Jeffery Deaver - Triple Threat

“So there’s a place you think he might be?”

Lis pulled a map out of a rack on the edge of her desk. She consulted it and pointed. “Here, I’d bet. Just past the old quarry.”

It was about three miles or so from where they were.

“Appreciate that. Thanks.”

Pellam took the map. He noted the price was two dollars. He gave her a ten. “Consider the rest a donation.”

“Hey, thanks.” She gave him a button that said “Earth Lover.”

This time Pellam drove, fast and just a bit recklessly. Hannah didn’t mind one bit. If anything, she seemed bored. She fished under the seat and found a small bottle of screw-top wine, the sort they give you on airplanes. She untwisted the lid with a cracking sound. She drank half. “You want some?”

Pellam wouldn’t have minded a hit of whiskey, but his Knob Creek was history and there was nothing worse than airplane wine. “Pass.”

She finished it.

In ten minutes they were at the quarry. A chain-link fence attempted to seal it off but even a sumo wrestler could have squeezed in through the gaps.

Pellam looked at his watch. It was nearly six-thirty. He checked the gun once more. Thinking he should’ve brought more shells. But too late for that.

“You head on back. Tell ‘em you escaped.”

“How’ll you get out?”

“I’ll have to call our friend Werther, whatever happens. Whether I find Taylor or not I’m going to get busted. The only difference’ll be how long it takes to recite the charges against me.”

# # #

Eerie as hell.

Devil’s Playground had been plenty spooky but the Gurney Quarry at dusk on a windy day ran a very close second.

Of course some of that might have to do with the fact that there was possibly a killer wandering around here. There’d been one at the Playground, too, it seemed, but Pellam hadn’t known it. That made a big difference. In the failing light he could just make out the austere beauty of the place, the chalky bone-white cliffs, the turquoise water at the base of the quarry going from azure to gray, the sensual curves of the black shadows of the hills.

Soon, in the dark, it would just be a maze of hiding places and traps, the wind howled mournfully over the landscape.

Thinking about Taylor. Sheriff Werther. And about Hannah. He thought about Ed some, too. He moved forward slowly, nervously thumbing the hammer of the Colt and not hearing a single boot on rock as a killer snuck up behind him.

An owl swooped low and snagged something--mouse or chipmunk--then veered off into the sky. The squeak had been loud and brief.

For half an hour, he tracked along the ground here, looking for suitable hiding places. With the cowboy gun and the ambiance here, he was thinking of his ancestor. Wild Bill Hickok—James Butler; no “William” was involved in any part of the name. The gunslinger/marshal had been murdered, shot in the back of the head by a man he’d beat at poker the day before. But what specifically Pellam was recalling was that Hickok felt bad for Jack McCall, the murderer, and gave him back some of what he’d lost.

But McCall had thought the gesture condescending, and that was the motive for the murder, not cheating, not arrogance.

A good deed.

Pellam shivered in the wind. He moved more slowly now—dusk was thick and moonlight still an hour away. But he saw no signs of anyone.

But then, a hundred yards away, the flicker of light. From one of the large caverns near the edge of the quarry. Pellam moved quickly toward the cavern where he’d seen it, dodging rocks and scrub oak and wiry balls of tumbleweed. The cavern was in a cul de sac. On one side a sheer wall rose fifty feet into the air, its surface scarred and chopped by the stone cutters. On the other side, the quarry fell into blackness.

Twenty feet from the entrance to the cavern. The light seemed dimmer now.

Moving closer, listening. Moving again. Hell, it was noisy, this persistent wind. Like the slipstream roaring through the window of the Winnebago that afternoon.

Mountain, truck or air…

He saw nothing other than the dancing light. Was it a fire? Or a lantern?

And then: What the hell am I doing here?

A question that was never answered because at that moment a man stepped from the shadows beside him and aimed his pistol at Pellam’s head.

“Drop that.”

“Can I set it down?”

“No.”

Pellam dropped the gun.

It wasn’t Taylor. The man had salt-and-pepper hair. He was in his fifties, Pellam estimated, and he was wearing khaki hiking clothes. He gestured Pellam back and retrieved the Peacemaker. Into a cell phone he said, “He’s here.”

“Where is he?”

That being the hitchhiker/poet.

Though Pellam knew the answer to the question: The ramblin’ man was either dead or tied up somewhere nearby.

Was this fellow in front of him, with the gun, Chris? The husband or partner of green-minded Lis, who had murdered Jonas Barnes near the Devil’s Playground today—presumably because Barnes was going to rape the earth by putting in a shopping center along the spur to the interstate?

If that was the case, then he reflected that it was rather ironic that they’d nearly run her down as she was returning from her deadly mission.

And, sure enough, he heard a woman’s voice. “I’m here, it’s me.”

Glancing toward the sound, Pellam realized that his theory about Barnes’s demise, while logical, was in fact wrong.

The murderer was not earth-loving Lis.

It was Hannah Billings.

Pellam turned to the man with the gun and said, “So, you must be Ed.”

# # #

“Does that thing work?” she asked her husband.

The man was looking over Pellam’s Peacemaker with some admiration. “Nice. I have a collection myself.”

Pellam had the bizarre thought that Ed Billings was going to start a genial conversation about antique firearms.

With a neutral glance Pellam’s way, Ed walked into the cavern and hauled Taylor to his feet. He was tied—though not duct-taped—which would, presumably, leave a residue that crime scene folks could detect. They were good at that. Pellam had served time. The police were all over the evidence. Pellam’s extremely expensive defense attorney hadn’t bothered to try to sever the head of that testimony.

“What the hell is going on here?” he pleaded. “Who are you?”

Pellam could picture clearly what these two had planned: Oh, damn, we got it wrong, the sheriff would announce. That Pellam fellow wasn’t guilty after all. It was that weird poet who killed Jonas Barnes. A hitchhiker, what did you expect? Pellam tracked him down—to prove he was innocent—and the man jumped him. They fought, they died.

A shame.

The poor hitchhiker was as baffled as he was terrified.

Pellam nodded. “Was it the real estate?”

Hannah was ignoring him. She was looking over the scenery, approaches, backdrops. Hell, she looked just like a cinematographer blocking out camera angles.

But Ed was happy to talk. “Barnes had an option to buy the five hundred acres next to Devil’s Playground.”

“Worth millions to whoever owned the land,” Pellam said. “When the spur was finished.”

Ed Billings nodded. “Fast food, gasoline and toilets. That kind of describes our country, doesn’t it?”

Pellam was distracted, since the man’s gun—a very efficient Glock—moved toward his abdomen, now his groin. There’s no traditional safety on a Glock. You simply pointed and shot. And the trigger pull was pretty light. Pellam felt certain parts south contracting.

“But his estate could exercise the option.”

“No, we know the wife. She wasn’t interested in real estate.”

Pellam said to Hannah, “You killed Barnes but you needed a fall guy, so picked up the hitchhiker, who would’ve taken the blame. It was going to be easy. Kill the real estate guy, plant some of his things on Taylor, a little DNA… It probably would’ve worked. But then—ah, got it now-- then came the monkey wrench. Me.”