Dead Run (15 page)

Harley shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

Dutch winked at him and unhooked the fuel hose. "Thought so. Rig like this sucks down the juice faster than an Irishman on Saint Paddy's."

Magozzi took a closer look at Dutch's bulbous red nose and decided he was speaking from experience.

"So, you boys are after some women who were in here today?"

"Yes, sir," Magozzi said. "Three women in a Range Rover. On the phone, you said you remembered them."

"Not likely to forget. I may be old, but I ain't dead yet, and when three lookers like that come into a little backwoods place like this, you stand up and take notice, if you know what I mean."

Magozzi decided to take the last comment at face value so he didn't have to hit a geriatric. "Did you talk to them?"

"Talked to one of them-a big gal, real pretty, real friendly. She came in for a pit stop, bought some water and a few lottery tickets, and we got to chit-chatting about weather and such."

"Did she happen to mention where they were going or what they were doing?"

Dutch shrugged. "Not right off, but she was wearing some kind of dress that looked like a wildcat had got to it-I figured it for a costume, so curiosity got the best of me and I asked where they were heading. When she told me Green Bay, that gave me pause. This place ain't exactly on the way to Green Bay, and I told her so, offered her a map. She didn't take it, though." He sounded disappointed.

"Why didn't she take it?"

"Said they weren't lost. Said one of her lady friends was from around here and knew where she was going."

"She didn't mention why they were on this particular road when they were supposed to be going to Green Bay?" Gino asked.

"Nope. I wondered, sure, but I'm not the nosy type."

At that point, Magozzi knew they'd hit a wall. Honest, salt-of-the-earth folks might make polite conversation by asking where you're headed, but they wouldn't push it further than that unless you offered.

"So these women," Dutch said. "Are they dangerous?"

You don't know the half of it, buddy, Magozzi thought, but he just shook his head. "No, but they are missing."

"Sorry to hear that. Wish I could be of more help." He finished fueling the RV and replaced the nozzle while Harley peeled off some twenties to pay him.

"One more thing," Magozzi said. "Did you notice which direction they went when they left?"

"Sure did. They pulled out and kept heading north. Now, if they had a local with them, she'd probably know that there are only a couple good ways to cross back over east and head to Green Bay, so I'd take a look at those. Come on into the station, I'll show you on a map."

The four men followed Dutch into the station and waited patiently while he took a new map from a cardboard stand on the counter and spread it open. "These used to be free for paying customers, but now we have to charge for them. This one's on me, though. Doesn't make sense, does it? Back in the old days, gas was cheap and you got real service-we'd pump your gas, wash your windshield, check yourtires . . , plus you got a free map. Now gas is through the roof, nobody does squat for you except take your money at the register, and they charge you for maps on top of it all."

As Dutch painstakingly highlighted roads with a felt-tipped marker, Magozzi's cell rang. When he answered, he heard the distinctive, prehistoric sound of coins being plunked into a pay phone, then the background noise of clinking glasses, multiple conversations, and country-western music. "It's Halloran. Are you still at Harley Davidson's place?"

"Actually, we're all at a gas station in some place called Medford now. Me, Gino, Harley, and Roadrunner."

"Medford, Wisconsin? What the hell are you doing there?"

Magozzi colored a little, still half feeling that he'd jumped the gun a bit, hoping that's what he'd done. Grace wasn't in trouble, absolutely couldn't be in trouble, and even if she was, she didn't need him or anyone else on some imaginary white horse tearing across the country looking for them. Grace took care of herself. Always had, always would. "Making an ass out of myself, most likely," is what he told Halloran.

"Women-hunting?"

"Yep. Roadrunner traced Sharon's credit card here. Last transaction."

"Medford? That's totally out of the way . . , shit. This is getting weirder and weirder."

"Where the hell are you, anyway? Sounds like a bar."

"That's exactly where I am. I've got FBI ears all over the place here. Can you call me back? I've only got two quarters left." He read off a number.

"No problem," Magozzi said, then waved the others back to the RV.

The minute Magozzi mentioned FBI, Harley went into black-op mode and insisted that they call Halloran back on the sat phone. "It's fully encrypted and trace-proof."

"The FBI's monitoring Halloran, not us."

"You can never be too sure with those sneaky sons of bitches. Besides, Roadrunner can patch the sat phone through the audio so we can all hear him loud and clear. It'll be like he's in the room with us."

They all moved into the RV's back office while Roadrunner took his place at his computer station to set up the call. As his fingers flew over the keys, Magozzi tried not to look at the gnarled joints and crooked fingers of his hands.

Suddenly, Halloran's voice filled the room like surround sound in a theater. "You there, Magozzi?"

"We're all here."

"Uh . . , this is making me a little nervous. I'm getting this weird delay on the line. . . ."

"We're calling you via satellite. No chance this phone is covered, so don't worry."

"Jesus. Cops get satellites in that big city of yours?"

"No, we're in the Monkeewrench RV. This thing has more electronics than the Kennedy Space Center."

"I'll be damned. And I was excited because I just figured out my cell phone had a speaker on it today. Probably just as well you've got an alternative. That cell of yours isn't going to be much good if you go any further north."

"That's what Roadrunner told us," Magozzi said.

"Okay," Halloran continued. "Here's the long and short of it. This morning, we pulled three bodies out of a local swimming hole, no IDs. Our ME said it was automatic rifle fire. So we run the prints and nothing comes back. Next thing we know, the FBI snatches our sinkers right out of the state lab, and they won't tell us beans."

Magozzi's brows shot up. "They took your bodies?"

"Right off the damn slab, according to the ME down there."

Harley folded his beefy arms across his chest. "This is getting interesting."

"That's just the start of it," Halloran said. "A couple hours after that, the cake lady comes up missing."

"What's a cake lady'"

"Gretchen Vanderwhite, sixties, bakes wedding cakes. She was delivering one over to Beaver Lake in Missaqua County this morning, never made it there."

Magozzi grunted. "You got the dogs out?"

Halloran took a noisy breath that came through the speakers like a hurricane. "This is where it really starts to get weird. Apparently, the FBI pulled every one of Missaqua's patrols in from the road a couple hours ago, won't even let a uniform out on the street."

Gino actually stood up. "What the hell? They can't do that. That isn't even legal, is it?"

"We're getting the word that it is, but that's not the end of it. I just got a call from one of my men who found a couple dozen Feds crawling over our crime scene at the swimming hole. They kicked us out, made some pretty nasty threats, and now they're monitoring our radios and God knows what else. Christ. If they nail this phone call to me, I'm toast."

"Rest easy, friend," Harley said. "Can't be done; we got you covered."

"I sure as hell hope so. Anyway, now you tell me Sharon and the others were in Medford, and that far north, anything that heads to Green Bay runs smack-dab through Missaqua County."

Roadrunner had been typing busily while he listened. He had a map of Wisconsin on one side of the big monitor with certain areas highlighted. In another open screen were endless lines of text that Magozzi couldn't begin to understand. "So this whole thing started when you ran the prints on those three bodies, right?" he piped up.

Halloran waited a beat. "Right. That's when the FBI moved in and took them."

"Did you scan those prints into a computer file?"

"Sure did."

"Can you send them to me? I might be able to access some other databases for you."

"Son, nothing would make me happier. How about that facial-recognition software? Can you run that from your rig?"

"Sure," Harley said, "but how far are we from you?"

"About two hours," Halloran said.

"So we'd have to work off a fax, which is less than ideal. And that program is damn slow. Let's try the prints first."

Gino was pacing, scrubbing at his brush cut. "Can we get back to the ladies here for a second while I get this straight in my head? We've got Grace, Annie, and Sharon off the radar, and you've got a missing cake lady, and if they aren't all in Missaqua County, they sure as hell could have been headed that way?"

"Right."

"And the cheerless horde of Huns just shut down that whole damn county."

"Right again."

Gino stopped pacing and looked at Magozzi. "We gotta go there."

GRACE, ANNIE, and Sharon were crouched in the deep shadows beneath some kind of weeping bushes that crowded against the back wall of the farmhouse. The quick run from the protection of the cornfield had left them all breathless.

There was a towering light pole close to the driveway, the kind that illuminates barnyards all across the Midwest, but thankfully, it was dark. Fortunate, and yet strange, Sharon thought. Normally those things were set to come on automatically at nightfall, or even during storms if the clouds were thick enough to block the sun. Burned out? It didn't seem likely in a place this well-kept.

Someone shut it off.

The three women hadn't spoken aloud in a long time, but through gestures, they had all agreed to bypass the house and head for the weathered barn that loomed across the drive, so enormous that it ate up a huge chunk of the sky.

Annie was hoping for sanctuary. Her heels were already blistered from the ill-fitting purple high-tops, and her muscles were screaming from tension and all the unaccustomed exertion. All she wanted was a few blessed minutes to stay in one place and let her heart slow down, and the barn seemed like a logical place to fulfill that fantasy. Even if the soldiers did come back, it would take a hundred of them to search every nook and cranny in a building that big.

Sharon was hoping for some kind of drivable vehicle behind the giant tractor doors, since there hadn't been a single one in town. Every old barn she'd ever been in contained a vehicle of some sort, from old hot rods buried under decades of hay dust to pristine classics preserved under heavy tarps. This was no bachelor pad; this was a family farm, and if there was one thing farms had in abundance, it was vehicles. Normally they were scattered all over the yard, tucked in long grass behind buildings, sheltered under an open shed, and certainly lining the drive. But there wasn't one of any kind in sight here, and that, almost more than anything else, seemed so dreadfully wrong. Surely the people who lived here couldn't have driven away in every single car they owned.

Grace was staring intently at the barn. Too big, she thought. The damn thing had to be at least eighty feet long, and that was too long to be out in the open. But if the inside was safe, they could travel through the barn to the back and, she hoped, a way out of this godforsaken town. She took a breath, glanced at the others, then moved.

They all darted from shadow to shadow across the moon-washed yard to the barn, and although the actual distance they covered was less than fifty yards, they were all breathing hard by the time they pressed against the cool blocks of the building's foundation. Hollyhocks grew here, too, leaning against the side of the massive structure as if the weight of their flowers was too much for the thick stems to bear.

Sharon's nostrils flared at the sharp, musky fragrance of the plants, and she remembered the hollyhocks that had grown on the side of her mother's potting shed.

"Oh, shit," Annie whispered from right behind her.

"What?"

"Shit. Literally." She grimaced and scraped the bottom of her shoe through the grass.

Sharon started to shake her head, then stopped the motion abruptly. She straightened against the side of the barn, lifting her head on her neck, then looked all around without saying anything.

"Did you hear something?" Grace asked.

Sharon jerked her head to look at her. "Nothing. I don't hear anything. That's the problem." She was preoccupied, eyes still busy. "Look at this place. Fenced paddock, those big hay bales stacked in front of the barn, feed sacks on that trailer over there, and now manure."

Annie snorted softly. "It's a farm, honey. What did you expect?"

"Animals. Where are all the animals?"

Grace felt a prickle at the back of her neck.

The three of them were perfectly silent for a long time, each one straining to hear the slightest sound. "Maybe they're in the barn," Annie whispered.

With her blue eyes narrowed and focused, Grace started to creep along the edge of the barn toward a door. It was man-sized, cut into one of those big, rolling tractor doors hanging from a metal track. She pressed her ear flat against the wood, listening, then eased back and reached for the rusty latch. The door opened smoothly, without a sound, and the unfamiliar rotting smell of cow manure filled her nostrils. She stood in the doorway for a moment, listening to her heart pound in her ears, then stepped inside.

There was a huge overhead loft filled to the rafters with sweet, green alfalfa hay. To the right, there were open pens and box stalls filled with straw that looked freshly laid. To the left, a concrete walkway bordered with gutters and lined with metal stanchions led to a closed door at the far end of the barn.

But there were no animals. Not one. Even the dozens of mud nests clinging to the rafters overhead were empty. Not a single sleepy swallow peeped at the intrusion.