Triple Threat (15 page)

“He seems old to be a student.”

A shrug, a glance toward Pellam, as if she was noticing him for the first time. “Maybe one of those perpetual college kids. Doesn’t want to get into the real world. Afraid of making money.”

The Moon Pie was pretty good. He thought about offering her a bite.

But he liked it more than he liked her, despite the glance from her cool, gray eyes.

Pellam eyed a ‘74 Gremlin, painted an iridescent green that existed nowhere in nature. Now, that was a car with personality, whatever else you could say about it. From the tiny engine to the downright weird logo of, yes, a gremlin. He stuck his head inside. It smelled like what 1974 must have smelled like.

Rudy finished the job in jiffy time and even washed the windshield for her, though the water in the pail didn’t leave it much cleaner than before.

She paid him and the big mechanic went on to look over Pellam’s Winnebago. Two flat tires, wrecked bumper, probably front-end work. Maybe the fan. If a bit of paint and fixing some dents was going to cost Ms. Hostility nearly three grand, what the hell was his estimate going to be? At least he had the production company credit card, though that would entail a complicated and thorough explanation to the accounting powers that be—and in the film business those were formidable powers indeed.

Rudy went off to do his ciphering. Pellam expected him to lick his pencil tip before he wrote, but he didn’t.

“Where the hell’s Taylor?” Hannah looked around with some irritation. “I told him to meet me here.”

Pellam decided that with her impatience, edge, and taste for authentic jewelry, in quantity, a poet would not make the cut in a relationship.

Good luck to you, Ed.

“You have Taylor’s number?” Pellam asked.

“No phone. He doesn’t believe in them. One of those.”

He didn’t know exactly what that category was, but he could figure it out. “How big can Gurney be?” Pellam asked.

“Too big,” she said.

She was tough but Pellam had to give her credit for some really good lines.

Rudy came back and, maybe it was Hannah’s presence, but the estimate was just under three Gs. Not terrible. He said okay. Rudy explained he’d call for the parts. They’d be here in the morning. “You’ll need to get a room for the night.”

“I have one.”

“You do.”

“The camper.”

“Oh, right.” The mechanic returned to his shop.

Pellam ate some more Moon Pie and sipped coffee.

She looked around the repair shop office and didn’t see anything to sit on. She started to ask Pellam, “You…?”

But she was interrupted when two law enforcement vehicles, different jurisdictions, to judge from the color, pulled into the lot in front of the station. They parked. Werther got out of the first and was joined by the second car’s occupant, a young Colorado state trooper, in a dark blue shirt, leather jacket and Smokey the Bear hat.

Pellam and Hannah left the shop, stepping into the windy afternoon, and joined them.

“Ms. Billings, Mr. Pellam, this’s Sergeant Lambert from the Colorado State Patrol. He’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

Heads were nodded. No hands shaken.

Lambert wasn’t as young as he seemed, looking into the weathered face up close, though he was still a decade behind Pellam. His dark eyes were still and cautious.

“You were both near Devil’s Playground around 10:30 a.m. today, is that correct?”

“I was,” Pellam said. “Around then.”

Hannah: “Probably, yeah.”

“And the sheriff says you weren’t alone.”

“No, a man was with me. Taylor… Duke was with me.”

“I see. Well, seems a man was murdered about that time near the Playground. On some private land near Lake Lobos.”

“Really,” Hannah said, not particularly interested.

“His name was Jonas Barnes. A commercial real estate developer from Quincy.”

Pellam pitched out the remaining Moon Pie. For some reason it just seemed like a bad idea to eat junk food pastries while being questioned about a homicide. The coffee went, too.

The trooper continued, “He was stabbed to death. We think the killer was surprised. He started to drag him to one of the caves nearby, but somebody showed up nearby and he fled That tells us there was a witness. Either of you happen to see anyone around there then? Parked vehicles? Hikers, fishermen? Anything out of the ordinary?”

Hannah shook her head.

Pellam thought back. “This was in the Devil’s Playground?”

“South of there. The victim was looking over some land he was thinking of buying.”

“Where that spur to the interstate’s gonna go?” This was from Rudy, who’d wandered up, doing more grease rearranging. He nodded a greeting to his brother-in-law.

“That’s the place, yeah,” the trooper offered. Werther said he didn’t know.

“Well, that’s what I heard. Connecting Fourteen to I-Fifty-two.”

Ah, the infamous State Route 14. He looked at Hannah Billings again. Her cool eyes and grim mouth didn’t make her any less attractive. He’d never see her again after today, of course, but he wondered just how married was she? Women like that, that was a natural question. It asked itself.

Hannah said, “I wasn’t in the park. I had a flat about a half mile south. It was near a café.”

“Duncan Schaeffer’s place.”

She looked at the mechanic with a gaze that said, And why the hell would I know who owns it?

The trooper said, “And the fellow who helped you with the flat? The hitchhiker? He might’ve seen more, since he was on foot.”

“Could be,” she offered.

“Where is he now?”

“He was downtown. He’s supposed to meet me. Should’ve been here by now, I’d think.”

The trooper took down their information and said he’d get an update while he waited until Taylor Duke returned. With ramrod-straight posture, he returned to his car, sat down, and began to type onto his computer. Sheriff Werther finished a conversation with Rudy, who headed back to the shop. The sheriff started up the cruiser and headed off.

Pellam spotted a convenience store fifty yards up the dusty road. He could get a frozen dinner to nuke and curl up with a whiskey and a map of southeastern Colorado to find a shooting location for
Paradice.
He’d get something, but he was pissed he’d been denied Devil’s Playground. It was perfect.

Stepping away, Hannah lit another cigarette, having some trouble getting the tobacco lit in the stream of wind. He caught a glimpse of her pale eyes, her dark eyebrows, jeans tight as paint, as the flame flared. She snapped the lighter shut—a silver one, not disposable.

Madam, I’m Adam…

She ambled in his direction, as a fierce gust of wind pushed her starboard a few inches. As she closed in, she hung up. “Don’t get married,” she muttered. “Ever.”

This intelligence about Ed was interesting. So was what she said next. “We go inside?” A nod at the camper.

But when he responded, “You bet we can,” he wasn’t flirting. The damn wind had chilled him to bone.

Once they were in the confined space, Pellam noted immediately that they both smelled of service station—a sweet and ultimately unpleasant astringent smell, courtesy of Rudy and Gurney Auto Service, We Fix All Makes and Models, Foriegn too!! Dump your Oil HERE.

Hannah noticed this as well and smelled her leather sleeve. “Jesus.” She settled into the bench seat behind the tiny kitchenette table. “Kind of homey.”

“I like it.”

Eyeing her beautiful face, to gauge if she was bored by his narrative, he told her about life on the road, what appealed to him. She did seem more or less interested. She rose, went to the cupboard. “Vodka?”

“Whiskey.”

“Headache.” She seemed to pout.

Pellam was amused. Hurrying off into the windy afternoon to buy her vodka was just the sort of thing that the straight guy, the innocent, the mark would do for a femme fatale in a noir movie like
Paradice
. And it was generally a bad decision on all fronts.

Hannah looked him over carefully once more and then sat down on the bed, rather than the banquette. Her head dipped, her eyes locked onto his.

He asked, “Grey Goose or Belvedere?”

Ten minutes later he’d shelled out big bucks for the premium and bought himself an extra fifth of Knob Creek, just to be safe. Two Stouffer’s frozen lasagnas too. They were both for him. He didn’t think Hannah would stay around for dinner.

Don’t get married. Ever.

At first he’d thought that was a warning, not an invitation. But seeing her on the bed he wasn’t so sure.

The wind kept up its insistent buffeting and Pellam walked with his head down, eyes squinted to slits. He’d spent a lot of time in deserts and it seemed to him that the grit in Colorado, Gurney in particular, was the sharpest and most abrasive. Imagination probably.

He lifted his head and oriented himself, then adjusted course. Pellam walked past an abandoned one-story building that had been a video store. There were fewer than there used to be. Talk in the industry was that soon cable TV was going to be offering nearly first-run films on special units that duplicated the clarity of theater screens. You could even watch movies on your computer—not with discs, which were soon going to take over the market from VHS tapes, but through your phone line or however you connected to the Internet. Pellam was skeptical of all this technology and, in any case, he didn’t like it. There was an intimacy about going to a theater to watch a movie. Lights going down, the hush of the crowd, then experiencing the images big and loud and awash with the reactions of everyone else. He couldn’t imagine—

Whatever hit him weighed fifty pounds easy. It shattered the vodka and whiskey and sent Pellam tumbling into the street.

But stuntmen instincts never quite go away. He rolled rather than impacted, diffusing the energy. And in a smooth motion he sprang up, flexing his right hand to see if it was broken—it wasn’t. Two fists and he was ready to fight.

The assailant, however, wasn’t. He was already sprinting away from the attack, through the brush. Pellam couldn’t see him clearly, but he noted that it seemed the man had a backpack on.

Interesting…

Pellam was about to go after him, but glanced toward the camper, about a hundred feet away, and saw the body lying on the ground.

In dark clothing.

Hell, was it Hannah?

He ran forward and stopped fast.

No, it was the State Patrol trooper. He was lying on his back, one leg straight, the other up, knee crooked. His throat had been slit, deep. A lake of blood surrounded his head and neck. His holster was empty. Bootprints led from the body into the woods behind the service station.

Then a man’s voice from nearby: “Help me!”

Pellam spun around. From the repair shop Rudy staggered toward the street. He’d been stabbed or struck on the head and blood cascaded down to his shoulder. He was staring at his hand, covered with the red liquid. “What’s this? What’s this?” He was hysterical.

Pellam ran to the mechanic. The wound wasn’t deep—a blow to the back of the head, it seemed. He eased the man to the ground and found a rag, filthy, but presumably saturated with enough petrochemical substances to render it relatively germ free. He pressed it against the wound.

Hannah?

Pellam ran to the camper and flung the door open.

“Any sign of--?” Hannah’s question skidded to a halt as she looked him over, covered with the aromatic dregs of whiskey and vodka, which glued dust and dirt to his body.

“Jesus. What’s going on?”

Pellam opened the tiny compartment beside the door. He took out his antique Colt .45 Peacemaker, a cowboy gun, and loaded it. Slipped it into his back waistband.

“Trooper’s dead, Rudy’s hurt. Somebody decked me. I think it was your hitchhiker. I couldn’t see for sure but I think so.”

“The poet?”

“Yep.”

“You have a gun? Where’d you get a gun?”

“Wait here.”

Recalling that Taylor would have the trooper’s weapon, he opened the camper door slowly and stepped into the wind.

No shots. And no sign of the man. Where would he have fled to?

He pulled out his cell phone and hit 911.

He got the operator, but five seconds later he was patched through to the sheriff himself.

Pellam didn’t think that was the sort of thing that ever happened in the big city.

Ten minutes later Hannah joined him outside as Werther showed up.

Hannah Billings was not the sort of person who stayed inside when she didn’t want to stay inside, whatever threats awaited.

The sheriff jumped out fast and ran to the trooper first, then saw there was nothing he could do for the man. He went to his brother-in-law, sitting on a bench in front of the service station. After a word or two with the man he returned to Hannah and Pellam. He made a radio call to see about the ambulance and to call in several other state patrol cars.

And then he pulled his weapon out and pointed it toward Pellam. He arrested him for murder.

Pellam blinked. “You’re out of your mind.”

Werther was his typical calm, the statue of reason. “You told me you weren’t where Jonas Barnes was killed this afternoon.”

“Well, I didn’t
know
where he was killed. I told you as best I could.”

“Witness saw you standing over the body.”

Pellam closed his eyes and shook his head. “No. I didn’t
see
a body.”

“And it looked like you were holding a knife. Which is how Barnes died. You started to drag him away into a cave and then you realized somebody was nearby. You ran.”

“Who is this witness?”

“It was anonymous. But he described you to a T.”

Hannah said, “It was Taylor. It had to be.”

Pellam pointed to the ground. “Those footprints! Those’re just what he was wearing. And he attacked me.”

“You say that. I didn’t see it.” He looked to Hannah. “Did you see it?”

She hesitated. “He couldn’t’ve done it.”

“Was he with you?”

Before she spoke Pellam said, “No, I was just coming back from the store up there and I got jumped. Then I found them. Why would I call 911 if I was the guilty party?”