J. Jance - Day of the Dead

“What do you think you’re doing?” Gayle asked.

He hadn’t heard the car or her. The sound of her voice scared him to death. A chill ran up his spine. The painting fell from his hand, splitting the heavy gilt frame as it smashed onto the Saltillo floor. This couldn’t be happening. Larry led a charmed life. He wasn’t supposed to get caught.

“Nothing,” he said, turning to face her. That’s when he saw the gun-a chrome-plated pistol-that was pointed straight at his chest. It wasn’t a very large weapon, but it seemed to grow in size. He stared at it until the gaping mouth of the pistol was all he could see. “I came to see if you needed any help,” he added lamely.

She smiled and shook her head, but she didn’t move the gun. It stayed pointed at him.

“I never knew about that safe,” she said quietly. “What do you keep in it?”

“Odds and ends. Nothing important. Put down the gun, Gayle. Shouldn’t we get to work?”

“Did you have money in there?” she demanded. “Were you hiding money from me?”

“Of course not!” he declared. Flustered, he felt his face turn red. “Nothing of the kind.”

“Then open the briefcase,” she ordered. “Show me.”

As he carried on his end of the conversation, Larry Stryker was trying to grapple with this new reality. There was no question about whether or not she would pull the trigger. Of the two of them, Gayle was the natural-born killer. He had known that about her for more than thirty years. He had always supposed he was immune. But he wasn’t. His only hope was to fight back.

So he stepped toward the desk and made as if to comply. Instead of opening the briefcase, he picked it up and heaved it at her. She dodged out of the way of the flying briefcase, and her first shot missed him completely. The second one didn’t. The bullet hit him square in the chest and flung him backward. It took forever for him to slide down the wall. He watched her, expecting her to fire again. She simply disappeared from view as he slid behind the desk.

“Gayle,” he called. “Don’t leave me like this. Please.”

She didn’t answer. The last thing Larry Stryker heard was the sound of the study door slamming shut behind her.

In twenty-six years of driving gravel trucks, Amos Brubaker had never had an accident-not even a fender bender. This, his last load of the day, was headed for another new development on the far side of Saddle Brook. The gravel pit was in the riverbed west of I-10 and southeast of Marana. According to the map, it should have been easier for him to get where he was going by backtracking as far as Rillito and going east there. Mileagewise, that would have been closer, but that was the sad truth about Tucson-area traffic. Amos was actually better off going miles out of his way, taking the freeway as far as north Red Rock, cutting over there to Highway 79, and approaching his drop-off point from the opposite direction.

Amos was doing that now, sailing along on the straightaway at slightly over the 65-miles-per-hour legal limit. He slowed slightly when he saw a green Suburban parked on the right-hand shoulder. These days DPS sometimes used stealth vehicles rather than clearly marked patrol cars to police Arizona’s highways. But the Suburban turned out to be just that, a Suburban with a single occupant-a man-sitting in it. His hazard lights weren’t on. He didn’t look like someone having car trouble or trying to flag someone down, so Amos put his foot back on the gas pedal and kept going.

Just then some dim-bulb babe in a Lexus went tearing past him doing at least eighty-five. She’d barely gone around the front fender of his Mack truck when she slammed on her brakes and turned off on a dirt road. Amos flipped her a bird as he went past. What the hell was the matter with drivers today-and not just women drivers, either? If she was planning on turning right, couldn’t she have stayed behind him for that last quarter of a mile? Did bimbos like her have even the vaguest idea of how much blacktop was needed to stop a loaded gravel truck? That was another problem with driving these days. Everybody was in too much of a hurry.

Amos was coming up on Oracle Junction. He reached the place where the straightaway ended. Beyond that point the road narrowed slightly and was far more curvy. Amos eased back to a real 65. He saw the car ahead of him-a pale yellow vehicle of some kind-approaching in the opposite lane, but he didn’t worry about it-didn’t consider it at all. He saw the approaching car and assumed whoever was in it saw him, too. Bright red Mack gravel trucks are hard to miss.

But then, when he was almost on top of the car-a Honda-it turned left directly in front of him. He saw now that the pale yellow Honda was driven by a woman-a gray-haired woman about the same age as Amos. At the very last moment, she glanced up and saw the truck. In that electric instant, he saw the look of horror flash across her face; saw her lips form themselves into a surprised O; saw her eyes open wide, shocked and disbelieving.

Looking for a way to avoid hitting her, Amos checked the left lane, but now there was another car in that lane, a cop car with flashing lights that was speeding toward both the Honda and Amos’s truck. By then, the Honda was fully astraddle the right-hand lane, directly in the path of the speeding Mack truck. Amos Brubaker had split seconds to make his decision. Between T-boning the seemingly stationary Honda or crashing head-on into an oncoming vehicle, the woman’s Honda presented the least lethal choice.

Almost standing on the brake pedal, Amos clung to the wheel and tried to keep the truck and its add-on trailer on the road. He had dodged enough-or maybe she had sped up enough-that instead of hitting her dead-on, he clipped her right quarter panel. Instead of being flattened under the truck’s front bumper, the Honda spun away. When it hit the soft shoulder on the side of the road, it flipped and flew end over end before finally coming to rest, leaning at an angle, against a barbed-wire fence.

Amos felt the impact and saw the car go whirling away. For the barest of moments, he thought he had made it-thought he was home free, then he felt a sickening lurch behind him. He looked in the rearview mirror long enough to see the trailer swing back across the centerline. In that awful moment he knew what was going to happen. The heavy load of gravel would pull him over. As the wheels of the tractor left the ground, all Amos Brubaker could do was hold on for dear life. Hold on and pray.

J. A. Jance

Day of the Dead

Twenty-Nine

Brian Fellows had heard the expression “watching a train wreck,” but he had never understood the implications until that very moment. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Not wanting to alert Larry Stryker, he had shut off the siren as they entered Oracle Junction. Once they were on Highway 79, he saw the approaching gravel truck. He saw the little yellow Honda. When the Honda’s brake lights came on, Brian assumed that the vehicle was preparing to turn, but when the turn signal didn’t come on, there was no way to tell which way the Honda was going. Then, to Brian’s gut-wrenching dismay, the Honda turned directly into the path of the truck. And through it all, there was nothing-not one thing-Brian could do to stop it.

“My God!” PeeWee shouted. “Look out!”

And Brian was looking. He was searching desperately for some safe haven, somewhere to pull off the road and get the hell out of the way. He saw the speeding tractor slam into the side of the Honda. With one tire bouncing high in the air above them all, the out-of-control Honda spun through the air while the truck careened straight toward them. Trying to dodge out of the way, Brian wrenched the wheel to the right. He managed to miss the bouncing tire and the Honda, but the maneuver sent the Crown Victoria pitching off the steep shoulder and directly into a concrete-bridge abutment, where it slammed to a stop.