” he asked.

“Depends on a couple of things,” I said.

“I’m all right here,” he said.

“You’re better than all right, kid. Trust me.”

As promised, they were waiting for me in Fred’s law office. Sarah Jane looked paler and thinner than I remembered. Looked like whatever weight she’d lost, Fred might have found.

Took the better part of twenty minutes for the two of us to sign and initial the paperwork giving her back The Flying H. We waited another ten while Fred ran next door to the bank to get everything notarized. He was huffing and puffing by the time he got back to the office.

“Soon as we sell the ranch, we’ll take care of you out of the proceeds,” Fred assured me as he plopped down into his chair. He pointed at the pile of papers. “It’s all in there, in black and white,” he said.