Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [57]
“Probably. Not much other reason to go there.” Baumann continued for eight miles until turning off on a narrow, rutted dirt road running alongside a fast-moving stream. He drove slowly. Puddles dotted the road from rain the night before, and vegetation was thick on both sides, growing up and over the country lane like a canopy. He checked his watch. He was running late, which was why he hadn’t wanted to make the detour to the small farm owned by Howard, last name unknown. He’d met the farmer once when he and a dozen other men from the Jasper ranch spent a day clearing a field. Jasper had said it was a neighborly thing to do: “Got to be good to our neighbors, Billy Boy,” he’d said. “The man seems like a decent, God-fearin’ man, like us. We give him a hand, he’ll do something for us. We’ve got to stick together as white men, like the niggers and Jews do.”
As far as Baumann was concerned, Howard was a crazy old man with only half his teeth, and lips and beard stained from the chewing tobacco that caused one cheek to perpetually bulge, like a growth. But he wasn’t about to disobey Jasper’s order, get on his bad side. Jasper came off like a friendly patriarch, always talking about caring for his flock and making sure his values were heeded. But Baumann had seen the other side of him when he severely beat a man for getting drunk in town and saying bad things about the ranch’s founder.
The road narrowed even more as Baumann approached Howard’s small, ramshackle farmhouse. It looked like a set from The Grapes of Wrath. An overweight black Lab raised its head on the porch, barked once, and resumed its supine position. Baumann stopped the red truck by the porch. Two dilapidated floral love seats stood in the midst of pieces of rusted farm equipment, automobile tires, and two discarded floor lamps without shades.
Baumann rolled down his window and shouted, “Howard?”
No response came from the house.
“Damn,” Baumann muttered as he prepared to leave the truck and go to the screen door in search of the farm’s owner. But he glanced in his rearview and saw the tan Mercedes slowly moving along the dirt road in his direction. At first, he wondered why Jasper would have sent others from the ranch to remind Howard he owed a favor for having his field cleared. But that question was immediately replaced by the realization that the two men in the car were not coming for that purpose.
Baumann didn’t hesitate. He rammed his left foot down on the clutch, slapped the gearshift into reverse, backed in a tight circle, and kicked up gravel and dirt as he headed down the road past Howard’s farm, eyes darting between the mirror and the constricted road in front of him. The Mercedes had stopped; Baumann saw the two men talking with animation. Then, they began to follow.
Baumann knew the road would soon become a flat, relatively straight stretch before twisting up through a hill that, once navigated, would bring him back to the stream and eventually to the main road he’d turned off. He ran through the gears, gaining speed and keeping a watch on the Mercedes, which seemed to have trouble keeping up. Good, he thought as the road leveled out and he could accelerate even faster.
Minutes later, he arrived at a juncture where the road swung hard left and began its ascent up the heavily forested hill. He downshifted to gain traction and torque, but couldn’t gain speed because of the road’s rain-filled holes, and the rocks. A glance behind: The Mercedes, too, had started up the craggy incline. They’ll never keep up with me, Baumann thought as he continued to shift gears in response to the terrain. But as he swerved right to avoid a large boulder that blocked half of the road, the truck’s rear wheels lost their grip and skidded left off the road and backward down a shallow incline, stopping with a jolt against a large Douglas fir. The impact dazed Baumann for a moment, and he shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut against it. The sound of a vehicle on the road thirty