The Passenger (7 page)

“Go easy,” he said.

To the side of the farmhouse he saw a
rusted-out Ford pickup that looked like it hadn’t been on the road in
years but beside it in front of the
porch, a light-colored, four-door Chevy. It would do.

“Pull up here,” he said. “Keep her
running.” They were about three car lengths away.

“Chevy looks just the ticket. Ray? You
want to do the honors?”

Ray, the one with the hands. He nodded.

“Billy, go along and keep an eye on the
house. Real quiet.”

They opened both doors and stepped
outside. He didn’t have to tell them not to shut them. He turned to the woman
beside him.

“You too,” he said. “
Real
quiet. Are we clear about that?”

“Yes.”

He watched them move to the driver’s side
of the Chevy and saw Ray open the door and duck in, Billy a little in front of
him watching the house and already jittering like he had the shits, looking
back at Ray as though willing him to hurry. He heard the engine sputter and die
and sputter again through the still night air and thought,
damn
! just as the living room window flew open and the shotgun
appeared and let fly and the Chevy’s windshield exploded. He saw Billy hit the
ground and start crawling toward the back of the car, Ray nowhere in sight.

“Get outa there! Goddammit! I’ll blow
your goddamn ears off!”

An old man’s voice. One very
pissed off
old man.

The shotgun sparked and roared again and
punched a hole in the grille. The car shuddered and the hood flew up as he
fired a third time and then the left front tire was down and hissing. He saw
Ray bail out of the
seat and
stumble for cover toward the rear of the Chevy and crouch beside Billy.

“Aw, shit,” he said.

He put his arm out the window and fired at
the same time the old man did and this time the blast kicked the hood off its
hinges entirely and back against what was left of the windshield.
The bastard’s sure doing a fuck of a job on
his own car
, he thought.
Doesn’t seem
to give a fuck either
. Only now he’d discovered that there was somebody in
the station wagon firing back at him, and Emil saw the shotgun glint and shift
in the moonlight.

“
Hit
it, Maggie
!”

He got off three fast ones toward the
window and saw wood fly off the sill as she slammed her foot to the gas pedal
and sent the car screeching into a turn behind the Chevy, spraying dirt and
gravel as the goddamn woman beside him tried to haul herself over the seat,
making for the open rear doors so that he had to reach for the back of her blouse
and grab hold of her with one hand and fire at the farmer with the other and
the farmer was shooting back. He felt the impact thump and quiver through the
right rear body of the wagon. Ray and Billy were up and running for the
wide-open backseat doors as she pulled the car through the full 180- degree
turn,
getting them the hell out of there
,
yes! and picking up speed, the two of them racing for the car and catching it
right and left just as the shotgun roared a final time and they finally slammed
the doors.

“Whew! That was one single-minded guy,”
Ray said.

“Disreputable,” said Billy.

* * *

The detective—the bigger of the two,
Frommer his name was—was seated on the couch flipping through his notepad,
frowning. Alan sat across from him on tin edge of the armchair and waited. He
heard the toilet flush and finally the smaller cop came out of
the hath
room so that then they could begin.

“What we’ve got here’s kind of unusual,
Mr. Laymon,” Frommer said. “Three out-of-
staters
and
a local girl.”

“Why unusual?”

“The boys turn up easy on the computer.
Emil Rothert, Ray Short and Billy Ripper. Rothert and Short originally from
Dead River, Maine. High school buddies, what little they had of it. Mostly they
had Juvenile. Assault, arson, skin the neighbor’s cat, that kind of thing.
Graduated to armed robbery, rape and aggravated assault. No convictions. Both
did time in Jersey—annul robbery again. And we figure they linked up with Rip
per there because next we got all three of ’em booked for auto theft in
Bristol, Connecticut, charges dismissed This Ripper’s a total fruitcake. Went
after his mom eight years ago with a straight razor and damn near killed her.
Lady sixty-six years old. Imagine that? Bui the real puzzler’s this Lane
woman.”

“How come?”

“Let’s just say the consensus is that she
ain’t got all her cookies in the jar,” the smaller cop said. Frommer shot him a
look that went from hot to cold. Then he shrugged.

“It’s true,” he said. “I wish I had a
buck for every time she’s called the station with some lame news or another.
First she says she’s being followed by some guy in a white Mercedes. Then she’s
getting obscene
calls every night and she
can’t be sure but she thinks the caller’s a
woman
.
She can tell by the breathing. She calls us at least a dozen times on this one.
Then somebody breaks in and cuts the wire to her window fan in the dead of
summer. Then somebody breaks in again and cuts her phone line. Finally somebody
sets fire to her garage.

“Well, there
was
a fire. Burned up an old sleeping bag and some old clothes and
papers. We got no proof but two guesses who set the thing. She was all right I
guess until her boyfriend ran off and dumped her. Since then, whacko.”

“So you’re saying ...”

“So I’m saying we don’t know if she’s
with ’em or against ’em. We figure she wasn’t in on the killing. The driver who
called it in said their car was off the road trying to kiss a tree. But other
than that? Could easily be the one as the other. So the point is . .

He
knew what the point was
.
“Jesus,” he said.

“Right. We could be talking three bad
guys and two hostages, or three bad guys, one hostage and one crazy. And I got
to be honest with you. Either way it could get very nasty here.”

* * *

They’re up against it now, she thought.
The police band had them made. Not just the car but them. She didn’t know
whether it made her feel frightened or elated. Maybe both.

“. . .
suspects identified as Emil Rothert, thirty-four, white male, six feet
two inches, two hundred fifteen pounds . . . Ray Short, thirty-four, white
male, five feet eleven inches, one hundred seventy pounds . . . William
Grant Ripper, thirty-one, white male,
five feet nine inches, one hundred forty pounds. ...
”

Emil reached over and turned it off.

"I don’t like this,” Ray said. “This
ain’t good at all.”

"We’re fine. All we need’s a car.”

His voice was different though. Maybe she
was seeing the first cracks in the great Emil Rothert bravado. She could hope
so.

"They got the names, Emil, they got
the plate number
,
the
registration .. .”

"
Which is why we
need the car.
”

"And maybe here she comes,” said
Marion.

Headlights gleamed in the rearview
mirror.

"Go for it,
Mags
,”
Emil said.

Marion got out and slammed the door and
Emil inched across and locked it. His look said she had better not move, locked
or unlocked. He turned and offered Marion’s .22 to Ray and Billy.

“Who wants it?”

"I’ll take it,” Billy said. “Thank
you very much.”

“Everybody down.”

In the mirror above she could see Marion
waving frantically at the car’s approach and she thought how he’d been doing
exactly the same thing a few hours ago,
just
looking for a lift
and then watched the car slow and stop directly behind
them, the driver, a man in jacket and tie, leaning out and Marion walking over
and leaning down, pointing back at the wagon, the man opening his door and
getting out and his car’s courtesy light blinking on so that she could see that
there were other her people in the car too, a woman in the front passenger seat
and two smaller figures in back, Marion gesturing with fake exasperation as
they walked toward the
wagon,
heard their footsteps approach and stop and the man say
what the
. . . ? in surprise as the two left-side doors swung open
and Emil and Billy stepped out. She sat up. The man’s eyes were going back and
forth from gun to gun.

“Oh god. Oh, Jesus. Listen, please... my
family. Whatever you want. Anything you want. Please . ..” “Sir,” Emil said.
“We won’t hurt your family. Just walk back to your car nice and slow. We’re not
gonna hurt anybody. Just take it easy, now, okay, sir?”

The man was clearly terrified but he did
as he was told, turned and started walking. Emil, Marion and Billy followed.

Emil called over his shoulder, “Hey,
Ray!”

“Yeah?”

“Bring her.”

“Ray, you don’t have to do this,” she
said. “Let me help you. Remember our talk? I can
help
you.”

He sighed. “Listen, lady, I don’t want
your help. And I’m not so stupid that I’m gonna trust you either. Now get out
of the car. Nothing’s gonna happen to those people except we take their
wheels.”

“You can promise me that, Ray? Really?”

He couldn’t. Only Emil could.

“Damn right I can promise you.”

He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled
out a wallet-sized snapshot, creased and worn. He handed it to her. “Look,” he
said. “I found it.”

She was looking at a color photo of
a scrawny
dishwater blonde and two scrawny kids of
indeterminate sex, barely smiling, standing in a miserable yard in front of a
broken swing.

His family.

“Now would you please get the hell out of
the car?”

He held out his hand and she gave him
back the photo and opened the door. He got out behind her.

“Listen,” he said. “I want you to know I
feel bad about. . . what happened back there. At the house I mean. Sometimes a
guy . . . you know . . .”

“I know,” she said and started walking.

She guessed the man and woman to be in
their late twenties, early thirties. The woman had seen the guns and was out of
her seat already and had gone around back to the little girl. The woman was
pretty and her left eye had let go of one long tear that streaked her cheek but
her arms were around her little girl and you could see she was trying to be
brave and stay calm so as not to panic her and you could see that it was working.
The girl was only five or so and looked confused by all this activity and her
mother’s sudden urgency but she didn’t cry but only sat silent, wide-eyed and
tense.

Beside her sat a teenage girl who looked
much like the woman. She guessed they were sisters because the girl was too old
to be the woman’s daughter. At first glance she seemed frozen with fear. Then
Janet saw something pass across her face and her lips set tight as she took the
girl’s hand in both of her own.

A family with grit, she thought. They
don’t deserve this.

“Let’s go,” said Emil.

He waved them out of the car. She noticed
that it was another station wagon. Another fake “
woodie
”
like Marion’s, only a later model.

“Like I said, it’s just the car we want,
ma’am.”

The man’s arm went around his wife’s
waist and his
hand down to his daughter.
The sister held the girl’s other hand as Emil and Billy walked them back to Marion’s
car. Marion lit a cigarette with a wooden match that flared brightly in the
still air and then diminished. She leaned back against their car.

Somewhere in the distance frogs bellowed
out their longing.

“I think you can all squeeze together in
the backseat there, right?” Emil said. She could hear every word. “I mean, for
all I know, your wife might be an expert at hot-wiring. This is your wife,
right, sir?”

He was trying to be reassuring. Janet
wasn’t reassured.

“Yes,” the man said.

“Your daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Kid sister?”

“Yes . .. well, no. My wife’s sister.”

“Well, sir, you’ve got a real pretty
family here.”

“Thank you.”

“What I want you all to do is to stay in
the back right where you are till we’re ready to leave, okay? Then I’ll toss
you the keys as we go. Oh, and I might as well take yours now, sir. Good now as
later, right?”

The man dug into his pocket and handed
him the keys.

“What we’re going to do is, we’re going
to have a little conference, the three of us, and then we’ll be moving on.”

They walked back to Ray, Janet and
Marion.