Melvin followed the road as it skirted the mountain and dropped toward the town. He came up on County Line Road, stunned to find it way out here, and turned the car onto it, due south. When he saw Ernest’s gas station up ahead, it surprised him. He was closer to Mammoth View than he thought. Closer than he wanted to be. The lighted sign on top of the pole—“Gas Cigarettes”—shimmied in and out, on the verge of going dark for good. He tried to remember if the gas can in the trunk was full. They were going to drive all night and he didn’t want to stop. Why give someone a chance to get a good look at them? He pulled in and rolled up to the pump. He could trust Ernest to keep quiet, he thought. Ernest had spent time in prison for assault. The old guy didn’t think much of the sheriff. Turning the car off, Melvin looked down the road. With the light fading, he couldn’t see far.
A splash of water made him jump in his seat. A rubber blade swooped down, cutting away the liquid. Melvin blinked, peered harder out the windshield. Ernest’s gaunt, leathery face heaved into view. The man looked like a skeleton. For the past year, Ernest’s son-in-law had been filling in for him on the weekends. It was supposed to be for only a few weeks while Ernest recovered from some kind of ailment. But Ernest had come back from the hospital a different man, a toothpick wearing a hat, and so his son-in-law kept working weekends. There’d been days when Melvin had pulled in—Mondays, Tuesdays—and found the place closed. You couldn’t expect an ex-con to have much of a work ethic, Melvin thought.
“Evenin’, Melvin,” Ernest said, appearing at the open driver’s side window. He leaned down further, squinted past Melvin. “Evenin’, Gordon.”
“Evening,” Melvin said, trying to sound normal. “Ten bucks’ worth, all right?” He held out a bill.
Ernest took the money and stuffed it into a pocket. He popped the lid off the gas tank, stuck the nozzle into the hole, and slung the pump’s crank down. He leaned a hand against the pump, watched the numbers turn on the dial.
Melvin looked out at the empty road some more, trying to make himself see something. He listened to Gordon picking at a scab on his palm. He turned, looked back at Ernest. “What do you hear, Ernest? Anything?”
The old man shrugged. He paused, counting off the dial, and slammed the lever back into place. “People scared,” he said, screwing the cap back onto the tank.
“About what?”
Ernest shrugged again. “The boogie man.”
“Guess it’s been a busy day, right?”
“Shit.” Ernest leaned on the window. He wiped at his nose and inspected the back of his hand. Unsatisfied with what he found there, he hawked like a pro and let loose a stream of yellow mucus onto the ground. “Since they blocked off the byway up there, it’s been deader than Abe Lincoln.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“The interchange. Right up there. It’s the sheriff’s doing.”
Melvin felt his stomach give way. He gripped the steering wheel. He realized he hadn’t seen any other cars since he’d pulled onto County Line. “What for?” he asked.
Ernest shrugged once again. “Like I said, people scared. Doesn’t matter what about.” The man strode away, disappeared inside the building.
Melvin wondered if he was giving Ernest too much credit. Why wouldn’t the old man tell the sheriff he’d seen him and Gordon? Because he was an ex-con? A man of principle? It would be much better to know for sure he wouldn’t talk. Ernest was a frail old bugger. He could snap the man’s neck without breaking a sweat. He could blow on him and he’d fall over. Angry with himself, angry about what he had to do, Melvin threw open the car door and climbed out.
“Where you going?” Gordon asked.
“Shut up. Stay here. If the sheriff—or anyone—comes along, you hit the horn. Got it?”
Gordon nodded.
“You hear me?”
“Yeah, blow the horn.”
Melvin walked into the building. He kept his head down, as if hoping Ernest wouldn’t recognize him. Sure enough, the old man didn’t seem to notice. He was behind the cash register, sitting on a stool and reading a magazine.
Melvin put his hand on the stack of the Bakersfield Californian. The morning edition, he noticed. The evening paper was probably sitting on an idling truck on the interchange, the driver wondering why traffic wasn’t moving. Next to the Californian rack was one for the weekly Tehachapi News. “Water levels at record lows,” the newspaper said across the front page. Melvin looked at his fingers, the tips now smudged with newsprint. He put his fingers in his mouth, sucked them clean. He stepped over to the counter.
Ernest still hadn’t looked up. He was engrossed in that magazine. Must be a titty rag, Melvin thought. The old man’s cheeks looked like they’d been carved by the wind for a thousand years. Ernest held the magazine in his right hand, and, with the left, tapped out a mindless tune on the counter. The fingers were like a spider’s legs. Melvin figured he could take those spider fingers in his own hand, squeeze hard and bend them back. Ernest wouldn’t be able to do nothing but scream. He’d go down on a knee, and he’d be at Melvin’s mercy. Melvin could grab something with the other hand—this glass bowl filled with Dubble Bubble gumballs—and smash it into Ernest’s head. How hard would he have to hit him so that he wouldn’t remember seeing him and Gordon at all? He figured three or four whacks would do it.
Ernest looked up, let the magazine drop against his chest. Jesus, Melvin thought, the man was reading Fortune.
“What can I do you?” Ernest said.
“You can open the goddamn cash register,” Melvin said. He had to make it look like a robbery. If it was a robbery, anybody could have done it.
The right side of Ernest’s mouth ticked upward. One of the wisps of his thin white hair fluttered on the top of his head. “You robbing me, Melvin?”
Melvin was suddenly furious. He’d been getting his gas here for years, and all this time Ernest thought he was a common criminal.
Ernest’s eyes flicked at him. His spider hand didn’t move toward the cash register; it just stayed right there on the counter.
“Jesus, Ernest, you son of a bitch. I just want some gum, all right? That okay with you?” He snatched a gumball off the top of the pile and slapped it down on the counter.
Ernest’s hand still didn’t move. His little gruel-like eyes had latched onto Melvin’s and wouldn’t let go. Melvin, flustered, pulled out his money clip and threw a dollar bill down on the counter. He grabbed up his gumball and turned away, away from those judging eyes. “Keep the change,” he said.
“Much obliged,” he heard Ernest say as the door slammed shut. Melvin started the car and pulled away from the pumps.
“What’re you talking to Ernest about?” Gordon asked.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” Melvin unwrapped the gumball and popped it into his mouth. He gunned the motor, turned the car onto the road and headed back the way they had come.
Chapter Twenty-One
Tori spotted the car below them. She watched it swing out of a turn and straighten itself out on the ribbon of black tar. Relief rolled through her. She’d had enough of walking. She was sure she had sunburn on her nose and neck. She wanted a roof over her head; she wanted to loll back on a plush seat. King stepped beside her. He followed Tori’s gaze until he noticed the marble-sized object heading up the mountain. A moment later the sound of the vehicle’s engine—revving wildly, followed by the lull of the gear change—reached them. It sounded like a faraway woodpecker banging itself into a tree. Tori and King watched it together, watched it slowly grow into a real thing as it twisted up the mountain.
As the car made the turn to come level with them, Tori raised her right arm high over her head and waved. Pressure gathered behind her eyes; her sinuses popped. She was going to cry. This time they would be tears of joy. King grabbed her wrist and pulled her arm down to her side.
“What
?” she said.
“That’s them.”
“Who?”
“The Johnsons. The guys you saw in town. That’s their car.”
Holding onto Tori’s wrist, King jumped onto the shoulder of the road, wrenching Tori’s arm. “Oww!” she yelped, but he kept pulling at her. King looked over the side of the mountain, searching for an opening that didn’t involve a sheer drop. He began to run, letting go of Tori only when he was sure she was running, too.
The sound of the engine rose behind them like a teakettle coming to boil. King leapt for the trees as the engine roared in his ears. Tori stumbled, crashing to the thin strip of dirt between the asphalt and the edge of the mountain. The vehicle screamed to a stop, leaving a long, wavy set of skid marks in its wake. Tori felt the burn on her knees and along her wrists and forearms. She tried to turn over but someone grabbed her in a half-nelson. She was lifted up like a bundle of laundry and dumped onto the floor of the car’s backseat. Her abductor crashed on top of her. He pushed a heavy, strong hand on her neck. Realizing what was happening, she screamed in panic, but the hand pushed harder on her neck, stifling her.
The Eldorado’s tires squealed again. Tori felt the car swoop into another turn, as if it were on tracks. She tried to kick her legs, but, with her face pushed down to the floor, she couldn’t manage it. The hand stayed on the back of her head. The pressure of it sent sparkles to her eyes. She thought she could make out shapes. Could her kidnapper send messages through his hand straight into her brain, like Mr. Spock?
“Where we going to take her?” the hand told her brain.
“You’re not going to touch that girl.” Another voice, not from her brain. Probably from the front seat.
“She’s for you?”
“She’s leverage!”
“What do you mean?”
“The pigs are after us, Gordo. How easy do you think it’s going to be to get away? When you have a hostage, the authorities will give you whatever you want. Food. Money. Clothes. We can be like that Army deserter who hijacked the jet airplane. They gave him a hundred thousand dollars and flew him to Algeria.”
“Where’s Algeria?”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re going to Mexico.”
“I don’t want to go to Mexico.”
“Well, you’re going. When we’re there, we can hire someone—a private dick—to clear our names.”
“So why can’t we do anything with her?”
“We just can’t. Not while we’re still in the country.”
“You don’t make any sense, Melvin.”
“You’re going to have to trust me, dammit.”
Tori slammed into the back of the driver’s seat. Her bottom teeth caught on the seat fabric and tore it as she flipped onto her back. She hacked and spit, thrashing. The hand had lifted off her head, and a body—a silhouette—appeared over her, suspended there, before flying away like a humming bird, back the way it came. She felt the sensation of turning, twisting. She was thrust upward—she could do a handstand with almost no effort, but she missed the chance because she immediately crashed down again onto her back. Sound finally arrived: metal scraping against metal, something or someone groaning. Her head banged into the door, and she realized she was about to die.
______
The stream moved with surprising force. At first Hicks thought he could jump from one rock to the next, but that dream lasted but two hops. His right boot slipped, dropping him thigh-deep into the drink. The cold water seized him; the entire lower half of his body immediately started to tingle as the water sluiced around him. He felt his boots fill with water. For a moment he thought he was going to fall to his knees, go all the way under. Lloyd grabbed him by the arm, but the lieutenant’s foot slipped as well. Screw it, they decided. They’d driven for half an hour and walked for another twenty minutes or so. In for a penny, in for a pound. They held the rifles against their chests and waded across the stream, hoping the day’s warmth would be enough to hold off anything more serious than the shivers. Once they were on the other side, they could see the lake through an opening in the trees. It wasn’t much, placid and without ambition, barely a lake at all, which might have been why deer and birds congregated there to drink and ponder their fate. The breeze played upon the lake’s surface, causing intricate ripples and shimmies. It was hypnotizing.
“You know where this cabin is?” Lloyd asked. “We really want to be back at the car by dark.”
Hicks had come out here with Sheriff Davis the last time they were looking for the Johnsons, when Gordon had assaulted the girl skier. They’d knocked on the cabin door and called out loudly for at least a full minute before deciding to go in. When they pushed the door open, light flooded the shack like an evangelical’s vision. Gordon was sitting on the floor in the far corner. “I didn’t do nothing,” he said when the sheriff’s stern voice made him look up.
Hicks pointed to the northern end of the lake. “It’s back in there,” he said. A dense, seemingly endless wave of pines overtook the landscape beyond the water. No wonder this was prime hunting ground.
“What do you think? About twenty to get there?” Lloyd asked. “If we hustle?” He looked at his watch. It’d be dark in an hour. They’d planned on being there by now.
“Sounds about right.”
They set off along the side of the lake, but even out in the open they found they weren’t able to pick up their pace. Hicks’s legs felt like they’d been filled with sand. He choked on the humidity. They’d managed to keep their torsos out of the stream, but now their shirts were just as soaked as their pants. Sweat spread across Hicks’s chest like paste. It was going to take them longer than twenty minutes. A lot longer. Looking up, he blinked at the surroundings. The natural world seemed exhausted too, unhappy to have visitors. Plants drooped. The ground covering wheezed under their feet like flagellants. The color of the sky had taken on an ominous tint. This all could be a matter of perception, Hicks thought. He was tired. It had been a long, tiring, upsetting day. They were heading into the lair of armed suspects, where they didn’t know the landscape and might not have the element of surprise.
Hicks had never been a fan of the Great Outdoors. He couldn’t recall ever being impressed by a mountain vista or moved by a babbling brook. The Fresno area was brutal, nondescript scrubland, but in all his years there he’d never given it two thoughts, never wished for prettier scenery. He just didn’t care about nature. He’d always wanted to be a big-city cop, walking the mean streets—the mean, paved streets. Fresno was supposed to be a steppingstone to L.A. or San Francisco or Oakland for him. He paused to catch his breath. He turned around and found where the stream bubbled into the lake.
On the far side of the water the land rose abruptly into a massive, curving mesa. The sides were jagged and angled, the top as flat as a stovepipe hat. The size of the mesa surprised him, and he stretched his neck backward to get a better look. The only sounds beyond their breathing were the birds, offering a repeating call and response in the trees overhead, and the occasional clicks and clacks of the forest—animals stepping on twigs and pine needles just like them, Hicks assumed. They needed to stay by the lake to avoid getting lost, but being in the open was taking too much out of them. They moved to the treeline. Now that he was in the shade, Hicks was able to breathe deeply and focus his vision again. He immediately spotted a wooden marker poking out of the water at the edge. Next to it sat a wide, three-seat canoe, the paddles hooked into their rings. “I remember the canoe,” Hicks said. “I know exactly where we are.”
The evening had begun to settle in by the time Hicks finally found the cabin; it popped in front of him like a goblin, giving him a start. He and Lloyd shined their flashlights against the building—it was a simple weatherboard structure. Realizing this was indeed it, they hastily clicked off the beams, put them away, and pulled their rifles off their shoulders. Doubled forward, they eased up to
the south-facing side and listened. Nothing. Hicks duck-walked around the corner and found the door. He motioned for Lloyd to stay put, then crouched. “Hello?” he called out. “Anybody in there?”
The cabin leaned but had an air of permanence about it. Hicks stood, pressed his back against the side of the cabin, and reached out for the door handle. It creaked in his hand: there was no lock. He turned the handle and pushed. It swung inward with a slow moan. Hicks inched toward the doorframe and peered inside. Empty. He stepped in, looked around. Lloyd joined him a moment later. Two empty cans of Campbell’s chicken-noodle soup lay on the floor. Hicks picked one up and held it to his nose; the pungent, pleasing smell made his eyes water. He looked at Lloyd. “I guess they heard us coming,” he said.
“You think so?”
“Yeah. They were just here.”
The chief and his lieutenant blundered back the way they came. The Johnsons could have headed further up into the mountain, but that seemed unlikely. It was too easy to get lost and freeze to death in the night. The brothers knew these woods, they hunted and fished up here, but neither of them was Grizzly Adams. Hicks and Lloyd reached the lake and dropped down under the cover of a stand of trees. The heat of the day had disappeared all at once, and Hicks found himself shuddering. Lloyd crouched beside him.
“What do you think?” Lloyd said.
“There’s only the one road out.”
“They could be lying in wait for us somewhere.”
“Could be. But they can only delay the inevitable out here. The car’s their only real chance for escape. They might guess that the highway and County Line have blocks, so that narrows their choices.”
Lloyd nodded and rose. Hicks headed out behind him, but he stopped after just half a dozen steps.
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