Vigilante

CHAPTER 46

When I opened my eyes, it was dark outside.

I was in the backseat of Marcia’s Cad convertible, my hands firmly tied behind me, my feet still lashed together with fishing line. I tried to speak but quickly realized a gag was jammed deep down my throat. I had to be careful breathing to keep from aspirating.

I looked over and saw that Marcia was also tied up and gagged beside me. Her eyes were bulging with terror.

Lee Bob Batiste was in the front seat behind the wheel, paying no attention to us, tapping his bony fingers on the dash. We were parked off a main road in a dirt lot. To my right, half a block down, I could just make out a road sign that said:

BUENA VISTA

Buena Vista was in Burbank. Out the other window I could see the exit ramp off the 5 Freeway at San Fernando Boulevard a block and a half away. Something about this location began tugging at my memory, but I couldn’t pull it together because my head was still freewheeling.

Marcia started to gag from the cloth down her throat. Lee Bob stopped drumming his fingers and turned sharply around in his seat.

“Tranquille, cher,” he said. “Da loup-garou ca s’advance.”

I didn’t know what most of that meant, but I’d taken a trip to Mardi Gras when I first got out of the service and thought I remembered that a loup-garou was some kind of fictitious Louisiana wolf-man-monster that wanders around in the night and eats the dead.

Lee Bob checked his watch, turned back, and continued to look out the front windshield. He seemed to be waiting for something. I looked again at Marcia, whose eyes were now darting back and forth in panic; the cords in her neck were rigid.

I was so damn mad at myself for having let this happen. One of these days, if I live, maybe I’ll just follow the fucking manual.

I tried to gather my wits. After a few more minutes, I pinned down what was familiar about this particular location. It had a bloody ten-year history.

The railroad intersection with San Fernando and Buena Vista Street in Burbank had produced a number of fatal collisions with the Metrolink. The cops called it the Death Crossing. In the past few years, there’d been twelve train hits on cars at this spot. The intersection was formed like a Y, which made it hard to see up the tracks when you merge from the left. The crossing was equipped with the normal array of warning lights and crossing guards, but the lights face south and are not easily seen by cars crossing the tracks from San Fernando Boulevard on the east. According to half a dozen lawsuits filed against the City of Burbank and the Metrolink, it’s possible to make a turn onto the tracks before the metallic crossing guard drops and you can see the flashing lights that warn you a train is coming. Because of this flaw, cars have become trapped on the tracks, unable to get off. Several deaths have resulted from train hits at this spot in the last three years. Because the crossing meets all of the NTSB technical and safety requirements, to date the Metrolink and the city have won each lawsuit. As a result, the intersection has yet to be redesigned.

It didn’t take much deduction for me to realize that Marcia and I were about to become the next fatalities.

There would be no prolonged investigation into our deaths. Probably no autopsy, as Nix had suggested. It would be assumed that we were just the next two unfortunate motorists to die here.

We would be victims of a tragic mistake in engineering. It would be covered by the news but dispatched with quickly.