The Highway (32 page)

The last man to enter was hatless but the blocky shape of his head was familiar. He was the trucker who’d brought them here and the man who’d pulled Krystyl out of the room by her hair. Gracie saw the glint of a badge on the second man, and for a brief electric moment her heart soared.
The police had come to rescue them
. Then she realized the man with the badge was in the middle of the three, not in back where he should be. He wasn’t prodding the men into the room—he was one of them.

A voice she’d not heard before, high and twangy, said, “Hello, girls.” Then: “Gimme that flashlight.”

A few seconds later Gracie was blinded by a beam. He’d shined it directly into her eyes. She raised her hands up and covered her face. Even through her closed eyelids she knew the bright light was still on her.

“That skinny little one looks like a damned boy,” the first one with the flashlight said. He was describing
her.
The beam left Gracie and swept to the left.

“Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” the man said, his voice rising again until he sounded giddy. “That’s what I’m
talkin’
about. Ha!”

The light, of course, was on Danielle.

“I was getting bored with them whores,” the man said. “You done good this time, Ronald. You keep this up and we won’t have to call you the Lizard King no more.”

Now that the light was off her, Gracie spread her fingers so she could see between them. The tall skinny one had come further into the room and now stood above them about fifteen feet away. She didn’t have the nerve to look up toward the flashlight or his face. In the reflected light she could see his scuffed pointy-toed cowboy boots, tight jeans, and an oval bronze belt buckle. The two men behind him, the trucker and the one with the badge, were still in shadow.

“Woo-eee,” the skinny old man said, dragging the word out.

She raised her eyes. The man with the badge behind the cowboy bent over, stood back up, and extended his hand toward the cowboy’s neck and she saw the outline of a gun in it.

The
bang
was concussive in the closed room and the skinny man dropped straight down. She heard the thud of his knees on the concrete and he was directly in front of her. The flashlight rolled away from him toward her, strobing across the side wall.

She got a glimpse of his face in the flashing light: long and horselike, sallow cheeks, unshaven skin sequined with silver whiskers like some kind of backwoods hillbilly type from the movies. His mouth was open slightly to reveal long yellow teeth and his eyes looked right at her but there didn’t seem to be anything intelligent behind them. He looked surprised.

The big man in the uniform stood behind him and pressed the muzzle of the gun to the back of the cowboy’s head and there was another explosion. The cowboy stiffened and fell over face-first.

Something hot and viscous landed on her bare leg but she didn’t look down to see what it was. She could smell gunpowder, blood, and burned hair.

“Dumb son of a bitch,” the man with the gun said. And to them, he said, “Sorry you had to see that, girlies.”

Gracie asked, “Are you here to help us?”

“Hardly,” the man with the badge said. Then, to the man behind him, “Ronald, help me drag this dumb son of a bitch into the corner for now.”

36.

10:23
A.M.
, Wednesday, November 21

R
ONALD
P
ERGRAM WATCHED IT HAPPEN
; Jimmy striding into the room blathering and whooping, asking for Legerski’s flashlight and reaching back for it, clicking it on and shining it on the girls in the corner, the beam playing on them like an evil eye. Then down and to the right, in the corner of his eye, he saw the trooper squat down surprisingly quick for a man of his bulk and tug up on his pant leg to reveal the butt of a revolver jutting out from an ankle holster, pulling it, and with one motion raising it up so the muzzle was four inches behind Jimmy’s ear. Jimmy never sensed it coming or looked around.

When the man went down, he watched Legerski fire the kill shot into the back of Jimmy’s stupid head.

Pergram didn’t make a move to stop the sequence. He just watched. There was no fear whatsoever that Legerski would turn on him.

Because he was the Lizard King, he had insurance, and right now he was bulletproof. Legerski turned and brandished the gun.

“The throwdown I used earlier,” he said, meaning it was the same untraceable weapon he’d used on Hoyt.

The trooper said, “Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of it soon enough.”

*   *   *

Jimmy’s body was light. Pergram grabbed a leg and dragged it toward the wall. He could feel Jimmy’s muscles twitch and quiver beneath the denim. Jimmy’s broken head left a wide spoor of black blood behind him like a wake behind a boat.

They got the body into the corner and Legerski kicked the stray flung-out limbs into some kind of order.

“Get the flashlight and help me.”

Dutifully, but resenting the hell out of following any man’s orders, Pergram closed his hand around the barrel of the flashlight on the floor. It was sticky from rolling through the blood. He carried it over to where Legerski was bent over Jimmy’s body. The trooper was looting his pockets of change; a folding knife, his wallet, and a wad of credit cards, receipts, and notes to himself Jimmy kept bound with a rubber band in his shirt pocket. Legerski unbuckled Jimmy’s belt and pulled it free through the loops.

“So they don’t have something to use as a weapon or to hang themselves.”

Then he took Jimmy’s cowboy boots off and tossed them through the open door into the hallway.

The act made Pergram remember the door was still open and it seemed to do the same to Legerski, because the trooper pivoted on his boots and pointed his finger toward the girls in the corner.

“Don’t neither of you even think of running through that door. There’s no place to go and we’ll stop you before you even get there. You seen what happened here, what I’m capable of. You have
no
idea what my partner is capable of. So just sit there quiet until we leave.”

Pergram turned and hit them with the flashlight. They hadn’t moved, but he saw something flash in the younger girl’s eyes. She’s been thinking about it, thinking about trying to dash by them toward the door. He smiled but he knew she couldn’t see him do it.

The girl with the dark hair said, “You’re going to leave him in here?”

“For a while,” Legerski said. “Until we figure out what to do with him.”

Pergram watched as Legerski looked around, saw the old blanket on the floor, and snatched it up to cover most of Jimmy’s body. “There,” the trooper said, “now we don’t have to look at him.”

Pergram didn’t want to talk, even though Jimmy, the stupid old coot, had actually said his name. So had Legerski. Even so, he doubted the girls would remember it, given what happened. They’d heard his voice before, but why push it now?

The older one buried her face into her hands and Pergram heard a sob. He looked at the younger one. She looked back, grim, her face a mask of defiance.

He thought,
She’ll be fun to break.
All that misplaced attitude based on nothing he could see. She was just another one of those overachiever types like his dead sister JoBeth. She didn’t know how the world worked. How could she, when she’d spent her life being coddled, being told how smart and special she was? At least the older was crying. Maybe, on a gut level, she understood. If not, she’d find out soon enough, he thought.

Even though it was the wrong time, the absolute wrong time, he felt his insides stir and his blood rise.

“You ready to go?” Legerski asked him.

Pergram nodded reluctantly. First things first.

*   *   *

As Legerski jammed Jimmy’s possessions into a plastic bag in the other other room, he said, “We’ll be better off without him.”

“Yeah. I never wanted him involved in the first place.”

The trooper looked up. “I know that. I wish I wouldn’t have brought him in. But you know what happened. He started asking me questions about our comings and goings. I knew he was a deviant, but I didn’t know he’d be reckless.”

“I did.”

It had been an unbelievably stupid move on Legerski’s part. Six months before, Jimmy had asked why it was the trooper kept ordering food to go in quantity when there was only one of him still left in his house. Asking him things like, “You got a dolly you ain’t telling me about?” Things like that. One night when the trooper was drunk and off duty, Jimmy showed him his porn collection, which was extensive and revealed his rough inclinations. Legerski noticed a few items that could only be trophies—locks of hair, panties, a pair of glasses. One thing led to another, and the next time Pergram and Legerski went to the bunker for a session Legerski had brought Jimmy along.

Pergram thought letting Legerski in had been his first mistake, although he didn’t feel like he had a choice at the time. Letting Jimmy in compounded the problem.

*   *   *

“It is what it is,” Legerski said, knotting the plastic garbage sack. “No one around here will be very shocked that Jimmy just closed up and hit the road. He’s done it for months at a time before.”

Pergram nodded, but a bad thought was forming.

“You mean you don’t have a real cover story for Jimmy going away?”

“Not really.”

“You’re just winging it? I thought you were supposed to be the great planner?”

“We didn’t have no choice. Jimmy was going to go in there and get them girls before we could get to them first. That was never the deal. He got greedy and stupid. Plus, we don’t have the time for that now. We’ve got to take care of our situation first and get the heat off.”

Pergram nodded for the sake of nodding.

“Look,” Legerski said, “I’ve got to get to Livingston and see that judge. That cunt cop is probably wondering where the hell I am now. I’ve got to get up there and cover my ass.”

“And leave mine hanging,” Pergram said.

“No, it’s not like that.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

“Ronald,” the trooper said, “you’ve got to step up now. I’ve been doing all the dirty work. It’s time you stepped up.”

Pergram leaned back and looked at Legerski through slitted eyes, waiting. The bad thought was turning into a freight train headed right at him.

“That Helena cop knows me,” Legerski said. “She don’t know you. You can get close enough to her to hit with a roofie. You can either take her to your secret spot in the park or bring her back here, I don’t care. But we’ve got to get her off the street before she stirs things up around here and asks too many questions and starts putting things together.”

Pergram said, “You saying you want me to kill the lady cop?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Won’t that bring down seven kinds of hell on us?”

Legerski stepped back from the table. “It could,” he said, “but not if we do it quick and thorough. The Park County sheriff’s deputies aren’t due for hours. She’s completely on her own. If we take her out now, it’ll be a mystery but no one will know jack shit unless we screw it up.

“In fact,” Legerski said, warming to it, “I can steer things a different direction. I can say I saw the two of them—Hoyt and Dewell—getting intimate in a car on the side of the road. Who’s to say they didn’t just run off together? The disgraced cop and his lover and partner? It sounds like something Cody Hoyt would do. It’s just crazy enough people will believe it.”

Then he grinned, and said, “I’ll work on the story. I’ve got between now and seeing the judge to work on it. I can plant the seeds with the Park County guys I know. There might be some holes but for now I’m liking it.”

Pergram didn’t say he did, didn’t say he didn’t. All he knew was that everything he’d built over the years was piled up between the tracks and that freight train was coming. All he’d accomplished was coming apart and spinning wildly out of control and the person running the show was standing right in front of him with a trash bag of a dead man’s remains in his hand.

Legerski grasped the handle of the ammo box Pergram had delivered with one hand and held the plastic bag with the other. For a moment, Pergram refused to let go and the two men stared in each other’s eyes. Then Pergram released his grip and let Legerski take it.

“You know I’ve got more copies,” Pergram whispered.

“I’ll need them, too.”

“Not until I decide to give them to you.”

“You might get us arrested if you keep them.”

“Yeah,” Pergram said, “but if that happens it’ll be the both of us. We’ll go down together.”

Legerski gave Pergram his best cop dead-eye, but Pergram didn’t crack. He’d been on the receiving end of cops and their looks for years.

Pergram gave it a beat, didn’t want to ruin Legerski’s good time. He changed the subject and said, “What does this cop look like and what is she driving?”

The trooper described the Ford Expedition and the Lewis & Clark County plates. He said, “Midthirties, heavy-set, medium-length brown hair, brown eyes, wearing a dark pantsuit and a white blouse.”

And added, “She has a pretty face.”

37.

10:38
A.M.
, Wednesday, November 21

C
ASSIE SAT IN THE PARKED
and idling Ford Expedition on the shoulder of the highway and thought about Thanksgiving, churches, and God.

The compound for the Church of Glory and Transcendence was across the river on the other side of Yankee Jim Canyon. She’d seen it years before as she passed by but she’d never studied the layout or paid much attention to it overall. Now, she looked at it through field glasses, building to building, hoping to find something that would lead to solving the disappearance of the Sullivan girls and Cody Hoyt. She saw no fresh tire tracks on the moist dirt road leading to the compound or on the roads within it, and she saw no red Ford, no sign of Cody’s pickup.

The morning sun, fused through winter storm clouds, came soft and late to the valley. Colors, shadows, and contours appeared flat. There were so many days of sunshine in Montana that a day without it always felt odd to her, and it somehow dampened her earlier enthusiasm that she was doing the right thing and that the investigation was going somewhere.