Luke went over the Patapsco Causeway at close to a hundred miles an hour, with the liquid scintillation of marina lights roiling and tossing on the blackened water on his right, and the lights and the traffic of Baltimore on his left, swirling all around him in arcs and coronas, a blur of blood reds and streaky yellows and hectic blue-white smears across the windshield, but the silence of the big blue Crown Victoria, and the muted steady roar of the wind rush all around him, kept him in a separate world, a dim green cocoon of regret, and recrimination, and fear.
He had the air conditioner on, but now and then he’d get a brief scent of the seas, a sharp, slightly rotten, half-sweet salt-rush of damp air that filled the car with the huge hidden presence of the vast booming water-fields of Chesapeake Bay.
Inside this swirling internal vortex, every little town and rest station he had blown through on his way up Interstate 95 had seemed to rise up out of the velvety Maryland countryside like a roadside carnival, had wheeled and flashed at him as he rolled onward, and then faded, glimmering, subsiding into a pale pink glow above the black shoulders of trees and the low hills in his rearview mirror.
The long empty spaces between the towns were like the brief but perfect silences that separate each heartbeat, each one a furtive, fleeting, sidelong glance down the shadowed hallways of eternity.
The dashboard lights were bright green, the numerals steady at ninety-five miles an hour, the tires booming and hissing on the smooth unreeling ribbon of the highway. Now and then he would rocket past a family sedan or a salesman’s rented Sable, and he’d get a peripheral flash of the back of a woman’s neck, a flicker of his own lights off the jewel on her ring finger, or the startled eyes of a driver as he passed him, the man trying to figure out what had come up out of nowhere in his rearview mirror less than thirty seconds ago and was now hurtling by him like a dark blue glimmer, the driver at the wheel hidden behind the heavy federal tint.
Now Baltimore was receding, sinking back into the Maryland countryside, and the interstate was spooling through Rosedale and Middle River. A green sign flashed by him on his right, with white letters on it, streaking past his left-hand windshield. Road signs came up and burned with green fires and then flicked out of existence like fireflies by the side of a country road. A timeless interlude carried him away, the road unreeling ahead.
An hour and seventeen minutes later, a few miles across the Delaware River, accelerating on the Jersey Turnpike, his high beams picked out the luminous side-strip panels of a New Jersey State Patrol unit sitting in a crossover lane on the median strip. At one mile away and closing fast, Luke watched the trooper’s car light up like a sideshow Ferris wheel as Luke cleared his radar horizon, a lunatic flutter of red and white and deep piercing blue. His high beams began to alternate right and left as the trooper put it in gear and waited for Luke to thunder past his position.
Luke leaned forward and picked up his blue Hot Shot light, set it up on his dashboard. He flicked it on, and the flashing blue light lit up the hood of the Crown Victoria and a lot of the highway ahead of him, blue spears of light arcing out, lighting up the trees and the blacktop and, in a few seconds, the shiny reflective paint on the side of the trooper car. The New Jersey patrol car stopped moving, but Luke knew he’d be trying to get a radio return out of this ambiguous blue rocket flying by.
Luke opened the glove compartment and punched the radio concealed inside it through to the New Jersey Statewide frequency, hoping the guy had his act together and was waiting for a callback on that channel. As soon as Luke punched the frequency, his speaker broke into sound.
“This is New Jersey State Patrol Unit Alpha Twelve. Identify.”
“Bravo Sixteen, Federal Marshal, Alpha Twelve. Sorry to make you spill your coffee.”
“Ten-four, Bravo Sixteen. I have you at one-ten in a sixty-five zone. State your business, please. Make it good.”
“Roger, Alpha Twelve. Urgent federal matter.”
“No shit, Bravo Sixteen. I had the impression it was urgent. Do you wish an escort?”
“I thank you, Alpha Twelve. I’ll be the disappearing red lights on your forward horizon. If you’re coming, let’s roll.”
“Ten-four, Bravo Sixteen. We’ll see about that. Out.”
Luke watched the car in his rearview as it faded into a tiny cycling spark of blue, white, and red flashing lights. He wasn’t thrilled about this, but he had more or less expected it. It was a long run from Georgetown to the Jersey Turnpike. There had to be a trooper in the shrubbery somewhere on that stretch. He checked the rearview again and saw the trooper coming up on his tail, no less than a hundred yards back and closing fast. He could literally hear the high-pitched howl of the car’s engine. Christ, the man must have one hell of a big mill in that thing. He’d heard about their new pursuit machines. This was definitely one of them.
The trooper car hurtled past him on his left side, a gray polished rocket with his roof-bar blazing. Luke got a brief glimpse of the driver, his hand raised, and he heard a short bleep from the siren. The car sounded like a bullfrog in a barrel, the banshee howl changing into a Doppler boom and then a low growling murmur as it slowed a bit, popped and rumbled, and took a post about a hundred feet in front of Luke’s Crown Victoria.
Locked like two stars in a black emptiness, they both began to climb again toward one hundred and thirty miles an hour. That snaking yellow line, and the rock-steady stern of the trooper car, became the only fixed compass points in Luke’s blackened and silent universe.
Watching the luminous letters on the rear panel of the state car—STATE PATROL—Luke knew the man would have already run Luke’s Maryland plates and gotten a registered owner of a leasing company in Chevy Chase. Then he’d have called in to his duty sergeant, who would have punched the plates up on his NCIC/DMV database and seen a file notation—see MAGLOCEN/RTA/10-95—which would support Luke’s statement that he was a federal agent on federal business. His radio crackled into life again.
“Alpha Twelve to Bravo Sixteen.”
“Bravo Sixteen.”
“So what’s the story?”
“I could tell you—”
“But then you’d have to kill me. You feds are all the same. How do you like my ride?”
“Awesome, Alpha Twelve.”
“Thank you, Bravo Sixteen. This is your basic five-liter ported and polished fuel-injected full-race Isky cam five-to-one ratio blacktop bullet. Caught a Porsche 911 with this thing last week, he was going so fast I was a day and a half younger by the time I caught him. I passed myself on the way back. Your machine’s no Winnebago, man. What’s in it?”
“Merc 454, tuned and blueprinted. I get another twenty out of the top-end by running it on JP5.”
“Very funny. Exits coming up. Where do you want to go?”
“State patrol substation.”
“Ten-four, Bravo Sixteen. That’s my home station. I’ll buy you a coffee. Just stay on my trunk-lock, and we’ll be there in a heartbeat.”
“Roger, Alpha Twelve.”
The turnpike exits were coming up. Luke could see the lights of a large town in the distance, past the hundred-foot-tall signs that read DENNY’S and ARCO and HOLIDAY INN. The trooper was decelerating now, and his taillights lit up like returning fire. Luke closed in on the unit as it slowed for the exit ramp. They stopped at the lights, and Luke reached over to finish the rest of the coffee in his Thermos. He was going to need his wits about him in the next few minutes.
Twinned now, rolling quietly into a wide small-town street lined with darkened storefronts under overhanging shade trees, they reached a yard fenced in with chain-link. A sprawling yellow-brick single-floored building took up most of the big yard. There were state cruisers all over the lot, as well as private Jeeps and vans and sedans, all waiting for their owners to come off-duty. A flagpole rose into the night sky, lit up by three mercury-vapor spots. The flag hung limp in the damp summer humidity, moths fluttering in the beams. Luke took the time to wonder why the flag was still flying after Taps. He never found out. Alpha Twelve parked his cruiser by the visitor spaces in front of the main entrance, and Luke slid his car in beside him.
The driver of Alpha Twelve climbed out and waited on the sidewalk while Luke tripped the remote alarms and walked up to meet the man.
Alpha Twelve turned out to be a black trooper in his late twenties with a shaved head and a body as short, solid, and impressive as a 105 artillery shell. His New Jersey uniform shirt was stretched out over his Kevlar vest, and a black-webbed leather Sam Browne at his waist carried about a half a ton of gear, including a Beretta nine-millimeter semiautomatic. He held his hand out as Luke reached him, grinning widely.
“I’m William Tighe. Nice to meet you.”
“Good to meet you. I’m Luke Zitto.”
Tighe’s grip was dry and firm, his face square and rocky. He seemed to have no neck at all. Luke showed him his Marshal’s star. Tighe looked at it as if he had never seen one before. Turned out he had. This was his career second for the shift. As they went up the walk toward the glass doors of the entrance, Tighe sounded like a man who had just stepped off the Hurricane at Asbury Park.
“That was more fun than I’ve had in a month, deputy. Except for that Porsche. Hell, we should have gone straight through to New York City.”
Luke smiled at the man. Years ago, a simple high-speed escort run would have left him as charged up and satisfied as it had left this trooper.
“Next time let’s do that. I guess I’m not looking forward to this.”
Tighe said nothing, and his face grew serious.
“Well, I think I know why you’re here. Lieutenant Farrell’s waiting for you.”
“You checked, hah?”
Tighe’s young face looked vaguely uneasy.
“Regulations, Deputy Zitto.”
“I know that. Don’t give it a second.”
They reached the doors, and Tighe pulled them open. Luke walked through into a bright reception area with the New Jersey state crest laid down in brass and marble against a polished terrazzo floor. A long desk ran from wall to wall, and a duty sergeant, overweight, his white hair cropped, his tie loosened, looked up from his computer console as they reached his station.
“This the man, Billy?”
“Sergeant Wytold, this is Deputy Marshal Luke Zitto.”
They shook hands across the countertop. Wytold’s eyes were sympathetic.
“You wanna go back there right now?”
“Not yet. I think your CO wants to see me.”
“Yeah. Come on back.”
Wytold pressed a button, and the swing-gate popped open.
“I’ll leave you here, Deputy—”
“Call me Luke.”
Tighe grinned. “Okay, Luke. I’ll be in the coffee room. I owe you one.”
“Sure.”
Wytold led Luke back through a series of glass-walled cubicles and a large muster room, where several young troopers, male and female, were sitting at long trestle tables writing up incident reports. They reached an office at the rear, walled in translucent ripple glass. Wytold knocked on the door. A woman’s voice answered.
“Yeah?”
Wytold opened the door. A slender middle-aged white woman, her hair swept back into a severe temple-tightening bun, held in place with a black ribbon, and wearing a perfectly cut and razor-edged trooper’s uniform with brass eagles on her epaulets, was seated behind a broad cluttered green-topped metal desk. There was a wide picture window behind her showing a stretch of parking lot and some trees in the shadows beyond, their leaves tinted yellow by the yard lights. One of the office walls was covered in training certificates, diplomas, four commendations, a family portrait, and even a sheepskin from the FBI training school at Quantico.
She stood up as soon as Luke came into the room, coming out from behind her desk, her strong Irish face a little closed, but with a good smile. Her eyes were a deep hazel, and two bright touches of blush or rouge floated delicately on her prominent cheekbones. There were sympathy and sadness in her eyes, but also a great deal of what Luke correctly interpreted as reflexive interagency defensiveness. She radiated a cool but not unkind intelligence.
“Deputy Zitto. You got here fast.”
“Yes, Lieutenant. Is her family here yet?”
“Mr. Powys called a while ago. He has to get a sitter, so he says. I told him you were on your way. He didn’t seem too thrilled.”
“Mr. Powys is a lawyer, Lieutenant Farrell.”
She grinned at that, then sat down behind her desk. Luke took the oak swivel chair in front of it. When he relaxed into it, a wave of weariness rolled over him. Farrell saw it passing. She opened a drawer and set out a bottle of Bushmill’s whiskey and two small cut-crystal glasses.
“Call me Margaret. You look dead beat. I save this stuff for times like this. Would you like one?”
“A short one, thanks. Please call me Luke.”
She poured two short jolts of the Irish whiskey into the glasses, handed one to Luke across her desk. They drank with a little ceremony. The liquid was smoky and light in his mouth and went down like a streak of amber fire. Luke patted his suit jacket and found his cigarettes. He held them up.
“Do you mind?”
“Not if you blow it toward me. I gave them up five months ago.”
She patted her chest.
“Losing my wind. I grow old, I grow old … something about my trousers rolled? Go ahead.”
Luke lit up a Kool and exhaled. The bitter mint rush raced through his lungs, calming him. Farrell watched him with a covetous glimmer in her hazel eyes.
“Have you seen her yet?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“You should.”
“I know. I wanted to talk to you first.”
Farrell’s face settled into a careful reserve. “That’s what you said. There’s not much I can do. Not much, to be honest, that I would do, even if I could.”
Luke let that go for the moment. “What happened, anyway?”
“You have the story. It’s not real complicated.”
“I know. I’d just like to hear it all at once.”
Farrell sat back into her chair and sipped at her glass. Exhaling, she considered Luke’s pack of Kools on the desk, seemed to shake herself, and put her hands together on her lap.
“There’s a tollbooth a few miles back. A county unit had picked her up on radar back there, and a citizen had called her in on his cell phone. A 1990 dark green and wood-veneer side-paneled Buick Roadmaster, about the size of a coal barge. Speeding, lane changes, she was doing close to a hundred on the tollbooth approaches, but no units reached her. She braked hard about a hundred and fifty yards from the toll station. The attendant heard her brakes squealing. She got herself together and rolled up to his station, fumbling for change. Dropped a lot of it out the window. They got it on video, I hear. Anyway, she got his attention, and when she pulled out onto the turnpike again, he called it in to us, and we set up an intercept.”
Farrell paused, sorting out her priorities. Then she simply raised her hands and shrugged.
“She blew right through it. One of my guys sprained an ankle getting out of the way. She grazed a highway unit and disappeared. We caught up with her a few miles later, and by that time she’d skimmed a bunch of tourists in a Grand Cherokee—got paint from that on her left quarter-panel….
Luke was staring at the Kool in his hand, at the red spark chewing its way down the narrow white cylinder, at the smoke curling up from it. He had a sudden reminiscence, bright red sparks circling around the Washington Monument, how long ago? A year? A decade?
“Anyway, Alpha Three and a couple of county units had her bracketed around an S-curve section.”
“Lights? Sirens?”
It was a dumb question.
“Of course. The whole megillah.”
“And she wouldn’t stop?”
“Eventually. She went off the shoulder, plowed up a section of turf, and then slid into a crash barrier by the overpass. Two seconds later, we had four cars on her, and they were trying to get her door open. It had buckled a bit when she hit the impact barrels.”
“Blood levels?”
“We’re still waiting.”
“Alcohol?”
“Be my guess. She had that look. The machine was wonky. Our lab doesn’t open until ten.”
“Where is she now?”
“In the back there.”
“Can I see her?”
Farrell studied Luke for a long moment. “Nothing to say? Officially, I mean?”
Luke drew in a lungful of Kool, held it, and blew it out in a kind of low whistle. “That was a hell of a ride, I’ll give her that.”
“Oh yes. Gave us all a big thrill.”
“What’s possible?”
Farrell looked up at the ceiling and ran a hand back through her hair, sweeping a stray thread back into position.
“Not one whole hell of a lot, Luke. You have the citizen with the cell phone. He made her plates. It was a big adventure for him, so you can bet he’ll talk about it. Sooner or later somebody from the regional press will get wind of it. As well, you have the paint from the Grand Cherokee. Nobody was hurt there, but this is a very litigious society. Fear and distress, anxiety, all that. About the pursuit, we might be able to do something. Thing is, people could have died. Not to mention what the press would do with it.”
Luke picked up the glass and swirled the last of the Bushmill’s around. “Have any press guys called yet?”
“Not yet. It’s only four in the morning. They don’t work our kind of hours, do they?”
“Do you know her story?”
“I know she’s a very troubled young woman.”
“Do you want to know it?”
Farrell considered Luke for another minute. Phones were ringing out in the hall. The sound of a sixteen-wheeler chugging up the interstate on-ramp made him think of his apartment next to the Gowanus Expressway. It was a lonely recollection.
“Yes,” she said, finally. “I think I do.”
So Luke told her.
Margaret Farrell listened quietly, placing a careful and pointed question from time to time. Luke left out a great deal of it, particularly the details surrounding the role of Treasury in the situation. When he was through, Margaret Farrell was silent for a while.
“That’s quite a story. How much of it is true?”
“Almost all of it.”
“It has some serious holes.”
“Nothing that would change the basic facts.”
“Interagency competition? Turf wars in D.C.?”
“Yes. Very much so.”
“Are you sleeping with her?”
Luke rocked in his swivel chair. He should have expected that.
He looked down at his Kool pack, pulled one out, offered it to the lieutenant. She refused it.
“No,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I’m not.”
Farrell sighed, got up from the desk.
“You disappoint me, Luke. Let’s go see her.”
Luke never asked Lieutenant Margaret Farrell of the New Jersey State Highway Patrol how he had disappointed her.
But then, he didn’t have to, did he?