C. Box - The Highway

So she raised up on her toes and looked in. It was obvious Jimmy didn’t have his trash hauled away very frequently. Hundreds of empty bottles, food containers, and open packages were inside almost to the top. She thought that the entire social history of the bar for the past month could be determined by the layers inside; what customers drank, what they ate, what they’d tracked in.

On the very top was a fairly clean empty box that had probably held the cinnamon rolls that were on the breakfast menu, she thought. She smiled, remembering what Legerski had said about Jimmy’s famous rolls. But obviously, Jimmy didn’t bake them: they were delivered.

She reached in and opened the box. The bottom was scored with caramel-colored swirls from where the rolls had been, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. Because in the corner of the box was a small heap of ashes and cigarette butts. Jimmy had obviously used the empty box as a dustpan when he cleaned up that morning. She recognized the Marlboro Red butts as the kind Cody left everywhere.

Cassie removed the box and carefully poured the contents into a clean paper bag she found next to it.

She looked inside and counted: eight. Eight cigarettes. She could have them tested for DNA but she had no doubt who’d smoked them. Even Cody wasn’t capable of smoking eight in twenty minutes. Which meant he’d been there much longer than twenty minutes the night before.

She wondered why Legerski had lied to her. And why Jimmy had gone along with it.

She decided to question Jimmy herself to find out, but as she walked around from the back of the building she heard a motor start up and a hiss of thrown gravel.

Jimmy’s old Jeep Wagoneer was sizzling down the highway to the north. He’d hastily hung up a SORRY FOLKS, WE’RE CLOSED sign in the front window.

9:47 A.M., Wednesday, November 21

Ronald Pergram was awakened by the burr of his cell phone on his pillow. He grunted and reached to turn it off, assuming it was the dispatcher calling to tell him about his next load, but the number displayed on the screen jolted him awake. It was a temporary number of a prepaid cell phone Legerski used only for emergencies.

As Pergram rolled to his side in bed the laptop that had been perched on his white belly slid off onto the mattress. He’d fallen asleep watching the DVD he’d selected, even before he got satisfaction from it. He was still bone tired and he’d not come close to having enough sleep.

“Yeah.”

“Meet me at the place,” Legerski said. He sounded agitated. Pergram could hear road sounds in the background. Legerski was calling from a moving vehicle.

“Now?”

“Fuck yes, now, ” Legerski said. “We’ve got problems.”

Pergram closed his eyes. Pure red anger gathered in his chest and pushed up his throat. But he was wide-awake.

“Isn’t that your department?” Pergram said. “I do the hunting and run the heavy equipment, and you solve the problems. That was the deal.”

“Jesus, this isn’t the time. Just get your ass to the place as soon as you can. I called Jimmy and he’s on his way.”

Pergram’s heart leapt. “Are you talking about a session?”

“Don’t be a moron. We don’t have time for that until we’re in the clear. I’m talking about a stupid cunt cop snooping around. She doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing but she’s got me worried.”

His hopes dashed, Pergram slid his feet out of bed and placed them on the cold floor.

“Okay, I’ve got to get dressed.”

“Bring the tapes,” Legerski said. “All of them.”

Pergram glanced down at the collection in the ammo box near the side of the bed.

“The DVDs too?”

“Of course the DVDs, too. You know what I meant.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Pergram said, killing the call.

Yeah, Pergram thought, I know exactly what you mean.

* * *

Before leaving his room, Pergram checked the loads in the magazine of his Taurus.380 ACP and shoved it into his waistband at the small of his back. A blunt two-shot Bond Arms.45 Derringer went into the front right pocket of his Carhartt parka. His sheathed bone-handled skinning knife fitted nicely into the shaft of his right work boot, and a razor-sharp throwing knife went into the left.

He got back down on his knees and retrieved the “Oh Shit” box and bolted the floorboard hatch.

Locking his room behind him, he carried an ammo can in each hand and went as quietly as he could through the tunnel of refuse toward the front door. Although he couldn’t hear her, he felt her presence and turned his head sharply. She glared at him from an ancient overstuffed chair in an alcove of boxes and translucent containers packed with items that still had the price tags fixed to them. Her wide feet were up on a stool made of milk crates and the fat from her sides pooled over the armrests. She’d been just sitting here, in the shadows, waiting.

“Where you going?”

“Out.”

“What you got there in your hands?”

The ammo cans. He didn’t look down at either when she asked, but the handles felt like they were burning his flesh.

“Might go to the range,” he said.

“Go ahead and lie to me,” she said. “You’re up to no good. I can see it on your face. I’ve always been able to tell when you’re out causing trouble.”

The rage hadn’t receded far, and it climbed into the base of his throat again. Three steps and he’d be on her. Three steps swinging two heavy steel containers. He wondered how long it would take them to find her in all the garbage.

“Not like JoBeth,” she said. “JoBeth never caused no trouble. She was the opposite of you. I still don’t know how the two of you grew up in the same house. It just don’t seem possible.”

He said, “I’m taking your car again.”

Her mouth dropped open. The reaction was worth it, he thought.

“What if I need to use it?”

“It’ll wait.”

“I’m going to have to hide the keys from you, Ronald. I swear, I’ll hide the keys.”

“I’ve got a spare set,” he said, turning for the front door.

The last thing he heard was, “Put some damned gas in it this time!”

* * *

There was a winter storm blowing in from the north and Pergram drove into the teeth of it. The sky was dark and close, the bumpers of the individual clouds tainted slightly green, the clouds themselves blocking out the omnipresent mountains. Thin smokelike waves of snow twisted across the highway, rolling like sidewinder snakes he’d seen firsthand in Texas. The heater in the Riviera wasn’t working worth a damn and the air the vents expelled smelled like radiator fluid. The ammo box filled with tapes and DVDs was on the passenger seat next to him.

She always brought up JoBeth, he thought. She used JoBeth like a blunt object to beat him with. Thin, lovely, athletic JoBeth, his little sister. Two-sport all-state athlete, honor roll, Future Farmers of America award winner. Somewhere in all that shit back home were her clippings from the Livingston Enterprise , each one of them painstakingly scissored out an eighth inch from the text and pressed into a three-binder scrapbook that used to sit prominently on the front coffee table when it could still be found. JoBeth’s official U.S. Marines induction photo was on the wall, her clear blue eyes gazing out with a sense of purpose as straight as her jawline. When the word had come that the Humvee she was riding in in Iraq was destroyed by an IED, Pergram had mixed emotions. His mother didn’t. She went off the deep end and found some kind of solace in “collecting.” Collecting, Pergram thought, and acting the martyr. Her perfect child had been taken away, leaving her with … him.