Authors: Robert Ellis
Frank picked up the photo and looked at it more closely, the dial tone echoing off the walls and into his head. There was no easy way out of Olson’s office now. No fast way of getting back to his car. Linda was holding him down and he couldn’t move.
Chapter 39
The photograph of Olson’s country house came to life as Frank drove over a two-lane bridge, crossed a small river and saw the idyllic home in the distance. Pulling off the road, he cut the engine and dropped the photo into his glove box.
The house was set on a hill just above the river. A big white stucco job with a rear terrace overlooking the valley which was still free of asphalt roads and other houses. Frank had passed the end of the makeshift suburban nightmare about ten miles back and figured the view from Olson’s house would last another two or three years before progress chopped it down.
A kite flapped in the sky overhead.
Frank followed the line down to the ground until he saw Olson’s wife and two young children move into the backyard from the other side of the house. Olson’s wife wore a man’s leather flight jacket over a long purple dress. At first glance, she looked a little round. But when she turned, he could see the breeze filling out her dress. The woman appeared wholesome, even pretty.
The kite rose a hundred yards in the air and would take time to reel in. Frank guessed the boy to be six or seven, the girl a few years younger than that. Even from a distance he could hear them giggling as they gazed at their mother and struggled to hold onto the thin line with unpracticed hands. The entire scene had a storybook feel to it. A long way from where Ozzie Olson lived now.
Bright light flashed through the car and then vanished. Frank turned to the river and squinted as the sunlight kicked off the wet rocks. Tall reeds stood ten feet off the ground and lined the slow-moving water on both sides. The strong breeze shook the grassy plants in waves, filling the clean afternoon air with a rustling sound.
The thought of Linda somehow being involved with Olson began to surface again and Frank fought to keep it down. He knew people experienced grief in different ways and that he was letting Woody’s death get to him. He hadn’t noticed it before. The frequent headaches over the past few days, his burning stomach. He had been fighting the grief, thinking he could work through it or put it off until after the election. Now his mind seemed like it was turning on him.
Linda and the money.
He remembered their meeting with the accountant. The glow on her face as she got the news. With Woody gone, they’d split the money not by three but by only two. Each would receive an additional $1.7 million because of Woody’s death.
Frank took a deep breath and went over it again. While murders had been committed for much less, the idea of Linda being involved in this was delusional. He could trust her with his life. There had to be a reasonable explanation for why she and Olson were talking to each other.
The light in the car brightened again. Frank noticed that it wasn’t coming from the water. Instead, the sun was spiking off something in the reeds that had the reflective feel of a small mirror. Frank kept his eyes on the spot, studying the tall grass. After several minutes, the wind picked up and he spotted the form of a man hiding on the other side of the river.
Frank got out of the car and crossed the bridge. A dirt road followed the river, bordering a field that had already lost its color and turned gray. The ground was still wet from the weekend rain. Sidestepping the mud, Frank slipped into the reeds, heard a metallic click and froze.
It was a camera with a motor drive attached. That white-hot reflection he’d seen had come from a lens.
Frank inched toward the sound. When he heard it again, he stopped and waited, trying to get a bearing on the location and distance. The wind picked up. As the reeds began to swirl, he saw the man leaning against an old pickup truck just ahead. Frank lowered himself into the grass. There could be no doubt. It was Ozzie Olson, spying on his own family with a long lens.
Frank had only met Olson the few times he agreed to debate Helen Pryor. He looked bigger than Frank remembered, older and more menacing. His face had turned pale, his eyes darker than a raccoon’s. Standing this close, Frank could see what the man’s thirst for revenge had done to him. Revenge had its own way of growing, not in the light, but in the dark. And Olson had every appearance of being a man who’d spent a lot of time in the dark.
Frank watched Olson frame his camera, the motor drive bursting through another series of rapid-fire shots. When he pulled the camera away, he looked dazed. Lost in thought, Frank guessed. Lost in the vision of what he once had and wanted to get back.
The wind let up, the tall grass rising all around him until it obscured his view. Frank didn’t move. He looked into the sky, but could no longer find the kite. After a moment, he heard a rustling sound. He thought that Olson might be moving toward him and searched the ground for a rock. But then the sound stopped. A car door opened and closed and an engine started. When he heard Olson drive off, he parted the tall grass and watched the pickup heading further down the dirt road.
Frank legged it over the bridge to his Lexus, made a U-turn and started down the muddy dirt road after Olson. He could see the pickup in the distance. The road followed the course of the sleepy river, cutting a winding path to the horizon. Frank assumed that it was an access road for farmers further down the way, but had no real idea where the road was leading him. Curiosity seemed to be pulling him forward and he lit a cigarette, wondering where a man went after spying on his wife and children with a long-lens camera.
The sun was nesting in the trees. He caught a glimpse of the pickup through the grass, watching it disappear around a bend. He took it slow and easy. He passed landmarks, two log cabins from the Revolution and a battery of artillery marking a small hill from the Civil War. Then the road broke from the river bed and made a slow turn into the woods.
His cell phone rang. Frank flipped it open, ready to hear Tracy asking him where he’d been for the last two hours.
“Is this Frank Miles?” the voice started.
It was a familiar voice, a man’s voice, but Frank couldn’t place it.
“Yeah,” he said. “Who’s this?”
“Your conscience,” the voice snarled back at him. “Fuck you.”
He heard the line click. The rear end of his car took a sudden hit and shuddered. When he checked the rearview mirror, he saw Olson in his pickup behind him. Olson had known Frank was there all along. The drive into the woods had been deliberate. The word
premeditated
came to mind.
Frank tightened his grip on the wheel and hit the gas. The Lexus thrust forward as his foot touched the floor and backed off. He could see Olson picking up speed, trying to catch up. Frank couldn’t believe his mistake. He’d walked right into it on a lonely dirt road in the middle of nowhere. If the hole was deep enough, he imagined, his body might never be found.
The road was slick with mud and wet leaves. He hit what looked like a puddle, but it was deep. The car bottomed out and then fishtailed, the rear end catching a tree and smashing into a bolder. Frank looked through the windshield at Olson approaching and turned the key. The car restarted. He threw the shift back into drive, glanced at Olson again and floored it. The car began to shake. He could feel the tires churning up mud and gravel. Turning the wheel into the road, he let the tires dig their way through the debris. When they found something hard enough to grip, the car began moving again—the vibration fading as he picked up speed and headed deeper into the woods.
Frank guessed that Olson’s truck was ten to fifteen years old. It was heavy, built high off the ground. And Olson probably had a good feel for the road—knew where the thing went and how it got there. Frank checked the rearview mirror again. Olson was taking the curves short, plowing over the brush and knocking small trees down.
When he looked away from the mirror, Frank saw an oak tree charging toward him. He wrenched the wheel to the right. The car skipped off the road and nearly rolled. Frank grit his teeth and kept his foot on the accelerator, trying to work through it. Shaving two small evergreens away from their roots, he hit a rock and bounced back onto the road.
He’d survived, but lost his distance. Olson hit him hard, the weight of the truck pushing him forward. His bumper broke loose, and he saw Olson roll over it, gain speed and plow into him again.
Frank gunned it, the Lexus rocking faster and faster as he pushed seventy, seventy-five and then eighty on the muddy road. He was pulling away, beginning to make distance now. And the surface of the road was changing. There was more gravel in it, his wheels digging the stones up and beating them into the underside of the car. Frank took it as a sign that he wasn’t headed into the woods, but on his way out. Once he reached asphalt, the Lexus could easily outrun Olson’s pickup.
He spotted the curve ahead and leaned into it as he turned the wheel to the left. The curve sharpened. The road rushing at him from behind the corner seemed almost endless. Then without warning, the car shot up a sudden rise and lifted into the air. Frank felt his stomach drop. Three or four seconds passed in slow-motion before the car pitched forward, fell thirty feet and hit the ground below. He could see the end of the road rushing toward him, a small boat launch at the river’s edge. As he jammed his foot on the brake, the car began twisting and skidding out of control.
The car felt like it was shaking apart but finally stopped. Then Frank shifted into reverse and floored it but nothing happened. He stuck his head out the window and saw the front tire grinding a hole in the mud. When he spotted Olson’s pickup moving down the hill, he gunned it again, his tire spraying muck into the air, unable to find hard ground.
Olson got out of his pickup and started walking toward him with a crowbar in his hand. Frank ripped open the door and jumped out thinking that he’d just been handed his ticket and was the world’s next dead man.
“Easy, Olson,” he said as they faced off. “Easy. You look like you could use a drink to calm down. Let’s go get a drink and calm down.”
Olson glanced at the Lexus, then turned back with the crowbar. “What you did to me isn’t a game, Frank. Not anymore.”
It hung there, with Olson chewing it over. Frank could see it as he stood there—Olson’s mind churning up the past.
“Why are you talking to Linda?” Frank asked.
The churning stopped. Olson’s eyes drifted up the hill and parked on the gravel road that Frank knew was the only way out.
“Have you been snooping around my office, Frank?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I had a good look. You’ve hit bottom. Killing Woody should’ve been your wake-up call, you crazy son-of-a-bitch.”
Olson swung the crowbar. Frank grabbed it, drove the big man back and hit him in the face with a closed fist. Olson’s head snapped back. As he lost his balance and fell, he let go of the crowbar and hit the ground with a heavy groan. Frank gave him a look and stepped back. Olson rolled onto his side, trying to catch his breath.
“It never stops, does it?” Olson said in a low voice.
Frank picked up the crowbar, wondering what he’d do with it if Olson made a move. “What’s that, Olson?”
Olson looked up at him from the ground. “You ruined me,” he said. “And now you’re doing the same thing to Lou Kay and his daughter. You’d do anything to get Merdock elected, wouldn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
Olson grimaced. “The Senate race in Virginia,” he said. “Lou Kay’s daughter. I thought kids were off-limits. And what about the man’s ex-wife? How much did it cost you to pay her off? How low can you go?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Olson didn’t answer, all three hundred pounds of him shaking with anger. It took considerable effort to lift himself off the ground. When he finally got to his feet, he was out of breath and unable to catch the drool slipping out of his mouth. He wiped his chin and turned to Frank’s car, eyeing the left front tire.
“Dig yourself out of the mud,” he said, walking off. “You ought to be pretty good at it by now.”
Frank watched Olson climb into his truck and settle in behind the wheel.
“What about Linda, Olson? What were the two of you talking about?”
Olson flashed a dark smile, lifting his camera and pointing it at him. He snapped three quick shots off. When he lowered the lens, his smile was gone.
“It’s the wrong time to be alone,” he said in an ominous voice. “If I were you, Frank, I’d be more careful. It’s dangerous now.”
Olson held the glance, then turned the pickup around and finally drove off, his words lingering as the sound of the truck’s engine faded slowly over the hill.
Aside from the murders, Frank had no idea what Olson had been talking about or why he’d brought up the Merdock/Kay race for the Senate. Frank was aware that Kay was divorced and had a nineteen-year-old daughter. But he had never considered them issues and certainly hadn’t done anything to them. What did Olson know that he didn’t? Even more troubling, why was Olson even following the race?
Frank turned back to his car. It looked like a wreck that had washed up from the river after a flood. The battery on his cell phone was dead and he couldn’t find the power cable that plugged into the lighter on the dash. Somehow he had to dig the car out and get back into town.