Fully Loaded Thrillers - Crouch Blake - Страница 20

Sheriff Hanson tilts his neck, vertebrae cracking, says, “Sir, you’re beginning to make me angry.”

“I’m not trying to make you angry, officer, I just—”

“Sheriff.”

“What?”

“Sheriff, not officer.”

“Look, we’ve had a terrible few hours here, Sheriff, and we’re just—”

The sheriff moves forward, a good four inches on Ron, backing him up against the wall, his breath spiced with cinnamon Altoids.

“You will answer my question.  Did you do the things Carol said you did?”

“You don’t understand, she’s—”

The sheriff pinches Ron’s nose between the nostrils, fingernails digging into the cartilage, tugging him along toward the doors, kicking them open with his right boot, Ron losing his footing, the sheriff shoving him completely across the sidewalk into the foot of snow that has piled up in the empty parking space.

He hears Jessica say, “Don’t you fucking touch me.”

“Then walk.”

She runs over and helps Ron sit up in the snow, his nose burning, both of them glaring at the sheriff who stands under the canopy of the Lone Cone Inn, smoothing the wrinkles out of his parka.

“Take a guess what’ll happen if I see either of you again tonight?”

“You’ll throw us in jail?” Jessica mocks.

“No, I’ll beat the shit out of you.  Both of you.”

Jessica scrambles to her feet and marches over to the sheriff.

“You see this?” she screams, pointing at her bottom lip.

“Yeah, you got a fishhook in your lip.”

“Your little restaurant over there—”

“I don’t give a shit.  You’ve blown through all my good will.  Now I own a blazing hot temper, and you’d do well to get out of my face right now.”

“Please, we just—”

“Right.  Now.”

Ron has rarely seen Jessica ever back down, but something in the sheriff’s tone convinces her to retreat from the sidewalk—maybe the possibility that she might get slapped or worse.

“Let’s go, Ron.”  She bends down, gives him a hand up, and he slides his arm around her waist as they start into the street.

Jessica glances back over her shoulder, yells out, “This isn’t over!  You know that, right?”

“Best keep walking!”

-15-

“How’s the pain, Jess?”

“Bad.”

They trek down the middle of Main in the single set of tire tracks.  Jessica walks ahead of Ron, crying, but he doesn’t dare attempt the distribution of comfort.  He made that mistake the last time she was passed over for partner, and like an injured animal, the fear and sadness instantly metastasized into rage.

“I’m freezing, Ron.”

“I’m thinking.”

“You’re thinking?”

“I’ve been trying, but there’s no cell service in this valley.”

“Right.”

“No place to stay for the—”

“Quit telling me shit I already know.”

“Let’s just get back to the Benz.  I have Lortab in my bag.  We’ll tilt the seats—”

“We’re sleeping in our car now?”

“Baby, when the Lortab hits, you won’t know the difference from that seat and a bed at the Waldorf-Astoria.  We’ll crank the heat, get it warm and toasty inside.”

“Jesus, Ron.”

“It’s the best I can do, Jess.  They’ll probably have the roads plowed when we wake up, and then we’ll get the fuck out of this town.”

They near the end of Main, every building dark, no light but the muted glow of the streetlamps.  A quarter mile ahead, Ron sees the gate lowered across the highway that climbs north out of town toward the pass.

Jessica says, “See that?”

On past the buildings of Main, near the city park, a bonfire shoots ribbons of flame into the sky.

They improve their pace, Ron noting a jolt of hope, thinking this could be a party of some sort, attended by people who might help them, but as he opens his mouth to suggest this to Jessica, she shrieks and starts running toward the flames.

-16-

Speechless, they stand thirty feet back, the Italian leather seats charred beyond any hope of salvation, the glass blown out, flames licking through the windows, the dashboard boiling, the scorching tires pouring black smoke up into the falling snow.  Ron’s face tingles in the warmth, and it occurs to him that frostbite might be an appropriate concern.

“Why are they doing this to us?” Jessica asks.

“I don’t know.”

And he realizes that his wife doesn’t sound angry anymore, just confused and scared, and for the first time he feels it, too—not annoyance or frustration, but real tangible fear.

He puts his hands on her shoulders, and she lets them stay for a moment, then turns and faces him, the firelight refracting off the tears in her eyes.

“Hold me.”

As he embraces her, the lamps up and down Main wink out, and the drink machines at the visitors’ center across the street go dark and quit humming, and an oppressive silence blankets the town, nothing beyond the whisper of snow collecting on their jackets and the quiet hisses and exhalations from the burning Benz.

“Something’s happening,” she says.  “Isn’t it?”

“It’s probably from the storm.”

“Do you really believe that, Ron?”

-17-

They walk up a side street lined with quaint Victorians buried under loads of powder, not a light in operation as far as they can see.

Ron opens the gate of a picket fence, and they trudge through snow to the front porch.

“What are you gonna say?” Jessica whispers.

“Tell them the truth.  We need help.”

He grasps the brass knocker, raps it three times against the door.

A moment passes.

No one comes.

“Let’s try another house,” Ron says.

They try five more on that street, three on the next one over, but despite the vehicles in the driveways, proximate tracks in the snow, and other signs of habitation, every house they approach stands vacant.

-18-

Ron’s watch beeps 11:00 p.m. as they come to the corner of Main and 12th, he and Jessica both shivering, the snow still dumping, and little to see but the impression of buildings and storefronts with the streetlamps out.

“We’re gonna die if we stay out here,” Jessica says, her teeth chattering.

Ron looks up and down the street, well over a foot of snow now on the pavement, the tire tracks completely covered, just a smooth sheet of snow across the road, the sidewalks, everything.

“Ron?”

A block down, on the outskirts of perception, he thinks he sees movement—figures draped in white.

“Ron!  I’m freezing to death standing—”

“I have an idea.”

They cross the street and start south down the sidewalk.

“I can’t feel my feet, Ron.”

“Then you’re lucky.  Mine are burning.”

Four blocks up, they cross 8th, and Ron stops under a canopy with “Out There Outfitters” in block letters stitched into the facade of the canvas, the snow having blown against the cloth, covered most of the words.

“Why are we here?” Jessica asks.

“If we don’t get out of the elements, we’re going to die.  I figure it’s better to break into a commercial space than a private residence, right, counselor?”

She stares at him like he’s lost his mind.

“Honey, you got a better idea?”

“No.”

“Then keep a lookout and pray this place doesn’t have an alarm.”

Ron lifts the chrome, cylindrical trashcan topped with a little cigarette butt-filled sand pit over his shoulder and runs at the storefront glass.  The first strike sends a hard recoil back through the trashcan, which flies out of Ron’s grasp and smashes into the snowblown sidewalk, the glass still intact, unblemished.  He lifts the trashcan and goes at it again, the next impact causing crystalline-shaped fractures to spread like a virus through the tall window.  This time, Ron steps back and hurls the twenty-pound trashcan at the cracking glass.