SPEEDING BACK THE WAY HE’D COME, JIMMY ARDMORE COULDN’T believe the catastrophe that had befallen him. Not only had Latisha gotten away, he’d killed a cop. It just didn’t get any worse than killing a cop, but the guy had caught him unawares with the gun in his hand. And after that little bitch kneed him in the balls, he’d lost it—just flat lost it. Next thing he knew, the guy—a deputy of some kind—was shot to shit, lying on the ground and not moving. Where the hell had he come from?
Jimmy knew this area like the back of his hand. He was used to driving these roads at all hours of the day and night. He often encountered Border Patrol vehicles out here, but almost never anybody from the local sheriff’s department—at least not in the middle of the night. So what was up? Was it possible somebody had located his burial grounds?
He had left Arthur out in the open for the vultures and scavengers as a sign of disrespect. He had disposed of the first few girls by burying them in shallow graves out behind Arthur’s house. But digging in the hard-packed dirt had turned out to be too much like work. It wasn’t as if he could hire some handy Mexican to do the job for him. He’d decided to leave the last few girls with Arthur, but what if somebody had found them? What if they’d found Amelia? It was time to put the exit strategy in motion, all right, and in one hell of a hurry, too.
He had always planned to burn Calhoun to the ground when he was ready to be quit of it—that’s why he had all those loaded gas cans. Harrison Ardmore’s final legacy would come crashing down in a firestorm of flame and ash—as close to hellfire and brimstone as Jimmy could make it. Now, though, with a cop dead and Latisha on the loose, there was no time for those kinds of niceties. Besides, somebody beset with occasional dizzy spells had no business messing around with gas cans and matches. Nope, Jimmy needed to get away fast and clean.
Any trucker worth his salt and passing through El Paso knows the drill. Somebody strikes up a casual conversation in a truck stop or at a rest area and offers you a ton of money to deliver a load of “product” to someone somewhere else. It was always best not to know exactly what the problematic product was, and if you took the deal, you sure as hell better not renege on it. Mules who didn’t make their required drop-offs tended to drop off themselves, usually sooner than later. It was risky, yes, but it was a way to make some money on the side that didn’t have to go through the company’s books and sure as hell didn’t involve the IRS, either.
Over the years, in the course of running that little side business, Jimmy Ardmore had made numerous connections with lots of useful people. And he had one in mind at this very moment—Tony Segura. Tony was a U.S.-based fixer for a network of Juárez drug cartels. If the price was right, he could book flights, obtain visas, create counterfeit documents, make real-estate purchases, move money from one place to another, and handle a myriad of pesky but vital details. For people interested in disappearing without a trace, Tony Segura was a one-stop shop.
But before Jimmy could avail himself of Tony’s services, he had to get to El Paso. Now that he had killed a cop, that might not be easy.
Two miles outside of Road Forks was a failed and long-abandoned feedlot. Most of the buildings had been gone for years, but the concrete loading dock and the earthen chute they’d used to drive livestock in and out of trucks were still there. That’s where Jimmy headed. The front gate was padlocked shut, but a bolt cutter from Arthur’s ever-present toolbox made short work of that. Jimmy parked the Subaru out of sight behind the lot’s sole remaining tin shed and then hiked into town.
Arthur’s hand-me-down Johnston & Murphys were a little too big, and they weren’t exactly built for cross-country hiking. By the time Jimmy made it to the truck stop, he had a popped blister on his heel and the soles of his feet were killing him—damn Latisha anyway! The grinding headache was back, too, but in all the excitement the bouts of crippling dizziness had mostly abated.
He got to the restaurant around eight and slid onto a stool at the counter just as Arlene, his favorite waitress, came on duty. “Hey there, stranger,” she said, approaching him with a ready smile. “Coffee?”
“You bet,” he said.
She took out her order pad. “What can I get you today?”
“My usual, the I-10 All-American, two eggs over easy with crisp bacon, hash browns, and pancakes instead of toast. I’m going to be heading out for L.A. in a little while, and I need to stock up.”
“Isn’t L.A. where you went last time?” Arlene asked. “Don’t you get tired of driving the same old route over and over?”
“Not really,” he said. “Once I got to L.A., they had me run a load up to Seattle, so I had a little side trip before I came home. I was planning on taking a couple of days off to do some chores out at my brother’s place, but the boss called and needs me back on the road. Between time off or money in my pocket, money wins.”
“Good for you,” Arlene said. “You take care now. Your food should be coming right up.”
Jimmy sat quietly, drinking his coffee until she returned with his order. “I noticed a lot of police activity out our way overnight. Any idea what’s going on?”
Arlene was the closest thing Road Forks had to a daily newspaper. “The way I hear it,” she said, “they found a whole bunch of bodies—seven or eight of them, maybe—out there by that dead volcano. The cops from Arizona are all over it.”
I’m sure they are, Jimmy thought, and that means I’m out of here!
After breakfast he walked back over to his place. He felt no sentiment about leaving it behind. He took nothing with him, not so much as a change of clothing and most especially not his cell phone. He’d be starting over from scratch. He simply locked the door and walked away.
He started his rig and drove over to the diesel pumps to fill up. When he went inside to pay, he bought a pre-paid cell phone while chatting up the cashier, telling her the same thing he’d just told Arlene—that he was doing another back-to-back trip to L.A.
Jimmy knew the locations of the truck stop’s security cameras, and there was one on the edge of the property that provided a clear view of the freeway interchange. He drove straight there and then up and over before turning onto the westbound entrance ramp with the security camera capturing his every move. What the security camera didn’t catch was him exiting the westbound freeway three miles later, crossing the freeway, and then driving eastbound along the frontage road until he came back to the defunct feedlot.
He got out, removed the damaged padlock, which from a distance looked as though it were just fine. Backing up to the loading dock, he opened the door. Arthur’s nimble little Subaru had no difficulty negotiating the livestock chute or bridging the six-inch gap between the end of the loading dock and the bed of the trailer. He drove the Subaru all the way to the front of the trailer, turned off the engine, and set the parking brake. Raiding his traveling tool kit, Jimmy located the adjustable straps that he used to stabilize loads. He crawled under the Subaru, secured straps to both the front and back bumpers, and then fastened those to the pins in the tie-down rails. Once the job was done, he knew that if he had to stop someplace in a hurry, the Subaru wasn’t going anywhere.
He worked as fast as he could, because he didn’t want to be at the loading dock of that deserted feedlot for a moment longer than necessary. One of the locals, someone who lived around here, might spot that distinctive blue Peterbilt and recognize it as his.
Once Jimmy finished loading, he closed the back doors and headed out. At 9:05 A.M. he paused long enough to replace the chain and the still-broken padlock on the gate. Then he drove westbound on the frontage road, returning to the place where he’d exited, and he entered the eastbound freeway there. By the time he drove past the Road Forks interchange, the guy who was supposed to be on his way to L.A. was definitely headed in the opposite direction.
He sincerely hoped that before anyone could figure that out, Tony Segura would have waved his magic wand and Jimmy Ardmore would be long gone. To that end, he picked up his brand new phone and called Tony. There weren’t any numbers in his contact list, but that was OK—he knew Tony’s number by heart.