The Highway by C. J. Box

Author:C. J. Box
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Minotaur Books

27.

4:21 A.M., Wednesday, November 21

RONALD C. PERGRAM, THE LIZARD KING, nosed the Case tractor onto the trailer for the second time that night. The cold night air within the cab smelled of diesel fumes and upturned soil. Hard white stars undulated through the spires of exhaust from the engine.

When the tracks and tires were firmly on the platform, he killed the engine and climbed out. His back ached and his neck was stiff from tension and concentrating on the work and he could barely turn it. Because of the harsh white light thrown by the headlamps of the tractor as he dug the second large hole in the floor of the mountain valley, his eyes weren’t yet acclimated to the dark. His ears rang from the percussive rattle of the engine that was now ticking furiously as it cooled. So furiously, he almost didn’t hear the burr of the cell phone in the dark behind him.

So instead of chaining the tractor to the trailer and tightening the turnbuckles, he stepped off the platform onto the soft dirt and cocked his head toward the sound. He saw the phone light up in the gloom about twenty feet away at belt level. Then it rose and illuminated Legerski’s wide face in the light. Pergram saw Legerski press the phone to his ear for a second or two, then lower it and kill the call.

He waited. Legerski just stood there in the dark, saying nothing. Then: “Shit.”

“Who was that?”

“Some woman,” Legerski said. “Trouble, maybe.”

“Meaning what?”

The trooper held the phone out. “She might be the one who’s been sending him stuff all night.”

Pergram was confused for a moment, but the confusion was overtaken by sudden anger. “You kept that deputy’s phone? Why didn’t you throw it in the hole with the truck? What the hell are you thinking?”

* * *

Pergram’s last glimpse of Cody Hoyt’s pickup was as he pushed it into the huge hole with the blade on the front of the tractor. From the height of the cab, he could look down over the bed of the vehicle and see Hoyt’s body doubled over on the passenger seat floorboard. The side and back windows of the vehicle were spattered from the inside with blood and hair and brain matter. Legerski had stood off to the side as if supervising the work, which the Lizard King resented the hell out of. As far as he was concerned, someone who’d never operated heavy equipment had no right waving his arms around or shouting, “Can’t you make the hole deeper?” Nevertheless, he’d dug out a fifteen-foot-deep casket-shaped hole, pushed the truck into it, and carefully backfilled the excavation and run his treads over the top to tamp down the soil. When he was through it looked similar to the excavation he’d done earlier in the night and multiple times before: like a grave for a giant. When the hole was filled, he raked over the mound with the teeth of the backhoe to make it look more natural to the naked eye.

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