Bag claim 26 was deserted.
I checked the flight information for bag claim 26 on one of the overhead monitors. A flight from Seattle had used it 30 minutes ago, a flight from San Francisco an hour ago. I was only twenty minutes late, and with the inclement weather I thought that my arriving passenger might be late, too. I stepped back outside through the big glass doors and took a long look at the people standing on the sidewalk waiting for rides. I didn't recognize any faces. I went back inside and took a seat where I could keep an eye on both the sidewalk and the baggage machinery. Cars stopped, people waiting on the sidewalk got in, and cars pulled away. I wondered if my passenger had already been picked up by someone else. Not much I could do about that. All I could do was wait for the next set of passengers and their bags to hit bag claim 26. If I didn’t recognize any faces in the next couple of hours, I'd leave, go back to Fullmeyer's cabin, and wait for him to call me again.
There was someone else waiting, too. He sat on a bench on the other side of the bag claim area. Average height, black hair cut short on the sides but long in back, mullet style. Brown Carhartt coat, blue jeans tucked into shiny black Doc Marten boots. Walrus mustache. Hard, sharp eyes that seemed too small for his face. He looked like a cross between a street punk and an old-time Pinkerton detective. Our eyes met, and his expression wasn’t casual. He looked at me as if I reminded him of someone he disliked. Then he pulled a cell phone from his coat pocket and started texting.
The electronic sign hanging over the bag claim belt made a bonging sound, and the display announced the arrival of a flight from El Paso, Texas. The belt began to move, making its serpentine way out through the rubber doors that separated the baggage-handling machinery from the carpeted, comfortable space where people waited for their bags. The passengers began to arrive, coming down the escalator to stand by the still-empty belt to wait for their bags. People in sweatpants, in business suits, some wearing ski coats. A family re-united with hugs that lasted a long time. Kids who looked like they might be in college kissed tenderly before standing with their foreheads tipped together like penguins, barely aware of the crowds around them. Two children wearing Hello Kitty backpacks waited patiently by their parents. I didn't recognize anyone I knew.
I looked through the crowd towards where the guy with the walrus mustache had been sitting. He'd moved, and I didn't know where he'd gone to.
Chapter 6
I got up from my seat and positioned myself midpoint between the bag claim, the escalator, and the glass doors that opened onto the sidewalk where the cars waited for passengers. If I didn't recognize my passenger, but they knew who I was, maybe they'd notice me on their way out of the bag claim area.
After most of the crowd from El Paso had left, a woman wearing sunglasses and a cream-colored trench coat walked past me towards the glass doors, trailing a wheeled carry-on bag behind her. As she went past, she turned and stared.
"Hi," I said, staring back.
She stopped and pulled her tortoise shell sunglasses down, showing me green eyes.
"You're the guy from the bar," she said. "With the gun."
"Yeah," I said. "Bonnie. Right?"
"Right," she said. "You remembered." She gave me a slightly crooked smile. “I don’t think I got the chance to thank you for what you did. I think you saved my life.”
I could see her eyes starting to well up with tears. I held out my hand. "I’m glad I could be there,” I said. “Delorean Harper.”
"Bonnie English," she said. She took my hand in hers and gave me a firm handshake. "Mr. Fullmeyer said someone would be here waiting for me. I thought it would be another federal marshal."
"It's just me for now," I said. We looked at each other, both nonplussed, both surprised to be seeing each other again.
"Well... Okay... I have my bag,” she said. “What do we do now?"
"Eric - Mr. Fullmeyer told me to take you back to the house where I'm staying for the time being."
"Okay, good sir. I am putting myself in your capable hands." She was wearing the bright red lipstick she’d had on in the bar, and I noticed how perfect her skin was and the shine of her black hair against the trench coat.
She pulled her sunglasses back up and gave me the smile again. Then she hooked her arm through mine. I smelled the perfume she was wearing and felt the softness of her leaning against my shoulder as we walked side by side. We went out through the big glass doors and followed the crosswalk across the lanes of traffic waiting to pick up passengers. A pale sun was still shining low in the sky, but a few clouds had moved back in. The first of the snowflakes were beginning to fall in slow motion outside the umbrella of glass between the airport terminal and the parking garage.
"I haven't seen snow in a while," she said. "It's really pretty."
"I agree."
We entered the parking garage, and I used one of the automated kiosks to validate my parking ticket. Once I had my receipt, we walked down a long aisle of cars to the Camry.
"I've never been to Portland before," she said.
"My first time, too."
We got to the car and put Bonnie's luggage in the trunk. I opened the passenger door and picked up the shotgun and the heavy coat, relocating them to the back seat. Bonnie took off her trench coat and handed it to me. She was wearing a pale green cashmere sweater over a short black wool skirt and black leather riding boots. I held the door open for her while she got in, put her trench coat on the back seat, got behind the wheel, and hit the electric door locks.
Bonnie was looking straight ahead. I could sense the nervousness in her.
"You still have that gun from the bar," she said.
"Right," I said. I started the car and turned the heater up to cut the cold that had settled in the Camry while I’d waited for Bonnie.
"Is it not safe here?" she asked.
"I don't know yet," I said, putting the car into reverse. As I backed out of the parking place, it occurred to me that since seeing Bonnie in the bag claim area, I hadn't checked a single time to see if anyone was watching us or following us. I would live to regret that.
Chapter 7
We drove towards downtown Portland in the early evening traffic. The weather alternated between sun breaks and light snow, but it wasn't cold enough for the snow to stick on the road surface. I had the wipers going and the rear window defroster on. Bonnie took in the scenery and held her hands in her lap.
"Is it okay for me to ask why Eric sent you here?" I asked.
Bonnie looked away, out her side window. "Those guys who were in the bar?" she said
"I remember."
"Eric charged them with kidnapping and for having the machine gun. They were in jail overnight and then got out on bail. Before Martin - he's the bartender - and I could testify at the arraignment about what they'd done, Martin was threatened at gunpoint in front of his wife and children. Then some guys came by my apartment when I wasn't there and told my roommate that if I testified against the men in the bar, they'd kill me and my sister and then maybe my parents, too. I told Mr. Fullmeyer that I was willing to testify anyway, but I thought about it, and I just couldn't be responsible for putting my whole family’s lives at risk. Those two men from the bar also told their lawyer that the machine gun was yours, and that you'd brought it in with a sawed-off shotgun. Since nobody would testify, all the charges were dropped."
"Shit," I said.
"Eric said he thought it would probably be better for me and for my family if I got out of town for a while to let things cool down. I said okay, so he put me up in a hotel last night and then put me on a plane this morning."
"That makes sense," I said.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because they're going to keep doing what they do until someone and their whole family is willing to get killed just to put them in jail for a while."
"Or somebody is willing to fight back," I said.
"Eric said they killed your brother."
; "Not those exact guys, but yeah, some other people they're connected with. My brother Bricklin was in Alamogordo driving a truck. He found out that some of the drivers he worked with were involved with the cartel. They killed Bricklin to keep him quiet, and almost killed me, too. I was testifying against someone in the cartel when he was poisoned during the trial. So my testimony, and the trial, and my brother's death didn't count for much."
"You must feel so bitter," she said.
"I'm trying to make peace with it," I said. "Some things are out of my control, right?"
"I guess so."
As the highway connected with downtown Portland, we turned south onto Interstate 5 and made our way along the Willamette River past the gleaming high rise office buildings and apartments overlooking the waterfront park. The sun was setting behind the hills that formed the backdrop for the downtown collection of buildings, so I turned on the headlights. We continued west on Highway 26 towards the coastal mountain range. The office buildings gradually gave way to suburbs and shopping malls which gradually gave way to farmland and gently rolling hills thick with Douglas fir trees.
"Where are we going?" Bonnie asked. "Aren't we staying in Portland?"
"No," I said. "The house is on the coast."
"Is that a long way?"
"If the roads stay okay, maybe an hour, an hour and a half."
"Oh."
"Do you want to stop for something to eat? We're just about past the part of the drive where you can find a restaurant."
"I'm not hungry. It's okay."
“Do you want some coffee? I have a thermos in the back seat.”
“No, thanks.”
After staring out the window for a while at the darkening hills, Bonnie turned her attention to the shoebox of CDs Eric had left in the foot well of the passenger seat. I pressed the overhead button for the map light so she could see what she was looking at. The music was an eclectic mix of indie rock, heavy metal guitar, bluegrass country music, old-time rock and roll, and acoustic guitar. Music to keep you engaged and awake on a long drive. I’d gone through the entire box during the drive from El Paso to the Cannon Beach. Bonnie looked at each CD in turn, carefully reading the description of the music and artist before finally selecting Coldplay's "Ghost Stories" from the stack. "You mind if I put some music in?" she asked.
"Not at all."
She slid the CD into the slot in the dash, and the music began to play through the car speakers, making a counterpoint to the gloomy weather and the steady metronome of the wipers clearing the snow from the windshield.
By then the clouds had changed into a gray-colored blanket, and snow was falling steadily and beginning to stick on the shoulder of the road. The traffic thinned as we headed into the foothills of the coastal mountain range. I began to see logging trucks in the oncoming lane every few minutes, but not much else in my lane either ahead or behind.
As we went through the last village before starting up the grade into the mountains, I noticed that a Corvette was following about a half mile back. Like me, he had his headlights on. I had the sense that he'd been hanging back there for a long time, and that he seemed to be pacing me. If I went faster, he went faster. If I slowed down, he did, too. Maybe he didn't want to tailgate me or pass me because of the snow on the road.
We started up the long climb that led to the crest of the coastal range, the snow beginning to fall heavily and accumulate on the road. Eric’s Camry had front wheel drive and good tires, and seemed to handle the road conditions okay, though. As we climbed, the Douglas fir trees grew thicker and closer to the highway on both sides, a reminder that the road was a narrow ribbon of man-made convenience through wilderness.
We drove through a stretch of road where the tree branches had formed a canopy over the highway. The huge tree trunks, the arches of the branches joining above us, and the snowflakes being swept over the car gave the impression of flying through a cathedral.
Bonnie pulled her coat from the back seat and covered herself with it like a blanket.
"How much farther?" She asked. "This place feels haunted. I'm ready to get there."
"Maybe another thirty minutes."
I kept the speed at a reasonable pace but eventually went around a curve and came up fast behind a small motor home doing about 20 miles an hour on a steep uphill grade. I jumped on the brakes and narrowly avoided a collision. Then another car came around the same curve behind me, jumped on its brakes, and his headlight beams filled the interior of the Camry. I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw the same walrus mustache and mullet haircut I'd seen in the bag claim area at the Portland airport. Then the Corvette receded quickly into the distance, with me crawling along behind the motorhome and the Corvette trailing behind, a quarter mile back.
Chapter 8
I shut off the music. "We're being followed," I said.
"I know we're going pretty slow," Bonnie said. "You mean someone is behind us?"
"No. I mean I just saw someone following us who was also at the airport when you were picking up your bag."
"Could he just be going to the coast, too?"
"It’s possible, but I doubt it."
She paused. "What do you think he wants?"
"I don't know. To figure out where we're going, maybe."
It was quiet in the car, with just the muted sounds of the windshield wipers and the Camry’s engine. Snowflakes fell through the headlight beams. Bonnie hugged herself like she’d become cold. I glanced over my shoulder at the back seat to see if I could see the shotgun.
"Does he know you saw him?" she asked.
I shook my head. "I'm not sure. I just looked at him in my mirror for a second."
The road straightened out again, and I went around the motorhome, picking up enough speed that even with front-wheel drive we began to slide when I went around curves. A minute later I saw the Corvette in my rear view mirror again. Then the road steepened again, and with the increasing altitude the snow fell harder. I was driving at the limit of the Camry's traction, and the Corvette receded in the rear view mirror again, his headlights becoming pinpoints in the distance.
We crested a hill and started down a long straightaway, and within a minute the Corvette's headlights surged in my rear view mirror again, his high beams flooding the interior of the Camry with hot white light.
"I don’t think he's just trying to figure out where we're going anymore,” I said. “He wants us to know he's back there."
"Why would he do that?" Bonnie said. She sounded like she was about to cry.
"I honestly don't know. To mess with us? Maybe to scare us into driving so fast we have a wreck?"
"Do you think ... do you think he has a gun?"
"I think that he probably does, yeah.” I looked over at Bonnie. “I do too."
Then we started up another steep hill. The road began to twist back and forth through a series of sharp curves cut through thick stands of fir trees, and I watched the Corvette recede in my mirror once again, the rear end of the Corvette fishtailing wildly on one of the curves before he slowed and brought the car under control.
I knew that eventually we would crest the coastal range and begin the descent to the Pacific Coast Highway, and that the Corvette would catch us on the long downhill. When we were at sea level, and the roads were clear again, I was certain that he would find a place to his liking and try to kill Bonnie and me.
Chapter 9
A road sign announced a rest stop a mile ahead. I told Bonnie that I was going to pull over.
“My God, please don't," she said. Her voice had a tone of near panic.
"Bonnie, if we let him, he'll follow us to the house. I can't outrun him in this car."
"What if we found a policeman?"
"I haven't seen a single highway patrol car since we left Portland, and that motorhome is the only other car I've seen in ten minutes. I think we're on our own."
"What if we call for help?"
"Do you have service?"
She pulle
d out her cell phone, powered it up, and looked at the screen. Then she turned to me and said "I can't get a signal."
The Douglas fir trees that lined the right side of the highway gave way to a clear cut. Burning piles of timber debris as tall as houses lined the highway, smoldering and smoking in the snowfall like giant funeral pyres, their inner cores moldering with a blood red glow. A layer of black haze hung in the air.
"Bonnie," I said. "Listen to me. I'm going to pull into the rest stop. Once we get stopped, get out and run like hell into the bathroom. Lock the door from the inside. I'll try to come up behind him. Surprise him somehow. Don't unlock the bathroom door until I tell you to. Okay?"
"I really don't want to," she said. Her voice was shaking. "Can't we stay together in the car?"