Crush - Alan Jacobson [146]
Gone, blurring past her, signaling the metaphoric passage of time.
Then she had a feeling. John Mayfield was still on the train. Somehow, she just knew.
So she moved forward. Stopped to ask a man in his forties if he had seen a large man dressed in gym attire moving through the cars. Yes, he said, and he pointed “thataway.” Vail couldn’t help thinking she was in some inane children’s cartoon, asking “Which way did he go?”
But she continued on nonetheless. Because this wasn’t an ink and celluloid drama. It was an honest to goodness race to find a man who murders people. Innocent people.
She moved into the next car and saw the door ahead close suddenly. Was it possibly her offender? Impossible to say. She pulled her phone and called Dixon. “Anything?”
“If he came off the west side of the train, no. If he came off the east, I have no fucking clue.”
“I think I just saw him. Who’s en route?”
“Task force is lights and siren, but probably at least fifteen out. I just called St. Helena and Calistoga PDs.”
“Ten-four. Wish me luck.”
Vail signed off and hung up. For now, it was her ballgame. Hopefully she could stay in the game until the others arrived. And being on a train filled with people—who paid handsomely to be here—didn’t make her job any easier. If Mayfield wanted to make this a hostage situation, there’d be little she could do to stop, or defuse, it. So she kept moving forward.
As she climbed through the doors of the next car, she grabbed the waitress and asked a question she should’ve thought to ask earlier. “Just how many goddamn cars are on this train?”
The answer told her she was in the last one before the locomotive. Mayfield was either here—which he was not—or he was in the locomotive. Or he had bailed out. Vail looked west first and did not see anyone—but in the near darkness, there was no way she could be sure of what she was seeing. To her right, the east was totally black.
Yet she sensed Mayfield was still aboard the train.
Vail pushed forward into the connecting area between the car and the locomotive—and saw, to her right and now behind her as the train continued on, John Mayfield, standing in the middle of the road, car-jacking a vehicle.
So much for intuition—
She pulled her BlackBerry, but Dixon was already calling through.
“Got him—” Dixon said. “Two cars ahead. Silver SUV—”
“I see it.”
Dixon pulled right, around the car in front of her, along the shoulder of the winding road.
“I’m getting off,” Vail said. “Pick me up.”
She yanked open the side door, looked at the descending metal stairs, and stepped down. Damn. It’s not enough I had to jump onto the train, now I have to jump off it. If she didn’t hate Mayfield before, she sure hated him now.
Glanced right. Saw what looked like Dixon’s car.
Why haven’t I heard back from Robby? Where the hell is he?
Vail stepped down to the lowest rung, then sprung off the train and into the brush, rolling onto her shoulder as she landed. Cushioning scrub or not, the impact still stung.
She pushed herself up, saw Dixon’s head poking through the window, yelling at her.
“Hurry the hell up!”
Blaring horns. Vail ran onto the roadway and got into Dixon’s car.
Dixon floored it as soon as the door closed, throwing the seatbeltless Vail backwards and sideways. She grabbed for the door handle and righted herself. Pain shot through her left shoulder.
Dixon’s engine was revving, groaning as she kept the pedal against the floor.
“Don’t lose him,” Vail shouted. As if she had to tell Dixon to step on it. Dixon was driving along the rough hard-pack shoulder, which made for a less than comfortable ride. But neither of them cared, not with their quarry in the SUV ahead of them, speeding along this twisty-turny stretch of Highway 29 that was now out in the suburbs, vineyards on both sides illuminated by Dixon’s headlights.
Suddenly, a buzz on Dixon’s phone.
“Get it,” she yelled.
Vail reached over, grabbed Dixon’s cell, and flipped it open. “This is Vail.”
“It’s Brix. I’m en route, passing Pratt Avenue.”
Now there’s a street that rings a bell.