Free Fall

CHAPTER 26

It didn't take long. Eric Dees went west toward LAX, then climbed onto the San Diego Freeway and headed north, up through Los Angeles and the Sepulveda Pass and into the San Fernando Valley.

He left the freeway at Roscoe, turned west again toward Van Nuys Airport, then pulled into the parking lot of a Tommy's hamburger stand where Mark Thurman was sitting at a window table, waiting for him. Jennifer Sheridan wasn't around.

We snapped a turn into a Nissan dealership next to the Tommy's just as Mark Thurman left his window table and came out to meet Eric Dees. Pike eased the Jeep toward them along one of the aisles of new Nissans, and parked behind a row of vans. We got out of the Jeep and moved up between two of the vans and watched.

Dees got out of the car, and Thurman hugged him, and Dees hugged him back, slapping Mark Thurman's shoulder the way you do when you're moved to see someone that you haven't seen in a while and they are someone you care about. Cars moved in and out of the lot, and Hispanic guys who looked like they did yard work and women who looked like they worked in offices came out of or went into the Tommy's, and looked at Dees and Thurman as they did, but Thurman and Dees seemed not to notice, nor to care. Dees put out his hand and Thurman gripped it tight, as if he were using it to anchor himself.

Thurman seemed tired and drawn, but then, so did Eric Dees. They looked nervous, and they looked glad to see each other, and they didn't look like homicidal co-conspirators rendezvousing to foil justice and commit evil. I wasn't sure what they should look like, but they didn't look like that. Pike said, "What?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. It's not the sort of meeting I expected."

Pike nodded and maybe his mouth twitched.

A balding salesman in a bright blue Miles Vandeveer sport coat smiled his way over and said, "That's an outstanding little van you're looking at there, gentlemen. You wanna trade in this old clunker, I'll give you a fair deal." He slapped the side of Pike's Jeep. Hard.

Pike's head swiveled toward the salesman. "Clunker."

I stepped in front of him. "We're just looking, thanks. If we have any questions, I'll come get you."

The salesman gestured at the van. "Great new five-year, fifty-thousand-mile warranty with these vehicles." He looked back at the Jeep, and this time slapped the hood. "Be a big step up from a maintenance hog like this old bitch."

I said, "Oh, man."

Pike leaned toward the salesman and said, "Look at me."

The salesman looked.

Pike said, "Touch the Jeep once more, and I will hurt you."

The salesman's smile faltered, then failed. He swallowed hard. "Yes, well. I'll be in the showroom if you gentlemen have any questions."

I said, "That will be fine."

He made a last stab at the smile, couldn't quite manage it, and walked backwards until he bumped into a green Stanza. When he hit the Stanza, the impact turned him around, and the fast walk became a sort of skipping hop, as if he had to go to the bathroom. Then he ducked into the showroom and peered out at us through the glass. A saleswoman with red hair came up beside him, and he started with the big gestures, filling her in.

I said, "Great, Joe. Nothing like a little restraint. What if he calls the cops?"

Pike gave sullen. "Clunker."

Thurman and Dees went into Tommy's and bought a couple of Cokes and returned to Thurman's window table. Eric Dees did most of the talking. Thurman nodded a lot, and occasionally said something, but mostly he just sipped at his drink. Thurman looked scared. He looked like Eric Dees was telling him things that were maybe hard to understand, but necessary to hear. At one point, Thurman got agitated and spread his hands, gesturing broadly, but Dees reached across the table and gripped his shoulder to explain something, and after a while Mark Thurman calmed.

The meeting didn't last long. Ten minutes later they came back into the parking lot and went to Eric Dees's sedan. Dees put his hand on Thurman's shoulder again, and said something else, and this time Mark Thurman smiled. Bucking up. Hanging tough. With Eric Dees telling him everything would be fine if he just hung in a little while longer. You could see it on his face. The pep talk by the old man. Then they shook hands and Eric Dees got into his sedan and drove away. Pike said, "Now what?"

"We stay with Thurman."

Mark Thurman crossed the parking lot to his blue Mustang even before Eric Dees had pulled away. He tossed his cup into a big cement trash container, climbed into the Mustang, and pulled out onto Roscoe heading east. Pike and I trotted back to the Jeep and roared through the car dealership and out into traffic after him. The salesman in the blue sport coat watched us go, then made a big deal out of saying something to the saleswoman who'd come up beside him. I think he gave us the finger.

We followed Thurman up onto the 405 and climbed north through the valley past Mission Hills and the Simi Freeway interchange and the San Fernando Reservoir. I kept waiting for him to exit, and maybe head west toward his apartment, but he didn't. We continued north into the Newhall Pass and the Santa Susana Mountains until the 405 became the Golden State, and when we came to the Antelope Valley Freeway just before Santa Clarita, Mark Thurman exited and followed it east, up through the San Gabriels. I said, "Thurman's from Lancaster."

Pike glanced at me.

"Mark Thurman is going home."

The landscape became parched and barren and more vertical than not. Pockets of condominiums clung to the mountains, and fields of low-cost housing spread across creek beds, and huge billboards proclaimed YOU COULD BE HOME NOW IF YOU LIVED HERE. Ten years ago, only rattlesnakes and sagebrush lived here.

Thurman followed the freeway through the mountains past quarries and rock formations and drop sites for dead bodies, and then we were out of the mountains and descending into the broad flat plain of Antelope Valley. The valley up there is high desert, and the communities there grew up around top-secret military projects and government funding. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier up there. Edwards Air Force Base is there, with its shuttle landings and Stealth fighters, and, beyond that, the Mojave Desert spreads out to the north and east, a hot dry desolate plain that is ideal for crashing top-secret government hardware. In the foothills of the San Gabriels there is water and fruit orchards, and, in the winter, there is even snow. But the valley is different. In the valley, there is only scrub brush and heat and cactus, and secret things that no one is supposed to know.

Maybe six miles after we descended out of the San Gabriels, Mark Thurman left the highway and turned into a flat middle-class housing tract with stucco houses and azalea bushes and two-car garages so filled with the clutter of life that at least one of the family's cars had to stay in the drive. We turned in after him, and Pike shook his head. "No traffic and no movement. We follow him in there, he'll make us."

"Then let him go."

We let Mark Thurman draw ahead and turn and disappear from sight.

We pulled to the side of the street and waited, and maybe five minutes later we started again. We made the same turn that Mark Thurman made, and then we drove slowly, criss-crossing the subdivision streets, and looking for his blue Mustang.

Two streets over, we found it, parked in the open garage of a pleasant two-story house with a neatly kept lawn and a fig tree in the front yard.

We parked in the drive behind the Mustang, walked up to the front door, and rang the bell. Footsteps came toward the door, the door opened, and Mark Thurman looked out at us. I said, "Hi, Mark."

Mark Thurman tried to shove the door shut. He was big, and strong, but he started the move too late and we had the angle.

The door crashed open, and Joe Pike went in first and I went in after him. Thurman threw a fast straight right, but it was high over Joe Pike's left shoulder. Pike hit Mark Thurman three times in maybe four-tenths of a second. Once in the neck and twice in the solar plexus.

Mark Thurman made a choking sound, then sat down and grabbed at his throat.

Somewhere deeper in the house a voice called, "Who is it, Mark?"

I called back. "Mark lost his voice, Jennifer. Better come out here and give him a hand."