A Stranger Lies There (10 page)

The taillights I'd just seen, no more than red pinpricks of light, were now nowhere in sight, and I was afraid I'd lost him. He could have made a U-turn over the dirt median and onto the northbound lanes, but if he had I'd missed it. Maybe he'd continued south, I thought, rocketing past the exit on my left for Avenue 50, its presence a mere twitch in my peripheral vision that registered a split second later. Instinctively, I slammed on the brakes, fishtailing down the road, leaving the smell of burned rubber in the air and thick black treadmarks on the pavement. I could see them trailing behind me in the red glow of the brake lights, which changed to pale white as I jerked the car into reverse, craned my neck around and sped backward toward the exit I'd missed, the transmission whining loudly in protest. Luckily, I was the only one on the road at that hour.

At the exit, I stopped and got out of reverse in one motion, then followed the exit lane to the left, through the median and over the northbound lanes, disregarding the stop sign there. Then I was in relative darkness beyond the highway, the streetlamps few and far between in this agricultural section of Coachella. My headlights stabbed the darkness when I came off the highway, momentarily illuminating a cloud of dust hanging in the air beside the road to my right, a few hundred yards away. It was either the remnants of a solitary dust-devil on this relatively windless night at the far end of the valley, or evidence of a man-made disturbance, like a car veering into the roadside dirt.

Without hesitation, I swung to the right, cutting the corner and throwing up dust clouds of my own, then followed the curve way too fast, straddling the orange center line as I tried to keep the car under control. In the field to my left, three radio towers stood skeletal and erect, reaching up into the nighttime sky, their red aircraft warning lights blinking solemnly.

The road had just straightened out on its long trek east toward the Mecca Hills when I made out a lone car parked in the dirt on the other side of the road, faced the wrong way. Its lights were out and I couldn't tell yet if it was the car I was chasing. I squinted through the dusty windshield from several hundred yards away, and quickly closing the distance, thought I saw movement behind the vehicle, like someone crouched near the trunk. I slowed down, realizing too late that this detour was probably a trap, and a moment later he poked his head above the car's back end and leveled a rifle my way.

I ducked to the right, taking the wheel with me, and skidded off the road into the dirt as my side window blew inward with a deafening pop, showering the interior with a hail of glass, the sharp, crystallized particles cutting into my skin and covering every surface in the cabin. The other side window was gone too, taken out by the bullet's continued trajectory over my head. Razor-like shards and splinters extended from the window opening, trembling and breaking apart as the car plowed through the furrows and irrigation ditches of the field I'd driven into.

Bouncing around like a pinball, I struggled to keep my foot on the pedal, with my head just above the dashboard to see where I was going, but low enough to avoid getting shot. The suspension was taking a hell of a beating, the car jolting violently over the cultivated rows of produce and the channels between them. The headlight beams seesawed crazily in front of me, then winked out abruptly when the car slammed nose first into a large irrigation ditch. The front end burrowed into the soft, wet soil. If I hadn't been trying to evade the rifle shots, I might have gone through the windshield. Instead, my upper body was thrown against the instrument panel, the gear-shift lever punching into my chest, the side of my head bouncing off the radio console. I went blurry for a few seconds and tried to shake it off, but couldn't stop the ringing in my ears. Then I realized I'd held on to the steering wheel for dear life during the crash, so that my left arm was pressed down on the horn. It was blaring continuously, piercing the night with a shrill cacophony. When I let go it stopped, and I could hear the engine idle roughly, then splutter and die.

CHAPTER NINE

Forcing myself to move quickly, I untwisted my legs and waist from beneath the steering wheel, sore all over. Blindly, I felt around for the gun I'd flung onto the seat beside me, and found it on the floor wedged up near the heater vent. I pulled it out, then pushed open the passenger door, desperate to get out of the car in case the shooter decided to finish me off. The door swung open easily, bouncing on its hinges before settling. I tumbled out into the dirt, crawled to the back of the car, and peeked over the trunk toward the road.

The man's car was gone, nowhere in sight. All I saw was the empty road and the unplanned exit lane I'd carved into the dirt. The pungent scent of farmland hung in the air, along with the steady buzz of insects. A placid calmness resettled over the evening. A few miles away, the interstate traffic cut through the hills, moving in slow motion silence as it entered and exited the valley. To the right: the road I'd skidded off stretching toward an ancient beach, powdered silver by grains of sifted moonlight. To the left: Highway 111 disappearing southward, not a speck of traffic on it. It seemed I was alone.

Then I became aware of the faint sound of music somewhere behind me. Turning, I saw a small house about two hundred yards away, illuminated by glaring security lamps. In my panicked flight through the field I'd missed it. Now I could see shadows moving against the brightly lit background of the house, several silhouetted figures making their way toward me. As they approached, I put the gun in the car, not wanting to seem a threatening presence on this darkened property. I wondered if the shooter would have been scared off so easily if not for those lights.

There were three of them. One was holding a flashlight, a full-moon circle of light bobbing up and down in the darkness. Tall, wearing a red baseball cap stained dark with grease, a tanktop and dungarees. The other two both wore T-shirts and one had a tattoo on his forearm.

They stopped on the other side of the ditch in front of my crippled vehicle. The leader pointed the flashlight at me, running the light up and down before settling on my face. The glare obscured my view of them.

“What are you doing here?” he asked warily.

I thought quickly, came up with something about a drunk driver running me off the road. “Didn't you see him?” I asked. No response. “Could you get that light out of my eyes?”

The light dropped to my feet. They were probably migrant workers, leery of dealing with the police. That was fine with me. “He was driving the opposite way and he came right toward me,” I continued, pointing back along the road.

“What about your windows?” one of the others asked, as the flashlight played over the car.

Shit. I hadn't thought of that. Kept my mouth shut, hoping they'd just want me off the property. I could see them thinking, obviously suspicious of my story. One of them circled around to the opposite side of the car, looking at the damage. The gun was right on the front seat, another question I couldn't answer. So far, they hadn't seen it.

“You need help with your car?” the first one finally asked.

Twenty minutes later, after a lot of grunting and heaving, we managed to get the car out, first by digging the driveshaft out of the dirt, then starting it up and pushing.

Back on level ground again, I shook their hands and said I owed them a cold one, but we all knew that would never happen. I backed out the way I'd come, so as not to further damage their crop by turning around. Slow going, the car sluggishly negotiating the dips and ruts and raising clouds of dust. Eventually, I reached the edge of the field and stopped on the shoulder of the road. The headlights, undamaged when they hit the soft dirt bank of the canal, threw twin rivers of light that shifted and swelled in the swirling dust.

The men watched me leave. Just before I turned into the road, I gave them the high-beams as a farewell, but they had already turned back toward the house.

CHAPTER TEN

My car seemed to guide itself back toward Indio and the Blue Bird Motel as I tried to make sense of everything that had happened. It wasn't easy with the headache pounding in my skull. I drove slowly to give myself time to think.

If not for my bruises and the sprinkles of glass all around me, I would hardly have believed that the last few hours weren't some half-remembered episode of a TV cop show. In fact, the whole night seemed like one of those hallucinations you get just before falling asleep, your imagination running wild while the rest of the world goes on normally.

Tonight had been as far from routine as you could get without ending up dead, and I thought about what I should do next. I was lucky those men had helped me with the car. And glad that my car was old enough to not have airbags. Without a tow-truck driver to report the accident, I didn't have to tell the police about anything other than discovering that matchbook. Leaving out the rest of it, though, meant they wouldn't get my description of the motel room intruder, and more important, the gun that was now sitting in my back seat.

The gun. My prints were on that gun.

I could wipe it clean, but that would remove the shooter's as well. Out of the question. I wanted to give the police every chance of solving the crime. I'd take my chances and play it straight.

Pulling into the motel parking lot a few minutes later, the second thoughts began to take over. There was no chance I wouldn't spend the night in jail. My prints on the weapon could get me convicted of murder. I didn't think it would come to that, but it was possible.

I had to bite the bullet though. Finding that boy's killer was too important to me.

I parked in front of the office beside the dust-covered Plymouth and turned off the ignition. The office windows were still lit from within. The neon vacancy sign buzzed and flickered, then seemed to synchronize with the ticking of my engine as it cooled. Looking to my right, I noticed the other vehicle parked in front of number 2. That room's lights were still off, and I could see number 12's door hanging ajar, the way it had been left in my sudden departure.

Eager to get this over with, I got out of the car and swung the door shut. Broken glass fragments rattled around inside. The office door, like the rest of the place, was covered with old peeling paint, and a dingy blind was closed in the window. It had a “Manager” sign at eye level and a doorbell to the left, identified as the night bell and feebly illuminated under a layer of grime. I pressed it and heard a strident buzzing inside, followed by the faint sounds of someone grunting and moaning as if he'd been injured.

The door wasn't locked when I tried it, swinging open slowly on squeaky hinges. Stepping inside the well-lit office, I noticed a blank-screened TV in the upper right corner and a counter running across the room in front of me. The sounds of muffled struggle turned more frantic, coming from the floor behind the front desk.

He was tied up down there, hands and feet, squirming in the tight space behind the counter. Eyes bugged out in fear. His mouth was duct-taped and his breath came out in a rapid, shallow whistle.

An open door on my right said “Private.” Beyond that, a dark alcove that I went through to get to the area behind the front desk. A short corridor on the right presumably led to the proprietor's living quarters.

Someone had done a thorough job incapacitating him. His legs were bound together at the knees and his feet were crossed one over the other and secured, preventing him from getting up to a standing position. The man's throat was working, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he struggled to get enough air around the duct tape. I ripped it off in one quick motion. He gasped several times, filling his lungs. There was a small patch of blood on the back of his head, a shiny, dark red spot congealing in his thick hair. Sweat beaded his face, which was as red as a bad sunburn. It was obvious he'd been getting pretty worked up over his predicament.

“You okay?”

“Who are you?” he asked, still breathing hard.

“My name's Tim Ryder,” I answered, undoing his hands from behind his back.

“That guy isn't still around, is he?”

“You mean the one who did this to you?”

“'Course. Who else would I be talking about?”

“What did he look like?”

I got the last of the tape off, and he rubbed his hands together, getting the circulation back.

“Tall, maybe six foot. Leather jacket and jeans. Red hair. White dude,” he added, reaching for a pair of scissors under the counter. Next to them, a roll of duct tape with its ripped end hanging off. The manager was lucky it had been there, I thought. Those scissors could have been buried in his neck right now instead.

“Why? You know him?” the man asked, cutting the tape from his knees and feet.

“Not really,” I answered.

A nervous look. “Not really? What does that mean?”

“Relax. He's no friend of mine.”

“So who is he, then?”

“I'm not sure,” I said, helping him up. “I'll tell you what I know after we call the police.”

“You don't look so good yourself,” he said, eyeing the bruise on the side of my face.

I brought my hand up to it and felt a bump. “I'll be all right.”

Nodding, he brushed past me, and I followed him into a sitting area in the back that was part of the living quarters. He veered toward an easy chair next to the couch and sat down heavily.

“Dizzy,” he said, touching the back of his head.

“You should get that looked at.” I went into the kitchen to get him a glass of water, which he drained in several long gulps.

“'Preciate it, bud. I was beginning to think I'd be there all night.” He got up and took the empty glass to the kitchen sink. “I gotta take a leak somethin' terrible. Be right back.” Just before he left the room, he turned back to me and asked, “You ain't gonna rip me off, are you?”