Off zooms Maid Marian Way, too shocked to speak. The next guy in line starts yelling the moment Danny leans down to his window. He looks exactly like Danny’s image of George Rathbun, but his voice is raspier and slightly higher in pitch.
It is at this tender moment that Danny hears the unmistakable rumble of the Thunder Five charging toward him down the highway. He has not felt right since he found Tyler Marshall’s bicycle in front of the old folks’ home, and the thought of wrangling with Beezer St. Pierre fills his brain with dark oily smoke and whirling red sparks. He lowers his head and stares directly into the eyes of the red-faced George Rathbun look-alike. His voice emerges in a low, dead monotone. “Sir, if you continue on your present course, I will handcuff you, park you in the back of my car until I am free to leave, and then take you to the station and charge you with everything that comes to mind. That is a promise. Now do yourself a favor and get the hell out of here.”
The man’s mouth opens and closes, goldfishlike. Splotches of brighter red appear on his jowly, already flushed face. Danny keeps staring into his eyes, almost hoping for an excuse to truss him in handcuffs and roast him in the back seat of his car. The guy considers his options, and caution wins. He drops his eyes, moves the shift lever to R, and nearly backs into the Miata behind him.
“I don’t believe this is happening,” Pam says. “What dumb so-and-so spilled the beans?”
Like Danny, she is watching Beezer and his friends roar toward them past the row of waiting cars.
“I don’t know, but I’d like to ram my nightstick down his throat. And after him, I’m looking for Wendell Green.”
“You won’t have to look very far. He’s about six cars back in the line.” Pam points to Wendell’s traveling sneer.
“Good God,” Danny says. “Actually, I’m sort of glad to see that miserable blowhard. Now I can tell him exactly what I think of him.” Smiling, he bends down to speak to the teenaged boy at the wheel of the Miata. The boy leaves, and Danny waves off the driver behind him while watching the Thunder Five get closer and closer. He says to Pam, “At this point, if Beezer climbs up in my face and even
“Paperwork, paperwork,” Pam says.
“I really don’t give a damn.”
“Well, here we go,” she says, telling him that if he pulls his gun, she will back him up.
Even the drivers trying to argue their way into the lane are taking time out to watch Beezer and the boys. In motion, hair and beards blowing, faces set, they look ready to commit as much mayhem as possible. Danny Tcheda’s heart begins to speed, and he feels his sphincter tighten.
But the Thunder Five bikers race past without so much as turning their heads, one after another. Beezer, Mouse, Doc, Sonny, and the Kaiser—there they go, leaving the scene.
“Well,
“Oh, please, no,” Pam says.
In the waiting automobiles, every head turns as the motorcycles flash by again, returning the way they came. For a couple of seconds, the only sound to be heard is the receding furor of five Harley-Davidson cycles. Danny Tcheda takes off his uniform hat and wipes his forehead. Pam Stevens arches her back and exhales. Then someone blasts his horn, and two other horns join in, and a guy with a graying walrus mustache and a denim shirt is holding up a three-quarter-sized badge in a leather case and explaining that he is the cousin of a county-circuit judge and an honorary member of the La Riviere police force, which basically means he never gets speeding or parking tickets and can go wherever he likes. The mustache spreads out in a big grin. “So just let me get by, and you can go back to your business, Officer.”
Not letting him get by
A few men have gotten out of their cars. Their fingers are pointing at Danny, their mouths are working, but he cannot make out what they are yelling. A band of pain runs like a red-hot iron bar from behind his left eye to the middle of his brain. Something is wrong; he cannot see Green’s ugly red car. Where the hell is it? Damn damn and double damn, Green must have eased out of the line and driven into the field alongside Ed’s. Danny snaps around and inspects the field. Angry voices and car horns boil up at his back. No beat-up red Toyota, no Wendell Green. What do you know, the windbag gave up!
A few minutes later the traffic thins out, and Danny and Pam think their job is pretty much over. All four lanes of Highway 35 are empty, their usual condition on a Saturday morning. The one truck that rolls along keeps on rolling, on its way to Centralia.
“Think we ought to go up there?” Pam asks, nodding toward the remains of the store.
“Maybe, in a couple minutes.” Danny is not eager to get within range of that smell. He would be perfectly happy to stay down here until the M.E. and the evidence wagon come along. What gets into people, anyhow? He would happily surrender two days’ pay to be spared the sight of Irma Freneau’s poor body.
Then he and Pam hear two distinct sounds at once, and neither one makes them comfortable. The first is that of a fresh wave of vehicles racing down the highway to their position; the second, the rumble of motorcycles descending upon the scene from somewhere behind the old store.
“Is there a back road to this place?” he asks, incredulous.
Pam shrugs. “Sounds like it. But look—Dale’ll have to deal with Beezer’s goons, because we’re gonna have our hands full down here.”
“Aw, cripes,” Danny says. Maybe thirty cars and pickups are converging on the end of the little lane, and both
