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The girl's eyes were wide. Deer caught in the headlights. The remaining gang members turned on her, walking her backward, trapping her against Ranger's truck. Another gun was drawn. A knife appeared.
I pressed the panic button on the trucks remote and the truck alarm went off.
Everyone jumped.
The SUV guys piled into their car, backed up, and left the lot, burning rubber.
I did a double hit on the panic
button, and the alarm went silent.
I turned to Lula and realized Pancek was missing. We'd forgotten to keep watch over Pancek. Worse than losing Pancek, he'd taken off wearing a sixty-dollar pair of cuffs.
Lula was looking around, too. 'Don't you hate when they take off like that?' she said. 'If there's one thing I can't stand it's a sneaky felon.'
'He can't have gone far. You take one side of the lot and I'll take the other, and we'll meet in the theater.'
There was the sound of a car engine coming to life in the second row. A car was gunned out of its parking space, and the car roared off toward the exit. I caught a glimpse of yellow hair on the guy behind the wheel.
'Guess we don't have to search the lot no more,' Lula said. 'Bet it's hard to drive with those cuffs on. Think you should have cuffed him behind his back like the book says.'
'He didn't seem dangerous. I was trying to be nice to him.'
'See where that gets you. Never be nice to people.'
I unlocked the truck and climbed in. 'Maybe he's dumb enough to go home,' I said to Lula. 'We'll check out his house.'
We pulled out of the lot, and I saw two Hamilton Township PD cars angled into the curb, lights flashing, half a block down. One was a squad car and the other was unmarked. The SUV was in front of the squad car. The occupants of the SUV were palms down on the SUV hood, getting searched.
I eased past the police cars and recognized Gus Chianni. He was standing back, letting the uniforms do their job. Most of the
Hamilton cops were strangers to me. I knew Chianni because he was one of Morelli's longtime drinking buddies.
I stopped and powered my window down. 'What's going on?' I asked Chianni.
'Speeding,' he said, smiling. 'We were answering your call and ran across this SUV doing eighty in a twenty.'
'It's the car I called in.'
His smile widened. 'I figured.' He took a step back and looked at Ranger's truck. 'You steal this?'
'Borrowed.'
'Bet Joe's happy about that.'
All the cops knew Rangers truck.
'Gotta go,' I said. If Chianni was here, Morelli wasn't far behind.
The guy in the white silk warm-up suit turned his head sideways and stared at me. His face held no expression, but his eyes were like still pools in the river Styx. Black and bottomless and terrifying.
He gave a slight nod, as if to say he knew who I was. His right hand lifted off the SUV hood and he made the sign of a gun, thumb up, index finger extended. He mouthed the word bang at me.
Chianni saw it, too. 'Be careful,' he said to me.
I went out to the highway and drove in the opposite direction to what I would ordinarily take to get to the Burg.
This is bad,' Lula said when we were on the highway. That guy recognized you. He knew who you were. And it wasn't because he saw you in the lot just now, either. None of them saw us in the lot.
