“Not yet. We’ve got divers and salvage operations out from Fredericksburg all the way north to D.C.”
“It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“It’s always bad. Especially now that we’ve got the Inauguration coming up. Everybody’s a little tense. I’ve got to make a few phone calls, Sheriff. You put your head back and take it easy. We should be there in half an hour.”
73
S now day, huh?” Metro Patrolman Joe Pastore said. “Remember Snow Days?”
“The best, Joey,” his partner, Tom Darius said. “Man. I loved Snow Days. More than life.”
Joe said, “Snow forts. Snow wars. Your kids’ school close down, too?”
“It was on the radio at six or something, just as I was leaving the house. I think every school in DC is closed. Look at this shit coming down. Has to be a couple of feet already, right?”
“I hope it keeps snowing. Right through the frigging Inauguration. That way people will stay home and watch it on TV. Make our lives a whole lot easier, right? Hey! Watch out for that truck! You see that guy?”
“Is this fruit nuts?” DC uniformed Patrolman Tommy Darius said to his partner, Pastore, who was driving the cruiser. A huge tractor-trailer truck had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, turning into the road right in front of them, barely visible in the swirling snow.
Joey laughed and hit the brakes, nodding his head. Is this fruit nuts? You have to ride around in a car all day, it better be with someone funny. Like Tommy. The two of them had been together ever since the academy, hell, every since grade school in Silver Spring. Inseparable, even back in the day. Next-door neighbors. Spitshooters. Hellraisers. Crimebusters. Partners to the end. Close, that’s what they always said. Like wallpaper to a wall.
Their DC squad car, a white Crown Vic, followed the big tractor-trailer along a winding wooded road in the middle of Rock Creek Park. There were few people using the vast park today, because of the snowfall. They’d seen a few hikers, a couple of hardy folks on horseback, riding through the huge mounds of snow drifted up under the trees.
Darius and Pastore began following the truck on North Waterside Drive, headed southeast, the only two vehicles on the road. They’d only passed one other vehicle, a big Lexus SUV, going the other way. Not only were trucks not allowed in the park, ever, they especially weren’t allowed on Waterside. That’s because the damn drive was closed, all the way from Massachusetts Avenue to Rock Creek Parkway. Clearly marked “Closed,” and here was this guy.
Now the guy braked and hung a right on Beach Drive, going wide, and headed toward the Riley Spring Bridge.
“Hit the lights, Tommy,” Pastore said, “I’ve had enough of this dick-head.”
“Yeah, let’s pull him,” Darius said, firing up the light bar and red flashers. “Then we’ll go get some supper.”
This driver of this rig, who was apparently hauling frozen seafood from Louisiana, was either lost or smoked up or both. “Crawdaddy & Co.,” that’s what it said on the truck. Big pink crawfish or something painted on the back and sides. Didn’t look all that tasty. Looked more like big bugs.
The guy was crawling through the park, ten miles an hour, pausing to stop at every intersection and then proceeding through it, moving along as if he owned the road. The truck being from way down south in Louisiana, Darius and Pastore assumed nobody’d told this ragin’ Cajun that this was a National park, run by the Department of the Interior, and trucks weren’t welcome.
“He’s not stopping, Joey. What do you want me to do?”
“I’ll pull along side this asshole. Roll your window down and flag him over to the shoulder.”
“It’s fuckin freezing out there, Joe.”
“Just do it.”
“He won’t stop. Look at those tints. Thinks he’s a movie star. We ought to bust him for those limo windows, too.”
“He stops at stop signs but he won’t stop for us. Jesus.”
“Hey! Watch it! You trying to kill me?”
Joey had pulled one car length ahead of the truck’s cab, then put the wheel hard over, jumping in front of the truck and then getting on the brakes, slowing to five miles an hour.
“Is he slowing down?” Joey asked, looking in the rearview. You could hardly see because of the snow and fog.
“Yeah. I think.”
“All right, that’s it, I’m stopping.”
“He ain’t,” Darius said, turning around in the seat and peering through the frosted rear window. The red and blue flashers lit up the snow-covered cab. “Jesus, he’s pushing us off the road.”
“He skidded. That’s all. He’s stopped now. Okay. Let’s go introduce ourselves, make this cracker feel at home here in our nation’s capitol.”
They both got out of the car and went back to the truck cab. Big Peterbilt, bright red. The windshield so dark you couldn’t see a thing inside. Tommy stepped up onto the running board and rapped on the driver’s window with his flashlight.
“What’s this guy, playing possum or something?”
“Bang harder. Break the fuckin’ thing.”
“Police!” Tommy said, rapping harder. “Open your window!”
“This guy’s unbelievable. I’m going to get the ram out of the trunk. We’ll bust his window for him he doesn’t open up.”
Joey jumped down from the truck and came back with the lightweight metal ram they used for taking doors down in a hurry. Tommy looked at him, then jumped down from the running board, shaking his head.
“Still nothing?”
“Maybe he’s dead.”
“Fuck it. I’m freezing my nuts off out here.”
Joey climbed up and used the ram on the driver’s side window. The glass was unbelievably thick. It took three tries. On the third, the window imploded inward in a shower of Saf-T-Glass. A weird smell came from the cab. Not sour sweat stink and tobacco like Joey and Tommy were accustomed to, stopping these rigs. Nothing like that. More like machinery and hydraulic fluid.
Tommy aimed his Mag-Lite inside.
“Holy shit.”
“What?”
“Nobody in here. Get up and take a look. Fucking Buck Rogers.”
Joey climbed up and peered through the window. “What the hell is all that stuff?”
“Some kind of remote control driving thing. I don’t know. Weird shit, huh? Listen, it’s beeping.”
“I don’t like beeping.” Joey said.
Tommy played his light across the polished stainless steel steering mechanism; saw that there was more elaborate machinery mounted on the floorboard where the pedals and transmission normally were. A split-screen monitor on the console showed four live views: front and rear, and on both sides. The two police officers stared at the screen for a moment, transfixed.
“Is that TV snow? Or, real snow?” Tommy said.
“Can’t tell. Should we call it in?” Joey said, staring at the little red light that was blinking rapidly.
“You see any cameras? You think we’re on Candid Camera?”
“Off the air. Reruns only. We gotta call this in. I don’t like it.”
“Let’s go see what’s in the back first. Must be some freaking hi-tech seafood, man.” Tommy jumped down into the snowbank and ran toward the rear. He was pumped about the robot truck. It was bad. But it was cool, too.
“I’m calling it in first,” Joey said, running back to his squad car.
It was a Rol-R-Door, which meant it rolled up from the bottom like a garage door. Slid up into the roof. There
