“Went into the bathroom and disappeared like a ghost.”
“Which one?”
“By the bras and stuff.”
“You didn’t go in with her?”
“Waited at the end of the hall.”
Irv chuckles at her. “That old chestnut. You figure it out yet?”
“No.”
“Keep trying. Oh, look, there she is,” Irv says, jutting his chin toward the window and raising the binoculars. “Climbing onto that Roadking. You see her?”
“How can you tell it’s her?” Melinda asks, watching a woman in a black leather jacket and helmet settle into the pillion seat on the Harley.
“Three reasons. She walked out the door with the helmet on. No one does that. Next, none of these bikers use a full-face helmet. They all ride in shorties and open-face gear. She’s trying to cover her face and probably protect her head, too. And lastly . . . just look at her. That jacket and helmet are sparkling, they’re so new.”
“That’s some real Sherlock stuff, Sheriff.”
“The truth is, Melinda, she’s got a nice and upscale wiggle to her tush that has never been seen walking into or out of that place before. Don’t give me a look. It’s nothing the pope wouldn’t’a noticed.”
“Wouldn’t’a mentioned it, though.”
“That’s probably true,” Irv admits.
The biker who owns the Harley is talking with a fat man in a brown leather vest and fingerless gloves. Sigrid is sitting with her feet on the foot pegs, waiting for movement. It is probably her imagination, but Melinda can almost feel Sigrid’s anxiety about wanting to get on the road.
“Being so smart and everything,” Melinda says, “I’m surprised she didn’t see this coming. Us setting her up like this and everything.”
“Her mistake was underestimating us,” Irv says.
“Why do you think that happened?”
“It’s the cowboy boots, Melinda. No one has ever overestimated the intellect of a man in cowboy boots. That’s why I wear them. I always liked that Everyman edge Columbo had. You remember Columbo?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t matter. All right, they’re about to head off. Get out of here. I’ll see you after I catch up to her.”
Melinda opens the heavy door of the Wagoneer and slides to the asphalt. Before closing the door, she says, “She knows about Jeffrey Simmons. She’s been asking about him.”
“It was bound to come up. It doesn’t affect anything. We need to find Marcus. So does she.”
“You really think her brother did it? That apple would’ve had to have fallen pretty far from the family tree if she’s any indication. Given her upscale tush and all.”
“Marcus and Lydia were lovers during an emotional time. Anything could have happened. That’s the whole point of the investigation, Melinda. Now go home to bed. You did good tonight. Aside from . . . you know . . . losing her and everything.”
“Drive safe, Sheriff.”
She slams the door and walks back to her patrol car under the towering lamps of the parking lot.
Irv fastens his seatbelt and starts up the car, leaving the lights off. The rider is a mountain of a man in short sleeves wearing a Kaiser helmet with a spike on top. He pulls out of the parking lot, the Harley’s flatulent pipes filling the night with hostility.
“Damn bikers,” Irv says to himself.
He puts some field glasses to his eyes to get a better look at the make and model in case he has any trouble tailing them. It’s a custom job with leather panniers on the back and a sissy bar and Sigrid.
Irv puts the Wagoneer into gear, checks that he has a full tank, and urges its V8 after the Harley while keeping at a respectful distance. On his way out of the lot and onto the dark road, he turns up the radio. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are playing “Revelator.” Their harmony is almost unnerving. It occurs to him that if he’d found even a measure of that with his ex-wife they’d still be married.
On the back of the Harley, staring at the white skull painted on the back of the idiot’s helmet, Sigrid again asks herself why any woman would choose a view like this rather than just ride the damn thing herself.
Two hundred dollars she had to pay this Neanderthal, and upfront, for the forty-minute ride through back roads to a bus stop in a place called Nicholville.
The biker reins in his hog outside a deserted brick building beside a split-lane road with signs for Greyhound. A cigarette machine and a Coke machine buzz under a corrugated roof nearby. Behind the building is a forest, dense and black. There is no other structure in sight beyond the road itself, the telephone poles, and the drooping wires that even the birds have abandoned.
“Who are your people?” the man asks.
“Thanks for the ride, we’re done,” Sigrid says, removing her helmet.
“I asked you a question.”
“My people have patches on their vests that say ‘The Filthy Few.’ You don’t. You even speak again,” Sigrid says, “and it’s going to cost you.”
The man snorts and looks her over. He’s obviously much stronger than she is and could overpower her easily if given the chance, but she’s certain she’s faster. Sigrid concentrates on his exposed throat. This is what she’ll strike if he makes a move. No one fights well with a broken trachea.
Without taking his eyes off her, he starts the bike again, revs the engine a half dozen times for dramatic effect, and peels out leaving her alone in Americana.
Across the road there is a field of black grass that moves to a breeze too far away to reach her. If she closes her eyes, and waits long enough, maybe it will.
In time, when her pulse slows and she allows the coolness of the night to settle her mood, she opens her eyes again and looks across the street to the field. There is a forest silhouetted behind it, and above, a mountain range of clouds lit on their edge by the fiery white light cast by the unseen moon. Streaks of navy blue and cobalt trim the clouds. Sigrid sits alone
