The year She Fell (66 page)

“Yeah. The truth is always the right way to go.”

 
She gave me a slight smile. “That sort of attitude would put the TV industry out of business.”

“Except for reality TV.”

“That’s just as invented as the show I’m on.”

We sat there in the dark, listening to the radio static. Holding hands. And I wanted to ask her like I would have when we were kids—Are we okay? Are we together? Is this for keeps?

But I was grown-up now, and I knew nothing was for keeps. We had what we had, and for as long as it lasted, and that was as long as we appreciated how lucky we were to get another chance. I wasn’t going to force the issue, because it still felt so fragile. But we were here together now, and that was more than I’d ever let myself expect.

A slice of yellow light in the second building over. The science building, I thought. Could be just a student leaving the back way—

But it looked like Urich, stuffing something in his jacket pocket, looking around, then stepping carefully down of the loading dock.

“Get down.” I urged Laura’s head down below the dashboard level and leaned back myself, back against the seat. I kept my gaze on the man walking through the line of cars to a black Mercedes parked in front of a Reserved sign.

I let him get in the car and out of the parking lot before I reached over and opened Laura’s door. “Out.”

Laura just pulled the door shut again and buckled her seatbelt. “No way.”

“I don’t have time to argue—”

“Then don’t. Get going.”

I was three parts annoyed and one part charmed. “Could get scary. High-speed chase, all that.”

She shrugged. “Big deal. I had a bit part in
Speed
. I was one of the passengers on that bus. I bet you drive better than Sandra Bullock.”

She trusted me too much. Always had. When I was a wild teenager driving too fast on the mountain roads, she trusted me. When she was so sick and I told her I’d take care of her, she trusted me. And she trusted me now. Again.

I put the car in gear and eased out into the road, and then picked up the radio. I instructed my officers to station themselves near the major intersections and the three bridges and wait for my word. No need to spook him— but if he was going to toss his evidence into the river, I wanted someone to witness it.

But Urich was cagier than that. He drove along the river road, just under the speed limit, windows rolled up. I hung back a few cars, staying focused on the distinctive Mercedes taillights. When he turned onto the north bridge, I followed him, keeping one car between us.

“Where do you think he’s going?” Laura whispered, as if he might be listening.

“Up Croak, I guess.” I peered into the gathering darkness, trying to assess his plans. “He’s going to cross the city limits if he gets down the other side—”

“Is that a problem?”

“Nah, I’m deputized for the whole county. Little arrangement between the sheriff and me.” As the Mercedes started up Croak Mountain Road, its taillights trailing red in the dark, I reached over to the dash and flipped on the little mini-camcorder. Never knew when that would come in handy.

Just as I cleared the bridge, the car ahead peeled off to the west, leaving me exposed. I let Urich get farther ahead, then followed, up the winding road towards the ridge.

“You don’t think he’s going to go to—to the scene?”

I mentally scanned the next few miles of road. The gorge where Cathy fell was another two miles up the hill, beyond the final climb to the ridge of the mountain, and a mile down on the road heading down the other side. Just inside the city limits. “That would be too incriminating, I think. He’ll probably toss it before that.”

Laura’s face was anxious in the dim green light from the dash. “But if he knows someone’s behind him, a potential witness . . .”

“Don’t worry.” I slowed until he was around the bend, and then I flipped off my headlights. We used to do this, when we were young and stupid—any boy with a car to drive and a girl to impress. Drive the mountain roads in the dark.

And it was pretty dark, for June. There was no moon, and a high cloud cover, and the lights of town were erased with the last turn of the road. But I’d driven this road enough, as a teenager and as an adult, that I knew every bend and turn.

On the right, there was nothing to worry about—just the jagged rock face the road carved out of the mountain. But on the left, I could see through the feathering of brush the sharp slope, rocky and rugged. Only a couple hundred feet here, but another half mile up, and the drop would be five hundred feet.

I felt Laura’s tension as we inched up the darkness. My window was cracked open, and I could smell the mountain laurel in the cool evening air and the musky smell of last year’s leaves. We turned a switchback and there were the taillights ahead, also climbing slower now that the danger was greater. “Can he see us, do you think?” Laura whispered.

“I doubt it. We’re far enough back, and no lights. He had his windows closed, so he can’t hear us either— think we’re okay.”

And then I saw it, the taillights swerving—into the scenic cutout overlooking French Valley to the east. I slowed, almost to a stop, and Laura leaned forward, peering out the windshield. A hundred yards ahead, there was a sudden flash of light—the dome light coming on as the car door opened. He got out of the car, silhouetted in the yellow light and the darkness beyond. I idled to the side of the road, the one against the cliff, heard to the quiet whir of my camcorder, and gave the viewer a little shove in the right direction. I didn’t know how much it would capture, but combined with our eyewitness testimony, it might be enough—

He slammed the door shut and crossed the few feet to the guardrail. He was just a dark form as he stood there looking out over the dark valley, and I thought maybe he was thinking of that other cliff, that other day, on the other side of the mountain. But then his arm rose, and something arched out over the guardrail and into the empty night.

Laura took a sharp breath, and I put a quelling hand on her arm. “Wait,” I said, low and quiet, and she settled, waiting.

I watched him get back into the car, and listened to his engine roar in the hush. “Hang on,” I said. And then I flipped on the lights, hit the siren and beacon, and jammed on the accelerator.

He was quick, I’d give him that. He had the car in gear and out into the road in seconds. But he couldn’t turn back down the mountain, not with me in the way, so he headed up to the ridge. His headlights shot through the darkness, up into the night, deflecting off the trees that lined the gorge. And his red taillights were right ahead of me, swerving to the left at the ridge of the mountain, drawing me on.

I knew this road like I knew the streets of my first beat in
Bristol
, like I knew the back alleys of Gemtown. And I knew over the ridge, the road stretched out for a hundred yards before heading down the other side, twisting back and forth over the river gorge.

“Do you, uh, have a plan?” Laura asked as we jammed left as the road turned.

“Plan?” I replied, like I’d never heard the word before. The exhilaration filled me and I pushed the accelerator up a notch, closing the distance between us and the car ahead. “Don’t need a plan. I know this road. And he doesn’t.”

She said in a small voice, “Okay.”

“Trust me.”

And in a slightly stronger voice, she said, “Okay,” and she gripped the armrest between us as we veered right, down the other side of the mountain.

“Call in,” I said, past a tight throat. “Tell the dispatcher to notify the sheriff— have some cars waiting over by Ellett—set up a stop.” The last thing I wanted was to take this chase into the little hamlet at the bottom of the mountain.

Laura complied, taking only a few seconds to figure the radio out, and crisply relayed my instructions to the dispatcher. If Toni was surprised to hear Laura on the radio, she didn’t give any indication. She just said, “Tell the chief we’re on it,” and left the channel open.

So we raced down the mountain, my car taking each turn with a squeal of tires that echoed in the hollow. The wind rushed in through the cracked window, and I could hear the night noises, and Laura’s startled laughter as we jammed into a switchback and she was thrown back against the seat.

The taillights slid around a curve. He was trying to outrun me, and he had the advantage of a hundred yards and a German-engineered car—and an empty passenger seat. He could take more risks. He didn’t have much choice. But I had the experience of someone who learned to drive right here—a reckless kid taught by a reckless older brother. I gunned the engine and jammed the brakes, sliding around the turn, and headed down into the darkness of the mountainside.

I just needed to keep him in sight.

But he pulled around the next curve, disappearing except for a flash of lights through the trees. I sped up, gripping the gearshift with my right hand. Then I felt Laura’s hand, hot and tight, on mine.

I pulled free of her, just to grab the steering wheel with both hands, just as we rounded the turn. My tires squealed as the car swerved into the far lane, but I righted the progress and headed down. Urich was ahead of me, taking the corners tighter and more economically in his European car. He was a good driver—I’d give him that much. And a smart one.

What was I going to do if I caught him? He’d fled from a pursuit—a minor crime, but one he could argue away. The hard drive might have some evidence, if we could recover it, but surely not of a long-ago murder. He could get away with it, more smug than ever, having beaten back the challenge.

“Don’t worry,” Laura said beside me, her voice low against the singing of the wind. “We’ll get him.”

All I could focus on then was the hairpin curve ahead. I jammed on the brakes, slewed sideways, and for a second saw the trees ahead and not to the side, and thought we wouldn’t make it. But the tires gripped, and we swung around, and we were after him again.

But he’d pulled too far ahead and I almost lost him. His lights disappeared, and for a second, I couldn’t place him. Then I remembered the old mining road that cut off to the south a half-mile before the bridge. I sped down the last road section, but I couldn’t make the sharp turn he’d made, not without slowing down. Cursing, I came to a stop in the middle of the pavement and backed up, then turned onto the rutted dirt road. I had to be careful here, more careful than he, because I had Laura with me, and she was more important than getting him. I growled as I saw his taillights swerving ahead. The road came out where? The frontage road near Lasted? Or—

“The pit,” Laura whispered, and suddenly I remembered. At the end of this road, a slag dump had, over the decades, filled in with snowmelt and river runoff, and generations of kids had gone skinny-dipping there in the cold dark water, miles from the nearest authority figure. We’d done it ourselves, that summer so long ago. There was the boarded-over mineshaft on the left as the road curved right toward Lasted. But straight ahead, there was the pit, just past a flimsy chain barrier we used to drive under, and a wooden fence—

“Hold on,” I said as I caught sight ahead of the abandoned mine. I turned the lights off again, slowing down and letting my instinct direct my steering. Then the road dipped up, and I saw his taillights just ahead, bouncing up and down as he negotiated the ruts. I flipped on my brights, surprising him, and he accelerated convulsively. He missed the turn to the right and crashed through the chain, and through the fence, and the Mercedes sailed out, and flew twenty feet before crashing into the pit, sending a shockwave of water back towards the shore.

I slammed on the brakes and shoved the shift into park. Then I was out the door, the ground solid beneath my feet. The car, caught in the beam of my headlight, was sinking fast into the pit’s depths. The light glinted off the crushed frame, the broken windows. In a few seconds, the cabin would fill with water.

 
“Call it in!” I shouted to Laura. Then instinct took over. I kicked off my shoes and was pulling off my shoulder holster when I felt her hands tight on mine.