The highway.
The headlights slid by, almost without sound, headed north out of Gerlach. Now gone. They’d been about two miles away.
I kept walking, shivering, loathing Julia. I envisioned another fantastic death for her, listened to her screams as she died.
Which made me sick and didn’t help.
I said Ma’s phone number aloud. We’d memorized each other’s numbers while tracking Julia and Leland. I still knew Ma’s but I needed a phone.
Jeri’s number was . . . she would never answer again. I would never again hear her voice. Tears filled my eyes as I stumbled along in the darkness.
I had to phone Ma, I had to get to Reno, Ma had to try to track Julia. Julia would leave a trail. Jeri’s brother, Ron DiFrazzia, had to be told. And Sarah, what about Sarah?
I didn’t know. Jeri had liked her, even loved her like a sister. Sarah would have to be told, but not right away.
Ma first.
Call the police? Tell Deputy Roup when I got to Gerlach? Tell Russell Fairchild? Phone the FBI? How could I get to Julia if she was caught by the FBI or Reno police?
Couldn’t. That would end it. In fact, Julia might skate on all the charges, if charges were even brought against her. Did anything tie her incontrovertibly to the murders other than what she’d told Jeri and me? If so, I didn’t see it. Jeri was gone, so it was my word against Julia’s. Where was the proof that would put Julia away, absolutely, without question?
There wasn’t any.
None of us could tell the police, not Ma, not me, not Sarah. Ma would know what to tell Ron DiFrazzia, if anything. Maybe he had to be kept out of it. Whatever happened, I was going to end Julia’s life. I would.
A faint gleam appeared ahead. Oil on blacktop. I’d reached the highway. Nothing had come along since I’d seen that one vehicle, forty minutes ago. I reached the blacktop and turned right, south toward Gerlach, and started walking. After a hundred yards or so I passed a vertical marker. I put my face six inches from it and slowly made out a number in the dark, forty-four. Mile marker forty-four. I put that in my head and kept walking.
An hour passed. I went by mile marker forty-seven.
Another half hour went by, then I heard an engine behind me, a big diesel from the sound of it. Then headlights appeared, red and yellow lights outlining the cab of an eighteen-wheeler.
I stood at the side of the road as it drew near and stuck out my thumb. It felt stupid. Who out here wouldn’t need a ride? But I stuck my thumb out anyway. I squinted into a blinding crescendo of light. Air brakes came on before it passed me. The rig slowed, came to a stop fifty yards beyond me, lights illuminating the blacktop and sage in muddy color. I jogged to catch up. The passenger door popped open. I stepped up, opened the door all the way, looked in. A guy in his fifties with a three-day growth of gray stubble stared at me in the cab’s yellow light.
“Hell of a place to hitchhike,” he said.
“You got that right.” I rubbed my forehead above my left eyebrow, concealing much of my face until the cab’s light went out.
“Didn’t see a car. Broke down somewhere off the highway?”
“Uh-huh. About seven miles up in the hills. East.” I told him east instead of west to keep this to myself. Julia was in my head. I was a gun, aimed at Julia. I didn’t want anyone else near her.
“Name’s Barry,” the guy said.
“Steve,” I told him. “Thanks for stopping.”
He got the rig going again. “No problem. Damn sure wouldn’t leave a guy walking out here at night.”
“Thanks again. How far is it to Gerlach?”
“’Bout eighteen miles. I’m stopping there. That suit you?”
“Uh-huh. Got a cell phone I can use?”
He got one off a ledge in the console. He hit an icon and handed it to me. It was still attached to a charger cable. I put in Ma’s number, heard it ringing.
“Yeah what?” Ma’s voice was sleepy, abrupt.
“It’s me, Ma.”
“Mort?”
“Uh-huh. I’m up in Gerlach. At least I’ll be there soon. I need you to come up and get me.” I felt my heart breaking all over again. Suddenly I could barely force the words out without sobbing.
“Gerlach? Whatcha doin’ up there?”
“Come get me, Ma. Now.”
“What’s . . . can you talk?”
“No.”
“Okay, I’ll be up there soon as I can. You gonna be in that casino place?”
“Only place open twenty-four hours. I’ll be there.”
“Need me to bring anything?”
I thought about that.
“Mort?”
“Can’t think of anything. I just need you.”
“I’m on my way.”
I ended the call, handed the phone back to Barry after deleting Ma’s number from the outgoing list.
“Your mother, huh?” he said.
“Yup.”
“I call my mom at one thirty in the morning, she’d have me fried and half-eaten before the sun got up.”
“Yeah.”
At the flat response Barry looked over at me. “You okay?”
“I’ve been better. But I’ll live.”
Barry pulled into a packed-dirt parking lot behind the Texaco station and left the rig running. If I was going to get Julia, I couldn’t be seen by any of the locals in Gerlach. Barry wasn’t a local guy, but I couldn’t go inside the casino. I wasn’t up here tonight. I’d played no part in anything that had taken place at that abandoned mine. If I was here in Gerlach, the story would unravel and drag Julia into it. The FBI and the police would be involved, and I would never be able to get to her.
I thanked Barry. He walked to the casino and I stayed outside, waiting for Ma to show up. The night was chilly. I walked between the Texaco station and the casino, keeping in the shadows, trying to stay warm.
By the time Ma arrived in her Eldorado at three twenty, I was cold, shivering. I figured she’d left two minutes after I’d called her and driven faster than fifty—not a good idea
