The Woman Who Stopped Traffic (24 page)

CHAPTER 31

The dam burst, the memories flooding in, the questions and doubts swirling as if in some roiling dark whirlpool. That Spring Break of 1996, spent like a skiptracer from detective stories of old
– tracing the man who’d skipped out on his obligations, his debts falling due.

Paris: where she met his old colleagues at
Le Monde
, and even a representative of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire – France’s equivalent of the FBI. She heard again how Henri Chevalier had spent the late ‘80s as a correspondent for the former soviet satellite states, reporting on what was revealed there as the iron curtain parted. He’d been one of the first to investigate the dark side of economic liberalization. In a seminal, award-winning article, he’d exposed how
Amid New Political and Economic Freedoms, Sexual Slavery Returns to Young Women of the East…

She heard too how he’d come to focus on Hungary, spending more and more time there, to the cost of his marriage. And so that Spring Break of ’96 got extended, to the cost of Natalie’s own commitments back in Seattle. Like father like daughter. The apple never falling far from the tree. Pick your metaphor. His old friend Sartre was the great existentialist, the great believer in responsibility for our actions, yet somehow Sartre concluded that: ‘
Long before we are born, even before we are conceived, our parents have decided who we will be
.’

Budapest then, that May of ‘96: the grand bridges spanning the Danube, the atmospheric streets of stone apartment buildings predating the communist era: Paris’s sister-city to the east.
What had happened to him out there
?

Had he turned over a wrong rock, been bitten by a snake?

All she could confirm was that he was last seen alive outside the landmark Hotel Gellért, getting into a dark-colored Mercedes, parked a hundred or so yards away. Whether of his free will or coerced, the doorman couldn’t say.

Questions on questions.

Rejoining Pine Glade Way, her phone moved back into range, lighting up with a voicemail and a text.

The voicemail was from Cindy, simply: “Natalie please call me back as soon as you get this.” She sounded pissed, or stressed, or both.

The text was from Star: ‘Something else to tell you please come back’. Natalie’s heart sank. She hesitated, slowed down and called Cindy back on ‘hands free’.

Cindy answered sharply: “Where are you?”

“Near Monterey. I’ve left Star’s but she just texted me. I’ve got to go back again. If it’s about the Glock, I told Adam that I’d –”

“Never mind the Glock. We got the wrong guy. We’re going to make another arrest, right now.”

Natalie almost crashed turning the car around: “
Who
?”

“Natalie, did you know anything about Bill Pulver following a material witness down into Mexico?”

“I didn’t – I mean,
we looked at some CCTV footage together
, and thought it
may
have shown a witness. But no, I had no idea that Pulver had gone to
Mexico
!”

“
Dammit Natalie
! If we’re going to work together, we have to be able to trust each other with important information like this!”

Feeling the sting of her rebuke, she tried again to explain her involvement with Pulver’s investigation. Cindy interrupted her:

“Pulver
skrrrr
tracked the wit down to Ajijic
skrrr
.” It sounded like she was sneezing with the deteriorating phone reception: A
hee
-sic. “
Skrrrr
a town on Lake Chapala, near Guadalajara. Dragged the kid into a local police station and conducted the skrrrrr skr-self. Using a folio of photos, of possible suspects,
skrrrrrrrr
direct hit
skrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
”

“Cindy, I’m losing you. My phone’s moving out of range.”

She pulled over halfway down Star’s driveway. She got out of the vehicle to see if it helped with the reception, but the call dropped.
Damn
. Maybe it would come back in again nearer the water. 

Then she paused among the silver trees. Something was very wrong.

Cindy Bayley flashed up on her phone. She was even more broken, yet louder:

“NAT
skrrr skrrrrrr skrrrrrr
skrrrr skrrrr skr skrrrr skrrrrrr
skrrrr
STAR
skrrrrr skrr skrrrr
DON’T
skr skrr skrrrr skrrrrrrrr
NOT skrrr TEXT!
Skrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…
”

Before she could get back in the car she heard the
crack
of a bullet breaking the sound barrier, the
whack
as it went into wood, followed by a
bang
.

The rifle report rumbled round the empty glade. A goose honked and beat its wings over the water. Her senses were supernaturally alive. The downy hair was up on the nape of her neck. The distant water heaved, sighed indifferently. Wind chimes sounded balefully. She was down on the ground beside the car. As far down as she could get.

Think.

Judging by the fresh, axe-like cut in the tree – and the direction of the report sound – the shooter was someplace the other side of her car.

The
shooter
! Dear God, what was this?

She caught her breath sharp and shallow. Ok, ok. Breathe deep. Breathe! Nice and easy. That’s Ok. It’s OK, it’s OK
–

Think!

Back to those days spent with her mom’s hunting side-of-the family, down in South Carolina –

How far away was the marksman
? From the delay in the report, a few hundred yards. Had he – surely a
he
? – pulled off Pine Glade Way…

Then why hadn’t she seen a car? Other direction maybe
–

The Glock…

The Glock was in its carrying case, in the glove compartment. Very,
very
slowly she felt her way into the cabin of the car. It rocked,
ever so slightly
– then an almighty
BANG!
resounded through it; he or she’d hit the passenger side door.

Jesus Christ.

The sound of the report came earlier and louder than the first time. The shooter was on the move, getting closer.

Probably reloading right now.

Click: glove box open. Snap: case open. Gun: Glock in hand.

She hauled the cold metal slide back between thumb and bent forefinger, pulling the first round up into the chamber, then she crouched back down beside the driver’s doorsill. The Glock suddenly seemed so tiny, so
puny
compared to whatever this person was aiming at her. Even from this range, she could
feel
the intent to extinguish her life, like a palm pressing down on the crown of her head.

Think
.

Oh Lord of Mercy and Love
–

Think!

The phone had jumped right out her hand with that first shot. It was now lying someplace in the bushes nearby. Not a good time to go looking. No service anyway.

The car?

Problem being it offered no protection. If the shooter was up near Pine Glade Way, he or she held elevation gain on her. To drive, she’d need to see out, and to see out… She glanced at the inside passenger door: that last bullet had spread out as it nosed through the inner door skin like some ghastly great pimple in the black vinyl – right below the window. Two inches higher, and it would have been goodnight.

What
did
offer protection?
Tree trunks were too narrow.

Star!

Why hadn’t Star heard the shots? 

There was only silence.

The ground was cold, the seat of her jeans damp. She was trembling, she now realized. Out the corner of her eye, she noticed an edge of movement. A rabbit? Or had she? – noticed anything? The silvery trees stared back at her. Would this person be camouflaged? The trees and brackish background were staring back at her, starting to play tricks on her.

It was late afternoon.
Don’t be out on the path after sundown
, the elves in
MultiQuest
had warned.

She heard a crackling of underbrush, not near, but not so far either – and too loud for a rabbit, or an elf,
or anything other than a human being
.

She had a sense of someone being almost clinically prepared for this encounter.
Did the shooter have night vision
? She imagined the glade as seen in green phosphor, like that ‘embed’ footage from Iraq on the nightly news: the intensified thermal image of her body, already appearing like a ghost –

Was she destined to haunt this glade once dead?

Despite all her attempts to suppress it, she could almost
see
the person in her mind’s eye. Had she pieced together the puzzle of the last few days?
Did she subconsciously already know
? Tumblers clunked obscurely into place. And yet she felt like she didn’t know anything anymore, or any
one
.
Where was Phariance?
She felt a hallucinatory level of fear. That this person could and absolutely would wait it out. Wait for her inevitable mistake. One mistake. That was all they needed.

Risk-situation security assessment: she was going to die!

This just wasn’t fair
!
She hadn’t done anything, yet
! Got fired from her job, failed to get married!
What The Fuck, Lord
! She stamped in tearful frustration, vowing that if she ever lived to survive this situation, she’d do something pretty damn useful with her life.

Tendrils of mist crept up the driveway from the cottage. With the fall in temperature, the evening fog was starting to roll in again.

Somehow it intertwined with a base, primordial anger in her. All of a sudden she was on her feet in a crouching run, the Glock exploding into action. She fired in the direction of the branch-breaking crackle while trying to dart among the trees beside the track without running into any of them;
Bang! Bang! Bang!

Bang!
– the Glock punched back into her hand –
Bang!

Counting off the rounds was a massive comfort, each new one affirming she was still alive. Glock 17 – she had seventeen rounds: six, seven, eight…

She was firing the gun sideways, everything Adam Lau had told her not to do. One disadvantage of this approach, she noted for next time, was that the ejecting copper shell casings flew rather distractingly in front of her face –

–
ten, eleven
–

Twenty-five yards to go, to a low wall, just ahead of the cottage, and now she felt a
–

Whhuuummmpphhhhh

–
as a fierce air current buffeted the back of her head.

Her lungs turned to lead. She slid down behind the wall, an excruciating pain engulfing her lower body.
She’d twisted her ankle. Or broken it? Shit! – no, it was only sprained, thank God.

The
boom of that last bullet hitting the empty horsebox and its report had arrived almost together. She breathed fast. Heart rate very fast, faster than she could ever recall. Alarmingly so. Star’s back door was twenty yards away, not even. The stone wall extended to the side of the cottage. She reckoned it was just tall enough to give cover, depending on how close this person really was.

Branches breaking again under foot: he or she really
was
close,
coming for her now
. She couldn’t wait to look. She crawled behind the wall, by instinct commando-style – as fast as she could with the pain shooting from her ankle, all the way up to her hip, beyond. Suddenly she was there. She was at Star’s door. Reaching up for the handle, already ajar. She rolled inside. Then she stood up, felt her ankle throb and heard herself scream. Star. Lying on her couch, with one arm aloft like she’d fallen asleep at a strange angle. Her right eye fixed Natalie with unswerving gaze. On her right temple, a small red circle. The exit wound joined with her other eye socket; a fir tree-like spatter of blood and other matter ran off into one corner of the room.

Things happened very fast, like in a dream. A car speeding down the track,
smashing
off the side of the Taurus, skidding to a halt broadside, driver’s side opening beside the back door – Cindy Bayley appearing in the doorframe, asking if she was OK:

“No!
I’m really not OK
!” She’d already ‘acquired’ her in the sighting arrangement of the Glock. “What are you doing here?” Taking no chances.
Not one
.