No Man's Land (24 page)

“Really I . . .” For a moment, it seemed as if he was reaching
for her. As if he might plant a kiss right in the middle of her
thatch. She shivered at the thought. Instead, he picked the towel
from the floor.

“Cover yourself,” he said.

Melanie Harris checked the side mirror again and smiled. The
burgundy Ford Taurus had been hanging three or four cars back ever
since they’d left Scottsdale half an hour before. Now, the turn
signal was on. She watched in the mirror as they motored up the exit
ramp, made a couple of left turns and headed back the way they’d
come.

“Looks like you were right,” she said. “Our federal friends
seem to have had enough of our company.”

Corso was sitting on the floor at the rear of the coach. He’d
removed his black leather jacket and was leaning back against the
bathroom door, one long leg up, the other stretched out along the
floor. She watched as he got to his feet, flicking her attention back
and forth between the mirror and the road ahead as he made his way to
the passenger seat, pushed it all the way back to accommodate his
long legs and strapped himself in. “Six-hour jaunts across the
desert aren’t in the federal job description,” he said.

“They’re not generally part of mine either. I always fly back
home when we do a remote.”

“But for a good story . . .” He let it hang.

“Neither rain nor snow nor dead of night . . .”

Yesterday’s clouds had scattered, leaving the sky a shade of
azure blue only seen in
Arizona Highways
magazine.

“You want anything?” she asked.

He gave her a shy smile. “Like what?”

“Like water or pop.”

“I’m good.”

She returned the smile. “If you change your mind, feel free to
help yourself from the fridge.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“So tell me about this guy Timothy Driver.”

“Which one? The one I wrote the book about or the one they’re
chasing all over the place right now?”

She thought it over. “The one you wrote the book about.”

Corso laid it out for her. Took him fifteen minutes to come up
with everything he could remember about Driver’s past. Finally, he
took a deep breath, and said, “
That
Tim Driver was a good
man who found himself in a bad situation. After twenty years of
self-discipline and single-minded service to his country, he came
home one day and found himself confronted with something completely
outside his realm. Something there was no manual for. The idea that
somebody could break their word to him like that. That somebody he
loved could be mixing it up with somebody else in his own bed . . .
it just wasn’t something he was prepared to deal with.”

“Lotta people catch their spouses flying united and don’t kill
anybody.”

“Most of them don’t live by the same code of honor he did.
We’re talking about a guy who had a couple of dozen nuclear weapons
at his disposal. For him it was just the worst kind of betrayal
imaginable. I think maybe it’s somehow tied in to the fact that his
father deserted the family when he was a little kid. Like maybe the
whole thing with his wife was just one straw too many for his
psyche.”

She checked the mirror and moved over one lane to the left,
wheeling the RV around a lumbering flatbed truck awash in rusty
machine parts.

“What did he want with you?”

Corso laughed. “Believe it or not, I’m still not real clear
about that. I think he wanted me to be his Boswell or something. I
think he wanted me on hand to document whatever he had in mind for a
grand finale.” He shrugged off her disbelief. “When he’s
talking like that he doesn’t make a lot of sense to anybody but
himself. I think it’s what he thought about the whole time he was
isolation. I think he tried to keep from going nuts and failed.”

“So you think they drove him crazy.”

“Either that or he’s got some progressive brain disease.
Something that overcame him during this last phase of incarceration.”

“Or he’s got bad genes. The father walked out. You said
yourself that his mother was pretty far out there. Maybe he’s just
the next generation of loony.”

“Could be.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No.”

“You blame the state.”

“It’s not the state. It’s the Randall Corporation.”

“And you don’t approve?”

“It’s like you have badly behaved kids, so you give them to
the neighbors and move out of town. It’s just not right.
Privatizing changes everything. Prisoners are suddenly part of the
‘profit motive’ equation. They lose their rights and become
numbers on a board . . . a board with the only number that matters on
a line at the bottom.”

She threw him a quick look. “Anybody ever suggest you had a
self-righteous streak about a yard wide?”

“Just about everybody.”

The air inside the camper began to rumble as a herd of
Harley-Davidsons passed them on the left. Fringed and fitted out.
Stripped down. In singles and in doubles, they roared past,
twenty-five maybe, all decked out in the latest biker gear. Twenty
years ago, they would surely have been a band of speed freak
commandos, armed and dangerous and ready to rumble. Nowadays they
might all be urologists.

“You think they’re going let themselves be captured?”

“No way. Not Driver. Not Kehoe. They’re not coming in alive.”

“Any idea where they’re headed?”

“Kehoe’s looking to get across the Canadian border. Just in
case he gets caught, he figures that’s the only way he’s going to
avoid the death chamber.”

“And Driver?”

“Sooner or later, Driver’s headed for his mother. I think
that’s what he means when he’s always talking about getting back
to where he started.”

“The feds can’t find his mother,” Melanie said. “Turns out
she doesn’t live where they thought she did.”

A minute passed. When she looked over at Corso she found him deep
in thought.

“You know that for sure?” he asked finally.

“It’s in the info Marty bought from somebody in the prison
hierarchy. Her letters had been postmarked from the same little town
in Oregon for as long as he’s been in Meza Azul. Turns out she
doesn’t live there though.”

“Oregon?”

“Pineville . . . something like that.”

“Prineville,” he corrected. He chuckled. “Well I’ll be
damned.”

“What am I missing here?”

“At least now I know why the feds were looking so hard for me
back in Scottsdale.”

“Why’s that?”

“They want to know where Driver’s mother lives.”

Her foot came off the accelerator. The big RV began to slow.

“Are you serious?”

He nodded, sat back in the seat and folded his arms across his
chest.

Melanie Harris used her turn signal and slid the motor home off
the highway and onto the shoulder. She set the parking brake and
turned toward Corso.

“They think you know where she is?”

Again he nodded silently. Something in his facial expression
alerted her.

“Do you?”

His eyes got all-of-a-sudden cagey. “Do I what?”

“Don’t start with me, Corso. You know what I mean. Do you or
don’t you know where his mother lives?”

“Yeah,” he said after a minute.

“How come you know what nobody else knows?”

He shrugged and looked out the side window. “After he got sent
to Meza Azul . . . Doris—that’s his mother’s name, Doris— the
press were driving her crazy. She asked me if I knew anybody who
could help her disappear for a little while. I turned her on to a guy
I know specializes in helping people get lost. He snuck her out of
Seattle. Set her up with a new address and a phony ID. Put together a
mail drop for her so nobody could find her that way either.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Almost seven years.”

“And you think she’s still where your friend put her?”

“She’s still using the mail drop.”

“I want to go there,” she said instantly.

He raised a hand, waving the idea off. “No way,” he said.

“She’s a very private woman.” He sat there shaking his head.

“You promised.”

“I didn’t promise to go anywhere other than L.A.”

“You promised to do everything you could to help me wind up this
story.” Corso opened his mouth to protest but changed his mind and
shut it again. Cars zipped by on the highway. An eighteen-wheeler
ripped the air.

“I’m gonna need a map,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

He told her.

“Where’s that.”

“Up in the mountains.”

“How far?”

He checked his watch. “We should get there before dark.”

Special Agent Westerman closed her cell phone with a snap. “I’ll
be damned,” she said with a wry grin. “You were right.”

Rosen smiled. “Tell me.”

“As soon as the first unit dropped off their tail, lo and behold
if Mr. Corso didn’t suddenly appear in the passenger seat. They
drove another fifty miles down the road, then pulled over. They
bought gas and a map of California. One-twelve fifty-nine, on her
American Manhunt
credit card. Harris called her producer in
L.A.” She sensed his next question. “She wasn’t on long enough
for us to pick up on the call.”

“Pity.”

“Then an hour or so and about eighty miles later they get off
they freeway at exit one-fifteen, the Mountainview Highway exit,
heading up into the Sierras. I don’t know where they’re headed.
but it’s sure as heck not L.A.”

“Good.”

“We’ve got an electronic transponder on the RV and two units
doing ground surveillance. We’ve also got a pair of units on her
producer, who, as of an hour ago, was on his way to LAX.”

“Too bad we don’t have an ear inside the RV.”

“She showed up before they could get it in place.”

Rosen nodded his understanding. “Tell them to keep their dis
tance. Make sure they don’t get made. With the electronics in place
on the RV there’s no sense crowding them.”

She assured Rosen that she’d relay his message to the agents in
the field.

“How’d you know?” she asked. “Is this one of those
esoteric things an agent only learns to sense after thirty years in
the Bureau?”

He laughed and waved the idea away. “I didn’t know,” he
said.

“It was a shot in the dark. Sometimes they pan out, sometimes
they don’t.” He showed his palms. “Better to be lucky than
good.”

“What now?”

“We wait.”

“Be still my heart.”

She began to walk around the carpet in tight circles.

“You had lunch?” he asked.

She said she hadn’t and kept on walking.

Next time she walked by, he caught her elbow in his hand.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ll spend a little of the Bureau’s
money.”

She stopped her pacing and fixed him with her gaze. She opened her
mouth, closed it, and then seemed to have a short discussion with
herself before speaking again.

“Agent Rosen,” she began.

“Ron,” he corrected.

“This may not be politic or even polite, but it’s going to be
in the way until I get it said.”

“In the way of what?” he wanted to know.

“For the past week or so . . . ever since we’ve been out of
town on this Meza Azul business . . . I’ve had the feeling.” She
hesitated. Made eye contact. “I’ve had the feeling that you’ve
been hitting on me.” She started to pace but stopped herself.
“Maybe I’m making it up. Maybe I’m misinterpreting. If that’s
the case, then I apologize.” She threw her hands in the air. “But
I’m not going to feel comfortable until you and I talk about this.”

He thrust his hands deep into his pants pockets. She watched as he
knit his eyebrows and considered his response. After a while, he
said, “I’d like to tell you the whole thing was a figment of your
girlish imagination, Agent Westerman,” he began. “I’d like to
tell you that . . .” He paused for effect. “. . . but it wouldn’t
be true.” He captured her eyes. “I guess I
have
been
hitting on you, in some small childish way,” he added. “I want
you to understand it wasn’t like I expected anything to come of the
matter. We both know that’s impossible.”

She nodded her understanding.

He pulled his hands from his pockets. “I know it sounds
foolish,” he said. “I think maybe I just wanted to know whether I
was still attractive. Whether I could capture the attention of a
young woman such as yourself. I hope you’ll forgive me for . . .”
He searched for a word. “. . . for any indiscretions. . . .”

“There were no indiscretions,” she assured him.

“I like to tell myself I survived my recent divorce unscathed.”

He made a wry face. “I may have to reexamine that particular
supposition.”

She started to speak, but he cut her off. “I wouldn’t blame
you one bit for reporting me to my superior. My actions were—”

This time, she interrupted him. “For what? You’ve never been
anything but professional and a gentleman. There’s nothing to
report. I just didn’t want this feeling I had to come between us,
either personally or professionally.”

Again, he paused to consider.

“Thanks,” he said, studying the floor “That offer of lunch
still hold?”

He looked up. Smiled. “You bet.”

• • • “Turn on the interior lights will you?”

Melanie Harris fumbled around on the dash, then the steering
column without finding the proper switch. The road ahead was dark,
two narrow lanes in each direction, lined with fir and pine trees
whose stout alpine limbs had been picked clean by the fierce mountain
winds. The road shoulders were marked by long poles, painted orange
at the tops, designed to define the edges of the driving surface when
everything for miles around was covered with six feet of snow.

“I better watch where I’m going,” Melanie said. “Lest we
end up in the ditch.” She was paying attention, driving with two
hands. Giving it all she had.