Jeffery Deaver - Triple Threat

There was a formality between the two of them. Pellam just couldn’t figure out their relationship. She had a Colorado license, he’d noted. And Taylor Illinois. Was he a distant relative?

Taylor looked around, offering a faint laugh. “This place is something. A real diner. It oughta be in black and white. Like an old TV show.”

Pellam quoted. “ ‘You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas… You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.”

“Controlling the vertical and the horizontal,” Taylor replied. Pellam believed that was a different show. But nodded anyway.

The woman completely ignored them. She took her coffee outside to make another cell phone call.

Taylor, the film- and TV-loving poet, went for some coffee, too, sitting down at the counter. He smiled, more friendly than flirtatious, at one of the waitresses: the younger of the two, a slim woman in a white uniform, which was only slightly jelly-marred. Rita, if Pellam read the scripty typeface above her left breast correctly. Taylor ordered, adding, “How ‘bout this diner, isn’t it totally authentic?” And, “Man, a real piece of America.” She glanced at him as if he’d told her he’d just seen Elvis mountain biking through the pines and went off silently to pour his coffee. It arrived in a chipped white mug that must’ve weighed close to a pound.

Pellam watched Hannah smoking half a cigarette, quickly. She returned inside, waving her hand about her to shoo away the smoke, as if trying to get rid of the evidence. It told Pellam her husband or some other family member wanted her to give up the habit, and, while she was courteous about the practice, she wasn’t going to stop.

She seemed more impatient yet, staring out toward the sheriff, hunched over his cruiser calling the incident in to points unknown. Finally she joined Pellam.

“I tried to get around you,” he said.

“I know, I saw.” Again, studying the sheriff.

Pellam reflected: Pale eyes but a great tan. Dark and rich, without a single crow’s foot to show for it. Taylor was tan, too, but only hands, face, and part of his neck. The rest was pale as paper. It told Pellam he spent a lot of time outside but wearing most of his clothes.

Ah, he deduced: hitchhiker. Made sense, that tan and the backpack. And those boots. Really serious boots.

But would a single woman have picked up a man who outweighed her by seventy pounds or so?

A woman with that right hook like she had was clearly somebody who could handle herself.

And as for her tan—it seemed to be everywhere. Which was, to John Pellam, an interesting matter for imaginative speculation.

The sheriff returned and looked over the threesome without suspicion or disdain. Still, he was a pro and there were questions to be asked. He asked Pellam, “You been drinking, sir?”

Ah, welcome to Gurney.

Pellam finally scored the name of the town; it was on the sheriff’s shoulder.

Hell of a name for a place. Wasn’t that some kind of medical stretcher?

“Brakes went.”

“So you say. Didn’t answer my question.”

“Then the answer is: No. Last drink I had was a beer…”

“Sure it wasn’t two?” the law enforcer asked wryly.

“How’s that?”

“S’all anybody ever drinks. Two beers. A fella’ll tank down a fifth of Old Crow and when we pull him outa the wreck he says he’s only had two beers. What they always say. Now, how many’d you really have?”

This was pretty funny, Pellam thought. As a follower of COPS , it was true.

“One beer and it was yesterday.”

“Yessir. We’ll just have you breathe into our little magic box. You object to that?”

“Not at all.”

“He hasn’t been drinking,” Taylor said. “You could tell.”

It was a Land’s End knapsack he held. He kneaded it with long fingers that could have used a good scrubbing. The backs of his hands were tanned, the palms pink.

“Doesn’t really matter what he seemed to you, sir. We’ll let science string him up. Or not. As the case may be.”

“Then let’s do it,” Pellam said agreeably.

In the end the Sheriff settled for a little heel and toe walk, along the checkerboard of the diner floor, and the law enforcer was satisfied with the result. “I just don’t want to see any empties in the front of a vehicle, you understand me? I—”

“They—”

“—even if they got themselves propelled there by the quote force of the impact.”

Pellam kind of liked this sheriff and—as a stranger in a lot of towns—he’d come under some scrutiny in his day.

“And your jaw? How’d that happen?”

Pellam looked him in the eye, “Boom box.”

“Rap?”

“What?”

“You were listening to rap on a boom box and you fell?”

“You can listen to anything on a boom box. I was listening to country.”

“And…?” He pointed to the bandage.

“It hit me in the face when we went off the road.”

“Okay.” Said in the way that cops always say, “Okay.” Like they don’t exactly believe you and they don’t exactly not believe you. Then he took in the driver. “You’re from Hamlin. And Billings? You Ed Billings’s wife?”

“That’s right. You know Ed?”

“Not personal. Know some folks who’ve retired to one of his developments? Paso Verde.”

“That’s a big one, yeah.” She looked at her watch. “Popular.”

“And what’s your story, sir?”

Taylor said, “I’m headed to Berkeley.”

“Colorado?”

“California. Taking a poetry course there.”

“Okay.”

“I’m hitching from Denver to Hamlin.”

Hannah said, “I was driving back from some meetings in Colorado Springs. The Ford had a flat and he fixed it for me.”

“You have business in Hamlin?” the sheriff asked.

“I’m getting the Amtrak there. To Oakland.”

“Rather than from Denver.”

“Yup.”

“You got money for the train, why’re you hitchin’?” the sheriff asked.

Pellam thought these questions, while delivered pleasantly, were a bit intrusive, directed as they were to a man who, in this particular scenario, was an innocent bystander. But Taylor was happy to talk. “The experience of it.” He gave his enthusiastic little laugh again. “I’d hitch all the way if I had time. I mean, the whole point of life is experience. Right?”

“You’re not thumbing on the interstate, are you?”

“Ramps only,” Taylor said automatically. With a grin. He’d been through this before.

The sheriff looked at Hannah, who didn’t know the drill ahead of time, but caught on. She said sourly, “I was on Fourteen when I had the flat.”

Route 14—the highway where the pickup/camper run-in occurred.

“Okay. Now, I’m not writing anybody up.”

“Thank you, officer,” Taylor said. Though, once again, Pellam had no clue what he might get written up for. He was acting so easygoing that Pellam knew his pack had to be drug free.

Hannah didn’t say thanks; her beautiful but severe face gave off the message: I got rear-ended in my birthday truck. Why the hell was a citation even an issue?

Licenses and registrations were redistributed. Except Pellam’s. Which the sheriff thumbed slowly. “Now you, sir.”

“The brakes went.”

“I said I’m not citing anybody. But on that, you know you have an obligation to check your equipment.”

Pellam didn’t think he’d ever looked at a brake line. He doubted he could recognize one.

“What I’m curious about is, are you making movies here?”

When the sheriff had checked the VIN on the Winnebago’s dash he must have seen the Colorado Film Board’s location permit.