So where were all the cops? Sandra didn’t like questions without answers. She had half a mind to just keep driving south, and let this whole business alone.
Well, she could still bird-dog McWhitney. If something seemed weird with him, or if he got nabbed by the cops, she’d be long gone.
There were two gas stations near the turnpike exit he’d be taking. She chose the one in the direction he would go, parked among a few other cars along the side perimeter, and used her hands-free cell to call him in the truck.
“Yeah?”
Of course he wouldn’t say hello like everybody else. Sandra said, “Just wondering how you’re coming along.”
“Fine.”
That was helpful. “About how long, do you figure?”
“You’re impatient for that green, huh?”
“I don’t wanna be doing my hair when you get here.”
That made him laugh, and loosen up a little. “Do your hair tomorrow. I’ll be there in less than an hour.”
“Where are you now?”
“On the Pike, be getting off in five, ten minutes.”
“I’ll be here,” she promised, and broke the connection, and spent the next seven minutes watching traffic come down the ramp and peel away.
If Roy Keenan were still alive, and still her partner, he’d be waiting north of here right now for Sandra to tell him when the van came off the turnpike and what it looked like. Then he’d follow from in front, keeping the van visible in his rearview mirror, so that Sandra could hang well back, ignoring the van as she watched for other interested parties. But Roy was gone and hadn’t as yet been replaced, so she’d do it this way.
Sandra had gotten her private investigator’s license a year after leaving college, and had worked for the first few years mostly on unimportant white-collar criminal matters for a large agency with many business clients. She investigated inside-job thefts at department stores, trade-secret-selling employees, minor frauds, and slippery accounting.
The work, which had at first been interesting, soon became a bore, but she couldn’t find an acceptable alternative until, at a fingerprinting refresher course given by the FBI, she’d met Roy, whose previous woman partner had just left him to get married. “Well, that won’t happen to me,” Sandra assured him.
They became a very good partnership. She kept her private life to herself, and Roy was fine with that. Sometimes they were flush and other times money was tight, but they’d never been scraping the bottom of the barrel until this protracted, expensive, frustrating search for Michael Maurice Harbin, a search that still hadn’t paid off, and the reason she was now waiting for an extremely dangerous felon in a Ford Econoline van.
There. Very good, good choice, a dark green beat-up little van. Holy Redeemer Choir.
She started the Honda, gave the van a chance to roll farther down the road to the north, then started to ease out after him, but abruptly stopped.
She’d almost missed him, dammit, she must be more distracted than she’d thought. Because there he was, in a little nondescript no-color car, just easing into McWhitney’s wake.
What he’d done, this guy, he’d come down the ramp and stopped at the yield sign at the bottom, even though there wasn’t any traffic to yield to. He stayed there almost ten seconds, a long time, until a car did come along the secondary road going in his direction. Then he pulled in behind that car. Sandra knew that maneuver, she’d done it herself a hundred times.
Now she accelerated across the gas station tarmac to the road, so she could get a close-up of the tail as he drove by. Cadaverous guy in black, hunched forward, very intense, very focused.
Sandra did the same thing he’d done, waited for another car to intervene, then joined the cavalcade. Out here there were towns to go through, every one of them with one traffic light. The first time they were all stopped at a light she took a hurried look at her Massachusetts map, then when they started moving again she called McWhitney and said, “You’ve got a tin can on you, you know about that?”
“What? Where are you?”
“Listen to me, Nelson. He’s in a nothing little car, two behind you.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Tall bony guy in black, looks like he’s never had a good meal in his life.”
“That son of a bitch.”
“You know him, I take it. Pal of yours?”
“Not any more.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t worry, Sandra, I’ll get rid of him.”
“Not in that truck,” Sandra told him. “We don’t want any problems with that truck. I’ll deal with it.”
“The dirty bastard.”
“Up ahead, you got Route 518.”
“Yeah?”
“Take the left on 518, the right on 26A, right on 47, it’ll take you back to this road, then just head on up, same as before.”
“And you’ll be up there.”
“I’ll do the cutout, catch up with you later. Here comes 518.”
The traffic light up ahead was green. The van’s turn signal went on, and then the follower. They went off to the left, and Sandra continued north, saying to McWhitney, “You wanna tell me about him?”
“His name is Oscar Sidd, he’s supposed to know about moving money out of the country.”
“You told him what we’ve got.”
“So we’d have some place to take it after.”
“And you just happened to forget to mention your friend Oscar to me.”
“Come on, Sandra. I never thought he’d pull something like this. What does he want, something to fall off the back of the truck?”
“If he forgot to mention to you, Nelson, that he was gonna take a drive up here today, he wants more than a skim, doesn’t he?”
“The bastard. He’s out of his league, if that’s what he’s thinking.”
“He is and it is. If you see me, a little later, don’t slow down.”
“There you go insulting me again.”
“Have a nice ride, Nelson,” she said, and broke the connection.
A few minutes later she was stopped at the red light for the intersection with Route 47. When it turned green, she drove more slowly, looking for a place to roost, and found it at a small wooden town hall on the edge of town, up a rise higher than the road. Saturday afternoon, it was deserted, no cars in the parking lot beside the building. She pulled in there, up the steep driveway to the parking lot beside the town hall, then swung around to face south, opened the passenger window, and waited.
Not quite ten minutes, and here came the van. Well behind it, but with no intervening vehicle this time, came Oscar Sidd in his no-brand jalopy. Sandra popped the glove compartment and took out her licensed Taurus Tracker revolver, chambered for the.17HMR, a punchier cartridge than the .22, in a very accurate handgun.
As the van went by, Sandra leaned over to the right window, curled her left hand onto the bottom of the frame, the side of her right hand holding the Tracker on the back of her left, and popped a bullet into Oscar Sidd’s right front tire.
Very good. The car jerked hard to the right, ran off the shoulder, and slammed into the rise, jolting to a stop. The windshield suddenly starred on the left side, so Mr. Sidd’s head must have met it.
Sandra started the Honda, closed the right window, put the Tracker away, and drove back down to the road. When she went past the other car, its hood was crumpled and steaming, and Mr. Sidd was motionless against the steering wheel.
Redial. “Nelson?”
“What’s happening?”