Stepping away, Hannah lit another cigarette, having some trouble getting the tobacco lit in the stream of wind. He caught a glimpse of her pale eyes, her dark eyebrows, jeans tight as paint, as the flame flared. She snapped the lighter shut—a silver one, not disposable.
She ambled in his direction, as a fierce gust of wind pushed her starboard a few inches. As she closed in, she hung up. “Don’t get married,” she muttered. “Ever.”
This intelligence about Ed was interesting. So was what she said next. “We go inside?” A nod at the camper.
But when he responded, “You bet we can,” he wasn’t flirting. The damn wind had chilled him to bone.
# # #
Once they were in the confined space, Pellam noted immediately that they both smelled of service station—a sweet and ultimately unpleasant astringent smell, courtesy of Rudy and Gurney Auto Service, We Fix All Makes and Models, Foriegn too!! Dump your Oil HERE.
Hannah noticed this as well and smelled her leather sleeve. “Jesus.” She settled into the bench seat behind the tiny kitchenette table. “Kind of homey.”
“I like it.”
Eyeing her beautiful face, to gauge if she was bored by his narrative, he told her about life on the road, what appealed to him. She did seem more or less interested. She rose, went to the cupboard. “Vodka?”
“Whiskey.”
“Headache.” She seemed to pout.
Pellam was amused. Hurrying off into the windy afternoon to buy her vodka was just the sort of thing that the straight guy, the innocent, the mark would do for a femme fatale in a noir movie like
Hannah looked him over carefully once more and then sat down on the bed, rather than the banquette. Her head dipped, her eyes locked onto his.
He asked, “Grey Goose or Belvedere?”
# # #
Ten minutes later he’d shelled out big bucks for the premium and bought himself an extra fifth of Knob Creek, just to be safe. Two Stouffer’s frozen lasagnas too. They were both for him. He didn’t think Hannah would stay around for dinner.
At first he’d thought that was a warning, not an invitation. But seeing her on the bed he wasn’t so sure.
The wind kept up its insistent buffeting and Pellam walked with his head down, eyes squinted to slits. He’d spent a lot of time in deserts and it seemed to him that the grit in Colorado, Gurney in particular, was the sharpest and most abrasive. Imagination probably.
He lifted his head and oriented himself, then adjusted course. Pellam walked past an abandoned one-story building that had been a video store. There were fewer than there used to be. Talk in the industry was that soon cable TV was going to be offering nearly first-run films on special units that duplicated the clarity of theater screens. You could even watch movies on your computer—not with discs, which were soon going to take over the market from VHS tapes, but through your phone line or however you connected to the Internet. Pellam was skeptical of all this technology and, in any case, he didn’t like it. There was an intimacy about going to a theater to watch a movie. Lights going down, the hush of the crowd, then experiencing the images big and loud and awash with the reactions of everyone else. He couldn’t imagine—
Whatever hit him weighed fifty pounds easy. It shattered the vodka and whiskey and sent Pellam tumbling into the street.
But stuntmen instincts never quite go away. He rolled rather than impacted, diffusing the energy. And in a smooth motion he sprang up, flexing his right hand to see if it was broken—it wasn’t. Two fists and he was ready to fight.
The assailant, however, wasn’t. He was already sprinting away from the attack, through the brush. Pellam couldn’t see him clearly, but he noted that it seemed the man had a backpack on.
Interesting…
Pellam was about to go after him, but glanced toward the camper, about a hundred feet away, and saw the body lying on the ground.
In dark clothing.
Hell, was it Hannah?
He ran forward and stopped fast.
No, it was the State Patrol trooper. He was lying on his back, one leg straight, the other up, knee crooked. His throat had been slit, deep. A lake of blood surrounded his head and neck. His holster was empty. Bootprints led from the body into the woods behind the service station.
Then a man’s voice from nearby: “Help me!”
Pellam spun around. From the repair shop Rudy staggered toward the street. He’d been stabbed or struck on the head and blood cascaded down to his shoulder. He was staring at his hand, covered with the red liquid. “What’s this? What’s this?” He was hysterical.
Pellam ran to the mechanic. The wound wasn’t deep—a blow to the back of the head, it seemed. He eased the man to the ground and found a rag, filthy, but presumably saturated with enough petrochemical substances to render it relatively germ free. He pressed it against the wound.
Hannah?
Pellam ran to the camper and flung the door open.
“Any sign of--?” Hannah’s question skidded to a halt as she looked him over, covered with the aromatic dregs of whiskey and vodka, which glued dust and dirt to his body.
“Jesus. What’s going on?”
Pellam opened the tiny compartment beside the door. He took out his antique Colt .45 Peacemaker, a cowboy gun, and loaded it. Slipped it into his back waistband.
“Trooper’s dead, Rudy’s hurt. Somebody decked me. I think it was your hitchhiker. I couldn’t see for sure but I think so.”
“The poet?”
“Yep.”
“You have a gun? Where’d you get a gun?”
“Wait here.”
Recalling that Taylor would have the trooper’s weapon, he opened the camper door slowly and stepped into the wind.
No shots. And no sign of the man. Where would he have fled to?
He pulled out his cell phone and hit 911.
He got the operator, but five seconds later he was patched through to the sheriff himself.
Pellam didn’t think that was the sort of thing that ever happened in the big city.
# # #
Ten minutes later Hannah joined him outside as Werther showed up.
Hannah Billings was not the sort of person who stayed inside when she didn’t want to stay inside, whatever threats awaited.
The sheriff jumped out fast and ran to the trooper first, then saw there was nothing he could do for the man. He went to his brother-in-law, sitting on a bench in front of the service station. After a word or two with the man he
