Blues Highway Blues (A Crossroads Thriller Book 1) Read online

  Alone in the dark, his thoughts drifted from his time with Connie to when their lives had begun to unravel, from a time when they were too much in love (or too young) to think that the world could ever touch them, to their end when they limped off to their respective corners after the world had torn them apart.

  He wondered where his son was. And why he hadn’t heard from him. He worried Zack had been one of those millions who must have clicked on a story about a maniac on a cross-country crime spree.

  He worried there were others out there, others like Rabidoso, who were searching for him, who would find him—or Zack.

  And what could he do about it now? Whatever was hidden and waiting for him in Philadelphia was out of his reach forever. The answer to the riddle would remain a mystery. There was nothing he could do. Nothing.

  The squeal of brakes and the sudden shifting of his body shook Daniel from his unintended sleep. He sat there, momentarily disoriented in the dark, and listened, not quite sure just what he was listening for. He heard the driver’s door open and close. And then nothing at all.

  When it finally seemed to him that the uninterrupted silence meant it was safe, he got to his feet and walked to the end of the cargo hold, listened for a moment, and then lifted the gate as quietly as he could. There were a dozen other trucks parked in rows, but nobody in sight.

  Daniel climbed out of the truck and pulled the door closed behind him. He turned and began to take quiet, careful steps across the abandoned truck yard. Step. Step. Step.

  There was a chain-link fence around the perimeter of the lot and he moved toward it as quietly as he could, wincing at the loud crunch each step made against the frozen snow beneath his feet. Step. Crunch. Another step and another crunch. A step and then a crunch. And then another crunch—an extra crunch.

  He froze in place. There was someone else with him in the truck yard. Daniel looked around the fenced yard but couldn’t see anything but trucks and darkness.

  He took a step. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Two extra crunches.

  Daniel turned toward the sounds, but he only managed to see the dog out of the corner of his eye. An instant later a German shepherd the size of a circus pony was just an arm’s length away.

  He sprinted for the fence with the dog right behind him. In a single move, Daniel jumped up toward the fence, caught two handfuls of links, and forced himself up and over. It was a display of athletic prowess he never would’ve guessed he had.

  The landing, however, was trickier. Propelling himself over the fence, he twisted in midair and proved Newton’s theory of gravity by dropping like a stone and landing on the flat of his back.

  Six inches behind him, the dog hit the fence like a bullet train meeting the sound barrier. The collision rattled the chains and made them sing as the shepherd barked wildly, its teeth bared, furious that its prey was so close yet so out of reach.

  Daniel got to his feet and began to run. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard laughter in the distance behind him. He was certain it must’ve been his imagination, but he thought he heard someone call out, “Run, mi key, run!” He didn’t look back, he just kept running.

  Just two blocks later, Daniel had completely run out of running room. Ahead of him, the Atlantic rolled into the sand. Daniel stood and looked at the rolling surf as incredulously as if it contained a half-submerged Statue of Liberty. It seemed impossible to him, but the frothing surf was undeniable proof that he had stowed away to a shore town in New Jersey.

  There was no point in heading out onto the sand and so he wandered down the street that lined the beach. Looking for some refuge from the night, he found there was still one place open despite the late hour. He opened the door and stepped inside.

  “We’re closed,” the woman behind the bar yelled without paying him any particular attention.

  He looked around the barroom and noticed all of the chairs had been turned up for the night. “I’m sorry. I just—”

  She raised her eyes from the bar she was wiping down and ran them up and down him, from head to toes and back again. “You look like a man who could use a drink.”

  “I could,” he agreed, although he hadn’t thought of it until she extended the invitation.

  She nodded at a spot at the bar in front of her. “One drink to get you back on your feet and then you can use them to take yourself out of here.”

  “Thanks.” He moved to the seat she’d offered.

  “What’ll it be?”

  He knew what his dire circumstances required: “Whisky.”

  She poured a double and set in down in front of him. “There you go.”

  “Thanks.” He took a drink, unprepared for the burning sensation down his throat and into his empty stomach.

  “Easy, Tiger.”

  “I’m Daniel,” he said, before it occurred to him that he probably shouldn’t.

  “Vicki.”

  She was more attractive than Daniel would’ve expected to find behind the bar at some seaside joint in the off-season. He guessed she’d spent happier days (and nights) behind a bar when she was younger and then retreated back there when her life didn’t play out as she planned in those halcyon days. Still, whatever collection of life’s disappointments had returned her behind the bar, they’d done little to dim her bright smile or to dampen the sparkle in her eye.

  “I’m all right,” Daniel assured her.

  “I’m sure you will be.”

  The conversation was joined—or interrupted, as Daniel saw it—by another man he hadn’t realized was in the otherwise empty barroom. Uninvited, the guy took the stool next to Daniel’s and put a hard-shell electric guitar case between them.

  “How’d you like the show?” he asked the bartender, who paid him even less attention than she’d paid Daniel’s entrance. Her pointed silence did not dissuade him. “Yeah, the band was really tight tonight.”

  She either disagreed or didn’t care. “What’ll you have?”

  For the first time, the man admitted taking notice of Daniel. “I’ll have what he’s having.”

  She shook her head. “You’ll get a beer.”

  The guy seemed disappointed when she put the amber bottle in front of him, but he took a big swig from it anyway. “I’m wearing her down,” he whispered to Daniel, loudly enough that she could hear.

  “The only thing you’re wearing down is your welcome. Now drink up and get out.” She picked up a tray of clean glasses from beneath the bar and carried them out through a pair of swinging doors.

  He watched her go. “I’m pretty sure she’s a dyke. But just ’cause the door’s closed doesn’t mean there’s no use in knocking, right?”

  The man turned to Daniel and offered him his hand. “George Beamer. George Beamer and the High Beams.” He used the top of his bottle to point at an E-Z Print banner that hung over a small stage area in the far back. “That’s me.”

  “Dan—” The whole fugitive thing was hard for him to get. “Eric Danielson.”

  “Well, nice to meet you, Dan Eric Danielson. What is that, Norwegian?” He snorted a laugh. “I’m only joking.”

  He caught Daniel looking down at his case. “She’s a ’52 Telecaster. Just like his.” He smiled as if he’d just said something important about himself and took a drink. “And, yes, before you ask, I’ve played with him. Played with the Boss many times.” He took another drink. “Couple a times. But that’s what everybody asks, ‘You ever played with him?’ ”

  Daniel had more important things on his mind than playing a rock-and-roll version of Six Degrees of Separation. “Uh-huh.”

  If thirty years of playing fifty-seat bars up and down the Atlantic shoreline had taught George Beamer anything, it was not to be discouraged just because people aren’t listening.

  “I tell you what gives me the biggest kick about him,” he continued unasked. “He’s always here. Well, not here,” he said, gesturing to that particular barroom, “but he’s constantly drifting in and out of all these little places, wa
lking up and down the Boardwalk at all hours. He’s like a rock-and-roll ghost.”

  Daniel wasn’t sure what to say. “OK.”

  “I mean, people always say to me, ‘Isn’t it hard, you know, you been playing as long as he has, you rock just as hard as he does.’”

  Daniel had never seen a High Beams show, but he found it difficult to believe.

  “They say, ‘You work as hard as he does, but he’s where he is and you’re where you are.’” He took a breather and a swig of beer. “But I tell them they’re missing the point, ’cause he’s where I am. You know?” He laughed harder than he had to and gestured around the barroom again. “He’s right here. I mean, he’s got the mansion on the hill, but I got the keys to the kingdom.”

  He looked at Daniel as if he expected some comment from him. He got none.

  “I’ve played some large venues in my day,” George said, lightly tapping the guitar case. “I opened up for Southside on this benefit gig out at Jones Beach. Must’ve been twenty thousand people there. Not when we were playing, but, you know, there were a lot of people there. And, you know what?”

  Daniel didn’t say anything.

  “It was just the worst. Couldn’t see anybody. Couldn’t connect with anybody. But a place like this,” he turned to look around the cramped confines of a room that couldn’t hold more than a hundred fifty people without giving the local fire marshal angina. “You get up on stage in a place like this and you can look into everyone’s eyes. You can feel them. In a place like this you can create real magic.” He took a sip of beer, disappointed that it was his last.

  “Today music,” Daniel said under his breath.

  George didn’t understand. “What?”

  “I met a man who told me that what made the old blues players so great was they were never playing for tomorrow. Everything was about playing for today. It’s not about the money or the venue. It’s just about the music. Playing for today. Today music. ‘He plays Today music.’ That’s got nothing to do with paid attendance or revenue receipts.”

  Somehow Daniel’s words had insulted him. “Yeah. I don’t know anything about that. Truth of the matter is that that show in Jones Beach was a rush. Like riding a fucking dragon. And whoever thinks money doesn’t matter doesn’t have a mortgage to make and an old lady buggin’ him for a new used car.” He looked around the dingy bar. “I can’t for the life of me understand why he keeps coming back. I get out of here, I ain’t ever coming back. That’s for fucking sure.”

  “Well, now that you’re all talked out,” Vicki informed him as she reappeared from behind the swinging double doors. “You should get going. I’ve gotta lock up.”

  “Sure enough.” George took another hit on the bottle, somehow surprised to find it was still empty. “All right, Eric van Toaster Slam. Let’s say you and I—”

  “He’s staying.”

  It was hard to say whether Daniel or George was more surprised by what she’d said, but George was the one who said, “What?”

  “He’s my ride home,” Vicki told him, her tone making it clear she resented the explanation she’d given him and had no intention of expounding on it.

  “I’ll be more than happy to—” George was quick to offer.

  She was quicker still to cut him off. “I didn’t ask you.” She made a motion with her hand like he was so much dust on the bar that she was brushing away.

  He reached down to pick up his case and as he did, Daniel—as surprised as anyone by the turn of events—offered him his hand. “It was nice to meet you.”

  Beamer grabbed the case handle instead. “Piss off.” And with his replica Telecaster dangling from his hand, George Beamer stomped off into the night.

  Vicki shook her head when he was gone. “He’s such a bore. Did he give you his whole ‘I’m Better Off Not Being Successful’ spiel?”

  “Yeah.”

  She laughed to herself. “What a load of shit.”

  Daniel looked back over his shoulder toward the door George had just let slam behind him. “He seems convinced.”

  “Well, he’s had thirty years to work on it.”

  She pointed at Daniel’s glass, which was still half full. “You finished?”

  He steeled himself, threw back the rest, and placed the glass back on the bar, proud of himself that he didn’t let a single cough, gasp, or choke escape. “Yes.”

  She took the glass, wiped it with the towel she’d been cleaning the bar with, and then placed it back on the shelf.

  “What?” she asked when she noticed the look he’d given her less-than-hygienic actions. “It’s not like you’re going to be back in here tomorrow to drink out of it.”

  It was true, but somehow the way she said it made it sound like an unnecessarily harsh accusation.

  “You got a smoke?” she asked.

  “No. I don’t smoke.”

  “I don’t either,” she announced proudly. “I just quit.”

  “How long?”

  “No, that’s it. I just quit. Right now,” she smiled. “If you’d had a cigarette I’d still be smoking.”

  “Well, it’s probably for the best.”

  “Think so? It hasn’t even been a minute and I’m already having my doubts.” She drummed her fingers on the bar. “I just wish I had one last one.”

  Her request triggered a memory about something Moog had told him about cigarettes buying things that cash couldn’t. “Wait a minute, I do have a pack.”

  “Never mind.” She shook it off, but regarded him suspiciously. “You don’t know your own name. Don’t know whether you smoke or not.”

  There wasn’t much he could offer in his defense. “It’s a long story.”

  “Tiger, you look like a guy who’s got a lot of long stories.”

  He thought on it. “Really, just the one. But it’s a killer.”

  “I’ll bet it is.”

  The man stared out of the photo with lost, empty eyes that were ringed by dark circles. His face was expressionless, not so much accepting of what had happened to him as resigned to it. Nothing about the man seemed particularly threatening; he was more melancholy than maniacal.

  “Who the hell is this? And why am I looking at his picture at two in the goddamn morning?” Regional Director Casey asked. “Can you tell me that, Agent Feller?”

  “That’s Daniel Erickson, sir. The picture is a mug shot taken in conjunction with an involuntary commitment in California two years ago.”

  “You’re running out of time to get to the why am I here looking at this, Agent Feller.” The older man in the bigger chair threw the photo on top of the rest of the dossier Feller had handed him. “Get to the goddamn why.”

  Feller didn’t flinch an inch. “Because he’s left crime scenes clear across the country in the last week.”

  The head of the FBI’s Philadelphia office picked up the photo with renewed interest. But still the same doubt. “This guy?”

  “It started with a shooting on the Pacific Coast Highway outside a home he was renting in Malibu.”

  The file Feller had prepared contained several photos of the cars that had collided with one another after Daniel had stepped out into the northbound lanes. The gruff old man was unimpressed. “A goddamn pileup is no crime, Agent Feller.”

  “We believe he was fleeing this domicile after murdering a Maria Gonzalez, whom he employed as a domestic.” Feller indicated a series of pictures of a female corpse, topless and reclined in a pool of its own blood.

  The gruesome scene piqued the regional director’s interest. “Good God!”

  “From that crime scene we believe Mr. Erickson stole a vehicle—a late-model Lotus Elise—and drove to the house of his ex-wife, where he subsequently murdered her live-in, a Randall James Baldwick.” The accompanying photographs showed a group of crime-scene technicians pulling up a freshly scrubbed carpet to reveal large, dark blood stains. “We haven’t found a body yet, but he’s currently missing and evidence at the scene strongly suggests there was a
murder here. There’s more blood under those carpets than in a slaughterhouse slough trough.”

  “The woman file a missing persons report?” Casey wondered aloud, sifting through the photos.

  “Sir?”

  “On the missing boyfriend. Did this ex-wife file—”

  Feller understood. “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Good.”

  “Again he stole a vehicle and it seems he drove east. Presumably fleeing his crimes. Eventually, he wound up at a service station in New Mexico.” The photo showed a surveillance camera image of Daniel at the pumps, suspiciously looking around as he fueled the Kia. “The surveillance tapes were stolen for the night of the crime, but we believe that he went back to the same station the following night and murdered the cashier, Nancy Ravensong.” There was a picture of that corpse too: a young woman with her throat cut open. Casey silently shook his head.

  “Next—”

  “Jesus, there’s more?”

  “Yes, sir. We next caught sight of him in New Orleans. He’s at the center of a riot at Mardi Gras.” There were more grainy pictures from a security camera that showed a man who looked like Daniel—or two and a half million other men—getting into an altercation that quickly developed into a riot. If Casey flipped through the collection, the images seemed to come to life.

  “He next serviced in Memphis. Where we apprehended the car he’d stolen. The suspect, however, eluded capture.”

  “How was that, Feller?” The edge in Casey’s voice was no accident.

  “All I can say, sir, is that the local law enforcement agencies down there leave something to be desired, sir.”

  The old man considered it. “Memphis, hmm?” Then he snorted his understanding and agreement.

  “Now the next we heard of him, he was in Chicago.”

  “He’s on a goddamn rock tour,” Casey observed.