Trouble in Mind: The Collected Stories, Volume 3

PARADICE A John Pellam story

On one side was rock, dark as old bone. On the other a drop of a hundred feet.

And in front, a Ford pickup, one of those fancy models, a pleasant navy-blue shade. It cruised down the steep grade, moving slow. The driver and passenger enjoying the Colorado scenery.

Those were his choices: Rock. Air. Pickup.

Which really wasn’t much of a choice at all as a means to die.

John Pellam jammed his left boot on the emergency brake again. It dropped another notch toward the floor. The pads ground fiercely and slowed the big camper not at all. He was going close to sixty.

He downshifted. Low gear screamed and the box threatened to tear apart. Don’t lose the gears, he told himself. Popped the lever back up to D.

Sixty mph…seventy…

Air. Rock.

Seventy-five.

Pickup.

Choose one, Pellam thought. His foot cramped as he instinctively shoved the useless brake pedal to the floor again. Five minutes ago he’d been easing the chugging camper over Clement Pass, near Walsenburg, three hours south of Denver, admiring the stern, impressive scenery this cool spring morning. There’d been a soft hiss, his foot had gone to the floor and the Winnebago had started its free fall.

From the tinny boom box on the passenger seat Kathy Mattea sang “Who Turned Out the Light?”

Pellam squinted as he bore down on the pickup, honking the horn, flashing his lights to warn the driver out of the way. He caught a glimpse of sunglasses in the Ford’s rearview mirror. The driver, wearing a brown cowboy hat, spun around quickly to see how close the camper really was. Then turned back, hands clasped at ten to two on the wheel.

Air, pickup…

Pellam picked mountain. He eased to the right, thinking maybe he could brush against the rock and brush and pine, slow down enough so that when he went head-on into a tree it wouldn’t kill him. Maybe.

But just as he swerved, the driver of the truck instinctively steered in the same direction — to the right, to escape onto the shoulder. Pellam sucked in an “Oh, hell” and spun the wheel to the left.

So did the driver of the Ford. Like one of those little dances people do trying to get out of each other’s way as they approach on the sidewalk. Both vehicles swung back to the right then to the left once more as the camper bore down on the blue pickup. Pellam chose to stay in the left lane, on the edge of the cliff. The pickup veered back to the right. But it was too late; the camper struck its rear end — red and clear plastic shrapnel scattered over the asphalt — and hooked on to the pickup’s trailer hitch.

The impact goosed the speed up to eighty.

Pellam looked over the roof of the Ford. He had a fine view of where the road disappeared in a curve a half mile ahead. If they didn’t slow by then the two vehicles were going to sail into space in the finest tradition of hackneyed car chase scenes.

Oh, hell. That wasn’t all: a new risk, a bicyclist. A woman, it seemed, on a mountain bike. She had one of those pistachio-shell-shaped helmets, in black, and a heavy backpack.

She had no clue they were bearing down on her.

For a moment the pickup wiggled out of control then straightened its course. The driver seemed to be looking back at Pellam more than ahead. He didn’t see the bike.

Seventy miles an hour. A quarter mile from the curve.

And a hundred feet from the bicyclist.

“Look out!” Pellam shouted. Pointlessly.

The driver of the pickup began to brake. The Ford vibrated powerfully. They slowed a few miles per hour.

Maybe the curve wasn’t that sharp. He squinted at a yellow warning sign.

The diagram showed a 180-degree switchback. A smaller sign commanded that thou shalt take the turn at ten miles an hour.

But they’d be on the cyclist in seconds. Without a clue they were speeding toward her, she was coasting and weaving around in the right lane, avoiding rocks. And about to get crushed to death. Some riders had tiny rearview mirrors attached to their helmets. She didn’t.

“Look!” Pellam shouted again and gestured.

Whether the driver saw the gesture or not Pellam couldn’t say. But the passenger did and pointed.

The pickup swerved to the left. Another squeal of brakes. The camper rode up higher on the hitch. It was like a fishhook. As they raced past the bicyclist, her mouth open in shock, she wove to the side, the far right, and managed to skid to a stop.

That was one tragedy averted. But the other loomed.

They were a thousand feet from the switchback.

Pellam felt the vibrations again, from the brakes. They slowed to sixty-five then sixty. Downshift.

Five hundred feet.

They’d slowed to fifty.

Danger Sharp Curve.

Down to forty-five leisurely miles an hour.

The switchback loomed. Straight ahead, past the curve, Pellam could see nothing. No trees. No mountains. Just a huge empty space. The tourist marker at Clement Pass said the area boasted some of the most spectacular vertical drops in Colorado.

Forty miles an hour. Thirty-nine.

Maybe we’ll just bring this one off.

But then the grade dropped, an acute angle, and the wedded vehicles began accelerating. Fifty, fifty-five.

Pellam took off his Ray-Bans. Swept the pens and beer bottles off the dash. Knocked the boom box to the floor. Kathy continued to sing. The song “Grand Canyon” was coming up soon.

A hundred feet from the switchback.

With a huge scream the pickup’s nose dropped. The driver had locked the brakes in a last desperate attempt to stop. Blue smoke swirled as the truck fishtailed and the rear of the camper swung to the left. But the driver was good. He turned into the skid far enough to control it but not so much that he lost control. They straightened out and kept slowing.

They were fifty feet from the edge of the switchback. The speed had dropped to fifty.

Forty-five…

But it wasn’t enough.

Pellam threw his arms over his face, sank down into the seat.

The pickup sliced through the pointless wooden guardrail and sailed over the edge of the road, the camper just behind.

There was a loud thump as the undercarriage of the Ford uprooted a skinny tree and then a soft jolt. Pellam opened his eyes to find the vehicles rolling down a gentle ten-foot incline, smooth as a driveway, into the parking lot of the Overlook Diner, sitting in the middle of a spacious area on an outcropping of rock high above the valley floor.

With a resounding snap the camper’s front bumper broke loose and fell beneath the front tires, slicing through and flattening them, a hard jolt that launched the boom box and possibly a beer bottle or two into Pellam’s ear and temple.

He winced at the pain. The truck rolled leisurely through the lot and steered out of the way of the Winnebago, which hobbled on, slowing, toward the rear of the diner.

Pellam’s laughter at the peaceful conclusion to the near-tragedy vanished as the camper’s nose headed directly for a large propane tank.

Shit…

Hitting the useless brakes again, couldn’t help himself, he squinted. But the dead tires slowed the camper significantly and the result of the collision was a quiet thonk, not the fireball that was the requisite conclusion of car chases in the sort of movies Pellam preferred not to work on.

He lowered his head and inhaled deeply for a moment. Not praying. Just lowered his head. He climbed out and stretched. John Pellam was lean of face and frame and tall, with not-quite-trimmed dark hair. In his denim jacket, Noconas, well-traveled jeans and a black wrinkled dress shirt converted to casual wear, he resembled a cowboy, or at least was mistaken for one in places like this, though not in the low-rent district of Beverly Hills — yes, they exist — that was his mailing address. The cowboy aura he tended to perpetuate not for image but for sentiment; the story went that he was actually related to a figure from the Old West, Wild Bill Hickok.

Pellam walked stiffly toward the pickup, noting the damage wasn’t terrible. Scraped paint and hitch, broken brake- and taillight.

The driver, too, shut off the engine and eased the door open.

Pellam approached. “Look, mister, I’m really sorry. The brakes…”

The Stetson came off swiftly, unleashing a cascade of long chestnut hair. The woman was in her mid-thirties, petite, about five two or so. With a heart-shaped face, red lips, brows thick and dark, which, for some reason, made them wildly sensual.

The passenger-side door opened and a young man — well built in a gangly sort of way, with an anemic goatee and short ruddy hair — climbed out. A cautious smile on his face. He looked as if he wanted to apologize for the accident, though passengers were probably not the first suspects traffic officers looked at.

Pellam continued toward the driver.

She took off her own Ray-Bans.

He was thinking that her eyes were the palest, most piercing gray he’d ever seen when she drew back and decked him with a solid right to the jaw.

A cold Colorado desert wind had come up and they were all inside the diner, the cast now including the town sheriff, fiftyish and twice Pellam’s weight. His name was partially H. Werther, according to his name plate. He stood near the counter, talking to the cowgirl.

Pellam was sitting at a table while a medic who smelled of chewing tobacco worked on his jaw. Pellam was mad at himself. He’d been in more fights than he could — or cared to — count. He’d seen the squint in her eyes as he stepped close and had an idea that it was an about-to-swing squint. And all the while Pellam kept grinning like a freshman on a first date and thinking, Now, those are some extraordinary eyes.

For Christsake, you might’ve ducked at least.

The fist had glanced off bone and hadn’t caused any serious damage, though it loosened a tooth and laid open some skin.

Six other patrons — two older couples and two single Cat-capped workers — watched with straight-faced amusement.

“She got you good,” offered the medic, in a low voice so the sheriff didn’t hear.

“It was the wreck, stuff flying everywhere.” He looked out the window at the damaged Winnebago. The medic looked, too. And, okay, it didn’t seem all that damaged. “Things flew around.”

“Uhn,” he grunted.

“A boom box.” He decided not to mention the beer bottles.

“We’re trained to look for certain contusions and abrasions. Like, for domestic situations.”

She barely tapped me, Pellam thought and wobbled the tooth again.

The driver stood with her arms crossed. The hat was back on. The brown was set off by a small green feather. She gazed back as she spoke to the sheriff; the beige-uniformed man towered over her and his weight, not insignificant, was a high percentage muscle. Probably the only peace officer in whatever town this was; Pellam had passed a welcome-to sign but that had been just as the emergency brake pad had pungently melted and he hadn’t had the inclination to check out the name and population of the place where he was about to die. He guessed it was maybe a thousand souls.

As the sheriff jotted in a small notebook Pellam studied the woman. She was calm now and he thought again how beautiful she looked.

Pale eyes, dark eyebrows.

Two red knuckles on her right hand.

She and the sheriff stood next to the cash register, an old-time hand-crank model. The diner itself was a real relic, too. Aluminum trim, paint-spatter Formica countertops, black-and-white linoleum diamonds on the floor. Arterial blood red for the vinyl upholstery — booth and stool.

The man who’d been in the passenger seat of the Ford stepped out of the washroom, still wearing a cautious smile. He was dressed in dark, baggy clothes — the sort you’d see in TriBeCa or on Melrose in West Hollywood. Pellam — for whom the line between movies and reality was always a little hazy — thought immediately that he could have stepped right out of a Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez flick. He wore no-nonsense hiking boots. Clutching his backpack, he laughed nervously again. To Pellam he nodded a rueful glance — the sort soldiers might exchange when they’ve just survived their first firefight. His hair was cut flat on the top, short on the sides — the kind of cut Pellam associated with characters in the comic books of his childhood; he mentally dubbed the man Butch.

Was she his wife? Girlfriend, sister? She wore a wedding ring but was easily ten years older. Not that that meant anything nowadays — if it ever had. Pellam was experienced, but not particularly successful, in the esoterica of romance. His job didn’t allow much room for relationships.

Or that’s what he told himself.

The medic pressed a bandage on his jaw. “You’re good to go. Keep your guard up.”

“It was a—”

“Then against dangerous entertainment devices.” The man nodded a farewell to the sheriff, shoved a chaw in his mouth and left with his fix-’em-up bag.

Pellam rose unsteadily and walked toward the driver and sheriff, who said, “Everybody, pull out some tickets for me, if you would.”

Butch said evenly, “Yessir. Here you go.” A moment’s pause as he dug through his wallet, which was thick with scraps of paper. Pellam noted his license was Illinois. Taylor was his real name. Pellam was somehow disappointed at this.

“Don’t look much like you,” the sheriff said, examining the license.

“I didn’t have a beard then.” Pointing to the picture. “Or short hair.”

“Can see that. I ain’t blind. Still don’t look like you.”

“Well…” Taylor offered, for no particular purpose.

“This your current residence? Chicago?”

“For the time being. Where I get my mail.”

The sheriff took Pellam’s license, too, which contained a picture that did look like him. Still, the sheriff frowned slightly, perhaps at the word on the top, California. You saw a lot of Californians in Telluride and Vail and Aspen. Probably not a lot down here in this neck of the woods.

The door opened and a woman walked in. She looked around. “Hey, Sheriff. Everybody all right?”

Pellam squinted. It was the bicyclist they’d nearly squashed. Frizzy blond hair, massive curls. The helmet was gone. She was short and stocky. The bicycle latex revealed serious thighs. She’d taken off her sunglasses and was scanning them all with green eyes — Pellam in particular, probably because of the bandage. A spattering of sun-enhanced freckles dusted her face.

Somebody had come to pick her up. The bike was racked on the roof of an old battered car, a man in the driver’s seat. Short hair, lightish colored, but Pellam couldn’t make out any details of the driver. He was preoccupied with something else — the camper, it seemed.

“Lis,” the sheriff said, glancing their way. “Fine. More or less. That Chris with you?” A nod toward the car.

“That’s right.”

She explained that she was a witness, not mentioning that she’d nearly been run down. “Happy to give a statement if you want.”

“Good of you to come forward,” Werther said. “Most people wouldn’t’ve.”

“I figured you’d track me down sooner or later. Didn’t want to be leaving the scene of an accident.”

“Go ahead. Tell me what you saw.”

She gave a pretty accurate description. He jotted a few notes, every fifth or sixth word, it seemed. This was apparently the investigation of the year.

“That’s helpful, Lis. Thanks. And why don’tcha give them one of our cards. For their insurance companies.”

A little hesitation, as if she hadn’t counted on this level of attention.

She dug into a massive purse, found some cards and gave them out. Lis and Chris were the codirectors of the Southeastern Colorado Ecological Center. Seemed a little odd that such a group was based here, since vegetation was sparse and the human footprint minimal.

“Scared the you know what out of me.”

“I’m sure,” Pellam said. “Sorry about that.”

The driver was silent. She didn’t seem to care. She pulled a cell phone from her rear pocket, looked at the screen without expression. A moment later she slipped the unit back.

“Thought you guys were racing at first, but then I saw what happened. Brakes went?”

“Mine, yeah,” Pellam said.

“Good thing there was nobody in the oncoming lane.”

That was sure true. Though there hadn’t been much traffic going in any direction on barren State Route 14. Not here, where it was close to a hundred miles to any kind of town.

Lis was cute and maternal. Pellam guessed her first reason for coming here was in fact to see if anyone was hurt, rather than cover her ass about leaving the scene.

“Thanks to you. And Chris,” the sheriff said, looking out the door toward the old car, a Toyota. Had to be twenty years old. The gloss was gone from the paint entirely.

Pellam played out a scenario that the group had been threatened because they protested land use or something or because they were hippies and Sheriff Werther had stood up for them.

It would have made a bad scene in a movie and it was surely not true. But that was the way Pellam’s mind worked. He wrung stories from dry rocks.

The earth mother left, climbed in the car and they sped away, she and Chris.

Without a word the sheriff stepped outside to write down VINs and to radio in the details and see who was who and what was what.

The driver got a coffee, not asking if anybody else wanted any. She paid with steady hands. “Look,” she said softly. “I’m sorry I hit you. I wasn’t thinking…The pickup was a birthday present. Just last week. It’s got eight hundred miles on it.”

Pellam thought about making a joke that out here that meant two trips to the grocery store and one to Blockbuster.

But he didn’t, mostly because she didn’t sound particularly sorry she’d slugged him.

“’S’okay,” he said automatically as his tongue poked the loose tooth. “I didn’t really get the impression you were out for blood.”

Though he happened to be tasting some at that moment.

He added, “It was a boom box hit me. That’s what happened.” He nodded toward the sheriff.

“Thanks. I get carried away sometimes.”

The pain was starting now. Probably more than boom box pain.

Then the issue of assault was gone and she looked impatiently at her watch.

It seemed an appropriate time for intros. Her name turned out to be Hannah Billings. “With an h.”

A back-end h. “I’m John Pellam. This isn’t a line — but I have to say I’ve never met a Hannah before. Pretty name.”

It conjured up a heroine in a World War II film, a resistance fighter, wearing a tight frock, whatever a frock might be.

Taylor brushed his butch hair and said, “It’s a palindrome. Her name.”

“A…?”

“A word that’s spelled the same backward and forward. ‘Madam, I’m Adam,’” he said. “I wrote an entire poem in palindromes once.”

Poem…

Hannah said, “And this is Taylor…”

The poet filled in, “Duke.”

More relationship mystery.

“As in the Duke. Being out here makes you think of old-time Westerns, doesn’t it?”

Hannah had no clue what he was talking about.

How could somebody not know John Wayne?

“So everybody okay?” Taylor asked. “That was freaky, I mean. Seeing the road doing that turn, what’s it called? A…?”

“Switchback,” Hannah offered and dumped sugar into her coffee. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve had worse.” As if Pellam were an afterthought. “You?”

“I used to be a stuntman. I’ve had worse.”

“Stuntman.” She was curious.

Taylor, too: “Wow. Hollywood?”

“Yep.”

“Fascinating.” He dug into his massive backpack for a notebook and wrote something down on the stained, limp pages.

Hannah muttered to him, “Didn’t quite work out the way you’d hoped, looks like.”

He shrugged. “Not your fault.” Taylor had a bulky presence but he seemed like a pretty softhearted guy.

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 Lands’ 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 Commission’s location permit.

“That’s right. I’m a location scout for a film company based in L.A.”

“Really?” Hannah asked, her curiosity piqued for the first time and sour attitude on hold. Pellam got this a lot. He wondered if she’d ask for a walk-on part. He had an amusing image of her as a femme fatale; she had the right look and spirit to be a really good bad girl. Sexy, too, which was another requirement. In fact, he was scouting for a film noir at the moment, an indie titled Paradice.

“And you’re setting it here?” she asked.

“Well, I was going to recommend it. Came across this place east of here fifteen miles or so. What’s it called? Devil’s…?”

“Playground,” Hannah said, shaking her head. “Be a good setting for a Stephen King movie, that’s about all.”

Taylor asked, “That’s near where you picked me up, right? Spooky.”

It was. The place was nestled at the base of two mountains, a huge craggy plain of pits and arroyos. Bleak as could be. But extremely photogenic.

“But I called the county supervisor this morning. He won’t issue film permits.”

“Derek Westerholm?”

“That was him.”

“Hey, Hube, you just bought some land up near there, didn’t you?” Rita, the young waitress, piped up. “Near that lake?”

Hube, Pellam reflected. Hubert. No wonder he went by a solitary H.

The sheriff didn’t answer.

“Let him make his movie on your property,” Rita continued. “And, mister, I’m available, you need a leading lady.”

Taylor said earnestly, “I’ll put you in a poem.”

Again, the Elvis-has-been-spotted look. Taylor’s hitchhiking-weathered face blushed.

“Okay, that’s all I need,” Werther said. “Just get those vehicles up to the law.”

“Whatta you mean?” Hannah asked.

“No brake light, no turn signals. No backup. You can’t drive without ’em.”

“You’re kidding. It’s still daylight.”

“Still.”

“Where?” she asked, her eyes going, for some reason, to Pellam.

The sheriff answered, “Rudy’s. ’Bout four blocks thataway. Best mechanic in town.”

“That the only one in town?” Pellam found himself asking.

“That’s right.” The sheriff gave him the phone number from memory.

Pellam asked, “He by any chance related to you?”

“Hah, that’s funny.” The sheriff’s smile might not have been real and Pellam reminded himself to watch it. He couldn’t afford to spend the night in jail on suspicion of fraternizing with empties in the front seat of a vehicle.

Ten minutes later Pellam and Hannah walked into the repair shop with the world’s most beautiful view.

The windows looked out over mountains to the west and north and craggy flats — salt or sand — to the east. Now, early afternoon, the peaks were lit brilliantly, the stunning light firing off the late spring snowcap. Way in the distance he noted a particularly impressive, elegant mountain. Was it Pikes Peak? Probably not.

Hannah had driven them both here in her rear-light-challenged Ford, with an okay from Sheriff Werther. The Winnebago was gingerly towed to a spot in front of the service station and lowered to its damaged front paws.

The garage was filthy and cluttered. The owner, Rudy, came out of the bays smiling. He nodded, but from habit, didn’t shake hands. His fingers were black. He wore a Carhartt brown jacket, stained beyond saving. He smiled at them in a way that was only a bit like a cat regarding a plump mouse and started talking like they were old friends. He was rambling on about life here in Gurney, his family (one boy in the army, one girl in nursing school) and assorted relatives. “Hube’s a good man. You know, he’s got a grandkid with that autism problem. It’s pretty bad, needs special help a lot. Hube works two jobs. Sheriff and security at Preston Assembly Plant. His wife, my sister—”

Pellam was content to let him go on because, he figured, the more like friends and family this seemed, the less the chance of getting robbed blind. But Hannah wasn’t in the mood. She interrupted curtly, “You mind getting to those estimates? The pickup first.”

“Well now, I’ll do that.” With a crinkly-eyed look that meant he’d just added a hundred or two onto the bill.

He headed outside. So did Hannah, setting the Stetson firmly on her head, against the up-and-coming wind. She pulled her cigarettes out of her pocket but then looked at assorted open containers of liquids that might or might not be flammable. She grimaced and put the Marlboros away. She made some calls.

Pellam did, too. He told the director that he’d been in an accident, which the man responded to with more or less genuine concern. When he learned that the county would not under any circumstances issue permits, the director had a more intense reaction.

“Fuckers. Why?”

“Fragile ecosystem.”

“Fragile? You told me it was rocks and sand.”

“Joe, that’s what they said. What they mean is that they don’t want horny actors and slutty actresses carousing around in their county.”

“We’re behind schedule, John.”

“I’ll get the camper fixed and head south tomorrow.”

A sigh. “Okay. Thanks.” The voice grew grave: “You okay, for sure?”

Concern in tone, not in spirit.

“Fine, Joe.”

He disconnected and happened to be looking at a map of the area. The Devil’s Playground seemed to be the best locale for Paradice, the fictional town where the movie was set, as well as being the film’s title.

And Pellam laughed to himself, realizing that, damn, the indie was about a stranger coming to a small desert town, like Gurney, and getting into all sorts of trouble. There wasn’t much of a story to go with it, but sometimes — especially in noir — all you needed was a misspelled word in the title, some hunky lead and a sexy babe and betrayal. Oh, and a fair amount of gunplay. Never forget the gunplay.

Hannah finished her own call, walked farther away from conflagration risks, and had a portion of a cigarette. Then she returned to the waiting room, staring out the window, too. She flopped down in a cracked fiberglass chair. “I told Ed. He wasn’t happy.”

Pellam got the impression she didn’t much care.

“Your husband, the real estate man.”

She looked at him as if asking, You heard that before. Why ask?

“Where’s Butch?” Pellam asked.

“Who?”

Oh. Right. “Taylor.”

“Headed to this little park in the middle of town. He wanted to write a poem.”

“A poem? He’s serious about that?”

Hannah continued, “Said he’d felt inspired by the experience of being out here. In a small Western town.” She shook her head, meaning: I don’t get it. “There’s nothing to experience. Not here. Dust maybe, rednecks, losers, coyotes. Hamlin’s got a mall.”

Pellam wondered if the shopping center comment was delivered with the irony that seemed warranted. Apparently not.

A few minutes later the huge, bearded mechanic lumbered into the office, rearranging the grease on his fingers with a filthy rag.

“Damn shame ’bout that pickup. Needin’ bodywork when you can still smell the new leather. That’s always the way, ain’t it? Now, miss, I got two options. First’ll get you home sooner: I can remove the old bulbs — that’s tricky since they’re busted — and then screw in new bulbs and mount the lenses. That’ll be four hundred eighty dollars. Number two, which I’d recommend, would include all that, plus the bodywork and replacing the hitch. You don’t want to tow nothing with it in that present condition. Paint, too.”

“And how much is that?”

“Twenty-eight fifty.”

Hannah squinted. “Really? I can have my guy in Hamlin do the bodywork for a thousand. The hitch is fine, I’ll buff off the scratches myself. And why’s that even an option? Didn’t your brother-in-law tell you I was in a hurry?”

“I—”

“So, we’re down to option one. And let’s think it through.”

“How’s that?”

She continued patiently. “You can get bulbs for six bucks a pop at NAPA, cheaper at Walmart. I need four of them. The lenses? Let’s be generous. Fifty bucks each. Just need two. That’s a grand total of one twenty-four in parts. Labor? Now, the bulbs aren’t screw-mount, like you said. They’re bayonet.”

Rudy’s face had gone red beneath the smudges. “Well, I meant ‘screw,’ you know, in a like general sense.”

“I’m sure you did,” Hannah muttered. Which was really a very funny line, even if she didn’t seem to realize it. “You put a glove on. Right? Stick your finger into the broken base and push and twist. You can do all four in a minute or two. Takes you another five minutes to mount the new ones. So you’re basically charging me four hundred dollars for twenty minutes’ work. That’s a thousand dollars an hour. My lawyer doesn’t charge that. Does yours?” A look at Pellam.

“I don’t have a lawyer.” He did but he wasn’t going to get involved in this. He was enjoying himself too much.

Silence for a moment.

“I have overhead” was the only defense Rudy could mount.

From beneath her dark, silken eyebrows, she gazed unflinchingly into his evasive eyes.

“Two fifty,” he muttered.

“One fifty.”

“Two fifty.”

“One fifty,” Hannah said firmly.

“Cash?” came the uneasy riposte.

“Cash.”

“Okay. Jesus.” The mechanic sullenly retreated into his garage to fetch the tools.

Pellam glanced at the Winnebago. He had no talent whatsoever when it came to motor vehicles, except for the uncanny ability to attract state troopers when he was speeding. Rudy was going to hose him. Maybe he should have Hannah go over the estimate.

He walked to the vending machine and bought a Moon Pie. Pellam noted the “complimentary” coffee and thought about making a joke that it better say nice things about you because it looked like sludge. But Hannah just didn’t seem to be the sort to share clever comments with. He bought a vending machine instant coffee. Which wasn’t terrible, with the double milk powder.

“You really picked that fellow up?” Pellam asked her after a moment. “I clock a hundred thousand miles a year but I never pick up hitchers.”

“Even pretty women?”

“Especially them. Though I’ve been tempted.” A glance into her pale eyes. Then he grazed her tan.

She chose not to flirt back. “I normally wouldn’t’ve, but he did help me out. And I mean, really, a poet or grad student? He’s about as harmless as they come.”

“Still could be pretty dangerous,” Pellam said gravely.

She looked at him with consideration.

“What if he started reciting poetry at you?”

A blink. “Actually, he did. And it sucks.”

“You ever been to Berkeley?”

“No. I don’t travel much. Not out of the state.”

Pellam had scouted for a film there. The movie was about the regents at a fictional school, which happened to look a lot like UC-B, tear-gassing protesting students in the sixties, and the rise of the counterculture. All very politically correct. The critics liked it. Unfortunately most of the people who went to see it, which was not very many, did not. Pellam thought the concept had potential but the director had ignored his suggestions — because he was JTLS. And even though he’d been a successful director himself years ago, anyone who was Just-the-Location-Scout, like Just-the-Grip or even Just-the-Screenwriter, was bound to be ignored by God.

“He seems old to be a student.”

A shrug, a glance toward Pellam, as if she were noticing him for the first time. “Maybe one of those perpetual college kids. Doesn’t want to get into the real world. Afraid of making money.”

The Moon Pie was pretty good. He thought about offering her a bite.

But he liked it more than he liked her, despite the glance from her cool, gray eyes.

Pellam eyed a ’74 Gremlin, painted an iridescent green that existed nowhere in nature. Now, that was a car with personality, whatever else you could say about it. From the tiny engine to the downright weird logo of, yes, a gremlin. He stuck his head inside. It smelled like what 1974 must have smelled like.

Rudy finished the job in jiffy time and even washed the windshield for her, though the water in the pail didn’t leave it much cleaner than before.

She paid him and the big mechanic went on to look over Pellam’s Winnebago. Two flat tires, wrecked bumper, probably front-end work. Maybe the fan. Bum brakes too, of course. What landed him here in the first place. If a bit of paint and fixing some dents were going to cost Ms. Hostility nearly three grand, what the hell was his estimate going to be? At least he had the production company credit card, though that would entail a complicated and thorough explanation to the accounting powers that be — and in the film business those were formidable powers indeed.

Rudy went off to do his ciphering. Pellam expected him to lick his pencil tip before he wrote, but he didn’t.

“Where the hell’s Taylor?” Hannah looked around with some irritation. “I told him to meet me here.”

Pellam decided that with her impatience, edge, and taste for authentic jewelry, in quantity, a poet would not make the cut in a relationship.

Good luck to you, Ed.

“You have Taylor’s number?” Pellam asked.

“No phone. He doesn’t believe in them. One of those.”

He didn’t know exactly what that category was, but he could figure it out. “How big can Gurney be?” Pellam asked.

“Too big,” she said.

She was tough but Pellam had to give her credit for some really good lines.

Rudy came back and, maybe it was Hannah’s presence, but the estimate was just under three Gs. Not terrible. He said okay. Rudy explained he’d call for the parts. They’d be here in the morning. “You’ll need to get a room for the night.”

“I have one.”

“You do.”

“The camper.”

“Oh, right.” The mechanic returned to his shop.

Pellam ate some more Moon Pie and sipped coffee.

Hannah looked around the repair shop office and didn’t see anything to sit on. She started to ask Pellam, “You—”

But she was interrupted when two law enforcement vehicles, different jurisdictions, to judge from the color, pulled into the lot in front of the station. They parked. Werther got out of the first and was joined by the second car’s occupant, a young Colorado state trooper, in a dark blue shirt, leather jacket and Smokey the Bear hat.

Pellam and Hannah left the shop, stepping into the windy afternoon, and joined them.

“Ms. Billings, Mr. Pellam, this’s Sergeant Lambert from the Colorado State Patrol. He’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

Heads were nodded. No hands shaken.

Lambert wasn’t as young as he seemed, looking into the weathered face up close, though he was still a decade behind Pellam. His dark eyes were still and cautious.

“You were both near Devil’s Playground around ten thirty a.m. today, is that correct?”

“I was,” Pellam said. “Around then.”

Hannah: “Probably, yeah.”

“And the sheriff says you weren’t alone.”

“No, a man was with me. Taylor…Duke was with me.”

“I see. Well, seems a man was murdered about that time near the Playground. On some private land near Lake Lobos.”

“Really,” Hannah said, not particularly interested.

“His name was Jonas Barnes. A commercial real estate developer from Quincy.”

Pellam pitched out the remaining Moon Pie. For some reason it just seemed like a bad idea to eat junk food pastries while being questioned about a homicide. The coffee went, too.

The trooper continued, “He was stabbed to death. We think the killer was surprised. He started to drag him to one of the caves nearby, but somebody showed up nearby and he fled. That tells us there was a witness. Either of you happen to see anyone around there then? Parked vehicles? Hikers, fishermen? Anything out of the ordinary?”

Hannah shook her head.

Pellam thought back. “This was in the Devil’s Playground?”

“South of there. The victim was looking over some land he was thinking of buying.”

“Where that spur to the interstate’s gonna go?” This was from Rudy, who’d wandered up, doing more grease rearranging. He nodded a greeting to his brother-in-law.

“That’s the place, yeah,” the trooper offered. Werther said he didn’t know.

“Well, that’s what I heard. Connecting Fourteen to I-Fifty-two.”

Ah, the infamous State Route 14. Pellam looked at Hannah Billings again. Her cool eyes and grim mouth didn’t make her any less attractive. He’d never see her again after today, of course, but he wondered just how married was she? Women like that, that was a natural question. It asked itself.

Hannah said, “I wasn’t in the park. I had a flat about a half mile south. It was near a café.”

“Duncan Schaeffer’s place?”

She looked at the mechanic with a gaze that said, And why the hell would I know who owns it?

The trooper said, “And the fellow who helped you with the flat? The hitchhiker? He might’ve seen more, since he was on foot.”

“Could be,” she offered.

“Where is he now?”

“He was downtown. He’s supposed to meet me. Should’ve been here by now, I’d think.”

The trooper took down their information and said he’d get an update while he waited until Taylor Duke returned. With ramrod-straight posture, he returned to his car, sat down, and began to type onto his computer. Sheriff Werther finished a conversation with Rudy, who headed back to the shop. The sheriff started up the cruiser and headed off.

Pellam spotted a convenience store fifty yards up the dusty road. He could get a frozen dinner to nuke and curl up with a whiskey and a map of southeastern Colorado to find a shooting location for Paradice. He’d get something, but he was pissed he’d been denied Devil’s Playground. It was perfect.

Stepping away, Hannah lit another cigarette, having some trouble getting the tobacco to stay alight in the stream of wind. He caught a glimpse of her pale eyes, her dark eyebrows, jeans tight as paint, as the flame flared. She snapped the lighter shut — a silver one, not disposable.

Madam, I’m Adam…

She ambled in his direction, as a fierce gust of wind pushed her starboard a few inches. As she closed in, she hung up. “Don’t get married,” she muttered. “Ever.”

This intelligence about Ed was interesting. So was what she said next. “We go inside?” A nod at the camper.

But when he responded, “You bet we can,” he wasn’t flirting. The damn wind had chilled him to the bone.

Once they were in the confined space, Pellam noted immediately that they both smelled of service station — a sweet and ultimately unpleasant astringent smell, courtesy of Rudy and Gurney Auto Service, We Fix All Makes and Models, Foriegn too!! Dump your Oil HERE.

Hannah noticed this as well and smelled her leather sleeve. “Jesus.” She settled into the bench seat behind the tiny kitchenette table. “Kind of homey.”

“I like it.”

Eyeing her beautiful face, to gauge if she was bored by his narrative, he told her about life on the road, what appealed to him. She did seem more or less interested. She rose, went to the cupboard. “Vodka?”

“Whiskey.”

“Headache.” She seemed to pout.

Pellam was amused. Hurrying off into the windy afternoon to buy her vodka was just the sort of thing that the straight guy, the innocent, the mark would do for a femme fatale in a noir movie like Paradice. And it was generally a bad decision on all fronts.

Hannah looked him over carefully once more and then sat down on the bed, rather than the banquette. Her head dipped, her eyes locked on to his.

He asked, “Grey Goose or Belvedere?”

Ten minutes later he’d shelled out big bucks for the premium and bought himself an extra fifth of Knob Creek, just to be safe. Two Stouffer’s frozen lasagnas, too. They were both for him. He didn’t think Hannah would stay around for dinner.

Don’t get married. Ever.

At first he’d thought that was a warning, not an invitation. But seeing her on the bed he wasn’t so sure.

The wind kept up its insistent buffeting and Pellam walked with his head down, eyes squinted to slits. He’d spent a lot of time in deserts and it seemed to him that the grit in Colorado, Gurney in particular, was the sharpest and most abrasive. Imagination probably.

He lifted his head and oriented himself, then adjusted course. Pellam walked past an abandoned one-story building that had been a video store. You hardly saw any of these anymore. As somebody in the Industry, he’d never really liked videotape or DVDs. And he didn’t like streaming movies on your computer or through your TV, however gargantuan was your Samsung or Sony. There was an intimacy about going to a theater to watch a movie. Lights going down, the hush of the crowd, then experiencing the images big and loud and awash with the reactions of everyone else. That was how movies should be—

Whatever hit him weighed fifty pounds easy. It shattered the vodka and whiskey and sent Pellam tumbling into the street.

But stuntman instincts never quite go away. He rolled rather than impacted, diffusing the energy. And in a smooth motion he sprang up, flexing his right hand to see if it was broken — it wasn’t. Two fists and he was ready to fight.

The assailant, however, wasn’t. He was already sprinting away from the attack, through the brush. Pellam couldn’t see him clearly, but he noted that it seemed the man had a backpack on.

Interesting…

Pellam was about to go after him, but glanced toward the camper, about a hundred feet away, and saw the body lying on the ground.

In dark clothing.

Hell, was it Hannah?

He ran forward and stopped fast.

No, it was the State Patrol trooper. He was lying on his back, one leg straight, the other up, knee crooked. His throat had been slit, deep. A lake of blood surrounded his head and neck. His holster was empty. Bootprints led from the body into the woods behind the service station.

Then a man’s voice from nearby: “Help me!”

Pellam spun around. From the repair shop Rudy staggered toward the street. He’d been stabbed or struck on the head and blood cascaded down to his shoulder. He was staring at his hand, covered with the red liquid. “What’s this? What’s this?” He was hysterical.

Pellam ran to the mechanic. The wound wasn’t deep — a blow to the back of the head, it seemed. He eased the man to the ground and found a rag, filthy, but presumably saturated with enough petrochemical substances to render it relatively germ free. He pressed it against the wound.

Hannah?

Pellam ran to the camper and flung the door open.

“Any sign of—?” Hannah’s question skidded to a halt as she looked him over, covered with the aromatic dregs of whiskey and vodka, which glued dust and dirt to his body.

“Jesus. What’s going on?”

Pellam opened the tiny compartment beside the door. He took out his antique Colt .45 Peacemaker, a cowboy gun, and loaded it. Slipped it into his back waistband.

“Trooper’s dead, Rudy’s hurt. Somebody decked me. I think it was your hitchhiker. I couldn’t see for sure but I think so.”

“The poet?”

“Yep.”

“You have a gun? Where’d you get a gun?”

“Wait here.”

Recalling that Taylor would have the trooper’s weapon, he opened the camper door slowly and stepped into the wind.

No shots. And no sign of the man. Where would he have fled to?

He pulled out his cell phone and hit 911.

He got the operator, but five seconds later he was patched through to the sheriff himself.

Pellam didn’t think that was the sort of thing that ever happened in the big city.

Ten minutes later Hannah joined him outside as Werther showed up.

Hannah Billings was not the sort of person who stayed inside when she didn’t want to stay inside, whatever threats awaited.

The sheriff jumped out fast and ran to the trooper first, then saw there was nothing he could do for the man. He went to his brother-in-law, sitting on a bench in front of the service station. After a word or two with the man he returned to Hannah and Pellam. He made a radio call to see about the ambulance and to call in several other state patrol cars.

And then he pulled his weapon out and pointed it toward Pellam. He arrested him for murder.

Pellam blinked. “You’re out of your mind.”

Werther was his typical calm, the statue of reason. “You told me you weren’t where Jonas Barnes was killed this afternoon.”

“Well, I didn’t know where he was killed. I told you as best I could.”

“Witness saw you standing over the body.”

Pellam closed his eyes and shook his head. “No. I didn’t see a body.”

“And it looked like you were holding a knife. Which is how Barnes died. You started to drag him away into a cave and then you realized somebody was nearby. You ran.”

“Who is this witness?”

“It was anonymous. But he described you to a T.”

Hannah said, “It was Taylor. It had to be.”

Pellam pointed to the ground. “Those footprints! Those’re just what he was wearing. And he attacked me.”

“You say that. I didn’t see it.” He looked to Hannah. “Did you see it?”

She hesitated. “He couldn’t’ve done it.”

“Was he with you?”

Before she spoke Pellam said, “No, I was just coming back from the store up there and I got jumped. Then I found them. Why would I call 911 if I was the guilty party?”

“So you wouldn’t look guilty, of course.”

“Jesus Christ. Taylor’s getting away.”

“Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

Pellam turned around and gave it ten seconds for Werther to holster his weapon and get his cuffs out. He fast-drew the Colt from his waistband and touched the muzzle against the sheriff’s belly, pulled out the man’s Glock and flung it into bushes across the road.

The man gasped. “Oh, Lord. Please, I got a family…”

“And if you want to see ’em you’ll hand the cuffs to your brother-in-law.”

“I—”

Pellam stepped back and now aimed at Rudy. “Sorry, but do it.”

The big man hesitated, looked at the gun, then at the spreading lake of blood around the trooper. He took the cuffs. “Cuff him.” Pellam then barked, “Now! I don’t have time to wait!”

The big man said, “I don’t know how they work.”

“Mister, this’s going to mean nothing but trouble for you for a long, long time.”

Pellam ignored the law enforcer and explained the cuffs to Rudy. Everyone, Hannah included, probably wondered why he knew this esoteric skill.

Motioning Rudy back, Pellam frisked Werther and found plastic hand restraints. He bound Rudy’s wrists behind him. Then, pointing his Colt Hannah’s way, he said, “I’m taking your car…and you. You’re driving.”

“Listen—”

“No, I’m tired of listening,” Pellam snapped. “Move now!”

“Pellam,” Werther called. “You won’t get but a mile. Troopers already have roadblocks up.”

But he was gesturing Hannah into the truck. The big engine fired up and she skidded into the road, the fix-your-seatbelt light flashing but the chime disconnected. Hannah seemed like the kind of woman who couldn’t be bothered with things like safety restraints.

Pellam slipped the gun away. “Sorry. I didn’t have any choice.”

“No,” she said. The word might’ve been a question.

“I didn’t kill Barnes,” he said. “Or anyone.”

“I didn’t think you had. Why’d you kidnap me?”

“It’s not a kidnap. It’s a borrowing. I need your car…and, okay, I needed a hostage.”

She snickered bitterly.

He continued. “The only way to prove I’m innocent is to find your goddamn poet. He’s not driving out of here either. He’ll be hiding out someplace. The cops’ll be checking all the motels. He’ll camp out somewhere. Caverns or someplace like that, I’d guess. You have any ideas?”

“Me?” she snapped, sounding insulted. “I’m not from here. I was just passing through this fucking place when you rear-ended me. Most I’ve ever done in Gurney ’fore today’s bought overpriced gas.”

She took a turn at nearly fifty, inducing a slight skid, which she controlled expertly. Pellam’s knees banged the dash. So she could reach the pedals, she’d moved the seats all the way forward.

She was staying off the main roads.

Pellam thought for a minute. “I’ve got an idea.” He dug in his pocket for a business card.

The office of Southeastern Colorado Ecological Center was outside Gurney in an area that looked more like ski territory than desert: pines, brush, grass and scrub oak or low trees that looked like they ought to be called scrub oak even if they weren’t. The building seemed to include offices, a small museum and an even smaller lecture hall.

A sign announced that people could learn about the relationship between carbon dioxide and “our green friends” next Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. Pellam supposed the audience would be local. He didn’t know who’d drive from Mosby, the next town north, let alone Denver, three hours away, for entertainment like this.

“No troopers. That’s the good news.” Pellam was looking over the three cars parked in the employee lot. None of them were hybrids; that was one of the ironies about the eco movement. Even many people in the field couldn’t afford to practice what they preached. He counted four bicycles, though.

Inside, at the desk, he found the woman who’d been bicycling along Route 14 when Pellam had slugged the rear of Hannah’s truck. Lis, of Lis and Chris.

She looked up with her official visitor-greeting grin. Then blinked as a wave of recognition descended over her. “Today…the accident…Hey.”

And no other reaction. Pellam looked at Hannah and the meaning was, So Werther hasn’t been in touch asking her to report a kidnapper and kidnappee.

“Sorry, I forgot your names.”

“John and Hannah,” Pellam offered.

“Sure. What can I do for you? Is this about the insurance?”

“No, actually,” Hannah said, delivering the spiel they’d come up with in the car. “We’re trying to find that friend of mine? Was in the diner with me?”

“With the crew cut?”

“Right. He was talking about camping out, maybe around some caverns in the area. But my truck got fixed up sooner than I thought. I want to get back to Hamlin now. He’ll want to come with me.”

“Camping, hm? Hope he brought his long underwear. Gets cold there.”

“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 ambience 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.

A moment later, though, 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 stonecutters. 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 knew this from several movies he’d worked on. He’d known it, too, from an incident in his past, a manslaughter charge that had derailed his directing career and was responsible for his present vocation of location scouting. The police had been 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 was 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 you 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.”

Hannah said, “After Barnes was dead I saw you with that fancy video camera of yours. I was afraid you’d got me on tape.”

“And you undid my brake line.” He gave a brittle laugh. “Sure, you know cars — the way you talked Rudy down with the brake lights incident. You were going to go through the wreckage and find the camera and tapes.”

“Except you got to the switchback faster than I thought you would and rammed into me.”

Pellam understood. “Change of plans, sure. You decided to go for cocktails in my camper. You get the tapes when I went to the convenience store?”

“I got ’em.” She nodded, presumably at the truck, parked nearby.

“But you still needed the fall guy.” Pellam looked toward Ed Billings. “And you showed up to kidnap Taylor, dress up in his clothes and kill the trooper.”

“Right.”

“And now I kill Taylor and he kills me. End of story.”

Hannah had lost interest in the narrative. “Yeah,” she said. “Shoot him. I’m bored with all this crap. I want to get home.”

Hamlin has a mall…

Just like the end of a Quentin Tarantino film. The filmmaker tended to fall back on the good old Mexican standoff, everybody pointing a gun at each other.

“Only one thing,” Pellam said, buying time.

“What’s that?” Ed asked.

“When does she shoot you?”

“Me?”

“That’s the scenario, situations like this. The girl sets it all up and then shifts the blame to her husband. He takes the fall and she rides off into the sunset with the money.”

A brief pause. Ed said, “You know the flaw in that? You can only do it once. And so far we’re worth more to each other alive.”

He lifted the Glock.

Which was when a series of lights came on and voices started shouting, “Police, police! On the ground, drop the weapons!” and similar assorted cop phrases, all enthusiastically punctuated.

Pellam supposed that Sheriff Werther and the others were charging forward with their assault rifles and executing some nifty arrest procedures.

He couldn’t say. At the first flash of spotlight he’d dropped to his belly and ducked. Another aspect of noir stories is that everybody has a gun and is always real eager to use it.

Fifteen minutes later Pellam was leaning against the side of Sheriff Werther’s car. He handed back the tracking device — it looked like a garage door opener — that the man had slipped into his pocket at the sham arrest two hours ago, in front of the Winnebago.

“Worked pretty good,” Pellam observed.

Werther, though, winced, looking at it. “Truth be told, seems there was only five minutes or so of battery left.”

Meaning, Pellam assumed, that if they hadn’t tracked him to the quarry in that time he’d now be dead.

“Ah.”

But considering that the sheriff’s plan had been thrown together quickly, it was understandable that there’d been a glitch or two.

When Pellam had been patched through to Werther after finding the trooper dead and Rudy injured, the sheriff had explained that the medical examiner had given the opinion that the man had been stabbed by someone who was short — five five or less, given the angle of the knife wounds. “And remember, somebody’d tried to drag the body to a cave? The trooper thought it was that they’d been spotted. Fact is, I decided they just weren’t strong enough.”

Those facts suggested the killer might be a woman, he explained.

Well, there were two women having something to do with the case, Werther had said: Hannah and Lis. And each of them had a male partner who could be an accomplice. So the sheriff decided to set up a trap to find out if either of them was the killer. But he needed Pellam’s help. The location scout was supposed to let both Hannah and Lis know that he was searching for Taylor.

Turning himself into a fall guy.

Whoever showed up at the quarry to kill him would be the guilty party.

Taylor was at the hospital in Redding for observation. Ed Billings had whaled on him pretty bad. When he’d said good-bye to Pellam a half hour before, he’d smiled ruefully and said, “Hey, quite an experience, hm?”

“Good luck with the poems,” the location scout had told him as he walked to the ambulance.

“Say,” Werther now asked Pellam, “did you get anybody on tape at Devil’s Playground?”

Pellam gave a sour laugh. “Not a soul.”

“Hm, too bad. Though I don’t suspect we need the evidence.”

“You’ve got property around there, too, don’t you, Sheriff?” Pellam asked wryly.

“Oh, what Rita was saying? Yeah, I do. Vacation house that I rent out. Helps for some of the expenses my son has.”

For his autistic grandchild, Pellam recalled.

“You suspect me?” Werther asked.

“No, sir, never occurred to me.”

It had.

“Okay…Now, about that little matter you and I horse-traded on? It’s all taken care of,” the sheriff said.

“Thanks.”

“You earned it.”

Pellam then asked for his brother-in-law’s phone number.

“Rudy? He can’t get your camper in shape until tomorrow.”

“This is about something else.”

Motion in the corner of his eye. Hannah Billings was being led across the parking area in front of the quarry to a squad car. She glanced his way.

A phrase came to Pellam’s mind:

If looks could kill…

Here’s Rita at the diner, her name proudly stitched on her impressive bosom.

She’s doing what she does best with diligence and polite mien, and with no tolerance for nonsense from former movie directors turned location scouts, from flirtatious poets, from killers noir at heart, from saints. Anybody. She takes waitressing seriously.

Pellam wasn’t in the mood for frozen so he’d arranged a private vehicle rental from Rudy (yes, the bile-green Gremlin, which was, he knew, a very underrated vehicle — it could beat the Pinto and VW Beetle hands down, at least with the optional four-speed BorgWarner).

He’s finished a meatloaf dinner and orders pie with cheese. He didn’t used to like this combo but, really, who shouldn’t? It doesn’t get any better than sweet apples and savory Kraft. He’d go for a whiskey, but that’s not an option at the Overlook, so it’s coffee, which is exemplary.

He gets a call on his cell. The director of Paradice is ecstatic that Pellam has secured a permit to shoot in Devil’s Playground after all.

“How’d you do it?”

Put my life on the line to catch a femme fatale, he thinks, earning Sheriff Werther’s friendship and assistance in all things governmental here.

“Just pulled some strings.”

“Ah, I love string pullers,” the director says breathily.

Pellam thinks about suggesting a new name for the film: Devil’s Playground. But he knows in his heart that the director will never buy it — he just loves his misspelled title.

Fine. It’s his movie, not mine.

As he ends the call Pellam feels eyes aimed his way. He looks up and believes that Rita is casting him a flirt, which is not by any means a bad thing.

Then he glances at her with a smile and sees she is, in fact, looking a few degrees past him. It’s toward a young man standing beside a revolving dessert display, featuring cakes that seem three feet high. He’s looking back at her. The nervous boy is handsome if pimply. He sits down at the end of the counter, isolated so he can gab a bit with her in private. He also will, Pellam knows, leave a five-dollar tip, though he can’t really afford it, on a ten-dollar tab, which will both embarrass and enthrall her.

Ain’t love grand?

The pie comes in for a landing and Pellam indulges. It’s good, no question.

His thoughts wander. He’s considering his time in Paradice, wait, no in Gurney, and he decides that, just like State Route 14, life sometimes is a switchback. You never know what’s going to happen around the next hairpin, or who’s who and what’s what.

But other times the road doesn’t curve at all. It’s straight as a ruler for miles and miles. What you see ahead is exactly what you’re going to get, no twists, no surprises. And the people you meet are just what they seem to be. The environmentalist is simply passionate about saving the earth. The hitchhiking poet is nothing more or less than a self-styled soul mate of Jack Kerouac, rambling around the country in search of who knows what. The sheriff is a hardworking pro with a conscience and a grandkid who needs particular looking after.

And the sexy cowgirl with red nails and a feather in her Stetson is exactly the bitch you pretty much knew in your heart she’d turn out to be.