Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery Part 37

But that wasn't it. I didn't bother to tell her. I thought about watching a light turn green, about driving away from Fast Freddy Sax with a blank IOU in my hand.

Handing me to Josh on a silver platter must have meant more to Fred than any payday. It hurt my insides to think about it, but there it was.

You try to tamp down your hopes. You prep yourself for disappointment.

Hope fights through anyway. Hope that Josh's c.r.a.ppy old Audi would croak on the way here. Hope that a heads-up cop had pulled him over. Hope that he couldn't swing loose the false floor by himself, that I'd catch him tangled in rope, vulnerable.

We eased down Jut Road and saw right away the hidey-hole had been opened. It dangled amid a mess of climbing rope.

"h.e.l.l," I said. Climbed from my truck, looked down at tire tracks made by an all-wheel-drive car-Josh's Audi.

He was long gone.

But hope fights through. I walked to the edge of the slope, looked over the half-a.s.sed sling he'd rigged. Slipped down the steep muck barely under control, got one work boot wet. Looked up.

Gone gone gone. The money and Josh both.

"Well?" Patty said.

"Gone." I had my hands in my back pockets, was looking at the river.

"What do you think he'll do?" she said, shouting. "Make a border run?"

"Safer to stay in the States. Ditch his car, make it to a bus station, he can be invisible in eighteen hours."

"Still," she said, shouting again over the Souhegan's rush, "I bet it's tempting to head for Canada when you're this far north."

If she hadn't kept hollering like that, babbling in a way that was unusual for her, he would have pulled it off. The river noise and woods thrum was plenty of cover.

But half a beat after the second time Patty shouted, I realized she was making noise to cover for Josh. I spun, threw myself against the steep bank, and looked up. As I did I heard a sound like two one-by-twos slapping together, then a flat plint as a bullet hit water.

There was Josh Whipple, Ollie's P35 in his hand, surprised he hadn't just killed me. I could understand the surprise: He was braced on one knee and had fired from eight feet away with a nice downward angle.

The moment of the adrenaline spurt is a lot like what happens in racing: Even though your world, your life, hinges on the next three seconds, an additional branch of perception opens up and you take in more data than people think possible. After a race at Thompson Speedway in Connecticut, one driver commented that on the third lap, a squirrel had tried to cross the track in turn three. I told him that was no squirrel, that was a chipmunk, and it was the fourth lap. Another driver overheard and asked if we were both blind, it was a family of chipmunks, and two of them made it, but he squished the papa with his left front tire.

So: The work boots dig in, splayed out duck style, chopping through muck for traction. Josh is above me and to my left, but instead of charging straight at him I crab to my right. This forces Josh to swing the P35 to his left, across his body, making for a tougher shot. I remember the gun's been modified to fire heavier-than-stock .40 S&W loads, which give it h.e.l.lacious stopping power but make it hard to fire accurately.

There's that second round, fired as I make the top of the slope. As I hoped, Josh has swung the P35 too far-this one whangs past my right shoulder as I turn to charge him. Next to his leg puddles a white trash bag, kitchen-size, its plastic drawstring tied in a nice bow. That's the seventy-five grand: I watched Trey bag it up, watched him tie the bow. Next to the bag stands Patty Marx, and I would swear in a court of law she is ignoring the semiautomatic pistol three feet from her ear, the two men trying their hardest to kill each other. She only has eyes for the sack of money.

I scrabble at Josh's shins, low low low, mostly because I slip as I charge, but it's a good move because his third shot whangs over my left shoulder. I hear it, and the zzzzz sound squirts more adrenaline, and I feel clever-very clever, the phrase of the day-for staying so low, and I take one last chopping step and angle upward, meaning to hit Josh with what football players call a form tackle, squared up, wrapping my arms around his torso.

And Josh, stepping back, off balance, panicking for the first time I've seen, flinches and grimaces and shoots me in the stomach.

Before I hit the water, arms locked around Josh as planned, I had time to feel like a jacka.s.s. Why hadn't I checked the shack before scrambling down to the river? Had Patty somehow warned him we were coming? Or had he decided on his own to stash his car and take me out right then? Any way you sliced it, I'd been stupid to not glance in the shack.

Then we slid into the river and the cold stole my wind. Josh ended up on top of me. My head settled into the muck. I stared through clear water at the sky.

Josh kneed me in the b.a.l.l.s. When I coiled up out of instinct, he stood, hesitated. I wondered if he was getting set to shoot me, then figured he couldn't find the gun. I took a weak kick at his legs. Nothing. He jumped in the air and landed on me with both feet.

That was when the gunshot shock wore off and my right side, maybe two inches above my pants pocket, began to hurt worse than anything I'd ever felt. A warm trickle front and back told me the bullet had gone through and through.

The warm trickle.

The icy water.

The stomped b.a.l.l.s.

I almost gave up.

Almost.

Instead: Josh bent over, reaching for my throat with both hands. I waited until he was fully committed, saw the hard smile in his eyes, kicked him in the b.a.l.l.s. He twitched at the last instant or I would've had him. As it was, he fell next to me and rested on hands and knees.

I didn't know what to do, but I needed to get the h.e.l.l away from there. I half stood, facing the sh.o.r.e, and as Josh rose with a good-size rock in his right hand, I used what was left of my leg strength to flop away into the Souhegan.

He dove after me, wrapped his arms. I grabbed a lungful of air as Josh dragged me under, my belly facing the sky. I reached for the pier that ought to be behind me. My fingertips brushed it, slipped away, grabbed, missed. Josh was bear-hugging us both to the bottom. He hadn't been shot, and he was young, and he was going to hold his breath until I pa.s.sed out.

There-fingertips on the pier again. I got my hands around it and began to climb, climb. I felt Josh loosen his arms to adjust his crushing grip. Before he could, I wrapped my legs around his torso, scissors style. He tried to move his arms, couldn't, thrashed and panicked.

And then my face was above water, my arms clamped around the pier. I breathed, breathed, had never known air to have an actual taste like this.

And all pain, all wounds, all bleeding, all cold were pushed from my mind as I squeezed Josh Whipple underwater with my legs, using every muscle, holding him under the Souhegan a full five minutes after I knew he was dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

Exactly three weeks later, on a Sat.u.r.day morning, I stood in front of a roll-up door on Mechanic Street, put two fingers in my mouth, cranked off a whistle. The pit bull sounded off. The Mexican looked through a small window, stared for ten seconds, vanished. In another ten seconds he stepped from the shop's front door, kicking at the pit bull to keep it inside.

"The f.u.c.k you want?"

"You remember me?"

"Who's gonna forget you? You all over the news."

"I need to do some work in there," I said, jerking a thumb at Motorenwerk. "Cops ever roll by these days?"

"Hardly ever. Things pretty much back to normal."

"Anybody swings past, I could use a heads-up."

"I got work of my own."

"Pay you a grand to sit out here in your favorite chair and call me if a cruiser comes by."

"You got shot, uh?"

I nodded.

"Save your grand," he said, sitting and waving a hand. "This could be entertaining."

We pulled our cells. I set mine so he had a unique ring tone: If a cop came by, the Mexican would speed-dial me and I wouldn't even have to pick up.

They said McCord found me on the riverbank with Josh's dead body still between my thighs. I'd either been unwilling to let go of him or, more likely they said, unable-muscles spasmed, locked up. It made for a h.e.l.l of a picture: me dog-paddling in from the pier, using my arms only, with a leg-lock on Josh Whipple.

I nearly bled to death and I nearly froze to death. When the New Hampshire State Police tried to shuffle me into some podunk hospital, Charlene and a half dozen lawyers she could afford laid a near-death experience on them, and so I wound up in Ma.s.s. General getting the best care in the world.

I'd suffered the easiest wound you can get north of your a.s.s, my surgeon told me proudly: low on my right side, through and through, no vital organs pierced, an abductor muscle "molested" (the surgeon's word).

Easy wound or not, that molested muscle hurt like h.e.l.l as I crossed Mechanic Street, scoping out Motorenwerk. The shop had that Twilight Zone look that businesses get after they go out of business but before their guts are auctioned off.

The same squadron of lawyers that terrorized the New Hampshire Staties made sure I never spent so much as an hour in a cop shop, even when I was healthy enough. By then, Josh Whipple's thirteen-year murder spree was the biggest story in the country. People wanted me to write a book. People wanted me to do a reality show. Network news shows sent fruit baskets.

I had the fruit baskets forwarded to Diana Patience Roper. She'd changed her name again: Patty Marx was dead, long live Diana. The Ma.s.sachusetts Staties grabbed her three hours after she took the trash bag full of money and stole my truck. When it was time for her phone call, she buzzed a producer she knew at a tabloid TV show and sketched out her story.

Her memoirs come out in October. The other day, Sophie saw her on the cover of Us magazine.

An embarra.s.sed cop is a hardworking cop. Two weeks too late, the geniuses on the Josh Whipple task force confirmed what no-longer-Patty had told me: Phigg and Ollie each had very minor bruising on the backs of their heads where Josh had sapped them before hoisting them into necktie nooses.

I hadn't noticed the skylights in Motorenwerk's roof until now. Standing in the shop, with the unlockable window closed behind me, I was grateful for them-plenty of morning light.

As McCord had warned me, the cops had torn the h.e.l.l out of the place. It was one thing to be thorough, but a lot of what I saw was plain mean. Window gla.s.s stomped, boxes of suba.s.semblies swept to the floor. Like that. The work of bored, mean a.s.sholes.

They'd sliced the interior from Phigg's Mercedes, and they'd removed, drained, and cut open the fuel tank. I thought about the pride Ollie had shown when he talked about his work. To him, stashing drugs in cars was no different than doing a faithful restoration. The idea was to cover up your work once you'd done your work. It reminded me of the old Westerns, where the last thing a guy did to cover his tracks was walk backward wiggling a handful of brush in the dirt.

With a droplight in my hand, I lay flat on my back-my wound had hurt like h.e.l.l when I'd swung under-and stared up at the car's underside. "s.h.i.t," I said out loud. If this was anything other than a quarter-century-old Mercedes that had spent most of its life on New England's winter-salted roads, Ollie Dufresne was a genius. No wonder the cops had focused on the interior.

I'd worked on this car myself, so I knew all its finicky, ahead-of-their-time systems looked just the way they should. The brake lines, the stupidly complex air-ride suspension, the steering rack, the fuel line-I'd replaced them all at least once, and they'd been untouched since. I saw nothing that looked like fresh paint, nothing that looked smooth or shiny when it ought to be rough or corroded.

The fuel line. Silver with light corrosion, quarter inch in diameter, attached to the left-side stiffening rib with stout brackets.

Why was I looking at a fuel line?

Like virtually all modern cars, the Mercedes had a unit body. That meant there was no traditional frame; the entire body served as the frame. Unit-body cars usually have two hollow rails running lengthwise down their undersides. Civilians look at these rails and call them a frame, but they're not. They're just stiffening ribs.

And they're hollow.

They make a convenient place to hide the plumbing that runs from the front of a car to the back.

Like the fuel line.

I remembered like h.e.l.l, wriggling on my back, looking up. Five, six years back, a fitting on Phigg's fuel line had cracked. It made a help of a mess and stink because the fuel line ran through the stiffening rib. Typical pain-in-the-a.s.s German overengineering.

But I was positive: The fuel line had run through the rib. So why was I looking at a fuel line on the outside of that rib?

I wished for my reading gla.s.ses, crawled back and forth, ignored the worsening pain in my side. Finally I found what used to be the hole where the line disappeared into the rib. The hole had been filled, painted, and distressed perfectly. The setup was disguised so well I wouldn't have found it in a million years if I hadn't replaced the line myself.

Ollie was a genius.

I slid out from under and turned on the shop's air compressor, a good Ingersoll Rand unit. Jesus, it was loud. I winced at the hammering noise. But this was Mechanic Street, where there was nothing unusual about a compressor on a Sat.u.r.day. I hoped. I hooked a plasma cutter to the air hose.

Three minutes later, I had safety goggles on and the business end of the cutter-it looked like the spray nozzle you screw on the end of a garden hose-was burning a twenty-seven-thousand-degree hole in the car's stiffening ribs. It took five minutes to cut a notch at each end of each rib, plus one neat line lengthwise.

I killed the plasma cutter and the air compressor, took a deep breath in the silence. I found a cat's-paw pry bar hanging above a tool bench, dove under the Mercedes again. Got the cat's paw deep into the line I'd just cut, levered. The steel gave way easier than I'd figured, moved a good half inch.

And showed me thick plastic.

I slid forward eighteen inches, pried again. Then again, then once more. Then I worked my way back, watching the gap spread. After a couple more trips from the rear of the rib to the front, metal fatigue took over and I just pushed the rib back. It was packed with plastic-wrapped packs.

Of money.

I knew at a glance they'd been wrapped by whomever had wrapped the money in Phigg's false floor. The plastic was industrial strength, and from the density, I guessed they'd sucked the air from each brick using one of those food-storage systems. Each brick was the length and width of a dollar bill and about three inches thick-the perfect thickness for the car's stiffening ribs.

I cat's-pawed seven bricks from the left rib, then went to work on the right, trying not to think about how much money I was dealing with. Finished up, shoved the money bricks out from under, climbed out, stood, tossed the goggles on a bench. I'd been here nearly two hours. Instinct screamed Get the h.e.l.l out. I ignored it. The cops had never paid as much attention to Motorenwerk as they should've, and I could keep it that way if I did minor cleanup.

I crawled under the Mercedes one last time and bent the stiffening ribs to their original positions. Found a push broom, swept away metal dust and the crud that had fallen from the ribs. Put all the tools away, looked around. The place looked about the same as when I'd come in. Not one person in a hundred would notice I'd been here.

McCord would notice. But he wouldn't be coming by. He quit. Had dropped by the hospital to tell me.

"Why are you leaving the staties?" I'd said. "No good deed goes unpunished?"

"Something like that."

"What will you do?"

"Think I'll head up to Alaska. Walk the coast."

That was how he put it. Not hike, not backpack. He was going to walk the G.o.dd.a.m.n coast of Alaska.

"That's a lot of coast, isn't it?"

"That's okay," McCord said. "Got a good pair of boots." His joke must have tickled him, because he smiled a full quarter inch.

I looked around the garage, found a canvas tool bag that swallowed the fourteen money bricks. I started to leave, thought things through, stopped. Grabbed an X-ACTO knife, sliced through one brick's plastic, thumbed the brick. "Holy s.h.i.t," I said out loud.