Triple Threat

Without a word the sheriff stepped outside to write down VINs and to radio in the details and see who was who and what was what.

The driver got a coffee, not asking if anybody else wanted any. She paid with steady hands. “Look,” she said softly. “I’m sorry I hit you. I wasn’t thinking… The pickup was a birthday present. Just last week. It’s got eight hundred miles on it.”

Pellam thought about making a joke that out here that meant two trips to the grocery store and one to Blockbuster.

But he didn’t, mostly because she didn’t sound particularly sorry she’d slugged him.

“ ‘S’okay,” he said automatically as his tongue poked a loose tooth. “I didn’t really get the impression you were out for blood.”

Though he happened to be tasting some at that moment.

He added, “It was a boom box hit me. That’s what happened.” He nodded toward the sheriff.

“Thanks. I get carried away sometimes.”

The pain was starting now. Probably more than boom box pain.

Then the issue of assault was gone and she looked impatiently at her watch.

It seemed an appropriate time for intros. Her name turned out to be Hannah Billings. “With an ‘h.’ ”

A back-end h. “I’m John Pellam. This isn’t a line--but I have to say I’ve never met a Hannah before. Pretty name.”

It conjured up a heroine in a World War II film, a resistance fighter, wearing a tight frock, whatever a frock might be.

Taylor brushed his butch hair and said, “It’s a palindrome. Her name.”

“A…?”

“A word that’s spelled the same backward and forward. ‘Madam, I’m Adam,’ ” he said. “I wrote an entire poem in palindromes once.”

Poem…

Hannah said, “And this is Taylor…”

The poet filled in, “Duke.”

More relationship mystery.

“As in the Duke. Being out here makes you think of old-time Westerns, doesn’t it?”

Hannah had no clue what he was talking about.

How could somebody not know John Wayne?

“So everybody okay?” Taylor asked. “That was freaky, I mean. Seeing the road doing that turn, what’s it called? A…?”

“Switchback,” Hannah offered and dumped sugar into her coffee. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve had worse.” As if Pellam were an afterthought. “You?”

“I used to be a stuntman. I’ve had worse.”

“Stuntman.” She was curious.

Taylor, too: “Wow. Hollywood?”

“Yep.”

“Fascinating.” He dug into his massive backpack for a notebook and wrote something down on the stained, limp pages.

Hannah muttered to him, “Didn’t quite work out the way you’d hoped, looks like.”

He shrugged. “Not your fault.” Taylor had a bulky presence but he seemed like a pretty soft-hearted guy.

There was a formality between the two of them. Pellam just couldn’t figure out their relationship. She had a Colorado license, he’d noted. And Taylor Illinois. Was he a distant relative?

Taylor looked around, offering a faint laugh. “This place is something. A real diner. It oughta be in black and white. Like an old TV show.”

Pellam quoted. “ ‘You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas… You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.”

“Controlling the vertical and the horizontal,” Taylor replied. Pellam believed that was a different show. But nodded anyway.

The woman completely ignored them. She took her coffee outside to make another cell phone call.

Taylor, the film- and TV-loving poet, went for some coffee, too, sitting down at the counter. He smiled, more friendly than flirtatious, at one of the waitresses: the younger of the two, a slim woman in a white uniform, which was only slightly jelly-marred. Rita, if Pellam read the scripty typeface above her left breast correctly. Taylor ordered, adding, “How ‘bout this diner, isn’t it totally authentic?” And, “Man, a real piece of America.” She glanced at him as if he’d told her he’d just seen Elvis mountain biking through the pines and went off silently to pour his coffee. It arrived in a chipped white mug that must’ve weighed close to a pound.

Pellam watched Hannah smoking half a cigarette, quickly. She returned inside, waving her hand about her to shoo away the smoke, as if trying to get rid of the evidence. It told Pellam her husband or some other family member wanted her to give up the habit, and, while she was courteous about the practice, she wasn’t going to stop.

She seemed more impatient yet, staring out toward the sheriff, hunched over his cruiser calling the incident in to points unknown. Finally she joined Pellam.

“I tried to get around you,” he said.

“I know, I saw.” Again, studying the sheriff.

Pellam reflected: Pale eyes but a great tan. Dark and rich, without a single crow’s foot to show for it. Taylor was tan, too, but only hands, face, and part of his neck. The rest was pale as paper. It told Pellam he spent a lot of time outside but wearing most of his clothes.

Ah, he deduced: hitchhiker. Made sense, that tan and the backpack. And those boots. Really serious boots.

But would a single woman have picked up a man who outweighed her by seventy pounds or so?

A woman with that right hook like she had was clearly somebody who could handle herself.

And as for her tan—it seemed to be everywhere. Which was, to John Pellam, an interesting matter for imaginative speculation.

The sheriff returned and looked over the threesome without suspicion or disdain. Still, he was a pro and there were questions to be asked. He asked Pellam, “You been drinking, sir?”

Ah, welcome to Gurney.

Pellam finally scored the name of the town; it was on the sheriff’s shoulder.

Hell of a name for a place. Wasn’t that some kind of medical stretcher?

“Brakes went.”

“So you say. Didn’t answer my question.”

“Then the answer is: No. Last drink I had was a beer…”

“Sure it wasn’t two?” the law enforcer asked wryly.

“How’s that?”

“S’all anybody ever drinks. Two beers. A fella’ll tank down a fifth of Old Crow and when we pull him outa the wreck he says he’s only had two beers. What they always say. Now, how many’d you really have?”

This was pretty funny, Pellam thought. As a follower of COPS, it was true.

“One beer and it was yesterday.”

“Yessir. We’ll just have you breathe into our little magic box. You object to that?”

“Not at all.”

“He hasn’t been drinking,” Taylor said. “You could tell.”

It was a Land’s End knapsack he held. He kneaded it with long fingers that could have used a good scrubbing. The backs of his hands were tanned, the palms pink.

“Doesn’t really matter what he seemed to you, sir. We’ll let science string him up. Or not. As the case may be.”

“Then let’s do it,” Pellam said agreeably.