by R. E. Donald
Donohue made no move, gave no sign of preparing to resume his flight, just sat sullenly, massaging his temple with his free hand. Hunter stepped slowly around to Pat's window. He crouched down so his head was in the window, his hands harmlessly on the roof. Donohue took the muzzle of the gun from the woman's neck, aimed it directly between Hunter's eyes. Pat sat with her head pressed hard against the headrest, so tense her body was rigid. She closed her eyes.
"If you want me to," Hunter said to Donohue, "I'll help you get out of this mess. I'll take the gun."
The next fifteen seconds were among the longest in Hunter's life. He kept his eyes trained on Donohue's, trying not to look into the neat black hole where death lurked just inches away from his face. The corner of Donohue's mouth lifted, and Hunter ventured a quizzical smile.
Donohue shook his head, snorting softly. "You're right," he said, his mouth contorted in bitterness. "Fuck. It will only get worse. I wish to God I'd never crossed that damned border." With that, he opened his hand and let the gun spin loosely on his index finger. As Hunter reached for it, Donohue flipped it back into position and aimed it again at Hunter's face.
Pat whimpered softly. Hunter let his breath out slowly. Ten seconds passed like hours.
"You know what, man?" said Donohue. "I could've killed you, just like that. You're nuts. You're fuckin' nuts." He let the gun drop again, let it hang from his index finger. "Here," he said, extending his arm. "Take it. Take the fuckin' gun."
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Russell leaned against the trunk of his rental car, watching the Ferndale police Mirandize Donohue and prepare to transport him to the local jail, where he would remain until the official transfer to Russell's custody. Pat Stevens had been guided to the back seat of Hunter Rayne's Chevy, where she had crumpled and cried for a few minutes while the trucker stood beside her looking helpless. Russell now felt the pull of her eyes on him, but kept his head half turned away. He hadn't spoken to her except for a brief test of the wire when he'd first arrived at the tavern. Was she his lover, or a hooker? He didn't know what to say.
The trucker appeared at Russell's elbow. "Say, chief. You're better with the ladies than I am. Maybe you could go over and debrief our volunteer." He nodded over toward Pat. "She's pretty shaken up."
Russell took a deep breath. He couldn't very well hand this off to a civilian, and he couldn't very well ignore someone who had just risked her life to help.
"She asked for you," added Hunter.
"Great," Russell muttered. He ran a hand through his hair, then across his jaw, remembering how scruffy he looked. What the hell. She's just a hooker.
She was watching him as he started over, but when he got to the car her eyes were trained on the broken sunglasses she held in her hand. "Hi," he said. "You were terrific."
She didn't look up, just ventured a wry smile. "That's what they all say."
"I mean it," he said, ignoring his inadvertent double entendre. "That took a lot of guts. I appreciate it." There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. He rubbed his jaw and looked away. "You look like you could use a drink. You want to go back inside while we talk?"
He stood back to let her out of the car, thought better of extending his hand to help her. She stood up, then stumbled. He took hold of her arm to steady her. Her skin was cool.
"Sorry. I'm feeling a little shaky."
He let go of her arm and she hugged herself, as if she were cold. "I can't stop shivering," she said.
Russell appraised her flimsy blouse and the amount of skin it left bare. "It's pretty cool inside with the air conditioning. Maybe we should stay here." He guided her back to the car, and she slid over to make room for him. He sat, but left one foot out on the pavement. Russell took a couple of deep breaths, yawned, then coughed. He wished he hadn't let her get under his skin. He wanted her to apologize for leading him to believe... but what had she led him to believe? Nothing more than that he was a good fuck. That as one night stands go, he was a good one. Instead, he decided to apologize to her, show her it didn't matter. "Look," he said. "I didn't realize you were... uh... this close to the case. It was very unprofessional of me... the other night, I mean. You should have said something."
She said nothing.
"You could have told me!" It burst from him before he knew what he was saying. "You could have told me," he repeated under his breath.
She opened and closed the arm of her sunglasses, making soft clicking sounds. "If I'd told you, you would have looked at me differently." She shivered visibly, and began rubbing her arms.
He snorted softly. "Why would you care, Ruby? I don't imagine you're so hard up for one nighters."
"You see?"
"Big deal, Pat. Big fuckin' deal."
"You're the one who's making a big deal out of it. Look, I liked you, you liked me. We had fun. Is that so wrong?"
"It screwed up a good relationship."
She laughed. "A good relationship? If you'd had a good relationship with your little prima donna, I wouldn't have been there in the first place, would I?" She seemed to be warming up. "Don't lay that on me, cowboy."
He grabbed the door rim with one hand, preparing to get out of the car.
"Men are such hypocrites. Sure, it's okay for you to cruise the bars to pick up a good-looking stranger. It's something you all boast about in the locker room. But let a woman look for a little fun, and she's a whore."
"You are a whore."
"Look, asshole! I'm an escort. I keep men company, go to parties, shows, out on their boats. I've even had guys fly me to Chicago and New Orleans to be their escorts at business conferences. They're rich men, they're busy men, they don't have time to meet women. The money a guy pays helps me dress nice so I can look good on his arm. Who gets hurt?"
"Sure, but you notice they never take you home to meet their mothers."
"I've got a perfectly good mother of my own, thank you."
"Does she know?"
"Go to hell."
After Russell was back in L.A., he thought about what Pat had said in the hotel room. You can't lose what you ain't never had. Maybe she was right, but it didn't make him feel any better. He'd had his guts tied in knots by a whore. Stupidly enough, he wanted to see her again, but he knew he never would.
The hydro towers visible from the I-5 looked like an endless parade of long-legged stick men, and the oblique shafts of evening sun blessed even the worn asphalt with amber light. It was mid-September when Hunter and the Blue Knight fell in behind that familiar rust colored Kenworth on the California interstate and followed it from the Lost Hills turn off to the truck stop in Buttonwillow. As he stepped down from his rig, Sharon Nillson was waiting by the fender, and wrapped her arms around him in a bear hug, almost pulling him off his feet.
"I know you don't like it," she said, tucking a strand of blond hair behind her ear, "but I've been wanting to do that for months. I don't know if we'll ever be able to thank you enough."
He waved her gratitude away. "If it hadn't been me, someone else would've sorted it out."
"I don't believe that for a minute." She raised her voice to be heard above the growling engine of a rig as it passed, gearing up and snorting smoke. "How did you figure out it was the customs guy?"
"I figured it had to have happened somewhere you and Ray had stopped, better yet where your trailer had been opened, and when I started to look at the border as a possible site, the pieces started to fit. I couldn't place it at the time, but I knew I'd heard the voice on one of Greg’s tapes before. There'd been bicycle paint on the trunk of Greg's car, and I knew that Tom Donohue had a bicycle, and he matched the description of the man who'd argued with Greg in the Blackburn the same night you did. He'd also shown up to work with a shiner, which I found kind of suspicious since the witnesses had mentioned a fight in the parking lot that night. I thought it could have been Toad and his biker buddies teaching Tom a lesson. Turned out I was right. Before we set up that sting, I got the police
to show his picture to Pat Stevens, and she identified him."
"You know, if I hadn't been so scared of saying something that would make Ray look guilty, I would've told the police how long we were away from our truck at the border. We opened it up for the Food Safety guy to do an inspection, then we’d both gone our separate ways – me to immigration and Ray over to the customs office – and Greg must’ve seen our truck on his way through the border and come back looking for us, although he knew he was supposed to meet us at the bank in Ferndale. Maybe he wanted to show us how easily he could turn over the those tapes to U.S. immigration. That’s when he saw the customs guy and recognized him and the guy must’ve knocked him out or something.”
Hunter nodded. “In his confession, Tom Donohue said that Greg laughed when he recognized him and said, Jackpot! Greg told him he was going to have to turn over a big piece of the action if he didn’t want his secret to get out. When Greg turned to leave, Tom panicked and got him in a chokehold. Greg passed out, and Tom thought he’d killed him, so he removed all possible identification, then hoisted Greg’s body in the trailer. He was too panicked to check to see if Greg was still alive.”
Sharon picked up the story again. “I couldn't vouch for where Ray was all that time, 'cause I was waiting in the immigration lineup, and Ray didn’t know where I was because he was waiting at the customs brokers office. It wasn't until I talked to Ray about it later that we realized that the customs guy had already locked up our trailer before either of us got back." Sharon shook her head. “But then why would we even suspect that the customs guy had anything to do with Greg? By the way, what about Greg’s car? Why wasn’t it found at the border? And why weren’t the tapes in it – the ones he wanted me to buy off him? Where are they?”
"Tom told the police that after his shift was over, he located Greg's car parked in the customs lot, loaded his bike in the trunk and drove the car to Mount Vernon, then rode home on his bike. He threw Greg's jacket, keys and wallet into the Skagit River on the way home. I assume the tapes were in his jacket pockets. But Greg never intended to give you the only copies, anyway. Unfortunately, he’d copied all of the microcassettes onto regular tapes, and those are the ones I found taped to his speaker."
“Unfortunately?” Sharon sighed and shook her head. "I’d say, fortunately for us. It's sure lucky for Ray and me that you're so smart. C'mon." She grabbed his arm. "Ray's just walkin' the dog, but he'll meet us in the restaurant."
Hunter gently pulled his arm away, scratched his other elbow. "El told me you had good news last week."
"Yeah, sort of. Alora told me they decided not to prosecute. That poor woman who was in my cell, she's still alive, but she's practically a vegetable. I'm really sorry it happened, but I can't let it ruin my life thinking about it." She shook her head. "When you come close to losing everything that's important to you - your freedom, your husband... your dog..." Her eyes crinkled up as she grinned. "… it sure makes you appreciate it all the more. It's like we've been given a second chance at life together, Ray and me. Maybe the trouble we've been through will bring us even closer together, you know?" She sighed. "Some day."
"I'm glad you see it that way. You can't do anything about the past, so put your energy toward the future. File the bad stuff away. Learn what you can from it, then toss it out. Concentrate on the good stuff." He held the door open for her.
"Yeah. I wish I could toss out about ten years of my life." She smiled wanly. "Ray pretends he doesn't feel any different about me, but I know he does. I see it in his eyes when he looks at me. It breaks my heart to have disappointed him."
They found a good table by the window, just being wiped clean by the waitress. "Coffee?" she asked, and Hunter said, "Please". Sharon ordered one for Ray as well.
"Alora told me she's going to Vancouver after Christmas. Did she call you?"
Hunter nodded. "I told her I'd show her around if I'm in town on the same day she is. She'll be staying up at Whistler." He hadn't yet decided whether he would try to arrange his schedule around her visit, or let fate call the shots. He had lots of time to make up his mind.
"Just one day? You should take some time off and go to Whistler at the same time. She's a really nice lady, and she'll be by herself."
"You see, Sharon," he said, leaning forward with his arms crossed on the table top. "It's like this. There's this other woman I'm involved with. I just don't think she'd let me go."
"Oh!" Sharon's eyes lit up. "Tell me more."
"What's to tell? She's big and she's mean and I owe her a bundle of money, and if I don't give her every possible minute of my time, she'll take away my truck," said Hunter, and Sharon laughed.
Ray arrived, sat next to Sharon, and gave her a quick hug. Sharon squeezed his hand and smiled, a little sadly, Hunter thought.
He looked away, out the window at the setting sun glinting off the chrome of a dozen big rigs. He saw hours of aching loneliness during nights on the road, with no shining beacon to aim for in the darkness. He wished it could be different for him, but even in his imagination, he couldn't see himself anything but alone. For now.
The waitress breezed up to the table with a pot of coffee in her hand, and menus tucked under her elbow. "How are you all tonight?" she asked, turning over their coffee cups on the saucers with a clatter.
"Just tickety boo," said Hunter, with a smile. "Just tickety boo."
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It’s been a long road to this first printing of ICE ON THE GRAPEVINE, starting back in 1995 when the plot ideas first started taking shape, through highway drives on the I-5 to check out the Grapevine and several rewrites based on what I learned along the road. As always, I owe my late husband, Jim Donald, for getting me started and providing the inspiration for the character of Hunter Rayne. My father was an amazing supporter from the beginning, and I miss him very much. He passed away in March 2012, but a part of him survives in the character of Hunter’s landlord, Gord Young.
Many thanks to my early readers, among them Californian Marc Mayfield, former long-haul trucker and author of ‘In the Driver’s Seat', who gave a thumbs up to the trucking depictions in my novel. I owe a great debt of gratitude to my sister, Chris, and her extremely talented husband, Steve, for taking time out of their busy schedules to create awesome covers for my novels.
I hope readers will forgive any errors I may have made in geography or description, and keep in mind that I may have taken literary license when I felt the story would be better for it. I’ve done my best to write a novel that mystery fans like myself will enjoy.
A huge thank you to all my readers, especially those who take the time to give me feedback or post reviews. Your enthusiasm for my mysteries gives meaning to how I spend my working days.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
R.E. Donald is the author of the Hunter Rayne highway mystery series. Ruth worked in the transportation industry in various capacities from 1972 until 2001, and draws on her own experiences, as well as those of her late husband, Jim Donald, in creating the characters and situations in her novels.
Ruth attended the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., where she studied languages (Russian, French and German) and creative writing to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree. She currently lives on a small farm in Langley, B.C. She and her partner, a French Canadian cowboy named Gilbert Roy, enjoy their Canadian Horses (Le Cheval Canadien) and other animals.
Also by R.E. Donald in the Hunter Rayne highway mystery series:
Slow Curve on the Coquihalla
Coming in the fall of 2012: Sea to Sky
For information on new releases visit
redonald.com or proudhorsepublishiing.com.
rayscale(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share