“Dogs rarely bite people for no reason,” the doctor said doubtfully.
“I don’t know what to tell ya,” Beckard said with a shrug. “This one did. I didn’t do a damn thing to it.”
“Uh huh.”
Sonofabitch. I must be losing it. Can’t even convince a tired doctor.
Before the woman could grill him some more, Jones appeared at the open door and leaned in. “He gonna play the piano again, doc?”
“You play the piano?” the doctor asked Beckard.
He shook his head. “He’s just messing around.”
“Hunh,” she said.
“Where’s Harper?” Beckard asked Jones.
“Robbins picked him up a few minutes ago,” the other trooper said.
“He went home?”
“Back to the station.”
Of course he did.
“He’s hot to interrogate the woman,” Jones continued, then made a gun with his finger and “shot” Beckard. “He’s probably really interested in how a 120-pound woman got the jump on you. Hell, we all are.”
“I told you, the crash knocked me out,” Beckard said, but he was already thinking, Harper, you motherfucker. He said to Jones, “Once the doc knits me back up, can you give me a ride back home? I’m exhausted, man.”
“You don’t wanna stay the night?”
“Do I have to?” Beckard asked the doctor.
“You mean you don’t want to stay?” she said, looking surprised.
“Not if I don’t have to.”
“You’re pretty bad off, trooper. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t insist you spend the night.”
“But I don’t have to…”
She shook her head. He had expected more of a fight, but apparently the woman couldn’t care less if he dropped dead soon. That should have made him a bit peeved, but Beckard was instead impressed with her indifference.
“I can’t make you stay,” she said. “You’ll have to sign forms saying that you’re refusing medical treatment.”
“You’re crazy, man,” Jones said from the door.
“Give me the papers to sign,” Beckard said to the doctor.
She shrugged. “Your funeral.”
“Until then, can you at least make sure I don’t bleed to death before I step out of this place?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said.
He grinned. He was really starting to like her. Maybe he could even overlook her height and age…
“Hell of a night, huh?” Jones said when they were back on the highway again. “At least you got to go to Rita’s. I might stop in after work, see if Sarah’s still there. Wanna come and take a second swing at the prize?”
“I think I’m done with Rita’s for a while,” Beckard said.
“Oh, come on, don’t be such a baby,” Jones laughed. “One dog bite and some buckshot, and you’re crying like a little girl.”
“That damn mutt almost took my entire arm off, man.”
“Waaah,” Jones said, mimicking a baby crying.
Beckard smiled. He liked Jones. They had known each other since their cadet days, so he wasn’t really looking forward to doing this. He had his knife, which Jones had given back to him after the hospital, but knives were always tricky. Besides, there was another, better option.
Now sitting in the front passenger seat, Beckard reached over and pulled out Jones’s gun from its holster.
“What the fuck you doing?” Jones said, his eyes widening. He might have grabbed for the gun back if both his hands weren’t on the steering wheel.
“Sorry,” Beckard said, shoving the Glock against Jones’s temple. “Pull over to the shoulder.”
Jones swallowed and did as he was told.
“Turn off the lights,” Beckard said.
Jones did. Not that he really needed to. The highway was always empty this time of the morning. It would be a few more hours before the truckers started coming through in a constant stream. For now, there wasn’t another vehicle in either direction, leaving the headlights of the Crown Vic a lonely pool of bright lights in a sea of black nothing.
It was perfect.
“What are you doing, man?” Jones asked.
The trooper looked genuinely scared, which told Beckard he hadn’t seen the way Beckard’s right hand was shaking. Just the effort of holding the gun up made him wince, every sensitive muscle that the dog’s teeth had torn through earlier rippling mercilessly.
“Out of the car,” Beckard said.
He opened the passenger-side door and climbed out, secretly grimacing when Jones couldn’t see him, and quickly changed the gun to his left hand. Beckard was right-handed like most of the world’s population, and if he had to shoot the cop from long distance — and at this point, long-distance was anything over a foot — he didn’t like his chances.
Jones climbed out of the other side and stared at him across the roof. “What are you doing, Beckard? What the fuck are you doing, man?”
Beckard didn’t answer him. He circled around the hood of the squad car instead before saying, “Assume the position.”
“What?”
“Assume the fucking position!”
Jones did, facing his driver-side door and spreading his legs before putting his arms behind his head.
“Don’t fuck with me!” Beckard shouted. He wasn’t worried about being overheard. They might as well be the only two living souls in the universe, given the emptiness around them at the moment.
Jones reluctantly laced his fingers together. “What now?”
“Sorry, buddy,” Beckard said. “I always liked you.”
“What are you—” Jones started to say, but never finished because Beckard shoved the Glock against the back of trooper’s head and pulled the trigger.
It was hard to miss from that kind of range, even left-handed.
Chapter 17
She didn’t say a word between the time they threw her into the police car, during the long drive to the police station, and when they booked her before eventually putting her into an interrogation room in the back of a long hallway. There, they handcuffed her right wrist to a steel ring at the edge of the table. The room was sparse and there were no recording devices she could see, or even one of those one-way mirrors where someone could watch her from a connected room.
Allie didn’t say anything, because they didn’t ask her anything.
After about five minutes, a female trooper named Tanner finally showed up to check her for injuries. Tanner jotted down notes on a cheap notepad, indicating her bruised side and the dry blood she had forgotten to completely wipe from around her mouth. Allie made sure the trooper saw the additional bruising along her wrists and ankles from the duct tape. She kept waiting for Tanner to ask a question, but the woman never did.
Tanner left twenty minutes later, but not before handcuffing her back to the table. She sat in silence and resumed waiting.
It was cold inside the small room, and very quiet. The building had been mostly empty when they brought her in, which wasn’t surprising, given where she was and the time of day. It wasn’t as if these people saw a lot of crimes in their jurisdiction — at least, not since the Roadside Killer “retired.”
She knew from her trips to the area that law enforcement in the surrounding two counties spent most of their time dealing with highway accidents and writing tickets, and you didn’t need a lot of manpower for that between midnight and early morning. She had counted less than ten people in the entire building, and most of them looked bored. There wasn’t the buzz resulting from the action in the woods that she had expected, which surprised her a bit.
Allie didn’t know when she laid her head down on the table, but she didn’t open her eyes again until the door clicked open and one of the troopers, an older man with blond hair, stepped inside.