Thicker Than Blood - the Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy - Blake Crouch [247]
"So tell me, Andy. How long do you think it'll take for someone to find out that motel's a morgue? In actuality, it may be a day or two, cause Billy Joe Bob motel manager is sharing a bed with one of his guests. But if someone stumbles into one of those rooms and calls the police, they'll set up roadblocks in a millisecond, and we'd never get through one with our cargo. You see, I'm planning on surprising the Choteau police department with Officer Barry in case they don't take my confession to heart. Hell, I might even wear the uniform again."
My fist landed square against his jaw. It popped, and Orson grunted, "Fuck." He leaned over on the dashboard, holding his jaw in his hands. My knuckles throbbed pleasantly.
"I'll take you to Choteau, you motherfucker," I said, starting the car. "I'd kill you."
We were doing a hundred before I realized it, and I slowed down. Orson sat up now, still holding his jaw, and I hoped it hurt him. The sky lighter now, it still snowed a little, the clouds a purplish-blue. A crushing sadness pressed down on me. I couldn't even think about what he'd done, so I told myself it wasn't true. It all felt like a dream. I was a dream.
I wondered if I'd pissed Orson off so much he'd want to drag me down. It was a terrifying thought, and I almost apologized for hitting him, but I convinced myself that he wouldn't want to share the blame for his killings. He'd want all the attention for himself, including his biography. He thought I was the only one who understood him, and he knew while I was free, he had me by the balls. I'd do whatever he said. I'd write his fuckin' book.
As the sky brightened into morning we sped through the prairie, and in the distance, a range of snowy mountains rose up out of the horizon. The clouds had dissipated, and now the early rays of sunlight made the snowpack glitter. I tried to focus on the remote, isolated beauty of the land rather than the fear, growing minute by minute inside of me. Orson didn't speak. He just sat there, holding his jaw, watching dawn break across the sky.
# # #
At seven-thirty in the morning, we sat in a Waffle House in Choteau. We occupied a booth, and a large, glass window at the end of our table looked out towards a chain of mountains called the Lewis Range. For the first time in hundreds of miles, I could see trees. At the foot of the mountains, still five miles west of town, a forest of tall, elegant pines spread across the yellow prairie. They stretched halfway up the slopes until the timberline began, a brown, lifeless zone of rock and scraggly undergrowth, coated with snow the higher it climbed. A thousand feet below the summits, the snowpack was so deep most of the boulders were hidden, and the contrast between blinding white and vivid blue where the peaks met the sky was ethereal.
I stared down into my cup of steaming black coffee. Lifting the cup to my nose, I inhaled the scent of charred, smoky beans, and took a small sip.
"Will you talk to me?" I asked, looking up at Orson. "About Vermont."
He sighed.
"Who was David Parker?" I asked.
"A friend of mine," he said.
"A friend?"
"We were colleagues in the history department at Middlebury."
"You never told me you were a professor."
"I never told you a lot of things."
"Why'd you quit teaching?"
"I didn't quit. I was removed. They found out my credentials were fake. Dave did actually, and he had my position taken away."
"Do you know how I found him?" I asked.
"Of course I know," he said, "and I took care of that rancher and his bingo-loving wife." Orson smiled. "Don't look so surprised, Andy. It's not like you aren't used to it now."
I sipped my coffee. "Did David know about you?" I asked. "About your hobby?"
"No one did."
"He looked just like you, Orson. He sounded like you. Even walked