Shadows Everywhere (19 page)

A big flatbed hauling steel pipe in the opposite direction on the divided highway had told me over the CB that it was clear of bears over his shoulder all the way to Allenville, so I was cutting a fat path, holding the big Kenworth well over the legal limit and damn near pushing the pesky four-wheelers into the slow lane where they belonged so I could pass. You get no argument out of anyone you outweigh by over thirty tons.

Just past the Route Nineteen cloverleaf I saw the hitchhiker, standing well up on a grade that I had to gear down to climb. He was a square-shouldered guy with a blondish heard, wearing a long-sleeved old army fatigue jacket despite the eighty-plus heat. One of his feet was propped up on a beat-looking black suitcase painted red at the corners. As I passed, he braced himself against the coming backwash of the big truck and made a sweeping motion with his thumb, already looking past me for the next vehicle. The company's got a rule against picking up hitchhikers. I pulled two quick blasts out of the air horn and let the grade help me slow so I could steer onto the shoulder and wait.

He had almost a half a mile to run with the old suitcase, and I sat watching him in the right-hand mirror. A string of four-wheelers swished by me on the left and headed like bright-colored darts toward the crest of the rise. The big diesel under the hood rumbled like it wanted to give chase.

The hitchhiker was breathing hard when he reached the truck. Even over the rumble of the diesel I could hear him panting as he opened the passenger-side door and hoisted his suitcase up onto the floor. The cab's seat was higher than he'd thought, and I reached over and grabbed him by the wrist to help him in. He seemed to resent that as he pulled the door shut with a slam and settled back in the upholstery. I dropped the Kenworth into low range and steered back onto the highway, working through the gears as I took the rest of the grade.

"Ruddy Kane," I said by way of introduction. "Where you headed?"

"Far as you're goin' in this direction."

He hadn't given me his name. That should have clued me. Up close he was a scruffy-looking little guy with a twice-broke nose and a U-shaped scar on his forehead. Too had he couldn't grow that beard over the rest of his face.

"I'll be turnin' north at Seventy-seven," I told him.

"My name's Brogan," he said, as if he'd thought it over. I nodded like Brogan was everybody's name. "I'm headin' east to get a job."

"What do you do?"

"Most anything."

What he was best at was being vague. I caught a faint mildewed odor from his wrinkled fatigue jacket and faded denim Levis, and I recognized what that scent might mean. I'd slept outside on the ground before.

The hell with it. None of my business.

"You had supper yet?" I asked Brogan.

He looked sharply at me and shook his head no.

"Place up there around the next curve I usually stop at," I told him. "Dale's Speed Grill. They serve top hamburgers fast and so are the waitresses."

Brogan said nothing, dug his hands into the baggy pockets of his jacket.

We took the curve and I saw the big neon hamburger on the roof of Dale's, bright red and green in the fast-fading light. The restaurant was small and kind of dumpy-looking, but it was neat and clean
inside, and almost everyone who traveled this highway regularly made it their meal stop if they were in the area.

I slowed the Kenworth, waited for a station wagon to pass, and edged into the right lane. There were half a dozen road rigs parked in Dale's big graveled lot, and a Highway Patrol car nosed up against the side of the low building.

Brogan's hands came out of his jacket pockets. The right one held a revolver. I couldn't say I was surprised.

"Keep right on drivin'," Brogan said.

I hit the accelerator and glanced at him as I shifted gears. "To where?"

"Wherever I tell you."

He pressed the barrel of the gun into my ribs to show me he was sincere. I saw Dale's bright neon hamburger fall away and disappear in the right outside mirror.

"The law on you?" I asked.

Brogan looked at me from beneath the curved scar on his forehead. You could've chilled beer with his eyes. "You don't need to know nothin' except how to drive this hunk of iron."

I made high range and considered. "And when you don't need me for that anymore, you don't need me at all."

He held the gun out where it would attract my eyes. "You scared, Mr. Driver?"

"Some." I concentrated on my driving with half my mind while the other half wondered just who this mildewed little desperado thought he was.

"Stick to the speed limit!" he ordered, purposely working the pistol barrel on my ribs to produce pain. I edged back to within the law.

"Somethin' you oughta know," I told him. "I'm haulin' explosives. Quick-dry cement and blasting powder for a big engineering project in Pennsylvania."

Brogan shrugged. "If it wasn't safe, you wouldn't be haulin' it."

"It's safe as long as I'm on smooth highway. Otherwise it could blow a fifty-foot crater in the ground. I thought you should know that in case you got plans to take this rig anywhere it's not supposed to go."

Brogan's grin was yellow in the glare of oncoming headlights, crooked in contrast to his pale level eyes. "I'll tell you when it's time for you to know my plans. This thing got plenty of fuel?"

"I topped the tanks just before I picked you up," I told him. "That should add to the explosion if anything goes wrong."

He ignored me, still grinning, and settled back in his seat with the gun still pointed at me.

We drove for almost an hour that way, without talking. When we reached the Route Twenty-two intersection I veered gently right and downshifted for a steep grade. Brogan didn't move beside me. He might have been sleeping, sitting the way he was with the back of his head against the upholstery. I got the impression maybe he wanted me to think he might he asleep so I'd try to get tricky.

Now that the sun was down the evening was cool, so I cut the air conditioner and rolled down a window. That caused Brogan to stir, nothing more.

The Highway Patrol weigh station was ahead on the right. As we approached I saw that the barrier arm was up and the station was open. There were two rigs waiting to drive onto the scale, where a trooper we called Rock Face Evans would be waiting to record their axle weights to make sure they weren't beyond the legal limits. I didn't slack speed as I went past.

We'd gone another four miles before I heard the siren.

Brogan sat up straight, swiveled his head. He couldn't see behind us from where he sat, but I could see the flashing red lights in my rearview mirror.

"State Patrol," I said. "Want me to stop?"

The gun barrel raked down my ribs. "I want you to drive," Brogan snarled, "like you never drove before!" He was some pumpkin.

I worked the gears and took us up to seventy. Wind screamed around the mirrors and diesel stacks and Brogan looked a little alarmed. I checked the mirror and saw that we were being pursued by two cars now. They were half a mile back and closing.

"No way to outrun 'em," I said. The sirens continued to wail behind us over the sound of the wind. I took us up to eighty. Brogan began to squirm in his seat.

"If you don't want to get caught," I told him, "there's only one thing to do."

I yanked on the wheel and we were off the pavement, bouncing across the wide grass median toward the other two lanes of the divided highway.

"Get us back on the road!" Brogan shouted. "The explosives!" He jabbed with the gun.

The truck hit a grassy rise, jounced to the side, wind and sirens still screaming at us. There were some small trees along the center of the median. Brogan's eyes were as wide as his gaping mouth as we mowed down the trees, picking up speed. Dust and a few leaves swirled inside the cab. "They can't follow us!" I yelled as the truck bounced back onto cement and we roared easy in the westbound lane with the right wheels on the shoulder. I took us up over ninety. The diesel howled.

"Gawdalmighty!" Brogan screamed.

Oncoming headlights flashed past us at a combined speed of a hundred and fifty. Brogan was staring straight ahead, sitting so stiffly pigeons might have lit on him. I looked over at him and spit on his gun hand, holding the wheel firm as the side of the truck shot sparks as we scraped the concrete rail of an overpass.

We both saw the roadblock ahead, two cars with flashing lights, parked to block the highway, distant small figures running in the shadowed red glare. On either side of the highway at that point the ground sloped up at close to a forty-five degree angle.

"We can go around 'em!" I called over the wind and the roar of the diesel.

Brogan was shaking now, the gun forgotten. I laughed at him. The world's Brogans don't like being laughed at, but who does? "It's a roadblock!" he screamed. "You're crazy!"

"Let's crash it!"

His eyes were wide and straining, his mouth working so that his beard hobbled up and down as if his teeth were chattering. Maybe they were.

"Don't worry about flippin' on that hill!" I shouted.

"We'll turn over! Stop this thing!"

I paid no attention to him and swept to the side of the Highway Patrol cars. We heard shots.

"Please!" Brogan screamed.

I stamped on the accelerator. The trailer was whipping behind us and I wrestled the wheel as we jolted and tilted to the left so far that Brogan's limp body slammed against me, then back to the right so he flew to the other side of the cab and slumped against the door.

I braked the rig to a slow, hissing stop.

They were coming on foot and by car behind me. I sat and watched them in the mirror. The passenger-side door was yanked open and Brogan would have fallen out if two troopers hadn't caught him and lowered him to the ground. One of them eased the revolver from his hand.

My door was pulled open. More guns.

"Hey, crazy man!" Rock Face yelled at me. "What in the hell was this all about?"

"He had a gun on me," I said, climbing down on rubbery legs, "made me drive him where he wanted to go."

"This is Dennison!" one of the troopers said, as a handcuffed and staggering Brogan was led around the side of the truck. "He's wanted for three drug murders in Saint Louis!"

I stared. "He told me his name was Brogan. I picked him up hitchhiking."

"You should have known better," Rock Face said.

"I should have," I agreed.

Rock Face squinted at Brogan-Dennison from under the wide brim of his trooper's hat. "What did you do to him?"

"I told him I was hauling explosives. Guess it wore on his nerves. And all I've got is a load of foam insulation."

Rock Face shook his head, then chuckled.

I chuckled along with him. Then he laughed aloud and I laughed.

More patrol cars arrived. The questions and answers began.

They didn't hold me long, and soon I was back on the road, feeling the numbing beat of the wind through the rolled-down window. When I looked at my watch I saw that I wasn't too far off schedule.

There was a steep grade ahead and I built up speed so the weight I was hauling wouldn't slow me too much as the truck climbed. Cement and blasting powder was what I was hauling, not foam insulation. But I couldn't tell that to Rock Face.

I was overweight on both axles. I couldn't have stopped for that scale.

This collection originally published by Mystery Scene Press as their Author's Choice Collection #7–©1994 Mystery Scene Press.

"Introduction" © 1994 by John Lutz

"Shadows Everywhere" originally published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,
June 1973
.
 
©
1973 by H.S.D. Publications Inc.

"The Lemon Drink Queen" originally published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
, February, 1974. © 1974 by H. S. D. Publications, Inc.

"A Rare Bird" originally published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
, August, 1967. © 1967 by H. S. D. Publications, Inc.

"A Verdict of Death" originally published in Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine, May, 1974.
 
© 1974 by Renown Books, Inc.

"All of a Sudden" originally published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,
August 1974
 
©
1974 by H.S.D. Publications Inc.

"Living All Alone" originally published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,
May, 1972
 
©
1972 by H.S.D. Publications Inc.

"Garden of Dreams" " originally published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,
June 1971
 
©
1971 by H.S.D. Publications Inc.

"Prospectus on Death"
 
" originally published in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,
July 1971
 
©
1971 by H.S.D. Publications Inc.