Killing Raven by Margaret Coel

Author:Margaret Coel [Coel, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 1129464
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2002-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

18

FATHER JOHN SLID into the pickup, found the cell phone in the glove compartment, and punched in Gianelli’s number. The answering machine picked up, and he heard his own voice speaking into the void. I have to talk to you. Call me.

He tossed the phone next to the tape player, flipped on Tosca again, and jammed the stick shift into reverse. He backed around the truck on the right and, forward now, spun out across the graveled drive and headed east on Seventeen-Mile Road.

He didn’t see the late-model, tan-colored truck until it had pulled around him, the noise of the engine roaring into his thoughts, tires thumping the asphalt. The truck cut in so short he had to step hard on the brake. There were two men inside, Indians by the black heads above the seat. Coming up in the rearview mirror was a dark-colored truck that looked almost purple in the sunshine. An Indian hunched over the steering wheel, another in the passenger seat.

They were crowding him now. He kept flicking his gaze between the tan truck ahead and the purple truck hugging his bumper in the rearview mirror. The driver was reaching out the window and setting something on the roof.

The siren wailed over the sounds of “E lucevan la stelle”; a blue light flashed on the roof. Ahead, the driver had turned on the right signal and raised his hand, motioning him toward the barrow ditch.

Father John kept going straight, waiting for the chance to swerve around the tan truck and gun the engine. The road stretched ahead as far as he could see. Empty. There were no houses, no one out in the fields. Nothing but the vast openness of the plains.

The Indians were not BIA police in unmarked vehicles, he was certain of it. Not state patrolmen or sheriff’s deputies or any other law-enforcement organization. He was being waylaid. Carjacking? Robbery? He stifled a laugh. He had twenty-some dollars and a few coins on him, and what would these Indians in their shiny trucks want with his old pickup?

There was a growing impatience in the whirl of the siren and the blue light behind him. Then he felt the shove against the rear bumper. The pickup lurched ahead, the music skipped a half measure. The Indian in the tan truck was gesturing with his fist toward the ditch.

Father John put on the right blinker. The instant the tan truck veered right, he jammed down on the accelerator and shot out into the oncoming lane, but the truck had swerved back. A blur of motion outside the passenger window. He stomped on the brake pedal, but it was too late. The jolt came in a cacophony of metal crumpling against metal and glass shattering. The steering wheel crashed into his ribs.

It was a moment before he understood that the pickup was standing still, the front end pushed up against the bed of the tan truck. The siren had stopped, and so had Tosca. The tape player lay upside down on the floor.

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