Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets (19 page)

So things ended wrong here.

He plugs along northbound, retracing her steps as he followed her in the helicopter that night, maybe like he can go back in time and change what happened.

He might not get the chance.

A trooper car slides into the lane behind him.

Damn it - he always notices cop cars.  Always. 
Doesn’t
know where this one came from, though. 
He’s distracted, of course.

He waits for the lig
hts to go on, but they don’t
right away. 

The
presence of cops
–
the
whole
threat of
some arbitrary
order over
the
natural, chaotic course of things, rubs Dodge the wrong way.
  He knows these
highways;
he knows the patterns of people when the police pull out of the U-turns.

He slows down and switches to the lane to the right of him.  The car that was in front of him suddenly see
s
there is a cop behind it and hits the brakes.  Because these aren’t cars; these are people driving cars.

It’s easy to predict what people will do.

You just might not be right.

When the driver brakes, the trooper can’t get over to the lane to follow Dodge, thanks to the slower moving car Dodge cut in front of.

He accelerates, puts some distance between him and the trooper.

He knows once the trooper puts his lights on, he can catch Dodge as soon as he wants.  But if Dodge isn’t doing anything wrong, the trooper has no right.  The trooper is bound by law and order.

Dodge is not.

Dodge sw
itches back to the middle lane -
the same on
e the trooper is in -
leaving a car between them, though.  He knows this will frustrate the cop - partly that his
view of Dodge is now
obstructed, but more that he realizes Dodge is in charge
here.

He watches the traffic in the left lane, waits for it to get closer to him, and when it’s too late for the trooper to move into
it
, Dodge
cuts over, leaving the trooper
trapped in the middle lane.  More cars start breaking as they notice the trooper car, and the trooper has to as well. 

Dodge accelerates.

He studied the OJ car chase.

He
has a sports car; he could blow th
is trooper away in a second now if he wants.

But he doesn’t want to speed, doesn’t want to give them a reason to pull him over.

He
sees Broonz
y’s squad car join in behind the trooper, catching up to them from behind.  He figures the game is over now.  If the trooper is waiting for back up to pull him over, this isn’t a game at all. 

Maybe he should just tear out of here right now. 

He could get a good jump.

But
Dodge keeps it cool.
  He knows he can’t do anything that makes him look guilty.

Which is basically impo
ssible.

He’s not
speeding;
he didn’t break any traffic laws.  So they’re just harassing him. 
That’s
worse than getting pulle
d over for speeding.  It means they have it out for him.

The lights come on.  He pulls over; he doesn’t want to add any more trouble to the mix.

“Dodge,” Broonzy says as he walks up to the window,
sticks his face in,
seconds a
fter Dodge skids
over the rumble strips onto the shoulder. 

The trooper is standing at the back corner of the car, hand gun drawn.

“Mind keeping your hands where I can see them?” Broonzy asks.

Dodge eyes the trooper nervously, but Broonzy coldly.

“They’re on the steering wheel, Broonzy,” Dodge tells him flatly.  “You can see them.”

Broonzy just grunts.  Dodge
can smell the eagerness on him -
like a freshly oiled pistol.

“Been looking for you,” he announces to Dodge.

“
Not too hard,” Dodge counters.  “I’ve been at home.  And it looks like the trooper
didn’t have any problems finding me
.”

“Oh, we figured you’d head back to the scene of the crime,” Broonzy explains.

Dodge is
, in fact,
headi
ng to the scene of the crime - w
onders how Broonzy knows.

But before he snaps something back, he pic
ks up Broonzy’s choice of words, though.

“
I’m
not heading back to anything,
”
he corrects Broonzy.

“Good answer,” Broonzy acknowledges.

“
It’s not illegal to visit
a crime
scene
,” Dodge says.  “I want to know what happened to my wife.  And I don’t trust you to figure it out.  So what’s this about?”

“Got a call from Interpol this morning,” Broonzy says, his tone accusing.

Dodge is not expecting this.  He looks quizzically at Broonzy, letting him go on.

“Know anything about two dead girls in Amsterdam?” Broonzy asks, smug, taking joy in this.

“No,” Dodge snaps.  “Jesus Christ, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Hotel room, under your credit card, two dead girls,” Broonzy explains.

“What are you saying, Broonzy?” Dodge barks.  “I killed two girls in a hotel room in Amsterdam and just left them there, with my name on it?”

Broonzy snorts.  “They ain’t killed,” he tells Dodge.

“What?” Dodge asks confused.

“Looks like they overdosed,” Broonzy lets on.  “Bad dope.”

Dodge almost breathes a sigh of relief, but he doesn’t want to show that much.

“So what do you want with me?” Dodge asks.

“Well, we got to figure this one out some still,” Broonzy said.  “If you knew those two girls were dying and didn’t do nothing.  Or if you knew they died and didn’t say nothing.”

Dodge sits quietly, thinking hard.  He wishes Jaime
were here,
to tell him what to say.  She always knows what to say.

“Did you
know they was dead?” Broonzy asks.

Dodge sighs.  He knows
to deny everything, and say no more.  “No,” he tells Broonzy. 
“
I don’t know anything about this at all.”

It’s the truth, so he thinks he sounds convincing.

Maybe Broonzy senses that.  He relents for now.

“Should I call my lawyer?” Dodge asks.

Broonzy’s quiet for a second.  “Not yet,” he says.  “But d
on’t leave town.”

At this point, Dodge just wants to lock himself inside his home. 

He’s not going anywhere.

*****

Jaime’s growing used to checking her rear view mirror.  Not because she thinks she’s b
eing followed.  It just seems appropriate,
paranoid behavior.

She knows she’s mostly in the clear here - she didn’t kill anyone, plan for, or want, anyone to be killed.  That’s a pretty major relief for her.
  But the fact that she may have catalyzed the whole thing eats at her a bit.

More than a bit, obviously.

She can’t go back and change what’s happened, and there’s no way she’
s opening up about what she did. 

Hey, I’m the little bitch who tricked you into thinking your wife was cheating on you, which led
to her and an innocent man
getting killed.

Hell no.

At this point, the only thing
she
can do is
just keep Dodge out of trouble.  She owes him that much.  Which is why she didn’t
sleep with
him the other day.  S
he can’t make it look like he’s
having an affair with his wife’s as
sistant.  That’s just
idiotic at this point.

Yes, she wants
to be with
him, and she wants him to want her, but she has to strike a balance between seducing him and making it look like he
had a reason to off his wife.

A smoking hot reason in her early twenties. 

To get everyth
ing she wants, though, means
play
ing
it cool.

And keep
ing
an eye on everything.

Including the rearview mirror.

Which means she notices the cop as soon as he notices her.