In the last half hour of light, the broad western sky gathered itself toward what promised to be a colorful sunset facilitated by discrete, attenuated clouds.
On Interstate 10, Jane Hawk drove five miles per hour under the speed limit, wanting nothing more than to avoid calling attention to herself, although she carried on her person everything required to get her through a confrontation.
Many miles earlier, Nadine Sacket had given her a thermos of hot black coffee, for which she was grateful, and a bag of homemade sugar cookies, which she didn’t intend to eat. The cookies gave off a pleasant aroma, however, as did the coffee, and the Ford Escape felt almost cozy, a little high-speed haven from a hostile world.
She needed to get to Nogales, Arizona, to trade the car back to Enrique de Soto for another that would likewise be one thing on the exterior and a different beast altogether under the hood, that would have no GPS and a new set of plates.
Another fourteen or fifteen hours of road separated her from Nogales. Allowing for a night’s sleep, she didn’t expect to be bargaining with Enrique before late Saturday morning.
After dark, when she arrived in Sonora, she would boost the plates off a parked car, switch them to the Ford, and have greater peace of mind during the run to Nogales.
When her luck changed, the sun was hanging swollen near the horizon, the red-veined orange of a bloody yolk, seeming to tremble as if it might burst when it settled to the low, fractured ridge rock of this sere landscape. The highway patrol car came out of the east in a faster lane than hers, with neither its siren nor its roof-mounted lightbar engaged. If the trooper meant to pass her, he changed his mind, abruptly reduced speed, and swung in behind the Ford.
She neither sped up nor slowed, and he paced her for a mile.
Maybe the NCIC had been provided with a description of her car, after it was captured by a traffic cam in Iron Furnace. Or maybe the mud on the license plate intrigued him. Even if he couldn’t read the plate, a lone woman in a black Ford Escape might be enough to remind him of America’s most sought-after murderer and traitor, motivating him to call for backup before taking action.
She dared not wait and hope that he’d have second thoughts, swing around her, and go on his way. Better to deal with one cop than two or three. She let the Ford stray into the faster lane, then yanked it sharply back, angling off the highway, onto the shoulder. The right front bumper knocked hard against the guardrail, and the car jolted to a halt. She shifted into park but left the engine running.
The patrol car eased off the pavement and halted eight or ten feet behind her.
Jane thrust a hand into the bag of cookies, broke one of the big treats in half, and stuffed it into her mouth. She plucked the thermos cup from the cup holder and filled her mouth with coffee.
When highway patrolmen pulled you over, they didn’t like you getting out of the vehicle until they told you to do so. She at once stepped out of the Ford, leaving the door open.
When she saw that he was watching from behind the wheel, she bent over and spewed part of the thick mush of cookie and coffee onto the ground. She spouted the last of the soupy mess and gagged and wiped at her mouth with her coat sleeve. She turned and put her left hand on the Ford as if for support and moved toward the back of the vehicle.
The cruiser’s lightbar began flashing now, warning westbound traffic out of the slow lane.
She pretended to change her mind about approaching the patrol car, instead climbed into the backseat of the Ford, and left that door standing open, too.
If the make of the car and the muddied plate gave the trooper one idea from which he’d imagined a scenario, she needed to throw a curve into the story line that he foresaw and get him to follow her script instead.
Lying prone on the seat, she heard him get out of his car.
A moment later, he spoke to her through the open door. “You havin’ a problem, ma’am?”
His right hand would be on the grip of his weapon.
Facedown, head away from him, she spoke with a slur and a hint of Texas, but strove not to exaggerate. “Go away an’ lemme sleep.”
“You need to sit up and have a little talk with me, ma’am.”
“You’ll jus’ be mean to me. Lemme sleep some.”
“Don’t make this any harder on yourself than it has to be. You hear me now?”
“I don’t hear nobodys.”
He said something, but an eighteen-wheeler went by and masked his words in engine roar and the rumble of rubber on asphalt.
The slipstream of the big truck washed through the open door, and Jane said, “Aw, shit, gonna puke again.”
She scrambled across the seat and threw open the back door on the passenger side.
“Hey, hey, hey,” the trooper said, “you just wait there.”
She got out of the car and bent forward and stood with her back to him and made retching noises. She stumbled sideways, then put her back to the car and slid down and sat on the ground.
He wouldn’t like leaving both port-side doors open. They were traffic hazards. He wouldn’t want to leave the engine running. But he couldn’t risk dealing with any of that.
When he came around the back of the Ford, gravelstone crunching under his shoes, he was probably following protocol, his right hand on his gun, or maybe he had even taken the precaution of drawing the weapon.
She sat with legs splayed and head hung. She didn’t look up at him, because drunks who avoided eye contact were generally much less belligerent than those who tried to stare you down.
“Come on, now, lady,” he said. “You don’t want to be resistin’ an officer of the law.”
She said, “Mr. Man…you ’cepted Jesus?”
“Have I accepted Jesus? Yes, ma’am, I guess I have. So you’ve nothin’ to fear by workin’ with me here.”
“I ’cepted Jesus,” she said, “but He’s done gone all mad at me, an’ He’s got every damn right to be.”
“Jesus doesn’t get mad, ma’am. He wants you to cooperate here, wants you to get up and talk to me now.”
“Does He? Yeah, but I can’t up my ownself.”
“You fixin’ to be sick again?”
She finally tilted her head back and looked up at him, wearing as sorrowful an expression as she could manage. “I wish’t I could puke some more, but seems I can’t.”
Face flushed with sunset light, he was handsome, maybe thirty, a recruiting poster for the Texas Highway Patrol in his dark-tan uniform with blue stripes and red piping on the pant legs, blue-and-red epaulettes on his shirt. Felt cowboy hat. Black patent-leather gun belt with a silver buckle—his pistol in its holster.
“Why don’t you take my hand here and get up from there.”
“Mr. Man, you figurin’ on bein’ mean to me?”
“You don’t need mean, you need soberin’. Come on, now.”
She hated to do this to him. He was young enough to have a little trust left in him, at least for pitiable drunk women, if for no one else; therefore, he wasn’t handling this strictly by the book. Jane didn’t like being the one who might knock enduring cynicism into him.
She took his hand, pretending awkwardness as she got up.
Maybe he caught a glimpse of the shoulder rig under her coat or maybe he realized that he didn’t smell either alcohol or vomit, but for whatever reason, he said, “Oh, shit.”
He might have successfully pulled away from her if she hadn’t already unclipped the handheld Taser from her belt. She buzzed him through his uniform shirt, and he dropped beside the car as if every hinged joint became unhinged and every ball-and-socket separated, his cowboy hat slipping off and rolling against the guardrail.
Jane bent down and Tasered him again, this time on the neck. She pulled the small plastic bottle from an inner coat pocket and sprayed his nose and mouth with chloroform. He stopped spasming and fell unconscious.
She recovered his hat and tilted it over his face to trap some of the fumes, leaving half his mouth and his dimpled chin exposed.