A Deadly Shade of Rose

by Douglas Hirt

  Marcie had thrown at least a dozen fancy chops and jabs. An expertly placed snap of a foot into his chest had sent him flying backwards, landing in the dark somewhere. He’d gave a single groan, and then went silent.

  She slowly eased from what a frozen stance that couldn’t have been comfortable to hold. I came up beside her—slowly so that she’d properly identify me—peered down at the crumpled shape. “Remind me to be at my gentlemanly best around you, Miss Rose.”

  She turned her head toward me, the wild—the same look I’d seen earlier this morning when she’d come into my campsite. “The other one?” she asked in a strictly business-like voice.

  “Dead. Or he ought to be. If not, we probably should get him to a hospital.” I grimaced. “I hope there’s a really good reason for what we did here tonight. One good enough to keep both of us out of jail.”

  She studied me a long moment trying to make up her mind. “This is hardly the place to discuss it, Granger. We need to find somewhere safe. Then we can talk.”

  I managed a halfhearted grin. “My cabin...or yours? Yours is likely being watched with more eyes than a bee.”

  “Bee?”

  “Never mind. It’s a biological metaphor.”

  Chapter Six

  “A gathering of vultures,” Marcie said.

  There was no emotion attached to that, only a calculating undertone that made me very uneasy. We were hunkered on a low ridge above the Timber Inn Restaurant. From our position the land fell steeply away to the lighted parking lot below. Behind us it climbed at a frightening angle into black nothingness.

  A swarm of men milled about the lighted lot, some peering into the cab of my parked truck. Others investigating along the backside of the restaurant. A couple just standing there looking cold and uninterested. More cars arrived. I counted eight men all together.

  Marcie studied the situation, a pout pressed into her lips.

  I said, “Scratch the truck. We’ll have to walk.”

  She didn’t answer. Her pout remained. I got the feeling it wasn’t disappointment, or even despair, but the outward display of a mind wholly occupied plotting its next move.

  And then it struck me what that next move was, that she was presently so carefully pondering. I said, “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking you can count me out. I feel obliged to tell you suicide is not on my list of fun things to do.”

  She pulled her view off the busy scene below and narrowed it at me. “We’re both armed now. If we hit them by surprise-”

  “Geeze, lady. The bodies are really piling up, and I have no intention of personally adding to the number, thank you very much. By my count there are eight men down there and who knows how many more might be showing up. You’re armed with an anemic little twenty-two, and I have a three-eighty with four rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. A pistol, I might remind you, which I’ve never fired. Your six and my five leave little margin for error.” I didn’t mention that she was carrying an unloaded revolver. “We’re outnumbered, outgunned, and you want to reenact the final scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid! Forget it!”

  Her expression reminded me of carved ice, but she couldn’t hold it. The corners of her lips crept upward, and she struggled to contain a low laugh. “You really do think I’m a bloodthirsty wench.”

  I shrugged, a little relieved as the tension drained from her face. “You didn’t exactly play patty cake with that gent back there.

  “Don’t worry, Granger, I’ll keep an eye on that precious hide of yours. And I’m not plagued with suicidal tendencies either.”

  “Then I suggest we slip quietly away from here before your friends get the clever notion to beat the bushes hunting for my precious hide, and yours.”

  “Slip quietly away to where?”

  “I really don’t care at the moment.”

  “Look.” She pointed. “That man coming out of the restaurant, that’s Alexander.”

  “The one who put a bullet hole in my tailgate?”

  “In the flesh.”

  “What about that other one, Jeff?”

  Marcie frowned. “I don’t see ol’ roaming hands among them.”

  “Cockran?”

  “Hahaha. Cockran doesn’t get his hands dirty in public. He has underlings to do that.”

  Two men emerged from the shadows behind the building. Between them they supported a limp shape, either Marcie’s or the one I took out. The man was alive, his legs trying to keep up, but not doing a very good job at it.

  Marcie said, “They’ve been found.”

  “This seems the appropriate time to get out of Dodge, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Another minute...”

  I couldn’t see any profit in hanging around but just then a pickup truck turned off the highway into the lot and stopped alongside my old rig, its new paint reflecting the overhead lights. Mine looked dull and worn-out beside it. Two stout, four-footed critters jumped out of the bed, metronome tails beating a prestissimo tempo, making happy romps around the men there as if each one needed a wet tongue greeting. “Oh no. Bant and his hounds.” Marcie’s wide eyes turned toward me. “Yes, I believe getting out of Dodge would be a good idea.”

  We moved away from our vantage point, scrambled up the rising land, found a gully that pointed us away from the activity around the restaurant, and ended on a deer trail up the mountainside.

  Between heavy breaths and mild cussing, Marcie said, “You have any idea where we’re heading?”

  “Of course not.” Just because she’d found me camping in the mountains didn’t mean I knew about every obscure trail like the old Ute Indians that used to inhabit these parts. Maybe I should have been flattered by her confidence in me? I gave her a hand over a fallen tree across the path.

  “Was afraid of that,” she said unhappily.

  We worked our way up the steep landscape and came to a gravel road only slightly brighter than the forested gloom we’d emerged from, running off into blackness both directions.

  She peered up one direction and down the other. “Which way?”

  “Can’t see as it makes much difference.” I studied it a moment. “Unless I’m completely turned around, that direction is away from Woodland Park.” The trees were too thick to see any village lights, so I was guessing.

  “Then that’s the way we’ll go.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Maybe we’ll come to a house?” she wondered.

  “Maybe,” I agreed. It wasn’t much of a conversation and I was glad when it ended making it easier to listen for the muffled growl of tires on gravel, or the baying of hunting hounds. All I heard was the soft crunch of our footsteps.

  I let Marcie have the lead, and she seemed happy to take it. We marched on, my senses on high alert, sifting sounds and expecting any moment to see headlights reflecting in the distance...thinking, ruefully, of all those fish I could be pulling out of a safe, friendly stream if a certain Miss Rose hadn’t stumbled into my life.

  I glanced at the luminescent hands of my wristwatch. It wouldn’t take long for the hounds to find our trail. So far, I hadn’t heard anything.

  Marcie stopped abruptly. I walked into her and grabbed a handful of her parka to stop her from falling.

  “Watch where you’re going.” She shook me off.

  “You need to get that brake light fixed.”

  “Shush! I hear something. Over that way.” She pointed.

  I heard it too. Softly, from the darkness came the unmistakable beat of rock and roll music. Not loud as Rock ought to be played—or endured as the case may be—but muted by trees and distance. We looked at each other, reading each other’s thoughts. Advancing along the road, the noise growing.

  A narrow, two-rut track angled off the road, cutting back into the trees. The noise got louder; a voice crying It’s a heartache, nothing but a heartache, accompanied ample orchestration. Someone’s heartache was rapidly becoming my earache. The double ruts ended in a clearing a f
ew hundred feet off the road where a compact station wagon sat.

  It was one of those tiny Japanese imports I was seeing a lot of. They’d become fashionable over here ever since the oil embargo of a few years back. In the dark it was impossible to tell the color. Its windows appeared steamed over and from within came the pale green glow from the radio. The music poured from a partly opened driver’s side window. Past the blare of it, the car’s engine purred softly, but I didn’t see anyone sitting behind the wheel. There was something else odd about the way the car rocked on its springs.

  In the dark I glimpsed Marcie’s mischievous smile. “It alive.” Her voice was low, breathless. It was plain she’d been doing some breath-holding only a moment before. Well, I had done a little of that myself.

  I said, “It seems to be keeping beat with the music.”

  “I think it’s beating faster than the music.” She advanced on the animated machine.

  I snagged her sleeve. “You aren’t going to-?”

  “We need a car. Anyway, it’s the risk they take.”

  “Well, I suppose,” I hesitated, uncertain. I didn’t like the idea, but at this point what did one more felony charge matter?

  What’s that I hear in your voice?” She gave me a speculative look. “Don’t claim you never-?”

  “I don’t claim anything of the sort,” I said with proper, red-blooded-male indignation.

  Marcie took the lead toward the lively car, keeping well back from the murky windows. She leaned carefully forward and peered into the car.

  I approached the left side. From the open window a female voice softly groaned. I looked inside. My impression was that of a lot of pink flesh in furious motion. The gal’s eyes were squeezed shut, and the guy, well, being occupied as he was, was oblivious to everything but the task at hand.

  Marcie grinned over the roof luggage rack at me, backed away, and came around the car, leaning close to my ear. “It does seem a shame to disturb them.”

  I shook my head. “It’s a risk, remember? You want to do it, or should I?”

  She winked. “I’ve got your back in case you get in trouble.”

  “That’s so thoughtful of you, Miss Rose.”

  They’d locked the door, but the window was down enough to slide a hand inside and lift the lock. The click of the latch was conveniently masked by a sudden extreme moan of delight.

  The inside light snapped on shining down upon their fully naked glory and startled faces. Their murky sensual drunkenness instantly sobered. The girl’s eyes registered terror. She was a good looking; firm and ample and would probably be have to keep an eye on her weight in another few years. She instinctively curled into herself in a futile attempt at modesty.

  The boy was of the tall, lanky variety, and not the least bit concerned about modesty. Anger flared in his face. “Get outta here!” he cried and lunged over the front seat at me.

  I planted a palm in the middle of his chest and that sent him back on his rump.

  His anger shifted fear. He’d probably heard stories about perverts who roamed the dark. The woods are full of them, if you believed the newspapers. “Hey, what’s up?” His voice choked and suddenly he was fighting to hold back tears. He was only seventeen or eighteen and I felt sorry for him.

  “You are, son.” I grinned and glanced at his pretty girlfriend. Her blond hair was a mess but her beautiful, long eyelashes were striking. Maybe they were false. It was plain nothing else about her was. “Sorry to interrupt,” I said mildly, “but we need to borrow the car.”

  “What are you going to do to us?” the girl said, her voice trembling, an arm folded across her breasts to hide them, a task requiring more protection than the slim limb could afford.

  “We’re not going to hurt you, Miss,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. I didn’t like the idea of what I was doing any more than she did, but any minute I expected hounds and headlights to come charging over the hill, and when that happened and the shooting began, no telling where bullets would land. “We just need the car.”

  “But you can’t,” the boy croaked, all remaining vestiges of puberty vanishing from his voice. “It belongs to my dad. He’ll kill me!”

  His chances of survival were better with dad than lingering here, but didn’t tell him that, and reached over and unlocked the passenger door. Marcie slid inside and looked back at them. The boy’s face colored and his hand moved to cover himself. Again, a limb not quite up to the task. Marcie studied him with approval and winked at the girl. “Nice hunk, honey. You’ve got good taste.”

  The girl looked dumbfounded by the remark, but I think Marcie’s arrival helped tone down the fear element a little. It was cold with both doors opened. I shut mine and switched off the radio.

  “You’re a music prude,” Marcie said.

  “I’d rather listen for dogs.”

  “There is that.”

  I said to the kids in the back seat, “You two get dressed. I’ll drop you off somewhere.” To Marcie I said, “Keep an eye on them.”

  The gear shifter felt strange, silky strange. I removed my hand and plucked off something obviously purposefully draped over it and held it to the faint light coming through the windshield. It was pink with little pink hearts embroidered all over it.

  “I think she’ll want those,” Marcie said in a casual voice.

  “Think so?” I raised an eyebrow and looked at the thin apparel in my fingers. “Probably wouldn’t fit you.”

  She gave me a looked of someone patiently enduring an obnoxious companion. “I don’t wear panties.”

  I laughed, “Interesting,” and dangled them over my shoulder to be immediately snatched away.

  I put the little car into gear, backed out of there, and crept up to the road making sure no one was coming before switching on the headlights.

  Marcie found a pack of Marlboros on the dash and snatched them up. “Mind?” she asked the kids.

  “They’re my dad’s,” the boy said.

  She punched in the lighter and a few moments later filled the car with smoke and gave a huge sigh.

  I said, “You guys have names?”

  They were silent a moment. The boy said, “I’m Jake.”

  “I’m Brenda,” his girlfriend said quietly.

  “I’m Mr. G and this is Miss R. Point me to the quickest way into town.” They were scared. I couldn’t blame them. I would be if the table had been turned.

  They were both dressed and bundled into their coats by time I pulled into a gas station along Highway 24 and set the brake. I turned, two pairs of wide eyes staring back at me, still not convinced I wasn’t some kind of serial murderer or cult leader looking for a couple young bodies to sacrifice to the God of Chaos.

  “This is where you two get off. There’s a phone over there. Call dad and tell him you stopped to fill the tank. Tell him you went inside to pay and Brenda went to the ladies’ room, and when you came out the car was gone. It was stupid to leave the keys, but you were only gone a minute. You’ll probably catch flak. I’m sorry for that, but there are some pretty bad men who will cause us all a lot of trouble if Miss R and I don’t get our butts out of here quick.” It wasn’t my normal vocabulary, but kids nowadays understand it.

  They opened their doors at the same time. “Here,” I pressed a fifty into Jake’s hand. He stared at it as if it had fangs. “Go on, take it. Tomorrow or the next I’ll leave the car in town where it can be found. It’ll have a full tank of gas. The keys will be under the mat.”

  I pulled away from there and onto twenty-four, heading west. “You’re a pushover, Granger.” Marcie blew smoke out the cracked window. “You should have just left them back there in the woods.”

  “You mean cold and scared, like I found you this morning?”

  She winced. “All right. So you did the right thing by them.”

  I glanced at her and grinned.

  “What?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing.” I turned back to the dark asphalt unraveling
in the headlights. According to the name on the radio face, I was driving a Datsun of some sort. What its small engine lacked in horsepower it made up for in a gutsy willingness to spin. The little mill didn’t seem to mind buzzing along with the tachometer nudging seven thousand. Those revolutions per minute, held very long, would have done major damage to the little English cars I’d grown up driving.

  “Nothing my—,” she stopped. “Let me rephrase that. Something is plainly on your mind, Mr. Granger.”

  “Well actually I was thinking about what you said back there.”

  She blinked naively. “That I don’t wear panties?” She blew smoke out the window.

  I grinned over at her. “Just wondering why you would tell me something like that.”

  “Young Adam and Eve have given you ideas? What is it with you men?”

  “It’s in the hormones.” I could have given a fuller biological explanation but didn’t think she was really interest in hearing it.

  “Well you can just forget it.”

  Chapter Seven

  We came out of a curve and Florissant sprang from the dark without warning. A handful of houses and few small roadside commercial buildings amounted to the sum total of this Colorado mountain village. At this time of night every window was dark and door bolted.

  It’s a quaint place, but I doubt it had a triple A rating on anybody’s map. There’s a fine little cafe off the highway, and after lunch you can drive historic Teller 1, a wide gravel road into the past...Cripple Creek.

  The famous boomtown once burned with gold fever, but the heat went out of it long ago. Today, glory faded, all that remained was a collection of shacks, a main street of crumbling brick facades, and a few tourist shops. There’s a pretty famous—among the locals that is—melodrama show in the basement of the old Imperial Hotel, and a lot of donkeys wandering about, but not much more. If you hike the back country, be careful where you step. Deep gold pits still pock the mountainside, some going straight down hundreds of feet. Not a place to wander about in the dark, or after having a wee bit too much to drink.