The Highway (37 page)

“I see one of you,” the man said to Danielle. “Where is the other? Where’s your sister?”

Gracie froze. The man couldn’t see her because she was out of the sight line of the sliding panel.

Instinctively, Danielle’s eyes moved to her.

Gracie felt as if she’d been stabbed in the back by her sister.

“Come out where I can see you,” the man said.

Gracie stepped into the center of the room.

“Hiding, huh?” the man said. “You’re not the first to ever try that trick.”

Gracie looked down at her bare feet. She was afraid if she looked at Danielle she’d dive at her and try to tear her sister’s hair out.

“I shouldn’t really be here,” the man said, as much to himself as to Gracie, it seemed. “But I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

She nodded.

“Has my other friend been here since we left?”

“No,” Gracie said, looking up.

“You’re not lying to me, are you?”

“No.”

She could see him nodding through the slot in a satisfied way. He said, “I believe you since you’re standing.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” the man said. “But you two need to keep something in mind. Your role here is to satisfy
me
. As long as you can do that, I’ll keep you around. I won’t let that trucker hurt you, and believe me—he will. He likes the sound of bones snapping. You saw what happened to Krystyl and the cook there. Think about them, and then think about
me.
Think of ways to make me happy. If you do that, girls, I can protect you from the trucker and we can discuss your future later. Got that?”

Neither said a word.

“Good,” the man said, and slammed the slider shut.

“If he doesn’t kill you, I will,” Gracie growled at her sister.

Danielle shrugged, tears in her eyes.

*   *   *

At the same time, Cassie Dewell kept one eye on the road and the other on her GPS unit as she coursed up the Highway 89 north from Gardiner. If she’d programmed the coordinates correctly, the screen said she’d be at the old Schweitzer place in six minutes.

Six minutes.

Back at the quilt shop, she’d debated with herself whether to wait on the highway for the contingent from the sheriff’s department in Livingston to storm the Schweitzer place en masse or to find it herself. Finally, she thought: What would Cody do?

She smiled grimly at the thought: WWCD.

Then she said good-bye to Sally Legerski, who was still in shock behind her silent sewing machine, and went out to the Ford. She made a vow to go back when it was over and offer what comfort she could. There were so many victims of crime, she thought. So many friends, relatives, and family members on the periphery of evil.

As she sped along the highway she noticed a black spoor of smoke to her right, toward the mountains. A big fire of some kind several miles from the highway. It seemed odd in the late fall/early winter when there was no wildfire danger. The low pressure of the storm front kept the smoke from rising straight up and flattened it on the top so it looked like a T. Because her driver’s side window was open, she caught a hint of the stench. It smelled like burning plastic and rotten garbage.

Her mind raced, fueled by adrenaline, lack of sleep, and horror. She imagined how horrible it would be to be a prisoner in the shelter without an inkling of who out there might be trying to find her, if anyone was. Every minute would be its own nightmare. The only positive aspect she could think of was how unlikely it was Legerski could have molested the Sullivan girls in such a short time since their abduction. She had to remind herself it had been less than twenty-four hours, and for much of the time Legerski had been entertaining Cody Hoyt and her. Inadvertently, that might have spared the Sullivan girls the fate of the girl on the DVD. But she couldn’t be sure, of course, and if he was given more time she had no doubt what their fate would be. One of the jarring impressions she had taken away from viewing the DVD was that he was well practiced.

She’d told Sheriff Pedersen she’d meet him at the Schweitzer place, but she didn’t say
at the same time he arrived.
She wanted to get there first, find and free Cody and the girls, and wait for the cavalry to arrive. She wanted to see Cody, put an end to the investigation, be the hero, and get home for Thanksgiving. It was something she could tell Ben about some day; how his mother was a hero like his father had been.

The GPS indicated she should turn off the highway within 0.5 miles, so she slowed down. The road displayed on the screen was nothing special; an ungraded private two-track with no official name. She looked ahead and saw that it wound up through the sagebrush and up and over a rise to what looked like a valley on the other side. As she turned she noticed a series of fresh tire tracks in the mud of the road, more activity than she thought there should be for such a forlorn location, and her heart began to whump.

And it was as if Cody was back in the Expedition with her, chain-smoking and doing one of his cynical monologues about human nature and the corrupt judicial system. She could hear him lay out the pros and cons, the very real scenario where everything they tried to do right turned out for shit.

What would happen if the evidence itself, the DVDs, turned out to be tainted somehow? What if the man who’d given them to her had stolen them? Would they hold up in court? What if Legerski claimed they were fraudulent, that some video sharpie with digital equipment had the know-how and technology to make it appear that he was raping and killing women? Isn’t that what they did in Hollywood—created realistic images of beings and people via computer? CGI—computer-generated imaging. What if they couldn’t find corroborating evidence to back up the images, or if the evidence they found was thrown out due to some technicality like an illegal search and seizure? After all, Cassie had made the decision to proceed with speed and force instead of careful deliberation. She hadn’t even tried to obtain a search warrant for the Schweitzer place or the shelter.…

There was still the truck driver who had blown the case open by leaving the disks. She didn’t know why he’d done it, whether he was somehow involved or whether he was a Good Samaritan who wanted to steer her in the right direction but leave himself out of it. Either way, the speed in which he’d driven away and his method of passing the damning evidence indicated he wanted to get out of town fast. She’d not called him in or put out an APB on his all-black truck, not wanting to risk Legerski hearing about the incident over his radio and panicking. She wanted Trooper Legerski to be caught before he knew he was a suspect.

Finding the driver and his truck shouldn’t be difficult, she thought. Although she didn’t know all the particulars of long-haul trucking, she did know the drivers were heavily regulated and their identities available through a national database. It wouldn’t take long for investigators to name him and pull his license plate number and put out the word to highway law enforcement. Plus, he had U.S. Department of Transportation numbers stenciled on the door of his truck for identification. There was no way, she thought, for a trucker to stay unidentified for very long, once the word was out to highway patrolmen, federal and state DOT officials, weigh station attendants, and truck stop cashiers. It should be a matter of hours or days before he was apprehended and brought back. She looked forward to questioning him. And maybe thanking him for being a knight of the road.

*   *   *

When she topped the rise and drove down into the steep mountain valley she made a decision. She thought again: WWCD.

Maybe it was seeing Legerski’s highway patrol cruiser parked beside the run-down old house in the valley below. Maybe it was the two rectangles of fresh upturned soil out in the hay meadow, and the outline of a half-dozen similar disturbances that were visible because the light snow from that morning clung to the natural grass around the rectangles and exposed them to her naked eye. She didn’t understand the reason for the plots, but they were certainly discordant and suspicious to the landscape.

She parked next to the highway patrol cruiser and got out. A slight icy breeze rustled her hair and she pushed a strand of it out of her eyes. It was obvious there was no one in the old house because the windows were broken out and the front door hung open like a gaping mouth.

Cassie reached back through her coat for her weapon. It was a .40 Glock 27 with nine rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. She’d never fired it in the line of duty, and had rarely pulled it out of its holster except at the qualifying range. It was a compact weapon that fit her hand and had plenty of firepower. She’d always wondered if she’d be capable of killing another human being, but what she’d seen on the DVD changed all that.

She followed several sets of tracks to the concrete abutment on the side of the house. It reminded her of a storm cellar entrance but the construction was thick and solid and it looked impregnable. It had been there long enough that blue-green veins of lichen climbed the sides. There was a set of closed wooden doors at the mouth of the passageway that swung out. She noted the rusty hasps on the edge of the doors but saw no lock on them.

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, then bent over and opened the doors one at a time, revealing a steep set of concrete steps that led to a closed steel door on the bottom of the landing. She started to climb down, hesitated, and then retreated back up to the opening.

Instead of descending into the shelter, she leaned into the stairwell and shouted, “Trooper Legerski! It’s Cassie Dewell. Are you down there? I saw your car outside.”

Silence for a moment, then she heard what sounded like a thump behind the closed door.

“Trooper Legerski, are you down there?”

She tried to keep her voice from trembling or sounding shrill. She wanted it to come across as normal as possible and as clueless as he thought she must be.

She was ready to throw herself to the side if he came out blasting. Instead, she heard a bolt thrown and saw the door crack open a few inches but she couldn’t yet see him.

“Mr. Legerski, are you down there?”

“What do you want?” He sounded gruff, but somehow false, like he was attempting to sound understandably annoyed. “What are you doing here?”

“Your ex-wife told me you owned this place, that’s how I found you.”

“Sally? Jesus Christ.” But there was a hint of relief in his voice.

“Did you get the warrant from the judge? I’ve been waiting for you to call and let me know.”

She heard him sigh. “Didn’t you hear? He wouldn’t issue one. He said there wasn’t enough probable cause, just like I told you would happen.”

“Damn,” she said, and stomped her foot. “No, I didn’t know that. Hey, can I come down there and talk with you? We need to go to Plan B.” She thought she sounded sincere.

“Jesus Christ, lady,” he said. After a beat, he said, “Stay there, I’m coming up.”

“What kind of place is this, anyway?” she asked the empty stairwell. She heard him curse and say something under his breath, then open the door. He was in uniform, although he looked as if he were buttoning up the top of his shirt. That did it. Why else would he be partially unclothed in a place like that?

At that moment, she was sure he had the girls down there and he didn’t want her any closer to them than she already was.

He filled the narrow staircase as he climbed. He stepped heavily, lurching from side to side as if each step was a chore. His wide shoulders nearly brushed both walls as he came up.

She waited until he emerged from the shadow and she could see his face in a band of sunlight. He was six steps from the top when she set her feet in a shooting stance and raised the Glock with both hands.

He looked up and saw the gun and his horrible fleshy face went slack. Then his eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak but she didn’t let him and she didn’t stop pulling the trigger until the slide of the gun locked back, the magazine empty. Legerski tumbled backward in slow motion, arms and legs flopping lifelessly, a sack of meat kicked down the stairs, blood spatter everywhere.

Cassie ejected the magazine and slammed another one home and followed her gun down the stairs, using the handrail when the steps became slippery with blood.

She stepped over the massive twisted body, turned, and shoved it on its side with her boot. It was heavy, and his uniform front was black with blood. He had holes in his cheek, neck, and hands.

She bent down and grabbed a handful of his uniform tunic where it was tucked into the back of his belt and pulled hard until it came free. His skin was pasty white but there it was: an oblong purple birthmark on the small of his back nearly eight inches high. There were two flesh-colored spots within the mark that looked vaguely like eye sockets. It
did
remind her of a death’s-head …

Cassie drew a glove from her coat pocket and pulled it on her right hand. She found his service weapon and removed it from its holster. There was another gun in an ankle holster, a snub-nosed revolver with the serial number filed off. A throw-down. Cody always packed a throwdown or two, but she didn’t need one. She put the revolver back in the holster and tugged the pant leg hem down to hide it so it would be discovered later.

She stood and stepped back, breathing hard. She looked down into his open eyes but there was nothing there. He didn’t look so tough now, she thought.

Then she aimed Legerski’s service weapon up the stairwell and fired two shots through the opening into the sky, and tossed the gun up the stairs.

She said, “Poor guy—killed by a stupid cunt.”

*   *   *

When the sliding steel window plate opened, Gracie looked up. Instead of the leering piglike eyes of the man who’d been there earlier and said he was coming back, she saw two blue eyes belonging to a woman barely tall enough to look in. Her heart swelled with hope.

Of course they’d heard the shots, one after another, in rapid succession like so many firecrackers.

Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
Then, two more.