Great, his tank must’ve gotten cracked.
He floored it and the car leapt forward.
The truck accelerated to match this burst of speed.
Decker dug in his pocket for his phone. His fingers tapped on the screen.
If he could just call 911...
Then the phone was flung out of his hand when the truck smashed into him again. This sent his car into a sideways spin. He felt like a NASCAR driver who’d had his car’s rear tapped by another at high speed. Fishtailing, totally out of control. It was not a great feeling.
But Decker had been in high-speed chases before as a cop. He knew what to do. He didn’t fight the wheel but rather steered in the direction of the spin to regain control of the car.
He slid sideways down the asphalt, tires smoking, fuel leaking, and Decker fearful that heat from one would ignite the other.
He came to a stop about fifty feet later. He pushed the deployed airbag out of the way and looked out the window.
The monster truck was heading his way, a T-bone impact definitely in the works.
Well, screw that.
Decker pulled his weapon, rolled down the window, took aim, and unloaded his mag first at the radiator, then down to the tires, and finally up to the windshield. Three fractured circles were imprinted on the glass where his bullets hit.
The truck immediately veered off, ran into the grass shoulder, regained traction, shot back onto the road, and limped off, smoke now coming from its engine.
Decker didn’t know if he’d hit the driver or not. He could only hope he had.
He was debating whether to go after the truck, when the smell of gas suddenly strengthened.
He quickly undid his seat belt, bent down and retrieved his phone, kicked open the door, and hustled away from the car. He dialed 911 and told them what had happened, giving his location as best he could. Then he watched with a sickening feeling as a lick of flames emerged at the rear of his ride.
He instantly turned and sprinted away from the car. When the explosion rocked the dark sky, he was flung forward by the concussive blast and drilled face first into the hard shoulder of dirt, grass, and gravel.
And that’s where the cops found him when they showed up later.
“You just can’t keep out of trouble, can you?”
Decker looked groggily up from his hospital bed at Lancaster hovering over him and furiously chewing her gum.
“Did they find the truck?”
She shook her head.
“I think I might have wounded the driver,” said Decker as he touched his forehead and felt the bandage there. “I placed three shots in the windshield right in front of the driver’s seat.”
“State police are checking it all out. Dollars to donuts we’ll be able to find the truck. So who do you think it was?”
Decker sat up a little. “Someone who either followed me to Trammel or picked up the tail after I left Mitzi Gardiner’s house.”
“And how did that go?”
Decker filled her in on his interview.
“You think she was telling the truth?”
“Almost nobody tells the entire truth. They slant facts to make themselves look better or blameless, or both.”
“Sounds like she’s really turned her life around, though,” said Lancaster, a bit wistfully.
“Which means she has a lot to lose potentially,” countered Decker.
“You think she called somebody after you left?”
“I guess you can pull her phone records and check. Although it would be a little obvious if as soon as I leave her somebody tries to kill me. She has to know she’d be on the suspect radar.”
“And with her new, chic life, she might not have ready access to hired killers.”
“They might have just wanted to warn me off, not kill me.”
She looked him over. “I think you need to rethink that. From what I heard, you almost got French-fried in your car.”
“It was close,” conceded Decker. “Any developments on your end?”
“None worth mentioning.”
“Well, this attempt on my life tells us one thing,” said Decker.
“What’s that?”
“It seems that Meryl Hawkins was telling the truth.”
Chapter 20
Talk about coming full circle.
Decker dropped his duffel on the floor of his new digs.
It was the next evening and after a night’s stay in the hospital he had moved into the Residence Inn. This was actually his old room when he’d lived there.
He’d gotten a new rental car after spending considerable time on the phone trying to explain to Hertz exactly what had happened to the other one.
“Someone was trying to kill you?” the customer service rep had said skeptically. “I’ve been doing this a long time and that’s a first for me.”
“Not for me,” Decker had truthfully replied.
He sat in the one chair next to the window and overlooking the street. He popped the cold beer he had brought with him.
That was dinner. Well, really it wasn’t, but after nearly getting blown up the night before, he didn’t have much of an appetite.
He touched his head where the bandage still was. It was another knock up there to add to all the others. How many more could he endure without something major popping?
And he was tired of getting nearly blown up. He’d almost bought it in a similar way back in Baronville. The only good thing to come out of his almost being killed was the fact that someone was afraid of what he would find out. That meant there was a truth out there that needed to be discovered.
And Decker meant to find it.
One floor down was the room where Meryl Hawkins’s life had ended, a bit prematurely.
And violently.
Sipping his beer, Decker walked down to the space. It was still off-limits and stickered with yellow tape, but the officer guarding the door knew Decker and let him pass.
“What happened to you?” the cop asked, eyeing the bandage around the big man’s head.
“When I find out, I’ll let you know.”
Decker closed the door behind him and surveyed the space. Nothing had been touched other than Hawkins’s body being removed. He wondered briefly about the man’s burial, or cremation. Part of him wanted to haul his daughter down here to take care of her father’s remains. Part of him understood why she wanted nothing to do with it.
At the end of the day that was really none of his concern.
He looked at the chair where Hawkins had been sitting. There were traces of blood on it, not from the exit wound since there hadn’t been one. The splatter from the entry wound had been the source.
Pillow, gun, dead guy. No witnesses.
He looked around the rest of the room. It had already been thoroughly searched and nothing else had been found.
They’d gotten the postmortem report on Hawkins but not the tox screen yet. His stomach had been empty. But what was in his bloodstream?
Decker closed his eyes and dialed up his cloud. Hawkins had told him at the cemetery that he was going to take something to help him sleep, after spending a few hours throwing up. There had been no evidence of that in the bathroom, but he might have cleaned it up. But there had also been no sign of meds, either illegal or not.
They’d checked the Dumpster at the rear of the building and found nothing there either. Had whoever killed him taken the meds for some reason? Why would that be? What could they have revealed?
He went back to his room, put his few clothes away, cleaned up, and, suddenly hungry, went in search of dinner.
He chose Suds because it was close and cheap. He sat at the bar and ordered a beer, and a burger and fries with chili. He involuntarily looked over his shoulder once, thinking that Jamison might swoop in and chastise him for the cardiac killer meal plan.