by Gregory Kay
Her father was more practical, and told her to be careful driving in the mountains and to have a nice time; then he’d laid a hand on her shoulder and surprised her utterly by what he said next, as soon as he got her alone for a moment.
“You need this, kid; I know it’s a big pain in the ass, but this is the best thing that could happen to you right now. You need to get out of the city for awhile, and put some distance behind you so you can get your head clear. Yeah, I’ll worry about you and your mother will drive me crazy, but hey, what else is new?
“I love you, kid. You just be sure and call everyday, or I won’t get any peace.”
Fiona had hugged him, told him she loved him too, and she’d meant it.
Glancing overhead as she passed under it, she saw a big green sign welcoming her to WEST VIRGINIA, WILD AND WONDERFUL.
She took a hand off the wheel to rub her eyes; according to the GPS, she had another three hours left to go, and she was getting tired.
I can do without the wild right now, but wonderful...that would be nice for a change.
TUESDAY
CHAPTER 5
Mason County, West Virginia
It was 2:47 in the morning when Luke Carter slowed his cruiser as he approached the stop sign that marked the intersection of the back road and Route 2, gently applying the brakes and bringing the black Dodge Charger with the silver, six-pointed Sheriff’s Department star on the door to an easy halt. He idly looked both ways, not really expecting to see any traffic this late on a weeknight, and thus was curious when he noticed a distant set of lights to his right, headed toward him on 2. The beams had the distinctive bluish shade that marked them as expensive halogen bulbs, which not many of the local people had, but, much more importantly to him, they were coming fast; if he was any judge, much too fast.
Luke killed his headlights and made a mental bet with himself as he reached over and touched the switch to his radar.
A drunk or a bunch of dumb kids, one or the other.
Whoever they were, he was going to have shut them down before something bad happened. They weren’t likely to kill anyone else in Mason County at this time of the morning, but they could damned sure kill themselves. The stretch of Route 2 running between Jackson County and Point Pleasant had several deceptive curves in it, and had taken more than its fair share of lives over the years.
Clicking the radar when the car – a dark Jaguar convertible – flashed by, he glanced at the readout and shook his head even as he flipped his headlights back on and his foot hit the gas.
You dumb-ass!
The Charger’s powerful 5.7 liter V8 Hemi roared like an eager hunting dog baying its anticipation, and, as his hunter’s instinct kicked into overdrive, Luke knew the feeling. Despite the obvious dangers – or maybe because of them – the deputy couldn’t deny he privately enjoyed the adrenaline rush of a high-speed chase, especially on a deserted road in the wee hours, when there was no other traffic to worry about.
Maybe I’m wrong for liking the rush, but so what if I am? A man’s got to have something to make him feel alive, at least once in a while...
It took him a couple of minutes, a few white-knuckles, and every bit of his high-speed pursuit trainint to catch up with the sports car, and he waited until he was right behind it to hit his siren and blue lights, and kick on his high beams. If he’d revealed his identity further back, he knew there was a good chance the driver might have tried to run for it, and become even more of a danger than he already was. Not letting a speeding driver know until he was up close and personal, then doing it all at once, shocked most people so badly the first thing they thought of was pulling over...although whether this one would comply or not remained to be seen.
When her car abruptly lit up, filled with colored light and ear-splitting sound, Fiona glanced in the mirror, realized what that single quick beep on her radar detector a few miles back must have meant, and then yelled and repeatedly pounded the steering wheel in frustration.
“Damn! Damn-damn-damn-damn!”
Angry, both at the cop for catching her and at herself for getting caught, and ignoring the nagging temptation to see if she could outrun him – she knew that wouldn’t be a good idea! – Fiona put on her right turn signal and began slowing, finally easing to the side of the road as far onto the graveled shoulder as she could get. Flipping on her hazard lights, she turned off the key and killed the engine. This wasn’t her first speeding ticket, and she knew the drill, but that familiarity didn’t do anything to improve her temper, especially when she happened to glance at her GPS and see that she was only about twenty minutes from her destination.
“Great!” she muttered, looking in the mirror at the flashing lights and squinting at the blinding high-beams behind her, “This is just what I need!”
She pressed the button to lower her window, and a mosquito promptly came in and began buzzing around her head. She was sure it was only doing it to add to her irritation.
His masters had been tracking the GPS signal in the woman’s car since they had been informed discovered she was on her way, and they had extrapolated this as the most likely route she would take. He had been here for three hours, waiting while they transmitted the data to him in real time, and it told him her vehicle had stopped not far from his position. If such gestures were natural to him, he would have shrugged; it was of no importance. The man in the black suit would wait as long as it took. Patience was one of his greatest virtues.
As was made obvious by the fact the frantic animal struggling in his arms was still alive, despite the satisfaction that making it otherwise would have given him.
He had ambushed the doe before settling down to wait; to him, the deceptively powerful animal’s desperate efforts to escape were no more than a minor distraction. Ordinarily the struggles would have been much shorter, but he needed the creature alive.
For now.
Luke was glad to see nothing of importance coming back on the license plate or its owner; vehicles from the northern states were always suspect by their very presence, since the county got most of its imported dope from Detroit or Columbus, but New York wasn’t out of the question either. He’d followed the standard procedure and called it in, but there were no wants or warrants, which was just as well, because there was no backup nearby, and few things were as dangerous as dealing with a desperate criminal alone on a deserted stretch of road. He shrugged, then made sure his Glock was secure and adjusted his equipment belt to put it exactly where his right hand would fall naturally on it when he got out of the car...just in case.
Fiona stewed, her temper growing hotter and hotter while the cop took his time. She knew he was following the standard police procedure of calling in her plate to see if she was wanted or the car was stolen, but that did nothing to calm her temper down. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, she heard his cruiser door open and close and his boots crunching in the gravel. A moment later, the powerful beam of his flashlight filled her car, blinding her.
Luke looked her over while she was squinting and gritting her teeth; even in the low-slung sports car, she was obviously tiny. With a thick head of long, dark curly hair topping white skin sprinkled with freckles, he supposed she might have actually been pretty, but he would have to see her un-scrunch her face before he finally decided that, one way or another...not that it mattered. What was important right now was that she didn’t look like a threat.
“Good morning, ma’am.”
Her response was nothing more than the slight jerk of an angry nod.
I wonder who peed in her pocket? Luke didn’t let the thought show, however, and maintained his friendly, pleasant demeanor; experience had taught him, if one side of any confrontation did that, there was about a seventy-five percent chance the other side would eventually calm down too. As for the other twenty-five percent...
He shrugged inwardly. It is what it is. Some people are just angry by nature, and others have something to be angry about.
“Do you know
how fast you were going, ma’am? I clocked you doing almost eighty.”
“Would you please take that light out of my eyes so I can see?” she snapped. He lowered the beam slightly and she took a deep, thoroughly exasperated breath. “Look, I’m in a hurry.”
Luke managed to conceal a chuckle. She’s like a little terrier! He didn’t bother to conceal the growth of his grin though, and she bristled at the distinct and entirely correct feeling that he found her amusing.
“That was pretty obvious, ma’am, since this is a fifty-five mile-an-hour zone. I need to see your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance, please.”
She already had her press ID in her hand, and thrust it out the window at him without looking, as if she were going to stab him with it.
I’ll be damned if I’ve got time to waste on some hick in the sticks! This should impress him and his backwoods department!
“Here!”
Luke looked the document over momentarily, and offered it back to her. His grin was still in place, but it was becoming a little frayed at the edges. He never had much use for snotty, self-important people, Yankees in particular, and she was obviously one of them. Still, he maintained his composure and facade of good humor, in part because of his own nature, experience, and sense of professional pride, but also just a little now because he knew that doing so would irritate her even more.
“That’s very nice, ma’am, but I still need to see your license.”
Fiona glared at him, looking at his face for the first time, but all she could seem to see was his irritating, almost condescending grin.
“Do you know what that is?”
“I know it’s not a drivers’ license, registration, or proof of insurance.”
Her pale complexion abruptly turned several shades darker, and her voice grew into a shrill yell, and she slapped the steering wheel again to emphasize it.
“That’s a press pass from one of the biggest newspapers in the country, hillbilly! The Straight Arrow; ever hear of it? I’m down here from New York City trying to do my job and then get the hell out of this Hicksville of yours just as soon as I can!”
When she saw his face instantly go hard and swallow up the grin like it had never been, she realized she had just allowed her anger to push things a little too far. Belatedly she remembered her friend and coworker Sylvia’s warning about the importance of good manners where she was going, and how the insults and raised voices that were so often just a part of everyday communication in the Big Apple were not well received ‘down there.’ Now she was ‘down there,’ on a deserted country road in the middle of the night with some hayseed cop and no witnesses…She noticed how big he looked in that uniform.
Oh shit…
Seeing her abruptly changed expression and recognizing it for what it was, Luke forced himself to take a deep breath and get his own temper under control, but it took a real effort.
“Yes, ma’am, and I’m down here trying to do my job of keeping people safe and enforcing the law. I need to see your license, registration, and proof of insurance now, please.”
Fiona clearly heard the many promises in that one little three-letter word, now. She knew, as surely as the night was dark, that if she didn’t do as he asked, there would be handcuffs and a trip to whatever hellhole passed for a jail here, doubtlessly followed by the humiliating strip search she knew was standard practice everywhere. Suddenly she blanched.
Oh shit! Do they even have women cops down here?
If not, that meant...
She looked at the big deputy again, fully realizing the only logical conclusion of that thought, and clamped down hard on her anger, biting off her natural retort. Not trusting herself to speak, she settled for nodding curtly and quickly producing the requested information.
Luke stood there holding the documents for a moment, looking each one over carefully, and getting his own temper back under control.
“Now Miss Pegliatti…”
If there was one thing Fiona hated, it was for someone to mangle her name, but there wasn’t much she could do about it this time.
“It’s Pelligatti,” she told him stonily, and he nodded apologetically.
“Sorry; I didn’t mean to mispronounce your name. Miss Pelligatti then. You need to realize that these back roads are dangerous, especially at night. It’s not just drunks and kids on four-wheelers, but deer are everywhere. You have to be careful out here – “
“Look,” she growled, “It’s late, I’m tired, and I want to get to the hotel. Just skip the lecture, give me the ticket and let me get on my way!”
Luke shrugged and his grin abruptly reappeared as he gave her a curt nod of his own.
“Alright, ma’am. Since you’re from out of town and don’t know about the conditions down here, I was just going to give you a warning to keep your speed down, but since you’re insisting on a ticket, well, I guess I’ll just have to oblige you. After all, we aim to please. Wait here just a minute, please.”
“No!” Final gasped, mentally kicking herself, “Wait! I…” Her voice tapered off when he turned and walked back to his car with her paperwork, and she just knew that jaunty little self-satisfied spring suddenly in his step was there only to irritate her.
Luke smiled with satisfaction the whole time he was filling out the ticket, and was still wearing the expression when he returned and presented her with the clipboard.
Some people just deserve what they get.
“Please sign by the X, ma’am.”
Not trusting herself to say a single word, she scrawled her signature with enough force to rip the paper, and he retrieved it, returned her documents plus her copy of the citation, and touched the brim of his black campaign hat with the silver star on the front.
“You have a nice night, Miss Pelligatti, and drive careful. Watch out for deer now.”
Hyperventilating with barely-suppressed rage as she glared at his back of his image walking away in her mirror, she reflected that it was a good thing she didn’t have a gun.
Fiona didn’t even wait until he got back in the cruiser to leave; she wanted to put some distance between them before she completely exploded. She had the presence of mind not to floor it and blast back out on the highway in a screech of burning rubber that would pepper both cruiser and deputy with gravel, but just barely; she had to force herself to take it up to fifty-five and keep it there.
“That son of a bitch!” she muttered as she rolled down the dark road, “That damned, smart-assed son of a bitch!”
She had been underway no more than two minutes when she noticed a glimmer of something small in her lights, about four feet high in the brush beside the road, and assumed it was a reflection off a piece of trash caught on a limb. She only recognized it as an animal’s eye when its owner burst out and leaped into the road directly in front of her, not ten feet ahead. Its flailing legs when it catapulted out of the bushes made it look almost as if it had been thrown rather than jumping out on its own power.
Luke put his clipboard back in the cruiser, then paused and closed the door while he was still outside, silencing the warning buzzer and turning off the dome light. Leaning his thick, muscular forearms on the Dodge’s roof, he took a deep breath, sucking in the cool night country air with its autumn smells of leaves and hay, and looked up past the tops of the surrounding black trees to the sky, trying to put the aggravating woman out of his mind.
Smiling at the moon still holding court overhead and the myriad glittering lights of the black dome surrounding it, he thought, that should do it if anything will.
He had always loved the stars, ever since his grandfather had given him a cheap telescope for his tenth birthday. He was no astronomer, of course – physics was something he had never been able to really get his head around beyond the very basics – but he loved them just the same, and could identify most of them, as well as the constellations they formed, at a glance. Many nights, alone in his cruiser somewhere on a back road, he would stop, turn off
the lights, shut down the motor, and get out just to look at them: Cassiopeia chasing the Big Dipper around and around the fixed North Star, Polaris; Orion with his belt clamped so straight and tight around his middle. Here in the country, late at night with little man-made illumination to spoil it, he could see much more, and, if he looked hard enough, on a clear night like this he could make out the thick sprinkling of fainter stars so tiny and so distant the eye couldn't pick them out individually, but rather as milky streaks in the night sky, like spilled sugar.
Luke wondered if Linda was up there somewhere, looking back at him.
He grinned a little at the thought, the toothache-pain of sadness jerking at his heart and stretching his mouth a little too tightly.
Linda would have disagreed with that thought, he knew, and would probably have called him a heathen in that half-joking way of hers whenever he expressed disagreement with anything their Baptist preacher said, and Luke had to admit his thoughts were certainly not the way the pastor had described Heaven. The Deputy didn’t doubt Heaven’s existence, of course; he just doubted Reverend Lewis’ or anyone else’s understanding of what it was really like.
Looking at the uncountable stars twinkling back and reflecting off the unbidden tear that gathered in the corner of his eye, he nodded and whispered, “Those sure look like they could be the pearly gates to me!”
He took in a deep breath, then blew it back out despite it catching just once in his throat.
“I miss you, honey...”
Suddenly, off in the distance, almost out of earshot, he heard the scream of locking brakes, followed by a crash that echoed off the wooded hills.