He handed me a Coors. Panic makes your pants wet and your throat dry. I hadn’t realized how dry until the first sip of beer went down smooth as silk and cold as ice. From now on, Coors would definitely be my post-shotgun beer of choice. I wondered if they could work up an advertising campaign around that slogan.
“How you feeling?” I asked.
“Okay. You risked getting your ass shot off to check on my health?”
“That night at the ER, you said you had to lay your bike down when an SUV ran the light at Blyden and Van Camp, right?”
“Asshole blew right through the intersection without hesitating and didn’t even tap his brakes after I went down. Good thing I was paying attention.”
“Can you remember anything about the SUV? Color? What state the tags were from, how many people were in-”
“Pretty sure it was a pewter Yukon. New, I think. At least two people, men up front. New York plates. Sorry, but I was a little too busy to get the number.”
“That’s good, but how do you know there were two men up front?”
“Dome light was on. I can’t tell you anything about them. Everything happened so fucking fast, you know? Does that help?”
“More than you can know. Thanks a lot, Crank.”
I shook his hand. When I did, he pulled me close and whispered in my ear, “Don’t come back here no more, bud. Makes the boys nervous to have cop types around and that don’t do me no kinda good. We understand one another?”
“We do.”
I turned to go and then the world shook. Baboom! The explosion wasn’t in the cabin, but it was close enough to shake the place and blow out the windows. I bounced off the wall and saw the fireball rising up out of the woods about a hundred yards away. I thought I could feel the heat on my face, but I was probably imagining that. I ran over and helped Crank up off the floor.
“You gotta get outta here,” he barked. “The timing don’t look so good for you.”
“I didn’t-”
“I know you didn’t, but they’re not gonna believe that. Keep your head down by the door and listen. You’ll know what to do.”
Crank waited till I crouched down and then ran out the front door screaming, “He jumped out the window and headed toward the lake. Hammer, you get Blade and Cutter and get to the lake. Skank, you go check on the kitchen to see if anything’s left of Skinny and the equipment. I’ll check the woods to make sure he don’t double back.”
“Shit, Crank, ain’t nothin’ gonna be left a Skinny, not after-”
“Listen, Skank, get the fuck over there and check on Skinny or-”
“Okay, Crank. Jesus, fuckin’ Christ, who the fuck died and left you God?”
I listened to all the footsteps heading away from the cabin and the road where my car was parked.
Crank kicked the door with his heel. “Go now. Fire your gun when you get to your car.”
I didn’t hesitate. Taking off, I kept low as I could and close to the trees. My car wasn’t too far from where I left it. I didn’t bother checking the damage to the front end. As Crank asked, I fired off a few rounds. He didn’t have to explain. I was giving him cover for when his crew got curious about how I had escaped.
As I drove back into Janus, I thought about what Crank had said about the timing of the explosion. It was one hell of a coincidence that his meth lab just happened to blow up during my visit. I didn’t like it, not even a little. I called Pete Vandervoort. He was asleep, but when I told him about Crank’s lab being launched into low Earth orbit, he agreed to meet me in his office.
Given the sheriff’s looks, I was glad I’d avoided mirrors. And he was just tired. I’d crashed a car, had a shotgun stuck in my throat, and witnessed a recreation of the Trinity test. I had just about used up my yearly allowance of adrenaline and was now paying the price. I could literally feel myself crashing and unless he was hiding a fifty-five gallon drum of coffee somewhere, I wasn’t going to last much longer.
I described the SUV to him that Crank described it to me.
“We’ve got a winner!” I think I remember him saying.
I recall his mouth moving some more after that, but I had already retreated behind a wall of sleep.
You reach a certain age in life and you’ve woken up in a few strange beds, Even so, it can be a pretty jarring experience. Waking up in a jail cell kicked that jarring thing up to a whole different level. The bed wasn’t too terribly uncomfortable and the bleach and pine disinfectant aroma wasn’t quite as pleasant as my dad’s Old Spice aftershave, but I guess it had its charms. On the other hand, I didn’t find the cold metal toilet hanging off the wall very welcoming. I kind of felt like Otis the town drunk on the old Andy Griffith Show. I think I half-expected Barney Fife or Aunt Bee to show up with my breakfast.
My watch said it was 8:22 a.m., but the florescent lighting and lack of windows kept the place in a kind of perpetual dusk. I threw some cold water on my face. I might have dunked my head into the water had the sink been larger than the ones in aircraft rest rooms. I was about to try the door to make sure the sheriff didn’t have a frat house sense of humor. Just then he walked in and swung the door back open.
“Where’s Opie?” I said.
“Huh?”
“Forget it, Pete. Thanks for putting me up. I was pretty zonked.”
“I’d say. I’ve been checking on you every hour,” he said, pointing at the security camera mounted on the ceiling outside the cell, “and you’ve been in one position for most of the night. Come on, I got some coffee for you out here.”
We stepped into the offices. Here, the sun streaming through the windows confirmed that my watch was telling the truth. Vandervoort handed me a cup of coffee and motioned for me to sit down in front of his desk. Although his expression was neutral, I could tell that the news he had for me wasn’t good.
“It’s a dead end, Moe. We got your Yukon on one of the tapes and we got the kid walking into the convenience store at the station, but it’s impossible to read the tags. The driver never got out of the vehicle to buy gas or anything and he drove off right after dropping the kid.”
“Shit!”
“I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, but it totally confirms that this is a setup. You got that much, anyway.”
“Tape show anything about the driver?” I asked.
“Well, the good thing is that this tape was brand new, so it’s much cleaner than the other one I gave you. No murky images on this one.”
“But…”
“But you can’t tell anything about the driver. The windows are slightly tinted and there’s some sun glare.”
“Can I have the tape?”
“I knew you’d ask that.” He shoved a plastic evidence bag across the desk. “Here you go.”
“Any news on the lab?”
He started laughing. “The damned explosion registered on earthquake sensors. That was no small operation there, my friend. Somebody’s not going to be happy about it going boom.”
“I don’t suppose they’re going to file any insurance claims.”
“I suspect not.”
I got up. “Thanks for the tape and for the accommodations, Pete. I better get back down to the city and see if I can figure out how to come at this from another angle.”
“Sorry the SUV thing didn’t work out for you.”
“Me too. Later.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
