Day of the Dead (41 page)

She smiled and shook her head, but she didn’t move the gun. It stayed pointed at him.

“I never knew about that safe,” she said quietly. “What do you keep in it?”

“Odds and ends. Nothing important. Put down the gun, Gayle. Shouldn’t we get to work?”

“Did you have money in there?” she demanded. “Were you hiding money from me?”

“Of course not!” he declared. Flustered, he felt his face turn red. “Nothing of the kind.”

“Then open the briefcase,” she ordered. “Show me.”

As he carried on his end of the conversation, Larry Stryker was trying to grapple with this new reality. There was no question about whether or not she would pull the trigger. Of the two of them, Gayle was the natural-born killer. He had known that about her for more than thirty years. He had always supposed he was immune. But he wasn’t. His only hope was to fight back.

So he stepped toward the desk and made as if to comply. Instead of opening the briefcase, he picked it up and heaved it at her. She dodged out of the way of the flying briefcase, and her first shot missed him completely. The second one didn’t. The bullet hit him square in the chest and flung him backward. It took forever for him to slide down the wall. He watched her, expecting her to fire again. She simply disappeared from view as he slid behind the desk.

“Gayle,” he called. “Don’t leave me like this. Please.”

She didn’t answer. The last thing Larry Stryker heard was the sound of the study door slamming shut behind her.

***

In twenty-six years
of driving gravel trucks, Amos Brubaker had never had an accident—not even a fender bender. This, his last load of the day, was headed for another new development on the far side of Saddle Brook. The gravel pit was in the riverbed west of I-10 and southeast of Marana. According to the map, it should have been easier for him to get where he was going by backtracking as far as Rillito and going east there. Mileagewise, that would have been closer, but that was the sad truth about Tucson-area traffic. Amos was actually better off going miles out of his way, taking the freeway as far as north Red Rock, cutting over there to Highway 79, and approaching his drop-off point from the opposite direction.

Amos was doing that now, sailing along on the straightaway at slightly over the 65-miles-per-hour legal limit. He slowed slightly when he saw a green Suburban parked on the right-hand shoulder. These days DPS sometimes used stealth vehicles rather than clearly marked patrol cars to police Arizona’s highways. But the Suburban turned out to be just that, a Suburban with a single occupant—a man—sitting in it. His hazard lights weren’t on. He didn’t look like someone having car trouble or trying to flag someone down, so Amos put his foot back on the gas pedal and kept going.

Just then some dim-bulb babe in a Lexus went tearing past him doing at least eighty-five. She’d barely gone around the front fender of his Mack truck when she slammed on her brakes and turned off on a dirt road. Amos flipped her a bird as he went past. What the hell was the matter with drivers today—and not just women drivers, either? If she was planning on turning right, couldn’t she have stayed behind him for that last quarter of a mile? Did bimbos like her have even the vaguest idea of how much blacktop was needed to stop a loaded gravel truck? That was another problem with driving these days. Everybody was in too much of a hurry.

Amos was coming up on Oracle Junction. He reached the place where the straightaway ended. Beyond that point the road narrowed slightly and was far more curvy. Amos eased back to a real 65. He saw the car ahead of him—a pale yellow vehicle of some kind—approaching in the opposite lane, but he didn’t worry about it—didn’t consider it at all. He saw the approaching car and assumed whoever was in it saw him, too. Bright red Mack gravel trucks are hard to miss.

But then, when he was almost on top of the car—a Honda—it turned left directly in front of him. He saw now that the pale yellow Honda was driven by a woman—a gray-haired woman about the same age as Amos. At the very last moment, she glanced up and saw the truck. In that electric instant, he saw the look of horror flash across her face; saw her lips form themselves into a surprised O; saw her eyes open wide, shocked and disbelieving.

Looking for a way to avoid hitting her, Amos checked the left lane, but now there was another car in that lane, a cop car with flashing lights that was speeding toward both the Honda and Amos’s truck. By then, the Honda was fully astraddle the right-hand lane, directly in the path of the speeding Mack truck. Amos Brubaker had split seconds to make his decision. Between T-boning the seemingly stationary Honda or crashing head-on into an oncoming vehicle, the woman’s Honda presented the least lethal choice.

Almost standing on the brake pedal, Amos clung to the wheel and tried to keep the truck and its add-on trailer on the road. He had dodged enough—or maybe she had sped up enough—that instead of hitting her dead-on, he clipped her right quarter panel. Instead of being flattened under the truck’s front bumper, the Honda spun away. When it hit the soft shoulder on the side of the road, it flipped and flew end over end before finally coming to rest, leaning at an angle, against a barbed-wire fence.

Amos felt the impact and saw the car go whirling away. For the barest of moments, he thought he had made it—thought he was home free, then he felt a sickening lurch behind him. He looked in the rearview mirror long enough to see the trailer swing back across the centerline. In that awful moment he knew what was going to happen. The heavy load of gravel would pull him over. As the wheels of the tractor left the ground, all Amos Brubaker could do was hold on for dear life. Hold on and pray.

Twenty-Nine

Brian Fellows had heard the expression “watching a train wreck,” but he had never understood the implications until that very moment. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Not wanting to alert Larry Stryker, he had shut off the siren as they entered Oracle Junction. Once they were on Highway 79, he saw the approaching gravel truck. He saw the little yellow Honda. When the Honda’s brake lights came on, Brian assumed that the vehicle was preparing to turn, but when the turn signal didn’t come on, there was no way to tell which way the Honda was going. Then, to Brian’s gut-wrenching dismay, the Honda turned directly into the path of the truck. And through it all, there was nothing—not one thing—Brian could do to stop it.

“My God!” PeeWee shouted. “Look out!”

And Brian was looking. He was searching desperately for some safe haven, somewhere to pull off the road and get the hell out of the way. He saw the speeding tractor slam into the side of the Honda. With one tire bouncing high in the air above them all, the out-of-control Honda spun through the air while the truck careened straight toward them. Trying to dodge out of the way, Brian wrenched the wheel to the right. He managed to miss the bouncing tire and the Honda, but the maneuver sent the Crown Victoria pitching off the steep shoulder and directly into a concrete-bridge abutment, where it slammed to a stop.

For the briefest moment, Brian’s vision was obscured by what turned out to be his deployed air bag. When he could see again, the fully loaded gravel truck and trailer were skidding on their sides along both lanes of roadway, spilling mounds of gravel and raising clouds of dust.

Brian turned to PeeWee. “Are you okay?”

PeeWee nodded, rubbing his collarbone. “I think so,” he said. “You?”

Brian tried the door. The frame was evidently jammed. His door wouldn’t open. Neither would PeeWee’s. They ended up having to shove their way through the shattered safety glass in the windshield.

“You go,” PeeWee said when the hole was wide enough for Brian to slip through. “I’ll radio for help.”

When Brian hit the ground, the Mack truck tractor lay on its side, wheels still spinning, with its signature bulldog hood ornament buried in the broken remains of a crushed mesquite tree. As Brian watched, the shaken truck driver scrambled out through a window opening and crawled across the door. Gripping the running board, he slipped over the side and then dropped the last few feet to the ground.

As soon as the man landed, he took off at a dead run. At first, Brian had no idea where he was going. Only when he looked beyond where the driver was headed did Brian see the wreckage of the smashed yellow Honda. It lay at the bottom of a steep wash, leaning up against several strands of barbed-wire fence. The truck driver ran to the edge of the wash and scrambled down the side. By the time Brian reached him, he was pulling desperately on the driver’s-side door handle.

“We’ve got to help her,” the man was saying. “We’ve got to get her out of there.”

But that door wouldn’t budge, either. Peering through the window, Brian saw the still form of a woman. She was flopped over against the door with blood seeping from a deep cut on her head. When he pounded on the window beside her, she didn’t move.

Leaving Brian behind, the truck driver raced around to the far side of the vehicle, clambered over the fence, and shoved. To Brian’s surprise, the Honda wavered for a moment and then tipped back onto its three remaining tires. Brian had to step back to get out of the way. With what seemed superhuman strength, the truck driver wrenched open the passenger door. He stood to one side, panting with exertion, while Brian scrambled inside. The woman still hadn’t moved. Brian felt for a pulse and found one—weak and fast, but there.

He clambered back outside. “Well?” the driver demanded. “Is she okay?”

Without answering, Brian turned back toward the wreckage of the Crown Vic. “She’s still alive,” he shouted at PeeWee, “but only just. Get on the horn. Tell them we’ll need a medevac helicopter out here. On the double.”

Brian turned back toward the truck driver, but the man was no longer standing. Pale and weak as a kitten, he had dropped to his knees and was quietly puking into the dirt.

***

Parked on the shoulder,
Brandon saw the big red gravel truck bearing down on him from behind and the white car come out to pass. As they roared past him, the passing vehicle was on the far side of the truck. He didn’t see it again until the truck braked as the other vehicle slowed to turn off on Flying C Ranch Road. That was when he recognized the white car for what it was—Gayle Stryker’s Lexus. Why was she coming from the north?

Brandon had picked up his phone to call Brian when he saw an explosion of dust a mile or so farther south toward Oracle Junction. Dust like that had to mean that the speeding gravel truck had somehow come to grief, but that wasn’t Brandon’s concern. What worried him was that Brian didn’t answer his phone. After three rings, the cell phone went to voice mail, giving Brandon no choice but to leave a message.

“It’s me. You’re not going to believe it. Gayle Stryker just showed up from the north and turned into the ranch. I don’t know where you are, but get a move on. I need you here now.”

He waited several minutes, thinking that surely Brian would call him back. Finally, impatient, he punched redial. Again, the cell phone rang several times. “Pick up, for God’s sake!” Brandon grumbled.

“Hello?” Brian said at last.

“Where the hell are you? Did you get my message?”

“What message?”

“I called a few minutes ago. Gayle Stryker showed up. She and Larry are both here at the ranch.”

“There’s been an accident,” Brian said. “My phone ended up under the car seat. I didn’t find it until it started ringing.”

“What accident?” Brandon stopped. “Wait a minute,” he added. “Somebody’s coming down the road. It’s a white vehicle, so it may be…” He squinted into the sunlight. “Yes, it’s definitely a Lexus. I can’t tell which one, and I don’t know how many passengers—if they’re both in there or if it’s only one of them. The vehicle’s almost back to the highway. If there was ever a time for backup, this is it.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There’s been a wreck,” Brian said. “A bad one, just short of the junction.”

“But…” Brandon slipped the Suburban into gear and moved forward. The Lexus had pulled up to the intersection now and was turning right onto the highway. “He’s coming out now, turning your way and heading for Tucson.”

“He won’t get past here,” Brian said. “A gravel truck tipped over and spilled its load on top of a culvert. The road’s completely blocked in both directions.”

“Can’t you and PeeWee get through?”

“Negative on that,” Brian returned. “We managed to get out of the way, but we hit a bridge abutment. PeeWee and I aren’t going anywhere. Neither is our vehicle.”

Brandon rounded a curve and saw the field of wreckage up ahead. A few other Tucson-bound cars were already stopped. As he watched, the Lexus swung off onto the shoulder and then turned.

“Stryker’s just this side of your position,” Brandon shouted into the phone. “He’s pulling a U-ey.”

“I’m on foot, but I’m on my way,” Brian told him.

But Brandon soon realized that having Brian on his way wasn’t nearly good enough. Once the Lexus was back on the highway, it would start gaining speed. Brandon did the only thing he could. Using the Suburban’s bulk, he drove toward the much smaller LS 430, forcing it off the highway and onto the shoulder. Only then, with the two vehicles sitting nose to nose, did Brandon see there was only one person in the Lexus. The driver wasn’t Larry Stryker after all—it was Gayle.

She honked at him furiously and motioned him out of her way. When he didn’t budge, she backed up, hit the gas, and tried to swing around him. He blocked her again. That time a stricken look of recognition crossed her face when she finally realized who he was. There was barely a moment of hesitation between her recognizing him and the appearance of the gun. She held it out the window and fired three rounds in rapid succession.

Brandon threw himself across the front seat and hoped that the Suburban’s engine block and dashboard would offer enough cover. He lay there with his ears ringing and wondered if she would fire again. Not wanting to be hit by spraying glass, Brandon rolled down the automatic window with the touch of a button while plucking his Walther out of its holster.