I believed her. She said it with matter-of-fact simplicity, no sign of duplicity. “So you raided the place,” I said.
She shrugged. “What would you have done? Of course we did. Well, Buddie did. He used the backhoe to rip out something across the road that blows out tires, then went up and got a big safe out of a locked room. Backhoe took out a wall in nothing flat. Buddie said he tipped the safe into the scoop with a big iron bar and loaded it onto the flatbed, brought it back here.”
“He got the generator, too. It was in the shed where he found Xenon’s body.”
She cocked her head and gave me a long look. “How do you know where he found him?”
“I know lots of things. But if you’re wondering how I knew exactly where he found Xenon, I went up there and had a look around. There was blood in the generator shed and no generator.”
“And you’re sure Buddie stole it, not someone else?”
“I would only be ninety-nine percent sure except that I found it in that storage unit of yours, the one at T&T Storage in North Vegas. So, yeah, I’m a hundred percent sure.”
A kind of shudder went through her. “How on earth did you find out about that place?”
“Police got it for me. If you listen very carefully, you might hear sirens.”
She listened for a moment, then shook it off.
“You might’ve gotten ten grand for the generator, except this game of yours is just about over, Arlene. Really, I’m surprised the police aren’t all over this place right now.”
Buddie came in through a back door behind me. I heard him but didn’t see him until he came around and got a bottle of water out of the refrigerator behind Arlene.
“He says he got into our shed at T&T,” Arlene said to him.
“That right?” Buddie gave me a reptilian stare, then opened the bottle and took a long drink.
“He found the generator you put in there.”
“And the gold bars,” Lucy said.
Another tremor passed through Arlene. “You took them.”
“Nope,” I said. “Unlike you, we’re not thieves.”
She thought about that for a moment, then looked at Buddie. “Tell me you didn’t leave a note in a mailbox in Reno asking for a million dollars. Please tell me you aren’t that stupid.”
His mouth dropped open, and he stared at her, lips wet. Made him look like a baleen whale, scooping plankton.
“You are,” she said, shoulders slumping in defeat. “You are utterly, dismally, terminally hopeless.”
“That Celine girl would’ve paid,” Buddie said with a whine in his voice. “She’d gotta have made millions bein’ with Jonnie-X, Ma. A million bucks we coulda had.”
“You think she got a million dollars in less than a month?” Arlene shook her head in disbelief. “And you left a flash drive on his body with those videos I made.”
“No, I didn’t . . . I mean, so what? That chick would’ve found it. Then she would’ve had to pay up.”
Arlene gave me a tormented look, as if I cared. “‘So what,’ he says. ‘The chick would have found it.’ See what I have to put up with? He can run a backhoe, but his brain is full of mush.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Though it’s probably genetic.”
She must not have heard that. She stared at Buddie. “Police could be on their way here as we speak. You’ve got to get rid of them. Immediately. Do it fast.”
“Hole’s ready,” he said. “I’m good to go.”
“Then go. Get it done and get back here. I’ll start cleaning up. Maybe we’ll get out of this mess you’ve made.”
Buddie untied the rope around Lucy’s waist and lifted her as if she were a doll stuffed with feathers. She struggled, but this was Bambi vs. Godzilla. He carried her out the back door.
Arlene gave me a dead look. “Good riddance to both of you. You have been the worst thing possible.”
“Too bad. Expect the police—soon.”
“They won’t find anything.”
“Cars buried out in the desert. They’ll find ’em.”
“I had Buddie put down one septic. If anyone wants to know what he buried out there, he’ll dig it up. The smell will knock them down. That’ll keep them away.”
“How many cars?” I asked.
“Thirteen so far. No, fourteen. We put that Hogan guy down yesterday night. You’ll be number fifteen.”
“You bury people in their cars?”
“Of course. Buddie puts them behind the wheel, in the trunk, whatever he feels like. It hardly matters. You’ll see.”
“Why are you doing this? Killing people?”
“That’s a silly damn question. For retirement, of course. This place is perfect for that, but it’s a horrible place to live. I’m not going to stay here forever.”
“How did you pick your victims?”
“As if that’ll matter to you in another hour or two.”
“Or to you, so tell me.”
She shrugged. “Room four is wired for sound and there’s two tiny little cameras way up high in the corners hooked up to a monitor in our back room. Some guy comes in alone, got a fat wallet or we see a money belt, find out he’s got a lot of cash, no one knows he’s here, I roofie him, Buddie packs the guy in his car and runs him out back, puts him in the ground.”
“Alive.”
Arlene shrugged again. “No one’s complained yet. You’re the first.”
“You’re insane. Both of you.”
“Least of my worries.”
Buddie came back inside, untied the rope around my waist, got me under the knees and the back of the neck like a forklift, folded me almost double, picked me up like a sack of grain, not even a grunt, and hauled me out the door into the night. It was an uncanny feeling, like being four years old again.
The Caddy was parked at the end of the building. The trunk was open. He dropped me in, banged the lid down, and the world went dark as hades.
I was half on top of Lucy, half on the lockbox. It dug into my ribs. Lucy was crying softly. The engine turned over, caught, and the car bumped over the uneven ground, bouncing us around as it headed out into the desert.
We were crammed in awkwardly. I worked the lockbox off to one side. The trunk was so cramped I could barely roll over. The effort made my head throb. “Did they open the lockbox?” I asked Lucy, keeping my voice down. “Did they get your gun?”
“I don’t know. He practically tossed me in here.”
She moved around, grunting. Then she said, “It’s open. Got hats and wigs and other stuff in here. And that knife.”
“Where is it? The knife?”
“Right here.”
“Open it. See if you can cut these straps on my wrists.”
I heard the click as the knife opened. “Careful,” I said.
She groped around, got hold of my forearms. She fumbled around, clumsy with her wrists held together, and I felt the knife slice into the pad of my left thumb. “That’s me you’re cutting,” I said.
“Sorry.”
She felt for the strap, kept sawing away, then the strap came loose. I took the knife from her and cut the strap from around her wrists, then pulled my legs up, cut the strap binding my ankles. I gave her the knife. “Get your ankles loose, then fold the knife up and give it to me.”
The jouncing continued, getting rougher.
“No gun in the lockbox?” I asked.
“I couldn’t feel one.”
“Try again. They’re going to bury this car with us in it, and everything we had. Keeping our guns would be stupid.”
“Like they’re geniuses.”
“He wouldn’t think of it, but she would. Feel around.”
We came up with a jack handle, clothing, shoes, no gun, no flashlights, then the bouncing stopped. A door opened, the Caddy gave a lurch as Bigfoot got out, then the door slammed shut.
“Let’s see if we can fold the rear seat down,” I said. “Maybe there’s a catch or lever here in the trunk.”
I felt around on the left side, Lucy worked on the right. Then the backhoe’s diesel fired up. Seconds later a grinding rasp of metal on metal came from the back bumper as the Cadillac was shoved from behind. The front end tilted down, rocks ground harshly along the undercarriage, metal scraped against rock, then the Caddy leveled out again. Finally it quit moving, tilted up a few degrees in front.
“We’ve got to find a latch, something.”
“He’s gonna bury us, Mort.”
“Don’t give up. Find a latch.”
I scrabbled all around that left side, didn’t feel anything. How did the engineers who designed these things expect people stuck in the trunk to get the fuck out?
“There’s nothing,” Lucy said.
Then the entire car bounced as an unearthly roar of rock and sand landed on the roof. Lucy whimpered.
“Move over,” I told her. “Give me room.”
I worked myself around and got on my side, folded up, and wedged my shoulders against the back of the trunk. I hammered the back of the rear seat with a foot, about where I figured a catch would have to be. Nothing gave. More dirt landed on the roof with a sickening thud.
I slammed the seat again. And again, again, again. In bare feet, it hurt like a sonofabitch. Another huge load of dirt landed on the car, then suddenly the latch broke and the backseat on the driver’s side flopped down.
“Go through,” I told her. “Turn on the overhead light. There should be a switch on the fixture. Fold the other backseat down, then see if they put our guns in the car. Check under the seats.”
She crawled forward, catching me in the face with a foot, which hurt. The darkness was complete. More dirt landed on the roof. I could feel the weight of it, deadening the car’s suspension. I sensed it pressing like death against the Caddy’s windows.
Then the dome light came on, bathing the interior of the car in weak yellow light. Dirt covered the outside of the windows. This is what it would look like from inside a transparent coffin. A shiver of raw fear crawled up my spine. Earth pressed against the windows like a malevolent force, eager to get in, snuff us out, fold us into its black arms forever.
I crawled out of the trunk. Felt more than heard a muffled thump as more dirt landed on top of what was already there.
“I got all three guns,” Lucy said breathlessly. “They were in back, on the floor.”
“Loaded?”
She snapped the cylinders out. “Well, shoot. No bullets in any of ’em. But it’s not like we’re gonna get a good sight picture in here, Mort.”
Gallows humor, God love her.
Outside, I didn’t hear anything. “Quiet,” I said. “Listen.”
We went still. All I could hear was a hiss of dirt sifting over the windows and along the skin of the car. I closed my eyes. No, there was the faint sound of a diesel engine, and as I strained my ears, it grew fainter, fainter still, then it was gone.
We’d been buried alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“NOT MUCH AIR, not much time,” I said.
“I know that.”
“Stay back. Find our clothes. Make sure you get our shoes. Try to conserve air.”
She didn’t ask why. I’d taken the jack handle with me as I’d crawled out of the trunk. I lowered the backs of both front seats as far as they would go, then slammed the jack handle into the windshield, passenger side, felt the glass crack.
“What’re you doin’?”
“Only thing I can think of, kiddo.” I swung the handle again and again, finally broke through the glass. It was tough, hanging in webs of flexible plastic—a lot safer if we’d been in a traffic accident, but I wanted the glass out.
It took more effort than I’d anticipated. Dirt and dust sifted in. I felt the air in the car start to go stale. Not a lot, but it was going to get worse, and soon.
I kept pounding the glass, hammering around the edges of the hole I’d started until it was finally big enough for me to get my shoulders through. A few hundred pounds of earth had come into the car—gravel, dirt, sand. Most of it ended up on the floor. I reached into the hole and dug furiously with my hands, shredding my fingernails.
“Can I help?” Lucy said.
“Not enough room in here for two, Honey.”
“Honey. I like that.” Her words sounded forced, airless.
I pulled dirt into the car, shoved it down to the floorboards. It was the only way. I couldn’t push the dirt out so I had to pull it in. I hoped there was enough volume in the car to take enough dirt, and that we wouldn’t run out of empty space or air before I burrowed a hole to the surface.
A rock wedged in the hole. I had to knock out more glass to pull it inside. It weighed at least two hundred pounds. I hoped there weren’t any more up there. I shoved it onto the driver’s seat then rolled it down into the foot well on that side.
With both hands up through the hole, I pulled more dirt into the car. It poured in like sand through an hourglass, jamming frequently. The passenger foot well was almost full. My mouth was full of grit. The air was getting bad.
About the time I couldn’t reach up any farther, an avalanche of dirt cascaded down through the windshield. I gagged, spitting out a mouthful of dirt.
“Let me,” Lucy said. “Trade places.”
She’d been shoving dirt back into the trunk. I clambered into the back and she took over at the windshield.
My breath came in tight gasps. Not much oxygen left. Lucy pulled dirt inside, and I pulled it back over the console between the front seats. She crouched on the dash with her shoulders and chest through the hole, windshield even with her waist. She dug furiously. Dirt came down around her, then suddenly she stopped.
“Lucy?”
No answer. Her feet kicked. I grabbed her and pulled her back inside the car along with another hundred pounds of dirt.
She lay on her stomach, spitting, gasping.
Not much time left. I was going to have to be a gopher and maybe die trapped in a vertical shaft of earth or the two of us were going to die in that car.
I pulled more dirt inside, worked my shoulders into the gap, then shoved myself upward, hands first, grabbing dirt, elbowing it down past my body, trying to shove it down and away with my feet. I felt the blackness start to get hold of me—when the brain feels those first cobwebs of floating thought and you know there isn’t much left, then there’s a kind of strange unearthly plateau when it doesn’t seem to matter very much . . . but I kept digging, digging, and then I saw a tiny, tiny light, a single star, and a ghostly breath of air and oxygen hit me in the face and I began to cry.
I gulped in air. We weren’t out of the woods yet. This could all go to hell in a heartbeat. The dirt around the hole was unstable and the hole was very small, but there was hope.
I scraped gently at the dirt. It filtered down around me, and I moved around, tried to get it to go down past my body. It wedged between me and the surrounding earth. Then the hole closed in on me, wouldn’t go past my chest, and all I could do was work my way back down.
I slid back into the car, felt dirt thud into the hole I’d created above, sealing off the air.
“Mort . . . I can’t . . .”
“Go up, Honey. There’s air. But be very, very careful. Don’t dislodge much dirt. Go straight up, hands first. Don’t make a big hole. Keep it small.”
She crawled into the hole and stood. I couldn’t tell what she was doing. Dirt sifted down around her, then she stopped and a few seconds of dead quiet went by. Finally, I heard her breathing, great gulps of air. But now there wasn’t much left in the car. I felt myself starting to slip away again.
I tapped her leg. She came back down. More dirt piled in after her. This was delicate, dangerous work. One misstep and we’d be down there forever.
“Your turn,” she said. “It sort of collapsed again.”
I reached up and pulled dirt out of the vertical shaft, shoved it to one side, then worked my shoulders through the windshield again. Pulled more dirt down,
got some air, gently widened the hole, saw two stars now, then lowered myself back down.
Back and forth we traded places, getting air, slowly making the hole larger. On the surface it widened like a funnel as the sides kept collapsing, dirt tumbling in through the windshield. The trunk was almost full of dirt. It wouldn’t take much more. If we ran out of room, that would be the ball game.
Finally, after my fifth or sixth turn, I lowered myself into the car and said, “Try to get out. I’ll lift your feet, boost you up.”
“And leave you here?”
“One of us has to get out first. That someone is going to be you, no argument. And don’t worry, I fully intend to get out of here, too.”
“Okay. Be careful.”
She gave me the world’s grittiest kiss then crawled into the hole and stood up. I crouched on the dirt as close to the hole as I could get. I cupped my hands around one of her feet, then put all my Borroloola strength training into lifting her as she scrabbled to the surface.
Then she was out.
I felt my eyes well up with tears. She was precious. I was not. I was just a former IRS goon and a scruffy old half-assed PI, but she was pure diamond. This rattletrap, sometimes-obnoxious universe could get along fine without me. Without her, it would be a far less valuable place.
“Your turn,” she said. Her voice came down muffled.
“Here, take this,” I said, passing clothing and other things up to her. She reached down, got hold of it, took it up the rest of the way.
Half-assed and scruffy or not, I still wanted out. What I needed was leverage, a place to put my foot. I reached up and back, scraped dirt off the roof to create a step for my foot. More dirt rattled down into the car. At least I had air.
It took a while, but finally I stood up through the windshield, feet on the dash. My eyes were level with the ground outside. I lifted one leg high enough to get my toes on the car’s roof, and with Lucy pulling on one hand, hauled myself out of the grave.
She slammed into me, hugging hard, crying.
Gumshoe on the Loose Page 30