Brian Garfield - Relentless

This stretch always tempted the drivers who had Le Mans fixations: it came down off the mountain like a ski slope and two-laned straight out across the twenty-mile flat below.

It was a Friday forenoon at the dying end of October. The aspen forest had turned gold. Watchman and Stevens lay in wait in the Roadside Rest Area, parked under the trees. There wasn’t a billboard to hide behind but the ritual was the same. Under the molten brass sun the shadows were black and had sharp edges; drivers barreling down the highway wouldn’t spot the cruiser until it had them nailed.

Downstate on more populous roads you could poke along five miles under the limit and gather a clot of traffic tamed and intimidated by the presence of your Highway Patrol car, and it would create a chain wave of caution that would slow them down for miles ahead and behind. But up in this corner of Arizona you seldom got more than one car in half an hour and the strategy of Visible Presence didn’t work. They had put Watchman and the rookie on this beat four months ago and it had been easy to size up: State Highway 793 was the only through route in the district but it was wide open for a hundred and fifty miles. Watchman had planted the word with gas stations and cafes from the mountains to the Nevada line and now the tourists were getting the warnings: You want to watch out, there’s a cop car posted somewheres between here and the Nevada border-speed trap, watch your step. Up here they didn’t assign a ticket quota and Watchman didn’t care about writing up violations but back in August a Cadillac going down this stretch at a hundred and five had dropped a tie rod and they had spent two hours with a blowtorch scraping the remains of the five passengers out of the wreckage. Now the word had spread and the road had been tamed, except for the occasional drunk and a few hot-rod tourists on their way to Las Vegas who hadn’t got the word.

Trooper Stevens shook up his bottle of root beer and spouted foam into his mouth from six inches away. “This sucks. I’ve had more fun watching TV test patterns.”

“Possibly you’d rather work for a living?”

“Typical lazy Inyun remark.”

Watchman gave him a pained look. “For you I pay taxes?”

“Join the Highway Patrol, see the world. Glamour, excitement, thrills!”

Sam Watchman slid down in the driver’s seat until he was sitting on the back of his neck and his knees butted the steering column. He cupped a brown hand around the back of his neck and reared his head back lazily. He hadn’t expected to like working with the rookie-he’d never had a partner before-but it was working out. What Buck Stevens didn’t know about the job could fill a thick manual but he was good-humored and he was flexible and in the end, when push came to shove, that was what counted: flexibility.

“Just about time to break for lunch,” Stevens said. “Oh joy. Another vulcanized steak sandwich at Holcombe’s.”

“No. We’ll go into town today. I’ve got to pick up something at the jeweler’s.”

Lisa…

There was a radio call, description of stolen car; Stevens wrote it down at the bottom of the week’s list. The speaker sputtered out, “Ten Four,” and Watchman straightened up and reached for the ignition key. “Okay, lunch.” The Fury’s starter popped and the engine began to hum.

That was when the speeder shot past: a baroque old oil burner of a Buick, chromium-laden, overstuffed, covered with stickers- It’s Your Flag Love It Or Leave It; These Colors Do Not Run; Grand Canyon National Park — traveling at relentless speed, swaying across the white line, the bored driver’s left hand hooked outside against the vent window in the slipstream.

“Jesus,” Buck Stevens said. “Craig Breedlove trying for the land speed record again.”

Watchman slid the Fury out onto the highway and gave chase. He pushed it up to ninety-five and Stevens said, “We’re not gaining on him.”

Watchman drawled gently. “Might be a good idea to clock him first, don’t you think?”

A crimson flush suffused the rookie’s face up to the blond hairline.

“Plenty of time. Get on the mileposts, I’ve got the speedometer.”

Stevens got out the clipboard. “Christ, I’m sorry, Sam.”

“No charge.”

“All right. Mile zero.”

The road had a high crown and blacktop patches where road crews had filled in last winter’s chuckholes. Watchman had both hands full keeping the cruiser on the road and he was a graduate of the California pursuit driving course, and that clown up ahead was driving one-handed.

“Mile One. Shee-yit.” Stevens checked his watch and scribbled a calculation on the clipboard pad. “Ninety-seven and a fraction.”

“Confirmed,” Watchman said, and flicked his eyes up from the speedometer. “Hold your hat.”

He floored the pedal and switched on the rooftop dome flasher. No point turning on the siren because at this speed the Buick wouldn’t hear it. The wind was a blast in his left ear, bouncing off the foothills and buffeting the road across the gaps. At a hundred and ten he was gaining on the Buick, not rapidly, but there wasn’t a crossroad in thirteen miles and there was plenty of time. The Buick had got a jump on them and it took four or five minutes to get up close but evidently the driver of the Buick had no use for his rear view mirror and Watchman had to pull out alongside and blow the horn at him. When he saw the thin shoulders jerk and the narrow face shift toward him he dropped back quickly because the fool was likely to panic and he didn’t want to be in the way if the Buick slewed across the road.

But the Buick slowed well, with just a touch of brakes, and when Watchman parked on the shoulder behind it Stevens said, “I’ll give him credit. He’s good.”

“Good and dead if he hit anything bigger than a jack rabbit at that speed.”

“Can I tag this one, kemo sabe? ”

“Go ahead, paleface.”

Stevens’ face was still a little red. He reached for the door handle. Up front the driver had got out of the Buick and was standing with his hands in his pockets and his face wreathed in saturnine disgust.

“Give him the cheesecake,” Watchman said. He slipped one of the three-by-five glossies out of the envelope. It was a good sharp photo of the remains they had torched out of the Cadillac. He had bought six dozen copies from the police lab. “Don’t let him rile you.”

“I’ll tell him if he don’t behave I got a wild-eyed partner who’d just as soon lift his scalp.” Stevens left the door open and walked over with his clipboard. Watchman saw the way the driver sized up the rookie-thinking about asking if twenty dollars cash would take care of it, and rejecting the thought at close sight of Stevens’ earnest young varsity pass-receiver’s face.

A few years back Watchman had been a rookie himself, partnering in a cruiser with a veteran hairbags trooper named Custis, and when they had pulled over a stop-sign runner and Watchman had started to make out the first moving-violation ticket of his career the driver had shown the edge of a twenty-dollar bill and lifted his eyebrows inquiringly. Watchman had gone back to the cruiser full of excitement and told Custis about it: “We can arrest the son of a bitch for attempted bribery, Fred.”

“You crazy? I’ll handle it.” Custis had left him behind and gone over to talk to the man and Watchman had seen the money change hands. When Custis had returned he’d offered to split the money with Watchman. Watchman had refused, and Custis had said, “Gee, thanks, Sam, that’s white of you,” and launched into a hard-luck story about his wife and kids and how much he needed the money.