Thyme of Death (31 page)

There was silence in the car while a
moving van rocketed past us on the left, the Datsun shuddering in its eighty-five-mile-per-hour
wake. The back of the truck declared that the driver observed the speed limit
and anybody who thought differently should call the 1-800 number carefully
hidden under an inch thick coating of mud. I’ve called in two complaints on those
guys. I wonder how many other people do it, and whether it slows any of them
down. Probably not.

Ruby glanced down at the gas gauge. “China,”
she said, “I hate to bring this up, but we’ve been running on empty for the
last few miles.”

“Shit,” I said. The needle sat on E.
“I don’t want to stop. I’d hate to get there late.” I had a backup plan—
showing up at the airport just at boarding time. But that was a lot trickier
than nabbing somebody at the car-rental place.

“If we run out of gas,” Ruby replied
reasonably, “we won’t get there at all.”

I sighed, seeing the wisdom in that.
A huge sign off to the right proclaimed
buda
truck city,
1
mile.
Buda
is a corruption of the Spanish word for widow. It’s pronounced Byoo-da by the
locals. The story goes that all the men in the town were massacred by
Comanches, who felt (with some justification) that the place was getting too
crowded. The widows were left to carry on alone, which they did, quite capably.

I took the Buda exit and pulled into
a gigantic truck stop. Monstrous eighteen-wheelers, and eighteen-wheelers
towing other eighteen-wheelers, not to mention tank trucks, stock trucks, and
even a caravan of Army trucks—all were lined up for the pump islands like
metallic dinosaurs jostling one another at the last watering hole.
Unfortunately, all the pumps turned out to be diesel.

“Maybe we’d better forget gas,” Ruby
said nervously, as we wove our second circuit of the complex. “It’s five
twenty-five.”

“There’s
got
to be an
unleaded pump here somewhere,” I said. Then I spotted it, and dodged ahead of
a green Mercury intent on the same goal. The driver, a well-dressed woman with
a bleached bouffant and two kids in the back seat shot me the finger.

I pumped three gallons—no point in
spending the time to fill the tank when this would get us there and back—and we
were on the road. “What’s the time?” I asked Ruby.

“Five twenty-nine.”

The traffic was lighter and we were
back to three lanes again, so I floored it. We had just sailed down the long
hill that bottoms out at the Onion Creek overpass when I saw the Department of
Public Safety lurking behind the oleander clump on the other side of the
bridge. The Datsun wasn’t doing much over eighty when we passed the trooper,
while the two cars just ahead were doing at least eighty-five. But ours was the
car he pulled over. He was professionally polite behind the reflecting shield
of his dark glasses. “May I see your license, please,” he said in a voice
without inflection. Ruby leaned toward the driver’s side. “But the cars ahead
of us were going a
lot
faster than we were,” she protested. I gave her a
sideways scowl as I handed over my license. I make it a rule never to argue
with the D.P.S., especially when I’m in the wrong. Even more especially when I’m
in a hurry.

The trooper’s mouth turned up in
what he might have meant as a smile. “Isn’t that interesting,” he said. “I’ll
be sure and watch for them next time.”

As he ambled back to the squad car
to radio in the registration check and write out the speeding citation, Ruby
sat back. “Maybe we should tell him. Maybe he could give us an escort.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said, angry at myself
for not remembering that the Onion Creek overpass was reported to yield a
couple of hundred dollars an hour in fines. “It’s five thirty-four now. It
would take us at least twenty-six minutes to give him the facts, which—even
assuming we could convince him that we’re telling the truth, which is
doubtful—would make us just about twenty-six minutes late for our date.” I
shook my head. “Sorry, Ruby. We’re on our own.”

Ruby didn’t look exactly pleased
with the idea. We sat in silence. I don’t know what Ruby was thinking, but I
was running through various scenarios of what might happen at Rent A Wreck. I
didn’t like any of them. Cops-and-robbers isn’t my idea of amusing Sunday
recreation.

The trooper was back within four
minutes. I signed the ticket, he gave me the obligatory caution, and we were on
our way again. It was five thirty-nine. I mentally surveyed all the possible
D.P.S. hidey-holes between Onion Creek and South Austin and decided to take
the chance. We were back up to eighty the minute we were out of radar range.

The Wyndham Hotel rises out of a
concrete parking lot like a fat stone obelisk with eyes, marking the intersection
of 1-35 and Ben White Boulevard. With Ruby clutching the panic handle above the
door as if she were a jet pilot ready to eject, I whipped the Datsun off the
Interstate and onto the frontage road. There were fifteen cars lined up for a
left onto Ben White. I was in no mood to wait, so I took the center lane,
reaching the intersection just as the light went yellow. I floored it and made
an illegal left, heading west on Ben White.

“How far?” Ruby asked breathlessly.

‘Two blocks,” I said, angling for
the right lane ahead of a blue van. “Should be on the right.”

It was in the next block, past
McDonald’s and the Pizza Hut. “Rent A Wreck!” Ruby said, pointing to a ten-foot
red-white-and-blue neon sign that was nearly lost in the neon jungle of taller,
gaudier signs. At the curb cut, I swung the wheel hard right. It was six oh
three.

We drove into what had been the
front lot of a drive-in movie a few years back, before cable television and the
VCR. Over a road at the rear of the lot was a weather-beaten drive-under sign
that said
north screen
on one end
and
south screen
on the other,
and
closed for the winter
underneath.
The Rent A Wreck office was in a white metal trailer with an un-painted wooden
deck. The trailer sat perpendicular to Ben White, about sixty feet back from
the street. A taxi and driver sat out front.

I drove around behind the building
and pulled up at the far end, behind an unpainted wooden lattice that screened
us from Ben White. I left the motor running, shifted into neutral, and surveyed
the lot in front of us. There were four or five rows of cars—maybe twenty in
all—some looking like they’d seen a lot of miles, others nearly new. The only
Duster I spotted was green, with a flat front tire.

“Looks like we made it,” Ruby said. “Maybe
the taxi’s waiting for—”

“You’d better check,” I said. “But
don’t linger.”

Ruby flashed me a grin. “I’ll be
right back, Sherlock.” She was just getting out when a brown Duster turned off
Ben White.

I grabbed Ruby’s arm, adrenaline
surging. “Hang on. Looks like this is it.”

The car drove through the lot and
pulled up in front of the office, angling nose-in beside the taxi. Ruby pulled
the door shut. I shifted into first, let out the clutch, and eased the Datsun
forward until we could see the driver get out of the car.

It was Jane Dorman.

She was dressed for Fifth Avenue in
a slim black-and-white checked coatdress with a white shawl collar and white
cuffs. She wore black stockings and high-heeled patent leather pumps and
carried a shiny black purse. Climbing out of the battered old car in this seedy
lot, she looked like an executive-suite hooker working the wrong address.

“It’s her!” Ruby said. “Do you think
she’s got a gun?”

I shook my head, edging the car
forward another few inches. “She left the thirty-eight at Violett’s,” I said. “Unless
she got her hands on another one, she’s not likely—”

At that same instant, Jane spotted
us. Her first expression was sheer surprise, then disbelief. For an instant,
I thought she might tough it out, wave, smile, trip on into the office in those
patent learner pumps. Then she dove back into the car, slammed the door, and
shoved the key into the ignition.

Thinking to cut her off, I twisted the
wheel in a hard left and pulled forward, half behind her car. But Jane shoved the
Duster into reverse, floored it, tires spinning, and rammed us in the left
front fender with a teeth-rattling crash, shoving the Datsun aside. Her reverse
momentum carried her across the gravel lot until she slammed into the front
end of a late-model Ford.

The office door flung open and a
red-faced, heavyset man with salt-and-pepper hair appeared. “Hey, you!” he shouted,
waving his fist at Jane. “What the fuck d’ya think you’re doin’? You crazy?”

I rolled down the window a notch. “Call
the cops!” I shouted. “She’s wanted for murder.”

The man’s jaw dropped. “No shit,” he
said, then ran back into the office. The taxi driver was already on his radio.

Jane had shifted into first, yanked the
steering wheel to the right, and headed for Ben White. A second later Ruby and
I were hard on her tail. At Ben White, she spotted a gap in the fast-moving
traffic and pulled into the right lane, westbound. We ducked in three cars behind,
under the nose of a mean-looking black Blazer with dark-tinted windows and a
don’t mess with Texas
sticker on the
front bumper.

“Jesus,”
Ruby screamed,
reaching overhead for the panic handle.

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Pray.”

A couple of blocks ahead I could see
the South Congress overpass. At the last minute, doing sixty, Jane took the
exit. We took it too, with nothing between us and her. There was a red light at
the intersection of the access road and South Congress, but Jane didn’t stop.
She took a left, hard, across the overpass. I ran the light too, dodging a
rattletrap Ford truck hauling a yellow Caterpillar backhoe, and stayed on her
tail, pressing her hard through the next light and down South Congress,
careening past surprised Sunday drivers placidly obeying the
forty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. I had my headlights on and emergency
lights flashing and the horn down hard, hoping that if a cop spotted us he’d
know we were chasing the Duster, not racing it. Ruby’s feet were braced against
the floor. She was alternately breathing out and gasping in, loudly.

Congress south of Ben White is four
narrow asphalt lanes through a hodgepodge neighborhood of forties and fifties
frame-and-brick motels, mini warehouses surrounded by chain-link fences, used
car lots, rundown cafes, and pawnshops. Across the railroad tracks, there’s a
giant retail lumber and building supplies warehouse, a dozen acres of stacked
lumber, roofing, fencing, concrete tile. “How are we going to stop her?” Ruby
asked. “I don’t know,” I said, eyes on the road. “Keep praying. Maybe God will
think of something.” God did. Congress makes a downhill at the Williamson Creek
bridge, then an uphill. On the other side of the concrete bridge the
neighborhood turns mixed residential, frame houses, liquor stores, trailer
parks, auto repair. At the top of the hill a flashing red light indicates a
four-way stop. The hill slowed Jane from sixty to fifty, but she didn’t bother
with the light She was barreling through the intersection when an empty yellow
minivan from the Children of Jesus Tabernacle lumbered into it. At the last
second, Jane locked the brakes and snapped the wheel to the right. The rear end
skidded around in a cloud of black rubber smoke and slammed into the right
front of the Children of Jesus. The van spun a graceful one-eighty and lurched
back across the intersection and onto the front porch of the South Austin
Family Medical Clinic, narrowly missing a ragged long-hair on a beat-up old
bike that was hitched to a cart filled with aluminum cans. The Duster swerved
right and bounced over the curb and onto the sidewalk, the passenger side
scraping a stone retaining wall. “Now we’ve got her!” Ruby cried. But Jane wasn’t
done yet. She gunned the Duster, pulled back onto Congress, and took off again.
“Christ,” Ruby said, “she’s unstoppable!” “No, she isn’t,” I said. “She’s
losing it.” Jane couldn’t get much speed out of the Duster, which was listing
sharply to the right. An instant later big chunks of rubber began sloughing off
the rear tire like slabs of charred elephant skin. Sparks showered from the
wheel as the last hunk tore loose and the rim began to skate on the concrete.
Jane lost control. The Duster lurched to the right and splintered a wooden
sandwich board with
Manuel’s trailer SALES
freshly
painted on it.

I skidded up and Ruby and I piled
out. Jane was out too, kicking off her black patent leather pumps. She ran to
the left, into the trailer sales lot. A short, heavy-set Hispanic man with an Errol
Flynn mustache and Rudolph Valentino hair popped out of a nearby trailer.
manuel
was embroidered in red on his white
Mexican wedding shirt.

“Hey, I saw you hit that sign!” he
yelled, shaking his fist at Jane. “You gonna pay, whore!” Jane was fast for
somebody running in her stockinged feet on gravel, but she was driven by the
primal urge to save her skin. She dodged to the left around a trailer with a
huge
buy now
banner draped across
the front.

“You go right,” I yelled to Ruby, as
I swung to the left. “We’ll get her between us.”

“Hey!” Manuel shouted again. Now
there were
three
women, not just one, running around in his lot. He
jumped off the deck of the trailer and ran in our direction. “Wait’ll I get my
hands on you,
ladronas!
You gonna pay—or else!”