Appleton might be okay even if Johnny Marinville had highsided his Harley and fucked himself up bigtime, he had looked like the sort of man who could (blazers and rep ties notwithstanding) accept the idea that sometimes things went wrong. Bill Harris, however, had struck Steve as a man who believed in playing Pin the Blame on the Donkey when things went wrong… and jamming that pin as far up the donkey’s ass as it would go.
As the potential donkey, Steve decided what he would really like was a witness—one who had never set eyes on him before today.
“No, I’d like you to ride along. But I have to be straight with you—I don’t know what we’re going to find. There could be blood.”
“I can deal with blood,” she said.
She made no comment about how fast he was going. but when the rental truck hit eighty—five and the frame began to shake, she fastened her shoulder-harness. Steve squeezed the gas-pedal a little harder, and when the truck got up around ninety, the vibration eased. He kept both hands curled around the wheel, though; the wind was kicking up, and at these speeds a good hard gust could swerve you onto the shoulder. Then, if your tires sank in, you were in real trouble.
Flipping-over trouble. The boss would have been even more vulnerable to windshear on his bike, Steve reflected. Maybe that was what had happened.
By now he had told Cynthia the basic facts of his em-ploy: he made reservations, checked routes, vetted sound—systems at the places where the boss was scheduled to speak, stayed out of the way so as not to conflict with the picture the boss was painting—Johnny Marinvil]e, the thinking man’s lone wolf, a politically correct Sam Peck-inpah hero, a writer who hadn’t forgotten how to hang tough and lay cool.
The panel-truck, Steve told her, was empty except for some extra gear and a long wooden ramp, which Johnny could ride up if the weather got too foul to cycle in. Since this was midsummer, that wasn’t very likely, but there was another reason for the ramp as well, and for the tiedowns Steve had installed on the floor of the van before setting out. This one was unspoken by either of them, but both had known it was there from the day they had set out from Westport, Connecticut. Johnny Mar-inville might wake up one morning and simply find him-self unwilling to keep riding the Harley.
Or incapable of it.
“I’ve heard of him,” Cynthia said, “but I never read anything by him. I like Dean Koontz and Danielle Steel, mostly. I just read for pleasure. Nice bike, though. And the guy had great hair. Rock-and-roll hair, you know.”
Steve nodded. He knew. Marinvil]e did, too.
“You really worried about him or just worried about what might happen to you.”
He likely would have resented the question if someone else had asked it, but he sensed no implied criticism in Cynthia’s tone. Only curiosity. “I’m worried about both,” he said.
She nodded. “How far have we come.”
He glanced down at the odometer. “Forty-five miles since I lost him off the phone.”
“But you don’t know exactly where he was calling from.”
“You think he just fucked himself up, or someone else, too.”
He looked over at her, surprised. That the boss might’ve fucked someone else up was exactly what he was afraid of, but he never would have said so out loud if she hadn’t raised the possibility first.
“Somebody else might be involved,” he replied reluc-tantly. “He said something about state cops and town cops. It might’ve been ’don’t call the state cops, call the town cops.’ I couldn’t tell for sure.”
She pointed to his cellular, which was back on the dashboard.
“No way,” he said. “I’m not calling any cops until I see what kind of mess he’s gotten himself into.”
“And I promise that won’t be in my statement, if you promise not to call me cookie anymore.”
He smiled a little, although he didn’t feel much like smiling. “Probably that’s a good idea. You could always say—“—that your phone wouldn’t work anymore,” she fin-ished. “Everybody knows how finicky those things are.”
“You’re okay, Cynthia.”
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
At just under ninety, the miles melted away like spring snowfall. When they were sixty miles west of the point where Steve had lost contact, he began slowing the truck a couple of miles an hour for each mile travelled. No police-cars had passed them in either direction, and he supposed that was good. He said so, and Cynthia shook her head doubtfully.
“It’s weird, is what it is. If there’s been an accident where your boss or maybe someone else got hurt, wouldn’t you think a few cop-cars would’ve gone past us by now. Or an ambulance.”
“Well, if they came from the other way, west—”
“According to my map, the next town that way is Austin, and that’s much farther ahead of us than Ely is behind us. Anything official—anything with sirens is what I mean—should be heading east to west. Catching up with us. Get it.”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“So where are they.”
“I don’t know.”
“Me either.”
“Well, keep looking for… well shit, who knows. Any thing out of the ordinary.”
“I am. Slow down a little more.”
He glanced at his watch and saw it was quarter to six The shadows had drawn long across the desert, but the day was still bright and hot. If Marinville was out there, they would see him.
You bet we will, he thought. He’s going to be sitting at the edge of the road, probably with his head busted and half his pants torn off from when he spilled and rolled And likely making notes on how it felt. Thank God he wears his helmet, at least. If he didn’t—“I see something! Up there!” The girl’s voice was excited but controlled. She was shading her eyes from the westering sun with her left hand and pointing with her right. “See. Could that… aw, shit no. That’s way too big to be a motorcycle. Looks like a motor home.”
“I think this is where he called from, though. Some-where around here, anyway.”
“What makes you think so.”
“He said there was an RV off the road a little farther up—I heard that part quite clearly.
He said he was about a mile east of it, and that’s about where we are now, so—”
“Yeah, don’t say it. I’m looking, I’m looking.”
He slowed the Ryder truck to thirty, then, as they ap proached the RV, to walking pace.
Cynthia had unrolled the passenger window and was halfway out of it, her tank top riding up to reveal the small of her back (the small small of her back, Steve thought) and the ridge of her spine.
“Anything.” he asked her. “At all.”
“Nope. I saw glint, but it was way out on the desert floor—a lot farther than he’da gone if he’d cracked up. Or if the wind pushed him off the road, you know.”
“Probably the sun reflecting off the mica in the rocks.”
“Uh-huh, could have been.”
“Don’t fall out that window, girl.”
“I’m fine,” she said, then winced her eyes shut as the wind, which was becoming steadily more grumpy, threw grit in her face.
“If this is the RV he was talking about, we’re already past where he called from.”
She nodded. “Yeah, but keep going. If there’s some-body home in there, they might have saw him.”
He snorted.” ‘Might have saw him.’ Did you learn that reading Dean Koontz and Danielle Steel.”
She pulled in long enough to give him a haughty look but he thought he saw hurt beneath it. “Sorry,” he said. “I was only teasing.”
“Oh.” she said coolly. “Tell me something, Mr. Big Texas Roadie—have you read anything your boss has written.”
“Well, he gave me a copy of Harper’s with a story of his in it. ‘Heaven-Sent Weather,’ it was called. I read that, sure did. Ever’ word.”
“Did you understand ever’ word.”