The radio clicked into carrier silence.
I didn't take time to wrap my ribs. I found a pair of grease-spotted cotton gloves on the workbench, pulled them over my bruised hands, and unbolted the rear shed doors.
Outside, the air was sharp with September frost. The old gravel lane behind Ruby Lane Diner ran along the creek bank, shielded from the front parking lot by eight feet of overgrown sumac and the rusted metal panels of the diner's trash corral. Beyond the weeds, idling silently on the spur's timber ties, sat Martha's 1994 flatbed utility truck, its wooden stake sides greyed with age and its tailpipe hung with baling wire.
I stayed low, keeping my back to the weathered fence until I reached the cab. The driver's door opened with a dull rattle. The ignition key was already sitting in the switch, tied to a brass bottle opener with a greasy leather thong.
Through the rear-view mirror, between the bare branches of the sumac hedge, I could see the roof of Hollister’s cruiser out front. He hadn't turned the motor off. His spotlight was angled straight at the front double doors of the diner, where Martha was now standing behind the glass, wiping down the register counter with a white towel that was no longer clean.
I pulled the manual choke out half an inch, shifted the floor lever into first gear, and turned the key.
The starter ground twice against the flywheel, a heavy, iron-on-iron rasp that sounded like a gunshot in the still morning. Then the eight-cylinder engine caught with a rough, thumping roar, sending a blue cloud of exhaust out into the elderberry bushes.
In the mirror, Hollister’s brake lights flared red.
His cruiser surged forward off the highway shoulder, swinging across the gravel apron toward the gravel driveway that wrapped around the east side of the building. He had heard the motor.
I dumped the clutch. The rear duals bit into the wet ballast rock of the old spur, throwing gravel against the wooden stakes as the truck lunged forward down the creek road, heading straight for the timber trestle that crossed the county line.
CHAPTER 3: The Boardroom Under State Seal
The timber ties of the Blackwood Creek trestle hammered against the flatbed’s front axle like rapid gunshots. Every jolt drove a spike of cold fire through my fractured ribs, forcing my chin down toward the cracked steering wheel. In the side mirror, Wayne Hollister’s black-and-gold cruiser crested the gravel rise behind Ruby Lane Diner, throwing twin rooster tails of crushed limestone into the September fog. He wasn't running his siren. In Oakhaven, Wayne only ran his siren when he wanted an audience; when he wanted to bury an administrative theft under county clay, he worked in total silence.
I slammed the floor lever into third, the old transmission grinding its teeth before the gears caught. The four-mile bypass corridor between the diner and the District Four weigh station had been graded five months earlier, leaving two parallel lanes of red subsoil packed hard by county rollers.
Wayne cut the distance to three car lengths on the straightaway. The cruiser’s steel push-bumper tapped Martha’s wooden tailgate, splintering a weathered oak slat that spun into the ditch. He didn't try to pit me. He knew sixty miles an hour on untreated clay would roll a forty-year-old farm flatbed into the irrigation ditch, ending both the dispute and the state audit in a single coroner's report.
Ahead, past the mile marker nine sign, the low green metal roof of the state scale house cut through the mist.
Outside the inspection bay, a white state transport van sat parked beside the certified axle pads. Standing near the portable generator was a tall man in a navy windbreaker bearing the yellow Department of Transportation emblem: Paul Miller, the district field engineer Karen had tracked from Norfolk.
I stood on the brake pedal forty yards out. The flatbed drifted sideways, tires howling across the wet aggregate before slapping against the concrete safety island of the scale. The sudden deceleration ripped the remaining air from my chest. I jammed the transmission into park, grabbed the torn corner of the assessor's brown envelope from the passenger seat, and shoved the dented door open with both boots.
Wayne’s cruiser skidded to a halt ten feet back, its heavy steel bumper blocking the scale house ramp.
"Step away from the state vehicle, Walter!" Wayne roared through his open window, his hand resting heavy on his service sidearm as he kicked his door open. "Mr. Miller, this individual is trespassing on an active right-of-way corridor! He is non-compliant and mentally erratic!"
Miller turned from his clipboard, his pen freezing over a three-part carbon receipt book. He took in my split brow, the blood drying dark down my flannel shirt, and the ragged brown slip clamped in my shaking fingers.