Murdermobile (Portland Bookmobile Mysteries)

by B. B. Cantwell

  Paul acted as if he didn’t hear her. But his thoughts jumped a track.

  “First I need to make a call. I think I’d better confer with my casino friends.” Paul searched his pocket for quarters. Turning slightly toward Ralph, Paul ordered, “Here, take this exit. Now!”

  Ralph jerked the wheel just in time for the bookmobile to careen off the highway onto an exit ramp. “Bridal Veil, Scenic Highway,” said a sign with an arrow angling right.

  “Head for the lodge at the falls, they’ve got pay phones,” Paul commanded Ralph as the bus braked at the top of the ramp. A sign pointed to Multnomah Falls. With another belch of blue smoke, the magenta bus lumbered onto the narrow old highway.

  A quarter-mile behind the bookmobile, Harry Harrington had been on his police radio to Nate Darrow, who confirmed that the big bus should be going to Bonneville.

  “I just hope they aren’t heading for the old scenic highway with all those steep hills,” Harrington said into the microphone. “I don’t know who the driver is on that thing, but the way he’s riding the brakes, they’ll be lucky if they have any brake pads left by the time they get to the falls.”

  The bookmobile’s brake lights had been flashing ever since Albina. Harrington accelerated the big Chevy and pulled a little closer behind the bus, which was approaching the Bridal Veil exit. He could see the tiny, one-room post office off to the right of the interstate.

  The bookmobile’s blinking brake lights were becoming almost hypnotic, Harrington thought to himself. Blink-blink-blink. Blink –– blink –– blink. It reminded him of reading the code lights in the Navy. He momentarily took his eyes away to watch a semi approach in his mirror.

  Suddenly, Harrington jerked his head away from the mirror and peered back at the taillights. Blink-blink-blink. Blink –– blink –– blink. Blink-blink-blink. Regular and rhythmic, ever since Albina.

  “Oh, Christ, what an idiot I am!” Harrington fumbled for the radio mike and put in another call for Darrow.

  As he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for a response, the bookmobile suddenly rocked across a lane and up the exit ramp. Harrington braked sharply just as Darrow’s voice crackled over the radio. With one hand, Harrington guided his cruiser onto the exit, using the other to press the microphone button.

  “Hey Nate, didn’t you say they were headed for Bonneville? If so, they’ve changed their minds. They just exited at Bridal Veil, driving erratically. And get this: the driver’s been tapping an SOS on his brake lights.”

  The radio was silent for a beat. Harrington wondered if he’d lost contact. “Nate?”

  Then Darrow’s voice came through loudly.

  “Harry, stay with them! Backup’s on the way.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The bookmobile chugged slowly along the winding, maple-lined road through the famed waterfall-area of the Gorge. Gracefully arching, mossy concrete railings and rock retaining walls lined the narrow, historical highway. Built in the early part of the century, it was the first road along this once-remote stretch of the Columbia River. Earlier, travelers navigated the river by paddlewheeler.

  The three riders fell silent as they passed Wahkeena Falls, the first lovely cataract visible from the road. Hester reflected how different the falls looked compared to when she was last here, on a summer picnic with two librarian friends. Now, banks of old snow framed the falls in shadowy places the sun never hit.

  In another 10 minutes, they approached the largest falls in the Gorge, Multnomah Falls, with its charming stone lodge, designed by the same architect who designed Grand Central Library.

  Ahead, Hester spied the large parking lot on the left of the narrow highway, directly across from the lodge’s front door. Only a few RVs and a dozen cars dotted the lot, unlike in summer when traffic on the scenic highway barely squeezes through the glut of tourist vehicles, not to mention the camera-toting families crossing the road like gaggles of geese.

  On the right behind the lodge and recessed in a deep, shadowy cleft of the gorge wall, as high as a 60-story building, the waterfall’s plume spilled spectacularly toward the Columbia.

  As Ralph slowed to turn into the lot, flashing blue lights suddenly appeared from around a bend ahead. A black-and-white Oregon State Police cruiser skidded to a stop to block the narrow bridge crossing the stream 100 yards in front of them.

  At the sight, Paul Kenyon hunched next to Hester and again crushed the gun barrel to her ribs.

  “Ouch!” Hester squirmed. “That hurts!”

  “Just be quiet, Hester!” Paul whispered, as if that might keep the pursuers from noticing the magenta bus. The hand that didn’t hold the gun nervously fluttered through his lush hair, making it stick out uncharacteristically like jackstraws.

  “Turn around,” he ordered Ralph. “Now!”

  Ralph hesitated. Impatient, Paul lunged and shoved the steering wheel over. Books flew from shelves as the bus wobbled and groaned in a tight u-turn that Hester wouldn’t have thought possible in old No. 3. The turn ended with a brief screech of metal as the bookmobile’s rear bumper skimmed the fender of a parked Winnebago.

  “Now floor it!” Paul commanded. Perspiration beaded on the driver’s forehead as he struggled with the bookmobile’s balky gear shift, trying to coax speed from a vehicle designed to corner sedately at 5 mph.

  The roadway that they now retraced was clearly part of the original 1917 highway: barely 15 feet wide, with a steep, rocky wall rising on one side. Opposite that, an unyielding stone railing hugged the highway to the hillside, like a skinny leather belt trying to contain a fat man’s belly.

  Harry Harrington, on the radio with the state cruiser, had just braked to a stop at the narrowest part of the roadway. There was little room to maneuver, but he turned the Caprice so that it sat broadside to block the bookmobile. He was just reaching for the door when the bus’s massive front bumper crumpled his fender, shattered a headlight and simultaneously blew out a front tire with a report resembling a shotgun blast.

  The car spun against the rock wall. The sound of tortured metal was like a thousand fingernails on as many chalkboards as the bookmobile barreled between the rock rail and the blue Chevy. Harrington, stunned, watched the big bus disappear in a billow of sour exhaust toward Wahkeena Falls.

  Inside the bus, Paul jumped up and down like an excited schoolboy. The gun barrel bobbed by Hester’s ear. Her eyes were wide.

  “OK, straddle the centerline,” Paul ordered Ralph. “Nobody can get past us on this road.”

  That might be true, Hester thought. Eventually, more help would come from ahead now that the police had somehow gotten wind of their plight. But then what would happen?

  Meanwhile, the bookmobile was setting no speed records. Ralph, his face frozen in grim fury, drove with his foot pressed to the floor. But every time the highway rose, Hester watched the wavering orange needle on the big round speedometer dip to 35, then 25, then 20. Ralph battled through the gears.

  As they rounded a bend a quarter-mile before Wahkeena Falls, blue lights flashed in the big rear-view mirror outside Ralph’s window. Paul could see the state police cruiser, which had stopped just long enough to pick up Harry Harrington, closing fast behind them.

  “Damn, damn, damn!” he shouted. It occurred to Hester that she had heard Paul swear more in the past hour than she ever had before.

  The bookmobile weaved to avoid a rock outcropping that overhung the highway. Paul turned and peered into the other mirror. With his face inches from hers, Hester saw something else new. The corner of his right eyelid suddenly jerked back as if trying to touch his ear. Hester hadn’t noticed the tic before.

  “This can’t be happening,” he moaned. Then a look of decision flashed across his face, and Paul turned and ran to the rear of the bus. Hester watched in amazement as he pushed open the door on the right rear side of the bookmobile and leaned out.

  She heard, rather than saw, the gun fire.

  “Oh my God, Ralph, he’s comp
letely off his nut!” she hissed to the driver.

  Ralph rolled his eyes and nodded, stealing a glance to the rear of the bookmobile.

  “Ralph, now’s our chance. We’re coming up to Wahkeena. See the old snow piled from when they plowed the parking area, there on the right? It’s slushy enough, it shouldn’t be too hard. We can jump out the front door!”

  Ralph nodded.

  “With his head out the back, he’s not going to see us,” Hester continued. “Aim us next to the snow bank. When I say go, I’ll get the door open and leap for it. You be right behind me.”

  Ralph didn’t have time to argue. Another gunshot sounded, this one more distant. Were the police firing back?

  Ralph twisted around, saw Paul leaning out the door again, then looked ahead to the wide spot at the side of the road. He whispered to Hester, “Here we go!”

  He edged the bookmobile to the shoulder. The speedometer needle dipped to 30, then 25.

  “Now!”

  Hester leapt from her seat, wheeled and grabbed for the door handle. As the door crashed open, she glanced back and saw Paul Kenyon staring at her from the rear of the bus. He looked... puzzled?

  Hester jumped. All she felt was the shock of cold as she rolled out of control in mushy, wet snow. She had a fleeting, blurry impression of the bookmobile’s big rear wheels passing within inches. Then a 220-pound weight knocked her breath away.

  A loud “Oof!” came from Ralph as he tumbled off Hester and into a 10-inch deep puddle of slush. After a second, he raised his head.

  “Oooh,” he groaned. “Let’s never do that again.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The driverless bookmobile almost stalled. But it kept moving, like a drunk staggering toward a closed door. A stone bridge abutment, built when Woodrow Wilson was president, stood in its path.

  Leaping from the back of the bus, Paul skidded on the linoleum floor, then wrenched the steering wheel just in time to avoid disaster. The bridge rail took a layer of magenta paint off the entire right side of old No. 3.

  Sliding into the driver’s seat, Paul grappled with the oversized gear shift. He winced as the transmission made a sound like a fork caught in an eggbeater. Finally, gears clicked. The bus once again lumbered on its way, the engine roaring like a wounded beast.

  Five miles away, Nate Darrow gripped a radio mike and coordinated the emergency response. A uniformed officer next to him guided their blue-and-white Ford as it rocketed up the steep road toward Six Tepees Over Oregon.

  “Harry, are you sure the driver and Ms. McGarrigle are OK?”

  Harrington, in the passenger seat of the state police cruiser, turned and cocked his head at Hester and Ralph, wrapped in blankets in the back seat.

  “I’ll be fine,” Hester said.

  “Just catch that S.O.B.,” Ralph added, nursing a cut lip.

  Harrington thumbed the mike.

  “She’s scraped up, and he should have a couple X-rays. We’ll get them to the E.R. at Gresham for a look-over. But they say to keep moving.”

  “So where’s the bookmobile?” Darrow’s voice came from the radio.

  “The postmistress in Bridal Veil said he headed uphill, definitely did not get on the freeway. We’re probably less than two miles behind him. We ought to be seeing him any time now. We’re not tailing an Indy car, trust me.”

  “Harry, he’s going to be heading for the casino, he’s got friends up there,” Darrow responded. “I want to meet him halfway. Just keep on his tail until Crown Point. Give me that far. Don’t press him. More units will be joining you.”

  As Darrow spoke, Harrington saw a green cruiser from the Multnomah County sheriff’s office barrel around a bend behind them, followed by another state police car.

  “That’s affirmative. They just arrived. Nate, I’ll wave them ahead of us, since we’ve got passengers. We’ll bring up the rear. See you at Vista House.”

  Hester sat numbly as the procession sped around twists and turns of the old roadway built for Model Ts. The strobing red and blue lights atop each car played eerily on the almost-black needles of low-hanging fir boughs. Rare glimpses of the sky showed brooding thunderheads.

  Just as they accelerated through the flats past the old Bridal Veil Falls roadhouse, now a bed-and-breakfast, rain spatters turned to a downpour.

  Hester tried to think as she watched the scenery whiz by, now smeary through the car’s foggy windows. Had she dreadfully wronged Karen in all this? Was it really all Paul Kenyon’s doing? And how had Duffy gotten involved? Surely she hadn’t been embezzling, too? Hester was certain the self-appointed Goody Two-Shoes hadn’t a larcenous bone in her dried-up, self-righteous old body.

  The cruiser slid sideways on rotting leaves as it rounded a curve, throwing Hester against the door in a rude reminder of her bruises. Ralph groaned. She sank back in the seat and gave up trying to think as they shot past the lovely natural grotto at Shepperd’s Dell. The little falls there, just a fleeting glimpse of white, seemed to blend with the cascade of water now pummeling the Gorge from above.

  As Nate Darrow’s car topped the rise into Corbin and turned toward Crown Point, two Troutdale Police cruisers pulled out at the intersection and followed. Ahead on the right, the garage door at Fire District 41’s cinder-block station slid up, and as the procession passed, a volunteer fire unit pulled in behind.

  The hand-cranked siren moaned and a revolving light like a maraschino cherry slowly flashed from atop District 41’s 1958 Seagrave ladder truck. Shopkeepers, school teachers and farmers, all in yellow slickers and big black helmets, clung to the rails and waved to curious neighbors as if on the way to a town picnic.

  “So much for keeping this quiet,” Darrow grumbled to his driver. “But a couple of those fellows are EMTs, and we can use that truck.”

  As they passed the casino turnoff, a sign pointed ahead to Crown Point: 3 miles.

  Aptly named, Crown Point was the crowning glory of the Columbia Gorge Highway, where the road snaked from river level to the top of one of the Gorge’s most visible promontories.

  Visionary highway designers marked the point with a unique octagonal visitor center, the Art Nouveau-design Vista House, built of stone when the historic highway was completed. Alone on the rocky point, 725 feet above the gorge floor and the interstate, Vista House commands breathtaking views of the river and mountains. It is the scenic area’s most-photographed landmark.

  Because the highway circles steeply up from below in a blind curve that skirts a sheer rock wall, it is also a perfect place for a roadblock.

  Runoff coated the roadside in muddy rivulets as Darrow’s parade reached the Vista House pullout. The parking lot was empty.

  “Thank God it’s closed for winter,” he said, nodding his driver to pull over.

  Darrow ran back through punishing, wind-whipped rain to wave the fire truck into position, blocking the narrow uphill highway. The other police cruisers lined up in the parking lot, facing the top of the blind curve where it rounded a rock wall at the base of Vista House.

  Darrow dashed to the parking lot’s edge. Careful not to outline himself against the sky, he peered over a rock railing. A gale roaring up from below flailed at his yellow poncho emblazoned across the back with POLICE.

  Darrow glimpsed the smoking, magenta bookmobile winding upward from a quarter-mile below.

  The old bus was managing maybe 20 mph up the 5-percent grade, straddling the center line. A string of police cars, their strobing lights a colorful blur through the deluge, followed politely 100 yards behind. A cynical grin crossed Darrow’s face with a fleeting thought: It was the most ridiculous thing he’d seen since O.J. Simpson’s “slow-speed” freeway chase.

  The highway was blissfully empty this dreary February day. Surprise might help them stop Paul Kenyon without anybody getting shot.

  Darrow grabbed a bullhorn from his trunk. The other cops pointed shotguns, shielding themselves behind their cars. The firefighters peeked over their truck, heads bobbing
like shooting-gallery targets. It was too late to scold them.

  A sudden flash of magenta roofline rounding the curve announced the bookmobile’s arrival.

  As the windshield rose into view, Darrow saw Paul Kenyon’s eyes widen between smeary swishes of the bus’s wipers.

  For a long moment, the action seemed to freeze. Only noises came through the storm. Windshield wipers squeaked across the glass. The diesel coughed. Rain boomed down on the bookmobile’s long metal roof.

  Darrow had just raised the bullhorn to speak when Paul Kenyon pulled a final surprise.

  Instead of braking to a halt, he swung the wheel and the big bus swerved into a driveway that encircled Vista House. Darrow caught a blurry glimpse of Kenyon, laughing and wild-eyed.

  The bookmobile careened around the building. On completion of the futile circle, the bus swung in a wide, lumbering turn back downhill.

  “Damn! Damn! Damn!” Darrow shouted. As if on cue, a lightning bolt shot from the sky to the Vista House roof, with a crash of thunder that might have registered on the Richter scale. Here, high on treeless Crown Point, the winter weather that had only toyed with Oregon in recent weeks now turned positively Wagnerian.

  Darrow and the other officers crouched and ran toward the rock railing. One of the Troutdale cops stood long enough to blast a shotgun at the bus’s tires. One of the rear duals exploded as the big bus disappeared around the curve. Across the Gorge, the storm boomed in answer.

  Darrow slid to a stop at the overlook. He looked down at the narrow ribbon of encircling highway that was the only outcropping between Vista House and the Gorge floor far below. Mopping rain-soaked hair from his eye, he saw Kenyon’s escape thwarted by two of the pursuing cruisers. One after another, they sat crosswise, blocking the road.

  Still, Kenyon wouldn’t surrender. The bookmobile’s engine roared once more as the bus rammed the front fender of the sheriff’s cruiser. The deputy in the driver’s seat wildly fired his revolver at the oncoming behemoth as it shoved his cruiser against the other.