I hit the curve in the road without slowing down. I had been involved in enough car chases as a cop to believe that I was good enough to do that. The driver of the pickup didn’t have the same faith in himself and slowed down.
I came out of the curve like a rocket. The road ahead was perfectly straight, with not another car to be seen. I heard a loud, throbbing sound, and realized it was my heart pounding in my ears.
Ten seconds later, the pickup appeared in my mirror. There was a good quarter of a mile separating us. Just enough distance to give me a momentary respite. The sound of a bullet hitting my car quickly dispelled that feeling.
I looked straight up. A bullet had ripped across my roof, and left a seam directly above where I sat. Five inches lower, and it would have blown my head clean off.
“They’ve got a high-powered rifle,” I said.
Seppi brought her hand up to her mouth like she was going to puke.
“We’re sitting ducks as it is,” Linderman said. “Slow the car down, and put on your emergency lights. I want them to think we’re pulling over.”
“We’re not?”
“Just do as I say.”
I let my foot off the gas, then flipped on the emergency flasher. The Legend quickly lost speed, and the pickup caught up to us.
“What now?” I asked.
“Just watch.”
In my mirror, I saw Linderman roll down his window. He was crouching low in his seat, so as not to be seen by the pickup’s driver.
“How close are they?” Linderman asked.
“About a hundred yards back,” I said.
“Are they directly behind us?”
“Yes.”
“Put your indicator on, and slow down some more.”
I did as told. The pickup drew dangerously close. At any moment, I expected another bullet to hit my car, and my life to be over.
“How far back are they now?” Linderman asked.
“About three car lengths,” I said.
“Perfect.”
I stared at my mirror. Linderman stuck his body through the open window, and aimed the Mossberg at the pickup’s windshield. Flames spit out of the shotgun’s barrel as he fired. I heard three shots in rapid succession followed by the sound of the windshield imploding. The pickup veered off the road, and took down a fence. It rumbled across a barren field before abruptly disappearing.
I pulled off the road and parked in the grass. The three of us got out. The wind was blowing from the north, and I could hear the strains of country music in the distance. I pulled Buster out of the car, and went to where the pickup had taken down the fence.
“What are you doing?” Linderman said.
“I want to find out what happened to them,” I said. “If they’re still alive, they’re going to call for reinforcements. We’re twenty-five miles from Daytona. We’re not going to be able to run away from them.”
“We need to leave, the sooner the better,” Linderman said.
I was holding my car keys. I threw them to him, and they hit Linderman squarely in the chest.
“You go,” I said.
I followed the tire tracks across the field with Buster beside me. The sound of Garth Brooks grew louder with each step I took. The ground seemed to fall away, and I stopped. Down below was a large, man-made hole, what locals call a borrow pit. The pit was filled with uprooted trees and piles of debris. The upside-down pickup lay at the bottom, its wheels still spinning and music coming out of its cab.
“Next to me,” I said.
Buster glued himself to my side, and together we climbed down. Nearing bottom, we both started to slide. I righted myself, and drew my Colt.
“Get out and show me your hands,” I said loudly.
There was no response from the pickup. I approached in a crouch, my gun held with both hands. In the moonlight, two men hung upside down in their seats. One had a hunting rifle with a sniper sight clutched in his hands, while the other held a pistol. Their faces had been blown clean off.
Reaching in through the open driver’s window, I killed the pickup’s ignition. I didn’t like killing people without knowing who they were, and I searched the driver’s pockets, and found a wallet along with a handful of loose change.
I pulled out a driver’s license. Holding it up to the moonlight, I read who the dead man was. I cursed loudly.
Walking around to the other side of the cab, I picked the other dead man’s pockets. I found his wallet, and read his ID. I cursed again.
I hurried back to the highway with my dog. Linderman and Seppi stood next to my Legend, waiting for me. Linderman threw my keys back to me.
“Find anything?” the FBI agent asked.
“You just killed the sheriff of Chatham and his deputy,” I said.
CHAPTER 53
I drove to Daytona without seeing another car on the road. It was a welcome relief, considering what had happened.
Daytona had more cheap hotel rooms than probably anywhere else in Florida. Many were located near the speedway where the Daytona 500 was held each year. Linderman chose the Holiday Inn across the street from the speedway, and rented a suite in the rear of the building, which let me park away from the road.
We took Seppi to the suite on the hotel’s second floor, and fed her black coffee and doughnuts and let her watch TV. The sheriff and his deputy’s killings had done a number on her, and she flipped through the channels aimlessly, unable to focus on any one program. I asked her if she wanted us to send someone to the nursing home to make sure her mother was all right, and she shook her head.
“No one’s going to hurt my momma now,” she told me.
A few hours later, the director of the FBI’s Jacksonville office, Special Agent Vaughn Wood, arrived, along with his female assistant. Wood wore a black turtleneck and black cargo pants that made the dark rings beneath his eyes much more pronounced. His assistant wore a blue pantsuit and looked like a soccer mom. They’d brought a tape recorder with them, which they set up in the suite’s living room in order to interview Seppi.
Seppi sat on the couch and chain-smoked cigarettes. Linderman sat in a chair facing her, and did the questioning, while Wood, his assistant, and I stood against the wall. Seppi started by talking about her background. She was a native of Chatham, as were her parents, and had had a normal upbringing. Then, she described her abduction from Daytona Community College, and why she’d never gone to the police.
“I love Chatham,” Seppi said, feathering the smoke of her cigarette through her nostrils. “But my town has a dirty secret that I was raised not to talk about it. So this is hard. You understand?”
Everyone in the suite nodded.
“In the late 1980s, the paper mill shut down, and Chatham hit the skids,” Seppi said. “There were no jobs, and times were tough. One day, some locals were sitting around a bar getting drunk. One of them was a guy named Travis Bledsoe.
“Travis had a few drinks, and accidentally cut his hand with a knife. Travis looked at the wound, and started talking about his hand’s earning potential, and its value on his insurance policy. That’s how the whole thing got started.”
