No Man's Land (21 page)

“We’ve got two officer fatalities. Southern Utah. A pair of
Nevada Staties who were transporting those Texas teenagers . . .”

“Gibbs and Spearbeck?”

“Yeah. Both cops shot dead at a rest area in Utah. Gibbs and
Spearbeck conspicuously missing.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, she could tell there was more.

“And?”

“And Clarence Kehoe’s thumbprint was found on both the sink
and the flush handle in the men’s restroom.”

Her mouth hung open. She didn’t care. “They’re sure?”

“Hundred percent.”

• • • Corso used his napkin to wipe his lips. He thought
about throwing it on top of his plate but remembered where he was and
changed his mind. Instead, he folded it twice and placed it to the
right of his unused coffee cup, all nice and neat-like.

“What flavor was that sorbet again?” Melanie Harris asked.

“Clementine.”

“Which is?”

“Darling.”

She laughed again. “Really.”

“I have no idea. I just ordered it so you’d think I was
sophisticated.”

“You
are
sophisticated.”

“Comes from spending lots of other people’s money.”

She staged a mock toast with her decaf coffee. “To life’s
little joys.”

“That’s my acid test for when something is way too expensive,”
Corso said.

“What’s that?”

“When my publisher is paying for it, and I
still
object
to the price.”

She nodded knowingly. “I take it you didn’t grow up with
things like clementine sorbet.”

His turn to laugh. “I grew up in Georgia. Macaroni-andcheese was
considered haute cuisine where I came from. What about you?”

“I’m meat-and-potatoes Michigan. The closer to Sunday you get
the better the cut of meat. That’s about as fancy as it got.”

Corso raised the last of his aperitif. “We’ve come a long way,
baby.”

Her eyes suddenly grew serious. She made no move to join his
toast. “For the better you think?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder.”

They’d allowed two hours between the time they’d checked in
and when they’d agreed to meet for dinner. The results were
impressive. Melanie had come up with a particularly striking version
of what women generally refer to as a “little black dress.”
Either she’d called in the show’s makeup department or the people
from the spa had spent the past couple of hours in her room. Whatever
. . . she was easily the best-looking woman in a room full of
good-looking women.

Corso’s situation had been more dire. The clothes he’d arrived
in had survived a prison riot, a shoot-out, a cross-country flight to
avoid prosecution and a couple of nights as pajamas. Oscar, the
concierge, had assured Corso he’d get everything dry-cleaned and
shipped back to Seattle. In the meantime, he sent one of his minions
down to Fashion Square with Corso’s measurements in hand. A hour
and a half and three grand later, Corso was outfitted with a black
silk shirt, a black cashmere blazer and a nice pair of gray slacks
suitable for dinner at Mary Elaine’s. For occasions less formal,
Oscar had provided a couple pair of jeans and two black silk
T-shirts. Apparently, Oscar also enjoyed spending other people’s
money.

Corso surveyed her disconsolate face. “Something I said?” he
inquired.

She waved him off. “I’m a little off my feed lately.”

“You’re on every channel. How bad can it be?”

“I meant personally,” she said, staring down into her coffee.
Silence settled over the table like a cloak. Across the room, a
well-turned-out older couple had recognized Melanie. They’d found
their cell phone and were in the process of sharing their Hollywood
moment with somebody more distant and thus less fortunate than
themselves.

Her eyes found his. “You’re not going to ask me, are you?”

“If you want to tell me, you will.”

He watched in silence as she had a conversation with herself. She
gave him a wan smile and pushed back her chair. “You’re right,”
was all she said.

She tried again and managed a better smile the second time around.
“This was lovely. Thanks for sharing it with me.”

“Thanks for the rescue.”

“My pleasure,” she assured him.

He looked around for the waiter.

“I already took care of the check,” she said.

“Other people’s money again.”

“Is there any other kind?”

He reached for her elbow. She let him take it as they wound their
way back to the restaurant entrance and out into the elegant lobby.

“You must be bushed,” she said.

“It’s been an interesting few days,” Corso hedged. They
stammered their good-byes and plans to meet for breakfast in the
morning with all the smooth assurance of backward seventh graders.

She could feel his eyes on her all the way down the hall to her
room. Before stepping inside, she snuck a peek. He made no attempt to
hide his gaze. She gave him a little “toodles” wave goodbye with
her fingers. He smiled, then turned and walked out of sight.

She’d been talking for two hours. Her life story. Pretty much
from birth to the present, but not necessarily in that order. Heidi
was not what you’d call a linear thinker. She tended to go off on
tangents so long and complicated as to make the listener altogether
forget what the original story line had been. The minute she’d
started, Harry had pulled his jacket around his ears and scrunched
down in the seat. Kehoe had lasted a half hour before leaning his
head against the window and eventually beginning to snore.

“So anyway, when I first met Harry it was down at the bowling
alley. Sharps Lanes they call it. Anyway, I used to bowl on Thursday
afternoons with the girls from my church group. Harry had him a job
there behind the counter. I mean it wasn’t like love at first sight
or nothing. Heck . . . I didn’t think much of him at all when I
first met him. I thought he was all stuck-up on himself. The way he
stood back there passin’ out shoes and flirtin’ with all the
girls. But then later on I come to see how he had a pure heart and I
could see through that silly James Dean thing he had going on about
himself. And then he bought me that box of chocolates. You know the
kind in the gold box where they got all the names of the candies
listed on the inside of the cover so’s you’ll know No Man’s
Land what it is you’re getting ahead of time and won’t taste
somethin’ you don’t like.”

“Give ’em a break, darlin’,” Harry growled from the
backseat.

“It wasn’t like we had anything to do or anyplace to go. I
mean I was livin’ with my daddy and Harry was livin’ with his
aunt. We didn’t have nothin’ to do but hang around town. Maybe go
over to Redlands to the movies once in a while whenever we could
scrounge up a ride. So anyway, that’s when we decided to make us a
place of our own. Harry knew this little patch of woods between the
highway and the railroad grade. Said he used to play there as a kid
and that nobody ever went there so’s we could be pretty sure of
being left alone. Harry built us this little tree house. You know, up
off the ground so’s we could keep away from the bugs and the
critters . . . someplace we could, you know, like be alone.” She
swallowed and took a deep breath. “I don’t want you thinkin’
bad about me, mister. I’m not a bad girl or nothing. Harry was my
first . . . you know, boy my age.” She hesitated. “I mean, you
know, I let Wesley Miles put his finger in it back in the seventh
grade and I mean did we
ever
get in trouble for that. You’da
thought the world come to an end the way everybody carried on.” She
shook her head. “Never for the life of me could figure out why
Wesley would tell his mama about a thing like that.

“Anyway, after Harry got promoted to assistant manager, he
figured it was time to ask my daddy about getting married.” She
made a clucking noise. “Isn’t like I didn’t know what was gonna
happen. I told Harry straight off my daddy wasn’t gonna to be
listenin’ to anything like that. I mean . . . who was gonna take
care of him if I was gone? Who was gonna do the cookin’ and the
cleanin’? Who was gonna . . .”

A wavy red line appeared on the near horizon.

“What in hell is that?” Driver asked.

Heidi closed her mouth with a snap.

Kehoe used the power lever on the seat to push himself upright. “A
wreck maybe,” Kehoe said after rubbing his eyes. He pointed up
toward the blanket of clouds overhead. In the distance, just over the
rise, pulsing lights could be seen bouncing off the dark clouds.
Light bar lights. Red and blue and yellow. Another quarter mile and
they found themselves queued up behind a battered red Toyota Corolla,
sporting a peeling Bush/Cheney sticker. Maybe ten cars separated them
from seeing what was going on over the crest of the hill.

“I don’t like it,” Driver said.

Kehoe reached beneath the passenger seat and pulled out a tattered
Rand McNally atlas they’d found earlier in the day. Kehoe snapped
on the overhead light and found the page he was looking for. “We’re
comin up on the junction of eighty-three where we was gonna head
north again,” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ else around here,
Captainman, less we wanna get out on one of these secondary roads.”
He used his fingernail to trace on the page. The cars in front moved
up. Driver followed suit.

A pair of headlights bobbed over the rise and began coming their
way. Driver pushed open the door and stepped out into the oncoming
lane of traffic. The approaching pickup slowed and then, when it
became obvious Driver wasn’t going to step aside, braked to a stop.

Driver walked over to the window. “What’s going on up there?”
he asked. The driver leaned out the truck window wearing a green John
Deere baseball cap.

“State cops got them a roadblock up there at the junction of
eighty-three,” the guy said. “Looking for a bunch of escaped
convicts.”

“No kidding,” Driver said.

“No need to get yourself in a lather. They’ll get you through
pretty quick.”

Driver took the hint and stepped out of the way. “Thanks,”

he said.

“Don’t mention it.”

Driver got back into the Mercedes and buckled himself in. Harry
was alert now, sitting up and patting at his hair.

“What did he say?” Kehoe asked.

“It’s a roadblock. Looking for us.”

Another truck passed, going in the opposite direction, this one
full of bales of hay. The line of cars in front of the Mercedes had
moved up three or four car lengths. The driver behind them tooted his
horn. Kehoe growled at the sound.

Driver spun the steering wheel to the left, going as far as he
could without running into the ditch, then backed up and spun the
wheel a second time, completing the one-eighty with only inches to
spare.

“Somebody sure as hell gonna tell the heat we pulled a uey.”

Kehoe offered. “They gonna send somebody out to find out why.”

“Nothing we can do about that,” Driver said. “Check that map
of yours and see how soon we can get off this road.”

Driver took it easy for as long as they were in sight, then put
the pedal to the metal, sending the big car careening down the
two-lane road at nearly eighty. They passed the truck with the hay
within the first mile or so. The other truck had disappeared.
Probably turned up one of the many driveways and farm access roads
they were passing at warp speed. “ ’Nother mile or so,” Kehoe
said. “On your left. Provisionary road two twenty-nine. Looks like
it winds through the mountains and runs into a pretty goodsized
little town namea Drake about twenty miles north of here. Looks like
maybe it ain’t paved all the way.”

“We’ll have to take our chances,” Driver said. Kehoe
pointed. “There,” he said.

Driver gave the brakes all he had. Miraculously, they didn’t
lock up and skid. He fishtailed the Mercedes ninety degrees to the
left, then used the accelerator to straighten the car out. First
thing he did after regaining control was to turn off the lights.

They were tearing up a one-lane road toward a pair of jagged
buttes looming in the near distance. “Got cop lights on the
highway,” Kehoe announced. Driver kept his eyes on the road. “Let
me know if they come this way.”

Kehoe unsnapped his seat belt and turned partway in the seat.

“Comin’ up on the turn,” he said. “Comin’ . . . comin’
. . . he’s past. He thinks we went the other way.”

Driver slowed the car but left the lights off. “Sooner or later
he’s gonna figure it out,” he said. “We need to make it to the
highway before it gets light.”

The road narrowed as it began to ascend a series of low hills.
Every half mile or so little graveled turnouts allowed drivers just
enough room to pass. The high desert of the valley gave way to the
layered sediment of an ancient seabed. The road seemed to sink
beneath the layers of shale and limestone until they were driving
along a series of boulder-strewn switchbacks, winding back and forth
across the face of the steep butte; finally, after negotiating a
particularly steep section of road, they crested the valley, very
nearly becoming airborne as the car slammed back to earth just in
time to take the sharp left necessary to prevent crashing into the
canyon wall. And then they were headed down again, knifing back and
forth across the face of the canyon, braking for corners so narrow
and steep, the car had nearly to be brought to a halt at the apex of
each turn. Driver accelerated and snapped on the lights. Mule deer.
Three of them standing rigid in the road. Mesmerized by the furious
glow of the headlights. Never so much as twitching as the Mercedes
plowed into them.

The steering wheel jerked violently to the left. Driver hung on,
trying to maintain control. The right side of the windshield
shattered in the same instant the driver’s airbag blew out of the
steering column, pushing Driver back in the seat and preventing him
from seeing the road.