Kill Devil Falls Read online

  Acknowledgments

  A big shout-out to the following: Lindsay Friedman for telling Bob Diforio he should represent me, and Bob for listening to her; Terri Bischoff, Amy Glaser, Katie Mickschl, Sandy Sullivan, and the gang at Midnight Ink; Chris Alexander, Nicholas Sigman, and Jon Klingborg for notes and suggestions; mom and dad for the obvious; and Lanchi, Sophie, and Sylvie for everything else.

  Copyright Information

  Kill Devil Falls © 2017 by Brian Klingborg.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  As the purchaser of this ebook, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

  Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First e-book edition © 2017

  E-book ISBN: 9780738752334

  Book format by Bob Gaul

  Cover design by Kevin R. Brown

  Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Klingborg, Brian, author.

  Title: Kill Devil Falls / Brian Klingborg.

  Description: First edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota: Midnight Ink, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016052436 (print) | LCCN 2017005150 (ebook) | ISBN

  9780738752013 | ISBN 9780738752334

  Subjects: LCSH: United States marshals—Fiction. | Bank robberies—United

  States—Fiction. | Sierra Nevada Region (Calif. and Nev.)—Fiction. |

  GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3611.L5629 K55 2017 (print) | LCC PS3611.L5629 (ebook)

  | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016052436

  Midnight Ink does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

  Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites.

  Midnight Ink

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1

  BEFORE SHE WALKED THROUGH the door, Lee Larimer had never once laid eyes on Helen Morrissey. Didn’t know her from Adam. Could be she was a real sweetheart. Active in the local church. Volunteered at an old folks’ home, emptying bed pans, spooning baby food into toothless mouths. Rescued stray kittens. Lee could give a good goddamn.

  Within two minutes of her arrival, he’d pegged her for a cop. And decided, odds were she was going to die.

  Rosa’s Café (Home of the Chili Cheese Fries Burger!) sat on the outskirts of a slowly decaying town in the Sierra Nevada foothills, just off Highway 80. It was a ramshackle structure, approximately the size of a shoebox, reeking of old bacon grease, frequented by three kinds of clientele: long-haul truckers, geriatric gamblers heading to Reno for the nickel slots, and unwashed backpackers.

  When Helen entered, the only other customers, aside from Lee, were two truck drivers in nearly identical flannel shirts, down vests, and fly-specked ball caps. The one sitting closest to the door was thickset, with Popeye forearms, aviator sunglasses, and a mustache. The other was rail-thin apart from an almost perfectly rounded gut, like a python who’d just swallowed a kid goat.

  Helen was dressed in dark pants, a blue shirt, a medium-weight coat, and black tactical boots. Her hair was drawn into a tight ponytail. She wore a trace of lipstick and sensibly modest gold studs in her earlobes. Lee guessed she was thirty or so. Her features were a tad sharp to be considered beautiful, yet she was striking in a tightly wound sort of way.

  Lee’s impression: given the surroundings, the lady stuck out like a diamond in a mangy dog’s asshole.

  Helen paused in the doorway, her eyes sweeping the cafe, noting the patched vinyl booths on the left (the one farthest from the entrance occupied by Lee), a bathroom door in the corner, a peeling Formica counter on the right where the two truckers slouched, the swinging door leading to the kitchen behind it.

  As her gaze fell on Lee, he lowered his head and shoveled a wet forkful of eggs, dripping yolk and Tabasco sauce, into his mouth.

  He was wearing one of his many thrift-store disguises. Enough to not look himself, but not so much he garnered unwanted attention. His normally longish, jet-black hair was cut short and speckled with gray, aging him a good ten years. His customary week-old scruff was shaved clean. He wore glasses with black plastic frames. A touch of bronzer darkened his complexion.

  The piece de resistance was his Operation Enduring Freedom camouflage fatigues. Military personnel were a common enough sight in small-town America these days. Nobody batted an eye or gave a soldier a hard time. Quite the contrary. Most folks bent over backward for a man in uniform. Accorded him an extra measure of respect. Didn’t ask too many questions, just thanked him shyly for his service on behalf of the country.

  Already, the waitress had refilled his drink twice without being asked.

  Lee certainly didn’t resemble his mug shots or the grainy surveillance photos released to the media. Still, it was always better to be safe than sorry. He switched the fork to his left hand, slipped his right beneath his coat.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five. He glanced up from his plate.

  Helen was frowning at the Formica counter. The seat closest to the front door was free, but frigid air leaked through the poorly sealed window facing the parking lot. She hesitated a moment, then walked over and slid onto the open stool sandwiched between the two truckers.

  Lee let out a breath. If she had any clue who he was, no way she’d take a seat with her back to him. Maybe she was just a real estate agent checking out summer rentals. Or a bank employee in town to foreclose on some unemployed single mother’s house.

  Whatever. As long as she wasn’t there for him.

  But as Helen shifted into a more comfortable position on the stool, her coat bunched up and Lee spotted the squared tip of a black leather holster dangling down her hip. Judging from its size, he guessed she was carrying something standard issue, like a Glock 17. A dependable, rugged little gun. A favorite of cops and feds alike.

  Lee fondled the smooth, cold surface of the enormous revolver resting on his lap; it was a Smith & Wesson X-Frame, with an 8 and 3/8ths-inch barrel. The X-Frame possessed the highest muzzle velocity of any mass-produced revolver on the market. It fired .200 grain, .460 caliber rounds at two thousand three hundred feet per second. If Lee were to line up everyone in the diner single file, including the waitress, line cook, and even the Mexican dishwasher, a single bullet from the X-Frame would punch right through all of them. And still have enough zip to knock the black off a crow on the other side.

  He leaned sideways to peer through the ice-streaked front window. Down in the valley, spring was slowly prying at winter’s blue-
tipped fingers, but at six thousand feet, daytime temperatures remained in the thirties and patches of black snow clung stubbornly to sidewalks and gutters.

  Only two cars occupied Rosa’s tiny parking lot. His, a shit-brown Honda Accord (stolen, plates switched with an unsuspecting soccer mom’s Highlander in a Safeway parking lot); and hers, a slightly battered white Dodge Charger.

  Lee was envious of the Charger. A V6 engine, zero to sixty in 6.6 seconds, more than enough horsepower for climbing mountain roads. He’d be lucky to squeeze a top speed of forty mph from the Honda on a steep upgrade.

  He didn’t see any police cruisers. No Crown Vics or vehicles with suspicious antenna clusters. Just two eighteen-wheelers parked on the street, no doubt property of the truckers sitting at the counter.

  Turning his attention back to the Charger, however, he spied a metal screen extending across the width of the cab behind the front seats. A cage. The kind you put criminals in when hauling them to jail.

  Lee wiped his mouth with a napkin, tossed it on his plate. He was no longer hungry.

  Helen rested her forearms on the counter. Her goal was a quick bite, and then back on the road. She desperately wanted to make it up the mountain and down again before dark.

  Her left hand landed in a patch of something moist and sticky. She lifted her palm—grape jelly. She tugged a few napkins from a metal dispenser.

  The trucker to her right chuckled. “Got a little jam on ya?”

  He was in his late fifties, with a purplish nose that looked to have been broken more than once. An ancient scar ran diagonally across the sun-roughened skin of his chin. Physically, he reminded her a bit of her father. Probably the toughest kid on his block growing up, now getting older but refusing to do so gracefully, beating back time with desperate hooks and savage uppercuts.

  Of course, her father wasn’t nearly as solicitous as the trucker. Didn’t matter if it was jam, blood, or tears, he would’ve just told her to stop being such a whiner, wipe it off, and get on with her day.

  “Yeah.” She wiped her palm with the napkins.

  “You want to save the napkin, I could lick it off for ya.”

  Helen stopped wiping. “Excuse me?”

  A waitress pushed through the kitchen door. “Hi, hon.” She smiled broadly, revealing a wad of gum squeezed between her pre-molars.

  Still processing the trucker’s offer, it took Helen a moment to answer. “Hi.”

  The waitress slipped a laminated menu on the counter. “Something to drink?”

  “Coffee.”

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “Just black, thanks.”

  “You bet.”

  Helen finished cleaning her hand, crumpled the napkin, dropped it on the counter. She decided to ignore the trucker.

  The waitress set down a chipped brown mug, filled it with coffee. She was around forty, a bleached-blonde, her hair parted down the middle and feathered. Probably the same haircut since seventh grade.

  “Know what you want, hon?”

  Helen scanned the menu. “How’s the Greek omelet?”

  The waitress scrunched her nose. “Butch, the cook? Closest he’s been to Greece is the gyro place on the other side of town. Try something else.”

  “I’ll go with two eggs, over hard, wheat toast, side of bacon, crispy.”

  “Okay. Even Butch can’t fudge that up.”

  Helen’s coat pocket buzzed. She pulled out her cell phone. The caller ID read Chowder.

  She slipped off the stool and answered the phone as she headed for the front door. “Morrissey.”

  Supervisory Deputy Marshal Rick Choder, whom Helen called Chowder but not to his face, wheezed into the mouthpiece.

  “Where you at, Morrissey?”

  She pushed through the front door of the diner and stepped into the parking lot. An icy breeze snatched at her coat. She squeezed the cell phone between her shoulder and ear and zipped up.

  “I stopped for a quick bite. I think I’m about an hour and change from Donnersville.”

  “Well, you’re not going to Donnersville anymore.”

  She felt a flush of hope. “You mean I can turn around?”

  Choder’s laugh betrayed a hint of spite. “You wish. The sheriff wasn’t able to run Crawford to the county jail, so you’ll have to pick her up where she was apprehended.”

  Helen took the phone from her shoulder with her left hand, slipped the right into her coat pocket. “What happened to the sheriff?”

  “He got an emergency call and had to take it.”

  “Why can’t one of the deputies transport her to Donnersville?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not your social secretary. Just do your job and go get her, okay, Deputy?”

  Helen clenched her fist, nails digging painfully into her palm. She pictured Choder, stupid cowboy boots he affected propped on a corner of his desk, wet grin on his punch-worthy face.

  “Where am I going now?”

  “Some Podunk town, north of Donnersville.”

  “Suck it,” she muttered.

  “What did you just say?”

  Helen was nominally a Catholic and still suffered a twinge of guilt each time she swore, which, since her recent assignment to the US Marshal’s Sacramento office with its high school locker-room ambience, had become excessive. For the past few weeks, she’d been making an effort to curb her potty mouth, substituting favorite curse words with more benign expressions.

  Hence, suck it, instead of go fuck yourself, Chowder.

  “Nothing, sir. You have directions?”

  “I’ll email them.”

  “Can you do it now? Cell coverage seems pretty intermittent up here.”

  “Roger that.”

  Chowder. She suspected he’d designated her for this crap duty out of pure vindictiveness. Because she refused to sleep with him. Or date him, or have a drink with him, or interact with him in any way at all outside the bounds of their professional relationship.

  “What’s the name of the town?”

  Again, that malicious little laugh.

  “Get this. It’s called Kill Devil Falls.”

  Lee watched Helen’s body language through the window as she spoke on the phone. He saw her shoulders hunch, her angry pacing. She didn’t care for what the person on the other end of the line was telling her. And she didn’t even glance in his direction when she came back inside. The lady was either a hell of an actress, or she truly had no clue a wanted man was sitting five feet away.

  Lee removed a roll of cash from his pocket, peeled off a twenty, and laid it on the table. He thought about it, took back the twenty, and replaced it with a ten and a five.

  Here’s what bothered him: if she was a cop, but wasn’t after him, it was a hell of a coincidence they’d both ended up in the same crappy diner in a jerkwater town halfway up the Sierra Nevadas. One hell of a coincidence.

  Like the saying goes, it’s a small world. But not that small. She must be bound for the same place he was.

  And now Lee had to make sure she never got there.

  Helen’s plate of eggs arrived just as she resumed her seat at the counter. She picked up her fork and took a bite. The trucker on her left leafed through the Chronicle’s sports pages. The waitress busied herself wiping menus with a wet dishcloth. The trucker on her right leaned over and murmured into her ear.

  “What?”

  “Like a man,” he said. “Your coffee. You drink it like a man.”

  Helen lowered her fork. “Really? How do you mean? Through a hole in my dick?”

  The waitress looked up from her menus, made a little “O” with her mouth.

  “Black. You drink it black. That’s what I meant.”

  “Oh. Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.”

  The trucker chewed a corner of his mustache, watched her take a bite of bacon. “Why? You got one?”

  Helen sighed. “What?”

  “A dick. ’Cause if you don’t, I’ll be happy to lend you mine for a spell.”
<
br />   “Hey, now,” the waitress said.

  “That’s okay,” Helen said, holding a hand up to the waitress. She finished chewing her bacon, swallowed, turned to the trucker.

  “Sir, consider this a warning. You have just surpassed your allowable limit for douchebaggery. Any further unwanted sexual advances will incur severe penalties, including, but not limited to, a slap across the face, a kick in the ass, and a hot cup of coffee dumped directly onto your ball sack. Please acknowledge this message by saying, ‘I understand.’”

  The trucker flushed. Helen heard the newspaper rattle sharply behind her.

  “Say it. ‘I understand.’”

  The trucker outweighed Helen by a hundred pounds, at minimum. He was thirty years older, but built like a Sherman tank. And if those forearms were any indication, he pumped heaps of iron.

  Helen was trained in hand-to-hand combat. Not just the basics she’d learned during her stint in the Navy and at the Marshals Academy. She could box, throw a kick, execute a decent hip throw; rolled Brazilian jiu-jitsu a couple times a week. And she’d been in a brawl or two, but never one-on-one versus a guy who looked like a finalist in the Mr. Senior Olympia powerlifting championships.

  Yet, if there was one thing she’d learned as a petite and reasonably attractive female in a work environment positively seething with alpha males, it was to never let an aggressor get the upper hand or assume a position of psychological dominance. Authority must be established right away. Doing so required taking a risk—and sometimes bluffing like a cardsharp down to his last wooden nickel.

  She slid off her stool.

  “Say it,” she growled.

  The trucker gave it a few seconds, looked away.

  “I ain’t saying a goddamn thing,” he mumbled. But that was it. He was done.

  “Fine. You stick to that.”

  She climbed back onto the stool, picked up her fork, cut into her eggs.

  “Stuck-up bitch,” the trucker muttered.

  He laid money on the counter, got to his feet. The waitress gave him the hairy eye as he walked out the door.