Dead Run

by P. J. Tracy

  "You've got lots of problems. Women just happen to top the list. You can't even get Grace MacBride to call you back, and she doesn't even know you well enough to dislike you yet."

  Halloran ignored the dig. "I'm thinking of just driving those morgue shots over to Green Bay so they'll be waiting for her."

  "Why don't you just fax them?"

  "Magozzi says the program works better with the original photo, and I want the best shot we can get. I don't suppose Wausau has any news about the autopsies yet?"

  "They do, and you're not going to like it. The ME called about a half hour ago. He took custody of our three bodies this afternoon and was prepping for the autopsies when the Feds charged in like the cavalry and rode off into the sunset with them."

  "They took ourbodies?"

  Bonar nodded. "Uh-huh."

  "They can't do that."

  "They can, and they did."

  "Just when did you plan on telling me all this?"

  Bonar shrugged. "After supper. Why ruin a good meal with something you can't do anything about anyway?"

  Halloran snatched the phone and started pushing buttons. "God-damnit, Bonar, you think I'm going to sit on this? I'm going to get some answers right now. . . ."

  "I already called them."

  "Who?"

  "Whoever you're trying to call. And I already asked all the questions you're going to ask. That's what you pay me for, remember?"

  Halloran was still miffed, but he replaced the receiver. "Oh, really. Okay, then give it to me, starting with who the hell gave those Federal body snatchers carte blanche at a Wisconsin ME's office."

  Bonar sighed and took a seat. "The Federal judge who signed the warrant, that's who. I'm guessing those prints we sent to Milwaukee got some attention after all."

  "So what did they tell the ME?"

  "Nothing. They just slapped down the warrant, said it was a Federal case now and they were taking over. He didn't know a thing about it until they came waltzing in, and neither did anybody else down there, including the director of the lab."

  "What the hell would make them move so fast?"

  "That's exactly what I wanted to know. So after I hung up with the ME, I gave Milwaukee a call and spent another fifteen minutes talking to every FBI buck-passer in the whole God-blessed office, learning exactly nothing except that anybody who knows anything about this is either out of the office, out of town, or just plain out. They ran me around in so many circles, I'm still dizzy."

  "So much for interagency cooperation."

  Bonar nodded sullenly. "They said to call Monday."

  "Right. Like the weekend will make a difference. Damn, this really pisses me off. If there's a Federal crime involved, fine, they can have it, but at least they could have given us a courtesy call."

  "So what do you want to do? We're kind of paralyzed here."

  "We're more than that-we're out of the loop. But I'd sure as hell like to find out what's going on and get a leg up on the FBI, just so I could rub it in their faces Monday morning."

  "Me, too." Bonar let his eyes drift thoughtfully to the window and the cow pasture beyond. "Of course, Sharon could probably find out for us in five minutes, if you'd just swallow your pride and give her a call. . .."

  Hailoran kept his expression perfectly flat and unreadable, but Bonar's eyes had zoomed in on him in one of those spooky looks that made Hailoran feel like he was getting an x-ray.

  After a few moments, Bonar was grinning smugly. "So you did try to call her."

  "Well, yeah, sure, I tried her a couple times," he said, going for nonchalance. "When I couldn't get ahold of Grace, I thought maybe I could reach her through Sharon."

  "You don't have to explain yourself to me."

  Hailoran grabbed his phone irritably. "I wish you'd stop reading my mind. It's creepy."

  "I'm no mind reader-you're just totally transparent. Who are you calling?"

  "Green Bay."

  Bonar's heavy brows went up. "You're going to call Sharon out of a meeting?"

  "I am."

  "Uh, excuse me, but first you threaten to fire the woman, and now you're going to ask for a favor?"

  "That's the plan."

  "This should be interesting. You do know that if chicken-fried steak sits in the gravy too long, the breading gets all mushy."

  Hailoran almost smiled. "I do know that."

  THE LEAD DETECTIVE in Green Bay was a fast talker with a broken-glass voice that sounded more blues singer than cop. Hailoran picked up the hint of an East Coast accent. Detective Yustin was cordial enough, but a bit bent out of shape, understandably so.

  "No sir, Sheriff Hailoran, haven't heard a word, can't raise them on their mobiles, and they were supposed to be here two hours ago. Four o'clock, Miss Mueller said, give or take, and it's after six. Don't get me wrong-this is a favor they're doing us, strictly gratis, so I'm not complaining, but I have four other guys here since three and I'm doing the overtime math in my head, you know? And overtime math :s like tax-audit math-it never adds up the way you want it to."

  Having never been audited, the whole tax analogy was lost on Hailoran, but he understood the sentiment. "I'd be grateful if you could tell Agent Mueller to give me a call as soon as she gets there. I won't keep her long, but it's fairly urgent."

  "These ladies are a hot ticket today."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean you and me aren't the only people looking for them. I got a call from Minneapolis earlier."

  "Huh. You get a name?"

  "Yeah, sure, a tough guy, said his name was Harley Davidson, if you can believe that, and when I told him they weren't here yet, he got a little testy and proceeded to tell me how to do my job. Put out a watch for the car, call in the troops, like that. And this was when the ladies were only an hour late. Hell, if I put out calls every time somebody was an hour late, my fourteen-year-old would be on our most-wanted list, you know? The guy sounded a little too tightly wound to me. I'm thinking jealous boyfriend, if you're curious."

  Halloran smiled a little. "Actually, he's the business partner of the two women Sharon Mueller is bringing along."

  "You mean the two incredibly generous women who are donating their time and software to help me out?"

  "The very same."

  "Oops. Guess I have some apologizing to do. You mind if I ask you a question?"

  "Fire away."

  "Well, this software has to be worth a billion dollars, and they're giving it away? Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand philanthropy when there are that many zeros attached."

  Halloran said, "From what I understand, all the partners made some serious money on their software company, but one of their games got a lot of people killed."

  Detective Yustin grunted. "The Monkeewrench murders last October."

  "Right."

  "So this is, what? Some kind of penance?"

  "Maybe. Hell, I don't know. Maybe they'd give this stuff away anyway. They're nice people, every one of them."

  "Well, that's good to know. I'll pass on your message to Agent Mueller when she arrives, Sheriff."

  By the time Halloran hung up with Detective Yustin, Bonar was over at the credenza, finishing a call on another line. He gave Halloran a dark look. "That was dispatch. Gretchen Vanderwhite's missing."

  "The cake lady?"

  "Yeah. She was hand-delivering a cake to a wedding over by Beaver Lake this morning; stopped to pick up Ernie's insulin at the pharmacy on the way, and was supposed to be back in plenty of time for Ernie's next shot. He's an hour overdue already."

  "Is Ernie still driving?"

  "Nah. He can't see a fly on the end of his nose anymore. Doc Hanson's on his way over there now to shoot him up. Dispatch called the bride's family. Gretchen never showed, and boy are they pissed. The bride and groom had to cut a grocery-store angel food for the pictures, and the bride cried during every damn one of them."

  Gretchen Vanderwhite had started baking cakes about the same time the first Mc
Donald's opened in Green Bay. She'd taken a fancy to the big sign that kept track of the number of burgers sold, and decided to put one up in her own yard. Everyone had gotten a chuckle out of that in the beginning, but then the numbers had started to climb and Ernie'd had to get a bigger sign. The last time Halloran drove by their farm, the sign had read more than four thousand, and as far as he knew, she'd never missed a single delivery. "We gotta move on this, Bonar," he said.

  "I know." He was already punching numbers into the phone. "I'll sweet-talk Cheryl into running our dinners over here, then we'll get things moving before you have to head to Green Bay."

  "That's on hold for a while. They're not there yet."

  Bonar looked up. "What do you mean?"

  "Just that. They haven't showed up, haven't called. They're two hours late."

  Bonar's fingers froze over the buttons. "That doesn't sound like Sharon. That woman would be ten minutes early for her own execution."

  "Apparently, it doesn't sound like Grace or Annie, either. Harley Davidson already called Green Bay a while ago, all hot and bothered."

  Bonar pushed the disconnect button and just stood there a moment, lips pushed out almost as far as his gut, his thick brows coming down like a couple of furry blinds. "Do you have Davidson's number? Maybe Grace checked in with him since then. They're a pretty tight crew."

  "No. But Magozzi can probably reach him." Halloran picked up the phone, thinking he hadn't made this many calls to the Minneapolis detective since the Monkeewrench case. Something about that gave him a bad feeling.

  WHEN MAGOZZI saw the Wisconsin area code on his caller ID, he nearly put his thumb through the talk button answering it. He was more than a little disappointed to hear Halloran's voice on the other end instead of Grace's, but it was a call he was about to make himself anyhow-the Sheriff had just beat him to the punch.

  When he hung up ten minutes later, he felt like an injured deer in a pack of wolves. Roadrunner and Harley had mobbed him during the conversation, straining to hear what Halloran was saying. He caught beer breath from Harley on one side and lime breath from Roadrunner on the other, which seemed peculiar, although nothing really surprised Magozzi anymore when it came to the odd man-child with the mind of a super-computer. For all he knew, the guy subsisted on an all-citrus diet. Gino was taking it all in from a big leather office chair, with Charlie at his feet, head lifted in rapt attention. It was the perfect portrait of a country gentleman and his loyal dog, sans the smoking jacket and hunt prints.

  "Okay, Halloran just got off the phone with Green Bay before he called me, and they're still not there. But you probably already figured that out."

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah," Harley said impatiently. "Jump to the good part where you asked if he could help us out and then you were really quiet for a long time."

  "He's going to do what he can."

  "Which is?" Roadrunner asked.

  "He'll get out a statewide APB on the Rover ASAP, plus he's going to make some personal calls to the counties they'd drive through and ask for some extra pairs of eyes out on the roads looking. I guess they have a pretty tight Sheriffs' Association over there, and according to him, they all owe him favors." He stood up slowly, as if he didn't completely trust the ability of his legs to hold him, and looked at Gino. "You want to come along?"

  "Give me a sec." Gino patted Charlie on the head, then pulled out his cell phone and pushed a single button. "Hey, Angela . . . Jesus, what's that noise? Oh, yeah? Well, it doesn't surprise me. I had that kid pegged as Satan's spawn years ago. Listen, the thing is, I'm probably not going to make it home tonight. You know that strip bar near Marshfield you never let me stop at? Hell, no, we're not going to bust them, we just want to watch, maybe get a lap dance or two. ... Of course we'll be careful, don't worry, Magozzi told me all the women are behind glass." Gino clicked off, ruffled Charlie's ears one last time, then pushed himself up out of the chair.

  Roadrunner and Harley were staring at him. "You're going to a strip club inMarshfield?" Harley asked.

  Gino rolled his eyes. "Christ, of course not. We're going to Wisconsin to find the ladies."

  "Just like that?"

  "Just like that."

  Magozzi was already halfway to the door when Gino caught up to him. "I'm probably jumping the gun here, Gino."

  "Probably."

  "You talked to Angela earlier, right?"

  "Yep. Called her after Roadrunner told me what was going on. Figured you'd want to head over there."

  "What'd she say?"

  "She wanted to know why we hadn't left yet."

  Magozzi smiled. "I love Angela."

  "Me, too."

  "We don't even know which road they took."

  Gino shrugged. "We're detectives. We'll figure it out."

  Roadrunner and Harley were right behind them before they got to the elevator. "We can all go together in the rig," Harley said.

  "Actually, we'll need the radio in the unmarked-" Gino started to say.

  Harley slapped him good-naturedly on the shoulder and nearly knocked him down. "My friend, we got more communications in that rig than you've seen in your life, police band and any other band you can think of. You can call the goddamn space station if you want."

  Gino raised his brows. "No shit?"

  "No shit. Besides, the computers might come in handy."

  Having all of them in the elevator at the same time was tight, and Gino looked worried. "You got a payload limit on this thing?"

  "Damned if I know," Harley replied, and pushed the down button.

  TWILIGHT HAD LEACHED the color from the town of Four Corners. It lay silent and still in the deepening shadows, like an old black-and-white photograph. The street was empty, the buildings were starting to disappear into their own darkness, and the silence was total.

  Inside the little house behind the cafe, Annie turned the bathroom faucet a fraction of an inch and washed her hands under a trickle of water. They had to be careful, Grace had said. The pump had already kicked in once when they'd washed their hands after handling the dead dog, and the noise had sounded like an explosion in the unnatural quiet. If they used too much water, it could happen again. Annie frowned, remembering the long list of things Grace had warned them to be wary of-things Annie wouldn't have thought of in a million years.

  She bent her head over the sink and pressed some cool water against her eyes. Damnit. After more than ten years of full-blown paranoia, every sense on high alert at all times, Grace had started to get a little better. Closing the books on the Atlanta horror had helped, so had her relationship with Magozzi, but all that progress had been erased in a few hours, as if it hadn't happened. The old Grace had settled in for another long stay.

  It was almost fully dark already-time for them to leave the house-and they were each taking a turn in the bathroom while the other two watched the windows, front and back.But don't flush. Anddon't use the toilet paper roll. It's wooden and loose and might clatter. Take some sheets off the fresh roll on the back of the can.

  Even Sharon had raised her brows at the thought process that pulled that little detail out of the murky realm of possibility. Grace wasn't leaving anything to chance anymore.

  Annie could barely see herself in the tiny medicine-chest mirror, and she decided that was a good thing. She'd caught a glimpse earlier, before the woods had swallowed the sun, and had barely recognized her own reflection. It wasn't the grime on her face or the running mascara or even the disheveled hair, as much as that distressed her. What Annie had inside could shine through all things superficial- but there was something in her eyes that made her look like a stranger, something she hadn't seen there since her seventeenth birthday, on the night she'd discovered what knives could do.

  When she was finished in the bathroom, she went to stand next to Sharon at the kitchen window. She wrinkled her nose at the faint odor coming from the pilot lights of the old-fashioned gas stove. "Your turn," she murmured.

  Sharon nodded absently, still st
aring at the dark backyard and the black woods beyond. She looked a little brittle to Annie. "How long have we been in here?"

  "About forty minutes. Too long, according to Grace."

  "She's right. It's starting to feel safe."

  "It isn't. Too easy to get trapped in here."

  "I know." Sharon stepped away from the counter, then stopped and looked down at the old wavy linoleum beneath her feet. "When I was little-five or six, maybe-our barn caught fire one night, went up so fast there was no time to get the cows out. But the horses had an outside door of their own, always open, so they could run in and out and get away from the bugs. So the timbers were falling and the cows were bawling and starting to cook and you could look through the big open door into where the horses were all bunched together in the smoke and the flames, screaming, kicking at each other, looking right out the door they ran in and out of a hundred times a day."

  Annie just stood there as Sharon walked away, looking out the window at the darkened backyard, at the clothesline over in the corner, at the zinnias someone had planted around the poles, feeling a little silly for watching for armed soldiers coming to kill her. Suddenly, it just seemed too surreal, and she could feel her mind slipping, telling her that this was simply too preposterous to be believed. Surely there wouldn't be soldiers in a place with zinnias and clotheslines, and even if there were, surely they wouldn't be bent on murder. They were panicking, jumping to conclusions, following Grace's paranoia when they were really perfectly safe here. .. .

  And then she closed her eyes and saw a burning barn and wanted desperately to get out of the house.Right now.

  Three minutes later, they were all huddled around the front door, peering through the glass panel at the top. There was nothing out there, just a hint of light at the top of the trees that towered around the town, advertising that somewhere beyond their view, the moon had risen. Apparently, it was high enough to start painting the shadow of the cafe on the grass between it and the house.