Good question. There weren’t any houses around the guy could be at. Nothing here but weeds and a few trees. “Probably taking a leak.”
Cupping his hands around his eyes, Max peered in the driver’s side window. “Tony? The keys are in it.” He tried the handle and the door opened.
“You think somebody dumped it?”
“No.”
“Why not? It’s old.”
“Not that old and look at it. It’s not banged up and the paint’s shiny.”
“So where’s the owner?
“How should I know? Around here somewhere.”
“Hey!” Max yelled. “Somebody’s stealin’ your car!”
A flock of little bitty birds flew away from the trees in a cloud of flutter.
“If anybody was here, he’d come a runnin’.” Max folded his scooter, tossed it in the back of the car and hopped into the driver’s seat.
“Max! What’re you doin’?”
The motor started with a roar.
“Max—”
“Get in! Hurry up!”
“You crazy?”
“Get in! Get in!”
Quickly, Tony popped his Razor in the back with Max’s and climbed in the passenger seat. “It’s stealing. You don’t even know how to drive.”
“I’ve been doing it for years.” Max tromped the accelerator. The motor screamed.
“If you know so much, how come you didn’t put the gear in drive?” Tony reached between the seats and took care of it.
The car shot backward. Max managed to hit the brakes before the car whipped across the road and down the ditch on the other side.
“Slower, stupid!”
Max crimped the wheel, put his foot on the accelerator and the car leaped ahead. Tony yelled. Max hit the brake. After a few more leaps and stops, Max got better. They drove farther down the county road, past corn stocks and pastureland with cattle grazing.
“Where you goin’?” Tony braced both hands on the dash to keep from being thrown through the windshield. He shouldn’t have gotten in the damn car. He should have just let Max go off by himself. But you never knew what the peckerwood might do. Tony needed to make sure Max didn’t kill himself.
“You crazy?” Tony repeated.
“It was dumped,” Max said. “That means whoever left it doesn’t want it, that means no reason we shouldn’t go for a ride.”
“That means stealing, dumb nuts.”
“Goody boy!”
“Don’t you think it’s kind of a nice car to just be dumped?”
“Then what was it doing there?”
“How should I know? It was just parked that’s all. The owner’s probably calling the cops right now.”
At the next crossroad, Max got the car turned around and headed toward town. Drifting back and forth across the road like he did, he was gonna get them smoked for sure.
“We can outrun the cops,” Max said. “This is great!”
“It’s dangerous. You don’t know the first thing about driving.” Tony opened the glove box and pulled out a bunch of papers. He flipped through them, insurance card, clippings about a fire where a bunch of people died, and finally the car registration.
“Think you could do better?”
“Anybody could do better, you dickhead. This car belongs to Vincent Egelhoff.”
Max looked at him. “So? You know him?”
“Look out! You’re gonna hit that tree.” Tony grabbed the wheel and they swerved back onto the road. “That’s it. Stop the car. I’m getting out.”
“Wimp. Wuss. You’re nothin’ but a baby. Baby Tony. Baby Tony.”
“We stole some guy’s car. He’s stranded out there somewhere. Turn around and go back.”
Like the doofus he was, Max drove right on into town where everybody could see him. Just like it wasn’t going to occur to them that Max was twelve and didn’t have a license.
He pulled a left on Lyons Street and squealed into Elkhorn Park. Too fast for Tony to sort it out, they spun a half-circle, slid, bounced off the boulder and plowed nose first into the raised concrete base of Horace Greeley. The Mustang’s hood rippled like an accordion. The trunk lid popped up. The passenger door flew open. Tony tumbled out, landed on his shoulder, banged his head. He couldn’t breathe.
The motor died. Antifreeze started dripping.
Max came running. “You all right?” He knelt and helped Tony sit up. “Say something! You dead or what!”
“What’d you go and do that for?”
“Gimme that stuff.” Max grabbed the papers Tony still clutched in his hand and stuffed them back in the glove box.
Tony stood up and rolled his shoulder. It hurt. He felt kinda funny. Dizzy and sorta sick. His head hurt.
“Wow.” Max stood peering into the trunk. “Oh man.”
“Now what are you doing?”
“There’s blood all over. Doesn’t smell too good either.”
Tony went to check what stupid stunt Max was pulling now.
A woman lay in the trunk. All curved and bent and kinda’ crumpled-looking. Bloody hair fanned out over most of her face. The skin was an icky gray color and the back of her head looked kinda squished.
“Hey!” Max shouted.
Tony jumped a mile, then turned and punched Max’s shoulder. “What’re you doing?”
“Tryin’ to wake her up.” Max’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You think she’s dead?”
“No.”
“Oh yeah? If you’re so sure, whyn’t you touch her? Go ahead. I dare you.”
Making sure his hand was steady so Max wouldn’t know how weirded out he was, Tony reached in and touched her shoulder. Hard, not like a person at all, more like cold inflexible rubber.
Max backed away.
“Where you going?”
“Anywhere, man.”
“We have to tell the cops,” Tony said.
“You do it. I’m gone.”
“Max!” Tony ran after him and grabbed his arm. “We have to get help.”
After that it started to get kinda confusing. There was a lot of commotion with people running over to see what happened and pretty soon the cops were there. And not too long after that they were at the cop house and Uncle Osey had his butt on the front edge of his desk and he wasn’t looking too friendly.
“Give it to me,” Osey said in a cop voice.
“Promise you won’t get mad.”
“Tony—”
Osey had all the patience in the world, but Tony could see even he was getting a little tight. Tony told it all, except the part where he tried to stop Max taking the car. That made him sound like making up excuses.
Osey looked madlike at him the whole time and that made Tony nervous and he kept forgetting stuff and having to go back and put it in and Max kept interrupting to add his two cents and the whole thing just sounded really snarky and by then even Max knew they were in a whole lot of trouble and kept saying actually it was a good thing they’d done it ’cause what would’ve happened if they hadn’t, she might have been totally rotted out before anybody knew and by the time Tony was finally finished with everything a whole lot of time had gone by and he wondered how an ordinary Sunday could turn into such a mess.
15
The discreet tap on the door was a member of the Sunflower Hotel staff returning Sean’s clean laundry, neatly plastic-wrapped. In at 10 P.M., out at 10 A.M., and bless all hotels who provided such a needed service. Some places he’d stayed didn’t offer much more than beds and those had dirty sheets. He dumped the package on a chair, found the remote and zapped on the television. As he transferred socks and underwear to a drawer and hung up shirts, he watched a reporter stick a microphone in the face of Congresswoman Stendor as she came from one of the House office buildings.
“Tell us what you think of the growing number of presidential candidates?”
“It reaffirms my faith in the American people. That in these most difficult times, there are so many willing to put themselves in
the fray and serve.”
“Anyone who stands out as a sure winner?”
“Everyone who runs for president has the soul of a winner.” She walked swiftly to the car and slid in.
“What about Governor Garrett?” the reporter asked before she could close the door. “You were classmates at Harvard. Does that mean his soul is more likely to win than the others?”
“It means friends don’t have to be in the same political party.” She closed the car door with a firm slam and her driver put his foot on the accelerator.
Sean folded the plastic his laundry had come in, dropped it in the wastebasket and carried the pile of Sunday newspapers to the easy chair by the window. Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, L.A. Times, and the Hampstead Herald. Outside, the sun shone on the soaked and bedraggled hotel grounds. To keep on top of what was happening in the world, he perused the national news—mostly the same in each one—then went to the political news. All the possibles maneuvering for presidential nomination managed to get their names mentioned somehow.
Most didn’t have a whisper of a chance. Some were a joke, some weren’t seriously running, just wanted to get their names out there in the country’s consciousness for future use—always another election coming up—some wanted to keep their names uppermost in the minds of their constituents, and some were nobodies with a single issue that most of the country had little interest in.
The smart money was going with the incumbent for the Republicans, historically always a good bet. All they had to do was keep patting him on the back and stating he was for God and country. With the Democrats it was all up in the air. Senator Roswell from Missouri, Senator Halderbreck from Massachusetts, Representative Barnes from Rhode Island, and Governor Garrett from Kansas, all with pluses and minuses on their records. Originally Halderbreck looked strong, but then Garrett started turning up in the polls.
The Hampstead Herald was thick with articles on Garrett, many with pictures, one twenty years old of Garrett all suited up and parachuting in to fight a raging forest fire. Should be good for a vote or two. Sean was a little surprised to see the photo and wondered where it came from. Garrett shied away from using his smoke jumping days in his campaign. Why? Something strange here. He was considered a hero for what happened in the disastrous forest fire that killed—what was it, five, six people?
Sean folded the paper, dropped it on the end of the bed and grabbed his jacket. One thing about small towns, you could walk just about anywhere. He shrugged on the jacket and set off for the Hampstead Herald. Even though the sun was still shining, the end of daylight saving time in the wee hours of the morning had shadows waiting in the wings and the wind was fierce. He turned up the collar of his jacket and upped his pace.
The railroad depot was made of local limestone. Quaint, loads of charm. The whole damn town was quaint. How did Susan live with this? Across from the depot was a squat brick building that housed the paper. Practical, ugly. Made him feel better already. The brass plaque on the front read 1866. Inside, he asked for the library and was directed down some rickety wooden stairs to a basement storage room. The walls were dingy white and hadn’t seen paint in a long time. Rolling shelves had rack after rack of microfiche, and, farther back, manila folders filled with news clippings. Beyond that was only murky dimness. He told the troll at the gate that he wanted everything they had on Governor Garrett.
In about ten minutes, the troll brought a set of microfiche cassettes. Sean sat at an old-fashioned metal desk, and scrolled through five-year-old articles. Nothing turned up that he didn’t already know. Any hint of something interesting required a different microfiche cassette and requisitioning another set. After the fourth request, the troll slid over the clipboard. “Fill it out and help yourself. Holler if you need anything. I’ll be in the back.” He disappeared into the gloom.
Sean didn’t ask in back of where. He read articles about the fire on Pale Horse Mountain in Montana that happened twenty years ago. One headline screamed FIRE OUT OF CONTROL, with a picture of Wakely Fromm in a jumpsuit with two parachutes hanging around his neck.
“The blow-up was just below me,” Fromm was quoted as saying. “The only thing I heard on the radio was ‘Run!’ The top of the hill was probably a hundred and seventy-five feet straight up and the fire got there in maybe thirteen seconds. Everywhere was this wall of fire, three hundred feet high.”
The forest had exploded around them, intense heat turning oak and pine and piñon into fodder for spontaneous combustion. Temperatures reached two thousand degrees that day, hot enough to fire clay and melt gold. Tools dropped by fleeing firefighters were completely incinerated. “You know it’s bad,” Fromm said, “when the guys are leaving equipment.”
Fromm was one of fifty firefighters caught by the swiftness and fury of a wildfire. Tragically, three hot shots and three smoke jumpers were overrun on a spine of Pale Horse Mountain called Horse’s Teeth Ridge. They all died on the steep edge of a mountain in a fire that, initially, was so small crews didn’t take it seriously. They died near enough to a highway that the cars going by could be seen. They died within view of camcorders held by people in the valley filming the walls of flame.
When Fromm raced to the top of the ridge, he thought he was the only one left alive on Pale Horse. With flames at his heels, he fled in such panic that he ran into a tree and knocked himself unconscious. He didn’t know how long he was out. The next thing he knew, Jack Garrett was dragging him and a tree fell on them. He remembered thinking the fire’s roar was more deafening than the rage of a tornado funnel.
When Fromm came to, on the other side of the ridge, Vince Egelhoff, another smoke jumper, was screaming. Ribbons of flesh hung from his burned hands. Garrett was wrapping them with wet T-shirts. When they stumbled down to the highway, Garrett made Egelhoff lie in the shade of a county car and watered him down to lower his body temperature, trying to ward off shock.
The incident commander was yelling names at the radio.
Six did not respond.
Sean leaned back. A stray thought wandered into mind. Friday night at the farm when he’d dumped Fromm in bed, Fromm was mumbling about horse’s teeth. A touch of posttraumatic stress here? Horse’s Teeth Ridge on Pale Horse Mountain? It certainly had sharp teeth. It had taken the lives of six firefighters. Why wasn’t Garrett using this stuff?
“Hey, Dudly! You hear they found her?”
Sean turned around to see who was yelling.
A kid, early twenties, buzz cut, jeans and sweatshirt, clattered down the stairs. “Dud?”
“Back here,” a lugubrious voice came from somewhere in the rear.
“Did you hear me? They found her. Deader than yesterday’s news.” He trotted over to Sean and stuck out his hand. “Ty Baldini. A pleasure to meet you, sir.”
Sean shook his hand. “Sean Donovan.”
“Yes, sir, I know. I’ve been following—well, covering the Garrett campaign. Just for, you know, the Herald. While he’s in town. I work here. Reporter for—”
A loud snort came from the murky gloom. Sean assumed it was Dudly giving his opinion.
“Let me tell you, sir, I’m really blown by meeting you. I’ve read all your stuff and—well, sir, it’s just great—”
“Thanks,” Sean said. He could do with a little less of the sirs, they made him feel a hundred years old. Ah youth, so fleeting. “Who was found?”
“Oh that. Local news, sir. Nothing you’d be interested in.”
“I’m always interested.”
“Yeah? Well, it’s the woman who called 911 and said she was in a car trunk and didn’t know where the car was. The cops tried to find her, but they didn’t even know where to look.”
“Who is she?” Sean was thinking Susan wouldn’t be happy about this.
“Don’t know yet, I’m birddogging out to see.”
“Mind if I tag along?”
“No, sir, that’d be great, sir.�
��
“Call me Sean,” he said as he got in Ty’s Trans Am.
Ty drove most of the way across town before he turned into a small park. There were cop cars, ambulance, uniformed cops, and silent onlookers. Sean followed Ty down a gravel path to a blue Mustang with its nose bashed into a concrete circular base around a statue of Horace Greeley. Go west, young man. Seemed like good advice to him.
The trunk lid was open. A kid was snapping photographs. He didn’t see Susan anywhere. Just as well. She wouldn’t be happy he was here. He edged up behind Ty and looked in the trunk. A woman was curled up next to the jack, head resting on one arm as though trying to make herself comfortable. The shape of her head wasn’t quite right, one side was sort of flattened. Dark hair, tangled and bloody, matted to her cheek, pale skin, bluish in the fading light. She had on jeans and a white sweater. The sweater was hiked up in the back exposing two inches of bluish skin. From the side of her face that he could see, she looked early forties.
A crime scene tech was working around the body. That meant a coroner, or somebody, had already come and declared the victim dead. Unless, of course, things were different here, which they certainly could be.
“Who was she?” he asked Ty.
“Gayle Egelhoff.”
“Egelhoff? There was an Egelhoff fighting the fire—”
“Husband,” Ty said, scribbling in his notebook.
“Baldini!”
Another kid—he must be getting old, everybody he ran into lately looked eighteen—ambled over. Lanky and thin, he looked a bit like a scarecrow, complete with straw-colored hair.
“What are you doing here, Ty?”
Ty just grinned, introduced Sean, and jerked his head at the scarecrow. “This here’s Osey Pickett. He’s a detective.”
Wow, Sean thought, a detective. So this was what Susan had to work with. No wonder she looked sad. Maybe her old man was right, she needed to be dragged back home by any means.
The detective who seemed all knees and elbows jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Get lost!”
“Come on, Osey, I need information for the paper.”
Up in Smoke Page 8