Blood Silence

by Roger Stelljes

  “Man!” he muttered. “You have to be careful out here.”

  He heard the truck lay on the horn after passing. Mac peered up in his rearview mirror and saw another passing vehicle, a pickup truck or SUV, just slip back into the southbound lane in time.

  “Patience out here, Mac, patience,” he muttered to himself.

  His phone was ringing again. It was Meredith.

  “Do I get this over with?” he asked himself. Maybe he should. At least here he wouldn’t be face-to-face with her—it would be easier to fight back or at least fight off any emotional appeal she would make. Plus, if it went bad, he could just hang up—he’d done that to her once already. He was going to hit the OK on his steering wheel to answer when he caught the flash of light in his rearview mirror.

  “In a hurry much,” Mac mumbled, looking left to his side mirror as the vehicle he saw moments ago just avoid getting clipped veer wildly out into the northbound lane again, looking to pass.

  It would be so much better if this were a four-lane highway, he thought. The truck was flying down the highway, trying to pass not one but two tanker trucks. He looked ahead again and saw headlights approaching—a long stream of headlights. There was a tanker truck a quarter mile ahead of him. Then he glanced in his rearview mirror, and there was still a tanker not far behind him.

  “This guy is crazy.”

  The truck slipped in front of the tanker and was squarely in Mac’s rearview mirror and was still coming up on him.

  Mac glanced forward and then up at the rearview mirror, his hands tightening on the wheel, tension in his shoulders.

  This felt wrong.

  The truck came up nearly right on top of him, the bright lights blinding in the rearview mirror.

  It wasn’t stopping.

  It wasn’t looking to pass.

  Then there was a flash.

  Pop!

  The glass in the tailgate shattered.

  Mac ducked his head down.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  Then the truck rammed him.

  Mac fought the wheel and looked ahead, rapidly trying to assess his options to evade. Then he felt the truck on his back left. It was pushing him sideways and into the oncoming traffic. “Not good,” he grunted as he jerked his wheel right, trying to fight the push.

  “Oh, shit!”

  There was a tanker coming fast, from the south, its bright lights on, the horn blaring. There was no way it could stop.

  Mac couldn’t straighten out.

  He had no choice.

  Mac reversed the steering wheel, pulled it hard left, and veered across the northbound lane, just in front of the approaching tanker. He jerked the wheel violently to the right, barely catching the southbound shoulder, nearly tipping left into the ditch. To correct, he pulled the steering wheel back to the right. It didn’t help. Now he was fishtailing wildly along the slick shoulder. Just as he was gaining control, the last little twist of the back end to the right clipped the rear of the tanker trailer as it passed him in the opposite direction.

  The Yukon was swerving violently.

  He was out of control.

  He fought the wheel to regain control as he again fishtailed back and forth between the shoulder and northbound lane. Mac couldn’t get control. Each correction was an overcorrection.

  Another tanker, unable to brake, was approaching rapidly, its horn blaring.

  “Oh, shit! Come on, come on, dammit!” he pleaded, fighting the wheel.

  Then all of his wheels caught some gravel on the shoulder. He had traction, and he straightened the truck, the tanker passing mere inches from his right side.

  Another long tanker approached.

  In some control now, Mac stayed on the shoulder as the second tanker passed. He looked to his right for the truck chasing him.

  Instead, there was a long semi-tractor trailer in the southbound lane, and there was space in front of it.

  Mac steered hard right, crossed the lane, and slipped just in front of the southbound semi and accelerated. He peered anxiously in his rearview mirror and then to the left side mirror, scanning for the pickup truck. It was back there somewhere, but all he saw was the semi-tractor trailer behind him.

  Then there was a flash of light back to his right.

  The pickup truck was on the shoulder to his back right.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  “God dammit!”

  The truck rammed him again.

  Pop! Pop!

  Glass from the passenger windows shattered all around him. He ducked down as much as he could, but that caused him to lose acceleration.

  “Not good, Mac! Not good!”

  He glanced quickly ahead, and there was another stream of headlights swiftly approaching from the south.

  Looking back, the truck had swerved back to his left rear bumper again. They were running him into the tanker ahead of him.

  Mac popped up, fought the wheel, accelerated, and jerked the wheel right, just missing the back end of the tanker, and veered onto the right shoulder. With his traction holding, he roared past the long tanker, accelerating. There was another tanker ahead that he passed. He stayed on the right shoulder, almost too long.

  “Oh, shit!” he yelped as he pulled the wheel left to get back in front of the tanker, just missing a narrowing of the shoulder. He’d have been doomed, careening down into a deep ditch.

  Now he had some clear highway in the southbound lane and a long stream of oncoming headlights in the northbound lane. Looking back, he couldn’t find the truck—it was stuck behind tankers. He quickly glanced down at the dashboard screen and the navigation map, analyzing the road ahead. There was a sharp curve turning left a mile ahead.

  “Enough of this shit,” he growled as he hit the gas.

  • • •

  “Dammit, he’s getting away! He’s getting away!” Wheeler screamed.

  Clint tried the right shoulder, but there was the drop off. He looked left, but the stream of lights was steady.

  “Pass! Pass him!” Wheeler yelled, pointing at the tanker truck ahead.

  “I fucking can’t!” Clint railed.

  After a minute, the long stream of northbound trucks finally went by, and Clint passed the two tanker trucks in front of them and then accelerated down the highway.

  “Where is he?” Royce asked, popping another clip into his .45. They’d lost a headlight in all the bumping and ramming. Their forward illumination was severely diminished.

  “I don’t see him! I don’t see him!” Clint replied anxiously as they approached a hard left turn in the highway.

  • • •

  Mac could see the pickup truck with one headlight coming around the bend. He looked across the hood of his Yukon, set his feet, and depressed the trigger.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!

  The first shots hit the windshield, then the driver’s side of the pickup truck as it passed, and then the rear as he pivoted left and kept firing, emptying his magazine.

  The truck fishtailed wildly across the wet road then turned viciously to the left, almost sideways, and the momentum flipped the truck violently. It rolled over once, twice, and then a third time high in the air and across the road before landing on the side of the northbound shoulder, and then slowly teetered on the edge of the shoulder before rolling over twice again on its way down into a deep ditch.

  Mac slipped his Sig into his waistline and pulled out his Glock, with his third gun still in his waistline as he jumped back into the Yukon and drove the quarter mile or so down the road to the truck, what he could now tell was a Ford F-150 dual cab.

  A tanker stopped in the southbound lane. The driver leaned out the window. He must have recognized Mac’s Yukon and that he was the one being chased. “Hey man, you okay? That was out of hand back there!”

  “I’m okay,” Mac replied. “Call 9-1-1 now. I’m a cop.” He wasn’t really, at least not officially, but the trucker didn’t know that, and right now, with his gun and approach, he sure as hell looked like
one.

  He raised his Glock and slowly approached the wreckage. There was one body lying in the ditch, fifty feet short of the truck.

  Mac recognized the man—Wheeler. His body was mangled and motionless, but his eyes were wide and active. Mac quickly checked him for weapons and didn’t find any.

  He heard a noise to his right. Mac pivoted, gun raised. The F-150 was upside down, the wheels in the air, unstable, listing, smoke coming from the undercarriage. Two truckers approached with fire extinguishers.

  “Hang on,” Mac ordered, his left hand up to hold them off, the gun in his right hand, still pointed at the truck as he slowly approached.

  He could see two bodies in the front of the cab of the pickup truck. The body closest to Mac was lying motionless in a crumpled heap on the ceiling of the cab. The other man was still bound by the seatbelt, but his arms hung limply.

  Mac got to within ten feet and kneeled down to peer inside, and he heard a groan. He crept closer and reached for the door handle for the passenger side and was able to pull it open. As he reached for the first man, he was able to get a look at his face, which he recognized as Hutchinson. Mac checked his wrist for a pulse and didn’t feel one. The way the man’s body had been thrown around and the way it was now lying, in a shape the skeleton could not naturally form, it would have been a miracle if he survived. There was a .45 lying by the body. Mac grabbed it and stuffed it into his coat pocket.

  There was another sound, a light murmur of a groan from the other man. Mac raised his gun. He carefully maneuvered his way around the upside-down front of the truck to the driver’s side. He pulled the door open. Despite all of the blood streaming down his face, he could tell that the man still strapped in was Wilton. The man’s eyes were open, and he croaked out a word, barely audible: “McRyan.”

  Mac nodded, “What’s your name? It’s not R.C. Wilton. What’s your name?”

  Even hanging upside down, the man’s eyes flashed in wonder. But the killer didn’t respond as his eyes slowly began to close. He was not a threat.

  Mac looked up at the truck drivers and nodded, and they both blasted the undercarriage of the truck with the fire extinguishers. Another trucker was setting out flares, and now traffic started to back up in both directions.

  The fire now being extinguished on the upside-down F-150, Mac walked back over to Wheeler, who was gasping for air, unable to move, his eyes wide.

  He leaned down to the Deep Core man. “You know, it was really pointless to come after me,” Mac stated quietly. “I have the Adam Murphy memo now.” He pointed to the truck. “I had those two guys’ cover IDs, and I was going to know who they really were soon. I had you, I have Deep Core—I have the whole story. You were going down. You were all going down. In fact, you were going down whether you got me or not.”

  Wheeler spit blood, gasping for air.

  “My only question is, who were you answering to? Who? Who called these shots? Who put you in this situation?”

  Wheeler didn’t respond.

  Mac took a knee, getting down close, looking Wheeler over, shaking his head. “You’re not going to make it. Don’t take it to the grave with you. You might as well set things as right as you can, and tell me. Who’s responsible for this?”

  “O-O-”

  It was a struggle for him. “Who? Who is ‘O’?” Mac demanded.

  “O-O’Her … li… hy …” he croaked out in a whisper.

  “O’Herlihy?” Mac asked, seeking confirmation.

  “Yes,” he groaned in reply. “O’Her … li … hy.” Wheeler’s eyes slowly closed. Mac reached down to check for a pulse. It was there but weak and quickly fading out.

  In the distance, Mac could see two sets of flashing lights coming from the south. They wouldn’t arrive soon enough.

  • • •

  “Yes … you saw the wreckage?… You’re sure they’re gone? … Okay, then. Thank you.” The investor hung up his phone.

  “Who was … that?” O’Herlihy asked, his words slurred, at least ten whiskeys in.

  “Someone with bad news,” the investor replied, reaching inside his briefcase. “Very bad news. Particularly for you.” The investor held a pistol in his hand. “Sorry, Selwyn, old buddy, but this can’t come back to me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “How’d you become such a good amateur psychologist?”

  Bismarck, North Dakota.

  At 6:30 A.M., Mac awoke in the front seat of the Dickinson police cruiser as it approached the airport. There was a 7:00 A.M. flight out of Bismarck for Minneapolis, and Riley’s friend, Dickinson Sergeant Greenway, was dropping Mac off.

  Wheeler and Wilton, or whatever his name was, were both dead by the time emergency medical personnel arrived on the crash scene. Mac remained at the scene for two hours while the North Dakota State Highway Patrol took control of the scene and interviewed him and other drivers to understand what happened. The drivers backed Mac all the way, and it quickly became a cleanup operation. Brock and Borland drove down when Mac called them. “Now, it really is over.”

  Brock took in the scene as she approached and then greeted Mac. “Hey, Vin Diesel, nice work.”

  Mac grimaced, shook his head, and said, “For the record, car chases are way cooler in the movies than they are in real life.”

  “So what actually happened?” Leah asked as Borland joined them.

  Mac described the chase.

  “That’s quite the story, McRyan,” Chief Borland stated.

  “No story—it was real,” Mac answered testily.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply …” The Williston chief had his hands up.

  “It’s okay, Chief, you and I—”

  “Got off to a bad start,” Borland finished the thought. “I’m happy you’re okay.”

  “Me too,” Brock added.

  “There is one thing,” Mac reported. “Wheeler told me he took his orders from a man named O’Herlihy.”

  “O’Herlihy?” Brock asked.

  “Yeah. That would be Selwyn O’Herlihy,” Mac answered. “He’s the owner of Deep Core. I mean, not a surprise, but he told me that. Last words he uttered.”

  She flipped through some notes. “I was researching Deep Core when the call came in. It’s a privately held company and”—she flipped the page—“it’s owned by a Selwyn O’Herlihy.”

  “Where is Deep Core based out of?” Borland asked Brock.

  “Houston, Texas.”

  “Leah,” Borland indicated, “I think we need to call Houston PD.”

  The two Williston officers walked off, freeing Mac to make some calls. He started with Lyman, then Riley, Lyman again, and then Sally, who simply pleaded, “Come home.”

  His final call, at least for a while, was to Antonin Rahn.

  “Mac, please put this Detective Brock you speak so highly of on the line.” Rahn and Brock spoke for five minutes. “Mac, Ms. Brock has my number now. She will be able to reach me if need be, and I will come to Williston when the time is right, if that becomes necessary.”

  “I’m sure she appreciates that,” Mac replied and then added, “I’m grateful you called last night when you did. I’m not sure I’d have figured all this out without that call. That information was a catalyst for a lot of things.”

  “As am I, son, as am I. And for the record, I think you would have figured it out in time. But all the same, I’m pleased we had a chance to meet and talk, and please let me extend to you congratulations for what you’ve done here. Listen, Mac, I want you to also keep this number. I’m indebted to you for finding and bringing Callie’s killer to justice, and frankly, my kind of justice. Death in a North Dakota ditch is what all of those bastards deserved. So if you ever need anything that you think I could help with—anything at all—you are not to hesitate to call me.”

  Mac thought quickly and laughed. “You said something about a private island down in the Caribbean.”

  Brock collected evidence at the scene, taking pictures of all three bodies,
taking prints, collecting cell phones and weapons. “I doubt we’ll get a ballistics match. I’ll run these cell phones and see what I get.”

  “You might for last night,” Mac replied. “They might not have had the chance to dump the guns from last night for new ones. Check it against that, at least. As for the Bullers, Murphy, and the others, I suspect you’re right, but it doesn’t matter—we know they did it.”

  Given the condition of the back of Mac’s truck, the glass shattered, the back bumper hanging, the sides torn apart—not to mention the weather conditions—a tow truck hauled the Yukon down to Dickinson and dropped it at the local GM dealer. It was going to require a lot of work. As he looked at it and considered its age, he knew it would likely end up totaled. Mac wasn’t going to hang around to get the answer. If it was totaled, he’d take the check. If it was fixable, he would pay someone to drive it back to St. Paul.

  Because he was carrying three guns, the state of North Dakota arranged for Mac to avoid check-in and airport security and dropped him on the tarmac, where his bag was packed in the luggage hold, and he was shown to a seat in the front of the plane. He would be allowed to avoid security in Minneapolis as well. Exhausted, he fell asleep before the plane ever took off. The little over one hour flight landed in Minneapolis just after 8:00 A.M. Lyman was awaiting his arrival.

  “Are you up for a drive to Hennepin County right now?”

  He gave a tired yawn as he tossed his bag in the back of Lyman’s car. His phone rang. It was Brock.

  “I have a surprise for you, Mac.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “This Wheeler guy had a burner in his pocket. It matches up to a burner the guy named Hutchinson had in his pocket, so no question Deep Core was heavily involved in this.”

  “That’s more confirmation.”

  “Even better, Wheeler’s regular cell phone had him in daily contact with Selwyn O’Herlihy, president of Deep Core.”

  “Okay, but I’m still waiting for the surprise,” Mac responded while yawning. “I mean, Wheeler was their main guy up in North Dakota—of course he was talking to O’Herlihy.”