Antler Dust (The Allison Coil Mystery Series Book 1)

by Mark Stevens

  He lay down on top of her, smothering her, and what effort she had mounted was of no consequence. He jammed his stinky head against her neck, pawed her breasts.

  Laughing? Yes, a goofy laugh.

  George was making so much noise he didn’t hear the door open. Trudy watched Mariela step inside the room and in one smooth motion she grabbed the telephone off the bedside table and brought it crashing down on George’s head.

  George bellowed, went limp. Trudy shoved him to the floor.

  “Mariela!” said Trudy.

  “Vamanos,” said Mariela. “I mean—”

  “I know, I know.”

  Trudy climbed out of bed, looked around like she might need something.

  “You can come back later,” said Mariela. “No time now.” George started to stir.

  What about the gun? Trudy picked it up with a bundle of sweaters, jeans and Fossil. Mariela scampered outside to the 4Runner. Trudy followed, digging into the pocket of the jeans she was holding, searching for the ignition key. She climbed in and started the engine, still wearing her robe.

  She stared straight ahead. A thick coat of frost was caked on the windshield. It was the worst kind—thick and crusty.

  “Drive with your head out the window,” said Mariela.

  “Come with me,” said Trudy.

  “I can’t.”

  “He’ll—”

  “He won’t find me,” said Mariela.

  Trudy closed the door, opened the side window.

  “Do you know him?” said Mariela.

  “Mi esposo,” said Trudy. The Spanish words came out of the blue, last used in a high school language class and long, she thought, forgotten.

  Mariela’s eyes widened as the door to Trudy’s room opened. George stumbled through. Mariela ducked into the dark and was gone. Trudy backed up, jammed the truck in gear and drove away with her head out the window, freezing air blowing into her face.

  ****

  Room 141. Look for the 4Runner.

  Allison had etched the room number in her weary head, but the knock went unanswered. It was after nine. The whole world was awake. No 4Runner. None parked at any of the motel room doors. She circled the parking lot twice. Should she bother going to the office? What if Trudy hadn’t checked in under her own name? Allison sat in her Blazer and waited, radio and heater on, engine running, antenna up. How long should she give her?

  A maid pushed a cart along between the rooms. She had a pleasant face, youngish. Not trouble-free, not burdenless, but simple and uncomplicated. Wrapped in a down vest, she left the door open to room 140 so she could come and go with her supplies from the cart.

  The images kept coming back to Allison: Rocky, Stern, Bear. She pictured each one going down. Rocky was still the puzzle. She saw the elk, whole and unblemished, the shell that held life in the combination of parts. She imagined vessels, organs, veins and muscles that needed to work together to keep each other functioning, to provide the host animal with the ability to breathe. Who had brought the elk down?

  And what did Rocky really know?

  There was a knock on her window. It was the maid. She was younger than Allison had thought.

  “Excuse me,” she said. Good English, but clearly a second language.

  Allison smiled; the maid didn’t.

  “I’m waiting, is that okay?”

  “Yes, of course. For the woman in this room?” Pointing to 141.

  “Yes.”

  “Is your name Allison?”

  “Yes.” How did this woman ...?

  “Trudy told me you could find her in the parking lot at City Market.”

  “Is Trudy okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The drive was a half mile, two stoplights’ worth. Both lights were red, both urged patience she couldn’t locate. She wouldn’t even know where to begin to look. It felt as if connections in the whole business were beyond her grasp, slippery and odd, a world where putting one foot in front of the other meant going zigzag. The rest hadn’t been rest at all, only fitful blips of snoozing with intermittent bouts of insomnia that neither chamomile tea nor rye whiskey could snap.

  The parking lot was half full. Most were SUVs—Cherokees and Explorers. Allison figured she would find Trudy either on the perimeter of the lot where she could watch everything, or in the middle where she could hide. She spotted a 4Runner in a pack of cars near the center row. Allison parked a few slots away.

  Trudy was seated behind the wheel, eyes flicking nervously about. Allison tapped on the window.

  “My God,” said Trudy, rolling down the window and reaching over to unlock the passenger-side door.

  “Mariela found you?” said Trudy as Allison hopped in.

  “It wasn’t difficult,” said Allison. “I was parked right there. How long have you been waiting?”

  “Couple hours. Two cups of tea from the bakery. Mariela saved me, literally. George tracked me down to the motel.” A kitten hopped up on Trudy’s shoulder. “Fossil. The refugee.”

  “Tracked you down?”

  “George said something about a reverse directory. Dumb me.”

  “What happened?”

  “He crashed in, stinking drunk. He was all over me. Mariela came in, whacked him on the head with a telephone and helped me get away. I think he’s leaving, as in really leaving.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Alaska. Some godforsaken place like that.”

  “He’s bailing out?”

  “He called it his trapdoor. Liquidate everything and go. He never wanted to be on any government record anywhere. This was always too much, dealing with permits and wilderness regulations.”

  “Apparently,” said Allison.

  “He always wanted to go live where nobody knew his name and nobody could easily track him down. I think he means it this time.”

  “The pressure’s on,” said Allison.

  “What do you mean?” said Trudy.

  Allison started off by telling her about Sal Marcovicci in Denver. She wound through most of the highlights of the days during which she and Trudy had been separated. When it came to telling about finding Rocky, she needed to pause for breath. She cracked the window and let her own tears flow in advance, anticipating Trudy’s, which came before Allison said Rocky’s name. They hugged. Trudy said it confirmed what she already knew, asked a few questions about whether they had moved the body. She cried some more. Allison went into the store for a box of Kleenex and cold sodas, keeping her eyes open for Grumley.

  “It’s all too weird,” said Trudy when Allison returned to the 4Runner. “I can’t make sense of it.”

  “It’s all tied together,” said Allison. “What if George stumbled across Applegate? The trail down from the spot where Rocky ended up would put him in the same area. Applegate is dazed and a mess from having killed Ray Stern. George gets him squared away, maybe even takes his rifle, but tells Applegate to keep quiet about them seeing each other on the mountain. Now the police have Applegate’s rifle. And George knows it.”

  “The Mooney,” said Trudy. “I don’t follow.”

  “We need to keep him here,” said Trudy. “His plane. He would be stuck without it.”

  “What are we going to do, fly it away and hide it?”

  “No,” said Trudy. “But maybe we can clip its wings.”

  Fifteen

  Three hundred cars were strung out behind them. Ellenberg drove with a giddy sensation of power, staying right at the speed limit. She sported a confident grin, nodding her head.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “Oh yeah. We are going to shut this sucker down.”

  The mouth of the canyon lay ahead around a wide curve. “Here we go,” said Ellenberg.

  The caravan was tightly bunched behind them. Applegate channeled their conviction, their purpose. The plan was working to a T. They jammed up both lanes. The highway hugged the north side of The Colorado River, swooped through tunnels, cut across the river on a graceful bridge, plunged through a long s
naking tunnel on the south side of the river and dumped them back out on the north. They were cruising. Ellenberg stayed in the left lane and held her speed steady. An old station wagon matched their speed in the right. The driver, a woman with long blonde braids, flashed a V with her fingers and smiled, gave the air a fist pump. An old red Volkswagen pulled up in the breakdown lane on the right. Applegate looked back. The highway was thick with cars, trucks and vans. Of course it was impossible to tell if every car was one of theirs, but any innocent travelers had no choice in what was going to happen next.

  Heading west, the No Name tunnels were the last in a series of bores that cut through a canyon wall. A half mile past the tunnels, in the long straightaway before Glenwood Springs and as the city itself came into view, Ellenberg brought her car to a crawl.

  Applegate signaled to the station wagon driver and the station wagon driver signaled to the red VW. It was all prearranged. And working beautifully.

  The crawl grew slower, to walking pace, and finally to a stop. Ellenberg pulled over as close as she could to the guardrail on the left. The station wagon squeezed in tight and the VW moved over to make room for a fourth car, a new black Jeep Cherokee. The driver of the Cherokee climbed out, hopped around to the back, flipped open the gate. She pulled out a furled banner attached to two sticks.

  Ellenberg squeezed out her door and Applegate followed out of his side. A car honked in the distance. The banner was unspooled across the lanes of the interstate, giant bright red letters on a white sheet: WHO KILLED RAY STERN?

  Applegate looked at the stunning scene behind them, a major US interstate at a complete standstill. Banners were popping up every everywhere, people cheered and chanted.

  “Beautiful,” said Ellenberg. “What a sight. Let’s see how long it takes ’em.” She checked her watch.

  “Ten minutes, tops,” said Applegate. The scene was exactly as he had envisioned it, maybe better.

  Two television crews jogged through the traffic and started recording. They had been invited along, let in on the plan. A short, fiftyish reporter named Alex Kirkwood, wearing a tailored suit under his winter parka, came straight for Ellenberg.

  “You promise, you deliver,” he said.

  “I thought you would be interested,” she said. “Pretty good visuals.”

  “We’ve got a helicopter rented too. There’s no way to shoot a sucker like this from the ground. Did you get all three hundred vehicles you wanted?”

  “Maybe double that,” Ellenberg lied.

  “And Dean Applegate to boot. Quite a display here,” said the reporter.

  The film crew aimed the camera at him and Applegate felt a sudden dry catch in his throat, like he’d swallowed chalk.

  “I understand this was your idea,” said Kirkwood.

  “Nobody seems to care about the death of Ray Stern,” said Applegate. His mouth didn’t wrap around the words the way it should. “We can’t let society forget the price he paid.”

  A helicopter screamed above them heading east. A cameraman leaned out of the open side door, his feet braced on the skids.

  “Who the fuck is in charge of this goddamn mess?”

  The booming voice broke through the din as the helicopter droned. The cameraman kept rolling as Ellenberg turned to look at the man who had spoken. He wore a dirty white T-shirt and grease-stained jeans. Long dark hair flowed from underneath a yellow baseball cap. The youthful elements masked a man in his mid-forties.

  “You can’t fucking stop in the middle of the goddamn interstate!” he yelled. He came storming at Ellenberg, his face red. “I’m half an hour late as it fucking is! I’ve got zero time for political bullshit. Is this your stupid idea of a joke?”

  “We won’t be here all day,” said Applegate.

  “I don’t have time for anything, never mind all day.”

  “You must have cared about something in your life, believed something needed changing,” said Ellenberg. Her tone was cool, nonthreatening.

  “Like the fucking Vietnam War.”

  “Exactly. Did you go, or did you protest?”

  “Fuck. Both. Went first. Came back and joined the other army that marched on DC.”

  He was inches away from Ellenberg, glaring down at her calm, centered expression.

  “You helped save thousands of human lives by protesting. By voicing your opinion, standing up for it. It’s on your record. And you deserve credit. We’ve got an issue with the police up here in Glenwood Springs and an issue with hunters and hunting. Somebody shot and killed—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I remember hearing about that.” His tone had eased.

  “We are trying to exert a little pressure on the local government here so somebody will decide to deal with whoever killed Ray Stern.”

  “Okay, okay. Christ,” said the driver. “Ten minutes?”

  “Max,” said Ellenberg. “Unless the cops are slower than we expect.”

  The man departed, resigned to the situation. One news crew followed him, asking his name and badgering him for more of his story.

  Ellenberg smiled.

  “This is our day,” she said, “I can feel it.”

  Good, thought Applegate—as long as that includes both of us.

  ****

  Trudy showed her driver’s license to a man who controlled a buzzered door that led out to the tarmac. Allison told the security man that her own name was Mrs. Ferguson and she was thinking of buying an airplane. The man said he wasn’t aware that George Grumley had put the plane on the market, but told them that if they needed any technical questions answered he would be glad to come out and poke around with them, though he said you couldn’t really judge a plane until you took it up for a test flight.

  The concrete apron was a cold sink. They walked past a dozen planes tied to their moorings. The wind picked up. Loose tethers snapped in the breeze.

  “Now pretend you’re doing lots of talking, the good sales pitch routine, in case old Mr. Anal Airport Security Man happens to be watching,” said Allison. She was starting to get a feeling that this bout of sabotage would feel pretty good.

  Allison dug into her coat for the all-purpose Leatherman and folded out the needle-nose pliers. Trudy opened the doors on both sides of the plane and Allison reached around underneath the dash. She pulled down a few wires, unsure of what was what, but remembering an old trick—do not snip a wire in half, but rather cut away a whole long section to make patching more difficult. She cut off a foot-long section of blue wire and a couple of yellows, lifted up the side flaps of the cowling and did the same to a bundle of wires that went around the distributor. She also lopped off a couple of sections of vacuum tubing.

  “Nice plane you’ve got here, Ms. Grumley,” said Allison, “but its value seems to be dropping as we speak.”

  Tethered down, of course, the airplane was harmless, but Allison felt a woozy wave of queasiness from sitting inside the metal machine with wings. They were now sitting in the cockpit, side by side.

  “This should hold him up a bit,” said Trudy. She was hiding a smile. “How much messing around should we do?”

  “You’re the one in the pilot’s seat,” said Allison.

  “Say when.”

  “When,” said Trudy.

  “While we’re here ...” said Allison.

  “What?”

  “I want to take a peek and see if there’s anything of interest.” The rear of the Mooney was seatless and spotless, an open area with two storage bins.

  “What’s to find?” said Trudy.

  “Worth a look,” said Allison. On her hands and knees, she lifted up one of the lids on the bin and found a flashlight, rope, mess kit, dried food, a gallon of water, a gallon of fuel mix, a box of shotgun shells and a funny-looking insulated orange hat with ear flaps.

  “Hardly George’s style,” said Trudy, trying it on.

  “Hardly been used,” said Allison.

  Trudy opened the other bin. “Nothing,” she reported, “unless you count an empty c
ardboard box.”

  “We could use it to carry our parts,” said Allison, referring to the pile of wires and tubes by the front seats.

  Trudy lifted the box out. “Slater?”

  “Huh?”

  “Isn’t that your boyfriend’s name?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Trudy held up the box so Allison could see the label. It had a bright red business logo on the return address and in smaller black ink the typed name: D. Slater.

  Allison blinked.

  “Mercy,” she whispered incredulously. “Plain old fucking mercy.”

  ****

  Police cars with blue lights flashing cruised toward them, driving eastbound in the empty westbound lanes.

  Applegate counted eight, a variety of paint jobs—city, county and state. It was as if they had been waiting to make their move. Cop cars pulled up nose to nose with the blockade, lights flashing. “Don’t worry, we’ve got lawyers standing by,” said Ellenberg.

  “How many can they arrest?”

  Dozens of people had worked their way to the front of the line and joined hands, chanting: “Who killed Ray Stern? Who killed Ray Stern? Cops don’t care, does anyone care? Who killed Ray Stern?”

  The state patrol deferred to the local cops, who were cuffing the protesters holding the largest banner.

  “So they arrest ’em, but how are they going to move all the cars?” said Applegate.

  “I doubt if they’ve thought it through,” said Ellenberg.

  The news crews were right on top of the scene, filming it all. Sheriff Jerry Sandstrom emerged from the pack of cop cars and walked slowly up as if everything was going according to plan. He hooked his thumbs in his belt buckle, waited through a few more cycles of chanting. He held his hands up like a politician encouraging quiet from an adoring throng.

  The protesters raised their voices. The chant went to full shout. Ellenberg was right with it, her voice shrill and piercing. She stepped forward, turned around to her troops and encouraged the voices to crank it up. The din reached a new depth and finally she waved her hands overhead and the chorus broke down to weak fragments and finally stopped.

  “Any car without a driver will be impounded,” Sandstrom announced. “We have tow trucks standing by.” A few more police cars zipped up the highway. “Return to your cars now. Your point has been made.”