Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

acting scared.”
    I watched his face. His ears were red, and when white fog wasn’t bursting from his mouth, it lingered there, churning and then rising slowly past his face.
    “When you went over that bank there, did you come across anything on your way down that might slash a car tire to the rim?”
    I thought for a quick second, then shook my head and said, “No. Why?”
    “I saw the girl’s car when they pulled it out of the water. Then later I saw it when they loaded it onto the flatbed. All four tires were cut up, slashed to the rim. On one tire the rim was completely bare, no rubber at all.”
    “You sure about that?”
    “I’ve got pictures.”
    “Video?”
    “Stills. I crawled in from where I parked and shot a roll. These weren’t blowouts, Mac, I can tell you that. I mean, what are the chances of all four tires blowing out all at once? No, these tires were slashed, there’s no two ways about it.”
    “How?”
    “Follow me.”
    Augie led me down the road, toward the curve and the cluster of trees where we had seen someone run across the road just before the accident.
    When we were near the trees, Augie stopped and said to me, “Would you say this is where the car first lost control?”
    I looked around, nodded.
    He knelt suddenly, pulling me with him. He took a pocket light from his jacket pocket and shined it on the pavement between us.
    I looked closely and saw in the center of the circle of white light several fanglike punctures in the blacktop.
    I looked back up at Augie and said, “A spike strip.”
    “That’s what I thought, too. Come here.”
    We crossed the road, to the side where Augie’s man had hid before bolting across. Augie knelt again and aimed his light on a divot in the dirt bank.
    “He nailed it in here and waited till he saw the car come, then dragged it across the road. The spikes tore up all four tires at once. If a car is going fast enough on a winding road like this … well, you saw what you saw. Girl dies in a car accident on a back road late at night. That kind of thing happens all the time. No one would think twice about it. And if someone did, no evidence.”
    “You’re talking murder and conspiracy, Aug. You’re talking a lot of people, if the Chief’s boys are in on it.”
    “Who else uses spike strips, Mac? Why the shoddy clean-up? You know what money can buy in this town. You know this better than anyone.”
    He rose, and I followed. Together we looked back over the dark, narrow road. The tall grass lining it was dead, bent sharply by the sudden cold. I thought of the pond down the bank and the icy water that almost killed me. I thought of the poor girl, whoever she was. I thought of those home waiting for her.
    Augie took a good look around, then said finally, “Something’s up. Something’s going on. I think it might do us well to find out just what that something is.”
    “Maybe.”
    Augie sighed, a puff of white bursting from his mouth, then shrugged. “Let’s hope for the best, then. Let’s hope its nothing.” He looked at me. “I should get you home,” he said. “You look beat.”
    “I’m okay.”
    “I’ll find out if the car went to the impound lot or a junkyard. Frank has men in Village Hall. I’ll have him make a few calls and pull some favors.”
    “Sounds good.”
    “Maybe one of my nurses was working at the hospital tonight. I’ll see if I can get some information on the girl, ID, address, that kind of thing. Maybe her autopsy’ll turn up something interesting.”
    “If you get a lead on a junkyard, let me know. I could maybe have a look around tomorrow, between shifts.”
    We both knew this could be nothing but trouble for me. But I wasn’t planning on letting Augie go headfirst into whatever this was alone. I wouldn’t have done that before he was put in the hospital, let alone now.
    “You’re far enough in the shit as it is, Mac,” he told me. “If this is what we think it is, it’ll be hard keeping low like you have been.”
    “If somebody killed that girl, I’d want to know who did it, cops or no cops. It’s my town, too, Aug.”
    We stood together and looked out over the barren farm fields, barely visible in the darkness. After a while, I said, “It’s cold. It’s as cold as hell.”
    Augie looked at me. “We should call it a night, Mac.”
    We started back down the road toward his truck. Halfway there I heard a sound in the distance behind us, the abrupt sound of a car door shutting and an engine