a reality check for Rhoda, and she knew it.
“These are from tonight,” he said, squatting down and running his fingertips along the smear of burned rubber. “Take a look. They veer right off the road.” He clicked on his own long-handled flash and swept the beam along the path of the skid marks. “See? Right there, they leave the road and go off into the field.” He moved to the very edge of the verge and shone his light into the corn. The light showed them the smashed-down corridor of stalks. “Bingo.”
Rhoda came up behind him. “You think they had an accident?”
“Be nice if it was that easy,” he said, then smiled thinly and added, “Be really nice if they totaled the car and themselves.”
“You think that’s likely?”
His smile became a grin and he shook his head. “Nah. Accident, maybe, but if they wrecked their ride, then they probably hightailed their asses out of here hours ago.” He stood and rubbed the skid mark with the toe of his shoe. “Could have been a blowout, who knows?” He turned and shone the light up and down the road, reading the scene. “Looks like a big car traveling in one hell of a hurry went off the road here and right into that field.”
She looked from the tracks to his face and then into the cornfield. The flash struck small splinters off chrome and glass way back in the field. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” he agreed and drew his sidearm, laying his gun arm across the wrist of the hand holding the flash so that the beam and the barrel tracked together.
“You think they’re still in the car?” Rhoda whispered.
“I doubt it.” He listened to the night. Distant rumbling thunder, the caw of a night bird, traffic on the highway miles away. Head sucked his teeth.
“What do you want to do? Should we go check it out?”
“Uh-uh, honey. I’m not going anywhere near that car until we get some backup.” He nodded at her sidearm. “You any good with that?”
“I suck,” she said.
“Swell.”
“I’m better with a shotgun,” she said hopefully. “Can’t miss with a shotgun.”
“Yeah. Got one in the unit?”
“In the trunk.”
“Get it.” Together they backed up to their unit. Rhoda popped the trunk and Head kept the barrel of the pistol trained on the smashed corridor of cornstalks.
Rhoda removed the pump-action shotgun from the clips that fastened it to the underside of the hood. It was a Mossberg Bullpup 12 with a pistol grip and thirty-inch barrel. With a hand that even in the darkness was visibly shaking, she worked the pump and blew out a puff of air that had soured in her lungs.
Head glanced at it out of the corner of his eye and his eyebrows went up. “That’s a lot of shotgun for a small town.”
“The chief likes ’em.”
“How about you?”
She shrugged. “As long as it doesn’t knock me on my behind, I don’t much care one way or another.”
Nodding, Head indicated the crash site with his pistol. “Point that cannon right there. I’m going to call for backup.” He reached into the unit and lifted the handset. “What’s your call number?”
“Unit Two.”
“What’s the call-in protocol?”
“Just ask for Ginny.”
Head smiled and shook his head. Gotta love small-town America. Clicking on the mike, he said, “Unit Two to, um, Ginny. Unit Two to Ginny. Over.”
“Who’s this?” a woman’s voice demanded sharply.
“Officer Jerry Head. I’m in Unit Two with Officer Thomas.”
“Oh, okay. What can I do for you?”
“Is Detective Sergeant Ferro there?”
“Yes. He’s having coffee.”
“Can you put him on the line, please?”
“He’s in the conference room with…oh, well, really, Mr. Wolfe, I didn’t say that…. I was just about to…no, I…” The conversation on the other end suddenly became agitated as Ginny and at least two other voices lapsed into an argument. Then a new voice came on the line. “Unit Two, this is Ferro. Over.”
“Sergeant, this is Jerry Head. Officer Thomas and I are on A-32, approximately fourteen miles from the center of town, on the eastern stretch.”
“Copy that.”
“We’re Code Six investigating skid marks indicating a vehicle recently gone off the road and into some cornfields. It looks like a single-vehicle accident, possibly a blowout, though the tracks are clean with no rubber debris.”
“Have you located the vehicle itself?”
“Negative. Request backup so we can check it out.”
“That’s affirmative. Hold for backup en route.”
“Copy that.”
“Ferro out.”
“Out.” Head tossed the mike onto the seat and turned to Rhoda. “You heard that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“We’ll wait. You know who we’re after. I didn’t wake up this morning as John Wayne and you probably aren’t Annie Oakley.”
“I have no idea who Annie Oakley is, but I get the point.” She grinned. “Waiting here is good.”
They stood on the far side of their unit, using it as cover. Head took a foil pack of Orbit gum out of his pocket and popped one through the blister; he offered the pack to Rhoda but she shook her head. His dark brown eyes had a gunslinger squint to them that Rhoda found intimidating.
She said, “You must think we’re a bunch of backwoods dumb-asses.”
He chuckled as he chewed the gum. “Actually, no. Just be happy you don’t deal with this kind of freak every day. It juices you for about the first year on the job but it damn sure gets old after a while.”
She nodded, cradling the shotgun in her arms.
Head grinned. “Tell you the truth, I’d switch jobs with you in a heartbeat. I love this town. I bring my kids up to the hayride every year. We were up here two weeks ago, and I’m probably going to bring my youngest and his Cub Scout pack up here closer to Halloween. My wife, Tracy, and I come up here Christmas shopping every year. Kind of a ritual. We always have breakfast in that place on Salem Street, what’s the name…? Auntie Ems?”
“Yeah, that’s a great place. I waitressed there some when I was still in high school.”
“Yeah? Be funny if maybe one of those times you waited our table.”
“Could have. The place is always packed.”
“Yeah, but man, they make the best breakfasts. I love that one they do, the omelet with Granny Smith apples and cheddar cheese? With a little cinnamon on top.”
“The Scarecrow.”
“Right, right. Man, I love that one. And Tracy really likes the Irish oatmeal with honey and milk.”
“Yeah, all their stuff’s good.”
He blew a stream of blue smoke into the night.
In the far distance they could see red and blue lights racing along A-32.
“That’s them,” he said.
They stood in silence, their guns still pointing at the darkened field, but their eyes flicking toward the approaching lights.
“Officer Head?”
“Jerry.”
“Jerry. Does this stuff — everything they’re saying about the suspect, about Ruger — doesn’t that scare you?”
