Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel by George R. R. Martin, Melinda M. Snodgrass Read Free Book Online Page A

reasserted command at that moment. “So strange truck rips along, loses a barrel, and then goes off the road? Seems wrong, somehow.”
    “How so?” Delpino said.
    Sheeba’s phone jingled. As she held up her finger, Jamal answered for her: “The logical sequence is, vehicle goes off the road first, spills its cargo … then gets out of ditch with no obvious help.” She gestured at the crash site. “With all the rain, there would be tracks if another vehicle helped out the first one.”
    “So we have a mystery,” Jamal said. “First step, though, is to secure that material.”
    “Where do you want it driven?” Delpino seemed eager to have this case off his plate as soon as possible.
    “Let me check.” Jamal reached for his phone. “They’ll probably want us to cordon the place off.…”
    Before he could make the call, however, Sheeba rejoined the conversation. “Get this,” she said, clicking off her phone. “Highway 519 is already cordoned off between Bergen and Hackettstown. New Jersey Highway Patrol.” Sheeba turned to Delpino. “What do you know about this?”
    “Not a thing. Traffic here is light; the spill is minuscule. And we really don’t have the authority—”
    Jamal looked down the road. Several sets of headlights burned. “Looks like an accident scene.” Christ, now he was stating the obvious. All these months with Sheeba must have affected him.
    “What are the odds of two unrelated accidents at the same time on this stretch of road?” Sheeba asked. She turned to Delpino. “Do you know anything about this?”
    “Not a thing. I got a call from dispatch just before noon and came straight here. Called in the haz-mat unit before one.” Delpino hooked a thumb toward the haz-mat truck. “This is Warren County.” He tilted an index finger toward the scene two hundred yards away. “One of those vehicles says ‘New Jersey Highway Patrol.’”
    “Shoot,” Sheeba said, “not this again. Different jurisdictions.”
    Jamal said, “The bane of SCARE ’s existence. Wherever we go, we have to make sure the local PD and the highway patrol and the sheriffs are all in the same loop…”
    Sheeba finished for him. “… and they never are!”
    “Why don’t I go?” he said. It would be informative, and would get him away from Sheeba as her blood sugar drove her to more frequent rages. He chose to walk. The cars weren’t that far, he needed the exercise, and it saved him from a pointless discussion about being sure to bring the Explorer back. Maybe Sheeba suspected his eagerness to drive away and never look back.
    Walking also allowed him to show up more or less unannounced, without adding that big movie moment of the black Explorer arriving at a crime scene.
    Which is clearly what this was: a New Jersey State Police prowler half blocked the road, its flashing cherries clearly visible in the twilight. (Even in bright sunlight, the SCARE team would have seen them from the truck spill site, except that there was a small hill between the two locations.) A coroner’s van was next to it.
    The yellow chalk figure in the middle of the highway told Jamal much of what he needed to know: they had found a body. And, from the apparent height and shape—not that a chalk outline was remotely reliable—some kind of joker.
    As Jamal approached, he saw and felt eyes turning toward him, especially those belonging to one of the New Jersey cops, a tall guy with his right arm in a sling.
    Stopping an appropriate distance away, he hauled out his shield. “Special Agent Norwood, SCARE .” As if the black suit didn’t give him away.
    “Gallo,” he said, clearly not happy with Jamal’s presence. “What brings SCARE to New Jersey?”
    Jamal jerked his head back up the highway. “We’ve got a crime scene. Ah, Federal issues. Controlled substances.” He quickly described the crash and the cargo. “And this might explain one problem we’ve found.”
    “You think they’re related?” Gallo’s whole