Chapter 33 - The Whiteout Convoy
We hit Route 9 in Arthur’s beaten 1988 Ford F-250, its heavy iron snowplow throwing sheets of crystallized sleet across the pitch-black highway. The blizzard had erased the centerline. The world was reduced to forty feet of swirling white illuminated by our halogen beams, bordered by the jagged black teeth of frozen pine trees.
The CB radio mounted beneath the dashboard crackled with erratic static.
"...all units... northern bridge is out... water main breached at the courthouse... state police dispatches report an unauthorized heavy transport moving south from the quarry..."
"That's her private security," Arthur said, his eyes narrowed as he fought the heavy play in the steering wheel. "Victoria hired private contractors out of Cincinnati when Julian went into hospice. Former transit cops and quarry guards. Men who don't ask questions as long as the wire transfers clear."
"How did she get into the cellar, Dad?" I shouted over the roar of the un-muffled engine. "You locked those access grates after the collapse in ninety-six."
"Someone gave her the keys, Nathan."
I looked at him. The green glow of the dashboard gauges carved deep canyons into his profile. "Who?"
"Judge Holloway died last Thursday," Arthur said softly. "The probate clerk who took over his desk is Victoria’s half-sister. Evelyn warned me about her forty years ago. Said that blood runs thicker than water, but Vance blood runs thicker than crude oil."
Suddenly, the red brake lights of an overturned vehicle cut through the snow ahead.
It was Mark’s Department of Transportation patrol truck, lying on its side against an ancient dry-stone wall. The driver-side window was spiderwebbed with bullet impacts, the safety glass frosted white.
Arthur slammed the brakes. The heavy truck fishtailed, tires biting through the slush until the plow screeched against the macadam, stopping ten feet from the wreckage. I was out of the door before the truck had settled, drawing my grandfather’s service revolver from my coat pocket.
"Mark!" I yelled, skidding on black ice.
The driver’s door was jammed shut against the frozen dirt, but through the shattered rear window, a gloved hand emerged, holding a red flare that had burned out to charcoal.
"Nathan..." Mark’s voice was barely a croak.
I hauled myself up onto the truck’s exposed drive shaft, peering into the inverted cab. Mark was suspended by his seatbelt, his face covered in dark, half-frozen blood from a scalp laceration. Beside him on the roof of the cab sat a water-resistant Pelican case, cracked open, its contents exposed to the freezing rain.
"They took... the certified copies," Mark gasped, his breath coming in shallow, fluttering bursts. "Two black Suburbans. They rammed me off the culvert. Nathan... she had the Sheriff's personal car with her."
"Hobbs is dirty?" I asked, my heart pounding against my ribs.
May you like
"Hobbs wasn't dirty," Mark whispered, clutching my forearm with fingers that were rapidly losing their warmth. "Hobbs is dead. I saw his body in the back of their lead vehicle. Victoria isn't running from the law anymore, boys. She's executing it."
***
