My mouth had gone dry and there was a sensation in my chest like a faraway electrical storm. “What did he say?”
“It didn’t seem to worry him. He said he’d drive over to have a chat with you and get it all straightened out, but he must have been delayed.”
“I thought someone pulled in just a moment ago.”
“Well, it must not have been him. He’d have knocked on the door.”
“If he shows up after I’m gone, would you tell him I was thinking of someone else and I’m sorry for the inconvenience?”
“I can tell him that.”
“Mind if I use your phone?”
“It’s right there on the wall.” She nodded toward the kitchen.
“Thanks.” I crossed the living room to the kitchen and picked up the handset from the wall-mounted phone. The line was dead. I set it back with care. “It seems to be out of order so I’ll just be on my way. I can probably find a phone somewhere else.”
“Whatever you say, Hon. I enjoyed the visit.”
I left by the front door, and the porch bulb went out as soon as my foot hit the step. For a minute I was blinded by the sudden shift from bright lights to darkness. The dog had taken up its barking, but he didn’t seem any closer to the house. I could hear the rattle of its chain as he paced back and forth. I stood there, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I scanned the area around the house. I spotted my VW, parked where I’d left it. There were no other cars in sight. The highway extended in both directions with no passing cars. I found my car keys and listened to them jingle as I went down the stairs. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely unlock the car door.
Automatically I checked the backseat before I got in. I made sure both doors were locked and then started the car, shoving the gear into reverse. I took my gun out of the glove compartment and laid it on the passenger seat, putting my shoulder bag over it to weigh it in place. I threw my right arm over the top of the passenger seat, my eyes on the path behind me as I backed out of the yard. I swung out onto the highway and shifted into first. All I had to do was reach the sheriff’s substation, less than ten miles away. I’d have to cut south from Highway 166 to West Winslet Road, then cut south again on Blosser, which Liza had penned in parallel to the triangle of land where the airport sat. Foster Road was close to the southernmost boundary.
The alternative was to take 166 straight into Santa Maria and pick up Blosser on the outskirts. The problem was Padgett Construction and A-Okay Heavy Equipment sat on Highway 166 between me and the town. My car was conspicuous. If Padgett were looking for me, all he had to do was wait for me to pass. I shifted from second to third, engine whining in a high-pitched protest. I tried to picture the roads that connected the 166 and West Winslet. There were three that I remembered. The Old Cromwell and New Cut were now behind me so scratch that idea. The one choice remaining was a road called Dinsmore.
I leaned on the gas until I spotted the sign and took a hard right-hand turn. It was black as pitch out there. I kept scanning for headlights, my eyes flicking back and forth from the darkened road ahead of me to the darkened road behind me, spinning away in my rearview mirror. On my right, lengths of thirty-six-inch pipe were lined up along the road, in preparation for who knows what. An excavator and a bulldozer were parked across the road. I was guessing they were laying gas lines, collection mains, something of the sort.
I was on the verge of making a U-turn when a set of headlights popped into view behind me, filling the oblong of mirror with a glare that made me squint. The vehicle was closing rapidly, coming up behind me at a speed far greater than I could coax out of my thirteen-year-old tin can. I pressed down on the accelerator, but my VW was no match for the car behind. I picked up a blend of silhouettes as the car swung wide and passed me with a crew of teenage boys inside. One of them tossed an empty beer can out the window, and I watched the aluminum cylinder bounce and tumble before it disappeared.
The red of taillights diminished and winked out.
A minute later, I saw a fork in the road ahead where Dinsmore split. One arm continued straight ahead and a second road shot off to the left. There was a row of four barriers across that arm. The devices were hinged like sawhorses with a two-by-four-foot panel across the top, painted in series of diagonal orange and white stripes. Each had a reflecting light on top that seemed to blink an additional caution. I slowed to a stop, remembering Winston’s description of the barriers he’d seen the night he’d spotted Violet’s car.
I had two choices: I could take the barrier as gospel, warning of repairs or obstructions on the road ahead, or I could assume it was a ruse, drive around one barrier and straight onto Winslet Road. I flicked on my brights. I could see the front end of a truck parked about a hundred yards away. I understood the game. At that point the angle of the two roads was probably no more than forty-five degrees, the distance between them widening over the course of four hundred yards. Padgett could be waiting in between, biding his time until I chose one or the other. It really made no difference which I picked. I backed up and yanked the steering wheel hard to my right. I completed the turn, shifted from reverse into first, and headed back the way I’d come.
I checked my rearview mirror, expecting to see some sign of a vehicle. Nothing. I thought I might be okay until I heard the whap-whap-whapping of my tires. I struggled with the steering, which was suddenly clumsy and stiff, trying to control the car as the pressure in my tires diminished. I slowed to a stop. I was right. Padgett had stopped off at Mrs. Wyrick’s earlier that night. An ice pick would have been the perfect instrument to create four slow leaks. Not as dramatic as his tire-slashing methodology at the Sun Bonnet Motel, but he wanted to make sure I could drive on the tires for a while. At least long enough to find myself out here.
That’s when I saw the headlights behind me.
Padgett took his time. My engine was idling, but I knew I couldn’t outrun him. I wanted to open the door and flee, but I didn’t think I’d get far. Even if I ran as swiftly as I could across one of the wide dark fields, I wouldn’t be hard to catch as long as he was driving his truck. I reached for my handgun and pulled the slide back.
He pulled up behind me and slowed to a stop, his engine idling as mine was. He waited for a minute and then got out of his truck. He left his headlights on, flooding my car with an unearthly glow. He strolled along the road, coming up next to my car on the passenger side. He knocked on the window despite the fact that I was looking right at him.
“Flat tire?” His tone was conversational, his voice faintly muffled. I hated his smile.
“I’m fine. Get away from me.”
He leaned back and in an exaggerated display of skepticism as he checked the tires on that side. “Don’t look fine to me.” He rested his arm on the roof of my car, watching me with interest. “Are you afraid of me or what?”
I pulled the gun up and pointed at him. “I said get the fuck away from me.”
He said, “Whoa!” and put his hands up. “I believe you have the wrong idea, Missie. I’m here to offer help…”
I should have shot him right then, but I thought there had to be another way out, something short of killing the man where he stood. I simply couldn’t sit there and blast him in the face.
I stepped on the accelerator and the car jolted forward. This threw him off balance, but far from becoming angry, he seemed amused. Maybe because he recognized my fleeting moment of cowardice. I put the gun in my lap and pressed on at a much-reduced speed. I knew I was ruining my rims, risking a broken front axle, and god knows what else, but I had to reach civilization. As I shuddered my way forward, I could see Padgett shake his head, bemused. He ambled toward his truck.
He got in, shifted into gear, and followed me, taking his sweet time, knowing his vehicle was always going to be the faster of the two. The rims were now cutting through my tires, trimming off streamers of rubber. The rims ripped along the pavement, throwing up a rooster tail of sparks. The steering was almost impossible to control, b
ut I hung on for dear life. We continued this slow-speed pursuit, Padgett riding up against my rear bumper, giving me the occasional quick bump just to remind me he was there.
I could see Highway 166 in the distance. It was 10:00 at night and there wasn’t any traffic to speak of, but there had to be a business open, a gas station at the very least. Cromwell was closer than Santa Maria and if I could make it as far as the highway, I’d head in that direction. Padgett had slipped his gear into neutral. I heard him revving his engine and then he popped it into first again and lurched into the back of my car with a thunderous bang. I clung to the steering wheel, my knuckles white with the tension of my grip. I spotted the construction site ahead, the bright yellow bulldozer and an excavator parked on the left. Padgett slammed into me twice, doing as much damage as he could, which turned out to be plenty. I smelled burning oil and scorched rubber, and something made a scraping sound every time my tires flopped around. Black smoke roiled across the rear window. My car limped along, like some sad, crippled beast while I listened to the screech of metal like the howling of the dead.
He tried another one of his gear-popping tricks, but he outsmarted himself and his engine stalled. He turned the key and I could hear the starter grind. Once the engine coughed to life, he backed up, veered around me and eased on down the road. I thought he’d given up, but that was just my inner optimist rearing her sunny little head. He pulled onto the gravel berm, cut the lights, and got out of his truck. I watched him as he proceeded at a casual pace, crossing to the bulldozer. He grabbed a handhold on the side and pulled himself up, using the track as a foothold as he climbed into the cab. He settled in the seat and leaned forward. He turned the key and the bulldozer grumbled to life. He flipped on the headlights and I watched him reach for the levers that controlled the big machine. I couldn’t figure out what his intention was—beyond the obvious, of course—until I spotted the mound of dirt in the middle of the field to my right. He’d dug a hole for me.
He was heading right at me. I braked and reached for the door handle. The engine died and by the time I turned back, he was on me. He laid the lip of the bucket up against the driver’s side of my car, making it impossible to open. He downshifted and began to push my car sideways toward the mound of dirt. I couldn’t see the hole, but I knew it was there. The VW was rocking, sliding sideways, raw dirt piling up against the passenger’s-side door. I stuck the gun down in the waistband of my jeans and slid over into the passenger seat. I pulled back on the door handle and then shoved, trying to push the door open against the rapidly increasing buildup of soil and rock on the other side. This was never going to work. I abandoned the effort and cranked down the window, working as fast as I could. By then the dirt accumulating against the side of the car was almost to the window. I hoisted myself onto the sill, making a low sound in my throat when I saw how fast we were moving. Five miles an hour doesn’t sound like much, but the pace was steady and relentless, leaving me very little room to negotiate. I rolled out, kicking to free myself, barely managing to clear the car as it scraped past me and tumbled into the hole. The ’dozer came to an abrupt halt while the VW hit bottom with a bang and a shudder that left the rear wheels spinning.
I staggered to my feet and headed out across the raw dirt field, hoping to make a wide circle back to the road. The ground had recently been plowed and the soil was broken into chunks that forced me to lift my feet high like a member of a marching band. Running across the rows was like running in a dream, agonizingly slow with no progress to speak of. Behind me, Padgett, in his ’dozer, trundled along at a same nifty five miles an hour, easily cutting the distance between us. I tried veering left, but he had no problem correcting the direction of the ’dozer, which proved to be remarkably agile for a machine weighing in at forty thousand pounds.
I pulled the gun from my waistband, for all the good it would do. In the time it would take me to stop, turn, and aim the gun, he’d mow me down. My only hope was to reach his truck, which I could see ahead and to my left. My breathing was ragged and my chest was on fire, my thigh muscles burning while the weight of my jogging shoes seemed to suck me deeper into the earth with every step. I headed left, stumbling toward the road at an angle while the ’dozer behind me clanked and banged, metal treads leveling the very ground that cost me everything to traverse. The size of the yellow excavator was diminished by distance, but I knew when I reached it, I’d be on the road. I felt like I was wading, my own weariness slowing me as I slogged on, trying to gain sufficient ground to make a stand. The yard-high lengths of pipe on the far side of the road grew marginally larger and the yellow excavator began to assume its proper dimensions. I was just about out of steam when I felt a change in the terrain. I was on the hard-packed berm. I reached the asphalt and ran. Once I gained the protection of the pickup, I turned and rested my arms on the side of the truck bed to steady my aim. I could see Padgett work to raise the bucket. In that split second, I squeezed the grip safety and then I fired off four rounds. I had to be dead-on or die, because there wasn’t going to be time to check for accuracy and then correct my aim.
The ’dozer rumbled on, continuing at full throttle. Its path was unwavering, its bulk aimed directly at the excavator. I backed up rapidly and moved to my left until I had Padgett in my sights again. He’d slumped sideways and I could see the blood pouring out of the hole that I’d nicked in his neck. The ’dozer slammed into the excavator and Padgett tumbled forward. I stood and waited, holding the gun until my arms trembled from the weight. Did I consider approaching him with an eye to rendering first aid? Never crossed my mind. I lowered the gun, went around the truck, and got in on the driver’s side. I put the gun on the seat and reached for the keys he’d left in the ignition. The truck started without complaint. I dropped it into first and headed toward the lights along the 166.
EPILOGUE
It was almost a year before I saw Daisy again. Technically, there wasn’t any reason to be in touch. I’d been paid in advance, and when my final written report was met with silence, I didn’t think much of it. As the weeks went by, however, I found myself feeling ever so faintly miffed. It’s not that I expected effusive gratitude or praise, but I would have appreciated some response. I had, after all, put my life at risk and killed a man in the process. In the wake of his death, I was subjected to the scrutiny of the Santa Teresa County Sheriff’s Department, which (as it turns out) looks unkindly on fatal shootings, whether justified or not.
I suppose I could have initiated contact with Daisy, but I really thought the move should be hers. This was one of those rare instances where our professional relationship had veered closer to friendship…or so I’d thought. On the few occasions when I stopped in at Sneaky Pete’s, Tannie didn’t know anything more than I did, which generated a certain sulkiness on both our parts.
I went about my business, taken up with other matters in the intervening months. Then, late morning on the last day in August, I returned to the office to find her sitting in her car, which was parked out front. I unlocked the door, letting it stand open while I picked up the mail. Moments later, Daisy followed me in.
I tossed the stack of envelopes on the desk and said, “Hey, how are you?” in that breezy offhand manner that conceals emotional injury. I sat down in my swivel chair.
She took the seat on the other side of the desk. She seemed uncomfortable, but I wasn’t going to make it any easier on her. Finally, she said, “Look, I know I should have called you, and I’m sorry. I stopped by Sneaky Pete’s, and Tannie’s so mad she’s hardly speaking to me. I owe you both an apology.”
“You did leave us hanging.”
“I’m aware of that,” she said. Her gaze traveled over the surface of my desk. She was probably desperate for a cigarette, but the absence of an ashtray must have made her think better of it. “I know this sounds feeble, but I didn’t know what to say. It’s taken me this long to figure it out. I knew I was depressed, and it didn’t seem right to inflict myself on anyone until I felt be
tter about life.”
“I can understand the depression,” I said.
“I’m glad you can. It surprised the hell out of me. I don’t know what I expected. I guess I thought if I ever found out what happened to my mother, everything would be different, so I was sitting around waiting for the big magical change. One day I realized my life was the same old shit heap it’s always been. I was still drinking too much and taking up with all the wrong men. I was also bored out of my mind.”
“With what?”
“You name it. My job, my house, my hair, my clothes. I had one session with a new shrink, and the whole time I was pissed off about the money I was having to spend.”
“What’d you do?”
“I quit therapy for starters and then I just waited it out. Yesterday I got it. I was sitting at my desk transcribing some doctor’s notes and doing a damn fine job of it as usual, when it occurred to me that I’d spent the first seven years of my life trying to be good so my mother would love me and take care of me. Well, that clearly didn’t work. Then, after she left, I kept on being good, thinking maybe I could make her come back.”
“And when she didn’t?”
Daisy shrugged, smiling. “I decided I might as well be bad and enjoy myself. Turns out she was dead the whole time, so my behavior didn’t matter one way or the other. Good, bad? What difference did it make?”
“And that made you feel better?”
She laughed. “No, but here’s what did. It dawned on me that if she’d lived…if she’d been alive…she might have come home of her own accord. She might have missed me a lot, and maybe she’d have realized how much she cared. She might have decided to swing back, pick me up, and take me with her this time. I’ll really never know, but I have just as much reason to believe in that possibility as the opposite. What made me feel better was realizing I don’t have to live like someone who’s been rejected and abandoned. I can choose any view I want. Death took away her options, but I still have mine.”