“Follow me,” Tony said. “Let’s get out a here.”
With a few hours’ sleep Tony felt invincible again. He turned the ignition. The sound the 5.7 liter HEMI engine made as it sprang to life fueled the adrenaline already pulsing through his body. He checked to see that the tractor was still headed away, then turned the Dodge Ram about and drove toward the main road.
Rudy followed close behind with Hank’s lifeless body in the Nissan’s trunk.
Agent Hawk had left the site of the gas station holdup, the last known sighting of the sedan, several hours before.
Sonya, the attendant, had been tied up and gagged in the back room, but she had been able to scoot to a phone, maneuver her hands enough to dial 9-1-1, and scream a muffled “Help!” into the receiver.
“Did they use the restroom at all?” Angela had asked during the interview at the store.
“Yeah, she did. He scared the shit out of me and I forgot about that.”
“What did the man do while she was in there?
“Well, I wasn’t paying much attention but now that you mention it, I think he stood outside the door,” she said and combed her fingers through her hair. “Yeah, he kept looking in my direction, kinda creepy like, until she come out.”
Angela had made an examination of the restroom and turned up a handwritten note, penned on a piece of paper with the name Pair-A-Dice Motel at the top.
“Been kidnapped and raped Tony, Rudy and Hank. Hank is dead. Driving a tan Nissan, headed to Rudy’s uncle’s cabin in Canada.
“Natalie Beaumont (Amy Westerhill) 714-555-8526”
After she showed Sonya photos of the suspects taken from the security video in California and Natalie Beaumont’s headshot, she confirmed the identity of the couple in the store but didn’t recognize the other two men.
Something the clerk hadn’t reported stolen caused Angela to stay in the area. They had taken all the cash in the register drawer, cartons of cigarettes, food, beer, bottled water, nylon rope, a Washington State map and a box knife. All practical things but, Sonya didn’t mention gasoline. When Angela asked about it, Sonya said, “There’s a security monitor in the back room. I watched them drive away right after they tied me up.”
That left one conclusion.
With the distance they had traveled since they had stolen the vehicle in Oregon, even if it had had a full tank, they should have been running low on fuel by now. They had stolen money in Lincoln City, so somewhere along the way they may have stopped to refuel, but that seemed unlikely. The conclusion she had drawn was that they didn’t fill up the tank because they planned to steal another vehicle in the area. Like a good hunting dog, she felt she had caught their scent, and now it lingered in the air.
After she had finished her report, except for a couple of hours when she couldn’t drive another mile without closing her eyes, she spent the night searching for the subject’s stolen car. She had been alone in the pursuit and, with too many places where they could have holed up, knew it practically impossible to find them at night. She had filed a BOLO for the Stanza in Pacific and the surrounding counties, but by daybreak nothing had surfaced.
Since she had been on duty over twenty-two hours, she decided to stop for something to eat. The sun had come up about an hour before and while she sipped her coffee and ate her over-easy eggs, she looked out from the window seat of the diner to the street as the city of Baker came to life.
A phone rang behind the counter, and drew her eyes to two old men and a middle aged woman with red hair sitting on barstools. They laughed and chatted like this was their daily ritual. A young female server took the call, and then looked across the café to the entire police department in Baker, Chief Clarence Bigad.
Bigad had responded to the robbery last night just after Angela concluded her interview with Sonya. The Jack Daniels on his breath partially explained his impertinence, but after two minutes with him, she recognized that it was either her agency or her gender—and probably both—that gave him that brazen edge. She could almost see the wheels spin in his head when she introduced herself as FBI. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised to overhear him refer to her with his cronies as that “G-Man, or to be absolutely politically correct, G-Person with the G-String.” Last night his eyes said, “Get the hell out of Baker,” but he had been cooperative, and when he entered the café fifteen minutes ago, he produced an almost polite smile and a wave.
He now sat across the diner with the morning newspaper and stuffed breakfast though his fat reddish cheeks. From her position, Angela could see his rotund belly filled the gap between the back of the seat and the table edge. Since he couldn’t lean over the table when he ate, the white paper napkin tucked into his shirt collar protected his khaki colored uniform shirt from drippings of egg yolk, coffee and strawberry pancake syrup. Just the edge of a polished gold badge winked out from under the stain barrier as it caught the overhead light.
“It’s for you,” the sever said as she stopped at the Chief’s table.
As he struggled to shift his bulk out of the bench seat, a loud squawk as the vinyl upholstery complained against his polyester trouser bottoms filled the diner. He finally came free. With the table and the seatback for leverage, he hoisted himself to a standing position. He threw the napkin on the table and waddled to the phone behind the counter.
Before the server returned to her station, she dropped Angela’s bill on the table. While the Special Agent studied it and pulled her billfold from her pocket, she listened to Bigad’s half of the conversation.
“Chief Bigad,” he shouted into the receiver and winked at the server.
“Stolen?” He met Agent Hawk’s eye and looked away. Bigad cupped his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece and turned his back to the restaurant patrons. Even with a lowered voice, Angela could still hear him in the now silent café. “When, where?”
“I’ll be right there,” Clarence concluded and hung up the receiver.
He motioned to the waitress for his bill, and while he paid it, he glanced toward Angela.
“You might want to join me,” he said and without hesitation, headed for the door.
_____
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