The Cold Spot

by Tom Piccirilli

  He sat up and drummed his fingers along the top of the steering wheel. She was pretty as hell and her body language somehow got to him—how she moved with poise and a solid, confident power. She stood at the outer rim of the streetlamp’s circle of illumination. Why wasn’t she calling it in yet, asking for backup? Probably because she didn’t want to pull anybody off the fire detail where they might be needed.

  Chase noted her full lips, dark eyes, and the short, feathered black hair that framed her valentine-shaped face. It was a haircut he disliked on most women, but somehow it worked on her. He drummed his fingers harder. She had some muscle and meat to her and she jiggled in all the right places beneath her uniform. He couldn’t stop staring.

  When she stood on tiptoe trying to get a look inside the front window, going for her billy club and not her sidearm, he knew he had to move. She was assertive but too optimistic.

  He slid out of the ’Stang without closing the driver’s door, moved silently in a wide arc so he’d come up directly behind her. She was still on tippytoe and he liked the way the shadows edged her curves, the streetlamp casting a soft pale light and the moon throwing off a much more vivid liquid silver, accenting every detail. Then someone inside the shop knocked over a vase or some shit and the noise made her stick the billy club back in her belt and start to draw her .38. Goddamn idiots.

  He sped up. She was sharp and fast enough to sense him while he was still sneaking up on her. He was maybe five feet away when she turned and swung the barrel toward him. He dove at her, his hand flashing out, and after a brief struggle in which she tried to knee him, he managed to wrestle the gun free from her. She elbowed him in the gut and came in again with a right cross to his chin. It rattled his teeth and he saw stars, but once he held her own pistol on her she settled back. They faced each other.

  She controlled her fear. Chase watched as she tightened herself around it, tamping the panic down, and he felt a surge of respect for her. It wasn’t easy to keep calm looking into a gun.

  “You’ve got mean eyes,” she said.

  She should only run into Jonah. “If you think so, then you’ve never really seen anybody with mean eyes.”

  “I think I have.”

  “In this town? Get real.”

  It made him itchy, the way she looked at him, and he hated holding on to the gun. He tossed it from one hand to the other, like it was red-hot.

  “My, but you’re a fast one,” she said.

  “You’ve got some speed yourself, lady.” It was about the finest compliment a driver could pay.

  “You set that hotel fire?”

  “It’s just a smoker, I didn’t want anyone hurt.”

  “People can still be hurt stampeding outta the building. You ever think’a that?”

  He’d always hated the Southern accent until he heard it on her. There was flint in her voice, a lot of heat.

  “Well, I am a bad guy,” he said, reasonably. “Just not too bad.”

  “Stop doing that.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Tossing that hardware. You’re likely to shoot me without even meaning to.”

  Chase almost apologized. He relaxed his hold on the .38 and pointed it down at the sidewalk.

  “There’s somethin’ truly goddamned infuriating about having your own gun aimed at you,” she told him.

  “I imagine there would be. But it’s not really aimed at you.”

  “Too close to shave the difference.” She lifted her chin and stuck her chest out. It was a pretty chin and a damn fine chest. “You gonna pull the trigger?”

  “I thought we might avoid all that.”

  It made her firm up her bottom lip into a sexy but very serious pout. “You could’ve avoided it by refraining from scoring jewelry shops at near 1:00 A.M. in my hometown.” She held her hand out. “You return that to me now and things will swing a lot easier for you, especially when I drag your ass before Judge Kelton in the morning.”

  “Let me ask you,” Chase said, “what kind of antiques and rustic curios is Bookatee likely to have in this rustic curio emporium?”

  She thought about it for a second, moonlight glazing her features. “I believe my cousin Ferdie once bought a stuffed gray squirrel dressed up like Robert E. Lee, with saber pointed skyward, astride his horse Traveler, from this here shop.”

  “Holy Christ, why?”

  “I never asked.”

  A small tug in his chest grew stronger. He stared at her, really trying to reach deep and see what might be inside, what gave her such confidence and strength. But the mercury sheen cast against the side of her face faded as clouds passed by the moon, throwing a veil across her eyes.

  “You’re by far the cutest cop to ever draw down on me,” he said.

  “And you’re just another damn outlaw, though younger than most I’ve seen.”

  Chase grinned. “And how many have you seen?”

  “Including you and Cousin Ferdie, too damn many. But I reckon there might be time for you yet, to do the right thing. So why don’t you try real hard to follow the smarter course?”

  “You’re not much older than me. How’d you become a deputy sheriff so young?”

  “The sheriff is my daddy,” she told him, “but don’t let that fact fool you. I earned my way.”

  He nodded, sure that she had. “What’s your name?”

  That got the pout out again. “Why? You plan on sending me a postcard from Angola?”

  He needn’t have asked. What with the Southern hospitality and all that shit, she wore a name tag beneath her cop badge. Shadow-obscured but still readable.

  Lila Bodeen.

  The klutzes inside the store knocked over something else with a loud ka-klunk. She said, “Not too nimble, your friends.”

  “Not my friends either.”

  “Well then, what’s a good ole boy like you want to boost a shop dedicated to improving the quality of life with curios anyway?”

  “Trust me, I’ve been asking myself that repeatedly.”

  “You’d think a smart fella could have answered by now.”

  She wasn’t going to give an inch, which made him like her even more. “Why aren’t you at the hotel making sure all your traveling soap salesmen are getting out safely?”

  “Somebody’s got to keep an eye on the town. Just in case some less than savorish types might be using smoke to cover illegal actions of one sort or another.”

  A laugh rose from him as he turned her name around and around in his head. He smiled and tried to stamp a sweet expression onto his face.

  She said, “I’m made of flesh and blood, not tinder. Those eyes aren’t going to burn me down.”

  So much for the charm and wit being able to work wonders. He could feel himself moving toward her. She saw him about to take a step. She misread his intentions and almost made a break for it. He held his hands out palms up to show he didn’t mean anything, that he was harmless really, but considering he still had his index finger in the trigger guard of her .38, he figured he wasn’t exactly getting the point across.

  The crew came rushing out carrying a couple of gunny sacks each. Hopefully the loot would be of greater value than stuffed gray squirrels posed in those The-South-Will-Rise-Again stances.

  The three-man string stopped short and stared at Deputy Sheriff Lila Bodeen. They didn’t ask any questions or run for the car or wait for Chase to say anything. They started talking among themselves and quickly decided they wanted to kill her.

  They threw down the sacks while they chattered and Chase took a peek inside. He saw a lot of crap and nothing that might be worth the fifteen grand he’d expected from his share.

  The string stood around arguing, discussing Lila’s murder like she wasn’t there. Saying they should give her a double tap to the back of the head and dispose of her body in the hills near one of the old abandoned stills. The corpse might never be found. Another wanted to tie rocks to her feet and toss her in the river. They considered which rocks might work best a
nd which method they should use to attach them to her feet. Ropes or chains, netting or mesh. They still had some TNT stashed, maybe they should blow her up. One of them wanted to rape her first. Then all of them did. Lila kept her face tight, doing her best to force out any fear.

  Chase sighed and shot all three of the nitwits in the leg.

  It made her jump, which was nice to see. She glanced at him and he was tinder, burning. He stuck the pistol in his belt and disarmed the others while they rolled around in the street yelping and gripping their wounds. Blood pulsed through their fingers. He told them to stop thrashing so much, it would just make them bleed faster. No one listened.

  They didn’t know his real name and even if they ever did run into anybody in prison that might recognize his description or skills, taking out these mooks would probably work in his favor.

  He turned to Lila and said, “Okay, there you go. You just bagged a few more unsavorish types, cracked another gang of regional jewel thieves.”

  “Not all of them,” she said. “There’s still you.”

  “Start with these three. Your Judge Kelton will give you a medal. Town this size, they might even throw you a parade.”

  “My daddy wouldn’t let them. He believes in humility almost as much as he does justice. I want my pistol back.”

  “I hate guns. I’ll leave it and the others on the curb when I pull out.”

  “You’re not taking the boodle?”

  Christ, maybe he really was in love. Boodle. Your heart had to skip at that. “I wouldn’t be able to unload this shit anyway, they’re the ones with the fence.”

  She cocked her head, studying him. He appreciated the way she looked at him, unsure but curious. She moistened her lips and the moon glistened in them. “You’re the damn strangest outlaw I’ve ever run into.”

  He shrugged and backed away down the block. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

  “Stay in my town and you can count on it.”

  Well, all right then. “I might just do that.”

  He dropped the guns in the gutter, got in the ’Stang, and started to pull away from the curb. Before he could put the pedal down she was running for her cruiser, leaving the three geniuses still rolling in the road and clutching their legs. He thought it might be fun to get into a high-speed pursuit around here. He figured he could out-drive her easily, but she’d know these roads better. It would even it up, make things a little more interesting.

  But no, that wasn’t it, she was going for the shotgun in the trunk of the car. Jesus Christ. He watched her pull it free and cock it once as he went speeding by. It made him grin and he thought she was smiling too, a second before she blew out his back window.

  That was the beginning.

  Stealing different cars and following her around as best he could without being spotted, he watched her for two weeks. She was keen as hell and seemed to know he was out there keeping an eye on her. Always checking her rearview and making crazy U-turns, suspecting a tail and hoping to shake him out of the shadows.

  There wasn’t much to his mustache but he let it grow and eventually dyed it. It made him look like Fu Manchu planning to take down all of Western culture. He wore a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses he picked up at Bookatee’s Emporium.

  The minute he stepped into the shithole store filled with Southern kitsch items—these people had a thing about stuffed animals, a shellacked bullfrog, the hell was up with this part of the country?—he was filled with a new sense of pride for having shot the crew for choosing this place to knock over.

  There were maybe fifty Jeb Stuart statues and Dixie flags hanging from the rafters. Guns, Bowie knives, plenty of Civil War pistols and cutlasses in the cases. The antique jewelry was right back on display. Some of it looked fairly impressive. He paid three bucks for the sunglasses, put them on, and thought for maybe the hundredth time, What am I doing?

  Tuesday was her day off. She went out to a matinee with a chunky friend of hers, poofy frizzy hair out to here, bad skin, the two of them heading down to the Piper Cub Movie Theater. It doubled as a place where country bands played on weekends, folks hopping out of their seats, yee-hawing and dancing in the aisles.

  No chick flicks for Lila, she liked the bang-’em-ups. This one was about terrorists who take a cutiepie ten-year-old girl hostage and she turns out to be some secret government assassin trained since birth. Pretty soon she’s flying a jet at Mach 2.0 and handling a high-powered rifle with laser sighting, icing evil dictators. Chase had seen the trailer on his rented room’s television and thought it looked like it might be a decent way to kill a couple of hours.

  He was staying at a boardinghouse two counties west, almost forty miles away, stealing cars over there just in case Lila’s father was still scouting around for his Mustang. The lady who ran the house was crocked on lightning half the time and never quit listening to Conway Twitty. There was a framed picture of the guy hanging on the wall over Chase’s bed where you usually found Jesus or Elvis. Chase felt a little uncomfortable with Conway looking down over him like that, especially considering the weirdo hair on that fucker.

  A pretty big crowd at the theater for a Tuesday morning, lots of toughs with torn-off sleeves who carried snap knives on their belts. A group of teenage girls clamoring for attention, blouses tied at the midriff, showing off their belly-button rings. He wondered if they went in for Conway too.

  Everybody knew Lila and they cooled their action when she walked by. Her friend was loud and talked a lot on her cell phone while they paid for their tickets.

  Playing with the mustache, the damn thing driving him crazy, Chase hung in close enough to hear the friend’s name—Molly Mae—and tried to think of a way to get her out of there. She was an attention hound, practically shouting into her phone at somebody named Hoyt, telling him to fix the busted axle on Lottie Belle’s—seriously, you can’t mean it, Lottie Belle?—truck or she wasn’t going to make briarberry pie this Saturday. Chase tried to figure out how to use this information to his advantage but came up empty.

  He needn’t have bothered. Turned out she was going to help him. At the candy counter she picked up a Mega-Box of popcorn, three candy bars, and a Jumbo Coke, the thing going forty ounces. She’d have to break for the bathroom by the end of the second reel.

  The little-girl assassin was poking out the eyes of a big bearded guy in a turban when Molly Mae made a beeline up the aisle and disappeared through the door into the lobby.

  Chase’s pulse twisted in his neck, and with death on the screen and maybe a jail term coming up due to this next move, his mind wandered back to a scene of happiness when he was a kid. His mother and father dancing in the living room on New Year’s, their laughter forever alive inside him. Their deaths forever seared into him. A thief never followed his heart, he always planned every move out and had at least three escape routes in place. You scored or you ran. Chase fought the instincts ingrained in him by his grandfather. He understood with a sudden clarity that he was terrified of his own mounting loneliness, for fear he would become even more like Jonah.

  Chase slid next to Lila, easing into Molly Mae’s seat, and put his feet up on the chair in front of him. She’d left some of her candy behind and in the darkness he plucked a few pieces out of the box.

  The little killer chick was crying about her lack of a normal childhood and the government black ops and scientists who’d created her were making speeches about fighting for the American Way. A few moments later she was chopping the main villain in the throat as a nuclear bomb ticked down. Chase kept trying to think of something slick to say and thought maybe he had it now. He opened his mouth.

  Without turning to look at him, Deputy Sheriff Lila Bodeen pressed a snub .32 into his ribs and said, “Now that there is one hell of a disguise, stranger.”

  Okay, now he needed something else to say instead. Nothing was coming, the bomb beeping at ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven—

  “But what do you think of the mustache?�
� he asked.

  “Is it real or is that a rat’s ass glued to your lip?”

  Christ, that was a much better line than anything he could come up with. She was going to trounce him at this. “Only one way to discover the truth. You’ll have to gather the empirical datum on your own.”

  She frowned, the bright light from the screen igniting the furrows in her brow. “You one of them college-educated outlaws?”

  Someone shushed them and they leaned their heads closer together.

  “No,” he whispered. “The fat scientist guy just told the little vicious chick that.”

  Lila nodded and dug the .32 in deeper, and Chase ground his back teeth together. She said, “Do I take it you’ve been struck with a case of conscience and are planning on turning yourself in?”

  “I just wanted to watch the movie.”

  “I admit I was liking it myself. Now the call of justice will interrupt me on my day off.”

  “I regret that,” Chase said. He let out a chuckle, feeling cool but not cold. A nervous tremor worked through him for a lot of reasons besides the fact that an extra foot-pound of pressure from her index finger would blast his spleen over the teenage couple sitting behind him.

  “Be a shame if you had to waste your $3.25 matinee money,” he said. “How about if you turn me in afterward?”

  “You think I won’t?” Lila asked.

  “Let’s find out.”

  It was then that Molly Mae returned from the ladies’ room and said, “Who’s this roughneck that’s been eatin’ my peanut clusters!”

  After gathering up her remaining candy, Molly Mae picked up on the undercurrents, maybe spotted the gleam of the gun in Chase’s ribs, and with a huff that blew more poof into her poofy hair, she moved an aisle down.

  The assassin girl defused the bomb, discovered the whereabouts of her real parents, tried to act like a normal girl but eventually garotted a terrorist in front of her mother’s coffee klatch, and finally decided to go live with the scientists again. Chase and Lila finished watching the film and sat in their seats, nodding as her friends and neighbors walked by, his bruised ribs really starting to kill him, until the theater completely emptied.