Murder Mountain by Stacy Dittrich Page A

three weeks before I came calling, Bob had told Matt that his first job as a runner was coming up in a week or two. It would pay fifteen hundred dollars. He was to go to an address in West Virginia that Bob would give him, deliver a supply of anhydrous ammonia to a man whom he was only to know as E, and leave.
    That was it. Lizzie would drive him. Matt thought that was the easiest thing in the world to do for fifteen hundred bucks. He told me that he didn’t know where this supply of the ammonia came from, but suspected another grabber had probably stolen it.
    “You drove in a car with anhydrous ammonia to West Virginia?” I yelled at him. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? If that propane tank would’ve leaked, you and Lizzie would’ve gone into instant respiratory distress, not to mention the possible explosion!”
    “Hey, for fifteen hundred bucks, I’d a’ walked there naked with a hypodermic needle stickin’ outta my ass! I’m not in your league, detective. People like me don’t see money like that much, if ever.” He sounded sour, defiant, and sad all at the same time.
    I just sat there and shook my head. Matt kept talking. He and Lizzie had made the drive in Lizzie’s old maroon Buick Regal to some hick town in West Virginia. Lizzie would just refer to it as “Murder Mountain,” which he’d known obviously wasn’t the town’s real name. Matt hadn’t paid too much attention to the directions or the address because Lizzie had done the driving.
    I asked him what he and Lizzie had talked about, and if she’d given away any other details about the business. Matt answered me, “No, but she did tell me she was also getting fifteen hundred bucks for the trip, and reminded me that we weren’t supposed to discuss anything with each other.”
    He thought quietly for a moment.
    “She was nervous the whole time,” he finally went on, “which I thought was strange. Bob told me that she’s one of the main runners and has done this a lot. She kept saying that when we get there I was to say absolutely nothing; just hand E the bag and get the hell out of there. She actually had me a little nervous, so I asked her how bad can this “E” dude be, ya know? She said she’ll tell me one thing but I ain’t never to tell anybody she tole me. She said, ‘He’s a cop.’ And I’m like, ‘Sweet-jesus-fucking-mama! Turn this fuckin’ car around!’ I thought she was trying to set me up! But then she said he wasn’t a cop tryin’ to bust us; he was dirty. Then she got scared and says she wasn’t talkin’ about it anymore.”
    He described going up one of the big mountains on a dirt road that was lined with trailers. About half of a mile from the top, they’d stopped at a light blue trailer with junked cars in the yard. Matt hadn’t known what he was supposed to do, so he got out of the car like Lizzie did, and they just stood there.
    “After we’d been waiting there a couple of minutes.” he went on, “A big dude came out of the trailer. And I mean a big dude! He never said a word. He just walked over to us and stood in front of Lizzie with a weird smile on his face. Lizzie looked, like, terrified, especially when that E took a strand of her hair and started smelling it, but she kept her nerve. The girl had heart. She just handed E the keys to the car and he walked around behind it and opened the trunk. Y’see, there was a hidden compartment underneath the trunk for carrying the ammonia. E knew just what to do and hauled it out. Then he handed Lizzie a plain white envelope from out of his back pocket, y’know, and started walking back towards the trailer.”
    Matt then took a deep breath and said, “And then, y’know, E stopped and turned around and looked at me and said, ‘Ya done good boy, be seein’ ya soon.’ And then he looked over at Lizzie and said, ‘I’ll miss that pretty face of yers, girlie,’ and then he walked into house.”
    Matt leaned forward and started talking