bore down on the blue pickup. Pellam chose to stay in the left lane, on the edge of the cliff. The pickup veered back to the right. But it was too late; the camper struck its rear end--red and clear plastic shrapnel scattered over the asphalt—and hooked onto the pickup’s trailer hitch.
The impact goosed the speed up to eighty.
Pellam looked over the roof of the Ford. He had a fine view of where the road disappeared in a curve a half mile ahead. If they didn’t slow by then the two vehicles were going to sail into space in the finest tradition of hackneyed car chase scenes.
Oh, hell. That wasn’t all: A new risk, a bicyclist. A woman, it seemed, on a mountain bike. She had one of those pistachio-shell-shaped helmets, in black, and a heavy backpack.
She had no clue they were bearing down on her.
For a moment the pickup wiggled out of control then straightened its course. The driver seemed to be looking back at Pellam more than ahead. He didn’t see the bike.
Seventy miles an hour. A quarter mile from the curve.
And a hundred feet from the bicyclist.
“Look out!” Pellam shouted. Pointlessly.
The driver of the pickup began to brake. The Ford vibrated powerfully. They slowed a few miles per hour.
Maybe the curve wasn’t that sharp. He squinted at a yellow warning sign.
The diagram showed a 180-degree switchback. A smaller sign commanded that thou shalt take the turn at ten miles an hour.
But they’d be on the cyclist in seconds. Without a clue they were speeding toward her, she was coasting and weaving around in the right lane, avoiding rocks. And about to get crushed to death. Some riders had tiny rearview mirrors attached to their helmets. She didn’t.
“Look!” Pellam shouted again and gestured.
Whether the driver saw the gesture or not Pellam couldn’t say. But the passenger did and pointed.
The pickup swerved to the left. Another squeal of brakes. The camper rode up higher on the hitch. It was like a fishhook. As they raced past the bicyclist, her mouth open in shock, she wove to the side, the far right, and managed to skid to a stop.
That was one tragedy averted. But the other loomed.
They were a thousand feet from the switchback
Pellam felt the vibrations again, from the brakes. They slowed to sixty-five then sixty. Downshift.
Five hundred feet.
They’d slowed to fifty.
Down to forty-five leisurely miles an hour.
The switchback loomed. Straight ahead, past the curve, Pellam could see nothing. No trees. No mountains. Just a huge empty space. The tourist marker at Clement Pass said the area boasted some of the most spectacular vertical drops in Colorado.
Forty miles an hour. Thirty-nine.
Maybe we’ll just bring this one off.
But then the grade dropped, an acute angle, and the wedded vehicles began accelerating. Fifty, fifty- five.
Pellam took off his Ray Bans. Swept the pens and beer bottles off the dash. Knocked the boom box to the floor. Kathy continued to sing. The song “Grand Canyon” was coming up soon.
A hundred feet from the switchback.
With a huge scream the pickup’s nose dropped. The driver had locked the brakes in a last desperate attempt to stop. Blue smoke swirled as the truck fishtailed and the rear of the camper swung to the left. But the driver was good. He turned into the skid far enough to control it but not so much that he lost control. They straightened out and kept slowing.
They were fifty feet from the edge of the switchback. The speed had dropped to fifty.
Forty-five…
But it wasn’t enough.
Pellam threw his arms over his face, sank down into the seat.
The pickup sliced through the pointless wooden guardrail and sailed over the edge of the road, the camper just behind.
There was a loud thump as the undercarriage of the Ford uprooted a skinny tree and then a soft jolt. Pellam opened his eyes to find the vehicles rolling down a gentle ten-foot incline, smooth as a driveway, into the parking lot of the Overlook diner, sitting in the middle of a spacious area on an outcropping of rock high above the valley floor.
With a resounding snap the camper’s front bumper broke loose and fell beneath the front tires, slicing through and flattening them, a hard jolt that launched the boom box and possibly a beer bottle or two into Pellam’s ear and temple.
He winced at the pain. The truck rolled leisurely through the lot and steered out of the way of the Winnebago, which hobbled on, slowing, toward the rear of the diner.
Pellam’s laughter at the peaceful conclusion to the near-tragedy vanished as the camper’s nose headed directly for a large propane tank.
Shit…
Hitting the useless brakes again, couldn’t help himself, he squinted. But the dead tires slowed the camper significantly and the result of the collision was a quiet
He lowered his head and inhaled deeply for a moment. Not praying. Just lowered his head. He climbed out and stretched. John Pellam was lean of face and frame and tall, with not-quite-trimmed dark hair. In his denim jacket, Noconas, well-traveled jeans, and a black wrinkled dress shirt converted to casual wear, he resembled a cowboy, or at least was mistaken for one in places like this, though not in the low-rent district of Beverly Hills—yes, they exist—that was his mailing address. The cowboy aura he tended to perpetuate not for image but for sentiment; the story went that he was actually related to a figure from the Old West, Wild Bill Hickok.
Pellam walked stiffly toward the pickup, noting the damage wasn’t terrible. Scraped paint and hitch, broken brake- and taillight.
The driver, too, shut off the engine and eased the door open.
Pellam approached. “Look, Mister, I’m really sorry. The brakes…”
The Stetson came off swiftly, unleashing a cascade of long chestnut hair. The woman was in her midthirties, petite, about five two or so. With a heart-shaped face, red lips, brows thick and dark, which, for some reason, made them wildly sensual.
The passenger-side door opened and a young man—well-built in a gangly sort of way, with an anemic goatee and short ruddy hair--climbed out. A cautious smile on his face. He looked as if he wanted to apologize for the accident, though passengers were probably not the first suspects traffic officers looked at.
Pellam continued toward the driver.
She took off her own Ray Bans.
He was thinking that her eyes were the palest, most piercing gray he’d ever seen when she drew back and decked him with a solid right to the jaw.
# # #
A cold Colorado desert wind had come up and they were all inside the diner, the cast now including the town sheriff, fiftyish and twice Pellam’s weight. His name was partially H. Werther, according to his name plate. He stood near the counter, talking to the cowgirl.
Pellam was sitting at a table while a medic who smelled of chewing tobacco worked on his jaw. Pellam was mad at himself. He’d been in more fights than he could-- or cared to--count. He’d seen the squint in her eyes as he stepped close and had an idea that it was an about-to-swing squint. And all the while Pellam kept grinning like a
