Wild Mustang Man

by Carol Grace

  The car passed within a hundred feet or so of the giant electric sign, but they saw only empty asphalt.

  “Where is he? I don’t get it,” he said. “Either he’d still be there undiscovered, or he’d have been found by now and there’d be a dozen police cars. Coroner. Press. But there’s nothing.”

  He turned into the lane that led directly to the sign.

  “What are you doing?” Pam asked nervously.

  “It’s not making sense. I’ve got to see up close.”

  “No. We’ve been circling around here so much already it’ll make people suspicious. If we go right up to the spot it’ll be a dead giveaway. Please...”

  Tom sensed the lack of resolve in her voice and ignored the plea. In another few seconds the car crawled almost directly under the monstrous sign, its million bulbs flickering with frantic energy. Tom stared at Pam.

  “Nothing. Not a trace. Are we crazy? Did we imagine it?”

  “Let’s get out of here. Now. Please.”

  Pam’s voice was quavering. Tom turned the car out onto the street. He watched the rearview mirror all the way to Pam’s apartment. When she told him she was going to immediately take a double dose of pills and get some sleep, he didn’t argue.

  “I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” he promised; they kissed quickly and she closed the door.

  January mornings in Reno can be crisp and cold, especially at five thirty, the time Tom usually left his apartment to do the Sunday sign-on shift at the radio station. The town was still and quiet, most people still in their beds, the clamor of the day yet to start. Often a thin mist hung over the city, as the sky over the desert hills began showing the first hints of sunrise. Normally he enjoyed this first hour of the new day, before the city came to life.

  But this morning was different. He’d awakened several times during the night, reliving the scene in the parking lot, groggily wondering if it would still be a reality in the morning. Sure enough, it was. His peace of mind was gone, and he wondered how long before it returned.

  Leaving the apartment and going to his car he was sure he was being watched. He turned on the radio, tuned it to the only 24-hour station that gave news headlines, to see if there was anything about the murder, but the only local story concerned a big-rig jackknifed on 395 south of town.

  He drove through the dark streets as if on autopilot, numb to his surroundings, looking only for the dark Mercedes, expecting at any moment to see it in the rearview mirror. After nearly rear-ending a garbage truck at an intersection, he snapped out of it and shook his head violently, as if trying to climb out of a bad dream.

  Look, it’s over, he muttered to the steering wheel. It had nothing to do with me.…nothing at all…I just…wonder who that guy was…

  It was worse when he pulled into the station parking lot and stopped the car a couple of spaces from the van – the same van from which he and Pam had witnessed a murder. The van with foot-high red letters flaunting its identity to everyone in the neighborhood. It was impossible that they would not know how and where to find it, if and when they wanted to. He sat frozen in the car, fingers at the ready to start up and race away at the first appearance of the death car. It was ten to six, barely light. The station had to be on the air in ten minutes, with him reading the headlines. Only force of will pushed him out of the car; he walked briskly to the steel security door of the KBLAST studio, disarmed the burglar alarm, and went in, locking the door behind him.

  The normalcy of the sign-on routine helped calm him. Go into the control room, flip the breakers, key the password into the transmitter remote control, and send the signal that powers on the filaments in the transmitter. Thirty miles away, atop Slide Mountain, the transmitter comes to life, its blower spinning up, the filament in the melon-size ceramic final output tube glowing orange. Next, go to the kitchen and load up the coffeepot. A minute before six, switch on the carrier, bathing the Reno-Tahoe-Carson City area in its FM signal.

  Read the sign-on, then the news headlines off the wire (again, no mention of a dead body), start the music. Pour the coffee, sit back, read the meters, and make the first log entries of the day.

  Thank God, everything was beginning to feel normal again. At nine o’clock Mike Turner would come in for his show, Tom would hang around to read the hourly news. With a little luck, the surreal experience in the Mountain Palace parking lot would gradually fade into memory and nothing more would come of it.

  After all, this was Reno. It wasn’t anywhere near as crazy as Vegas, but weird things did happen. This kind of stuff happens in a casino town. His mood brightened: chances are, the casino itself cleaned up the mess, and is keeping it quiet. Corpses in parking lots are never good for business.

  For a moment he dwelled on the irony of his being a broadcast news person, with possibly the biggest story that would ever almost literally fall into his lap, and he couldn’t use it.

  Right after the noon newscast he called Pam. She sounded withdrawn and remote, and he couldn’t blame her. She turned down his dinner invitation, after which he made the mistake of offering to get some takeout and bring it over.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m kind of…kind of tired. I think I’ll just stay in and watch some TV. I think I’ll stay around the house for a while. And you…maybe you should do the same. I mean at your house.”

  Tom got the message. He had become radioactive. The Mercedes guys hadn’t seen Pam, had no reason to believe she was even in the van, no reason to go after her. But for Tom, maybe it was only a matter of time.

  “You don’t want me to come over for a while, is that it?”

  “I think that makes a lot of sense, don’t you? I mean, until we know they’re not going to…to come after you.”

  They’re probably going to come and kill you, he heard in her voice, and I don’t want to be there when it happens.

  The thought of being deprived of Pam, of her warmth next to him in bed, of her lithe dancer’s body with its energy and unbelievable sexual appetite, was almost as abhorrent as his fear of the killers. That week away from her in Tahoe was bad enough, how long would this last?

  “I suppose you’re right,” he answered forlornly.

  The conversation ended after a few polite words of encouragement to each other; Tom ended the call and left the building. He waved to Mike Turner as he passed the studio window; Mike was reading a used-car commercial and raised a hand in a casual response.

  Damn you people, Tom growled as he got into his car. Now you’re really messing with my life. They looked like some kind of Asians, he remembered. Maybe they were already on their way back to China.

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