Helen had walked the same twenty-mile route five days now, stopping briefly at the hot-dog stand at Fifth and Grand each day for a drink and a quick exchange with its proprietor, Chuck. She'd suspected from the first words out of Chuck's mouth that he was a man holed up in his religion.
Today she had helped him out of his shell.
“You walk every day, Helen?”
She'd nodded.
“How far?”
“A long way. Longer than I can count.”
“More than a mile?”
“I can count a mile, young man.”
“Longer?”
“Longer than I can count.”
He'd chuckled nervously. “Ten miles?”
She sipped at the lemonade he'd served her. “Longer.”
“Twenty?” he asked incredulous.
She shrugged. “I don't know for sure.”
“But that's impossible! You walk twenty miles
every
day?”
She looked right into his eyes then. “Yes, I'm an intercessor, Chuck. You know what that is, don't you? I will walk as long as he requires me to.”
He glanced around quickly. “You mean you pray?”
“I pray, and I walk. And as long as I'm walking and praying I don't feel strain on my legs at all.” She eyed him steadily. “How does that sound, Chuck?”
He stood there with his mouth open, possibly thinking that this kind woman he'd served over the last five days was stark-raving mad. “Sound strange? Well, there's more, Chuck. I see things too. I walk on legs that have no business walking, and I see things.” It was the first time she had been so vocal about this business to a stranger, but she could hardly resist.
She pointed to the overcast sky and gave it a faraway look. “You see those clouds there? Or this air?” She swept her hand through the air. “Suppose you could tear away this air and expose what lay behind. What do you think you would find?”
Chuck the hot-dog man was stuck in the open-mouth, wide-eyes look. He did not answer.
“I'll tell you what you would find. A million beings peering over the railing at the choices of one man. You would find the real game. Because it's all about what happens on the other side, Chuck. And if you could tear the heavens apart, you would see that. All this other stuff you see with those marbles in your head are props for the real game.” She flashed him a grin and let that sink in. “At least, that's one way of looking at it all. And I think there is a game over your soul as well, young man.”
She had left him like that, holding a hot dog in one hand with his mouth gaping as if he were ready to shove it in.
It had been the high point of the day, actually, because she knew Chuck's life would change now. But the balance of her walk had been a somber one.
Back at home, Helen picked up the phone and called Pastor Bill at home.
“Bill Madison here.”
“He's gone off the deep end, Bill.”
“Helen?”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kent's gone off the deep end, and I smell death in the air. I think he may be in trouble.”
“Whoa. You think he may
die?
I didn't think he
could
die in this thing.”
“I didn't either. But there's death in the air. And I think it's his death, although I don't know that. There was a lot of silence in the heavens today.”
“Then maybe you should warn him. Tell him about this. You haven't been . . . you know . . . told not to, have you?”
“No. Not specifically. I've had no desire to tell him, which usually means that I shouldn't. But I think you may be right. I think I will tell him the next time I see him.”
They let the phones rest silent for a moment.
“Helen, are you walking tomorrow?”
“Did you awake this morning, Bill?”
“What? Of course I did.”
“The answer to your question should be as obvious, don't you think? I walk every day.”
He continued after regrouping himself. “Would you mind if I walked with you for a spell tomorrow? Before church?”
“I would like that, Pastor.”
“Good. Five o'clock?”
“Five-thirty. I sleep in on Sundays.”
IF KENT thought he could have managed it, he would have driven straight back to Denver. But his body was in no condition to pull a twenty-four-hour shift without sleeping. He had to rest somewhere. At least, that was the way he'd planned it on paper.
He pulled into Grady's Truck Stop two hours outside of Denver, near midnight. A hundred sleeping rigs lined the graveled lot to the west of the all-night diner, and he pulled the little Iveco between two large, purring diesels. So far, so good. No flat tires, no routine pullovers, no breakdowns, no boulders from the sky. He could easily be a real driver for a mortuary, handling just one more body in a series of a hundred.
Kent locked the truck up and walked briskly toward the café. The cool night air rushed softly under the power of the towering trucks on all sides. What were the odds of being recognized in such a remote spot? He paused by the front wheel of a black International tractor-trailer and studied the diner thirty yards away. It stood there all decked out in neon like a Christmas tree. Two thoughts crossed his mind simultaneously, and they brought his pulse up to a steady thump.
The first was that the Iveco back there did not have a lock on the rear door. That had been an oversight on his part. He should have bought a padlock. A grisly wino on the prowl would find his little Iveco easy pickings. Only when the vagrant got back to his lair would he and his cohorts discover that the brown box did not contain rifles or beef or a priceless statue or any such treasure, but a cadaver. A smelly old fish. A dead bodyânot fit for the eating unless you were on an airplane that went down in the Andes and it was either you or the bodies.
The second thought was that entering Grady's diner, all lit up like a Christmas tree, was starting to seem like one of those stupid mistakes a criminal from Stupid Street might make.
“Yes sir, everything was going perfect until I ran into Bill at Grady's Diner, and he asked me what I was doing at one in the morning toting a cadaver around in a meat truck. Imagine, Bill at Grady's Diner! Who would have possibly thought?”
Anybody with half a brain would have thought, that's who would have thought! He should have brought his own food. Although he
was
two hours out of Denver. Who that he knew could possibly be here at midnight? But that was just the point, wasn't it? What would
he
be doing here at midnight?
Kent slunk back into the shadows and climbed into the cab he'd made home for the last sixteen hours. He lifted a 7-Up can he'd purchased four hours earlier at the Utah border and swallowed the flat dregs in one gulp. There would be plenty of time for food and drink later. Now he needed sleep.
But sleep did not come easily. For one thing, he found himself craving a real drink. Just one quick nip to settle the nerves. Grady's could probably oblige him with at least a six-pack of beer.
“Don't be a fool,” he muttered and lay down on the bench seat.
It was then, parked outside of Grady's, two hours from Denver, that the first major flaw in his plan presented itself to him like a siren in the night. He jerked upright and stared, wide eyed, out the windshield.
Helen!
Helen had moved in
after
he'd laid out the timetable. When the rest of his plan was put into play, they would question her, and that questioning rang through his head now, clear and conciseâand as condemning as a judge's gavel.
“You're saying he left you a note stating he's going fishing on Saturday but he never comes back? Not even on Sunday?”
“Yes, officer. As far as I can tell.”
“So he goes fishingâwe know that from the neighbor who saw himâand goes straight to the office in his fishing gear thirty-six hours later, without bothering to come home. No pun intended here, but doesn't that smell a little fishy?”
He had decided not to return for the simple reason that he had the body to contend with. He couldn't very well drive up to his house in the meat truck. Neither could he drive around town with a body in the trunk of the Lexus for a whole day. At some point things would be smelling more than just fishy.
But that was before Helen.
An alarm went off in his head.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
He had to get to Denver. Get home somehow.
Kent brought the truck to life and roared back to the freeway, once again bouncing on the edge of the seat like some kind of idiot.
An hour later, rumbling into the outskirts of suburban Denver, he conceded to the only plan that made sense in the morning's wee hours. A new element of risk threatened now, but nobody ever said stealing twenty million would be light on the risk factor.
Kent slowly wound his way back to the Front Range Meat Packers compound south of 470 and entered the industrial maze of metal buildings. He killed the lights and crept forward, his eyes peeled for motion, his muscles rigid, his fingers wrapped white on the wheel.
Two minutes later, Kent eased the Iveco into its original space and pulled the ignition wires free. The engine sputtered to silence. By the watch on his right wrist, it was two o'clock in the morning.
For five minutes he sat in the silence, allowing the distant highway drone to settle his nerves. He finally climbed from the truck and walked behind. The roll door remained latched. He eased the lever up and pulled the door up. The box lay on the floor, swirling in a cold mist. He closed the door.
It took him another fifteen minutes to repair the cut wire in the steering column and return the cab to its original condition. Satisfying himself that he no longer needed access to the cab, he locked the doors and shut them quietly. Come Monday morning, if Cruiser had an inkling to pull truck 24 in for service, he would hopefully find her just as he'd left her. Now, if the truck would be kind enough to keep his body hidden and free from rot for another twelve hours without its cooling unit in operation, all would be well.
Kent had made it halfway back to the storage unit housing the Lexus before realizing he'd left the McDaniel's Mortuary signs on the truck. He hastily retreated and tore them free, cursing himself for the oversight. If he could have stopped somewhere and flogged the stupidity from his mind he would have done it without consideration. Evidently he was discovering what most criminals discover midcrime: Stupidity is something that comes upon you
during
the crime, not before. Like the rising sun, you cannot escape it. You can only hope to do your dirty deed before it fries you.
Kent headed back to the storage units, hauling his briefcase in one hand and the rolled-up signs in the other. Sweat soaked his shirt, and he let stealth slip a little. You can't very well pretend to be invisible lugging ten-foot rolls of vinyl under your arm. He plopped the load on the asphalt before the storage door, retrieved the rivet poppers from his briefcase, and made quick work of the fasteners he'd installed earlier.
The Lexus gleamed silver in the moonlight, undisturbed. Kent stuffed the signs in the trunk, tossed the briefcase into the passenger seat, and climbed into the familiar cockpit. He made it all the way to the industrial park's entrance before flipping on his lights. It was 2:38 Sunday morning when he finally entered highway 470 and headed for home, wondering what other small mistake he had made back there.
Yet he had made it, hadn't he? No, not reallyânot at all. Really he had not even started.
Kent left his Lexus on the street where it would be seenâright in front of the red
No Street Parking
sign by his house. The small black letters below promised that violators would be towed, but they'd never actually hauled any car off that he knew of, and he doubted they would begin on a Sunday.
He entered the house, flipped his shoes off at the front door, made a little noise in the kitchen, moved a few items around, and headed for his bedroom. The trick was to clearly show his presence without actually engaging Helen. He did not want to engage Helen. Not at all.
And, considering the old lady's walking obsession, which he assumed was an everyday affair, missing her might not be so difficult. On the other hand, today was Sunday. She might not walk on Sundays. If she did not, she would at least leave for church. He would have to be gone by noon.
Kent locked the door to the master suite, peeled off his clothes, and fell into bed. He slowly drifted into a fitful sleep.
HELEN SLIPPED out onto the porch after the doorbell's first ring.
“He's here, Bill.”
The pastor did not respond immediately.
“Let's walk.” She stepped past him and strolled to the street. The silver Lexus sat along the street beside the driveway. She turned left at the sidewalk and walked briskly past it.
“He came home last night.”
“He catch any fish?” Bill asked, beside her now.
“Don't know. He's hiding something.”
“Hiding what? How do you know?”
“I don't know what he's hiding, but I'm going to find out the minute I get home. They're on pins and needles up there; that's how I know. Death is in the air. I can feel it.”
“You mind if we slow down a little, Helen? You're walking pretty fast here.”
“We have to walk fast. I'm cutting it short today. Real short. I've got to get back there.” She glanced down at her Reeboks and noted they were wearing thin in the toes.
“You want to pray, Bill?”
“Sure.”
“Pray, then. Pray out loud.”
KENT AWOKE with a start. Something was wrong. His chest felt as though a jackrabbit had taken up residence there and was testing its thumpers. Only this was his heartânot some bunny. Which meant he'd had another dream.
He could remember nothingânot even why he was in his own bed.
Then he remembered everything, and he leapt from the bed.