Gumshoe Rock

by Rob Leininger

  “Yup.”

  So we left the Mustang at the curb, circled around, walked home, then drove to Reno Guns & Range in the Toyota and got rid of extra adrenaline after our moment with Dooley by blasting away at human-silhouette targets. Lucy drew dumb-ass gauged ears on them with a Sharpie and went for head shots.

  What a girl.

  * * *

  Ma had called earlier when we were shredding targets at the firing range. I’d told her about Kimmi and Dooley, didn’t mention Robin or Robin’s Binkies, didn’t see any point in that, told her about Dooley in the hallway, voices at the door, that Lucy and I hadn’t learned anything new by following Kimmi. Ma had had nothing interesting to report at that time either.

  She called a second time as we were getting dressed, about to head over to the Green Room for hot toddies. “Volker stayed put so I’m outta here. I’m thinking he’s clean.”

  “We’re headed over to the Green Room, Ma. Want to join us?”

  “Hell, yes. I need a drink.”

  “Really? Just one?”

  She hung up. I get that a lot, not sure why.

  It was dark when Lucy and I left the house. A half-moon was high overhead, no clouds. The night was cool, temperature into the sixties as I locked the front door.

  My back was turned when I heard a strange crackling noise and Lucy let out a little cry. I whipped around and something hit me between the eyes and I went down.

  Out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS with a headache and a possible concussion, which is how I do it when someone tries to take my head off with a sap or a length of pipe. Lights flickered across my vision. Couldn’t make sense of them. Finally, I realized I was seeing double. Maybe triple. Hard to tell. Fuckin’ concussions were going to be the death of me yet. If I had one, it would be the fourth in two years. In my sixteen years with the IRS, I never got a concussion even if I deserved a few. Maybe this career move was to blame?

  About then I became aware that I was in a car. What car? Going where?

  I blinked, trying to corral the multiple images. No go, but blinking made my left eye hurt. A lot. I tried to rub my eye but discovered I couldn’t lift my hands.

  Sonofabitch, I had another plastic tie around my wrists. I’d had to cut one off last year by rubbing it on the sheet metal of a burned-out travel trailer.

  “My uncle’s,” someone said.

  I realized that I’d been hearing voices for a minute or two but hadn’t processed anything that was being said.

  “I still don’t like it,” said another voice. “We should take ’em out in the desert and do ’em there.” Both voices were male.

  “I already got this planned. The place is old, wood siding, wood everything inside. It’ll go up fast. Won’t be anything left of him.” Ramon’s voice.

  “Yeah, but, dude—your uncle’s place? That points a finger at you. Which points at me, kinda. I don’t like that.” Dooley.

  One voice came from in front of me. The other was beside me to my left. It was still night. I couldn’t see much except dim shadows and doubled lights smearing across my vision.

  “Places burn down all the time,” Ramon said.

  “Not by arson. And your uncle’s cabin?”

  “It’s just a summer place. It’s old. And insured. It’s way up in the forest, so it better be.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “How would I? Like I’d ask him, right? Hey, Uncle Wes, is this place insured? Anyway, he’s seventy years old and I haven’t seen him in two years. It’s not like we’re close.”

  “I still think this is fucked, man.”

  “I told you, I got this all worked out. That’s why I got that cordless and those screws. I had sheets of plywood delivered up there a week ago. I used cash, gave ’em a fake name.” Ramon paused, then said, “I’ve been thinking about this, waiting for it. I want him alive when we do it—in a room tied to a chair, place sealed up tight. Fucker’s gonna go screaming in a ball of fire.”

  I was in the back seat, door to my right. I tested my wrists, discovered my arms were on opposite sides of a seat belt around my waist. The plastic tie holding my wrists completed a loop. The shoulder strap was keeping me upright. If I opened the door and jumped out, the seat belt would drag me alongside the car unless the plastic tie gave way. With my luck, it wouldn’t.

  I looked to my left. Oncoming headlights revealed Dooley beside me, Lucy on the other side of him. Her eyes were open. She was conscious, silent. Kimmi was driving, so Ramon had to be in the passenger seat up front.

  I tested my legs, found them tied at the ankles using rope instead of a plastic tie, which might mean they were thinking of making me walk somewhere. I hoped so. If they freed my legs I might try to kick one or both of them to death. Odds are I’d end up taking a bullet, but that sounded a lot better than what Ramon had in store for me.

  I blinked, squinted, and up ahead I saw the gaudy lights of Boomtown, a big hotel-casino seven or eight miles west of the city for people who don’t care for Reno’s ambience and traffic. We were on Interstate 80, headed west.

  “So where the hell is this place?” Dooley asked.

  “Off Dog Valley Road,” Ramon replied. “Nearest house is miles away. You can’t see it from the cabin.”

  Dog Valley. Northwest of Reno. I’d been up there a time or two when a crazy friend was doing a fifty-mile ultramarathon up over Peavine Mountain. It was mostly wilderness, dirt roads maintained by the Forest Service. Access in the winter would be by snowmobile or snow cat.

  We weren’t in Kimmi’s Honda. Best guess, it was a Ford or Chevy, big sedan, big engine, at least ten years old. It had lost that new-car smell. Now the odor was either Dooley or Ramon, and a hint of marijuana, burgers, unwashed socks, and beer.

  Ramon gave Kimmi directions. At Boomtown we got off the interstate, went past the hotel-casino, then took a back road into Verdi, right turn in the middle of town, across a bridge, then onto a dirt road that went up into empty black hills.

  Headlights picked out sagebrush, rocks, scattered trees. We went around a switchback, trees becoming more dense as we went higher, moon faintly illuminating the thickening forest.

  Ramon was probably in no condition to knock anyone out, fight, handle a two-by-four, but he was clearly in charge. Dooley was muscle, not brains. I could thank him for the concussion, if I had one.

  At the house, Lucy had made a sound of pain or surprise, then I’d gone down. I wondered if Kimmi had taken Lucy down. If so, how? One-on-one, I figured Lucy could beat the crap out of Kimmi. I’d heard a faint crackling sound. Best guess, Kimmi had used a stun gun on her. If I got my hands on a stun gun, I would fry these guys until they turned into cabbages.

  We went four or five miles into the hills, then Ramon told Kimmi to turn left off Dog Valley Road onto a bumpy dirt road.

  “Christ, this washboard son of a bitch got a name?” Dooley asked. He didn’t sound happy.

  “Three Butte Trail,” Ramon replied.

  “Weird fuckin’ name.”

  “It’s a Forest Service road most of the way to Wes’s cabin. It forks off half a mile from the cabin and dead-ends two or three miles higher up.”

  “Yeah, great. It still sucks.”

  The trail went south along the side of the hill. It climbed, not steeply, but steadily. We reached a switchback and headed back north, still climbing. Another half mile, past a granite cliff eighty or a hundred feet high, then another mile on a smoother dirt section. Kimmi took the car up to fifty. We reached another switchback, went back south again, still climbing.

  “Where the hell is this place?” Dooley’s voice had a whine in it like an eight-year-old kid.

  “Relax,” Ramon said. Nothing else.

  Relax? Not me. I was twisting my wrists in the dark, trying to lever them apart, break the plastic tie. Not having any luck. But if they were going to get me out of the car, they would have to cut the tie. Or cut the seat belt, which didn’t see
m likely.

  We traveled another half mile, came to another switchback, tight one, went level for a while then sloped down a quarter mile to another switchback, finally ended up at a decrepit-looking cabin surrounded by pine trees, dark, single-story with a metal roof. A covered porch faced east and an empty woodshed stood off to one side.

  Kimmi pulled up close to the cabin and cut the engine.

  “Leave the lights on,” Ramon said. “Get those two outta the car. If that guy’s still out, drag his ass out on the ground.”

  He opened the passenger door with his left hand. The dome light came on and he got out. His right side was still in a body cast. He had a coat on, right sleeve empty and flapping.

  Kimmi got out and opened the rear door, driver’s side. “Get out, bitch.”

  “How about you make me, Chicklet?” Lucy said.

  There was a brief scuffle, then Dooley braced himself and shoved Lucy out, clambered out after her. Her hands were held behind her with a plastic tie. Dooley punched her in the face and Lucy went down, flat on her back.

  I saw red. I wanted to kill him. Get this plastic shit off my wrists and I’d break every bone in his body. Every single bone, including the hammer, stirrup, and anvil in both his ears.

  Lucy sat up, didn’t make a sound. She was a dark shape in the night, tough as a railroad spike. Give her an opening and she’d rip these guys to pieces like a wildcat.

  Dooley came around, opened the door to my right, looked in at me. “He’s awake.”

  Ramon said, “Outta the way.” He pushed Dooley aside then crouched at the open door and stared at me. His left hand held a black automatic with a four-inch barrel. Didn’t look comfortable in his left hand, but it looked nasty. “Dooley’s gonna cut that tie on your wrists,” he said evenly. “I’ll have this gun at that girl’s head. If you want to see brains all over, just try something.” He backed away. Kimmi brought Lucy around to my side of the car, kept her well out of reach. Ramon put the muzzle of the gun against Lucy’s head.

  “Okay,” he said to Dooley. “Cut ’im loose.”

  Dooley opened a wicked-looking knife and stuck it under the plastic tie, ripped upward. My wrists came free. He shut the knife, hauled me out on the ground, and kicked me in the ribs with the toe of a boot. Okay, that hurt.

  “No!” Ramon said sharply. “I want him awake. I want him to feel it when he’s on fire, not some broken fuckin’ ribs.”

  “Fucker about broke my hand,” Dooley said to Ramon by way of explanation. “I owed him one.”

  “Fuck your hand. It ain’t broke. Look what he did to me. Get a tie on his wrists, then untie his feet and stand him up.”

  “Want his hands in front or back?” Dooley asked.

  “In back, dude. What the hell you think? Jesus.”

  Dooley rolled me over, yanked my hands behind me, got another tie around my wrists, pulled it tight, then freed my feet. Ramon kept his gun against Lucy’s head. “Stand up,” he said to me. “Try anything and she’s dead.”

  Awkwardly, I got to my feet. My head still hurt, but my vision had mostly settled down.

  The headlights revealed plywood sheets leaning against the side of the cabin. The place was more shack than cabin, built without logs. Single story, basic two-by-four construction, six hundred square feet, if that. Its outside walls were horizontal planks of weathered wood that hadn’t seen paint in twenty years. If they were going to set the place on fire, it would go up fast.

  I looked over at Lucy. She was staring at me, terrified. Her nose was bleeding. I tried to offer up a smile but knew it didn’t take.

  Finally, Ramon had a chance to get a good look around. He stopped and stared, looking east. “Fuck.”

  “What?” Dooley said.

  Ramon pointed. “That. Out there.”

  Dooley looked out at Verdi, six or seven miles away, lights sparkling in the bowl of the valley where the Truckee River cut through. Interstate 80 was a ribbon of lights snaking between low hills. He made a disgusted sound. “Man, you light this place up, it’ll be reported by two hundred people. We’ll be up to our asses in police and firefighters.”

  Ramon was silent for a while, thinking. “Means we’ll have to get outta here fast after we get it going,” he said at last. “Not too fast though. I want to hear this sucker scream.”

  “Let’s just take ’em out in the desert. Like I said. He can scream there.”

  Ramon didn’t respond. Finally, he said, “No. We’re here. I got this all set up. I want to seriously light this fucker up. Once we get it going, we’ll go back down to Dog Valley Road, then up into the hills. We can go all the way to Truckee. Police and firefighters won’t come in that way.”

  He got a flashlight out of the car. “Cut those lights,” he said to Dooley. “Bring those two along. Grab a few plastic ties too, we’ll need ’em.”

  Dooley cut the headlights. The night avalanched in on us. Dark. It took a moment for my eyes to acclimate enough to see a faint moon glow over the valley to the east, Verdi, the city glow of Reno beyond that. The top six or eight stories of the Golden Goose Casino were visible above low black hills.

  Ramon hit the switch on the flashlight. The car was an old Dodge Charger with dings and scrapes, a bent front bumper, rust damage. Ramon headed for the cabin. Kimmi followed, pushing Lucy ahead of her.

  Dooley grabbed my left arm and forced me to trail along. Against the moonlit sky, I saw a power line arcing downhill into the trees. Ramon felt under the porch and came up with a key. He climbed two steps to the porch and opened the front door, flashlight swinging around, then a light came on and we were in a small living room with a basic kitchen to one side. The room was furnished in Goodwill—a sofa with tufts of stuffing visible through torn upholstery, a pine dining table with flaking varnish, three mismatched wooden chairs around it, an old wood stove that looked antique but might get the job done on a chilly night. A pair of old oval rugs were laid over a dusty wood plank floor. The walls were panels of fake knotty pine. All in all, the place was a tinderbox, ready to go up.

  A tremor went through me. I hoped Lucy wasn’t going to be included in this, but she was here so it was likely we were both about to be burned alive.

  Ramon opened a door in the far wall, went into a room, turned on another light. “Bring ’em in here.”

  It was a bedroom, fourteen by twenty feet with a bathroom to the left. Two doors, one to the living room, the other to the bathroom, and two windows, one in the back wall, one on a side wall that would look out on the car parked outside. The walls had faded into a shade of mold green. Standard drywall, not the knotty pine of the other room. Queen-size bed with a sag in the middle, no headboard. D-Con in the corners for the mice. There was an old dresser with a mirror on the wall above it, a wooden chair that might have come from a forties library, worn rug on the floor, cheap light fixture full of dead bugs in the ceiling. All five of us gathered in the room. Kimmi stared around silently, chewing her gum in an expressionless, bovine way.

  “Get another chair,” Ramon said to Dooley. Dooley left. Ramon aimed the gun at my face and smiled. “We gonna have us some fun now.” The gun looked unnatural in his left hand, but he only had to pull the trigger.

  Dooley returned with a sturdy, paint-spattered oak chair.

  “Put it over there with the other one.” Ramon wagged the gun at the other chair in the room.

  They sat Lucy in one chair, me in the other. Ramon was in charge. He gave orders and Dooley carried them out. With only one arm, Ramon couldn’t do much. He told Dooley to strap my ankles to the legs of the chair and tie a rope around my waist and around the back of the chair.

  Dooley strapped my ankles. As he tied the rope around my waist, I scooted forward a little. When he was done, I could slide back half an inch and the rope would be slightly loose. I didn’t know if I would be able to use that, but anything was better than nothing.

  Dooley put a tie around one of Lucy’s ankles and around a leg of her chair. He pulled it t
ight. Ramon came closer. “Just that one leg,” he said to Dooley. “She’s goin’ with us.”

  He crouched in front of me. “I’m gonna burn you up, dude, not her. No way I’m passing up pussy that sweet.”

  I bounced in my chair, trying to rip loose and kill him, not that it did any good.

  He laughed, still in a crouch. He looked at Lucy. “You’re somethin’ else, girl. I’m gonna make you last a while, maybe a couple of days.”

  He was still in front of me. Lucy was flexible and tough. Ramon should’ve strapped both her legs. She whipped a leg up and kicked him in the face. Too bad she was wearing running shoes. He went over with a grunt, then screamed curses. Dooley charged over and punched Lucy in the face. He pulled his fist back to hit her again.

  “No!” Ramon barked, still on the floor. “I don’t want her hurt, you dumb-ass.” He sat up and stared at her, keeping out of reach. He held his nose. “After I’m done with you, bitch, that’ll cost you. More than you can imagine.”

  Lucy didn’t answer. Dooley had hit her in the mouth. She had blood on her teeth, dribbling over her chin. Her eyes looked wild, savage. I looked at Kimmi. She stared back, then produced a little shrug with her lips. Nothing else moved. Her eyes were like worm holes in rotten wood.

  Ramon staggered to his feet. Having learned a lesson, he had Dooley tie Lucy in the chair, rope around her waist same as me, then he ordered Dooley to haul the furniture out of the room. It didn’t amount to much. Spavined queen bed, dresser, battered night table, a canted coat rack. It all got piled in the living room. Ramon dragged the rug out.

  The room was empty except for the mirror on the wall and the chairs Lucy and I were tied to. Ramon kept the gun on us as Dooley hauled in sheets of plywood. Kimmi got a chair from the other room and sat facing us, six feet away, out of reach of Lucy’s lethal feet. Dooley began to cover windows, using a drill-driver to screw plywood sheets to the window frames.

  “Christ, this is gonna take a while,” he said, again with the whine in his voice. “We really need to do this, man? He’s tied to a chair. He ain’t goin’ nowhere.”