Chill Factor

DUTCH RODE SHOTGUN IN CAL HAWKINS’S sanding truck, primarily because he didn’t trust Hawkins to make an honest effort to get up the mountain road. Second, he wanted to be the first to reach the cabin, first through the door, Lilly’s knight in shining armor.

It had been a harrowing trip back to town from the dive in which he and Wes had found Hawkins. Bridges were perilous, the roads weren’t much better. When they arrived at the garage, Dutch had poured several cups of black coffee into Hawkins. He had bitched and whined nonstop until Dutch threatened to stuff a gag in his mouth if he didn’t shut up, then literally boosted him into his rig.

The cab of the truck was a pigsty. Trash and food wrappers left over from last winter littered the floor. The vinyl seat covers had open wounds that exposed stained stuffing. Dangling from the rearview mirror, along with a pair of oversize fuzzy dice and a hologram of a naked girl being intimate with a vibrator, there was a deodorizer shaped like a pine tree. It was doing a lousy job of masking the variou

s odors.

The sanding truck had been in the fleet of heavy equipment that old Mr. Hawkins had rented to municipalities, public utility companies, and construction crews. It had been a successful business until he died and Cal Junior inherited it. This sanding truck was all that remained of the legacy.

Cal Junior had used his late father’s assets as collateral against loans that he failed to pay back. Everything had been repossessed except this rig. Dutch was unsympathetic to Cal’s financial woes and didn’t care if a collection agency claimed the sanding truck tomorrow, so long as it got him up to the peak tonight.

He glanced into the exterior side mirror and saw the headlights of his Bronco following at a safe distance. One of his officers, Samuel Bull, was at the wheel. He had the advantage of driving on the mix of sand and salt that Hawkins was putting down. Nevertheless, the road’s surface was still hazardous. Occasionally Dutch saw the Bronco drifting toward the ditch or across the center stripe.

Wes was riding with Bull. Before they left the garage, Dutch had told him he didn’t have to come along. “Go home. This is my problem, not yours.”

“I’ll stick around to lend moral support,” he’d said and climbed into the Bronco.

Dutch would need moral support only if this attempt to reach Lilly failed. Apparently Wes thought failure was inevitable. So did Bull. So did Hawkins. Doubt rang loud and clear behind everything they said, and he detected pity in the looks they cast him.

I must appear desperate to them, he thought. Desperation was an unfit state of mind for a chief of police. For a man. It certainly didn’t inspire the confidence of others. About the only thing he could inspire in Cal Hawkins was fear.

When they were about fifty yards from the turnoff onto Mountain Laurel Road, he said, “If I feel like you’re holding back on purpose, I’ll jail you.”

“On what charge?”

“Pissing me off.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I advise you not to test it. You give this heap everything it’s got, do you understand me?”

“Yeah, but—”

“No excuses.”

Hawkins wet his lips and gripped the steering wheel tighter, mumbling, “Can’t see worth a goddamn.” But he downshifted as he approached the intersection.

It was tricky because it was a sharp turn, and coming out of it the road went into a steep incline. To keep from spinning out, Hawkins would have to take the turn slowly but have enough acceleration to handle the incline.

Dutch clicked on the two-way radio in his hand. “Hang back, Bull. Don’t get too close.”

“No need to worry about that, buddy,” Wes replied through the speaker. “My instructions to him exactly.”

“Nice and easy,” Hawkins said under his breath, talking either to himself or to the truck.

“Not too easy,” Dutch said. “You’ve got to get up that incline.”

“I’m the one experienced at driving this thing.”

“So drive it. But you’d sure as hell better drive it right.” Surreptitiously he took a deep breath and held it.

Hawkins went into the turn cautiously. The rig made it without mishap.

Dutch exhaled. “Now give it some gas.”

“Don’t tell me my job,” Hawkins snapped. “Shit, this road’s darker than Egypt.”

The state highway, which became Main Street in Cleary proper, was lined with streetlights all the way to the city limit signs at either end of town. But once off the beaten path, the roads were unlighted, and the contrast was dramatic. The truck’s headlights illuminated nothing except the dizzy dance of windblown, frozen precipitation.