Stateline (25 page)

“I see your point,” he said slowly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that Raneswich and Iverson want to talk to you.”

“Do me a favor. Tell Bascom I’m agreeable to talk to the detectives. Just leave it at that.”

“I guess that’ll work. Between you and me, I don’t care if you don’t talk to them as long as you close the case—and quick. That’s Mr. Bascom’s bottom line, and that’s what I’m looking out for.”

“I respect that. Hang loose, and I’ll be in touch.”

“By the way, I’m still interested in seeing that place in Carson City when you get back. Just out of curiosity, nothing more.”

“Okay.”

“So you’ll take me?”

“Sure. Keep your pants on.”

• • •

The conversation with Edward snapped me out of my funk. I reviewed my options as I waited for the plane. My obvious priority was to find the Samoan at Pistol Pete’s. If that was a dead end, I could try to track down Mr. 187 through Samantha’s address book. Maybe Cody could help out by accessing prison release information. Assuming I could identify and locate the Samoan, I’d secure him and take him to Bascom and collect the bounty. Pretty straightforward. If the detectives caught up to me before I was ready, I’d piss in their ear and tell them it was raining.

The sequence of events in the hotel room suggested a robbery gone bad. Samantha took a break to let Beverly do the dirty work, and opened the door for Mr. 187. The robbery probably would have been quick and easy, if Osterlund hadn’t jumped out of the closet. It was likely that Osterlund was there with some sort of specialized camera or video device that could capture images through the peephole. He may have been taking pictures for his own pleasure or possibly for a blackmail scam on Sylvester Bascom. The blackmail angle made good sense. Sylvester was a perfect target, and Osterlund needed money badly.

But what was the Samoan doing there? Was he just backup for Mr. 187? Did he stab Sylvester in the heat of battle? Or was something else going on? The questions would have to wait. They might never be answered, but my job was to identify and deliver the killer to John Bascom, nothing more. After that, Raneswich and the authorities could go figure out who was guilty of what crime.

The flight back to Reno was uneventful, and when the shuttle bus dropped me off near my car, the skies were just turning dark, the weather clear and cold under a brilliant full moon sitting low over the westward ridgeline. It would make for an easy drive to Tahoe. I decided to take Interstate 80, which would take me back to Stateline through Truckee and Tahoe City. It was a slightly longer drive, but there was a great burger place in Tahoe City I wanted to stop at for dinner.

I pulled my keys out of my jacket, but when I went to my door I saw it wasn’t locked. My skin tingled and I frowned. It was possible I had left the car unlocked, but I considered it unlikely. I set my bags on the pavement and walked around the Nissan. Nothing looked unusual about the car. It was dirty when I parked it, and it was still dirty. I lay down and peered underneath, but it was too dark to see anything. I didn’t like it. I opened the rear passenger door and checked the interior. Everything appeared as I left it. Before starting the motor, I opened the hood and looked over the engine compartment with my flashlight. Satisfied that the car hadn’t been tampered with, I fired it up and drove out to the highway.

• • •

Interstate 80, running from Reno to Sacramento, had been built along roughly the same pass the ill-fated Donner party had attempted to cross in the winter of 1846–47. The group of a hundred or so pioneers left from Illinois in April and enjoyed relatively easy traveling until they reached the territory that would later become the state of Wyoming. A trail guide informed them of a shortcut to the south, through Utah, and across the Great Basin desert into Reno. They were told it would take about a week to reach the Great Salt Lake. All went well until they arrived at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, and the trail petered out in the foothills. The energy and time they spent clearing the thick brush and leading their oxen and cattle over the mountains marked the beginning of their troubles.

It took a month to make it to the small settlement that was Salt Lake City, and then the party was faced with eighty miles of featureless salt desert, near what is now the Bonneville Salt Flats Speedway. The sun baked them by day, and the winds turned freezing at nightfall. They lost most of their livestock, horses, and ox teams, as well as a handful of people, to thirst and Indians. Once they made it beyond the salt flats, five hundred miles of high desert remained to be crossed. They set out on foot, down to one wagon, running low on all provisions and now without cattle. A few of the weaker died of thirst and hunger, but the worst was yet to come.

In November the group reached Reno, in poor shape and badly demoralized, but decided to press on westward over the Sierras toward Sacramento. They were within a few miles of the summit near Truckee when winter unleashed its fury upon them. The snow quickly became so deep it was impassable. With little option, the party made camp on the shores of Donner Lake and spent the months of December, January, and February completely snowbound and isolated from civilization. They were a group made up of mostly farmers, with a high percentage of elderly, women, and children. Their ability to hunt, fish, and otherwise live off the land was minimal, and they began to die of starvation and exposure.

A number of attempts were made by the healthiest pioneers to escape the wilderness, but even in the most protected areas the snow was so deep they would sink up to their hips. They fashioned homemade snowshoes, and, in mid-December, a group of ten men and five women, named “Forlorn Hope” by those left behind, set out on a desperate attempt to cross the mountains. A month later, two of the men and the five women reached a cabin a hundred miles away on the Bear River near Sacramento and were rescued, more dead than alive.

It wasn’t until early March that rescue parties were able to reach those who remained trapped at Donner Lake. More than half had died, and many of those who survived did so by eating what meager flesh remained on the corpses of their dead comrades.

• • •

I drove through the night, west on 80 toward Truckee. A local classic rock station announced it was “reality-is-for-people-who-can’t-handle-drugs Thursday.” I relaxed, grooving on the radio, remembering the stoned visions of my youth. The lazy days and psychedelic nights, the teenage chicks with bellbottoms and flowing hair looking for astral revelations, psychic communion, or maybe just good old wild times. A twelve-pack of discount beer, a baggie of homegrown, and guilt-free sex without head trips. My friends and I had been too late for the hippie era, but I guess we didn’t realize it at the time. Those were good days while they lasted, days when the next morning meant nothing more than waking up and waiting for the party to begin again. At least that’s how I remembered it. But that was a long time ago, back before AIDS, and before recreational drugs became big business. After that, all the fun had gone out of it. Or maybe I just wasn’t young anymore.

The miles fell behind me, and I crossed the state border into California. Scattered pine trees became visible as the desert started its gradual transition to forest.

The road came over a mild crest and fell into a steep downhill curve, sweeping to the left. I pushed on my brakes, and the pedal felt slack and mushy, so I pushed down harder, but the car seemed to accelerate. My foot jammed the brake pedal to the floorboard, and when I let up, the pedal stayed on the floor.
Sonofabitch, no brakes!

I stabbed my foot repeatedly against the dead pedal and cursed myself for not trusting my instincts back at the airport.

The Nissan was picking up speed as I held it tight into the bend. Swearing through clenched teeth, I eased up the emergency brake, but it had no effect on the car’s increasing momentum. The tires were squealing as the turn reached its apex. I dropped the gearshift into second, and the motor revved loudly as a pair of lights came up close in my rearview mirror. I jerked the transmission down into first, and the engine howled like an air-raid siren, the tachometer bouncing off the red line. The Nissan was slowing, the transmission holding off the pull of gravity. Then the motor backfired twice, sputtered, and died.

The wheel jerked in my hand when the power steering cut out, but I held the car steady, seeing the end of the curve where the grade flattened, and I thought I could manage to slow to the point where jumping out the door wouldn’t be suicide. And I probably would have, if it weren’t for the truck that came up behind me again, its headlamps blazing in my rear window. My head snapped back as the truck’s bumper slammed into my trunk, then I was skidding sideways, the tires shrieking on the course pavement, my headlights scanning the banks of the canyon walls beyond the edge of the road.

I fishtailed around 180 degrees and looked directly into the truck’s headlights for a long moment, long enough to feel the dread and rage boiling in my gut. Then my car crashed violently into the low steel guardrail. The chassis bounced and shuddered as the car leaned on the mangled rail, then it tilted over with a wretched screech, and tipped down into the darkness below.

The Nissan rolled once, crushing in the roof on the passenger side and shattering the windshield into a dense spider web. My head snapped to the side and clipped the edge of a piece of jagged metal. The car came around upright on all four tires, then a stout Joshua tree caught the front end and spun the vehicle around backward. The wheels were locked, which was a stroke of luck. I held the steering wheel straight and skidded down the hillside in reverse, thrashing through sagebrush and thistle, bouncing over rocks, until the Nissan fell off a short drop at the bottom of the canyon and was thrown onto its side, coming to a stop with a bone-jarring splash in the Truckee River.

I was still belted in, which kept me from bathing in six inches of icy water that flowed through the passenger side of my car. The Nissan lay on its side, precariously balanced on the river rocks. My head stung, and I reached up and felt the sticky ooze from a minor gash. I was shaken, but I didn’t think I had any broken bones. I had left my gear case on the seat beside me, and I pulled it out of the water. My door was jammed, so I kicked the glass out of the windshield, climbed over the high side of the car, and jumped down onto the riverbank.

One of the Nissan’s headlights was shining up the river, reflecting off the black water and patches of snow. I looked up the hill to the road, realizing I had somehow survived a fall down at least a 250-foot canyon. A dark pickup truck, American made, was parked on the highway. The truck’s interior light flashed on, and I saw a person climb out, then heard the clunk of the door as the light went out. The full moon clearly silhouetted the man as he jumped over the railing, pistol in hand.

A large boulder lay near the river behind my car. I moved behind it with my suitcase, shrugged into my vest, and jacked a hollow-point round into the chamber of the Beretta.

A minute later I saw the man above, sliding down the scree toward the car. Pebbles and rocks slid past me as he continued to move forward. He was perhaps fifty feet away, standing against a snowy background up the hill to my right, when I drew a bead on him.

“Drop your gun!” I yelled over the rush of the river.

There are times in life when people do things that are inexplicably stupid. The kinds of things that make you wonder what they were thinking, if anything, at that moment. This was one of those times, and the man couldn’t have picked a worse moment to have a mental breakdown. He fired two blind shots in my direction—I heard one bullet thud into the dirt, and the other ricocheted off some rocks behind me.

I fired low, aiming at his leg, but he took a step downward as I pulled the trigger, and the bullet hit him in the gut. The impact blew him backward, leaving a red smear on the snow, then his body fell forward, skidding and tumbling down to the water’s edge. He came to a stop twenty feet from where I stood, his legs strewn in the river like broken sticks, his chest heaving in the glare of my headlight.

I approached him, kneeling once I was sure he no longer held his pistol. He was throwing up and choking on his vomit. I helped him turn his head so he could clear his mouth, then splashed some water on his face to clean him up.

He was in bad shape. The bullet had blown through him, leaving a gaping, sucking wound in his stomach. His guts pulsed, glistening, and blood drained steadily down his side into the dirt.

“Mr. One Eight Seven?” I said.

“I guess the joke’s on me,” he said, trying to smile.

His eyes were clouding over. He didn’t have long.

“You’re dying. It’s time to confess your sins,” I said, hoping I made a convincing priest.

“Gulp yump, motherfucker.”

I started to stand. His face was drained of color, his tongue gray in his open mouth.

“Hey,” he wheezed, and I knelt down to him again.

“The sheriff…” he whispered.

“What?” I said, but his head fell to the side, and I heard his breath leave him. His eyes were fixed and staring, and his lips were split in a small smile, as if he died laughing at his own joke.

I checked his pockets and pulled out a soggy wallet. The name on his driver’s license was Michael Dean Stiles. It listed a Reno address and a birthday three days after mine. His wallet held four dollars, an assortment of cards, and a small baggie of white powder. I looked at his still, bloody corpse. His jeans were soaked through, and water rippled around his legs. The sleeve of his black leather jacket was unsnapped and pulled up to the elbow, revealing his tattooed forearm. The long beard off his chin looked old and brittle, and moved back and forth stiffly with the breeze that whispered through the canyon.

When I stood, a short burst of machine-gun fire shattered the night. I dove behind the Nissan as a series of slugs plowed into Mr. 187’s corpse, bouncing it further into the river. I reached in through the busted sunroof and switched the headlights off, searching the hillside for movement. Another burst rang out, and half a dozen bullets punched into the car’s undercarriage. Two of the rounds came up through the roof, narrowly missing me. I sprinted through the shallow water back to the boulder where I’d left my suitcase. The machine gun barked again, sending more shots into my ruined car. I saw the muzzle flash about halfway up the hill, and I fired five shots at it as fast as I could pull the Beretta’s trigger. The blast was deafening.