Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

He jerked his mind back. He had wandered out onto Highway 120. He got back onto the shoulder. Bent to pick up a fallen branch for a walking stick, and fell down again. Idiot! Keep the head higher than the heart or he’d end up as dead as Corwin.

Corwin! That was it! Hatfield wanted him dead because he, not Hatfield, had killed Corwin and thus had saved Wallberg’s life. If Thorne was alive, even in a Kenya jailhouse, he could keep telling people all about it. Eventually, someone might listen. And talk. Talk to important people who might believe, and talk also, and Wallberg might hear about it... Far better for Hatfield if Thorne were dead.

Ahead, in the just beginning pre-dawn, he saw the Casa Loma store. And the ’94 Chev Astro minivan that had been parked there yesterday morning. Detach the wires under the dash to bypass the ignition switch... And what? Drive as far and fast as he could? Hope he got to Oakdale and Whiskey River and Janet Kestrel before Hatfield caught up with him?

To his wandering mind, Janet seemed to have all the answers he needed. She’d give him two or three days before she moved on. He would have to get to Whiskey River before then. He’d have to tell her that Corwin was dead — and that Thorne was the one who had killed him. Then somehow, despite all that, get her to work with him on finding the answers he sought.

But first things first. He needed food, water, antibiotics to stave off incipient infection. Already he was getting feverish. If he went goofy, he was lost indeed.

He threw a rock through the store window.

As the sun began to shine through the notch of the Tioga Pass beyond Yosemite, Hatfield had to admit that Thorne was gone. Or that his men had missed the body. They should be expanding the perimeter of the search, but they didn’t have the manpower for it. He was operating outside the FBI action structure, and at this point, he couldn’t call in the cops or the sheriffs. Because if Thorne was found alive, he knew Thorne would talk.

The girl hadn’t shown, either. His search engines had been useless: he’d been looking for Amore or Roanhorse, not Kestrel.

He ransacked her cabin. What looked like all her clothes were there, and her personal papers. Missing were her i.d. and purse and money and car keys, but she would have needed those...

Car keys!

He checked his watch. Eight a.m. He didn’t remember Sammy as a workaholic, but he called the LA FO and asked for AIC Spaulding. Sammy was in!

‘Terrill! I couldn’t sleep all night. How much trouble am I in with the big boys back in Washington because of you?’

‘None. We missed our man. But I need you to run a Janet Kestrel, that’s K-E-S-T-R-E-L, for a California driver’s license, any vehicles registered to her, any wants and warrants.’

‘That sound you hear is my sigh of relief. Okay, Kestrel. I’m feeding her into the computer right now. Anything else?’

Hatfield paused, could see no downside to going ahead.

‘Yeah. Put out a Seeking Information Alert on her.’

‘An SIA? That’s terrorist shit, Terrill.’

‘I keep telling you this is coming from far up the food chain. I need to ask her about a possible associate.’

‘Got you. Ah hah! Janet Kestrel. Valid California driver’s license and a valid Nevada driver’s license. She holds legal title to a 1990 Toyota 4-Runner, dark green, Calif Five, C-W-D, Zero-Four-Six. Registration and insurance are current, no wants or warrants. I’ll keep digging, but—’

‘Put out a BOLO on the 4-Runner as well.’

He hung up, elated. They didn’t have Thorne — yet. But he’d soon have the girl. Had she and Thorne ever hooked up? Did she connect with Corwin in any way? Was that why Thorne was looking for her? He’d wring her dry, then decide whether he had to keep her on ice, probably in the FBI’s secret detention cells at the Federal Building in Westwood. The post-9/11 anti-terrorist laws gave him plenty of authority to do that.

With the BOLO out on her 4-Runner, and the SIA out on her, it was just a matter of hours until he had her in custody.

Janet was already in Oakdale with the 4-Runner stashed in Kate Wayne’s garage before Hatfield got out his BOLO. Kate had been a fellow blackjack dealer with her in Reno, but three years before had married a biker who was part-owner of Whiskey River. They had a daughter, now aged two, and a good marriage until he was killed in a motorcycle crash. Kate took over his share of Whiskey River, and now worked there as night bartender.

Janet got Kate’s spare key from the fake rock beside the front door, looked in on Lindy, Kate’s two-year-old sleeping daughter, and fell into bed in the made-up spare room of her modest California bungalow two blocks from Whiskey River. She went to sleep, hard, without even remembering to wonder whether Thorne was dead or alive.

Alive. Sort of.

A half-feverish Thorne drank water and ate trailmix, then treated his gunshot wound with antibiotics taken from one of the AQUA Tours first-aid kits. He bandaged it and wrapped the bandage in plastic bags for waterproofing, and stole a life jacket. Before staggering out to hotwire the Chevy Astro, he left a hundred-dollar bill on the counter by the cash register.

This night drive down the tortuous dirt road to the Tuolemne River — the track Arness had called mean as a snake — seemed much more dire than his drive down the morning before. It was just a blur of never-ending twists and turns ahead of his high-beams, no barriers to a precipitous tumble to the valley floor and the ribbon of river, more daunting because imagined rather than seen in the obscurity of night.

When the track finally leveled out by the Tuolemne, he stopped the car and rolled down his window to hear the rushing water. It was not a soothing sound. Even through his medicated haze, he shivered slightly.

He put on the life jacket, and half-slid down the grassy bank to the leaky old boat hidden in the bushes. With his last strength, he wrested it from its bed of weeds, shoved it into the water and crawled in. Bent over and clutching the gunnels, he worked his way forward to the bow of the boat. The stern lifted, slowly swung around.

Facing forward, he watched the water seep up between the boat’s dried-out planks, chills running through him even as sweat stood on his face. He let the river take him.

Kate Wayne looked more like a cowgirl than she did a biker. She rolled her own cigarettes and wore plaid shirts with leather loop ties, tight faded jeans and embossed high-heeled cowboy boots, and a Stetson hat over her streaked-blond hair.

Right now she was pouring coffee, her shrewd brown eyes, set in a lean fox face, examining Janet seated across the kitchen table from her.

‘Don’t try to bullshit me, lollypop. You only act this way when you’re scared shitless. Remember, I knew you when.’

Janet chuckled and bit into her third toasted English muffin slathered in butter.

‘You’re right, I’m in trouble. Because of Arnie. You remember I worked in Reno last summer to pay for a new roof for the cabin. Anyway, mid-July, Arnie and I were in the Golden Horseshoe after my shift. I was trying to watch Wallberg accept the Democratic Presidential nomination on TV, Arnie as usual was trying to turn me out, with him to protect me — and I got pissed off. So I started flirting with this old dude on the next stool. Then Arnie got pissed and slapped my face, really hard.’

‘Arnie was always good at that. Why you let that turd—’

‘Next thing I know, he and the old guy are taking the place apart. Arnie had a knife, the old guy a bottle. The cops came in the front while I was dragging the old guy out the back. I got him into the 4-Runner and started driving. I figured Reno’d had enough of me for a while. His name was Hal. We traveled together ’til November. The best four months of my life.’