Short Ride to Nowhere

by Tom Piccirilli

  Collie turned on the charm, showed me his perfect teeth, and said, “Been a long time, Terry You look good. Trim, built up. You’re as dark as if you’d been dipped in a vat of maple syrup.”

  “I work on a ranch.”

  “Yeah? What, busting broncos? Roping cattle? Like that?”

  “Like that.”

  “Where? Colorado? Montana?”

  That question made me frown. I’d been eager to know how he’d managed to track me down. I’d been off the grift for years, living under an assumed name, doing an honest job. I thought I’d covered my tracks well, but four days ago, after coming in from digging fence posts, I’d received a phone call from a woman whose voice I didn’t recognize. She’d told me Collie wanted to see me before he died.

  “You already know. How’d you find me?”

  “I put in a call.”

  “To who?”

  “Who do you think?”

  He meant our family, who had connections all over the circuit. I’d half-expected that they’d somehow kept tabs on me. They must’ve gotten in touch with the people I’d gotten my fake ID from and shadowed me through the years. I should have realized my father wouldn’t let me go so easily.

  But that voice on the phone didn’t belong to anyone I knew. I wondered if my other identity had been completely blown and I’d have to start over again, rebuild another new life. How many more did I have left in me?

  “It’s been good seeing you, Terry. I’m glad you came. We both need a little more time.”

  I’d barely slept over the last four days and all the miles gunning across the country suddenly caught up with me. I felt tired as hell. “What are you talking about, Collie?”

  “Come back tomorrow or the day after. They gave you shit at the door, I can tell. Rousted you, strip searched you? If they try that again tell them to fuck themselves.” He raised his voice again and shouted at the screws. “Dead man walking has at least a couple of extra privileges!”

  “Listen, I’m not–”

  “Take some time to settle yourself.”

  “I don’t want to settle myself. I’m not coming back tomorrow, Collie.”

  “Go home. Visit the family. I’ll tell you what I need when I see you again.”

  I started breathing through my teeth. “What you need. I’m not running drugs for you. I’m not icing anybody on the outside for you. I’m not sending around a petition to the governor. I’m not coming back.”

  It got him laughing again. “You’re home. You’re going to see the family because you’ve missed them. You’ve been gone a long time and proven whatever point you had to make, Terry. You can stick it out on your own. You’re your own man. You’re not Dad. You’re not me.” He cupped the phone even more tightly to his mouth. “Besides, you love them and they love you. It’s time to say hello again.”

  Life lessons from death row. Christ. I felt nauseous.

  I stared hard into my brother’s eyes, trying to read a face I’d always been able to read before. I saw in it just how plagued he was by his own culpability. He was shallow and vindictive but he rarely lied. He didn’t often deny responsibility and he never cared about consequences. There was absolutely nothing I could do for him.

  “I’m not coming back,” I told him.

  “I think I need you to save someone’s life,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon. Or the day after, if you want. And don’t be late this time.”

  I hung up on his smile and let out a hiss that steamed the glass.

  Already he’d bent me out of shape. It had taken no more than fifteen minutes. We hadn’t said shit to each other. Maybe it was his fault, maybe it was mine. I could feel the old, singular pain rising once more.

  I shoved my chair back, took a few steps, and stopped. I thought, If I can get out now, without asking the question, I might be able to free myself. I have the chance. It’s there. The door is three feet away. I can do this. I can do this.

  It was a stupid mantra. I’d already missed my chance. I’d turned back once already, and I was about to do the same thing again. I knew Collie would still be seated, watching me, waiting. I turned back, grabbed the phone up again, stood facing the glass and said, “The girl in the mobile home.”

  He almost looked ashamed for an instant. He shut his eyes and swung his chin back and forth like he was trying to jar one memory loose and replace it with another. He pursed his lips and muttered something to his invisible audience that I wasn’t meant to hear. Then he grinned, his hard and cool back in place. “Okay.”

  “So tell me,” I said.

  “What do you want to hear?”

  “You already know. Just say it.”

  “You want to hear that I did it? Okay, I aced her.”

  “She was nine.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “Would you feel better if she was nineteen? Or twenty-nine? You feel better about the old lady? She was seventy-one. I killed her with my fists. Or–”

  “I want to know why, Collie.”

  “You’re asking the wrong questions.”

  “Tell me or you’ll never see me again.”

  His icy eyes softened. Not out of shame but out of fear that I would leave him forever. He licked his lips and his brow tightened in concentration as he searched for a genuine response.

  “I was making ghosts,” he said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I appreciate you showing up. Really. Come back tomorrow, Terry. Okay? Or the day after. Please.”

  I thought of a nine-year-old girl standing in the face of my enraged brother. I knew what it was like to be caught in that storm. I imagined his laughter, the way his eyes whirled in their sockets as he made her lay down on the floor beside her parents and brothers, pointed a .38 at the back of her head as she twisted her face away in terror, and squeezed the trigger.

  I made it to my car and threw up twice in the parking lot. I drove through the prison gates and waited on the street until I spotted the guard who’d made me repeat my name three times.

  He eased by in a flashy sports car so well waxed that the rain slewed off and barely touched it. For a half hour I followed him from a quarter-mile back until he turned into a new neighborhood development maybe ten minutes from the shore.

  The rain had shifted to a light drizzle. I watched him pull into a yellow two-story house with a new clapboard roof and a well-mown yard. There was an SUV in the driveway and the garage door was open. Two six or seven year old boys rolled up and down the wet sidewalk wearing sneakers with little wheels built into them.

  I drove to the beach and sat staring at the waves until it was dark. I’d been surrounded by mountains and desert for so long that I’d forgotten how lulling the ocean can be, alive and comforting, aware of your weaknesses and sometimes merciful.

  Five minutes off the parkway I found a restaurant and ate an overpriced but succulent seafood dinner. I’d been living on steak and tex-mex spices for so long that it was like an exotic meal from some foreign and romantic land. The lobster and crab legs quieted my stomach and loosened the knot there I listened in to the families around me, the children laughing and whining, the parents humorous and warm and short-tempered.

  The wind picked up and it started to rain harder again. Streams of saturated moonlight did wild endless shimmies against the glass. I drank a cup of coffee every twenty minutes until the place closed, then I sat out at the beach again until the bluster passed.

  It took me three minutes to get into the screw’s house. I stood in the master bedroom and watched as he and his wife spooned in their sleep. She was lovely with a tussled mound of hair that glowed a burnished copper in the dark. One lace strap of her lingerie had slipped off her shoulder, and the swell of her breast arched toward me.

  I found his trousers and snatched his wallet. He had a lot of photos of his children. I left the house, drove to the water, and threw his wallet into the whitecaps. I
didn’t want his money. I didn’t want to know his name. I didn’t even especially want to hurt him. I was testing myself and finding that I’d both passed and failed.

  I was still a good creeper. The skills remained. My heart rate never sped. I didn’t make a sound.

  I hadn’t broken the law in five years, not so much as running a yellow light. My chest itched. My scars burned. The one where Collie had stabbed me. The one from my broken rib. And the largest one made up of Kimmy’s teeth marks from the last time we’d made love. She bit in so deep under my heart that she’d scraped bone.

  I drove home through the storm thinking of the ghosts I had made.

  About the Author

  www.tompiccirilli.com

  www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com

  Tom Piccirilli is the author of twenty novels including SHADOW SEASON, THE COLD SPOT, THE COLDEST MILE, and A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN. He's won two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity, and Le Grand Prix de L'imagination.

  "Tom Piccirilli straddles genres with the boldness of the best writers today, blending suspense and crime fiction into tight, brutal masterpieces."

  —JAMES ROLLINS, New York Times bestselling author of The Judas Strain

  Don’t miss any of these acclaimed novels by Tom Piccirilli

  Available in paperback and e-book

  Shadow Season

  ~International Thriller Writers Award nominee

  “One of the most chilling thrillers of the year…[Piccirilli] does a convincing job of portraying the life of a man who can’t see, adding a unique and inviting twist to what is already an exciting plot.”—Chicago Sun-Times

  An ex-cop, Finn was left literally blinded by violence. The one thing he can still see is the body of his wife, Dani, and a crime scene that won’t fade from his mind’s eye. Now a professor, Finn never would have guessed that an isolated girls’ prep school could be every bit as dangerous as city streets. Especially when he stumbles upon a local girl lying in a graveyard in the middle of a raging blizzard. A group of innocent students has been put in harm’s way by a pair of vicious criminals stalking Finn for unknown reasons. Secrets are creeping from the shadows around him—the kind that even a man with perfect vision never sees until it’s too late. They’re about to become terrifyingly clear to Finn—and it all begins with the scent of blood.

  978-0-553-90634-9 e-book / 978-0-553-59247-4 paperback

  The Coldest Mile

  ~Winner of an International Thriller Writers Award

  ~A Deadly Pleasures Best Mystery/Crime Novel

  ~Sequel to The Cold Spot

  “Pedal to the metal for 352 pages. Don’t miss it.”—Booklist

  Raised to be a thief and getaway driver, Chase left the bent life after he found his true love, Lila. For ten years he walked the straight and narrow—until Lila was murdered. Now Chase is looking for his grandfather Jonah, the stone-cold-killer con man who raised him and is the last living repository of his family’s darkest secrets. First he’ll need a score. Chase thinks he’s found it as a driver for a dysfunctional crime family, but with the Langans’ patriarch dying, the once powerful syndicate may unravel before Chase can rip it off. If he survives the bloodbath to come, he’ll face an even uglier showdown. Because his grandfather Jonah is waiting for him at the coldest family reunion this side of hell.

  978-0-553-90618-9 e-book / 978-0-553-59085-2 paperback

  The Cold Spot

  ~ Edgar Award nominee

  “Both funny and ferocious…[Piccirilli’s] stories are worth their weight in gold.”

  –San Francisco Chronicle

  Chase was raised as a getaway driver by his grandfather, Jonah, a con man feared by even the hardened career criminals who make up his crew. But when Jonah crosses the line and murders one of his own, Chase goes solo, stealing cars and pulling scores across the country….And then he meets Lila, a strong-willed deputy sheriff with a beguiling smile who shows him what love can be. Chase is on the straight and narrow for the first time in his life—until tragedy hits, and he must reenter the dark world of grifters and crooks. Now Chase is out for revenge—and he’ll have to turn to the one man he hates most in the world. Only Jonah can teach Chase how to become a stone-cold killer. But even as the two men work together, Chase knows that their unresolved past will eventually lead them to a showdown of their own.

  978-0-553-90496-3 e-book / 978-0-553-59084-5 paperback

  The Midnight Road

  ~Winner of an International Thriller Writers Award

  “I read this novel nonstop. A combination of noir suspense and humorous ghost story, Piccirilli…is at the top of his game.”—Rocky Mountain News

  As an investigator for Suffolk County Child Protective Services, Flynn has seen more than his share of misery, but nothing could prepare him for the nightmare inside the Shepards’ million-dollar Long Island home. In less than an hour, that nightmare will send him plunging into a frozen harbor—and awaken him to a reality even more terrifying. They’ve nicknamed Flynn “The Miracle Man” because few have ever been resuscitated after being dead so long. But a determined homicide detective and a beautiful, inquisitive reporter have questions about what really happened at the Shepard house—and why the people around Flynn are suddenly being murdered. Flynn has questions of his own, especially when one of the victims dies while handing him a note: THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT. Flynn has returned from the Midnight Road—and someone wants to send him back.

  978-0-553-90384-3 e-book / 978-0-553-38408-6 paperback

  The Dead Letters

  ~A Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Nominee

  “A powerful meditation on the nature of revenge, structured like a psychological thriller…A terrific novel.”—Locus

  Five years ago, Eddie Whitt’s daughter Sarah became the victim of a serial killer known as Killjoy, and Whitt vowed to hunt him down—no matter what the cost. The only clues to Killjoy’s identity lie in a trail of taunting letters. And even as they lead Whitt to a deadly cult—and closer to his prey—he begins to suspect that, like his wife, he’s losing his grip on reality: Sarah’s dollhouse is filled with eerie activity, as if her murder never occurred. As dark forces rise around him, Whitt must choose—between believing that evil can repent…and stepping into a trap set by a killer who may know the only way to save Whitt’s soul.

  978-0-553-90297-6 e-book / 978-0-553-38407-9 paperback

  Headstone City

  ~Named one of the Salt Lake City Tribune’s "Best of the Literary Crop"

  ~Bram Stoker Award nominee

  ~International Thriller Writers Award nominee

  "A beautiful and perversely funny sort of crime novel.... [Piccirilli has] the authentic surrealist's gift of blind trust in his imagination, and that enables him to throw off striking metaphors like sparks from a speeding train….Headstone City gives you the distinctive shiver…all good writing provides: the certainty that the writer’s own ghosts are in it.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  The night Johnny Danetello drove a dying girl through the streets of Brooklyn in his cab, he was trying to save her life. Instead he ran down a cop and lost her and his freedom. Every day in prison, Johnny knew that Angie Monticelli’s family blamed him for her death, and that going home would be suicide. But Johnny has unfinished business with his former friend turned mob boss, Vinny Monticelli. Survivors of a long-ago freak accident, Johnny and Vinny share access to alternate realities no one else can know–and to a past and present that will all become the same in a city only one of them can leave alive. . . .

  978-0-553-90235-8 e-book / 978-0-553-58721-0 paperback

  November Mourns

  “Tom Piccirilli is the master of the Southern gothic, quietly building horror where the chills grow with increasing strangeness….When he is done, the uneasy horrors of Moon Run Hollow are in your bones.”—Denver Post

  Two years ago Shad Jenkins
went to prison for assaulting his sister’s attacker. Now he has returned to the southern mountain town of Moon Run Hollow, only to find that Megan is dead. No one knows how she died–or why she was found on Gospel Trail Road, a dirt path leading up to the gorge high above the Chatalaha River, where victims of yellow fever were once brought to die. Shad must pierce the townsfolk’s superstitions and terrible secrets to find out the truth about his sister’s death. But the Blood Dreams he’s suffered from since childhood have taken on an eerie urgency, revealing to Shad the nightmarish form of an unseen adversary....

  978-0-553-90154-2 ebook / 978-0-553-58720-3 paperback

  A Choir of Ill Children

  “A wonderfully wacked, disorienting, fully creepy book…The poetic nature of the prose and seriousness of intent carried the day in every scene.” —DEAN KOONTZ

  Since his mother’s disappearance and his father’s suicide, Thomas has cared for his three brothers—conjoined triplets with separate bodies but one shared brain—and the town’s only industry, the Mill. Because of his family’s prominence, Thomas is feared and respected by the superstitious swamp folk. Granny witches cast hexes while Thomas’s childhood sweetheart drifts through his life like a vengeful ghost and his best friend, a reverend suffering from the power of tongues, is overcome with this curse as he tries to warn of impending menace. All Thomas learns is that “the carnival is coming.” Torn by responsibility and rage, Thomas must face his tormented past as well as the mysterious forces surging toward the town he loves and despises.