Sleeping Policemen (14 page)

“Shit!” Finney half-shouted, a desperate note in his voice. Headlights illuminated them and they both whipped around; a pickup came down the rise and turned onto Main. The Mercedes eased up beside them. Nick turned back to the trunk, studied Pomeroy's sunken, mottled face. He looked worse; his nose split down the middle, his mouth leaking a yellowish bile, his skin waxen. He heard the electric buzz of the Mercedes's window.

“Christ! What are you two doing?”

“The fucking trunk won't shut!”

“Get him in the backseat.” Nick leaned into the trunk and pulled the body's top half out by the armpits. Pomeroy's effluvium engulfed him, a combination of dead fish and overripe fruit. Gagging, Nick tugged harder. “Now!” he shouted at Finney. Together they hauled the detective out of the trunk and into the street. Nick felt his grip slipping, but he kept moving; Finney staggered after him, an oily, snake-skin boot stuffed under each arm, Pomeroy's ass dragging across the macadam. With one arm Nick held the body in a half nelson and with his free hand fumbled open the back door.

Tucker's moony, pale face stared up at him. “What,” he said.

“Goddammit, get out of the way, Tuck,” Nick said, already moving Pomeroy's torso into the backseat. Tucker looked blearily from Nick to the body. His eyes grew wide and a strangled chirp escaped his mouth; he scrambled crablike to the far side of the car.

“Fuck you doing!” Tucker's voice was a squeal, a piglet in pain. “What!”

Finney slipped and fell forward, bending Pomeroy double, forcing his legs into his belly. The body broke explosive wind.

Tucker screamed, a short doglike yelp. “He's still alive!
Motherfucker's still alive
!” He wailed, a sound not unlike the sirens Nick had expected to hear earlier.

“Shut up!” Nick screamed. Tuck fell quiet, glaring at Nick, his body jerking with the sobs he tried to hold in. Nick breathed deeply, collecting himself. Pomeroy farted again, a low, ratcheting sound.

“What is that?” Finney asked.

“I don't know—the body settling, I think. The muscles loosening, giving up.” Nick shrugged. “Saw it on
CSI
.” The odor was dishearteningly similar to the bile Pomeroy had spewed across his shoes.

“Finney,” he said, grateful for how calm he sounded. “Go start the car.” He wrapped his arms around Pomeroy's chest and pushed the body onto the backseat, placing it in a sitting position. He took the legs and swung them to the floorboard. Pomeroy toppled over, his head landing in Tucker's lap with a wet, smacking sound.

Tucker shrieked, slapping at Pomeroy's head as if it were some loathsome spider, and somehow slid beneath the body to the floorboard. Never pausing, moving as if the entire sequence were a single contrived action, he vaulted into the front seat and clutched the dashboard. Finney, already behind the wheel, placed a hand on Tucker's shoulder and said quietly, “It's okay, man. Pull yourself together.”

“Fuck off! Don't fucking boss me now!” he screamed, flinging Finney's hand away. His voice was a scratchy shriek and his eyes rolled crazily in his head. “Let's go, let's go!” he shouted, resuming his white-knuckled grip on the dash, staring blindly out the cracked windshield.

Nick pushed Pomeroy farther into the seat and shut the door. As he turned to open the front door, he saw that Sue had pulled in front of them. He gave Main Street a quick, last look. A half-familiar car cruised slowly through the intersection; it was a long sedan, black or navy blue, with a buggy-whip antenna nodding lazily in the air above it. Nick's mind filled with a view from between slit blinds, through a grimy pane of glass: that enormous state trooper, Evans, settling into his unmarked cruiser and gliding away from the curb. Something cold burst in Nick's stomach. The car slid behind the First Bank of Ransom. Another car approached the intersection, paused, and then headlights the size of twin moons turned off Main and eased toward them. Nick's heart froze; his legs turned to noodles. He heard Finney whisper, “Sweet Jesus.” Tucker emitted a long groan.

The car passed though a pool cast by a streetlight and Nick recognized one of the town's patrol cars, its blue lights flickering like faraway heat lightning; then the car merged with the darkness and he realized it had been only a reflection of the street light. He slipped into the Cadillac and closed the door softly behind him. Sue had disappeared.

“Be cool,” he said, as much to himself as to Finney and Tucker.

The patrol car pulled up beside them and the passenger window slid smoothly down. The interior was black. The only thing Nick could make out was the ember of a cigarette dipping lazily about, a drunken firefly.

Finney cranked down his window and started to speak when a voice, as smooth as mountain whiskey, said, “You boys having trouble?”

“No, sir,” Finney said, his voice firm but with the appropriate trace of acquiescence. “On our way home. We—”

“Y'all up kind of early. Ain't been up drinking all night, now have y'all?” Nick could just make out the pale blob of a face, as if a cloak shrouded everything else.

“No, sir,” Finney said. “A friend called us to take him home.” Nick winced. What kind of sense did that make? He thought he heard the cop grunt noncommittally. Then he said, “What's with the trunk?”

“Busted lock. Had it tied, but the string broke this afternoon. I'm taking it to a garage tomorrow.” Finney had assumed his Senator stance, all glad-handing and concerned-citizen smarminess.

There was a long pause, and then the voice said, slowly, “Why don't you boys head on home.” He paused and the firefly somersaulted. “Now.”

“Yes, sir.” Finney eased forward. Inside the car, no one moved. Finney watched the rearview mirror, his face grim in the refracted light of street lamps. “He's gone.”

Nick expelled a breath he'd been holding since he'd seen the headlights. Tiny stars danced and burst before his eyes. In the backseat, Pomeroy farted enormously.

Tuesday, 6:50 to 7:15 AM

Minutes later—the dash clock read 5:24—they passed the city limit sign and headed into the darkness of the mountains. Just outside of town Sue pulled up behind them; the Mercedes's lights flashed twice.

“How far?” Nick asked.

“A couple miles, probably less.” He slowed and turned onto Jonestown Road.

The Cadillac ate the road, balding tires singing a one-note aria over the asphalt. The Mercedes's headlights gave the interior a ghostly aura. Appropriate, Nick thought—this car is filled with ghosts. Beside him, Tucker clung to the dashboard. His lips moved in fervent recitation, but Nick couldn't hear him over the roar of the engine.

Soon the grade rose and the road turned serpentine, twisting up the mountainside. On a narrow straightway, Finney slowed and signaled Sue around.

“Not sure where the turnoff is,” he said.

Nick watched Sue pass. As she pulled into the far lane, coming into sight around the bouncing trunk lid, the high beams popped on, the eyes of some predatory creature coming alert, the scent of blood filling its head. Nick turned away, peering out his window at the dark forest sliding by. With nothing to busy it—like the lifting and hauling of dead—

—
murdered
—

—private eyes—his mind cataloged the week's deaths: the Aryan, Casey Nicole Barrett, Pomeroy. His mind recited them in the innocent voice of the old Nick, the long-ago voice of a boy incorruptible.

Panic like a black wave washed over him, assaulting him with a battery of broken images: the photo of a crumpled fender; Pomeroy's yellowed teeth, an incisor chipped; black bondage masks floating toward him as though underwater, their movements languorous and heavy.

His hands shaking, Nick popped open the glove compartment, filling his mind with a needless task. A shower of fast food wrappers and poorly folded roadmaps fell out. In the back Nick found a small box of bullets, half-empty.

“Give me those,” Finney said, reaching for the box. He studied it briefly by the dashboard light, then put them in his jacket pocket. “Might need these.” Nick closed the glove compartment.

Up ahead, Sue slowed and turned off Jonestown. Finney followed. The road was little more than a pair of rutted tracks leading into the wilderness. Branches whipped across the windshield and scraped along the flanks of the Cadillac as it bounced through the underbrush. Several times they drove over saplings growing in the middle of the track. Once, in a sharp bend, the Cadillac's back tires bogged. Finney gunned the engine and the backend slipped slowly sideways before the tires discovered firmer ground. The car lurched forward and Finney had to fight the wheel to guide the behemoth back onto the trail.

As Nick jostled between Tucker and the door, he studied the woods, a black, formless mass, blocking the ghosts from his mind. As he watched, the darkness began to cohere, at first into blocks of shape, and then, slowly, into entire trees, deadfalls, and outcroppings of stone; bundles of writhing snakes became interlacings of branches and vines, hirsute beasts transformed into thatches of thistle and rhododendron.

Nick glanced at the dash clock. Only 5:31. Light shouldn't come for another hour at least. The long, bony finger of panic caressed his shoulder, the nape of his neck.
Time is everything.
He stared at the clock, mesmerized, watching its flame-red second hand sweep through the minutes. He could hear the seconds crashing past, a jarring
click
that reverberated through his ears and deep into his head.
Everything is time.

“Finney,” he said, his voice a gasp. “It's getting light.”

“I can see.”

“It's only 5:33, what's—”

“The dash clock's wrong.” He glanced at the Rolex bound to his wrist; it flashed golden in the dash light. “It's a couple minutes after seven.”

Nick sunk back into the stiff leather of the seat, a loose spring jabbing him between the shoulder blades. We'll never make it, he thought.
Everything is time.

The woods fell back abruptly and the two cars entered a small clearing. At the far end was a small knoll; beyond it Nick could see only emptiness. Sue pulled to one side and Finney drove the Cadillac up the incline. The car nosed into the sky—Nick saw that the east was a dull scroll of gray, the color of the Gulf on a cold day—and then banked sharply downward. The quarry opened before them, a pit of still water the shade of the eastern sky. The color reminded Nick of dead flesh, of Pomeroy's waxen pallor. Nick stared at the tarnished waters and wondered what might be entrenched in the silty bottoms.

Another dead body?

Nick shook off the thought as he climbed out of the car. He walked to the top of the rise; Sue joined him there and stood silently beside him. Finney cut the engine and emerged from the Cadillac, Tucker coming behind him. Like Jonah from the whale, Nick thought.

The quarry was the size of a small lake; several monolithic forms rose from the water, columns of stone the gravel-seekers had gnawed around, abandoning them to become diving and picnicking platforms. In the semi-darkness they looked like prehistoric sentries brooding over a deserted empire. Nick looked back at the sky. The horizon ran from a dull gray to the color of old nickels. Behind them a smattering of birds began to chirp. Farther back, something large lumbered through the undergrowth, paused, then moved on.

“We need to hustle,” Finney said. Tucker shook his head and moved down the knoll, stopping at the water's edge. Nick walked back to the car and cupped his face to the back window. Pomeroy had rolled to the other side of the back seat, his head propped on an outstretched arm.

Nick opened the door and crawled in. Finney leaned in from his side. They exchanged a quick look and together heaved Pomeroy up, rolling him—first his upper body, then his legs—over the seats. The body felt stiffer but not solid. Nick wondered how long it took for rigor mortis to set in. The head and shoulders fell onto the passenger side floorboard, the snakeskin boots jamming between the steering wheel and leather seat. Pomeroy's ass stuck awkwardly into the air. Hunched into that confining space, he looked like a dwarf jammed into a box.

Nick backed out of the Cadillac, scooping up the Stetson and dropping it into the front. Finney retrieved his monogrammed handkerchief and rapidly wiped down the back seat. He leaned over the seats and, dodging the body, wiped down the front—the dash, the steering wheel, both doors. He was meticulous, wiping even the horn and the dash clock, things Nick knew none of them had touched.

Finney climbed out and shut the door firmly. He wiped the handle down. He walked around the back, cleaning the trunk and passenger doors. Then he wrapped the handkerchief around his hand and opened the front door. He pushed one of Pomeroy's boots aside and, with the same hand, cranked the engine. It chugged reluctantly to life. Backing out, he grabbed the gearshift. Nick watched him close his eyes. His lips moved silently—
a prayer? a plea?
—then he yanked the shaft down into drive and scrambled quickly away from the Cadillac, slamming the door behind him.

Nothing happened at first, the world as still as a snow scene trapped within a crystal ball. Then gravity wrapped her slender fingers around the Cadillac and pulled it slowly, inexorably forward. It moved at first like a drugged elephant, lugubrious and dazed, then, gaining the momentum of the incline, picked up speed. Small branches and pebbles popped and cracked under the wheels, the sound of tiny bones snapping.

It hit the water with a loud splash, the dark waters parting stubbornly before it. The surface of the quarry boiled as the hood submerged, every nook and hollow of the engine filling with the tainted water. The Cadillac hissed angrily and steam rose in small tendrils above the roiling waters. The headlights continued to glow, stabbing through the brackish quarry in two thin streams of light. They flickered, underwater lightning, then blinked out with a muffled pop. And still, the Cadillac plowed forward.