Stuart Woods: Fast and Loose

“Yep. Let’s get a little sleep ourselves.” He laid his head against the seat back and seemed instantly asleep.

Stone dozed, too, and when he awoke the moon had set, and it was pitch-dark: no lights in the house. As he shifted his weight, Rawls woke, too.

“Ah, good,” Ed said, “I feel better rested now.”

“What’s your plan?” Stone asked.

“I want to get a look inside that Mercedes,” Rawls said.

“What if it’s locked?”

“Who would lock his car out here in the wilderness?” He got out of the car, closed the door softly, and, followed by Stone, crossed the road and walked toward the house. At the entrance to the driveway, which was paved, Rawls stopped and took off his shoes, and Stone followed suit.

“Don’t use your flashlight unless you have to,” Rawls said. He walked silently up the driveway, stopped, and signaled for Stone to wait, then he went to the driver’s-side door of the Mercedes, shone his light inside briefly, and the trunk lid opened without a sound.

Rawls walked to the rear of the car, set his shoes inside the trunk, then played his light around the interior. He seemed to open a box, then he set down his light and worked for perhaps a minute at something, then he switched off the light, picked up his shoes, silently closed the trunk lid, and joined Stone.

“Let’s go have a look behind the garage,” Rawls said.

Stone followed him, keeping the garage between them and the house. Ed waited until they were standing on the edge of the dark pit before he switched on his flashlight. “Well,” Ed said, holding the beam steady, “you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for him, would you?”

“No,” Stone replied, “you wouldn’t.”

“Let’s go back to our car,” Rawls said.

Stone followed him back to the road, where they put their shoes back on and walked the few yards to the car. “Why aren’t we rousting Macher?” he asked.

“Well,” Rawls said, “I’d rather not tiptoe into the house and up the stairs to the bedroom, where he’s likely sleeping with a gun next to him. It’s an old house, and it’s creaky in places. I’d rather wait until he comes downstairs in the morning and gets into his car. I’ll give him the option of running.”

“I’ll take the backseat,” Stone said, opening the door and crawling in. He was, shortly, fast asleep.

Stone was awakened at sunrise by the starting of the car. He sat up as Rawls put it into gear and drove the fifty yards that separated them from the house. To Stone’s surprise, Rawls parked on the opposite side of the road at the entrance to the driveway, leaving it clear.

Ed switched off the engine. “Now,” he said.

Stone got out of the car, peed into a ditch, then got into the front passenger seat. There was no traffic anywhere. “Now what?” he asked.

“Mr. Macher has stirred,” Ed said. “I caught a whiff of coffee on the air. He’ll be leaving soon.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because he won’t want to be here when the backhoe operator arrives, in case the fellow should notice that there’s a corpse in the hole with the tank. Macher will stop somewhere nearby where he has a view, and make sure the operator does his work and leaves without the cops arriving. That done, he’ll drive home a free man, with no evidence of anything against him. Then, in due course, he’ll find a way to murder you.”

“I’m tired of people trying to murder me,” Stone said.

“Well, he’s screwed up three times. Fourth time lucky, I reckon. He’ll take the greatest care next time.”

“You’re very encouraging,” Stone said.

“Not to worry,” Ed said, “he won’t get far, then he’ll have a terrible accident.”

“I don’t understand,” Stone said.

“You will in a little while. By the way, I think you should keep your weapon in its holster.”

“You won’t need help?”

“I’ll have all the help I need, and I and my weapon are legal in Virginia.”

“Whatever you say,” Stone said. He was hungry; he started thinking about eggs and bacon.

“Here we go!” Rawls shouted. He began getting out of the car.

Stone looked up to see Macher, carrying a small suitcase, come out of the kitchen door and start for his car. He didn’t seem to notice the car parked across the road with a man leaning against it.

Macher got into the Mercedes, made a U-turn, drove to the head of the driveway, and stopped. Now he was staring straight ahead at Ed Rawls.

“Does he know you?” Stone asked.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Rawls replied. “Stop! Murder!” he whispered aloud.

Then Macher saw Stone.

“What’s your plan, Ed?”

“I’m going to put a few rounds into the man’s trunk, where he has stored two bricks of gelignite.”

“I’ve got bad news for you, Ed.”

“What’s that?”

“You can fire all the bullets you like into gelignite, and they won’t ignite it.”

“We’ll see,” Ed said.

Macher decided it was time to move. He started a right turn into the road and accelerated. Ed began firing at the lower right of his trunk. The fourth round bore fruit.

Fortunately, the car was far enough away to protect the shooter and his friend, because the explosion was like what Stone thought would be produced by a missile from a passing fighter plane. Assisted by the fuel in the tank, the car erupted into an enormous fireball, and the noise pinned their ears back, and the shockwave knocked them down. Small bits of the car rained down around them, some of them flaming.

The two men got to their feet. “You’re right, Stone,” Ed said, “a bullet into the plastique wouldn’t ignite it, but if there were half a dozen detonators plugged into it and the bullet struck one of those, then that, as you can see, would do the job.”

“I can’t bring myself to disagree,” Stone said, brushing himself off.

Ed reached into the car and turned on the emergency blinkers. “Why don’t we go into the house, have some breakfast, call the cops, and get our stories straight?”

Stone and Rawls sat across the kitchen table from a Captain Sawyer, chief of the Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation, who looked tired and a little baffled.

“Mr. Rawls,” Sawyer said, “I have to tell you, in thirty years of serving in law enforcement, that is the most complicated story I have ever heard.”

“That’s the way it happened,” Rawls replied. “Sometimes life is complicated.”

“Life is usually complicated,” Sawyer replied, “but not that complicated.” He looked at Stone, who had remained mostly mute. “Mr. Barrington, is that the way you saw it happen?”

“Captain, I’m Mr. Rawls’s attorney. I wouldn’t let him lie to a law enforcement officer.”

“Well, I spoke to Commissioner Bacchetti, in New York, as you suggested, and he backs you up about the threat constituted by Jacob Herman and Erik Macher. After hearing about them, I’m not surprised there were explosives in the trunk of Macher’s car.”

“I was surprised,” Rawls said. “I was aiming at his right rear tire, not his trunk.”

Stone kicked him under the table.

“But that’s all I’ve got to tell you,” Rawls said.

Stone breathed a sigh of relief.

“Lieutenant,” Sawyer said to the uniformed officer leaning against a kitchen counter, “I’m satisfied with Mr. Rawls’s and Mr. Barrington’s accounts of what happened here. You may remove Mr. Herman’s body to the state crime lab. Have you found any of Mr. Macher?”

“A few charred pieces of bone,” the lieutenant replied. “I guess everything else was just vaporized.”

“I’m not surprised,” Sawyer said. “That must have been some explosion. We got nine-one-one calls from miles around. Most folks thought there had been a plane crash.”