cops are on the way and I’m going to stay on this public road until they get here.”
He pulled his bike in front of me, blocking my path. “Stop.” He said. I stopped and looked at him. All the muscles in his face seemed tense. “You didn’t call the cops did you? How could you, your hands are tied.”
“I called before.” I said. “I called as soon as I saw those women go up Fallowfield. I was trying to stop them -and I might’ve succeeded if you had listened to me.”
“Get on the bike.” He said. “We have to go back.”
“My hands are tied.” I said.
He got off the bike and used a pocketknife to free my hands. He got on the bike and I stood there weighing my options. “Get on.” He said. I took a deep breath and got on the bike holding the back of the seat. “You ever ride on the back of a bike before?”
“Just go.” I said.
TWENTY-FOUR
The road where I had almost been killed by the Escalade led to a flat clearing that was brightly lit. There were four banks of lights, high up on poles like at a football field, and they illuminated a large patch of pavement and two long buildings. One of the buildings was open on one side, like a big garage door. It wasn’t until I was almost to the top of the hill that I saw the small airplane with it’s under compartment open, and it’s stairs down. It was an airfield.
When we pulled up to the side of the building I saw a body face down in a pool of blood, still holding onto a handgun. The bike’s wheels went through the blood and it seemed incredibly cold to me that he would drive through the man’s blood. He could’ve easily avoided it.
“Who’s that?” I asked when he had stopped the bike.
“His name wouldn’t mean anything to you.” Dennis said.
I got off the bike and looked at the man. “It’s not Junior?”
“No, Junior’s in the office.” He said. “Come on.” He opened the door to the side of the building and went in and I followed him. It was a small office with fake plants and a large framed photograph of a glacier on the wall. Junior Pierson sat behind a desk listening to someone speaking on the other end of the phone. His left arm was still in a sling. He didn’t look surprised to see me.
“I gotta go.” He told whoever it was. “No, tomorrow.” He hung up the phone and looked at me. “Ben Perkins.” He said. “Why am I looking at you right now? What possible reason could there be for your presence here right now?”
“He called the cops.” Dennis said. “When he saw those bitches coming up here, he figured they were going to try to kill you so he called the cops.”
“How long ago?” He asked me
“I don’t know.” I said. “Twenty minutes or so I guess.”
“Oh, they should be here soon then.” Junior said. “I guess we’d better call the Jesus Committee.”
“Yeah and tell them to hurry.” Dennis said. “We leave Ray where he’s at?”
“Yeah, no time anyway, the JC will take care of it. I guess Ross’ll get some more flight hours now.”
“Hell of a way to get them.” Dennis said. “What about our security guard here?”
“Former security guard.” Junior said. “They recently terminated his employment.”
“He was trying to help you.” Dennis said.
“Is that true?” Junior asked me. “How did you know they’d come up here?”
“I figured whoever killed Freddie was going to try to kill you next so I waited down the road and kept an eye on your driveway. I was going to warn you.”
“Yeah, nice work,” Dennis was laughing, “usually you warn somebody about something before it happens.”
“I got held up on the way.” I said looking at Dennis.
“You really want your job back that much? You appoint yourself my personal bodyguard?”
“Look I don’t care one way or another. I just don’t want to see my friend go down for something some crazy bitch did.”
That seemed to satisfy him. “I’ll call the JC, you have a talk to our savior here.” He said to Dennis.
“Come on.” Dennis said. I followed him outside and we stood not far from the body of Ray. “Did you see those bitches drive by in my truck?” He asked.
“No.” I said. “I had a sack over my head at the time.”
“Oh yeah. And what are you going to tell the police?”
“Nothing.” I said.
“That’s right.” He said. “You didn’t see nothin’ you don’t know nothin’.” He stretched his neck out by tilting his head side to side. “Look I have to admit, as much of a pain in the ass as you’ve been tonight, you’ve definitely got some balls. I know you’re out of a job and you could probably use some extra money and maybe I could help. I could always use some extra manpower. Does that interest you at all?”
“Yeah.” I said. “Fuck yeah.”
“Just to be clear, it might be the kind of work where you’d have to bring along that Mak I sold you.”
“I understand.” I said. Red and blue lights were flashing on the tops of the trees and we both saw it at the same time.
“We’ll see how you handle yourself with the cops and then go from there.” He said. As the cop car drove onto the airfield Dennis pulled a leather case with a badge in it out of his coat pocket and held it up above his head. “Federal agent.” He shouted.
TWENTY-FIVE
The black Ford Explorers arrived and I watched from the back seat of Reyes’ car as the men who emerged took over the scene at the airfield. When the cops from Peninsula had seen the body they called in backup, which arrived about the time that Reyes did. She spoke to one of the black Explorer guys for a minute and then she got behind the wheel of the car and turned off the airfield’s pavement, going down the dirt road. She seemed annoyed. “Those are feds right? The guys in the black Explorers?” I asked. “They look like the guys that tried to kill E.T.” She didn’t answer me. We passed the gnarled gate and got onto Oak Hill Road, headed back toward the freeway. “What’s going to happen to my car?” I asked. “I can’t just leave it here.”
“I told one of the officers to drive it to the station, don’t worry about it.” She answered. We rode in silence for what seemed like a long time. Finally she spoke. “You want to tell me what you’re doing here Mr. Perkins?”
“Trying to help.” I said. I told her the same thing I’d told Junior, that I was watching his place on a hunch. “Protecting Junior Pierson is part of my job as a security agent. I just figured I could help.”
She looked at me in the rearview mirror with her lie-detector eyes, and I knew that what I had said wasn’t going over. “Mr. Pierson told me that you aren’t an agent anymore. He said you’re on some kind of suspension until the Telano matter is settled.”
“Just a mix up.” I said. “I haven’t spoken with David in years.”
“So what happened tonight? Start at the beginning.”
I told her I was watching Fallowfield road from a hiding spot when I saw four people in ski masks with guns going up toward the Pierson property. “That was when I called you.” I said.
“You said it was four women.” She said. “You mentioned a name.”
“That hunch wasn’t so good.” I said. “See Jessie and me did some research on Amanda Porgett, and we found out that she had this girlfriend, Gretchen. Our theory was that Gretchen was the one doing all the murders, for revenge or whatever. So when I saw the people going up the road I figured one of them was her.”
Detective Reyes sighed. “You thought this Gretchen person had assembled a small army and invaded the Pierson compound for revenge?”
“It sounds silly when you say it.”
“So what happens next?”
I told her how I was intercepted and tied up by Dennis, only I didn’t use his name. I told about the black sack and the gunshots I’d heard. I told her how I’d almost been run over.
“Did you get a good look at the vehicle when it drove by?”
“Uh not really. Why do you think Da
vid Telano might’ve been one of the guys in ski masks?” I mentioned his name in hopes that she would tell me he’d been arrested earlier that night, but she wasn’t sharing.
“You’re a key witness in three homicides now, would you like to explain why you happened to be at the scene of each of these murders?”
“Just lucky I guess.”
She didn’t laugh. “You know how many murders we had in this county last year?” She asked. “One. All year. Now we’ve had four in the last two months. We don’t like the high profile homicide cases. Bad for tourism -bad for the town’s image.”
“Bad for the people who get murdered.” I said.
“I want you to know that you’re going to jail. Maybe not for murder, but for something. Withholding evidence at the very least. You haven’t cooperated with this investigation for a second, and you know what? It’s starting to get on my nerves. Nobody likes to be lied to Mr. Perkins, but when it’s patently obvious that you are being lied to, then it becomes insulting.” She shrugged. “I’ve heard that jail isn’t a nice place, so if I were you I’d be talking right now. I’d be telling the whole truth, and not treating the detective who holds your fate in her hands as if she were an idiot. You don’t think I’m an idiot do you Mr. Perkins?”
“No.” I said.
“And do you want to go to jail?”
“No.” I said.
“And what would you think if you were in my position?”
“I guess I would think that I had something to do with this.” I said. She glanced at me in the rearview again and waited. “I’m trying to solve this thing, which I know isn’t