Chapter 58
Riker was starting in on his hash browns about the time Kyle was sprinting diagonally across Historic Route 66, toward the Santa Fe Restaurant and, hopefully, for everyone watching, a well-earned C-note.
Tara folded an empty pie box and stuffed it back into the bag. After washing the pie down with a swig of coffee, she said, “Think Vern is going to respond?”
Riker said, “One million percent, yes. Question is, how long will it take him to arrive?”
Taking her hash browns from the sack, Tara asked, “How fast are those cruisers?”
“Quicker than snot.”
Steve-O said, “Faster than Dolly?”
Across the street, Kyle was pressing the receiver to his ear and appeared to be placing a call.
Seeing Kyle hang up and start back for the two-lane separating the two entirely different restaurants from one another, Riker said, “Dolly would hold her own in a straight line against the Charger and its HEMI. While Dolly excels in the horsepower department, the cruiser has her beat when it comes to handling and stopping.”
Tara said, “So what’s the over/under on Vern’s arrival time?”
Riker consulted his watch. Estimated they had burned five minutes in the drive-thru and another two eating and playing voyeur. So, rounding up, he deduced Vern had been gone eight minutes.
Assuming Vern had kept to the speed limit after entering the interstate and motoring west, Riker figured he was somewhere between eleven or twelve miles distant. Plugging this into an equation that allowed for thirty seconds to get turned back around and had Vern racing back to the location of the zombie sighting at near maximum speed, Riker set the over/under of his arrival at six minutes.
“Six minutes to drive twelve miles. No way,” Tara said. “I’ll take the over on that all day long.”
Knowing how much he had enjoyed racing souped-up luxury SUVs at top-speed on the rare occasion he found himself without a VIP aboard, Riker rather confidently accepted the under line.
Steve-O said, “I’m with Lee on this one.”
Tara said, “Of course you are, Steve-O. You’re always with Lee.” Then, regarding her brother, she asked, “So, what are we betting?”
“Loser does the dishes at Casa De Riker for thirty days.”
Brows meeting in the middle, Tara said, “You think we’ll be there that long?”
“What planet are you on, Sis? Haven’t you been taking notes?”
Steve-O said, “Won’t be long before the Sickos are everywhere.”
Tara said nothing for a long while. Finally, when she did speak, her eyes had gone glassy with tears and there was a noticeable waver in her tone. “I wanted to travel, Lee. To places warm and cold and in between. I’ve never been rich. Now that I am, this shit has to happen. Seems like I never win in life.”
Riker had known this was coming. He had noticed the slight change in her demeanor the moment they left the mansion in Miami. She was a bit edgier to him than normal. She’d even snapped at Steve-O, an action that was definitely not in her nature.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better, he thought.
But out loud he said, “You did good on the mansion. We got a few days to get stuff in line. You got some sun. Steve-O got too much sun. I got stuff done I needed to get done. All in all, it was a nice little vacation.” Peering over at the drive-thru window, he saw the three skeleton crew members filling up the rectangle of lightly tinted glass.
Suddenly an unfolded napkin filled up the space between seats.
Tara took it from Steve-O, thanked him, then dabbed at her eyes with it.
“Look at it on the bright side, Tara. You’re not wearing mascara. Therefore you don’t look like Tammy Faye Baker. Remember those raccoon eyes leaking black tears?”
“How could I forget?” Pointing at the drive-thru, she said, “Kyle was rocking raccoon eyes. Wonder if that dude ever sleeps.”
As if he knew he was subject of conversation, the man placed his hands on the window and stretched to full extension.
Bethany and her unnamed co-worker slipped away from the bi-fold only to emerge a few seconds later through a windowless door at the rear of the restaurant.
Tara ran her window down. “Hear that?”
Riker nodded. He definitely heard the rising and falling blare of the rapidly approaching siren.
Tara said, “We better go now.”
Without a word, Riker buckled up and got the Shelby started and rolling forward.
Turning right onto Old Route 66, he saw, still maybe a mile distant, the diluted glow of the blue and reds popping off in the light bar atop Vern’s patrol Charger.
“Five minutes and ten seconds,” Riker said, turning onto the ramp that fed back onto I-40 West.
As Riker merged the Shelby onto the interstate and took up station in the right lane, the Charger blipped by, a furious flurry of quivering needle antennas and wailing sirens and blinding lights.
Face and upper chest lit up by the soft glow from the computer and radios making up an elaborate electronics suite, the hatless trooper sat hunched over the wheel, radio handset pressed to his mouth, eyes no doubt scanning ahead for the exit.
In his side mirror Riker witnessed the single bank of LED lights set above the cruiser’s rear bumper go solid red as the black and white braked hard to negotiate the exit ramp.
Riker said, “Fish on!” and accelerated to ten above the limit.
Clearly not happy at the prospect of a month’s worth of dish duty, Tara said, “How’d he get here so quickly?”
“Question is, what do we do if we run out of gas before we make it to Santa Fe?”
Steve-O said, “We can suck-steal some more gas.”
Got to hand it to the man, Riker thought. He calls them like he sees them.
But out loud he said, “Let’s hope for Tara’s sake we don’t have to do that again.”
The thought alone caused Tara to again taste and smell the gasoline. Her salivary glands kicked in, causing her to gag a couple of times.
She said, “I’d rather push this thing a mile than swallow another drop of unleaded. Even the pumpkin spice in the pie, which I fuckin’ hate after making thousands of pumpkin-spiced lattes, couldn’t cleanse my palate of the chemical taste.”
Steve-O said, “Suck, Tara, don’t swallow.”
Aware the man wasn’t going there, she said, “Duly noted,” and tapped the zoom-out icon on the navigation screen until their general vicinity had shrunk down to a small, centrally located square on the display.
On the screen, I-40 was a squiggly green line tracking gradually north by west, to an eventual rendezvous with U.S. Route 285. That split off on a near ninety-degree northerly tangent toward Santa Fe and the route’s eventual terminus in Denver, Colorado, nearly four hundred miles beyond.
Tracked by a web of GPS satellites high overhead, the Shelby was represented as a red triangle within a red circle. At the moment, the icon was equidistant from all four corners of the digital map and tooling west on I-40.
Tara said, “Want to wager?”
Riker said, “Maybe. What’s on the line?”
“Double or nothing on the dishes.”
As the headlights picked up a sign indicating that the nondescript span ahead crossed over the Pecos River, Riker asked what they were wagering on.
Tara said, “I’m betting that you will be siphoning gas before we reach Santa Fe.”
Seeing the wager for what it was, a pretty good indication she’d been mulling over how to get out of her turn on the hose, he said, “I’d take that in a heartbeat. However, I can’t in good conscience accept the bet.”
Tara shot him a queer look.
“Kyle said Vern just got coffee and food, right?”
She said nothing.
“Would you resume your patrol, or find a cozy hiding spot near your beat to enjoy your food and drink before it gets cold?”
Gaze fixed on the dark void ahead, she downed her coffee, st
uffed the cup in the sack, then folded her arms across her chest.
“If it’s any consolation, I’ll release you from dish duty.”
Tara shook her head. “I’ll do the dishes. You do the sucking.”
Having watched the entire back and forth with rapt attention, Steve-O said, “Don’t you fret, Pretty Lady. I will help you with the dishes.”
Tara looked to Riker and stuck her tongue out. Addressing Steve-O, she said, “Deal.”
Chapter 59
Between Santa Rosa and the I-40 junction with U.S. Route 285, a total of fifty-eight miles of lightly traveled two-lane, there had been no shortage of billboards advertising Clines Corners. As the odometer ticked off the final miles, expectations among everyone inside the Shelby kept pace with the substantial elevation gain between the two waypoints.
A couple of miles and change from Clines Corners, everyone had already given voice as to what the place would be like when they finally got there.
Steve-O was certain the gift shop would be huge, with aisle after aisle containing shelves full of Route 66 memorabilia. He was also set on finding a jade and silver belt buckle as big as Texas and as garish as the stolen New Mexico plates on the Shelby.
Adopting a pessimistic stance, Tara figured either her big brother would find some way to get into trouble at the world-famous Clines Corners. Or, more than likely, trouble was going to find him.
Always has, always will, had been her final words on the matter.
Riker’s bar was set somewhere between possible fisticuffs and encountering the mother of all gift shops. That the first billboard outside of Santa Rosa—likely the billboard trooper Vern had parked behind in order to enjoy his breakfast—touted the combination Travel Center/RV Park as a Route 66 historical site established way back in 1937, he was expecting to see little more than a squat adobe building with multiple fuel islands, a couple of restaurants, and ten-dollar gas.
Supposedly open 24/7, and no doubt lit up with a copious amount of neon signage, he also thought that by now they should be seeing Clines Corners as a colorful bubble of light on the western horizon.
“Where is it?” Steve-O asked from his usual perch, elbows firmly planted on the seatbacks.
“I just had the same thought,” Riker said, slowing considerably in anticipation of an upcoming exit. Suddenly he pointed across the dash at a point in space. “I see it now. There, behind the overpass.”
“It’s completely dark,” Tara said. “No way it’s closed. The last billboard said it’s open twenty-four-seven, three-sixty-five.”
Riker took the exit, then braked at a four-way stop to let a minivan go through. Crossing the two-lane, he nosed the Shelby onto the Clines Corners lot and learned he was mostly correct in his blind assessment of the place.
There were, indeed, two restaurants. Clines Corners was a full-service operation on one end of the dining experience spectrum. On the other was a Subway sandwich shop.
As close to the good old Route 66 days as Riker was going to get was the darkened Phillips 66 sign above the truck plaza fuel islands.
On the south side of the building, sitting atop a thirty-foot pole, was a V-shaped sign. Spelled out in yellow letters stacked vertically atop one another were the words TRAVEL CENTER.
A second sign sat horizontal on the roof, directly above the entrance. Spelled out in three-foot-high yellow block letters were the words CLINES CORNERS.
Where Riker had erred in his blind assessment was his assumption that the place would be lit up like a Vegas casino.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Though the massive signs and key design elements on the building were adorned with hundreds of feet of bent-glass-tubing, the neon gas inside was inert.
Steering for the fuel island, he said, “A little underwhelming, huh?”
Steve-O said, “Maybe they didn’t pay the electric company. Happened one time at the home.”
Tara said, “Your caregivers didn’t pay the bills?”
“Ted told the man on the phone that the mailman lost the check.”
“Likely story,” Tara said. “I think Ted was drinking.”
Riker said, “Or gambling.”
“Or both,” Tara added.
After looping counterclockwise around the far island, Riker stopped the Shelby beside the nearest pump. Expecting to see a hand-lettered sign informing him the pumps were dry, he instead saw only dark-gray LCD screens and padlocked pump handles.
“That does nothing to shed light on this mystery.”
“Pardon the pun, right, Sis?”
“Inadvertent pun,” she said. “Still pretty funny.”
Smiling at that, Riker steered a big circle to the north edge of the plaza. Looking west, he detected no movement in the expanse of gravel bordering the paved lot. Just a few eighteen wheelers parked there. Reflected back at him in the tractors’ window glass was the strobing red and blue lights of an indeterminate number of emergency vehicles.
Steve-O said, “Are we going to park and go inside?”
Riker said, “I don’t think they’re open for business.”
Pointing at the south-facing entry, Tara said, “There’s a sign on the doors and some tape or something blocking entry. Drive closer so we can see what it says.”
Riker rolled forward and stopped a truck-length short of the entry. Slivers of light peeked around the edges of the mirrored film covering the double doors. Taped to one of the doors was a square of paper. Scrawled in black ink on the paper was a simple and succinct message: Closed Until Further Notice.
Woven through both door pulls and tied off on a pair of waist-high cement poles meant to protect the doors from poor drivers was a length of yellow tape emblazoned with the words CRIME SCENE - DO NOT CROSS.
Tara said, “Well, that seems to explain the flashing lights around back.”
Preoccupied by the battle raging inside of him between morbid curiosity and the all-encompassing need to find fuel for the Shelby, Riker said, “What do you want to do?”
Hooking a thumb over her shoulder, Tara said, “Let’s go back there and take a look.”
That was all it took for Riker’s curiosity—morbid or otherwise—to come out on top. In the next beat he was wheeling them around back and telling Steve-O to look away until they knew the nature and severity of the crime.
As the Shelby rounded the building’s northwest corner, the scene was revealed in tiny slices.
First, they saw a white panel van with the words County Coroner plastered on its slab side. It was sitting on the far edge of the parking lot, partially blocking a much taller van wrapped with vinyl graphics identifying it as belonging to a news outfit headquartered in Albuquerque.
On the ground next to the county meat wagon, their limbs bent at impossible angles, was a pair of bullet-riddled bodies. Both were males. And both had lots of gray facial hair on their upturned faces.
A yellow Versa-cone sat next to a tire iron still clutched in one corpse’s hand. A dozen smaller yellow cones were spread out to the right of the bodies. Their spacing and placement seemed totally random.
Riker guessed the crime-scene cones were marking the locations of spent brass. The absence of blood halos around the corpse’s heads led him to believe that prior to death they weren’t zombies. Most likely, they were just a couple of long-haul truckers caught in the middle of an armed robbery.
A classic example of wrong place, wrong time.
Parked broadside to the crime scene was a black Chevy Silverado from the Torrance County Sherriff’s office.
Working in the splash from the blue and reds spinning lazily inside the pickup’s roof-mounted light bar was a portly, balding man. He wore black slacks, a blue windbreaker with “Albuquerque ME” printed in yellow on the back, and comfortable looking, thick-soled shoes. At the moment, he was crouched next to the corpse with the tire iron and snapping pictures with an expensive-looking camera.
When the Shelby’s lights washed over the scene, the man stopped what h
e was doing and looked in their direction.
Tara directed Riker’s attention to the rear doors on Clines Corners’ west-facing wall. They were identical to the pair up front, only these were standing open. Streamers of crime scene tape tied to the door pulls stretched around an identical set of cement poles to create a makeshift barrier.
Now and again a light would flash inside Clines Corners, revealing yet another bloodied corpse laid out in the middle of a long, darkened hallway.
“Looks like a robbery gone wrong,” proffered Riker. Seeing the sparkle of broken glass on the floor near the dead body, he added, “They shot out the lights on their way to the parking lot. Which makes me think they were pumping warning shots into the ceiling.”
Tara said, “How do you explain the bodies?”
Steve-O said, “I bet the Sickos beat us here.”
“I don’t think so,” Riker said. “These guys likely tried to intervene and paid the ultimate price. Too bad there wasn’t a good guy with a gun here when all this went down.”
While Riker was speaking, the coroner approached the Silverado, spoke to the deputy inside, and then pointed at the Shelby.
At the exact moment Riker finished voicing his theory, the Hispanic deputy exited his pickup. He was tall and well-muscled. Looked like he could hold his own with the best of them. Riker figured if he and the deputy were standing toe-to-toe, they’d be looking each other in the eyes.
The deputy donned his Smokey the bear hat, smoothed out his coyote-tan uniform pants, and started a slow-walk toward the Shelby, all the while waving them away with one hand and mouthing, “Clines Corners is closed until further notice. You can’t be here. Move along now.”
Nodding, Riker flashed the deputy a thumbs-up.
Message received.
Mind full of unanswered questions, and with the prospect of the Shelby’s tank going dry prior to reaching Santa Fe a very real possibility, Riker wheeled the Shelby around to a rendezvous with U.S. Route 285 northbound and whatever fate awaited them.
The Plan Page 34