Authors: Charlie Price
She walked around the wrought-iron fence between the tables and street, talked to a waitress for a moment, then went inside the restaurant.
Mick didn’t have to signal JJ. The girl was already moving.
Timing would be crucial. Mick headed for the car in the public lot at the wharf. He’d bring it to the restaurant, double-park if he had to. Risk a ticket. He knew JJ would need help.
Mick was right but not the way he expected. By the time he stopped the car, JJ and Grace were already in a loud argument outside the restaurant’s front door. He was out and running in time to see JJ smash Grace right in the face with a ferocious roundhouse.
What the?
Grace grabbed her nose. JJ grabbed Grace under the right arm and Mick got there to catch her under the left.
People outside dining were standing now.
“Don’t worry,” JJ said to the crowd. “Intervention. My sister. Crackhead! Going residential. Show’s over.”
The new JJ.
They moved Grace to the car and JJ pushed her into the backseat. Slid in beside her.
Mick jumped in front and they were gone. Him and JJ. Hookerjackers. North this time. Roundabout. Up 95 past Sandpoint to Highway 2 and then down through Troy to 56 and home. Small roads. Out of the way. Probably less risky.
JJ asked if there were any rags up front. Grace’s nose was bleeding.
Grace was crying and cursing and every so often groaning when a new wave of pain would pass through. “Goddamn it! I’ll kill you!” Paused to get her breath. “Kill you both.”
Mick could hear JJ shushing her gently, not arguing. In the mirror he could see her holding Grace.
After maybe twenty miles, Grace sat up and JJ let go. Mick wondered if they were going to have another fight the next time they got gas.
“What’s wrong with you guys?” Grace sounded like she had the flu.
“Couldn’t let you keep doing that,” JJ said. “You don’t have to. We’ll figure something else.”
“You … basket case!” That burst seemed to take a lot out of Grace. She dropped her voice. “You want them to send me home. Back to California?”
“California?” JJ said. “No way.”
Mick thought he’d heard Grace cry before, but he hadn’t. Not like she started to then, sobbing that took her whole body, possessed it.
JJ sat beside her. Not touching. Letting her grieve.
* * *
They stopped on the outskirts of Sandpoint for gas. “We’re not going to make it,” Mick said, across from a Chevron. They’d spent the money Grace gave them in Coeur d’Alene. The food was already gone. Mick held up the remaining cash. “We’ll wind up probably fifty miles short of Portage. And hungry.”
JJ stared at Grace.
Grace took off her shoe. Removed a thin fold. Peeled off two bills and put the leftover in her jeans pocket. Poked the money at JJ and looked away, out her window.
There was a lot in those two twenties. Seemed like she was giving up on her plan to keep running, at least for now.
Mick pulled across the street and put gas in the car while Grace and JJ went in the mini-mart. They weren’t running now. They were going home.
55
M
ICK PULLED OFF
2
just before Moyie Springs, took a small road south to the Kootenai River. A paved parking area had three or four RVs and a pickup camper. Mick figured it would be a safe place for a quick nap before they crossed into Montana.
“What are we going to do when we get back?” JJ, after Mick shut off the engine.
He’d been batting that same question back and forth. “I’ll drop you guys off and go look for the sheriff, I guess.”
“We should call Gary and see what’s happened,” JJ said. “Have you called him?” This to Grace.
No reply. Bitter look.
“Have you?” JJ asked Mick.
“Don’t know a thing,” he said.
“You trust the sheriff?”
“Dovey does.”
“I like her,” JJ said. “Maybe you should talk to her.”
“Maybe you should. I think I have to go to the sheriff right away. First. If I don’t, and he sees me, he’ll think I’m still scamming.”
“What about Tim Cassel and his dad?”
Mick was really struck by JJ. She hadn’t mentioned the moon lately. She’d stepped up to the plate. Brainstorming, involved in a way he’d never seen before. Grace had told him JJ’d shut down, pulled a Tina, and Mick remembered the slump of JJ’s shoulders earlier when she and Grace were walking toward the Coeur d’Alene policeman. Not now.
Mick wondered if JJ had ever been needed like this before. To keep a friend from self-destruction. But it wasn’t just that. JJ had started thinking ahead, trying to take care of him.
Maybe the only sane response to having your mom die and being stuck with addicts for years in a rancid trailer was to numb out. Living right on top of people? Putting up with Tina and Jon and how he was treated? No options? Who wouldn’t go inside, daydream? That or go crazy. And in Coeur d’Alene, when Grace started hooking, JJ numbed out. Made sense. She’d learned that from both moms in different ways.
Somehow though, JJ had picked up a new way. Like she’d brought her strength and confidence from sports into the rest of her life, and Mick bet she didn’t even realize she was doing it. You could fold or fight. Grace had forced Mick to learn that. Made him be totally on his own. He thought he could do it again, if he had to, if he didn’t have his dad anymore.
“Well?” JJ broke into Mick’s thoughts. “You don’t think the Cassels are a world-class problem?” Annoyed, as if Mick had been avoiding her earlier question.
Maybe he had. “No. I mean, I don’t know. I was thinking about you. You’ve … you’re different.”
“Goddamn it!” She swatted at him from the backseat. “I’m not stupid! Neither of you knows shit about me. And you don’t care. I’m just around. You ask me places because you want Grace to go. I’m convenient. Period.”
Mick hadn’t fooled her. JJ could see right through him.
She wasn’t done. “I’m … too private … or too out of it. But that doesn’t matter now. This is about you. You have to be ready. You can’t just walk in there like a dummy and let things happen.”
Grace wasn’t reacting, turned away from both of them, sullen, hurting.
Mick was pinned by JJ’s words. He wanted to reassure her. Wanted to deny the charges. But she was right. He’d gone off on Grace for using him but he’d done the same thing to JJ. Gotten to know her so maybe she could help find a place to live if his dad took off again. Invited her places so Grace would go. Was it true? Did he really not care?
Mick clicked the car’s electrics on for a moment and lowered the windows. A breeze came in off the water, the river moving so massively it was barely audible.
Mick did care. He could feel it but he couldn’t explain it. Just as well. If he tried right now, JJ’d think he was lying. And, JJ was right. He couldn’t just walk into the sheriff’s office and expect things to go well. He had been wanted for questioning and he ran. Fugitive. Wrong and illegal. Now he’d have to prove he didn’t kill the girl.
Before Portage, Mick needed to learn what Grace and JJ knew, but right now neither one was in any mood to talk to him. They’d get over it. He started the car and headed back to the highway. He’d stop again when they got closer to home, when their anger had passed, when they could pool information.
* * *
They made it about a half hour into Montana before JJ asked Mick to pull over for a bathroom break. Mick thought there’d be something in Troy but it was close to dawn and the town was completely buttoned up. Ten or fifteen minutes later they hit a rest area at the intersection of Bull Lake Road.
JJ was out of the car immediately, heading for the Women’s. Grace was asleep. Mick’s head ached and his eyes burned from straining to watch for animals crossing the dark two-lane. A good-sized buck could wreck a car. He rested his chin on his chest and shut down for a minute.
JJ opening the car door jerked him awake.
“Where’s Grace?” JJ asked, sounding tired herself. “She go in the bushes?”
Mick spun around. Gone. Grace was gone. They both jumped out of the car and scanned the parking area. There were two other cars. They checked those first. Single men, asleep. JJ went back to the toilets, searched them. Nothing. Could she have gotten in a car that had already pulled out? Mick had been so wiped he hadn’t noticed other cars when they arrived. It was possible.
JJ hustled back to the Bonnie, leaned on it. “Hang on,” she said, catching her breath. “I don’t think she trusts men enough to hitch a ride in the dark or even wake those sleeping guys. I watched her. She only goes with guys she chooses. She’s out here somewhere, gonna wait till light to find somebody to take her back to Coeur d’Alene. That’s her best bet.”
They calmed down and looked the rest area over more carefully. The truck parking area was empty save for a Forest Service pickup with a man in the driver’s seat eating a sandwich. Neither Mick nor JJ thought Grace would hitch with a government person. They’d ask him later if they needed to. Moved to a different vantage point and saw behind them, across the parking lot from the toilets, a metal enclosure for the dumpster. JJ motioned Mick to follow and sneaked over.
It was too tall to see inside, but when JJ opened the gate, Grace was sitting on the far side on a pile of balloony orange plastic trash bags. She rose without speaking and walked directly to the women’s bathroom. JJ went with her and Mick started the car.
56
W
HEN
G
RACE
got in the front seat Mick could smell onions, probably fast food remains from the garbage area. She looked beat, hopeless.
JJ got in beside her. Crowded but workable for a short distance. “We need to get off the highway and talk.”
Mick wheeled the car out of the rest area and onto Bull Lake Road. A mile down, took a right on a dirt road and pulled off shortly at the entrance to a range gate. Parked and left the car to stretch for a minute. He came back to JJ and Grace standing beside the car, talking. Interrupted.
“Me making the 911 wrecked it,” Mick said, voicing what he’d been thinking. He looked at Grace to get a read.
Her hands were clasped in front of her, her eyes on the ground. “You should’ve let me alone,” she said. “I can’t go back, now.”
“What do you mean?” Mick asked.
“I was working with them before. Now they’re going to be suspicious.”
“Them who?” JJ.
“Hammond and all his guys.”
“Doing what?” Mick asked, but while his stomach churned, something else slid into place. “Do Hammond and his guys have these, wear these V-rings?”
Grace nodded. Said, “I think so.”
“Like who?” Mick asked.
“Cookie told me Sam Hammond started it back in high school after the school football and basketball teams won their league.”
“Started it with…?”
“Teammates, I guess. Greer, Bolton, Cassel, maybe Mackler.”
“What does—?”
“God! Leave me alone.” Grace turned away, reached in, snatched the folded tarp from the car floor, and hugged it in front of her like a shield.
Their questions were interrupted by a low-grade noise back toward the highway. They saw the cloud of dust before they saw the vehicle. A quarter mile away, Forest Service green pickup. They left the Bonnie and walked out to meet it as if they had nothing to hide. “It’s the breakfast guy from the rest stop,” JJ said. “Say we’ve been visiting friends in Bonners Ferry, just needed a driving break.”
Mick nodded. That would work.
When the truck stopped they saw their mistake. Government insignia had been painted over. The truck had been bought at auction.
The man behind the wheel set down the paper sack he’d been sipping from, reached over and lifted a twelve-pack off his seat. Gestured like “want one?”
JJ headed around the far side of the Pontiac. Mick shook his head. Grace was motionless beside him.
The man turned off his engine, stopping his truck in a position that blocked their car’s path back to the road. Stepped out carrying the box of beer. “Too hot for work, even early in the morning, huh?” He reached in the box, came out with a can, and pitched it to Mick.
Mick stepped aside and let the can fly by, hit the ground and roll.
“Well, if you can’t catch, I’m damned sure going to hand one to the lady.”
“We’re not drinking,” Mick said.
“I saw your little dance back there at the stop. Thought the little lady might need some help.”
Grace shook her head. “No. An argument. I’m fine.”
“Say the word.” The man tipped his hat back and wiped his forehead with his sleeve, even though it was just past dawn and far from warm. When Grace didn’t speak, he started again. “You broke down?” The man drew out another beer, popped the top, and took a long swallow. “Hell of a place to be busted,” he said. “Nothing around except the Merrill spread and I’m the best grease monkey he got.”
“We’re fine,” Mick said. “Just taking a break.”
“One boy, two ladies, whatcha do on your break? Getting frisky? I wouldn’t mind some of that.”
Mick looked the man over more carefully. What was he missing? Was he just drunk or was he dangerous? Guy was unshaven under his battered cowboy hat. Bowlegged, wiry, sun-beat, with a crafty narrow face that made Mick think of a ferret. Looking for a gun or a knife on his belt, Mick finally spotted the crowbar, hanging from a belt loop and lying close to his leg.
“Lot can happen out here fifty miles from Jesus,” the man said. “You don’t want to get crossways with a Good Samaritan. That’d be arrogance. Be costly.”
Grace walked a couple of steps away, bent over and picked up a fallen limb from a tree they were parked near. It was dry, over two feet long and thick as her wrist. Held it at her side.
Mick saw JJ making a looping circle past the back of the man’s truck and then walking toward them talking on the cell phone.
“His license number is 41-1130,” she was saying. “Green Dodge. He’s about fifty, slim, five eight or ten, one sixty. We’re just off Bull Lake Road past Troy about a half mile south of the rest stop on 2. You want to talk to him?”