No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [109]
Vince sat there a moment. “You need to pack?” he asked.
“Pack?”
“I think you’re going to Youngstown. You can’t get there and back in a day.”
I considered what he’d said. “If he’s checked out,” I said, “it makes sense he’s going home.”
“And even if he isn’t, looks to me like that might be the only place at the moment where you might find some answers.”
Vince reached across the car in my direction, and I recoiled for a second, thinking he was going to grab me, but he was just opening the glove box. “Jesus,” he said, “fucking relax.” He grabbed a road map, unfolded it. “Okay, let’s have a look here.” He scanned the map, looking into the upper left corner, then said, “Here it is. North of Buffalo, just north of Lewiston. Youngstown. Tiny little place. Should take us eight hours maybe.”
“Us?”
Vince attempted, briefly, to fold the map back into its original form, then shoved it, a jagged-edged paper ball, at me. “That’ll be your job. You get that back together, I might even let you do some of the driving. But don’t even think of touching the radio. That’s fucking off-limits.”
39
Looking at the map, it appeared our fastest route was to head straight north, into Massachusetts as far north as Lee, head west from there into New York State, then catch the New York Thruway up to Albany and west to Buffalo.
Our route was going to take us through Otis, which would put us within a couple of miles of the quarry where Patricia Bigge’s car had been found.
I told Vince. “You want to see?” I asked.
We’d been averaging over eighty miles per hour. Vince had a radar detector engaged. “We’re making pretty good time,” he said. “Yeah, why not?”
Even though there were no police cars marking the entrance this time, I was able to find the narrow road in. The Dodge Ram, with its greater clearance, took them a lot better than my basic sedan, and when we crested the final hill, where the woods opened up at the edge of the cliff, I thought, sitting up high in the passenger seat, that we were going to plunge over the side.
But Vince gently braked, put the truck in park, and engaged the emergency brake, which I’d never observed him do before. He got out and walked to the cliff’s edge and looked down.
“They found the car right down there,” I said, coming up alongside him and pointing.
Vince nodded, impressed. “If I was going to dump a car with a couple people inside,” he said, “I could do a lot worse than a spot like this.”
I was riding with a cobra.
No, not a cobra. A scorpion. I thought of that old American Indian folktale about the frog and scorpion, the one where the frog agrees to help the scorpion across the river if it promises not to sting him with its poisonous venom. The scorpion agrees, then halfway across, even though it means he, too, will perish, he plunges his stinger into the frog. The frog, dying, asks, “Why did you do this?” And the scorpion replies, “Because I am a scorpion, and it is my nature.”
At what point, I wondered, might Vince sting me?
If he did, I couldn’t imagine it would be like with the frog and the scorpion. Vince struck me as much more of a survivor.
Once we neared the Mass Pike, and the little bars on my phone started reappearing, I tried Cynthia again. When there was no answer on her cell, I tried home, but without any real expectation that she would be there.
She was not.
Maybe it was just as well that I couldn’t reach her. I’d rather call her when I had real news, and maybe, after we’d reached Youngstown, I’d have some.
I was about to put the phone away when it rang in my hand. I jumped.
“Hello?” I said.
“Terry.” It was Rolly.
“Hi,” I said.
“Heard anything from Cynthia?”
“I spoke to her before I left, but she didn’t tell me where she was. But she and Grace sounded okay.”
“Before you left? Where are you?”
“We’re just about to get on the Mass Turnpike, at Lee. We’re on our way to Buffalo. Actually, a bit north of there.”
“We?”
“It’s a long story, Rolly. And it seems to be getting longer and longer.”
“Where are you going?” He sounded genuinely concerned.
“Maybe