The Passenger (5 page)

The man stopped and squinted at him.

You’ll
see something
, he’d
said. She guessed this was going to be it. She had to work to keep from
smiling.

“Pay for this for me, will you, friend?
I’m short on cash.”

The man glanced at the whiskey and the
beer. He shook his head.

“Crazy sumbitch,” he muttered.

He moved toward the door again, and Emil
flung his arm across her shoulders from behind and pulled her between the man
and the door. When she felt the gun against her cheek the gasp was real.

“Pay for it. Or I shoot the lady and then
I shoot you.”

“He means it,” Billy said. “He’s not
facetious.” “And you behind the counter. Don’t move.”

You could see the old guy sizing up the
situation. She wondered what war he’d served in. He wasn’t particularly
rattled. Tough old bird.

She was doing all right so far though,
she thought, playing the victim, eyes wide and mouth hung open in what she
hoped looked like sheer terror though she was practically coming in her pants
here for god’s sake— and then Emil made things worse by sliding his hand down
over her breast and squeezing and the old guy seemed to get the picture all at
once. His face changed, hardened. And Emil must have seen that too because that
was when he turned the gun and fired and the old man dropped to the floor
howling and clutching his left foot, the Old Times bursting beside him.

“I forgot to mention that I could just as
easily do it reverse order,” Emil said. “Bag it. Ring it up,” he told the
clerk. He caressed her breast and she couldn’t help it now and didn’t try, she
moaned. “Soon as he can, I know he’ll be happy to pay up.”

Which was exactly what both of them did.

* * *

They’d come whooping out of the package
store like
schoolkids
at a panty raid but she’d heard
the muted gunshot and now Billy was driving, with Emil and Marion in the back
with Ray and she glanced around and saw the two of them kissing and his hand
between her legs, so that she wasn’t at all surprised when he told Billy to
pull onto the narrow dirt access road and then to stop and cut the lights. They
got out, a bottle of scotch in Emil’s hand, and went running, laughing, for the
woods.

They didn’t go far. Just behind a stand
of pines. She could hear them over the drone of crickets through the open
window. Marion giggling and then groaning. Emil grunting like a goddamn animal.
Brush crackling beneath them in the still air.

They were animals. So was the one Ray
with the gun against her cheek, running it along first one side of her face and
then the other so that each time she had to pull away and finally rapping her head
with the barrel to make her sit still—rapping her lightly but her head was
taking such a beating tonight it still hurt like hell—and then she could feel
him lean over her, could smell the beer on his breath as he ran the barrel down
over her neck and collarbone, heading for her breast and she could feel Billy’s
eyes on both of them.

You’ve got to stop this, she thought.
Now
. Already she felt bathed in filth.

“You’d better be ready to kill me,” she
said. “Just one more inch.”

“Who says I’m not?”

“You didn’t do the cop.
He
did the cop. You get caught, I can
say that. You kill me, I can’t. You’ve heard of state’s evidence?”

“Uh-huh.”

“ Course he has,” Billy said. “Everybody
has. It’s where you angle in on somebody and you get impunity.”

The little guy was short a few major
cable stations. She’d keep her pitch to Ray, who at least
appeared
to be somewhat sane—and she’d damn well have to hurry. The
sounds from the bushes had all but stopped now.

“If you don’t hurt me and you don’t abuse
me I can
help you. I know what I’m talking about.
I’m a lawyer. It’s my job to know.”

“A lawyer?”

“A defense attorney.”

“Bullshit.”

She’d expected that. She dug into her
purse for the wallet, opened it and flashed the laminated card at him.

“See that? That’s a court pass. They don’t
come in cereal boxes, Ray.”

He took it from her. The gun no longer
pressed her flesh.

“I’ll be damned.”

He studied it a moment and handed it back
to her. “Well,” he said, “I probably wouldn’t be the one to shoot you anyway,
truth be known. ’Less you started something. I’m a family man, you know. Want
to see?” She heard him digging into his back pocket, pulling out his own wallet
and flipping through the plastic inserts. He couldn’t seem to find what he was
looking for.

“I had a lawyer once,” he said. “I kinda
liked the man. I appreciated his efforts on my behalf.”

Then she heard him slap the wallet closed
and abruptly shove it back into his jeans and turned and saw Marion and Emil
come thrashing through the brush. Marion leaned in through Janet’s window and
smiled. “Nothing like the great outdoors, hon. Shove over.”

* * *

Alan was already thirty yards past it and
headed along the downslope, briefs for the Mohica case foremost on his mind,
when he registered Janet’s blue Taurus, warning lights blinking like
fireflies, dark and silent by the road. It wasn’t safe to pull a U-turn here on
the hill so he continued to the bottom and turned and drove back
up again. He crossed lanes and parked
into her dead headlights and got out of the car and peered in through the
window. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or not to find that there was
nobody home.

He got back into his car and tried her on
his cell phone but all he got was the machine and that
definitely
didn’t relieve him. The gas station, maybe? Arranging
for jumper cables or a tow truck? Could be. He got Kaltzas’s number from
Information but when he tried it the line was busy.

The anxiety really didn’t hit him until
he reached the roadhouse and saw the side of the road swarming with cops, saw
the jackknifed car and the Jeep and the crime- scene tape and the forensics
team working over the body of a man and then it
really
hit him when he saw the paramedics wheeling a woman into an
ambulance.
Janet? My god
, he
thought. He didn’t know why he thought it—the woman could have been anybody—but
it came unbidden and pounded through his blood. He slowed and then stopped even
as the officer waved him on. He flashed his ID. The officer frowned at him anyway.

“What happened? Accident?”

“Shooting. One dead. One of ours,
dammit.”

“The woman?”

“Girl. Can’t be more’n seventeen.
Concussion, fractures, god knows what else. It’s a helluva mess.”

He nodded. “Thanks, Officer. Good luck.
Hope you get the bastard.”

“Bastards,” he said. “Three of them.”

Alan guessed it was just his night to be
corrected. He pulled out and tried her again on the cell phone.

“
Leave
a message
,” she said.

* * *

“Vehicle described as a late-model
four-door Buick station wagon, light blue. Suspects are assumed to be armed
and . .

“Dangerous,” said Emil.

Billy reached over and flipped off the
police band and pounded once at the steering wheel. “Shit,” he said. “How’d
they make the wagon?” said Ray.

“The car that passed us by back there.
While Billy was toyin’ with the Man.”

“Shit!” He pounded the wheel again.

“Called us in as an accident, probably.
Good citizen. Well hell, we
are
an
accident. An accident waitin’ to happen!”

It seemed to break the tension and they
laughed. Broke it for them, anyway, if not exactly for Janet. They were all too
damn matter-of-fact about this. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t normal. And Emil.
Couldn’t
anything
shake Emil?

“We’ll just find us another car, that’s
all,” he said. “Meantime we better get off the road awhile.” He turned to
Marion. “You know a place?”

She looked at Janet.

“Do I know a place? Hell, yes.”

She draped her arm over Janet’s shoulders
and gave her a squeeze.

“ ’Course I do,” she said.

* * *

She’d chosen the house because, unlike
the Justice Building, where every footfall echoed like pistol fire across the marble
floors, where even the walls were polished on a weekly basis, where the air
was processed and always traced with disinfectant, the house was as
much of nature as in the midst of it.
Over 120 years old, it stood surrounded by tall untended grass atop a hill at
the end of a two-lane dirt track that wound past a small country graveyard and
an abandoned church of even earlier origin. Its beams were hand-hewn. Both
fireplaces worked. The occasional bat still fluttered upstairs in the attic.

Her nearest neighbors were over a mile
away. The house was quiet. It was private.

Now
it was remote.

“How many phones?” Emil said. He’d walked
in with his gun drawn. He shoved it in his belt.

“Just the one in the kitchen.”

“Truth, now.”

“Just the kitchen.”

“Ray? You want to take care of that?”

“Sure.”

Ray walked into the kitchen, put the
paper bag containing the whiskey down on the counter and the beer in the
refrigerator and unplugged the wall jack. The blinking light on her answering
machine blinked out.

“Any guns?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. You want to hide the carving
knives? I promise not to look.”

Emil smiled. “I just might do that.”

Billy plopped down in her armchair like a
man after a hard day at work. Emil went to the refrigerator to get himself a
beer. He popped one for Ray and handed it to him, then another for himself and
closed the door.

“Hey,” said Marion.

“Oh, right.”

He got her a beer, opened it and stepped
out of the kitchen and handed it to her.

“Sorry, Marie.”

“Marion.”

“Sorry. You care for one?”

“No,” Janet said.

She
needed something a whole lot stronger. Not too much, god knows she had to keep
her wits about her. But Jesus, something.
She went to the kitchen cabinet and took down the fifth of
Glenlivet and a glass and uncorked the bottle.

“Scotch?” Ray said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Hey, we got scotch too. Have some of
ours. Be our guest.”

“No thanks.
This
is scotch. You bought rubbing alcohol.”

She poured herself a double. Ray took the
bottle from her hand.

“So educate me,” he said.

She got him a glass. He poured and drank.

“Smooth. What is it?”

“Single malt.”

“Good stuff,” he said.

“Where’s the bathroom?” said Marion.

Janet pointed. “Through there. Through
the bedroom.”

“What’s over there?” Emil said.

He was pointing to the closed door to the
study. Neither Emil nor Marion knew what she happened to do for a living yet
and for some reason she didn’t want them to. So far the others hadn’t said
anything. But if
he went browsing around in
there he could probably figure it out for himself.

“A study. Books and papers.”

He moved to the door and opened it and
flicked on the wall switch and his eyes went to the cluttered desk.

“You work here?”

“Sometimes.”

“You some kind of writer or something?”

“I write.”

She walked over and as she turned the
light off again and closed the door in front of him she saw Alan’s forgotten
briefs on the end table.

He
needed them tomorrow
.

He’s
supposed to be staying in town tonight.

“Please,” she said. “This room’s
private.”

He shrugged and smiled. “Sure. Okay. You
figure on writing about me?”

“Would you want me to?”

She glanced at Billy, slumped in the
armchair, opening and closing a big sharp-looking folding knife, his brow
furrowed as though deep in thought.
Billy’s
got a knife, she thought. You damn well remember that too.

“Sure I’d want you to. Farm boy makes
good, right? You know I’m the seventh son of a seventh son? Supposed to be
magic or spiritual or something, real powerful. Now Billy here’s a preacher’s
son. A very spiritual being in his own right. And Ray ..