“No.”
“And you say the boy is dead.”
“Yes, but she took him with her.”
“Took him with her. You mean, put him in the vehicle and drove away?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” She felt defensive. The man looked at her with skeptical eyes. He didn’t think much of a cop who let someone get the jump on her.
His lips tightened into a line. Tess knew what it was like to sit on the other side of the table, knee to knee with a suspect. All the mental games you played to get the upper hand. There was a whole toolbox of them, and she knew all of them. She’d been considered the best interrogator in her department in Albuquerque. And now here she was, feeling that they were halfway humoring her and halfway pegging her as Bonnie to Max Conroy’s Clyde. How’d she lose her phone? Why didn’t the car have a radio? How did she team up with Conroy?
When she’d finished, Glazer nodded. He stared at her, skeptical.
She stared back at him. Stay calm. It helped to know that she’d been in his shoes hundreds of times. She knew the drill. “Are we done here?”
He grunted, stood up, gathered the papers together. “Wait here,” he said.
Forty minutes later, he returned.
“I talked to Sheriff Bonneville. He asserts that everything you said was true.” His distaste was clear. “Bonny’s always been eccentric, but it’s his agency and I guess he runs his ship his own way.”
Underneath, he was saying, It sure isn’t a tight ship.
He added, “We want you to go to the hospital for observation.”
“I don’t plan to do that.”
He shrugged. “Your call. But you’re beat up. You could do yourself some damage.”
“Is one of my people coming?”
“He’s on the way. You can wait in here.”
“Thanks.”
“Soda?”
“No, thanks.”
He ducked out. She had a feeling he was watching her through the one-way mirror.
Let him. All she had to do was wait.
Chapter Thirty-Five
TWO MILES LATER, the truck loomed in Max’s rearview mirror. It roared up behind him and almost connected. He hit the gas and spurted away.
No match, though—and he knew it.
They were quickly coming up on the first hairpin turn. He could not go too fast. And yet the freight train on his tail was moving up, closer and closer. Ready to project him into space.
Doubtful this thing had airbags.
The rain had lessened to a drizzle, but it was almost completely dark.
He kept hitting the gas, gaining a few feet. The truck behind him seemed to have steering problems—he saw it overcorrect a couple of times as they made the hairpin.
Max thought through his options. He tried to remember this road—but he’d only been on it twice. Knew the streets were narrow and one section was one-way. If he could slow it down without getting pushed by the truck, he could jump out and run for one of the houses. But the truck hugged his bumper, and he couldn’t stop.
Max could almost feel the hatred coming at him. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Although it was dark he could see her sitting like a mannequin, high up in the truck. And a smaller figure, strapped into the passenger’s side. The kid? Could it be the kid? Was he dead, or just wounded? He only saw the silhouettes. He heard the truck throttle up, the loud, big engine—and felt the thud as she hit him. Tires screeched—his. He felt the back end slide a little, then catch, and he hit the gas. The truck came up and bumped him again, a glancing blow. He kept his hands steady on the wheel—don’t overcorrect. He’d had training, a lot of training, but most of it flew out the window now. He spurted ahead again, looking through the mist and the rain for an offshoot road, or an empty parking lot, but all the lots were full. The cars must belong to tourists, kept on the mountain by the thunderstorm. He could go left, onto a side street, but by the time he thought it, the street was gone.
“You remember when you were in Brickyard Dreams?”
Max turned his head in the direction of the LeBaron’s passenger seat. Shower Cap was belted in beside him.
Jesus! The woman behind him had the dead boy belted in the car, and he had a goddamn hallucination sitting in his front seat. “What?”
“Rinaldo—remember? You remember Rinaldo Anisetti? He liked Grey Goose vodka and plump women. He and his crew worked with you for a week.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” And suddenly he did know. Anisetti had taught him how to drive an Indy car. They’d worked on turns. Max had learned to hit the brakes hard before the turn, ease off when he hit the curve, and accelerate out of the turn. Something about the wheels. The more the car’s wheels turned, the less you used the steering wheel. The words came back to him: apex, turn-in point, exit. It was his instinct, anyway—he knew about centrifugal force—it came naturally to him. With turns like these, you tried to bend the turn rather than kink it—make as flat an arc from point A to point B to point C as possible.
In a town like this, where turns were tight, it could buy him a few yards. He hoped.
They followed the crooked street past mining shacks and old brick structures, the buildings sweeping by in the night like pickets on a fence, the mist coming off the pavement. The rain had stopped. It was a Saturday night, and the revelers were out in force, wandering down the uneven sidewalks and off high curbs, stepping back in horror as the two vehicles, like coupled rail cars, hurtled past.
He saw another offshoot ahead, just before a hard right-angle turn, and made for it. At the last minute, three people broke from the curb and started across it, and this time Max overcorrected, and he hit the brakes, the tail end fishtailing, the truck behind him hitting him another glancing blow. But the smack in the back fender actually helped him make the corner, and he hit the gas coming out of the turn. He glanced in his rearview and saw the truck stopped in the middle of the road. Saw it back and fill, and start back after him. By that time, he was coming up on another right-angle turn and a stop sign. He rolled through it, looking for a place to hide.
Keep going. He pressed on, cataloging every possible escape, even though he knew he was going too fast. Looking for a garage or another side road or…
As he rounded a curve, he saw a building in the middle of the road. It took him a moment to remember this was the split he’d encountered before—the road was a one-way street to the right of the narrow building, and ran the other way to the left.
Instinctively, he hit the gas and went left. No place to turn in—it was all town buildings close together. A car came at him, horn blaring. He missed it. Some people started to cross, saw him, horror on their faces, and jumped backward, the spray of his passing soaking them.
Shower Cap was banging his arm on the side of the car, the spray and wet air blowing through the open window of the LeBaron at him.
Max made it to the next bend. Turn left. Most people turn right, so you turn left. He did. Flatten the arc. He did, and realized he was now almost out of town. He could find some place to go to ground.
Suddenly, he felt headlights pin him from behind. The woman had come the same way down the wrong-way street. He looked in his rearview mirror and there she was, coming up and coming fast. She’d be up his tailpipe in a minute.
Another tight turn ahead. He barely made it.
He saw her overshoot into a small side street diagonal to the road. She’d have to back up to get turned around.
Max hit the gas, for the first time feeling joy. He felt exhilarated. Free.