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

  “Are you carjacking me?” There was genuine disbelief in the man’s voice as he tried to determine if this was just a postconcussive hallucination.

  Grand Theft Auto hadn’t been Daniel’s original intention, but the more he thought about it the more obvious it became to him. “Yes. Yes, I am. I’m carjacking you.”

  “But you don’t even have a gun,” the driver pointed out.

  “No,” Daniel admitted, “but he does.”

  A second later a shot from Moog’s hand cannon hit the Lotus’s fiberglass frame and tore through it like it was fifty grand worth of cotton candy.

  “Holy shit!” The driver looked back through his now-shattered rear window as if there might be something back there to see besides his impending death.

  “Get out of the goddamn car!” Daniel tugged at the driver, now trying frantically to free himself from the seat restraint. As the man came loose of the harness, Daniel climbed over him and slid into the cramped cockpit.

  A quick glance into the shattered rearview mirror showed Daniel a kaleidoscopic image of the big man purposefully advancing on him, slow and steady. In the spiderweb of broken glass, it looked as if a dozen Moogs were raising their arms, each one aiming his own chromed cannon at him.

  Daniel hit the starter and the stalled engine miraculously came to life. He pressed the clutch, threw it into gear, and then let the clutch pop out as he stomped the accelerator. The car jumped like a Jesus bug skimming across the surface of a pond and thick black smoke rose from the squealing, spinning tires.

  Moog’s second shot hit the pavement right where the car had been stopped a second before.

  Daniel stepped hard on the gas and a feeling of exhilaration overcame him as the acceleration shoved him back in the seat and the sports car took off like an AMRAAM missile shooting straight up the now abandoned roadway. “Woooooooooooo!”

  Behind him a crowd of people cursed him. One of them wanted to kill him—two, if he counted the Lotus’s owner.

  He had nowhere to go, but he was getting there fast. He was free. And alive. Nothing else seemed to matter.

  His exuberance, however, didn’t last longer than a mile marker or two.

  The realization hit him harder than a slug from the .50 would have. Even racing as fast as the Lotus could go, he hadn’t gone more than five miles before the most terrible realization hit him. His heart sank and he put the accelerator all the way to the floor.

  “Zack!”

  There was somewhere to go. And he had to get there even faster.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Rabidoso didn’t bother to tuck the pistol back into his pants. It dangled loosely from his hand as he slowly descended the stairs.

  Maria had disobeyed Daniel, staying behind to finish her soap opera. When the shooting started she’d sought refuge behind the couch. The sustained silence had tricked her into believing it was safe to finally make her escape. “Por favor, señor.” Maria backed away slowly, knowing she had no chance to outrun him.

  He shook his head with feigned concern. “You’re in a lot of trouble here.”

  “Por favor, señor,” she repeated aloud, though in her head she began reciting the Ave Maria, hoping some celestial force might show her the mercy that a man with such hateful eyes never would.

  He pointed to the leather couch she was trying to back around. “Take a seat.”

  “Por qué?” The question warbled with her fear.

  “Sit!” He screamed the command with more authority than she could defy.

  She did as she was told, but begged, “Señor!” Tears streamed down her cheeks, salty evidence of her growing desperation. “I have six children, señor. Four grandchildren.”

  “Family’s a blessing.” He wasn’t immune to her tears, only excited by them. “Losing them is the curse.”

  She gasped audibly, “Oh, señor. Please—”

  “My partner and me, we’re FBI. Federales. He smiled proudly at the lie. “And I’m not looking to make any trouble for you.”

  She couldn’t help but be relieved. “Oh, gracias, señor. Gracias—”

  “Unless I have to.” His voice was cold and sharp like the knife he kept in the pocket of his jeans. “But right now you’re the only one in a house with fifty kilos of cocaína upstairs. Do you understand?” He liked this lie even better.

  “Cocaína?” The stream of tears became a flood. “Cocaína? Señor Erickson?” She’d never really liked the man, always thought him weak, but that was why she couldn’t believe he’d be involved in such a dangerous enterprise. “Noooooooooo.” She drew out the word like an overexcited fútbol announcer to stress the depth of her disbelief.

  Rabidoso just stared at her. “Well, if it’s not him, it must be you.”

  She was quick to rethink her position. “Señor Erickson, he is in the music business. Always there are musicians coming and going here. You know—”

  “I know,” he affirmed. “Well, your Mr. Erickson just shot at two federales. Now he’s running. I need to know where he’s running to.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, señor.” She shook her head vigorously. “I know nothing.”

  Rabidoso knew something. “I was looking around upstairs. There’s a room, a boy’s bedroom. Does your Señor Erickson have a son?”

  “Sí.” She answered quickly, thinking of her own boys. “A son. Señor Zack.”

  Like a viper pressing the scent of its next meal to its Jacobson’s organ, Rabidoso knew he’d found his prey. “Where do I find him?”

  “I don’t know, señor.”

  “Maria, you’re in deep mierda. Not only with the cocaína upstairs—”

  “I swear—”

  He held up a hand to stop her. “The federales are going to want to talk to you.”

  She knew what he was suggesting. “I’m a citizen,” she declared as indignantly as she dared.

  “They’re going to want to talk to all your people. I know, because I am the federal that’s going to do it.” He gave her a sinister smile so she’d understand exactly what he meant.

  She was a good woman, but she wouldn’t sacrifice her family to save Daniel’s. “Mr. and Mrs. Erickson. They get a divorce two years ago. The boy, he lives with her.”

  “Where?”

  She considered lying for a minute, but the predatory glint in her inquisitor’s eyes made her think better of such a gamble. “Westlake Village. Wynnefield Avenue. One seven one five zero. I clean her house on Thursdays.”

  He laughed contemptuously. “So, they got joint custody of you in the divorce.”

  “That’s all I know.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, chica. ’Cause I got one more question.” She looked at him blankly. “Your Mr. Erickson brought us here because he said he had a lot of money in that safe upstairs.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “There no safe up there.”

  He just laughed. “No, there is, because it’s up there open right now. And it’s empty. No money.” He cleared his throat. “I want to know where the money went.”

  Her eyes went wide. “I know nothing about any money.”

  Rabidoso had a long history with people offering him desperate denials. His personal policy was to ignore them until death proved them right. “He called you last night, didn’t he?” he pressed. “Told you to move the money? To put the gun in there?” With every question he moved closer, until finally he was just a hot, stale breath away.

  She would have backed away farther, but there was nowhere left to retreat. “I swear, I don’t know.” She was caught between the mad man and the Ibris Blue couch.

  “I’m going to ask you again.” This time he prefaced the question by dragging back the hammer of the pistol until it cocked. “Where’s the money?” He pressed the pistol’s barrel against her forehead and she quivered at its icy touch.

  “I swear, I don’t know anything about any money.” Her words dissolved into gasping sobs. But her thoughts turned immediately to what she knew was her only
chance for survival and she began to recite the Ave Maria in her head. Santa Maria, Madre de Dios.

  He reached down and took hold of the neckline of her uniform dress. “Where is the money, puta?” He tugged at her top, again and again until neither the fabric nor her desperate efforts to cover herself could resist his savage violence. A shriek escaped her trembling lips as he tore her free and pushed her to the carpet.

  He straddled her and she was helpless beneath him, unable to even raise her hands to protect her head and face from the butt of his pistol as he brought it down on her. “Don’t lie to me, mami,” he screamed with each blow. “No me mienta, mami!”

  “I swear.” Her tears ran into the gashes he’d opened and mixed with the blood streaming down her face. “I told you everything.” Her voice failed her, but there were no more words to be spoken.

  Ruega por nosotros pecadores.

  He drew closer still, so she would have to look up at him, so their last moment would be an intimate one, with her looking into his eyes and him looking down into hers. His lips twisted into a wicked sneer as he leaned forward and whispered into her ear, “I believe you. Now.” He tucked away his pistol.

  And drew out his knife. He placed the blade against her throat, smiled, and then traced a path down to her belly.

  Ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte.

  Parenthood is a man’s greatest vulnerability.

  Over the course of his last twelve hours, Daniel Erickson had been held over a sixty-five-story balcony, had a finger chopped off, been shot at a dozen times, fallen forty feet, rolled down a canyon slope, and almost been hit by a car—twice. Still, with the memories of all those events as fresh in his mind as the wounds they’d left on his body, there was only one fate he truly feared. Only one outcome he wouldn’t allow himself to consider.

  Daniel raced the school-bus-colored sports car harder and harder until the non-intercooled supercharger pinned the RPMs near the red. A hundred and twenty miles per hour. He felt like he was speeding through a series of still photographs and the passing suburban scenes were pages in some pretentious coffee table book.

  In that chaotic calmness, he absentmindedly scratched at his midsection and was surprised to discover the cause of the irritation was the mysterious disc he’d slid into his shirt. He pulled it free and considered it for a moment, wondering who’d left it for him. And why.

  He opened the case and slipped it into the CD player.

  As the first track keyed up, a pair of acoustic guitars began a slow throbbing twelve-bar blues vamp. The recording sounded like it was eighty years old, but Daniel knew it wasn’t. The engineer had simply boosted the mids and then added some high compression to keep the track’s volume level, maybe blended some gray or white noise low in the mix to enhance the antiquated effect.

  The vocalist who began to sing was clearly not the black man he was trying hard to emulate, but there was nothing patronizing in the imitation. It was the sincerest form of adulation, like a young Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones’s version of Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You” or Keith Relf on the Yardbirds’s take of “Smokestack Lightning.”

  Daniel turned up the volume so he could hear the lyrics more clearly.

  Little Robert Dusty couldn’t play like Son House on guitar

  He wandered into the wilderness and came back a shooting star

  Some say he made a deal with a demon, tall and black

  But I think it was an angel who brought his lost soul back

  He rode that stretch of blacktop, it runs to heaven

  And straight through hell

  One more hard luck story than any man could tell

  Of the ones who made that music

  Unafraid to pay their dues

  And his songs still echo in the night

  The Blues Highway Blues

  It wasn’t anything Daniel had ever heard before. And there was no reason he could think of for why it had been left where his million dollars should have been.

  Granddad told lil’ Chester there were wolves out in the night

  And I’ll be damned if that old man didn’t have that story right

  Their guitars sound like wild beasts, snarling and growlin’

  And when that boy heard their blues, Good Lord, it sent him howlin’

  He drove that stretch of blacktop, it runs to heaven

  And straight through hell

  One more hard luck story than any man could tell

  Of the ones who made that music

  Unafraid to pay their dues

  And their songs still echo in the night

  The Blues Highway Blues

  At the end of that second chorus, the song shifted into an instrumental with two dueling acoustic guitars taking their turns, swooping in and out from one another like birds of prey sharing the same sky for their hunt. One player worked a slide, while the other finger-picked his part. From a modern standard, neither was technically perfect—maybe not even proficient—but what they lacked in technique they more than made up for with unrestrained passion. There was a rawness to their playing that Daniel hadn’t heard in a long time.

  Under other circumstances his initial impression of the mysterious band calling itself Dockery Plantation might have been more favorable. If he hadn’t been running from killers or racing off in a stolen car to head off the unthinkable, he probably would have been intrigued by the possibilities for a band like this. But given his life-or-death situation, his only conclusion was that there wasn’t anything in the track worth a million bucks.

  It was the most troubling part of the mystery. If the thief already had his money, why had the culprit left the CD for him?

  And then he heard the third verse.

  Poor mannish boy, Danny, hear me singing straight at you

  You know you sold your soul. And now you’ve lost that money

  too

  If you wanna earn your soul back, find where your money’s hid

  Better get down to the crossroads like young Robert did

  You just follow that blacktop, it runs to heaven

  And straight through hell

  One more hard luck story than any man could tell

  Of the ones who made that music

  Unafraid to pay their dues

  Their songs still echo in the night

  The Blues Highway Blues

  You got the Blues Highway Blues

  You got the Blues Highway Blues

  Dust your broom, Danny, you’re a travelin’ man now

  You got the Blues Highway Blues

  You got the Blues Highway Blues

  The track built in bluesy fury until it concluded with a single shot of guitars. And then silence.

  In the deep background of the track there was some unintelligible conversation between the members of the band, but no matter how loudly Daniel replayed it he couldn’t make out the words.

  There was nothing else.

  Daniel played the track several times, but that was the only thing on the disc. He frantically searched his mind for some glimmer of an idea that might explain who had taken his money. He replayed the lyrics in his head, trying to distill some meaning that might explain what was happening to him. He searched for an answer but could only conclude that whoever had taken his money had left him with nothing but “The Blues Highway Blues.”

  Across the cul-de-sac from his ex-wife’s McMansion lived a dentist who had called the cops to report noise violations when one of Zack’s bands was practicing too loudly. Daniel decided the nosey neighbor could spend his afternoon explaining to those same cops why there was a stolen sports car in his driveway and left the Lotus there. As stealthily as he could, he crossed the circle and walked to her front door.

  When his life first began to fall apart, there were plenty of well-wishers who offered Daniel the same worn-out platitudes about fish in the sea and time healing wounds that get offered to the heartbroken. That was two years ago. He was still waiting for just one of t
hem to ring true.

  She answered the door and just the sight of her standing there stirred in him a feeling that wasn’t unlike the upside-down-and-falling-fast sensation that had gripped him when he was hanging over the du Monde’s balcony and thought Moog might drop him to the ground. “Daniel?”

  She was still beautiful. No one could dispute that, although he would have understood if some might have insisted on adding “for her age” as a caveat.

  It wasn’t just the passage of time though. The divorce had been tough on both of them, but somehow all of the anger and bitterness had stayed in her face even after the proceedings had concluded. Somehow the mean little scowl with which she’d purposely regarded him at the time had distorted the fine lines in her face, leaving her eyes permanently pinched in a squint, her mouth in a perpetual sneer.

  But while time and temperament had taken a toll on her physical attributes, neither one had lessened his feelings for her. Nothing had. Not the merciless lawyers or the court-ordered bloodlettings. Not the psychologists, the psychiatrists, or the prescriptions. Not even his breakdown. Nothing. Nothing could lessen what he still held in his heart.

  He was self-aware enough to recognize his feelings were pathetic. Any number of trained professionals had convinced him of that fact. Family, friends, and business associates too. And yet at the same time he couldn’t help thinking there was more than a shred of nobility in his boundless romanticism. If every man had a fatal flaw, he was content to have her be his.

  “What do you want?” She made no effort to hide her contempt, maybe even exaggerated it for her own effect.

  Daniel didn’t care. Not this morning. “I need to come in, Connie.”

  “What the hell happened to you?” She sounded more curious than concerned. “You look like shit.” She noticed the blood-stained bandages wrapped around his hand, which he was trying to conceal behind his back. “What the hell happened to your hand?”

  “It’s nothing, but I look better than I feel.” He checked over his shoulder. “I need to come in.”

  “I’m a little busy right now,” she purred, tucking a strand of auburn hair behind her ear and adjusting but not pulling closed the silk bathrobe and negligee that did little to conceal what he couldn’t force himself to forget.