“No. Give me the bloody paper.”
“I believe him,” Top said to one of the guards, heading for the door. “For now. Give him what he wants. We begin again in the morning.”
68
LEE’S FERRY, VIRGINIA
I t was snowing, bad, just like Homer had said on the phone, coming down so hard Franklin could barely make out the shoulders of the road he was driving on. You could only see intermittently, through the fan-shaped area of glass left by the wiper. Every time it squeegeed a fresh coat of damp white stuff off the windshield, he leaned forward to see where he was. Wet snow mixed with sleet, heavy, about a foot of it already baked to a firm white cake on the hood of his car.
He was hardly doing twenty now, just blowing a thin layer of frosting off the cake. Up ahead he saw flashing yellow lights in the whirling snow, moving slow along the shoulder. The big plows were out, but clearly Route 1 South was not a priority. Not with a major corridor like I-95 just a mile away to the west. Even with the conditions, he was glad Homer had told him to take the old road south. Less traffic to deal with, and nobody was going anywhere fast to begin with.
He leaned forward over the wheel and squinted, trying to peer through the swirling stuff. This stretch of road he was on would be pretty near impassable to anybody not driving a big SUV. Or, a rented Jeep Cherokee 4X4, the last car left at the Hertz counter at Reagan Airport. “It’s red, is that all right?” the Hertz girl had asked him. He told her red was his favorite color.
A few miles back he’d seen the sugar-coated green signs for General Washington’s home at Mt. Vernon, and then the town of Woodbridge, so he figured to be getting close. Route 1 was the old eastern seaboard road to the Capitol and time had passed it by. There were still places called the Three Oaks Motor Hotel, little log cabins built in the trees around a semi-circular drive. There was maybe an hour of sun left in the sky. Then it would be dark and much harder to find Morning Glory Farm.
He hoped Homer was in his vehicle with the heat on. Temperature had been dropping since he’d landed. He reached over and turned the heater fan to high, wished he had his leather gloves. Glad he’d worn his duster.
Okay, there it is, he said to himself, seeing a frosted sign for River Road in the yellow cones of his headlights. He took a left. Another sign said, Lee’s Ferry, 1 mile. Good, we’re in business. He slowed way down now, to a crawl. Big old trees, huge dark trunks, bare branches heavily laden with snow. And through them, the river. The farm should be coming up on his left pretty soon.
To his left, he saw, there was what had to be a split-rail fence under a mound of fresh snow and then a white wooden sign coming up that said Morning Glory Farm.
The drive came up fast and he braked too hard. The rear end fishtailed, caught up with the front end and then he was spinning, headed straight for the ditch. He eased his foot off the brake and slid around to a stop, the headlight beams aimed at a weird angle. Well. Bad start. He put the thing in low and gunned it. Tried reverse. The wheels just spun like he was on oily glass.
He cursed under his breath, shut the engine off, swung out of the car, and started climbing the hill on foot. Cowboy boots made the walking trickier than it had to be. No fresh tracks in the drive, but it was snowing so hard a car could have driven up this road twenty minutes ago and you wouldn’t know it.
There was a long sloping white meadow to his left as he climbed. Up on the summit, a pretty two-story white farmhouse with dark shutters on all the windows. Nice views of the woods and town to the west and down to the river to the east. It would be pretty dark in the house now, sun was almost down behind him, but there were no lights in any of the windows. No movement around the house, no smoke coming from the two tall brick chimneys at either end of the roof peak.
There was a heavily wooded area to his right.
He figured Homer’s vehicle to be parked deep in those woods, just over the ridge. Some kind of river access road maybe. A public boat launch? He angled off the drive into the woods as he got close to the top, moving slowly through the trees now, expecting to come upon Homer or his car at any moment. The footing here was more difficult, big drifts piled up beneath the trees, and by the time he’d reached the top of the hill he was breathing pretty hard.
He saw Homer’s car.
It was parked in the trees down near the black, slow-moving river and covered with snow. He started down toward it, an unreasonable uneasiness suddenly pinging at his brain. He’d last spoken to the boy, what, five hours ago? Still, that was a long time to sit in your car, waiting, snow blanketing your windows.
Homer had the bone in his teeth now, and Franklin knew how it felt. You wanted to see how it ended. You wanted to end it. Still, the sight of that car made him uneasy. He quickened his pace, slipping and sliding, holding onto branches to stay on his feet.
Homer was not in the car. The driver’s side door was hanging open. There was a lot of snow on the seat. On the dash and on the floor. Something was missing besides Homer. Yeah. The Mossburg shotgun was not in its mount under the dash.
Franklin stood up, breathing hard. There had been a small access road to the river, he’d crossed it coming down the hill. He started moving back up in that direction, the only one that made any sense, until he reached the road. The road angled through the woods down to the river. And there was the boat ramp. And there was the trailer truck they’d stopped that night outside of Prairie. Homer’s ghost rider, the Yankee Slugger. The trailer was backed down the incline, the rear wheels a few feet from the water’s edge. The tractor was facing this way, uphill, and the headlights were on. A few feet away, an idling forklift was parked on the slope.
On the ground in the pool of light was his deputy.
He was on his back, staring blindly up into the light from the truck’s headlamps. The snow on the ground around him was soaked bright red. About a foot from his outreached hand, the Mossburg was almost buried but still visible. This had happened just before he’d pulled off the road. Within the last fifteen minutes or so. Maybe while he was spinning into the ditch.
Homer was still breathing.
Rapid, shallow breaths, but he was alive.
“Homer?” he knelt down and cradled the boy’s head in his arms.
“You made it.”
“Don’t talk. We have to get you to a hospital.”
“Too late for that, Sheriff. Don’t worry about it.”
“Who did this?”
“It was—the son. I was watching them unload the truck. Putting the thing in the river. Tried to stop them. The older one, on the forklift, saw me come out of the woods. He—he yelled something and the son just turned around and shot me. I shot back. I think I killed him. That’s all there is to it.”
Homer’s eyes were going far away.
“You’re going to be okay, Homer. You hold on, son.”
“No, listen. You have to…wait. You have to hear about the thing they put in the river. It’s—bad.”
“What is it, Homer?”
“Some kind of—what. I don’t know. A baby submarine. High tech. Nobody inside. Leastways nobody got in the damn thing. Just like the truck…remote control.”
“Still there? The thing in the river?”
“Hell, no. Hit the water and started to submerge. Headed upriver. Going pretty fast, too, and it—it—”
“Which way? Which way was it headed?”
“North I think.”
“Towards Washington?”
“I can’t…I’m not…”
“Don’t talk, Homer. Stay with it. Stay with me.”
“Can’t. I got to go.”
