“The thing is to get it rocking. Put it into reverse and then slam it into drive.”
“I’m sure that’ll be real good on the transmission.”
“Right now,” she said, “I couldn’t give a damn about the transmission. Right now I just want to get rid of your girlfriend.”
“This is some goddamned luck I’m having. First my cancer—”
“And now a dead girl.”
He glowered at her.
“Don’t give me that kind of look, David,” she said. “You were the one who killed her, not me.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“You pushed her.”
“I may have pushed her but I didn’t kill her. I want you to get that straight.”
“Try reverse again.”
“Oh, yeah, that’ll do a lot of good.”
“You want to just sit here, then?”
And that’s when he thought he heard — through the slashing rain, through the hammering of his heart, through the rumble and roar of thunder — something moving through the night.
He glanced up, the good manly lines of his face slick with sweat, and gazed into the rearview mirror.
And said, “Oh, no. Oh, shit.”
4
The county people had a deal with Chief Hadley. The Crystal Falls officers would swing out by the state park every night and check things out. The county had had major financial troubles last year and had downsized the sheriff’s department by four patrol officers. While the state park was technically within their jurisdiction, it was a bitch to reach the way the new patrol maps had been drawn. A county car had to swing way the hell over here just to take a drive through the park. It was actually much easier for a Crystal Falls car to do this, so the Chief said that his own people would handle the park.
Sam Bowers had just finished tooling through the park. He hadn’t seen any signs of life. Nobody was going to be out here on a night like this.
But when he was near the west end of the park, way up on a hill, he could see down into the river valley, and that’s where he saw the silver Lincoln Towncar.
He was sure it belonged to Senator Cummings.
But what would Cummings be doing out on a night like this?
Sam dug his binoculars out from the glove compartment and had himself a look.
Helen, the Senator’s sister, was sitting shotgun. The Senator was behind the wheel. They were arguing, which was no surprise. Everybody knew about their arguing. She was the brains of the outfit and the Senator resented it. And so they argued. A few times, they couldn’t control themselves and had arguments right out in public.
They were sure arguing now, both of them gesturing wildly as they shouted back and forth within the confines of the sleek new car.
Then he watched as the Senator shifted gears and gave the big car some gas.
The Towncar rocked a little but went nowhere.
They were stuck.
What the hell were they doing out on this county road at night?
He put the binoculars away, then swung down the steep, angling asphalt road and drove out of the park, which was eerily empty in the downpour.
He was an animal lover and missed the sight of the raccoons, opossums, bunnies, and owls who lined the park roads every night.
He couldn’t get the image of the angry Cummingses out of his mind. Even by their standard, this looked to be an exceptionally violent argument.
And again the question: What the hell were they doing out on a county road so late at night?
As he left the park and cut over to the county road a quarter of a mile away, he thought he’d soon have his answer.
The county road was a mudhole.
Along with cutbacks in personnel, the county hadn’t had enough road-use taxes for needed repairs. Those taxes had ended up in a medical contingency fund. So some of the roads were in pretty bad shape. This particular one, Sam knew, had needed grading and fresh gravel for more than two years.
After climbing two very muddy hills, Sam got them in his sight.
They were still sitting there in the silver Lincoln, the Senator jamming the gears back and forth in an attempt to wedge the car free.
For one thing, he’d been driving way the hell over on the side of the road, which is how he’d gotten stuck.
For a second thing, no amount of rocking the car back and forth was going to do any good.
Sam thought about the chains in the trunk. He’d probably be able to tug the Lincoln out of its hole. He just hoped that the regular shift guys had thought to leave the chains in the trunk where they were supposed to be.
He turned on the red emergency lights, no siren, and climbed the hill up to the Cummingses’ vehicle.
5
“Oh, my God,” Helen said when she turned around and saw the police car coming up the hill, emergency lights staining the rain a bloodred color.
“Now what do we fucking do?” David said.
He sounded as if he were about to cry again.
“Get control of yourself, David. For God’s sake.”
“He’s going to ask us what we’re doing out here and what’re we going to tell him?”
Helen did what she usually did whenever David gave in to panic. Became the strong one. “We’re going to tell him that we were out driving around and got caught in the rain.”
“Why were we driving around?”
“Because, David, we wanted to drive around.”
“What if he doesn’t buy it?”
“David, you’re a United States senator. If you want to drive around, that’s your business.”
“What if he wants to see in the trunk?”
“Why would he want to see in the trunk?”
“Oh, God, he’s right behind us.”
And so he was.
Sam Bowers was climbing out of the official Chevrolet with the heavy-duty engine in it.
He was shrugging into his black rubber raincoat and walking toward the silver Lincoln.
He spent a long minute in the downpour sizing up the situation, getting down on his haunches for a better look at the muddy hole.
Then he was walking around the car and checking the other rear wheel.
Finally, he was walking back to the stuck wheel and looking at it again.
“Oh, God,” David said, “he’s coming up here.”
“Of course he’s coming up here. What the hell did you think he was going to do?”
Sam was knocking on David’s window.
David touched the electric window button. “Hi, Sam.”
“Evening, Senator. Helen.”
“You’ve got some night for it, Sam.”
He leaned in closer and smiled. “Doesn’t look much better for you two.”
“Oh, you know how my brother is. Heavy foot and all. I told him to slow down.”
David Cummings smiled with great pain, obviously wanting to start in on his sister, but not wanting to be unseemly and do it in front of Sam. “After we got stuck, that’s when she told me to slow down, Sam.”
Now it was Sam’s smile that was pained. Long as he’d been a cop, he’d never figured out what expression to wear when people were cutting each other up with small verbal knives.
“I’ve got a chain in my trunk,” Sam said. “I think I can pull you out of there.”
“We’d really appreciate it, Sam,” Helen said.
“I’ll pull my car up the hill,” Sam said, “and then dig out the chain.”
“That’d be great,” David said.
“Thanks, Sam,” Helen said.
Sam gave her a little salute and then started back toward his car.
“No problem,” David said.
“It’s not over yet.”