Gray Mountain (5 page)

“I haven’t needed one in years. I guess I could lease one for a few months if I need to.”

“Come to think of it, I’ll need mine tomorrow night. I’m playing bridge at a friend’s house in McLean.”

“No problem. I’ll rent one for a couple of days. The more I think about it, the more I’m looking forward to a long drive, alone.”

“How long?”

“Six hours.”

“You can drive to New York in six hours.”

“Well, tomorrow I’m going the other way.”

The entrées arrived and they were both starving.

I
t took an hour to rent a red Toyota Prius, and as Samantha worked her way through D.C. traffic she gripped the wheel and constantly scanned the mirrors. She had not driven in months and was quite uncomfortable. The incoming lanes were packed with commuters hustling from the suburbs to the city, but the traffic headed west moved without too much congestion. Past Manassas, the interstate cleared considerably and she finally relaxed. Izabelle called and they gossiped for fifteen minutes. Scully & Pershing had furloughed more associates late the day before, including another friend from law school. Another batch of non-equity partners had hit the street. A dozen or so senior partners took early retirement, apparently at gunpoint. Support staff was cut by 15 percent. The place was paralyzed with fear, with lawyers locking their doors and hiding under their desks. Izabelle said she might go to Wilmington and live in her sister’s basement, intern for a child advocacy program, and look for part-time work. She doubted she would return to New York, but it was too early to make predictions. Things were too unsettled, and changing rapidly, and, well, no one could say where they might be in a year. Samantha admitted she was thrilled to be out of the law firm and on the open road.

She called her father and canceled lunch. He seemed disappointed, but was quick to advise her against rushing into a meaningless internship deep in “the third world.” He mentioned the job
offer again and pressed a little too hard. So she said no. “No, Dad, I don’t want the job, but thanks anyway.”

“You’re making a mistake, Sam,” he said.

“I didn’t ask for your advice, Dad.”

“Perhaps you need my advice. Please listen to someone with some sense.”

“Good-bye, Dad. I’ll call later.”

Near the small town of Strasburg, she turned south on Interstate 81 and fell in with a stampede of eighteen-wheelers, all seemingly oblivious to the speed limit. Looking at the map, she had envisioned a lovely drive through the Shenandoah Valley. Instead, she found herself dodging the big rigs on a crowded four-lane. Thousands of them. She managed to steal an occasional glance to the east and the foothills of the Blue Ridge, and to the west and the Appalachian Mountains. It was the first day of October and the leaves were beginning to turn, but sightseeing was not prudent in such traffic. Her phone kept buzzing with texts but she managed to ignore them. She stopped at a fast-food place near Staunton and had a stale salad. As she ate, she breathed deeply, listened to the locals, and tried to calm herself.

There was an e-mail from Henry, the old boyfriend, back in the city and looking for a drink. He had heard the bad news and wanted to commiserate. His acting career had fallen flatter in L.A. than it had in New York, and he was tired of driving limousines for D-list actors with inferior talent. He said he missed her, thought of her often, and now that she was unemployed perhaps they could spend some time together, polishing their résumés and watching the want ads. She decided not to respond, not then anyway. Perhaps when she was back in New York, and bored and really lonely.

In spite of the trucks and the traffic, she was beginning to enjoy the solitude of the drive. She tried NPR a few times, but always found the same story—the economic meltdown, the great recession. Plenty of smart people were predicting a depression. Others were thinking the panic would pass, the world would survive. In Washington, the brains appeared to be frozen as conflicting strategies were offered, debated, and discarded. She eventually ignored
the radio, and the cell phone, and drove on in silence, lost in her thoughts. The GPS directed her to leave the interstate at Abingdon, Virginia, and she happily did so. For two hours she wound her way westward, into the mountains. As the roads became narrower, she asked herself more than once what, exactly, was she doing? Where was she going? What could she possibly find in Brady, Virginia, that would entice her to spend the next year there? Nothing—that was the answer. But she was determined to get there and to complete this little adventure. Maybe it would make for a bit of amusing chitchat over cocktails back in the city; perhaps not. At the moment, she was still relieved to be away from New York.

When she crossed into Noland County, she turned onto Route 36 and the road became even narrower, the mountains became steeper, the foliage brighter with yellow and burnt orange. She was alone on the highway, and the deeper she sank into the mountains the more she wondered if, in fact, there was another way out. Wherever Brady was, it seemed to be at the dead end of the road. Her ears popped and she realized she and her little red Prius were slowly climbing. A battered sign announced the approach to Dunne Spring, population 201, and she topped a hill and passed a gas station on the left and a country store on the right.

Seconds later, there was a car on her bumper, one with flashing blue lights. Then she heard the wail of a siren. She panicked, hit her brakes and almost caused the cop to ram her, then hurriedly stopped on some gravel next to a bridge. By the time the officer approached her door, she was fighting back tears. She grabbed her phone to text someone, but there was no service.

He said something that vaguely resembled “Driver’s license please.” She grabbed her bag and eventually found her license. Her hands were shaking as she gave him the card. He took it and pulled it almost to his nose, as if visually impaired. She finally looked at him; other impairments were obvious. His uniform was a mismatched ensemble of frayed and stained khaki pants, a faded brown shirt covered with all manner of insignia, unpolished black combat boots, and a Smokey the Bear trooper’s hat at least two sizes too
big and resting on his oversized ears. Unruly black hair crept from under the hat.

“New York?” he said. His diction was far from crisp but his belligerent tone was clear.

“Yes sir. I live in New York City.”

“Then why are you driving a car from Vermont?”

“It’s a rental car,” she said, grabbing the Avis agreement on the console. She offered it to him but he was still staring at her license, as if he had trouble reading.

“What’s a Prius?” he asked. Long
i
, like “Pryus.”

“It’s a hybrid, from Toyota.”

“A what?”

She knew nothing about cars, but at that moment it did not matter. An abundance of knowledge would not help her explain the concept of a hybrid. “A hybrid, you know, it runs on both gas and electricity.”

“You don’t say.”

She could not think of the proper response, and while he waited she just smiled at him. His left eye seemed to drift toward his nose.

He said, “Well, it must go pretty fast. I clocked you doing fifty-one back there in a twenty-mile-an-hour zone. That’s thirty over. That’s reckless driving down here in Virginia. Not sure about New York and Vermont, but it’s reckless down here. Yes ma’am, it sure is.”

“But I didn’t see a speed limit sign.”

“I can’t help what you don’t see, ma’am, now can I?”

An old pickup truck approached from ahead, slowed, and seemed ready to stop. The driver leaned out and yelled, “Come on, Romey, not again.”

The cop turned around and yelled back, “Get outta here!”

The truck stopped on the center line, and the driver yelled, “You gotta stop that, man.”

The cop unsnapped his holster, whipped out his black pistol, and said, “You heard me, get outta here.”

The truck lurched forward, spun its rear tires, and sped away.
When it was twenty yards down the road, the cop aimed his pistol at the sky and fired a loud, thundering shot that cracked through the valley and echoed off the ridges. Samantha screamed and began crying. The cop watched the truck disappear, then said, “It’s okay, it’s okay. He’s always butting in. Now, where were we?” He stuck the pistol back into the holster and fiddled with the snap as he talked.

“I don’t know,” she said, trying to wipe her eyes with trembling hands.

Frustrated, the cop said, “It’s okay, ma’am. It’s okay. Now, you got a New York driver’s license and Vermont tags on this little weird car, and you were thirty miles over. What are you doing down here?”

Is it really any of your business? she almost blurted, but an attitude would only cause more trouble. She looked straight ahead, took deep breaths, and fought to compose herself. Finally she said, “I’m headed to Brady. I have a job interview.” Her ears were ringing.

He laughed awkwardly and said, “Ain’t no jobs in Brady, I can guarantee you that.”

“I have an interview with the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic,” she said, teeth clenched, her own words hollow and surreal.

This baffled him and he seemed uncertain as to his next move. “Well, I gotta take you in. Thirty over is extreme recklessness. Judge’ll probably throw the book at you. Gotta take you in.”

“In where?”

“To the county jail in Brady.”

Her chin dropped to her chest and she massaged her temples. “I don’t believe this,” she said.

“Sorry ma’am. Get out of the car. I’ll let you sit in my front seat.” He was standing with his hands on his hips, his right one dangerously close to his holster.

“Are you serious?” she asked.

“As a heart attack.”

“Can I make a phone call?”

“No way. Maybe at the jail. Besides, ain’t no service out here.”

“You’re arresting me and taking me to jail?”

“Now you’re catching on. I’m sure we do things different down here in Virginia. Let’s go.”

“What about my car?”

“Tow truck’ll come get it. Cost you another forty bucks. Let’s go.”

She couldn’t think clearly, but all other options seemed to end with more gunfire. Slowly, she grabbed her bag and got out of the car. At five foot seven and in flat shoes, she had at least two inches on Romey. She walked back to his car, its blue grille lights still flashing. She looked at the driver’s door and saw nothing. He sensed what she was thinking and said, “It’s an unmarked car. That’s why you didn’t see me back there. Works every time. Get in the front seat. I’ll take you in with no handcuffs.”

She managed to mumble a weak “Thanks.”

It was a dark blue Ford of some variety, and it vaguely resembled an old patrol car, one retired a decade earlier. The front seat was of the bench style, vinyl with large cracks that revealed dirty foam padding. Two radios were stuck on the dashboard. Romey grabbed a mike and said, in rapid words barely decipherable, something like, “Unit ten, inbound to Brady with subject. ETA five minutes. Notify the judge. Need a wrecker at Thack’s Bridge, some kinda little weird Japanese car.”

There was no response, as if no one was listening. Samantha wondered if the radio really worked. On the bench between them was a police scanner, it too as quiet as the radio. Romey hit a switch and turned off his lights. “You wanna hear the siren?” he asked with a grin, a kid and his toys.

She shook her head. No.

And she thought yesterday had been the pits, with the ten rejections and all. And the day before she’d been laid off and escorted out of the building. But now this—arrested in Podunk and hauled away to jail. Her heart pounded and she had trouble swallowing.

There were no seat belts. Romey hit the gas and they were
soon flying down the center of the highway, the old Ford rattling from bumper to bumper. After a mile or two he said, “I’m really sorry about this. Just doing my job.”

She asked, “Are you a policeman or a deputy sheriff or something like that?”

“I’m a constable. Do primarily traffic enforcement.”

She nodded as if this cleared up everything. He drove with his left wrist limped over the steering wheel, which was vibrating. On a flat stretch of road, he gunned the engine and the turbulence increased. She glanced at the speedometer, which was not working. He barked into his mike again like a bad actor, and again no one answered. They slid into a steep curve, much too fast, but when the car fishtailed, Romey calmly turned in to the spin and tapped the brakes.

I’m going to die, she thought. Either at the hands of a deranged killer or in a fiery crash. Her stomach flipped and she felt faint. She clutched her bag, closed her eyes, and began to pray.

On the outskirts of Brady, she finally managed to breathe normally. If he planned to rape and murder her, and toss her body off a mountain, he wouldn’t do it in town. They passed shops with gravel parking lots, and rows of neat little houses, all painted white. There were church steeples rising above the trees when she looked up. Before they got to Main Street, Romey turned abruptly and slid into the unpaved parking lot of the Noland County Jail. “Just follow me,” he said. For a split second, she was actually relieved to be at the jail.

As she followed him toward the front door, she glanced around to make sure no one was watching. And who, exactly, was she worried about? Inside, they stopped in a cramped and dusty waiting area. To the left was a door with the word “Jail” stenciled on it. Romey pointed to the right and said, “You take a seat over there while I get the paperwork. And no funny stuff, okay?” No one else was present.

“Where would I go?” she asked. “I’ve lost my car.”

“You just sit down and keep quiet.” She sat in a plastic chair and he disappeared through the door. Evidently, the walls were
quite thin because she heard him say, “Got a girl from New York out there, picked her up at Dunne Spring, doing fifty-one. Can you believe that?”

A male voice responded sharply, “Oh come on, Romey, not again.”

“Yep. Nailed her.”

“You gotta stop that crap, Romey.”

“Don’t start with me again, Doug.”

There were heavy footsteps as the voices grew muted, then disappeared. Then, from deeper in the jail, loud angry voices erupted. Though she couldn’t understand what was being said, it was obvious that at least two men were arguing with Romey. The voices went silent as the minutes passed. A chubby man in a blue uniform walked through the jail door and said, “Howdy. Are you Miss Kofer?”