Pursuit (9 page)

The view became his salvation; his only real fancy. He had been careful all these years to come only at night and preferably when natural light lit his way.

He sat on his familiar rock, a smooth-surfaced bench-like outcrop. The cool night air tingled his hands as they pressed against the age-polished stone.

Somewhere beyond the nearest hill, in a valley, a coyote yelped its eerie song. The sound repeated through the earth's canyons.

He took the binoculars from the padded case and scanned the night, the slight swaying of pines, their crooked branches spiraling upward. Near the middle of this dark panorama, nestled between a silver stream and a gentle pasture, lay a shadowed group of boulders looking as if, over the years, they'd grown tired of their loftier homes and rolled gently down into the glade below. From his vantage point looking down, they formed a large
C
. He felt it vain but couldn't help himself, each stone a triumph.

From a backpack, he retrieved a silk scarf, carefully folded with four corners tied. His keepsakes—the only evidence of a life filled with the complete domination of other humans. He ran his hands over the smooth cloth, relishing the objects inside. Each treasure elicited a separate but distinct pleasure. As he jiggled the contents, a wide metal bracelet pressed against the sides of the bundle. His fingers felt the cross with its jeweled exterior wrapped with a soft woven cord. A thin gold watch and a metal American flag clinked together. Missing was his most treasured of all—the ring and chain. He had searched the area where he was sure it had been lost. After all these years, maybe he would look once more. He began his ritual as an errant cloud shifted its position. Liking the unexpected darkness, he reminisced. Starting with the first, his trousers tightened. He smoothed the offending bulge several times and squeezed his eyes tight.

By the time he had finished reliving the history of his stony quintet, he was breathing heavily, his trousers at his knees. His bright celestial cousin peeked through her shaded cloud. He shouted in joy and anguish.

Each time, the same melancholy settled in his chest and then gradually spread through him. He made it a point to descend his stony pinnacle before his wretchedness
got the best of him, always vowing that this would be the last. A part of him laughed at his empty pledge, for he knew there would be another pilgrimage to his site. But he would try not to; he would be strong.

His supreme hidden life. The pursuits. But maybe, just a final and triumphant event; an homage to his silent years of red meetings.

Charles knew right from wrong. No conflict there. But doing wrong had been such a part of his life that it seemed an old friend making a decision. He recalled the fall of '95, the comfort he felt when he dispatched his disciples.

The decision had been to quit, to give up his moonstruck needs, to squelch his desires in more conventional ways. As his former keeper, nee “shitso minder,” or better yet, county-paid father figure, used to say, “Shrimp, face it. You'll never be a normal, desirable person. Deal with it, shit-for-brains.”

He tried religion: went to a church where he made an unusual alliance. A lady who, marked by her relationship with God, had been transformed into a hedonist slave, a believer of the flesh. He then took her to the depths.

No, in fact, religion didn't work for him. But through sheer force of will, he began to taper off, his conquests became fewer and for the most part ended in simple degradation and the reduction of his captives' ability to think of themselves as decent humans.

He felt good about his progress. An advanced study in self-denial and a lot less risky, as his disciples were oftentimes not coherent enough to report what happened to them.

Charles Clegg, the happy philanthropist. He reasoned the sparing of human life to be God's will. The Almighty
empowered him to give life back and make these women a symbol of his work.

Maybe if he deviated from the prescribed on occasion, he would be forgiven. Completing his ritual at the height of his special mountain, it would be only a matter of hours before he would be forced to the edge of oppression.

Anger and desire split his life. They became mixed, with desire usually winning. Early on, dreaded anger took over, culminating in what he called his Scarlet Rendezvous.

H
ey, Dev, how
about I take you to lunch?” Julie offered.

“What you hungry for, partner?”

“The Mexican joint up north where we caught that parole violator?”

“Let's do it. We'll go in separate cars. I need to make a couple stops after lunch.”

Julie started to leave the department parking lot. She saw Todd with his cell phone to his ear, waving at her. He held up his left hand to signal five and pointed for her to go on. He added a halfhearted tap at his chest. She glanced once in her rearview mirror to see him going back into the station. If she understood correctly, he'd be along in five minutes along with his yearning heart. Knowing her partner, it would take a world-class prison break for him to miss an invitation to lunch. She thought a lot of the guy, but mostly like a kid brother.

She liked the drive up north. The paved road bordered with Lombardy poplar led immediately into the country. Although an isolated road, folks on the north side of town used it regularly as easy interstate access.

Julie looked forward to lunch. Rodrigo's La Playa, located next to a busy interchange, specialized in seafood. Her favorite, a ceviche-style shrimp cocktail.

It seemed quiet for a weekday. Traffic, light, on the two-lane blacktop road. Another week of basement duty, and she would be back in present-day crime investigation.

In some ways, her penance in the dark confines of the storage files proved to be good for her. Rather than being held to the strict accordance of investigation, she took her time analyzing items long since restricted to the cellar. Maybe not a quantum leap but a minor revolution.

Revolution.
What if that third letter in the ring was an
R
? That would make it
DAR
, a society of women who were accepted in a special organization only after proving a direct bloodline link to the American Revolution. Like Garthwait said, his grandmother had been an ancestor. Daughters of the American Revolution.
Okay, Dick Tracy. What now?

She wondered about the link between the Preston girl and the Garthwait kid. The reverend's daughter takes the ring from her mother's jewelry case and splits. Somehow she meets up with a bad dude who takes the ring.
And probably more than that.
The creepy bastard can't wear the ring, so he strings it around his neck. The Preston girl rips it off while trying to save her life.
Makes sense.

Something caught her eye. A dark grey Ford F-150 pickup truck eased in behind her. Not exactly tailgating but just a bit too close. She slowed, not wanting to deal with the guy. She assumed it was a guy—she couldn't tell—a baseball cap and sunglasses completing a dark silhouette. She waved him on. Instead, he dropped back. She dismissed the person as just one more in a legion of bizarre drivers.

She passed through what was not a town or even a community but merely a wide place in the road. A general store, an abandoned gas station, and a couple grain elevators.

After slowing through the burg and then at a Thank You for Visiting sign, she accelerated back to sixty-five in the fifty-five. A cop should have some privileges. Tired of a political hack ranting about the disillusionment of America, Julie reached down to lower the radio volume as the sound of a loud, straining engine came up next to her. The driver, as he pulled even, ducked his head.

She eased up on the gas, gripping the wheel as the pickup stayed next to her, and then started to move past. When almost clear, the truck cut in front of her, crashing into her left-side front fender. Julie's car jerked violently to the right. She fought the wheel, trying to correct back to the left. The right rear wheel of her vehicle caught the gravel verge and began to lose traction.

She wrestled her Charger back onto the pavement, stomping the brakes, only to have the wheels lock up. A fleeting thought of a defensive driving course flashed to mind, but in the moment, she forgot everything. The pickup continued to slam against her left side.

A concrete abutment appeared to the side of her. The impact snapped the front of the car back toward the right and up and over the three-foot-high buttress. The car spun 180 degrees toward where she started and then plunged, cocked to one side, into the deep culvert bordering the road.

The world turned upside down. Quick-cut movie images of bending steel and shattering glass. Dirt, papers, cups, and food wrappers whirled in a cyclone of confusion. Her head bounced hard against the door post and
then rocketed back the other way. She slammed against the center console, her arms flopping hard against the right-side dashboard.

A suspension in near silence as her car went airborne, and then everything was repeated. She tried to grip the passenger-side seat belt, but the loose webbing flapped at her. The car slowed, spun onto its nose, and then the noise stopped. Dazed, Julie felt the car rock gently onto its back. Her seat belt tightened; she was suspended upside down. Water from the culvert rushed into the ceiling of the car. It settled, finding its level. She tilted her head slightly to keep her nose and mouth free of the drainage.

Someone wearing pants, the legs had gotten wet, appeared where the windshield should have been. She tried pulling on the clasp of the seat belt with both hands and called for help. The legs moved. A head with a grey cap and dark glasses appeared at her side where the window used to be. Julie reached out toward the apparition and faded into a world of gauzy white clouds.

Voices came to Julie. One of them sounded like her mother.

“I don't think there's anything we can do.”

“She has to be dead.” Another voice, a man's.

Then a warbling unrelenting siren. More “Step back!” “Stand aside!” commands.

Julie wanted to push away from the confusion. She struggled to come from a far-off place, feeling cold water and a light continuing to brighten. She felt a force against her neck. Someone was trying to get her to do something; what was it?

“Let me through. Stand aside. Jules, it's Todd. Can you hear me?”

She tried to push away the fog; this had to be someone she knew.

“You'll be out soon.” To protect her face, Todd placed a blanket over Julie's head. “Hold on, okay? Just hold on.”

There began a repetitive whirring, like a motor scooter. A giant yellow claw danced before her eyes, then once again a terrible wrenching, metal being stretched and bent. A hand slipped to her neck along with the reassuring strong grip of her partner.

“He did it on purpose, his pant legs, wet. He turned his head and laughed.” She came off delirious, but at least it was a sign she was alive.

Todd cradled her neck as the jaws of life continued to stretch the window opening. “Who? Who did it on purpose?”

Julie felt herself once again on the roller coaster, her stomach reaching up into her chest, her head pounding full of blood. “A grinning bastard in a dark grey pickup did it.”