Pushed Too Far: A Thriller (16 page)

They’d almost reached the turnoff to Bensenville when Grace finally spoke. “I don’t want to stay somewhere without you.”

She hadn’t yet told Grace anything about her need to dash back to Lake Loyal after what they’d found in the cemetery, but with her call to Harlan, she should have known the girl would put it together. “You’ll like Jack.”

“Jack?”

“Jack Daniels.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Isn’t that booze?”

“This Jack Daniels is a friend of mine from back when I worked for the Chicago PD. Jack is short for Jacqueline. You’ll have fun, Grace. She knows a lot more about fashion than I do, and if you cooperate, maybe she’ll even take you to the firing range.”

Of course, first she had to make sure Jack didn’t mind Grace staying with her without Val present.

The pout stayed on Grace’s lips despite the prospect of buying clothes and shooting guns. “You won’t remember to feed the horses.”

“Good thing I hired someone to do that.”

“You won’t remember to feed yourself.”

Val could hardly argue that point, especially after the past few days. “I’ll stick a Post-It on the door so I can’t miss it.”

“Now you’re making fun of me.”

Val was exhausted, and she still had to figure out what happened to Liz Unger and—provided she found something—drive the four hours back to Lake Loyal. She didn’t have the energy for this. “It’s going to be tough not having you there, Grace. I know you’ve been keeping the place together, especially lately. But I can’t deal with it unless I know you’re okay.”

“Who’s going to make sure
you’re
okay?”

Her question hit Val like a hard kick. Grace was an amazing girl, always responsible, always caring for others. She was so much like her mother, it made Val’s chest hurt. “I need you to do this for me, Grace. Just for a few days.”

Her niece stared straight ahead out the windshield, not answering. A mile hummed under the tires, then another.

No one could administer the silent treatment like a teenage girl.

Fine. She was angry now, but she’d get over it, and she might even have a good time. Most of all she’d be safe. That was what mattered most.

Jack’s directions were precise, and Val found the house in Bensenville with little problem. Her old friend and mentor looked stylishly gorgeous as usual in a pair of gray herringbone trousers and a wrap sweater that had to be cashmere. She really was too well dressed to be a cop.

In light of Val’s fashion ineptitude, it was probably a good thing she moved to the middle of Wisconsin, where the chicest outfit you could wear was green and gold on game day.

As they exchanged hugs and introductions, a tall redheaded man with a charming little boy smile stepped into the room, his gait a halting shuffle that took a lot of time and a seemingly large amount of effort. He thrust out a hand.

“This is my fiancé, Latham.” Jack wasn’t smiling, she was glowing.

His grip was warm and felt more vital than he looked. After they made introductions all around, Latham talked Grace into a game of rummy, leaving Val and Jack to duck into the kitchen to talk.

“What do you think of Latham?” Jack said as soon as they were out of earshot.

What could Val say? Latham’s eyes lit up every time he looked in Jack’s direction, something he couldn’t keep from doing at every opportunity. “He’s great.”

“I proposed to him,” Jack said. “One knee, mariachi band, the works.”

That caught Val by surprise. If there was a woman less romantic than she was, it was Jack. She might dress well, but fashion was her way of projecting confidence, something essential in the old boys’ club of the Chicago PD. Jack kept her emotions close to her chest, and wasn’t one to get dewy-eyed over a man.

Jack smiled. “I know, I know. You can’t imagine it. But I’ve never been this happy with anyone.”

Val had to admit, between Monica and now Jack, she was feeling left out. And more than a little envious. “When are you getting married?”

“I don’t know. He’s recovering from a brush with botulism.”

So that was the reason for the shuffling steps, the pallor to his skin.

“Do you have a guy up in the north woods?”

For the flash of a second, Val thought of Lund, then she shook the thought away. “I’m a little busy lately.”

“In other words, you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Right.”

“Fair enough.”

“Jack, I have a favor to ask.”

“Shoot.”

“I was wondering if Grace could stay with you a few days. Without me, I mean.”

“Of course she can.” Jack narrowed her eyes. “Something happen with Dixon Hess since we talked?”

She filled Jack in on Tamara Wade, ending with the missing death date on Liz Unger’s gravestone.

After listening to it all, Jack gave a sage-like nod. “I think I have exactly what you need.” She led Val to a computer and called up a vital records database.

Val slid into the chair. “Thanks.”

“I’ll make some coffee.”

Val had downed at least five cups by the time she found what she was looking for.

Liz Unger’s death records where listed under Elizabeth Schneider, not Unger, since it appeared she and Jeff Schneider never officially divorced. She’d died ten years ago from injuries sustained in a car accident, and she was buried in the White Church cemetery in Illinois.

The only problem was that there was no police report of the fatal accident, and while the cemetery had a record of her plot, a call to the White Church Cemetery’s association president confirmed she hadn’t been buried there. Odd that Olson hadn’t picked up on those inconsistencies when looking for information on the family, especially since Schneider had assisted him.

But that wasn’t all.

Val stared at the computer screen, her heart drumming so hard she thought she might be sick. In the other room, she could hear Grace laughing above the low hum of Latham’s voice. The scent of apple pie drifted on the air, Jack’s mother having arrived home a short time before and insisted on baking something for Grace, along with giving her tips on how to beat Latham at rummy.

The door squeaked open, and she could feel Jack watching her. “You found something.”

She didn’t bother asking how Jack knew. Her old friend was a master when it came to reading body language and assembling puzzles. “Seems like I came a long way to find something that was in my own backyard.”

“She died in Wisconsin.”

“My home county, to be precise.”

Throat dry, she stared at the part that disturbed her most … the name of the coroner who’d signed the death certificate.

Val’s head was buzzing long after she’d driven back across the Wisconsin border, known as the cheddar curtain, took the Highway 12 exit circling around Madison and Middleton, and then followed it north. The rain meteorologists had predicted pattered against the windshield, and the temperature hovered around freezing.

Not a good night for driving.

In years past, this stretch of road had been dangerous, fraught with steep twists and badly banked turns. A bypass had smoothed out the rough edges, and Val continued at a good clip. Only the occasional set of headlights pierced the darkness in the oncoming lane. A mid-sized pickup followed a little too close behind.

She’d first noticed him in Janesville. Before that, she’d been too distracted by the thoughts pinging around in her head, not that they had quieted down in the miles since.

Pete Olson, Jeff Schneider and Harlan Runk
.

At least one of them was lying to her, maybe all three.

She’d been a cop long enough to know that the best of people were capable of horrible acts when caught by difficult circumstances. She just didn’t want to believe men she’d worked with for the past six years framed a man for a woman’s death.

Or maybe even caused it themselves.

As she approached the first turn off to Roxbury, ice started to build up at the edges of the Focus’s back window, and she could feel an unstable slickness under the tires. She pulled her foot from the accelerator and let the car’s momentum take her around the curve.

The headlights behind drew closer, their glare flooding her car and bouncing off the rear view into her eyes.

She tilted the mirror toward the ceiling, but between the glare and her increasingly foggy vision, for a few scary moments, she could barely see.

They’d passed town after town, dozens of chances to turn off, but he hadn’t. She’d slowed enough for him to pass, but he didn’t take the opportunity. The truck’s driver was probably a flaming asshole who happened to be traveling the same route, but unease prickled at the back of her neck all the same.

Fields stretched on either shoulder, the stubble of corn stalks barely poking through snow. She hadn’t remembered how lonely this stretch of road was, farms far between, houses non-existent. Her pulse pounded in her ears, drowning out the swish of the wipers. Ice started forming on the rubber blades, and she flicked the heater to full-on defrost.

She eased around two more bends in the highway.

The headlights followed, tightening the distance, passing each intersecting road, rolling right by the occasional driveway.

Gripping the wheel in her left hand, she groped in her coat pocket and found her phone. On an icy night like this, she doubted the county sheriff’s departments or local police were lacking for things to do. She wouldn’t call for help based on some vague, uneasy feeling, but she wanted to be prepared in case this was more than fatigue mixed with paranoia.

She set her phone in her lap and put both hands on the wheel, forcing herself to breathe deeply and focus on the ribbon of asphalt ahead. Taking her foot off the accelerator, she let the truck creep closer. If she could get a glimpse of the license plate in her rear view mirror, she’d have something to work with.

Only there was no front plate.

She’d heard rumor of a bill working its way through the state legislature that would make a front plate unnecessary, but she couldn’t quite believe the omission was as innocent as a misinterpretation of the law. In only a few minutes, she’d reach Sauk City. She’d drive straight to the police station. No way would the driver confront her there.

River bluffs hulked ahead, dark against the glow of city lights off low clouds. Businesses sprung up on either side of the road; bars, restaurants, and roadside motels catering to summer tourists. Ahead the highway funneled onto a bridge spanning the Wisconsin River. Sauk City sparkled along the far bank.

She was almost there.

The first jolt hit above her back bumper. Her car fishtailed, skimming on ice.

Shit, shit, shit.

She counter steered, careful not to overcorrect, struggling to stay on the road.

The truck hit her from the side.

The Focus careened over the ice like a hockey puck. She steered, counter steered, but it did no good. A sign advertising canoe rentals whipped by on the right. She shuddered over the end of a guardrail to the left.

Sliding, jolting, skidding.

In slow motion, yet too fast for mind and body to react.

The tires hit the river bank. For a moment, she skated over frozen sand and ice, then water surged over the hood and the airbag exploded in her face.

L
und paced across his living room and looked at the wall clock for what had to be the fiftieth time in the last minute. The roads were starting to get slick now. Every few minutes his radio would come alive with an assistance call for a fender bender in Lake Delton or a car in the ditch outside of Merrimac. He figured it was only a matter of time before he had to use his extrication skills again.

You’d think one of these days people would learn to stay off the road during ice storms. Apparently that was too much to ask.

He’d gotten half way across the floor when the next call came in. As soon as he identified it as originating from outside the district, he only half listened.

Car off the road at the Highway 12 bridge in Sauk City.