The Grim Reaper's Dance (4 page)

“So did they leave?”

“After a bit. Seems they were finally convinced by Trixie’s teeth and my pipe.” He laughed. “They figured I could shoot them quicker than they could shoot me.”

“And they haven’t been back today?”

“Nope. And believe me, Trixie would know.”

Casey found a new appreciation for the little dog.

She paused, wanting to word her question the right way. “Any chance you would let me take a look at the truck? Please?”

Davey ran his tongue over his teeth.

“She’s been in it before,” Wendell said.

Davey didn’t take his gaze from her face.

“In the accident,” Wendell said. “She was there.”

Davey’s eyes didn’t waver. “You a friend of the driver’s?”

“As much as you can be in one day.”

“You hitchin’?

“Yes.”

He chewed on his lip, then rose from his chair. “Rachel!”

Casey jumped as a woman stuck her head out from a door at the end of the trailer. She was mostly hidden behind a massive file cabinet.

“Going out for a minute.”

The woman nodded and disappeared back behind the cabinet.

“Come on.” Davey led them out the door and across the yard, Trixie dancing around their feet, panting joyously. “That’s a good girl.” He tossed her the remainder of his donut.

They rounded the corner of the first pole barn and Casey stopped abruptly, bending over, trying to catch her breath. The sight of the semi was like getting kicked in the chest.

It took the men a moment to realize she wasn’t with them. Wendell came back. “You all right?”

She filled her cheeks with air and let it out slowly. “I will be in a minute.”

Trixie ran over and snuffled up in Casey’s face, her wet nose cold against Casey’s. Casey ruffled the fur on the dog’s head. “Okay.”

The truck lay broken and battered, slumping sideways, two of its front tires flat, its remaining windows creased with spiderweb cracks. Casey was relieved to see the refrigerated trailer still attached. She’d been afraid it had been hauled away separately.

“Is the load still in there?” Casey asked.

Davey shook his head. “Company came and took it all away. Meats and stuff. Probably have to trash it all, but I guess they wanted to salvage what they could. It was still pretty cold in there, even by the time they got the rig here.”

“Cab’s not looking any too safe,” Wendell said.

Casey smiled grimly. “I don’t need the cab.”

Davey and Wendell glanced at each other.

“Well, then,” Davey said. “What is it you need?”

“A crowbar.”

Davey smiled. “I think I just might have one of those.”

In fact, he had about a dozen, and Casey picked the most heavy duty. Wendell and Davey each chose one, too.

“What are we looking for?” Wendell stood at the back of the truck, holding his crowbar over his shoulder.

Casey eyed the trim, still remarkably intact. “I’m not sure. But Evan said whatever it is was in the back trim, in the insulation, and that I shouldn’t let them have it.” At least that’s what she’d inferred. She had been, admittedly, rather shaken up at the time.

“Well, then,” Davey said. “Let’s have at it. Unless you want to look around a bit first.”

A good idea. If whatever Evan was hiding was something he’d want access to, he’d have to make himself a way to get at it. But after twenty minutes of fruitless searching, they hadn’t found anything.

Davey stepped back. “Looks like we need the crowbars, after all.”

With the screeching and wrenching of metal, the three of them tore away at the trim. It was harder than Casey had expected, and sweat soon ran down her scalp and between her shoulder blades and breasts. She stepped back, wiping her eyes, and felt something squish beneath her foot. Great. The banana, which she’d completely forgotten about.

Wendell and Davey were each pulling on a section of trim, their muscles straining with the effort. Casey took a breath and pulled back a new section, sliding out the insulation.

And she saw it.

She hollered for the other two to stop, and they hopped down from the back bumper to gather around her. Carefully she peeled back several more inches of trim and eased the insulation out from around the corner of a manila envelope. Soon she could get the entire thing out, and the three of them stood looking at it.

“What do you think’s in it?” Wendell said.

“It feels like papers.”

“Open it up,” Davey said. “Let’s have a look.”

She eased her finger under the envelope’s flap and wiggled it across, not wanting to rip anything, since this envelope’s contents were, in all likelihood, what Evan had died for.

“Come on,” Wendell said. “Let’s see it.”

Casey lifted the flap, and looked inside.

Chapter Four

“What is it?” Wendell leaned over to peer into the envelope.

“Lots of things.” Casey was surprised how much Evan had stuffed in, and she tilted the envelope so the men could see just how many papers were there.

“Come on,” Davey said. “Let’s go back to the office so you don’t lose anything. And you can get another banana.” He looked at the ground, where Casey’s fruit had met its fate.

Trixie accompanied them back to the office, and Casey reached down to pet her. “Good girl.”

Trixie turned in a circle, chasing her tail.

Inside the trailer office, Davey cleared one of the desks with a sweep of his arm and pulled up two extra chairs before grabbing the donuts and the few pieces of fruit and plunking them on the surface. Casey peeled the last banana and took a bite before emptying the envelope onto the desk. Papers, photos, and forms slid out into a messy pile.

“Wow,” Wendell said.

Davey picked up a photo. “This is them.”

“Them who?”

“The guys who were here last night. I mean, not all of them, but a couple.” He handed the photo to Casey. She wasn’t surprised when the picture’s subjects looked familiar. The whole group of them had been at the crash, she thought, but a few in particular stood out.

“That guy messed with me.” She pointed to the guy with dirty blond hair and green eyes, the one who had frisked her. “And that one.” The man who had climbed into the cab and shoved her out, all the while yelling at Evan not to die.

Casey swallowed down a bad taste in her mouth. Davey got up, filled a cup at the water cooler in the corner, and set it down in front of her. She drank it all, then ate the rest of the banana in two big bites.

“So,” she said as she chewed. “What’s the rest of this stuff?”

“More pictures,” Wendell said. “Looks like truckers, along with these guys again. Truck stops. Highway signs. All with dates written on the back. Like Evan was making a photo journal or something.”

He was right. The photos—mostly Polaroids, which was interesting, since Casey hadn’t been sure Polaroids still existed—could be organized chronologically, with locations and names. A lot of the people were repeated, but several faces appeared only once.

“These papers,” Davey said, holding them out at arm’s length and squinting. “Some of ’em are truck manifests. Where the truck had been, where it was going, mileage, load, fuel stops, all that stuff.”

Casey took a bite of an almost-ripe apple and scanned one of the pages. “Do they say what exactly the trucks were hauling?”

Davey shuffled through the pages. “All sorts of things. Grain, office supplies, hardware, frozen broccoli. I don’t see a pattern, right off. I’d need some time with this stuff in order to figure anything out. I’m not an expert on trucking.”

“This is just notes.” Wendell held up a small, spiral-bound notebook. “Names, companies, questions. Like Evan was trying to figure something out by writing it all down.”

Trixie barked outside, the sound harsher than her happy conversational yipping. The barks ended with a loud whine, and then silence. Davey looked out the window, and Casey could see immediately that something was wrong. She scooped the papers, photos and last pieces of fruit into a wastebasket at the side of the desk and grabbed it, heading toward the door where Rachel had appeared earlier. Rachel, who sat at a table with an adding machine, looked up as Casey entered, and Casey put a finger to her lips.

Casey closed the door almost completely, still able to peer out the crack, just around the file cabinet, but from knee level, where no one would think to look.

Davey stood, plunking cups of coffee down on the desk where they’d been working, one in front of Wendell, and one at his spot. He was just sitting back down with a donut when a man came in the door—a man Casey recognized from the crash site and from the photos in the wastebasket—the man who had climbed up into the cab and yelled at Evan not to die.

“Help you?” Davey said, his voice an attempt at casual. Casey hoped the man couldn’t hear the underlying nervousness.

“Hope you can,” the man said. “I believe you met some of my friends last night, and you didn’t show them any of our famous Midwestern hospitality.”

Davey took a bite of donut and chewed it. “Don’t recall as I’m supposed to be charming to folks who trespass in the wee hours of the morning.”

The man smiled. “The middle of the night—just when people might need your help the most.”

Casey glanced around the small room where she found herself. There were two small windows, and a larger one probably meant as an emergency exit. She studied it, hoping it could be opened without noise.

“You have something I want here in your junk yard,” the man said. “A semi, would’ve come in yesterday, late afternoon.”

“Sounds familiar,” Davey said. “What’s your business with it?”

“Don’t think I need to tell you that, do I?”

Rachel had gotten up from her chair to join Casey, and she pinched two buttons together on the right-hand side of the window. The pane slid quietly sideways, to reveal a screen. With another pinch the screen lifted up and out, squealing. Casey froze.

“If there’s something in it you’re looking for, I could tell you if we found it or not,” Davey said. “We’ve been through it pretty good.”

“And?”

“Didn’t find much. Nothing unusual, anyhow.”

Casey let out her breath. The man hadn’t heard the screen. She stuck her head out the window, hoping he didn’t have an accomplice standing just outside. No one there. If he had a partner, he was probably out front.

“I don’t think you’d find what I’m looking for,” the man said. “It was probably hidden.”

“Well, then, I don’t guess you were meant to find it, were you?” Davey took a loud a sip of coffee.

“I think I was,” the man said. “And you’re going to help me.”

Davey and Wendell both exclaimed, and Casey dashed back to the crack in the door. The man was pointing a gun across the counter, directly at Davey’s face.

Casey mouthed a thank you at Rachel, who was punching 911 into her phone, and eased the wastebasket liner, along with the papers and photos, from the trashcan. She tied the top with a loop and held it, climbing onto a chair to ease out of the open window, right leg first. She swung her left leg out, then hung onto the window frame, dropping quietly to the ground. She held her breath, listening. No movement outside. Not even Trixie, who lay motionless in the driveway.

On her hands and knees, Casey crawled to the back of the trailer, and saw no one there. A stack of crates sat at the front corner of the trailer, so she couldn’t see around to the front. She lay on her stomach and looked underneath. Two sets of feet. She sat on her heels. The man inside had a gun, so she had to assume these two did, as well. The first man would be bringing Davey and Wendell outside soon, and she wanted to get these others out of the way before she dealt with him.

Quietly, she slid the bag of papers as far underneath the trailer as she could, then looked around for something to use as a weapon. Bricks. Rocks. A shop broom. She grabbed the broom and twisted the head until she freed the stick. She stood and balanced it in her hands. Heavier than the Bo she used in hapkido, but about the same length.

Taking a deep breath and centering herself, she stood with her left side against the crates, her back against the trailer. She held the broomstick against her right side, her right arm extended along underneath it, resting the stick on her fingers, the back of her left hand flat against her right shoulder, the stick balanced on her palm.

She scraped her foot along the ground, the gravel loud in the quiet afternoon.

One of the men out front said something, and she heard footsteps. He came around the corner, turning toward her when he cleared the crates. Casey swung the stick upward, striking him in the groin. He bent over with a grunt, and she stepped forward, sweeping the stick over her head to strike him on the back of the neck. He sprawled at her feet, unconscious.

The second man ran around the corner, gun extended. Casey rocked back, pivoting on her left foot and swinging the stick upward. It hit the man’s wrist, knocking his arm back, but he held onto the gun. Pulling the stick forward, Casey hit the bony back of his wrist, and the gun flew about ten feet away. The man lunged toward it, and Casey leapt after him, striking the side of his knee with the point of the stick.

He screamed and fell to the ground, clutching his now-useless knee. Casey jumped forward, flicking the gun away with her staff, and swung the stick around under the man’s chin, lifting his face toward hers. “Who
are
you guys?”

He groaned, his eyes bright with pain.

The door to the trailer slapped open and Wendell walked down the steps, his face white. Davey came next, followed by the man with the gun, who held the pistol against his thigh. When he saw Casey he dropped the casual pose and wrapped his arm around Davey’s neck, holding the gun at his temple.

Casey looked quickly for the gun on the ground, but she’d knocked it too far away for her to reach. The man on the ground gave a strangled half-laugh, half-groan, and Casey swung the stick from under his chin and knocked the side of his head, putting him out of his immediate misery, laying him flat out on the ground. She faced the last man, the stick balanced in her hands.

“You again?” the man said, a mocking smile on his face. “Dix will be glad to hear you’re still around.”

“Dix?”

“My friend you met at the accident yesterday. You embarrassed him in front of the guys.”

“You can tell him I’m not sorry.”

The man laughed. “Oh, I’ll tell him. Now, honey, why don’t you just put down that little stick of yours.”

Casey gripped the staff tighter.

“Put it
down
.” The man emphasized the last word by shoving the gun harder against Davey’s head. Davey winced, and Wendell went even paler.

Casey clenched her jaw, then slowly lowered the stick to the ground. She rose, her hands palms-out at her shoulders. “Let the men go.”

“And do what with them? Let them go back inside and call the cops? I don’t think so.”

The sound of a siren split the air.

Casey kept her hands up. “Guess they won’t have to call now, will they?”

The man looked wildly at his fallen comrades, then dropped his gun hand and ran around the trailer. Casey ran the other way, jumping over her first victim and keeping out of the gunman’s sightlines so she wouldn’t be a target if he still wanted to shoot somebody.

But he wasn’t looking for her anymore. He jumped into a dark blue Explorer and flew out of the driveway, tires spinning on the gravel as he sped in the opposite direction as the sirens.

“Let’s go after him!” Wendell was behind her, his color more than fully back.

“The cops will get him.” Casey returned to the side of the trailer and dropped to her knees, pulling the bag out from under the trailer. “But I don’t want them to get me, too.”

“Where are you going? I’ll drive you.”

Davey came around the side of the trailer, Trixie limp in his arms. Where Wendell was now beet red, Davey had gone almost completely white.

“You guys will be in a lot of trouble because of me,” Casey said, indicating the two unconscious men. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” Davey’s voice shook. “They deserved what you gave them.”

Casey looked at Trixie. “Is she alive?”

Davey clutched her to his chest. “She’s breathing.”

“I want to
do
something.” Wendell’s voice grew loud.

Casey held up the bag. “You already have.”

The sirens came closer, and Rachel stuck her head out of the open window. “I see cruisers.”

“I’m sorry,” Casey said again, and ran toward the far end of the lot, where she climbed a stack of crushed cars, dropped over the fence, and sprinted as fast as she could through the cornfield.