Fatal (14 page)

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ronnie replied. “I’m just a college freshman suffering from a really bad case of mistaken identity. Can I go now?”

“That’s not for me to decide. I’ve told you that.” Wesling tapped the folder in front of her. “From what I’m reading in here, you’ve got something. I don’t know what, but I will find out. Being a smartass isn’t going to get you anything but a longer stay. And your girlfriend? Don’t expect to be seeing her anytime soon.” She got up and moved around the desk, leaning against the front and putting her own face directly into Ronnie’s.

“Here’s the deal. You work with us and things won’t be so bad. Luke Francis isn’t like General Archer. He’s not going to let you wander around free. It’s too risky. But … if you work with me I can get him to ease up. I can probably get him to let you see Cassie on a regular basis. That is, as long as you’re providing us with good information.”

“What is it you want to know?”

“Are you willing to cooperate?” Wesling asked.

“What is it you want to know?’ Ronnie asked again. “I’m not saying I’m going to help you, or even that I can help. I’m asking you what you want to know.”

Wesling moved back around her desk. Sitting down, she selected a single file and pushed it over. “The first thing you’re going to do is take a look at this file. When I see you tomorrow morning, I’ll ask you some questions. You give me answers. The first thing I have to do is figure out if I can trust your information.”

Ronnie picked up the folder, a plain manila, and flipped through it quickly. Inside were ten or so pages of typed material and a smaller brown envelope. “What kind of information are you looking for?”

“I’ll ask the questions,” Wesling said. “You answer them. Now, is there anything else you need?”

“Yes,” Ronnie said.

“What?”

“Some decent coffee.”

*****

There were thunderstorms building towards the west as Cassie left the hotel a few minutes after dawn. She had eaten in the diner, eggs, grits, bacon and toast fueling her up for the day. Highway 90 stretched ahead, the Gulf on her right, the mainland on her left. She had decided on the highway rather than picking up the Interstate, the faster route. Highway 90 would take her to Pensacola and Highway 29. From there, 29 would take her well into Virginia. East, then north, a simple enough plan. She kept her speed a few miles an hour under the limit. With a pistol in the glove compartment and a rifle under the seat, Cassie wanted to avoid even a minor traffic stop. The route would take her through Alabama, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and then on into Virginia, a situation that made for plenty of opportunity for a state trooper with a quota and a grudge against tourists passing through.

Through the morning, one song on the radio faded into another. Pascagoula turned into Mobile and the expanse of Mobile Bay. Crossing the Florida State line, the clouds finally burst loose. Sheeting rain rolled over the windshield while the horizon flashed and rumbled. The pickup rolled on, uneasy footing underneath, wind and water outside. What should have been a three hour drive stretched into more than four. Five miles outside Pensacola, she stopped for fuel.

The station sat on the beach side of the road, the parking lot covered with an invisible layer of sand that gathered at the curbs and washed into grey streams in the rain. Cassie parked at the pump and climbed down out of the truck, stopping to bend at the waist and stretch her legs as she made her way into the glass-fronted convenience store. The smell of disinfectant hit her as she opened the door. The interior was one small square, fluorescent lights overhead, dirty tiled floor beneath her feet. Directly in front of her were three rows of merchandise, candy, chips, bread. The back wall was all refrigerators, four glass-paned doors across the front. In the back corner, on the right, a red and white sign with an arrow pointed to restrooms. To her immediate left was the cash register, the counter manned by a pimple-faced redhead. He was wearing a Doors t-shirt. Jim Morrison stared sulkily at everyone he faced. The back of his head, along with the entire inside of the store, reflected back at the customers in a half-globe mirror mounted on the wall above. He gave Cassie a tentative smile and a wave. Cassie smiled back, returned the wave, and headed for the restroom. She emerged five minutes later, stopping at the candy aisle to pick up a half dozen Almond Joy bars. She put them on the counter where the clerk was already popping open a paper bag.

“Hold on,” Cassie said. “I need to get some other things.” She loaded up on junk food, enough to keep her until dinner. Things she could eat behind the wheel. Potato chips, two soft drinks, a pack of white-powdered doughnuts. The clerk rang it all up. Cassie paid for the food and added another ten dollars for gas. The bag went on the seat. She was filling the tank on the pickup when the clerk came out the door. He walked over, standing at the rear of the truck.

“I think I shorted you a dollar,” he said, holding out a single bill.

“Really?” Cassie said, “I don’t think so.”

“Here. Just take it from me.”
He was holding the bill out in front of him. Cassie reached for it, thought better of it.

“Why? What are you doing?”

The clerk shook his head. His face was bright red. He looked up and down the road in quick movements before he turned back. “Listen up. Someone showed me a picture of you last night. Step over here.” He moved a few paces toward the road, raising his arm to point down the highway. “Two guys came in with a picture of a girl that looks a lot like you. Said she’d be driving a white Ford pickup. I said no, I hadn’t seen you. They left the picture with me and I stuck it under the stapler on the counter. I looked again when you walked in. It sure looks like you.” He was still waving his arms and pointing. Anyone driving by would think he was giving directions.

“Okay,” Cassie said. “What are you going to do?”

He shrugged. “A girl that looks a lot like that picture came in, got gas, and then turned left, towards Mobile.” He grinned. “They looked like a couple of a-holes to me, and … um … let’s just say you don’t look like any kind of criminal.” With that, he turned and walked back into the store. He went through the door and back behind the counter, deliberately not looking out front. Cassie put the truck in gear. If Francis had his men out this far, in this direction, then she was heading the right way. There couldn’t be any other explanation. Between here and Virginia, Francis would have men waiting. She had to think about getting rid of the truck. Highway 29 was six miles down the road.

*****

Clayton Beuhl woke up shortly after lunchtime with a hangover, a bad case of nerves, and the feeling that things were getting away from him. It might, he thought, be time to take a break from sitting on the porch drinking beer. A sad thought since doing so was his principle form of recreation. Phantom visitors in his driveway probably meant things were getting out of hand. He showered and shaved, found a clean pair of jeans and a button-down shirt. The pickup was still in the driveway. As he got in, he thought again of the girl. She had been standing right alongside the truck.

What disturbed him was how clearly he could still see her. Beuhl was no stranger to drunken escapades. Usually when he woke up he had only vague memories of what he’d done, and some of the things he’d done in college were still the stuff of legend. Back then. his drink of choice had been vodka. Last night he was been drinking beer, and though he didn’t know exactly how much he’d put down it couldn’t have been more than six or seven. Okay, maybe eight, but hardly enough to make a man see things, especially a man who did that on a regular basis. It was time to take a break.

That resolved, he drove into town, passed under the single traffic light at the intersection, and crunched his way into the gravel parking lot of Gina’s. Every small town in America has a place where a man can go and have a beer and a sandwich. Gina’s had been that place in Beuhl’s life since he was a teenager. Gina Strait was long dead, a victim of cancer. When she died after years spent doling out sandwiches, pickled eggs, and draft beer, her spot was filled by her daughter Karen, an overly friendly and buxom girl who had once fulfilled Clayton’s fantasy of making love on a pile of hay. Their relationship was hot, furious, and short lived. Beuhl went off to school, Karen took up with the son of a small tobacco farmer, and they hadn’t seen each other for almost ten years. He still liked her though he hadn’t talked to her in years.

The lunch crowd was mostly gone and the only occupants were a pair of old men at the far end of the bar. They were wearing coveralls and nursing bottles of beer. Both looked up when he walked in, gave him a once over, and returned to their bottles. Gina’s was outfitted with three tables on the right, the wooden surfaces faded and scratched. The bar was on the left, a room in the back had two pool tables and a broken pinball machine. The kitchen was behind the bar. How many thousands of meals had passed through that window Beuhl didn’t know, but it was plenty. Karen was behind the bar wiping down glasses.

“Well, look who managed to drag himself into town,” she said. “What’s it gonna be? Filet mignon? You want some champagne with that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Beuhl said. “How about a club sandwich and a Coke?”

“Sure thing. Try and find a seat if you can.” She waved him over to one of the tables. “Coming right up.”

He took the table in the back, away from the glare of the front window. The place still had the feel he remembered, and the smell of the kitchen, overlaid with old beer and cigarette smoke, would probably never come out of the walls. Beuhl felt a sudden sense of nostalgia, like looking at an old photograph, or finding your high school jacket in a box in the closet. Since his return, he had rarely ventured into town, preferring to drive the extra few miles into Gathrow for the better restaurants and the higher class of hookers both he and his father patronized. Sitting at the table, he thought maybe that had been a mistake. The familiarity of the place was comforting. A man might even forget young girls who materialized out of nowhere in a place like this.

Karen came out of the kitchen with his sandwich and drink on a tray. A year younger than Beuhl, she was a well built woman, with good hips wrapped in worn jeans and a green satin finish shirt that showed off excellent cleavage. Beuhl assumed that cleavage was a real asset in the bar business. Karen popped the top on his Coke and poured it into a glass with ice, settling herself into a chair at his table.

“So what brings you into town?” she said. “I don’t think I’ve seen
you around more than twice since you got back.”

Beuhl shrugged. “Just taking a break, I guess. The place still looks the same.”

“Yep, nothing’s changed. Some of the people are older. Like you and me, I guess.”

“From what I can see you haven’t changed much. In fact, I’d say you’re even better looking than you were when I left. How’s Bill?” Bill Crawford was Gina’s husband. He ran a small tobacco farm four or five miles outside of town, or at least he used to. Last Beuhl had heard, the big tobacco companies had bought out almost everyone.

“Sweet talker. Bill is out being Bill. Which means he’s probably drinking beer in a trailer somewhere. We split up two years ago. I live in my Momma’s old house. My sister watches my kids when I’m working.”

“Oh … well.”

“Oh well nothing. I never should have married him. I got two sweet kids out the deal, though. How about you? I haven’t heard anything about you getting hooked up. All I’ve heard is that you sit out on your front porch drinking beer in your underwear. What kind of thing is that for a big fancy lawyer to be doing?”

Beuhl laughed into his Coke. “I never was a big fancy lawyer. I spent most of my time defending drunk drivers and wife beaters. It wasn’t a bad living, but it wasn’t what I expected. Besides, it’s my front porch and if I want to drink beer in my underwear on it, that’s my business.”

They spent the next half an hour just catching up. Beuhl thoroughly enjoyed it. Karen knew everything about everyone it seemed, one of the benefits of slinging beer in a small town. When the suds were flowing the talk got loose. He ate while they talked. Karen reached across the table once with a napkin and wiped mayonnaise off his lip, giving him a sudden rush and a solid shot of cleavage. It was enough to get his motor running. It had been a long time since he was interested in a woman enough to sit and talk for more than five minutes.

“You should come out to the house,” he said on impulse. “I’ll have the housekeeper cook dinner. We can catch up on old times.”

“Oh my, now I’m getting a dinner invitation from a rich gentleman. It’s been a while since I had one of those.”

“Or we could go into the city and eat somewhere really nice.”

Before she could answer, the door opened and two men walked in. Karen immediately got up and greeted them, taking their order on a green pad she kept in her back pocket. They took a seat at the bar to wait, giving Beuhl an opportunity to look them over. They weren’t local, at least they weren’t anyone he recognized, and they weren’t dressed like locals. Both were wearing sport coats with ties and dress shoes, something you didn’t see in Clark County much unless it was Sunday. Their haircuts were military short and they moved with the kind of fluid action that indicated they were in good shape. The pair talked in low tones, ignoring the older men at the end of the bar. Once, the taller of the two turned his head, saw Beuhl, and gave him a slight nod of acknowledgement. Karen returned from the kitchen with a paper bag, rang up their bill, and sent them on their way with a smile. The door closed, leaving Beuhl with his old girlfriend at the table and two old men wrapped up in their own world.