Twisted Twenty-Six (Stephanie Plum 26)

“I need a night at home. I’ve gone through all my emergency clothes at your house, and I have to clean Rex’s cage.”

“How’s your arm?”

“It’s good. Nothing oozing out of the incision. Stitches are intact. Only aches a little when I use it.”

“I know big, strong cops who would be sidelined for two weeks with your gunshot wound.”

“I don’t have that luxury. And I was lucky. It was only a flesh wound.” I hung up and hooked a thumb at Lula. “Let’s go.”

I got behind the wheel and pulled the hijacker file out of my bag.

“Looks like we’re going after a new guy,” Lula said.

“Emory Lindal. Wanted for hijacking a truck full of beer. Took it while the driver was eating dinner. Made the mistake of drinking a six-pack, and the police found him asleep behind the wheel. Didn’t show up for court.”

“Probably embarrassed to show his face because he’s an alcoholic idiot,” Lula said. “Any priors?”

“Traffic violations. Domestic violence. Seventy-two years old and lives in a mobile home south of town.”

“He doesn’t sound like much of a hijacker,” Lula said. “It sounds to me like he committed a crime of convenience. He probably doesn’t even have a warehouse.”

I drove south toward White Horse and turned off onto Old Bridge Pike. After five miles we still hadn’t come to an old bridge, and we’d passed only one other car.

“According to my phone map, this guy’s road is a quarter mile on the right,” Lula said.

I got to the road and stopped. It was narrow and it was dirt.

“I don’t like this road,” Lula said.

“There’s a sign on it that says Applegate Road. So this is it.”

“I know what’s going to be at the end of this road. There’s going to be some nasty old guy living in a broken-down, rusted-out trailer, and he’s going to have a pet snake. A big one. That’s always the way it is with dirt roads going through the woods.”

I turned onto the road and took it slow over the rutted surface. “That only applies to one guy and one snake,” I said. “Maybe there are others, but we only know one. Simon Diggery and Ethel. And I think Ethel likes you.”

I drove past a shack made of random lumber and half of a VW van. It didn’t look habitable, and I didn’t see any sign of recent use.

“I’m telling you this isn’t going to end good,” Lula said. “I’m totally creeped out. I don’t even like woods when they got flowers, and this woods only has woods.”

We came to the end of the road and stared out at a small mobile home. It was pocked with rust, and the windows were painted black. It was surrounded by high grass. A crude dirt path led to the door. There were signs plastered all over it warning off intruders. KEEP OUT. SURVIVALIST HABITAT. DO NOT ENTER. SECOND AMENDMENT IN FORCE. Vultures hunkered down on the roof and circled overhead. Some of the roof vultures were working at trying to rip the roof open.

“That’s a lot of vultures,” Lula said.

I agreed. It was a lot of vultures.

“You know what vultures like?” Lula said. “Dead things.”

“We should go check it out,” I said.

Lula’s eyes bugged out. “Are you nuts? This is a horror movie. You step out of this car, and some freak is going to rush out of the woods with an ax and chop you up into tiny pieces. He’s going to be bleeding out of his eyes, and his skin is going to be green and falling off him in chunks.”

“I’m thinking that the dead thing in the trailer is Emory Lindal, and that’s why he went FTA.”

“I guess that’s possible,” Lula said. “The guy with the ax could have got to him.”

“You stay here,” I said. “I’m going to take a fast look.”

I opened the car door and stepped out and was almost knocked over by the smell. I jumped back into the car and jerked the door closed. “Wow!”