Elizabeth Lowell - Blue Smoke and Murder

The Escalade sat beside the front door of the gas station. Through the binoculars, he followed Jill as she came out of the station and stood beside the car, sat phone in one hand, BlackBerry in her belly bag. He could hear her end of any conversation.

“Now what,” she said impatiently into her sat phone.

Silence.

“Yes, I’m filling up on gas at a price that makes the paintings look cheap.”

More silence while she listened.

“Again? I’m getting tired of that stretch of highway. Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

Zach wondered when and where the opposition was going to stop playing games. The sun was already sliding down the sky, heading toward the western horizon and the dark velvet twilight of a summer desert evening.

His sat/cell vibrated. He hit the connect button, read the caller ID, and said, “Nothing new.”

Faroe wasn’t any happier than he was. “They’ve had enough chance to vet Jill and everyone else on the highway. Are they waiting for dark?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Craptastic.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Zach said. “The good news is that it will make it easier for her to escape, if it comes to that.”

“The bad news is that in the dark, you’ll have to tighten up the chase units. Actually, that’s good. We’ve switched chase vehicles four times. Won’t need to worry as much about being made after dark.”

“This has to be hard on Jill’s nerves,” Zach said.

“Worry about your own. She’s solid. Steele is already making noises about signing her up as an op.”

“Is that good or bad?” Zach shot back.

“Not our choice, is it?”

Faroe broke the connection.

Zach wanted to put his fist through the thin aluminum skin of the airplane. Instead he took a few slow breaths and turned hot impatience into the cold stillness of a predator. He wouldn’t be any good for Jill if he was on the breaking edge of frustration.

Quick playing jerk-around, you bastard. It’s time to party.

INDIAN SPRINGS, NEVADA

SEPTEMBER 17

6:16 P.M.

Jill leaned against the car and let the gas feed in through the battered metal nozzle. The long, straight highway just beyond the gas station cut across an alluvial fan that spread gracefully down the mountains to the desert floor. Just the sight of the dry ridges and shadowed ravines of the mountains loosened her tension. She knew that the desert was frightening to some people, boring to others. To her the desert was clean, spare, whispering of endless space for the mind and soul to run free.

She itched to paint the land almost as much as she itched to touch Zach again. She didn’t know if that was good or bad. She only knew it was as real as the metal towers marching away over the dry land, their arms holding lines that hummed with power.

The highway itself was an intrusion, but not as much as the heavy lines draped from steel towers. She looked through them, beyond them, to the majestic wild, lonely landscape that Thomas Dunstan-or her grandmother-had captured so indelibly.

To the right of the Cadillac, a knot of cottonwoods swept the wind with restless leaves. Their fluttering green announced the presence of water in a dry land. The cottonwoods had been here when the Indian Springs canvas had been painted. The trees were still there, still restless, still shouting of cool water in a dry, relentless wilderness.

Jill let her glance roam the landscape, seeing with the eyes of her grandmother. Take away the power lines, and the area had changed very little since Indian Springs had been painted. The gas station had evolved from a ramshackle frame building with two antique pumps into a sand-and sun-blasted metal structure with four pumps out front, but the trees and the fault line of little springs running along the base of the mountains looked the same.

Where are you, Zach?

Ten thousand feet overhead.

Somewhere.

Out of reach.

What’s the big deal? I’ve spent a lot of my life alone.

But death threats took a little more time to get used to.

Shaking off the edgy feeling, Jill went into the station, used the bathroom, bought several liters of water, and paid for everything. The old man who took her money wasn’t feeling chatty. Neither was she.

While the man slowly, painfully, counted out her change, she looked behind the counter at the faded black-and-white print of the gas station with a ribbon proclaiming the date and the grand opening of the station. The photo had been taken a long time ago, when cars in the rugged land were an adventure, not a necessity, back when the frail man counting pennies over the counter had been a little boy yearning to be old enough to break broncs and chase lean cattle through sagebrush valleys.

Jill looked from the photo to the man whose fingers were arthritic from winters spent chasing stubborn cows out of nameless ravines.

Were things really simpler then?

Or does it just seem that way now?

She put the change in her belly bag, went to the car, pulled back onto the road, and settled in for an unknown time of driving before her sat phone rang with new instructions.

She’d no more reached cruising speed when her phone came alive. She eased off the gas and answered.

“What?” she demanded.

“A sheriff’s car will stop you. Do what the deputy says.”

The connection ended.

“O frabjous day,” she said bitterly. “The local cops are friends with the other guys.”

Silence answered.

It was all she’d expected.

SAN DIEGO

SEPTEMBER 17

6:18 P.M.

Grace had watched and listened while her husband peeled away layers of bureaucracy until he got to the man in charge. She stayed silent, because the phone was on speaker.

Besides, she’d already done her part by calling a retired federal judge and having him talk to the sheriff’s secretary.

“So what you’re saying, Sheriff, is that you won’t tell me why your deputy singled out that particular young woman and told her to follow him?” Faroe’s voice was mild, gentle.

Grace winced. She’d learned that when her husband sounded most gentle, he was the most dangerous.

The sheriff might have to learn, too.

Faroe’s hand gripped the phone hard. He wished it was the sheriff’s balls.

“No, I won’t tell you,” the sheriff said impatiently. “None of your business, no matter how many retired judges your wife knows.”

“Then I’ll guess why your deputy decided to pull the woman over,” Faroe said. “My teenage son did a quick database check of contributions to your last election. You received thirty thousand dollars and change in campaign contributions from a group of law-abiding folks up in Carson City.”

“What does-”

Faroe kept talking. Gently. “That’s a lot of money in a little county like yours, so I asked my son to check out those Carson City names. It took him maybe thirty seconds to find links between five of the ten contributors. Seems like they’re all members of the same law firm. Are you following me okay, Sheriff?”

“You’re wasting my-”

“My kid could start a court-records search on one of the proprietary databases that covers your state,” Faroe continued gently, relentlessly. “But I’m betting he’ll find that the law firm has only one real client, and more digging would prove that single client is the source of your campaign funds. Do you want me to name that client?”

Silence, then a sigh. The sound of papers being stacked. The click of high heels on tile as some woman came and went from his office.

“What do you want?” the sheriff asked.

“St. Kilda Consulting is engaged in a murder, arson, and robbery investigation in behalf of the young woman who is presently being intimidated by your deputy, acting in behalf of your big-time donor,” Faroe said.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Just doing a favor for a big man, huh?”

“Nothing illegal about it,” the sheriff said. “The deputy has to patrol the area around Beaver Tail Ranch anyway.”

Quickly Grace typed the destination into her mapping program.

“Odd name for a ranch in the desert,” Faroe said, watching Grace.

“We have some odd ranches here. Again, nothing illegal.”

The printer spat out a piece of paper. Grace handed it to Faroe.

“You keep telling yourself that, Sheriff. Then you listen real good when I tell you that you’re in danger of becoming accessory after the fact to murder.”

“That’s a load of BS,” the sheriff shot back. “There haven’t been any murders in my county in nine months.”

“If you want to keep your record clean,” Faroe said, “you’ll get on the radio to your deputy and tell him to call in as soon as he leads Ms. Breck to her destination. Then you’ll tell your deputy to haul his ass back out to Highway 93 and drive north to”-he looked at the map Grace had printed out-“milepost marker 418. Should I repeat that?”

“No.”

“Tell your deputy to stop at marker 418, turn on the light bar, and block all southbound traffic for the next ten minutes.”

“What for?”

“Road hazard,” Faroe said. “A small private aircraft will touch down south of him and let off a passenger. As soon as the plane takes off again, your deputy can turn off his light bar and head north.”

“Why north?”

“Because you want to keep your job. And if you let your good, rich friend know what’s happening, I will guarantee that you won’t be able to get work anywhere, including picking up trash at a downscale cathouse.”

“If you’re wrong-”

“I’m not.”

Faroe punched out.

“Will he do it?” Grace asked.

Faroe let out a long breath. “Zach will be the first to know.”

OVER NEVADA

SEPTEMBER 17

6:22 P.M.

Contact continues,” Zach said into the microphone that went to the men on the ground who were shadowing Jill, front and rear. “White sheriff’s car with blue-and-red light bar is still behind Jill, about a quarter mile back. He may be looking for company. Keep giving him a lot of space.”

The sound of microphones popping in agreement came through the small headset Zach wore.

He looked out through the aircraft’s windscreen at the road ahead, straight and black to the far horizon. Trucks and a few RVs were most of what little traffic there was.

“What’s out here for the next hundred miles?” Zach asked the pilot.

“Sand, rock, and rabbitbrush. And maybe a half-dozen whorehouses.”

“Whorehouses? Out in the middle of nowhere?”

“Roger that,” the pilot drawled. “There are thirty accredited brothels in the state of Nevada. I think at least half of them are along Highway 93. Chances are, if you see a settlement beside the road, it will have a name like ‘The Lobster Ranch’ or ‘Kangaroo Court.’”

“Lobster Ranch?”

The pilot grinned. “Yeah. Like the sign says, ‘Not too many lobsters but a whole lot of tail.’”

“Maybe that’s why I never chased classic cars down there,” Zach said, sweeping the landscape with his binoculars. “I thought there weren’t enough people to leave behind junkyards. But from up here, I’ve noticed several small ones off the highway.”

“Probably old ranches. Everybody down there now is dead or driving through. Truckers, mostly.”

“Hence the tail ranches.”

“They’re state-regulated,” the pilot said, glancing automatically at the control panel. “All the girls get checked once a week. Newspapers carry the results in the public notices, just like restaurant inspection reports.”

Zach laughed out loud at the thought of government-inspected tail. “Nevada. Gamble with your money, not your health. Gotta love it.”

He kept the binoculars on the patrol car.

It kept the same interval behind Jill for five miles.

Zach switched the headphones to his sat/cell and punched in a number. A St. Kilda communications specialist answered instantly.