Goodbye Sister Disco (30 page)

“Yeah.”

Hastings took a breath. He said, “The roads around here, if you stay off the highways, the roads are more or less on a grid. Like a checkerboard. We run back and forth and … see what we can find.”

“Yeah,” Gabler said, “if they didn't go far.”

Hastings pointed to the black bag. “They'd want to come back for that.”

“Okay,” Gabler said. “I'll tell Craig to give the order.”

Hastings said, “I'll get started.” He ran to his car, leaving the corpses and the feds behind.

*   *   *

Terrill gave up about forty yards into the wheat. He couldn't see the girl anywhere. He couldn't even hear her rustling about because the sound of his own crashing was too loud. He stopped a couple of times to see if she would cry out because she'd stepped on a short stalk and hopefully punctured a hole in her foot, but it didn't happen. He had Mickey's little semiautomatic, but it wasn't the sort of gun you could use for long-distance shooting and he couldn't see anything. If they had a combine, they could cut it all down, wait for her to try to scurry out of its path, and then shoot her when she presented herself. But they didn't have a combine and Terrill wouldn't have known how to operate it anyway.

After spending precious minutes doing this horseshit, Terrill thought, She's running and she's going to come out the other end. Use your head, man, and wait for her on the other side.

Terrill went back to the Volvo. He got in and backed out onto the road. He took a look at the wheat field, now on his right. It spread up a couple of hundred yards where it would stop at the next road on the grid. Terrill told himself that she was not going to stay in that wheat. It would be too cold for her to do that and she would be too scared, thinking that he was coming through the wheat after her. She would be scared and she would try to make a run for the road and flag down a driver.
Help me, please. Help me
. Yes … yes. Better to be there when she came out. A welcoming party.

He got the Volvo up to about fifty, but slowed when he came to the next intersection. He told himself that it was not easy to run through a wheat field. The terrain was not flat and was difficult to cross. She would have to push her way through it, and it would not be easy for a girl who was exhausted and weak with hunger. He would get to the other side before her.

Terrill made a left at the intersection. There was about a twenty-yard stretch between the wheat field and the road, long prairie grass and scrub filling the gap. Terrill stopped the car. He got out and took the Browning bolt-action rifle out of the backseat. He put a 7.62-millimeter slug in the breech and bolted it into place. It clicked home and was ready.

And then he saw it.
There.
A black shadow among the yellow and gray. She was coming out of the wheat, about fifty yards ahead and up to his right. She came out of the wheat and into the tall grass and scrub. Looking toward the road like it was a beacon of hope. Then she turned and saw him in the distance.

Terrill raised the rifle. He put the front sight on her, saw her begin to move, and he pulled the trigger. He saw her go down.

*   *   *

Hastings drove fast enough to eat up the roads that lay flat and long. He made loops, going four intersections down before turning down one, then coming back down the other. Looking for a 1991 Volvo, looking for two white males, looking for a girl who he hoped was still alive. Looking and hoping.

They had two more cars out there: Klosterman with a federal agent in one, other federal agents in the other. The U.S. Marshals would send men out too, in time. They had split up the area into boxes.

But it was a big goddamn area. They needed a helicopter to sweep over these things. Looking for the same thing he was looking for and doing it much better and quicker than he could. He had not spoken to Gabler about a helicopter, but Gabler would figure that out on his own. For now, all they could do was drive up and down the lines separating this checkerboard of fields until they found something. They had to do something because the alternative was to give up.

One dead girl at the house, one male killed by FBI agents. Radicals, revolutionaries, fighters of the establishment, whatever you want to call it, but finding out soon enough what Bogart had had to deal with in
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
: that money does things to people, makes them paranoid and watchful and sometimes murderous.

But the money was still at the house. They would have to come back to the house to get the money. At least try. But they had the girl and they weren't going to come back until they took care of her.

Hastings would slow enough at the intersections to take a quick look left and right. See if the lines between the checkerboard would give him something to go after, something to pursue, something to stop him from going nuts from driving and seeing nothing worth seeing.

And then he saw it.

He had lost track of how many intersections he had counted. But it didn't matter. He saw a flash of darkness. A car. A boxy car. A Volvo.

Then he was past the intersection.

Hastings stomped on the brakes, the wheels trying to grip the gravel before coming to a stop. Hastings put the gear in reverse and backed up to the intersection.

And there it was. A 1991 Volvo pulled off to the side of the road. A man with dark hair holding a fucking rifle. And in the distance he could see the girl on her knees.

*   *   *

Did I get her? Terrill wondered.

He had seen her fall. Had seen her fall after he fired.

Terrill squinted into the distance. There was no scope on the rifle, only the front sight. The front sight was sufficient for aiming, but it wouldn't work as a telescope. At first, he thought he had hit her with the bullet. But now he wasn't so sure. Maybe she had just tripped or fainted.

Terrill pulled the bolt back and then shoved it forward again, putting another slug in the breech. He could still see her. She had not gone back into the field. She was on her knees now, maybe preparing for another dash back into the wheat for cover. Terrill raised the rifle to fire.

He heard tires on gravel then and then the sound of a car's engine. Not steady, but accelerating and getting closer. Terrill turned. A brown Jaguar—

“Christ,” Terrill said.

—Bearing down on him.

Terrill raised the rifle again, as Hastings pressed the accelerator to the floor. The engine roaring as the Jaguar veered off the road and slammed into the back of the Volvo. The impact punched the Volvo off its wheels and into Terrill Colely. The force of it swatted Terrill about twenty-five feet through the air, unconscious before he hit the ground.

Hastings ran to him after he got his seat belt off. He was holding the shotgun on Colely. He checked for a pulse and found one. Colely would later die of internal injuries, but he was alive then. Hastings knew that the man was in bad shape and wasn't going anywhere. Still, Hastings checked him for other weapons, and when he left Colely he took the rifle with him.

Hastings walked toward the field. His heart was racing.

“Cordelia,” he called out. “Cordelia!”

Hastings turned and looked back at his Jag, the front all smashed in. In front of the damage, a man on his back, crushed and bloody. She wouldn't know it was a policeman's car, Hastings thought.

Hastings dropped the shotgun and the rifle on the ground. He took out his police badge and held it up.

“Cordelia,” he said. “I'm a police officer. My name's Lieutenant George Hastings. I'm a police officer. It's okay.”

That's when he saw the girl stand up. She was coming toward him.

Hastings said, “Are you shot?”

She was about thirty yards from him, stumbling a little but coming to him, saying something.

“What?” he said.

“No,” she said. “I'm not shot. Is he dead?”

Hastings said, “I don't think so. But he's unconscious. It's okay now.”

There was an awkward moment, the two of them complete strangers, but she knew what he was and her face was crumpled with fright, on the verge of collapse. She rushed to him quickly, a stranger, but needing human contact then. She wrapped her arms around him, crying and shaking. And Hastings was aware that if he let her go she would drop to the ground.

“It's okay now,” Hastings said.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Within a half hour, they were back at Muller's house and all the emergency vehicles had converged onto the grounds. Ambulances, police cars, federal vehicles, and then a police helicopter. Hastings looked up and shook his head at it, wondering where it had been earlier. The helicopter landed and Hastings saw Jim Shellow step out with a couple of other federal agents.

Cordelia Penmark said she would get in the ambulance even though she felt she was not hurt. But before she did she asked Hastings who he was again, and when he told her she said, “I saw it. I saw that man in the field shoot Tom. It was him.”

They were standing in front of the house. The ambulance was nearby. Cordelia had told them that she didn't need a stretcher.

Hastings said, “That's what we thought.”

“I want to help,” Cordelia said.

“You have,” Hastings said. He gestured to a woman in uniform. “This is Gerry Willis. She's a U.S. marshal. She's going to ride with you to the hospital. You'll be all right.”

Cordelia said, “Okay.”

Hastings had decided that Cordelia Penmark was not in shock. He had thought she would be. He said, “Your parents will be waiting for you at the hospital. We've telephoned them.”

“My mother too?”

“Your mother too. And your sister.”

“Oh,” Cordelia said. “How are they?”

Hastings stopped. The girl worrying about her mother and sister at a time like this. Amazing. “They're overjoyed,” he said. “They look forward to seeing you.”

Hmmm,” Cordelia said, a slight smile on her face. She reached out and placed her hand on his arm. “Thank you,” she said.

“Forget it.”

He wanted to say something else. Something like,
It's over now.
Which it was. But he knew she would have nightmares over it for years to come, would flinch at shadows in the night in the following months at least. It would take a while before she would be able to heal. Some never did, and there was a line between healing and nursing grief unnecessarily that was hard to discern. Grief was to be respected, not bowed to. Closure was an illusory concept; you just had to carry on.

It was on Hastings's mind when he looked at the young lady and told her what he thought she needed to hear. He said, “It's good to be alive. Remember that.”

“I will,” Cordelia said.

The U.S. marshal led her away to the ambulance.

*   *   *

Hastings joined Gabler and Klosterman. They were leaned up against a car. Gabler had a cigarette in his mouth.

Hastings said, “You smoke?”

“Once in a while,” Gabler said. “When I'm stressed.”

“But it's over.”

Gabler shrugged.

Klosterman said, “Probably Virginia Slims.”

“Well,” Hastings said, “there are no children watching. Give me one too.”

Gabler did and handed him a lighter to go along with it. Then Gabler said, “Well, hotshot, now that you wrecked your car, how're you going to get home?”

“We'll figure something out. Maybe I can buy another one with the reward money.”

Klosterman said, “There is no reward money.”

A uniformed agent came within shouting distance of them.

“Gabe,” he said. “There's a Jeffrey Rook on the phone. He says he wants to talk to you right now.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself,” Gabler said, his voice raised. “I'm working here.”

“Yes, sir.”

To Hastings, Klosterman said, “Quick-tempered, these feds. Very volatile.”

Agent Gabler was smiling, an expression of intoxication brought on by exhaustion rather than alcohol. Gabler said, “You guys had lunch yet?”

The cops said they hadn't.

“Let's go into town,” Gabler said. “It's on me.”

THIRTY-NINE

On Christmas Eve, he awoke on his couch from a long nap. He had intended to sleep for about twenty minutes or so, but it had stretched into two and half hours. His arm over his eyes to ward off light. Sounds coming in and out and then he opened his eyes completely and looked over at his daughter. She was sitting in the recliner, her legs draped over the arm. She was eating some sort of yogurt granola mix from a bowl. The sort of thing Hastings didn't even like to look at.

Amy said, “Did the television wake you?”

“No,” Hastings said. He looked at his watch. “Hmmm,” he said, acknowledging the passage of time.

Amy said, “I can turn it off if you like. I mean, if you want to go back to sleep.”

“No, that's all right.” He sat up and rubbed his face with his hands. Came out of the hands and looked at the television screen. Cary Grant and Loretta Young skating around on an outdoor ice rink. A seasonal film, Cary Grant playing an angel who falls in love with David Niven's wife, yet somehow also teaches Niven the true meaning of Christmas.

Hastings said, “Haven't you seen this before?”

“Yeah.” Amy shrugged. “I like it. Do you want to watch football instead?”

“Not really.” He stood up and went to the kitchen. Thought, Beer or coffee? Then decided on coffee. A couple of minutes later, it was brewing and he went back to the living room and stood behind Amy's chair.

“Amy.”

“Yes.” Her attention still on the movie.

“I know it's short notice, but Joe asked if we'd like to come to his house for Christmas.”

Amy turned to look at him.

“We'd have dinner with him and his family,” Hastings said. “You like them, don't you?”

“They're okay.”