Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

Desert and Swamp by James H. Cobb

James H. Cobb’s latest novel (from Grand Central Publishing, January 2009) forms part of a series that several thriller writers have contributed to, based on a concept of the late Robert Ludlum’s. Entitled Robert Ludlum’s (TM) The Infinity Affair, the novel centers on a crashed Soviet aircraft from the 1950s, discovered in the Arctic. For EQMM, Mr. Cobb puts on a very different hat, continuing his series of hot-rodder puzzle mysteries featuring the likeable Kevin Pulaski.

I was wandering around a swap meet with my friend and hot-rodding sage, Kevin Pulaski. As we poked around the displays of intriguing, obsolescent automotive junk, the topic turned to things that aren’t there anymore.

“There’s some things from the Fifties that I wish were still around,” the former L.A. County deputy said, “like Exner body designs and real chrome. But there’s a bunch of other stuff, like bias-ply tires, that’re no great loss to anybody.”

He paused before a tarp spread with old car parts. Among them was an odd-looking rusty cylinder with a set of mounting brackets and a louvered vent on its side. He tapped it with the toe of his boot and a reminiscent gleam came to his eye. “Yeah, my man, there are some things I definitely don’t miss.”

At night in the Mojave, everything changes. A cease-fire is declared until the next day’s dawn and the desert stops trying to kill you. All the little creepers and crawlers that hide from the sun come out and go about their business and the coyotes sing their praises to the coming of the cool and the ten million stars overhead.

Looking across the huddled shape in the sagging bed, I could see a little patch of those bright, bright stars through the far window of the tourist cabin. I was forted up in the bathroom, sitting on what was available. It wasn’t elegant, but it was the only hidey-hole that kept me out of sight. It was kind of stuffy too because I’d shut down the cabin’s swamp cooler. I wanted to hear them coming.

Idly, I hefted the stumpy Colt automatic in my hand, wondering about how long I’d have to wait. I didn’t think it would be for long. I could feel them thinking over in the main building. They’d want to finish the old guy off fast, while it would still sell at the coroner’s inquest.

It was a race my bad-news ’57 Chevy hadn’t been able to win. Car, the Princess, and I had left Kingman, Arizona, at first light, intending to blast across Route 66 to El Cajon in the narrow band of cool that lingers between dawn and hell in the California high desert. What we hadn’t figured on was getting pinned behind a convoy of heavy earth-moving machinery lowboying in to the potash mines south of Barstow.

Now, the two-lane and the dammed-up backlog of cars it carried writhed like a snake in the road shimmer. Chunks of the rusty lava ridges flanking the highway broke off and hovered in the sun-bleached sky like a fleet of flying saucers. The auxiliary cooling fans moaned under Car’s hood and she grumbled through her dual exhausts in radical-cammed aggravation, incensed at our snail crawl.

The air stream through the wind-wings might have been blasting out of an open furnace door. I tried to be philosophical about the whole thing, but Miss Lisette Kingman had never studied philosophy.

“Kevin, you’re supposed to be the absolute automotive living end. Why can’t you install some air conditioning in this thing?”

The Princess sprawled on the front seat beside me, her model’s pretty face flushed, her dark ponytail limp, and her short shorts and Kerrybrooke blouse soggy. Only part of it was perspiration, the rest came from the thermos of water she’d emptied over herself. Lisette had been a hot-rodder’s girl for a comparatively short time so she didn’t realize she was speaking heresy.

Car and I forgave her.

“The compressor would bleed ten or fifteen horsepower out of the mill,” I replied patiently, “not to mention the weight of the unit. On a drag strip, that’d tack a good half-second onto your Estimated Time, easy.”

“Which would you prefer,” she arched back, “that half-second or a girlfriend?... Wait a minute. What am I saying? Forget it.”

I chuckled, and slouched lower behind the wheel, my sweat-soaked T-shirt bunching across my back. The Princess was learning.

“What about one of those deals,” she pointed at the vehicle running ahead of us. “That’s an air conditioner, isn’t it? You see a lot of people using them.”

The vehicle in question was a red-and-black ’48 Dodge pickup, ten years old but in good shape. Its cab windows were closed, and something that looked sort of like a sawed-off bazooka was fixed between the top of the passenger-side window and the doorframe.

“Kinda,” I replied. “That’s a swamp cooler, the automotive version of the window coolers a lot of the desert stations use. It’s packed full of ice and the air scoop catches your slipstream and forces it over the ice and through a straw filter that wicks up the melt water. It’s supposed to cool the air down before feeding it into the passenger compartment. They sort of work, but not all that well and they make your wheels look lopsided.”

“Which would you prefer, a car that looks lopsided or a... Never mind! Never mind!” The Princess unbuttoned her blouse, then knotted it closed under her breasts, baring a little more satiny skin.

There can be good in every situation if you look for it.

I edged Car closer to the center line. Squinting through my sunglasses, I watched for the long straightaway and the break in the oncoming traffic I’d need to blast around the road block of lumbering big rigs.

But then the Dodge pickup ahead of me also began a slow, erratic drift to the left. Weaving into the eastbound lane, it drew an angry blast of horn from an oncoming Imperial. The pickup’s driver jerkily swerved back, overcorrecting and kicking up dust from the right shoulder of the road.

“What’s his problem?” Lisette inquired, sitting up straighter.

“I dunno.” I backed off another precautionary car-length from the slaloming truck. “But something’s gone gestanko with this guy.” Through the rear window of the cab I could see the driver’s big-eared head bobbing unsteadily on a skinny neck.

“Do you think he’s drunk?”

“I dunno,” I repeated. “He seemed straight when he pulled onto the highway back at Devlin station. Could be the heat’s getting to him.”

Again the Dodge wobbled off track, almost head-oning a Greyhound.

“That guy’s going to kill somebody, Kevin!”

“That looks like a safe-money bet; himself, if nobody else.”

The question was, what could I do about it? I had the ’57 tricked out with just about every street-worthy speed part you could name, along with a few gimmicks that had to do with my day job as an L.A. County deputy sheriff. Unfortunately that gow-gear didn’t run to roof flashers and a siren.

Then, abruptly, the problem was taken out of my hands. The Dodge’s driver slumped behind the wheel and the pickup started its final fatal drift to the right. I was flashing my brake lights at the traffic behind us even before he tipped off the edge of the road.

It wasn’t too bad of a wreck as wrecks go. At that point, it was only about a three-foot drop from the shoulder of 66 to the desert floor and, thanks to that earth-mover convoy, we’d only been doing about thirty.

I reached the overturned pickup while it was still engulfed in the dust cloud of its roll-over. I kicked in the driver’s-side window and hunkered down beside the cab. Reaching inside, I yanked the keys out of the ignition. Gas was cascading out of the truck’s filler pipe and a spark just then would have been raunchy.

“He’s still alive, Kevin.” Ignoring the dirt, the gasoline, and the broken glass, Lisette was stretched out on her stomach on the far side of the truck, checking on the driver through the busted passenger window.

The Princess only looks decorative. When things go off the high side, my girl is good people to have around.

The driver lay crumpled on the cab roof, a thin, elderly man in a rusty black going-to-town suit. He had the leathery tan of a life-long desert dweller and, under other circumstances, he looked like he might have been a tough old bird. Now, though, he was blue-lipped and limp and when I touched the side of his neck for his carotid pulse, his skin was chill and clammy. I couldn’t smell alcohol on him and there didn’t seem to be a bottle loose in the truck.

“Is he hurt bad?” A tentative voice asked from the outside world.

“You ever hear of anyone hurt good?” I backed out of the crumpled cab and stood up.

Traffic had come to a stop on the highway with long rows of cars pulled over on the shoulders and the usual crowd of gawkers standing around waiting for somebody else to do something constructive.

And the only somebody available was Kevin Pulaski of L.A. County’s finest.

I pointed at a big, late-model Buick Roadmaster station wagon. “Who owns that car?”

“Uh, I do,” a man in a garish Hawaiian shirt and straw golf hat looked startled.

“Okay. Get your tailgate open and your backseat folded down. We’re going to need you to get this guy out of here.”

That’s how you work it in an emergency. Don’t ask ’em. Tell ’em!

Lisette bobbed up on the far side of the truck, smeared with mud and gas. “Is it a good idea to try and move him?”

“We don’t have a choice, Princess.” I looked around at the cholla-studded wastes surrounding us. “It’ll hit a hundred and twenty degrees on these flats and it’ll take at least an hour for a doc and an ambulance to get out from Barstow. This old guy’ll fry if we leave him like this. I figure our best bet is to get him back to Devlin station.”

It seemed to make sense, to me anyway. I only hoped I was calling it right. I lifted my voice again. “We’re going to need a plank or something to use as a stretcher and some blankets...”

Back when the Southern Pacific first ran its rails across the Mojave, they built a string of jerkwaters along the right-of-way to service the old steam locomotives. Named alphabetically from west to east, there was never much to these stations, just a siding and a water tower with all the water coming in by tank car and a few sun-strange section men.

The coming of the diesel made these jerkwaters obsolete, at least for the railroad. But by then, Route 66 paralleled the tracks and some of the stations, like Amboy, Essex, and Goff, got a reprieve from extinction, servicing tourists instead of 4-6-4 Baldwins.

Devlin was average for the breed, a gaunt two-story combination store-gas station-lunchstand-residence and a short row of auto-court cabins. The buildings were whitewashed to bounce off a little of the sun and were all set within a perimeter of rabbit brush, hulked cars, and rusting mining machinery. Tin signs advertised DuPont dynamite and Bull Durham and a yard-tall Nehi promotional thermometer told you what you already knew.

I’d sent an eastbound driver on ahead to let the folks at the station know we were bringing the old man in. They were waiting as our ad hoc ambulance rolled into the shade of the gas-pump shelter. There were only the two of them, a fading middle-aged woman and a lanky, taciturn teenaged boy. I wondered if they might be the entire population of Devlin, California. It turned out I was wrong.

I bailed out of the ’57 and jogged back to the station wagon to find the woman peering in through its side windows.

“Oh Lord, Teddy! It is Rupe!” Her voice was strange. Soft and flat, but with rags of emotion trailing from it, like she wanted to get excited or hysterical but just didn’t have the energy for it. The kid just grunted and hung back, his hands in his dungaree pockets.

“You know him, ma’am?” I asked, coming up beside her.

“He’s my husband.”

Jesus! I’d have figured him for her father. The woman had the remnants of a baby-doll prettiness left to her and she must have been a good twenty years younger than the unmoving old man in the back of the Buick. She wore a limp nylon waitress’s uniform and a stained apron and she had a dishtowel twisted around her right hand.

“Have you called a doc?” I demanded. Any other questions could come later. Still, my cop’s instinct for putting things in their places made me do a mental comparison between the face of the old man and the pimply features of the teenager. No resemblance. A second marriage and a stepfather-stepson deal? A good chance of.

“Yes, our doctor is driving out from Barstow,” the woman’s hands clenched and twisted on the dishtowel. “I knew this was bound to happen. This place will kill us all!”

“He’s not dead yet, ma’am.”

The tailgate of the station wagon swung down and Lisette scrambled out. She’d ridden in with the old guy, keeping wet compresses on his head.

“How’s he doing, Princess?”

“Better, I think. He’s still out, but his heartbeat’s steadier and his color’s improved.”

It had. There was a nasty bruise developing on his forehead, but the blue-gray tinge had left his face and the rise and fall of his chest was deepening. I had the sense this old coyote still had some mileage left in him.

“Let’s get him inside. Where you want him, ma’am? And don’t worry, I think he’s going to be okay.”

The woman twisted the dishtowel more tightly around her hand. “That’s good,” she said in her washed-out voice. “I think it would be easier to put him in one of the cabins than to take him up the stairs to our room.”

Jeez, lady. Try to control your joy.

We got the old gent into bed in the first of the four tourist cabins. Then I shook the hand of the station wagon’s driver and sent him on his way. He was only a passing tourist with a lousy taste in shirts, but he’d gone out of his way to help a stranger in a jam. I hoped the story would make for a good brag back in Des Moines.

A boxy swamp cooler filled one of the cabin’s windows, precious water dripping onto its burlap panels. Its roaring electric fan didn’t exactly render the room cool, just less hot. The cabin was like the rest of Devlin: clean, barring the perpetual dust haze of the desert, and well maintained by somebody’s hard work. But the furnishings and fixtures were 1930s vintage and wearing down.

The closemouthed boy gave Lisette’s legs a long last study and went out to tend the gas pumps, leaving the three of us to stand awkwardly around the bed.

“Thank you for your help,” the woman said finally. “I’m Sue Kelton and this is my husband Rupert. We own the station here at Devlin.” She gave a brief laugh that didn’t have any real meaning behind it. “Nowadays I suppose we are Devlin.”

“No big deal, ma’am. My name’s Kevin Pulaski and this is Lisette Kingman. We’ve been visiting in Flagstaff and we were heading home to L.A.”

I didn’t mention that my visit had been at the invitation of the Arizona District Court. I’d been giving testimony relating to an interstate car-theft ring.

A big part of my job with Metro Intelligence revolved around me not letting people know what I actually do for a living. I’m pretty good at it, too. Damn few folks ever pick up on the fact that this slouching, jeans-wearing, hot-rod driving kid with too much slicked-back brown hair is actually a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff, and that’s just how it’s supposed to be.

“I don’t know what happened, ma’am. We were following behind your husband when he kinda like blacked out and went off the road. Has he been sick lately or anything?”

“No, nothing like that. He’s just... old.” She stared down at the slack, seamed face on the pillow, her words drifting. “It’s the heat and the work. I’ve told him it’s time we took things easier. I’ve warned him...”

She shook off some thought and looked up at us, her voice growing brisker. “Thank you again. I suppose you’ll want to get back on the road. My son and I can take care of things until the doctor gets here.”

I glanced down at Sue Kelton’s hands again, knob-knuckled and work reddened, the one still twisted in that dishtowel. I hesitated for one last extra second before making the call. “Nah. It’s too hot to go on now. I guess we’ll stay over until tomorrow morning. Can we have a couple of your other cabins?”

Mrs. Kelton didn’t have a reason to say no, no matter how much she might want to.

Teddy Kelton stared at us from the shade of the pump shelters as I backed the ’57 in between our cabins. He didn’t offer to help us carry our bags in.

The Princess held off until we were inside of her airless little clapboard box. “Look, lover, I know it’s hot out there but I’d vastly prefer prickly heat to this!”

“Me, too,” I replied. I put down her makeup case and sat on the edge of the cabin’s creaky iron-framed bed. “But I’ve got kind of a funny feeling about this place.”

“No kidding!” Lisette braced her hands on her hips. “This place is strictly nowheresville... literally! The giant radioactive tarantulas are going to come crawling out of the desert at any minute! If you think I’m...” The Princess stopped revving her engine and looked at me sharply. “Wait a minute. You mean cop funny, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” I untwisted my Luckys from my T-shirt sleeve and drew one of the smokes from the pack with my lips. “I want to talk to that doc when he gets here,” I said around the cigarette, “and with the old man. And I don’t want to leave that old guy alone for too long either.”

Lisette crossed to the cabin’s front window and peered around the edge of the cracked shade, the outside glare putting a bar of light across her suddenly intent features. The Princess likes to hunt, too, although she maintains her amateur status. “The boy’s still watching us from over by the gas pumps. What do you think the caper is?”

I touched my lighter flame to my smoke. Standing, I joined her at the window, putting my arm around her slim shoulder. “I dunno, Princess. It could be the sun’s just getting to me, but when we brought that old Joe in breathing, I got the feeling that somebody was disappointed as all hell.”

Dr. Bruce Purcell of Barstow was a desert rat in his own right. He drove a battered Jeep station wagon, wore a sweat-stained stockman’s Stetson, and called his patient a dried-up old son of a bitch.

Rupert Kelton laughed at the comment, although it was a feeble kind of laugh. The station owner had come around a few minutes before the doc had arrived. He was shaky, but his head was clear and he didn’t seem ready to pack it in yet.

Kelton insisted on shaking my hand, and we had a hard time keeping him down on the pillow while doing it. “I surely appreciate it, son,” he said gravely, “and I’m sorry, causin’ you all this trouble.”

“Forget it,” I replied. Beat up or not, the old gent had a grip. “No big deal.”

“The question is, what happened to you?” the doctor demanded, rigging a blood-pressure cuff around Kelton’s other arm. “Any chest pain? Anything go numb or paralyzed? Any sparks of light in front of your eyes?”

“Ah, hell, Bruce. Nothin’ like that.” Kelton sounded disgusted. “I don’t know what happened out on that road... Damn me, I think I just fell asleep.”

He glanced toward his wife sitting stiffly in the cabin’s one straight-backed chair. “I’m sorry, Treasure. I guess you’re right. I am getting old.”

She didn’t make an attempt to go to him. “I told you, Rupe. This damn station is killing you!”

He shrugged and winced. “A man’s got to die someplace. You might as well do it somewhere you know.”

The doc pumped at the bulb of the blood-pressure cuff and scowled at the results on the dial. “I thought you had a buyer for the place?”

“Oh, I been thinkin’ about it. I was goin’ in to Barstow to talk to the fella again.” The old man closed his eyes. “I don’t think it’s gonna work out. He’s not offering enough to keep me, Sue, and the boy going for long. At least here we can stay alive.”

“No we can’t, Rupe!” For the first time there was real feeling in Sue Kelton’s voice and she sat forward in the chair. “Can’t you see that? Now the truck’s wrecked on top of everything else.”

“Don’t take on, Treasure,” the old man murmured back, not opening his eyes. “We’ll make out.”

The doctor unstrapped the cuff from his patient’s arm. “From what I can see, it’s cuts, bruises, and a mild concussion. Nothing seems broken, and I can’t see any indication of internal injuries yet. I don’t suppose I could convince you to go to the hospital for a couple of days for observation?”

Kelton still didn’t open his eyes. “Not likely.”

“On your own head be it, then. All I can say is to stay in bed for a few days and watch yourself. Concussions can be tricky.” The doctor started stowing his gear back in his bag. “If you start to feel strange or if you pass out again, have me called immediately, but by then it’ll probably be too late anyhow.”

The corner of Kelton’s mouth twitched up. “I’ll take it easy, Bruce.”

“What do you figure made him conk out, Doc?” I interjected.

“Damned if I know. His heart’s strong. Pupils are equal and responsive. Blood pressure is right where it’s supposed to be. No overt indication of a stroke or heart attack. If I could get this old fool into a hospital for some tests I might be able to tell you something.”

“I was wondering if it might have been the heat.”

The old man on the bed opened his eyes. “No, son, it wasn’t that. I’ve lived out here all of my life and the heat doesn’t get to me much anymore. Anyway, Teddy filled up my swamp cooler before I left and it was working real good.”

I recalled touching Kelton’s throat and the chill feel of his skin. Yeah. That thing had been working real good. “Could you have had an exhaust leak?”

The old man looked faintly puzzled. “I don’t recall hearing one or smelling any fumes. Anyway, I keep my rollin’ stock in good shape and it ain’t as if anything ever rusts much out here.”

Sue Kelton stood up abruptly. “Look, I really think it would be best if we let Rupe rest now. Isn’t that so, Doctor? He’s had a hard day and he’s tired.”

The doctor rose from the far side of the bed. “You’re right, Sue. Rest’s as good a prescription as any. I’ll come by tomorrow and have another look at him.” He glanced down at the woman’s hands. “And maybe at you, too. What happened to your hand?”

The woman’s right hand wasn’t wrapped in a towel anymore but in a swathing of gauze and adhesive tape. “This? It’s nothing. I just burned it on the grill in the lunchroom.”

“Better let me have a look at it while I’m here. No sense in taking any chances.”

She took a hasty step back. “No, really. It’s nothing.”

Rupe Kelton spoke up from the bed. “Let the old croaker have a look, Treasure. He can use the money.”

Reluctantly Mrs. Kelton extended her hand. Dr. Purcell guided her back to the chair and started to unwrap the bandages. As for me, I just sort of stood back out of the way, trying to look dumb and uninvolved.

With a professional patch job done on her hand, Sue Kelton returned to the lunchroom, while I trailed out after the doc. As he stowed his bag in the back of his Jeep I unobtrusively flashed my star at him.

“You’re a deputy,” he said, his brows lifting.

“Yeah, and if you’re surprised I’ll take it as a compliment.” I slid my badge wallet back in my hip pocket, looking around to make sure Teddy boy wasn’t hovering around anywhere. “You sound like you’ve known the Keltons for a long time.”

“I’ve known Rupe since just about forever,” the doctor replied, tilting his Stetson back. “He was already working out here for the Southern Pacific when I went away to medical school.”

“How about his wife and her kid?”

“Well, at least since they moved to Barstow just after the war. She was married to Lee James then. Lee was killed by a hangfire at the White Arrow Mine back in ’fifty-two and Sue and Rupe married up a little while afterwards.”

“How’s it worked out for them?”

Doctor Purcell hesitated.

“This is official, Doc.”

He frowned back. “If you put it that way, it was a damn fool stunt for all involved. Rupe married because he was so lonely out here he was talking to the Gila monsters, while Sue and her boy were starving to death because she’d run through all of her first husband’s insurance money. Since then, Rupe’s been halfway okay with how things are, while she’s been going stir-crazy. She’s been nagging on Rupe to sell out, but I doubt it’s ever going to happen. Rupe’s a desert man. If you know the breed, you know how they are.”

I glanced out across the shimmering cholla flats and the naked lava ridges beyond. I did know the breed. Running hot rods on the Mojave’s dry lakes, I’d gotten to know a few of them.

There is abso-goddamn-lutely nothing out here to hold a person, yet, somehow, the very vast emptiness of it can creep into you and grab hold. I’ve picked up a touch of it myself, enough to understand, at any rate. Put a born desert rat into a greener, more crowded land and, man, they’ll just curl up and die like a horn toad in a snowbank.

“I’m more worried about him not living here, Doc, or at least his not staying alive.”

The doc cut his eyes at me sharply. “What do you mean, Deputy?”

“I’m still thinking about it. What did you think about those burns on Mrs. Kelton’s hand?”

“They weren’t too bad. Mild, with a little blistering. They likely hurt a bit but if they’re kept clean there shouldn’t be any problems.”

“You figure they came from a hot grill, like she’s saying?”

His frown deepened, and he looked at the gravel underfoot. “Well, I don’t know. Now that you mention it, they didn’t look quite right for that somehow.”

“Yeah.”

Teddy Kelton had emerged from the lunchroom and was lurking over in the shadow of the pump islands. He was starting to take an interest in us “Look, Doc, I may get back to you on this in a day or two. In the meantime, you remember what those burns looked like, okay?”

The doc gave me a beetle-browed squint. “What are you thinking, boy?”

“Thinking don’t count, Doc, knowing does. And as soon as I know a little more, I’ll let you in on it.”

As the doc drove off I went down the line of cabins to where I’d parked the ’57. The chrome of her door handles was so hot it scorched you to touch them but there were some things under the front seat I figured I might need in the near future.

Making sure I was out of sight of the lunchroom, I tucked my .45 Colt Commander’s model under my belt, letting my T-shirt hang loosely over the automatic. Then I slipped a reload clip and my red-handled paratrooper’s switchblade into my pocket.

Teddy Kelton was sitting with his back to one of the Esso pumps as I sauntered back to the main building. I nodded to him in passing and he didn’t respond. He just watched out of the corner of his eye as I pushed through the screen door into the lunchroom.

The little cafe, with its fading Formica counter and row of cracked Naugahyde stools, was like the rest of Devlin, clean, worn, and out of its right time. A couple of World War II vintage Coke promotions bled a little color onto the white-enameled walls, and a tough Mojave fly was trying to batter its way through a plastic cake cover.

A couple of booths were located at either end of the room and Lisette occupied the one that put her in the direct blast of the counter fan. She’d freshened up and had changed into a sundress and sandals. A bottle of Pepsi with a straw in it shared the booth’s tabletop with her sketchbook. A page was covered with a series of her lightning-quick impression drawings: a snatch of desert skyline, a wrecked truck belly-up beside a highway, the slack face of an unconscious old man.

Sue Kelton wasn’t in sight, but there was the intermittent click and clatter of someone moving around in the kitchen.

The Princess didn’t say anything, but she looked up as I slid into the booth across from her.

“The kid give you any trouble?” I inquired, keeping my voice pitched under the purr of the fan.

She shrugged. “Nothing beyond giving my dress the X-ray treatment. He seems to be a little distracted. So does Momma.”

“Pick up on anything else?”

“When Mrs. Kelton came back from the cabin, there was a tight little conference between mother and son in the kitchen.” The Princess took a sip of her soda. “I couldn’t hear anything over the fans. Then the boy went out to keep an eye on things.”

He was still at it. Looking over Lisette’s shoulder, I could see Teddy boy scoping us out through the front windows. Reaching under the table, I tapped her lightly on the knee with the closed switchblade. She cocked an eyebrow at me and accepted the knife. From beneath the tabletop I heard the snick of the blade deploying as she tested the spring action of the wicked little shiv.

“I’ve gotta go up the road for a while.” I said. “Go over and sit with the old man. Talk to him. Offer to do his portrait. Say he reminds you of your father. I don’t care what reason you give, but don’t leave him alone for a minute until I get back.”

The Princess closed the knife one-handed. Pretending to straighten a dress strap she deftly executed a gang-moll shift, making the palmed blade disappear into her bra. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

“The accident is that he’s still alive.”

Firing up the ’57, I motored out to the highway, turning west. I kept it casual until I was out of sight of the station, then I stood on it. I was pretty sure Lisette could pick up anything that’d be laid down back at Devlin. She can flip from cool kitten to hellcat when the mood’s on her. Still, I didn’t want to leave her holding the fort alone for too long.

When your wheels are set up right, speed doesn’t make you overheat, it’s the slow that’ll do it. The low-boy convoy was long gone and Route 66 was clear as Car and I burned up to the wreck site. I was running on police business so I didn’t hesitate to let Car run the way she likes. It only took a few minutes to get back to the piled-up pickup.

The wrecker hadn’t arrived from Barstow yet, likely he’d wait for the cool after sundown. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. The truck’s swamp cooler had been torn out of the cab window during the roll-over and it lay a few yards away from the hulk, beatup but pretty much intact.

The sand around it was dry as the rest of the desert.

The cooler had been badly dented in the crash and because I was being careful about any fingerprints on the casing it took me awhile to get the reservoir cap open. I thrust a couple of fingers inside.

Nothing. Abso-flat-ass-lutely nothing.

Gingerly I carried the swamp cooler up to Car, stowing it in the trunk. Firing up again, I continued my tear up 66 to the next desert station up the line.

Amboy is located at the turnoff south to the big Marine base at Twenty-Nine Palms, so there’s a little more to it than at Devlin. You could almost call it a town, with a couple of gas stations and a stand-alone cafe, painted the usual reflective desert white.

The cafe was my target.

A few wilted travelers were rehydrating inside with pop and ice cream as I stalked up to the cash register. I flashed my badge at the shift manager, demanding to know where they got their dairy products. The startled woman didn’t know offhand, the owner handled the detail work like that, but a quick check of the freezer turned up a stencil on the side of one of the big brown cardboard ice cream tubs that named an Apple Valley dairy.

With an extra-thick cherry milkshake cooling me down, I made use of the cafe’s public telephone and made a couple of calls. The first, to directory assistance, got me the number of the dairy. The second got me the dairy itself.

All the people at the dairy had to do was answer two questions. They did.

I tossed off the last of my milkshake and made a third call to the San Bernardino County sheriff’s station in Barstow.

And that, my man, is how I ended up sitting in the john of a tourist cabin in Devlin, California, waiting for a murderer, and/or murderers, to show up.

Well, maybe murderer was kinda strong. They hadn’t actually killed anybody yet, but like “A for effort,” you know?

Out in the still darkness I heard a screen door open and close, not by any sharp honest bang but by the faint creak of springs stretching and relaxing. It sounded like it came from the main building. I settled the .45 in my hand and waited.

Footfalls on gravel, light, and coming closer. More than one set. The steps came to the cabin’s front steps, and the doorknob turned, the cabin door easing open.

It had been left unlocked, of course, so Sue Kelton could come in and check on her husband during the night.

Between Lisette and me, Rupe Kelton had been checked on real good up until bedtime. Doc Purcell had come by to have another long look at him as well, and had hung around for some time. What with one thing and another, Kelton hadn’t been left alone for a second until the old-timer had rather testily run us all out with the request that we kindly let him get some sleep.

His loving wife had wanted to stay in the cabin with him, but he’d told her not to be silly. He’d be just fine if everybody would just quit fussing over him.

Silently I stood up. I’d already checked the bathroom’s floorboards out for creaks. Two silhouettes stood just inside the cabin’s doorway. One of them took a stealthy step toward the bed, holding up something bulky.

I snaked my free hand around the doorframe and hit the light switch for the main room. “You should have done the job yourself, lady. Your kid would have only taken the fall for accessory then.”

Sue Kelton and her son blinked in the light of the single overhead bulb, the boy still holding the pillow he’d planned on smothering his stepfather with.

Only there wasn’t anybody to smother. The lumpy shape under the sheet had been artistically made up out of the wadded blankets taken from my cabin.

Sue Kelton’s mouth worked, trying to shape the first instinctive denial, and Teddy Kelton dropped the pillow and took a step toward me, fists clenching. I didn’t actually aim the Commander at him, I just lifted it a little, giving the kid the word that he was about to do something really stupid.

Outside, there were more running footfalls as Lisette and the two San Bernardino deputies came tearing across from next-door, responding to the cabin’s light coming on.

Rupe Kelton looked almost as bad as when we’d hauled him out of the wreck that afternoon. Now, his stepfamily was under arrest for his attempted murder. He didn’t much want to believe it and who could blame him?

We’d smuggled the old guy into Lisette’s cabin after lights-out and Doc Purcell had managed him while we’d set up the bushwhack. I’d called the doc back to help us keep Kelton covered that evening. After he’d left for the second time, Purcell had parked down the highway and had walked back with the men from the Barstow sheriff’s station.

“Sue wouldn’t do that,” Kelton mumbled, staring down at his sheet-covered knees. “I knew she wasn’t all that happy, but she wouldn’t do that.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kelton, but your wife’s already copped to it.” I stood at the foot of the iron-framed bed, my thumbs hooked in my belt. “She’s taking responsibility for the whole thing. I guess she wants to keep as much of the heat off her son as she can, although he was in on the deal all the way.”

“But why?”

“An old story. She wanted to move back to what she figured was civilization and you were the one holding her back.”

“Didn’t know it was getting that bad,” he said dully. “If I’d known, I’d have sold out. I would. Or I’d have given her a divorce, if that’s what she really wanted.”

I could only shrug. “It wasn’t just that. She figured any alimony you could pay wouldn’t be worth it, and the only disposable asset you possessed was Devlin station. Only to dispose of it, she first had to dispose of you.”

I couldn’t dress it up any prettier. In the weeping hysteria that had followed her arrest, Sue Kelton had made it clear that her April... well, July-September marriage had only been about the bucks.

Lisette sat on one edge of Kelton’s bed, one small hand lightly stroking his skinny shoulder, trying to make him feel not so all alone. She knows something about being alone and being used. Inside of that sleek sophisticate’s armor was a big bowl of mush for the kicked-around of this world. Dr. Purcell sat on the other side, frowning over the old man’s pulse.

Kelton shook his head, wanting it all to go away. “I still don’t understand, Deputy. You’re sayin’ they tried to kill me, but I only had a car accident. That wasn’t anybody’s fault but mine.”

“It wasn’t any kind of accident, sir,” I replied. “You were supposed to die in that wreck. Only your wife didn’t figure on you getting stuck behind those slow movers along with the rest of us. The speed limit on this stretch of Route 66 is normally fifty-five. But you were only doing about thirty when you went off the road. The pile-up that was supposed to kill you only banged you up some.”

“But nothin’ happened!” he protested. “I just kinda dozed off.”

“You were being poisoned, sir.”

“Poisoned?”

“The boy knows what he’s talking about, Rupe,” Doc Purcell interjected. “Carbon dioxide poisoning. Looking back, the symptoms stuck out all over you, but it was something I just wasn’t looking for. You were suffocating and you never knew it.”

“Suffocating?” The old man tried to grope back to his last memories before the crash. “I remember it feelin’ kinda close in the truck, but I didn’t want to crack the window because it was so nice and cool inside.”

“There was a reason for that,” I replied. “Who set up the swamp cooler on your truck this afternoon?”

“Why, Teddy said he’d do it.” A hint of bitterness leaked into Kelton’s voice. “I guess I shoulda known right then something was up. That boy’s never done me a favor before, and it was damn rare that he ever did anything at all.”

“He wasn’t doing you any favors today. He and his mom packed your swamp cooler full of dry ice, frozen carbon dioxide, instead of regular water ice. That’s why your cooler was working so well. Dry ice is a whole lot colder than the good old wet kind.

“But it still melts, or rather vaporizes back into carbon dioxide gas. The airflow coming in through your swamp cooler was heavily contaminated. In the confined space of your truck cab the concentration gradually built up high enough to knock you woozy. Since you were feeling cool and you weren’t exerting, you didn’t feel yourself getting short of breath until it was too late and you were going off the road. It was a neat move. A coroner likely wouldn’t have noticed a thing and it would have been written off as a plain old traffic fatality.”

Lisette nodded in thoughtful approval. Back in Chicago in the good old days, certain members of her family had managed a subsidiary of Murder Inc. and, while she’s pretty much gone straight, she could still appreciate a slick rub-out when she saw one. “Where’d they get the stuff from, Kevin?” she asked. “You can’t pick dry ice up just anywhere. Especially out here.”

“It was brought to them, Princess. You had the weekly dairy delivery for your lunchroom this morning, didn’t you, Mr. Kelton?”

“Sure thing.” He nodded. “Our milk and ice cream and such, same as usual. I signed for it a little while before I started in to Barstow.”

“That’s where the murder weapon came from. I talked with the dairy that services all of the stations along this stretch of 66. Their delivery truck doesn’t use mechanical refrigeration. It’s just a heavily insulated, hard-side van. They use blocks of dry ice to keep everything cold. While the delivery driver was making his drop-off, your stepson snuck out and swiped a chunk of the stuff. The San Bernardino lab crew was able to lift some of his fingerprints from the cold-locker handles and the side of the truck.

“While you were getting dressed to go to town, your wife and your stepson were packing your swamp cooler full of frozen poison gas. Their fingerprints were all over the cooler casing.”

“Damn,” Kelton repeated. A flicker of a rueful smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Sue always said this place would be the death of me, an’ she was damn near right.”

I kinda had a hunch then that the old sand lizard was gonna be okay. If you’re tough enough to survive the high desert, there’s not a lot that can kill you.

“Dry ice, for Christ’s sake.” Doc Purcell tossed his stethoscope back into the fishing-tackle box he used for a medical kit. “I don’t know how the hell you ever came up with that one, Deputy. I’d never have thought of it, and after thirty years of patching up after Barstow Saturday nights I’d thought I’d seen it all.”

“There were a couple of things,” I replied. “For one, when I recovered the swamp cooler from the wreck site, both the reservoir and the wick filter were bone dry. Sure, ice melts and water evaporates rapidly in the high desert, but not that fast. There should have been some residual moisture left in that cooler if it had been loaded with frozen water. But dry ice evaporates away into nothing.”

The doc digested the idea. “All right, fine. But here’s the question, quiz kid. What made you suspicious of Rupe’s swamp cooler in the first place?”

“It was Mrs. Kelton,” I replied. “She bitched her own play. She may have read about dry ice somewhere, but she’d obviously never handled any of it before. Like I said, that stuff is seriously cold! Remember those funny-looking burns you treated on her hand?”

“Yeah?”

“They weren’t burns. Since you’ve done all of your docing out here, it’s not surprising you wouldn’t recognize them for what they were. But I did. I spent a winter on the line in Korea and, man, I got real familiar with it.

“I had to wonder, just how in the heck does anybody pick up a case of frostbite in the middle of the Mojave Desert?”