Final Stroke (31 page)

And then of course there was the weird guy who had borrowed her phone. Why, if his friend knew Tony Gianetti Junior, was the van leaving the scene? What about the flat-nosed man who had obviously followed her? When she told Steve about him she was certain he’d not think the accident was a coincidence. But if it wasn’t a coincidence …

No, it had been an accident clear and simple. She had witnessed it. Others had witnessed it. Someone familiar with Tony Gianetti’s gay rights organization had recognized the license plate. Someone who knew Tony Gianetti had used her phone to call someone else and by now perhaps friends and associates from all over the Chicago area were calling one another to deliver news of the fatal accident. Yes, it was an accident. Although the truck driver had driven recklessly, it was still an accident.

The lights from traffic following her were blinding. When she looked in her mirror she could see the shape of the van, and realized the van with the weird guy inside was following her. The van’s brights were on and she tried to imagine the conversation in the van, the weird guy describing his conversation with her.

She glanced down at her phone in its holder and …

Wait! If the friend of Tony Gianetti Junior called someone, the
number would still be stored on her phone. Later, when she had a chance, she could call the number. But maybe it would be better to wait until she was back with Steve. Maybe bouncing everything that happened off him would be best.

As she drove away from the scene, she glanced in her mirror at the frenetic flashes of emergency vehicle lights multiplied a thousand-fold by droplets of rain on the rear window. The van finally dropped back a little but its brights were still on, making it difficult to concentrate on the dark road ahead.

Although she knew it would be pointless to go back to the acci
dent scene, and that she’d be viewed as a crackpot if she did, she de
cided she just might go to the police. Maybe that would be better than dragging Steve into it. And if she saw the flat-nosed man following her again, she’d definitely go to the police. Yes, maybe she’d call Ta
mara and get her advice on what agency to call when an accident just doesn’t seem like an accident. She was tempted to use her cell phone to call Tamara, but decided it would be best to let the phone charge and maybe go see Tamara in person as she had planned earlier. Better to explain face to face to her husband’s ex-lover the circumstances sur
rounding her bungled investigation. The irony of having Tamara as one of her most trusted friends added to the confusion of the night.

She headed south until the northbound backup ended where po
lice were diverting the traffic east on a crossroad. Because there was no reason to continue south into farm country, and because she didn’t want to turn east into the traffic jam of the detour, she turned west.

After turning off the main highway she picked up her phone and flipped it open. When it did not light up she assumed the man who had used it had turned it off. She held it closer to her face so she could find the On button. She would have found the On button and pow ered the phone on but bright lights from behind blinded her again and
she put the phone down.

At first she assumed the headlights turning west onto the two-lane behind her belonged to others trying to go back north and avoid the detour traffic jam heading east. But why follow her if they had been heading south on Route 45 prior to the accident? And why drive with their damn brights on?

On both sides of the road were embryonic housing developments with names referring to hills and lakes she could not see. A few mod
els were completed, but the rest of the land was flat and weed-covered except where it had been torn up to put in utilities. At the entrance to one housing development where the road swerved she could see that two cars and a van were behind her, their headlights glaring in her rearview mirror. They had not turned into the development as she had hoped, and now the land on both sides reverted to farm fields.

Suddenly, the pavement ahead ended, the road west becoming gravel, and the road south paved. There was no road going north so she turned south. The two cars and the van also turned south and now she wished she had gone straight ahead. Of course, if she had done that, and if they had followed her on the gravel road …

Who could blame her for being paranoid? In a single day she’d been followed by a guy who looks like a boxer, then the car she’s fol
lowing is suddenly destroyed. Maybe she should have stayed at the scene, or gone south on 45 until she got to a main road, or voiced her concerns to the policeman back at the accident. Steve always said it was good to ask questions because the process of doing so—even if the answer was, of course it was an accident—often led one to other ques
tions that might not seem so ridiculous.

No more housing developments. Driving south was nothing but farmland, the groupings of farm buildings spaced at least a quarter mile apart. Despite the fact it was still mid-afternoon, she could see
lights on in one of the farmhouses she passed, but the next farmhouse was boarded up. She had assumed the two cars and the van following her knew a short cut. But now, as they came closer, she knew this was not the case. And to make things even worse, it was getting darker and had begun to rain very hard.

Then it happened. Her outside left mirror exploded in white light as one of the cars pulled out to pass. The car’s headlights flashed up into the cold rain ahead as the car bounced repeatedly after hitting a series of chuckholes on the left side of the road. She was going nearly fifty, it was raining like hell, and this idiot in a huge behemoth of a car was passing on a road that was awash with rain and wasn’t even a full two lanes wide!

As the large car caught up she could hear the splash of water from its front tire drumming the rear fender of the Audi. Then, when the car got alongside and the splash from its front tire pummeled the wind
shield so that she could not see, she braked hard so the idiot would get by more quickly. But the driver of the car also braked and, before she could react, the large car veered to the right and hit her front fender and door. The sounds of metal tearing and tires rubbing created an insane rhythm. She thought the car would bounce off, but it stayed with her, steering into her. She tried to turn left but it was useless against the mass of the large car. She was being pushed off the road.

Gravel banging beneath the Audi. Dead weeds laid flat by win
ter snows brushing loudly at the bottom of the Audi. She floored the accelerator and the Audi’s four-wheel-drive carried it up the slight in
cline of the shoulder and back onto the road ahead of the large car. It was a Lincoln or Ford. It was keeping up. When it touched her rear bumper she screamed, floored the Audi again and raced ahead. In her mirror she could see the large car that had hit her was being followed closely by the van and the other car.

It was insane. Minutes earlier she had been in the midst of a crowd, had even talked to a policeman, had even talked to the 911 op
erator, and now she was being chased, the two cars and the van using up the entire road, getting out of one another’s spray. Who were they? A gang of idiots who had seen her at the accident scene? All kinds of characters there like the one who asked for her phone so someone in a van could borrow it. Was the van behind her really the same van? On this dark afternoon colors blended into one another so that the light blue van at the accident scene could be this van that appeared gray in her rearview mirror. How many men were there? Would they rape her, then kill her? And if they did kill her, what would Steve do?

“Goddamn you bastards!” she screamed.

The road went through a series of curves ahead and she took the Audi through the curves as fast as she could. When the road straight
ened she had gained several hundred feet on them. She steered to the center of the road, reached for her phone, made sure the road was straight, then flipped open the phone, found the On button in the glare of headlights, held the On button in. But the phone did not light up.

“Come on, phone! Come on!”

When the phone still did not light up she pressed 911. Nothing. She tried pressing the On button again and again, made sure the char
ger plug was all the way in. The green light on the charger plug was lit but still the phone would not light up.

The three pair of headlights slithering back and forth like reptiles dimmed and brightened because of the bumpy road and the spray from her car. They were getting closer. She was going eighty-five, the Audi hydroplaning when it hit puddles, and they were getting closer!

Even though the phone had not lit up, she kept pushing the On button and putting the phone to her ear. Nothing.

She recalled Steve telling her to go to Wisconsin with Lydia,
recalled the insistent look on his face as he struggled to tell her that she needed a vacation, that she needed to get away.

She kept glancing side to side, hoping she’d see someone at a farm
house staring out at these idiots speeding down the road. Someone, anyone, who would call the police. Or maybe there would be a police
man at a side road. So far, all of the side roads had been gravel, the rain dotting them with puddles. And the lead car was following too closely for her to brake and turn into a farm driveway. By the time she saw a driveway loom up out of the rain and gloom, it was too late to brake. Even if she did manage to turn into a driveway, what then?

As she drove she began sounding the Audi’s horn. If she could attract someone’s attention, wake someone up in the farmhouses she passed … but they wouldn’t be in bed. Although it was dark, it was afternoon. By the time she passed the farmhouses, people inside would shrug and go about their business. And if a farmer were out in the barnyard, he’d probably do the same. Unless …

There was another curve ahead and she sped through it, almost losing control, but managing to hold on and stay ahead of the two cars and the van. Back on straight road she reached between the front seats and into the back seat. She grabbed handful after handful of maga
zines, magazines she had been carrying around for weeks, magazines she took into Hell in the Woods a few at a time to go over with Steve. She would do something. Anything. Maybe a page from a magazine would flatten itself on a windshield and cause one of them to go off the road. Maybe magazines flying out the window would anger a farmer enough to call the police. Maybe she was nuts, but she had to do something.

And so, as she took the Audi up to ninety, steering it toward the centerline of the narrow road to keep the wheels out of the puddles, she pushed the button to lower the passenger window and, with her
right hand, began flinging handful after handful of magazines out the far window.

It worked! Or at least it caused the car behind the van to pull to the side and stop. Now there were only two following. She kept throwing magazines out, reaching into the back seat to get more. But when the road came to a T and she had to slow down, she saw the third car was catching up to the others.

She turned left at the T, hoping this would take her back east to Route 45. She assumed the direction was east, but because of the curves she had gone through she wasn’t sure.

This road was bumpier than the road she’d turned off of. The Audi’s steering wheel, normally firm and steady, became a live snake. She could see, by the way their headlights bounced and the way they steered side to side, that the three behind her were also having trouble with the road. The van had slowed down and now the following car passed it. Then the van slowed more and soon after she passed a gravel road to the left, the van turned down that road. In her mirror she could see its lights as it seemed to drive across the rain-soaked fields.

The road got even bumpier and went through a series of curves bordered by a wooded area. The two following had dropped back. Soon she would be back on Route 45. Soon she would be able to speed back north to where the police diverted traffic around the accident scene. She had stopped throwing magazines out the window and she could feel the wind and rain coming in the passenger window. She was about to raise the window when she saw it.

A sign ahead, double black arrows pointing left and right on a yel low background. Another sign, “Pavement Ends,” loomed up from behind a lone tree at the side of the road. Not knowing what else to do, and thinking in the back of her mind that this would be good evi dence to leave behind after she is raped and killed, she began throwing
magazines out again, flinging them as fast as she could across the seat and out the passenger window. And as she did, she screamed Steve’s name. Then she began crying, especially when she saw the van. It had taken another road and was approaching the T from the left in order to cut her off.

She turned right at the T, just ahead of the van. Left had been gravel, but she had no choice, and now the Audi fishtailed, bogged down, and finally bottomed out in mud that splashed ahead of the tires and came up over the hood so the windshield wipers seemed to be clearing the windshield of black blood. She tried to accelerate, spinning all four tires, but she was stuck in a deep puddle and it was no use.

As the van pulled around her to the left on higher ground, its tires splashed mud onto her driver’s window. The Audi’s engine roared as she tried in vain to escape. Finally, she let off the gas, raised the pas
senger window, made sure the doors were locked, and pressed her hand down on the Audi’s horn.