Voodoo Ridge

“We all have our off days.”

I asked him if he knew anybody in town who drove a green van.

“A green van… a green van…” He closed his eyes, trying to focus, working the question like a contestant on final Jeopardy. “No, dude,” he said after several seconds, “can’t say that I do. My buddy, Twitch, he’s got this totally tricked-out blue van with a Porta-Potty in it and everything, but it’s, like—”

“Blue.”

“Exactly.”

“Look, if you do happen to spot any green vans, or the woman from that picture,” I said, handing him my card, “I’d appreciate a call.”

“No worries.” He grabbed his own business card from above the sun visor and handed it to me. “You need any snow plowed, firewood, run some errands, there’s my number, right there. Ask anybody, OK? I’m, like, totally reliable.”

“I’ll, like, keep you in mind.”

Back inside the Yukon, I glanced at his card in the glow of the dashboard instruments. His corporate DBA was, “The Plowman Cometh.”

Clever. I wondered if I’d ever smile again.

The red message light was blinking on my beige-colored room phone when I got back to the Econo Lodge. It was Streeter. He’d called about an hour earlier to apprise me that the fingerprint dusting of the room where Sava

“Don’t think we’re giving up, we haven’t even started,” he said on the machine. “I’m still confident we’ll find her. I also have an update on the Lovejoy homicide I thought you’d find interesting. Call me when you get a chance.”

Streeter had been unable to reach me on my cell phone. The thought occurred to me: what if Crocodile Dundee had the same problem — tried to call me with instructions and couldn’t get through because I had yet to figure out all of my phone’s mind-numbing, over-engineered features. What if he’d taken his frustration out on Sava

Walking quickly into the bathroom, I filled a plastic cup with water and gulped it down, refilled the cup, and drank that, too. Suddenly, I couldn’t catch my breath. My heart began pounding crazily, like it was skipping beats, and for a moment, I thought I was dying. Not even in a firefight, or diving in on a heavily defended target, had I ever felt anything remotely close to panic. But that’s what it was. A panic attack. Complete, unbridled terror.

I went and sat down on the corner of the bed, closed my eyes, and concentrated, trying to will my heart to normalcy. When that didn’t work, I rolled onto the floor and did stomach crunches to the point of exhaustion. That seemed to do the trick; the skipping beats stopped. I lay back on the carpet, my right triceps in spasm, too tired to move.

The Buddha believed that fear is the result of attachment — to ourselves, our possessions, the people we love. Everything in life is transient, including life. Embrace that transience, recognize that all those attachments are fleeting, Buddhists reason, and you’ll ultimately shed your fear. Could be all of that is true. I don’t really know. But if the Buddha had sat in the same room with Sava

My cell phone was on the nightstand above me. I pushed myself off the floor and grabbed it, peering closely at the screen, trying to figure out if I’d missed Dundee’s call or text message. Whether he’d tried to reach me or not, I couldn’t tell; advancements in digital communications are an anathema to the analog me. I lay down on the bed, not bothering to undress or pull down the bedspread, and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the sun was coming up and my phone was chiming with an incoming text message:

Behind Applebee’s. Suitcase. You got 10 minutes. Will call to confirm you have it. No cops or she dies. You’re late, she dies.

The room clock read 7:35 A.M. The text had come in two minutes earlier. I grabbed my duffel bag and bolted, throwing open the motel’s office door on my way to my car.

“Where’s the Applebee’s?”

The college kid ma

“Excuse me?”

“Applebee’s. Where is it?”

She pointed. “Take a right on Lake Tahoe Boulevard. It’s about three and a half miles. But I’m pretty sure they don’t open ’til—”

I reached the Yukon, tossed my duffel into the passenger seat, hopped in, fired up the engine, and roared out, onto the boulevard.

The road was still snow packed and icy in spots, but traffic fortunately was sparse. I fishtailed around a garbage truck and a snail-like Mercedes 450 whose driver, a wizened old man, looked to be steering with one hand and conducting Beethoven’s Fifth with the other. As I glanced back to pass him, a deer and her spotted fawn bounded out of nowhere, directly into my path. I cut the wheel hard left and slid along the shoulder, fighting to keep 5,200 pounds of SUV from going off the road. How I avoided hitting Bambi and his mother, I’ll never know.

The Yukon’s odometer told me I had another two miles to go. That was assuming the desk clerk was correct in her distance estimate. Assuming the clock on the dashboard was set correctly, I had six minutes to get there, find a suitcase, and send a text message acknowledging that whatever was in that suitcase was in my possession, or Sava

The traffic light ahead was red. Vehicles were begi

Four minutes.

I gu

Ever so subtly, I could feel the Yukon swaying left and right as the front tires danced on patches of black ice.

I heeded the words of Jose Camacho and slowed down.

Three minutes.

The landscape passed by as a blur. Towering pine forests and minimalls punctuated by stand-alone ski shops, banks, burger joints, cafés, and budget motels. Ordinarily, I would’ve mentally catalogued them all, consciously and automatically mapping my exfiltration route — the byproduct of escape and evasion training. But I was so laser-focused on making it to Applebee’s in time, I barely noticed any of it.

Two minutes.

The road faded left and suddenly I was tapping like crazy on the brakes, hook-sliding on the ice to a stop. An eighteen-wheeler had jackknifed 200 meters ahead of me. The road in either direction was blocked with traffic.