Halfway to Hell: A Mike Dodge Mystery

January 2024

The Road

We were in the home stretch, the third day toward Gilbert and a winter of not Illinois. I had my own silent version of car bingo: As we’d passed The Arch onto 44 down past Rolla and Tulsa and Amarillo, the roadside raccoons became possums became deer and armadillos and furry things that might have taken us out first had we not blasted an interstate system through the bluffs and hills and cliffs and buttes from sea to shining sea.

“What was that?” Sarah gasped as I scored another lupine/sasquatch and we buzzed the umpteenth indigenous casino along the broad, flat highway. We’d just come out of Gallup and Track 34 of the Harry Bosch I’d downloaded for the trip along with Obama’s Dreams of My Father and a Jonathan Kellerman I wasn’t certain we hadn’t heard on a previous migration.

The question proved moot – Sarah was a harsh mistress with the drive-time diversion, and each hour of contemporary theater of the mind was followed by The Playlist. The Playlist was compiled and pirated and cobbled by a committee of one using the eeny-meeny paradigm, which usually meant a Fifteenfer Friday of Conway Twitty or the complete Zac Brown catalogue punctuated on an every-other-odyssey basis by a 30-mile all-Motown blast for the fat guy in the driver’s seat. As the twang of steel guitars filled the new Palisade’s suddenly quite claustrophobic interior, I glanced out over sheared peaks and scrub.    

“Halfway to Hell,” I murmured.

 “I know,” Sarah said, “but I let you have an extra hour of your Connelly yesterday in exchange for eating at Panera.”

“No, no. It’s shit-kicking time. I was just thinking about the Gustafsons.”

“After all this time? I’d forgotten all about them. Thank God. What made you think about them again?”

I started as the lane sensor sounded, and a semi with what looked like a Roman coin and the scripted slogan ‘Go on reassured ‘ on the side nearly blew my door off. “You remember that call I got last month? From Curtis?”

“You might be more specific.” Curtis Mead was a cop, and thus to Sarah’s view a good reason to blow out of town every now and again.

“Suffice it to say I don’t think we need to worry about the Gustafsons any more,” I said.

**

54 Weeks Earlier

The AZ

“We’re the Road Rangers. If you’ve been the victim of an accident by no fault of your own, and the insurance companies won’t pay, we won’t stay in our lane.”

I’d been in the word business for 33 years, and the tagline, with its contradictory messaging, made me wince slightly. But the attorney’s suit was several pay grades above the Men’s Wearhouse special I’d been saving since ’98 for the funeral home, so who was I to play Nuance Police?

“Can’t quite cut it in the bedroom, guys?” The ex-quarterback, on the other hand, was hawking mail-order hard-on pills, so I sauntered to the fridge and selected another dollar store water. A pair of headlights swept the darkened front window, then pulled in apparently next to the Honda under the carport. The high, intense lights danced on the front of the condo as the driver attempted to stick the landing. I shut my eyes waiting for the crunch of metal and whatever it was they made Hondas out of, but the engine died and the lights phased out.

I settled back into the recliner. ED Guy faded out and the dogs faded in under a bed of Sarah McLachlan. I hastily muted the Sony and checked my Facebook.  

Then what to my wandering eyes should appear but an old dude on my porch clearly blitzed on his beer. Stella Artois or Amstel, I guessed, as my heart slowed to a clatter; I hauled my ass up to see what the fuck was the matter.

He looked somehow familiar, in that disorienting sense of the wrong face in the wrong place. He began pounding on the glass and miming curses as I tugged frantically at the dowel rod that served as our crack security system. I finally freed it in one Arthurian jerk, and peeked at the DVR clock.12:24. I hesitated at the slider handle, but the man was portly and impaired, and I could probably knock him over with one poke of the door stick.

“The fuck are you doing in there?” he shrieked. “How’d you get in?”

“Jeez, shush,” I whispered desperately. “It’s my fucking house. You’re lost. What’s your unit number?”

“One-twenty—“ he began. Then he waggled his index finger in my face – the effort almost threw his balance. “Ohhh, nooooo. You tell me yours, asshole.”

“124.”

The man paused, though the polo pony on his golf shirt continued to caper about in the TV room light. “You got proof?”

“Yeah. On the front of the house.”

“You left your gate open, which posed an erotic, enteric, fuck, attractive nuisance. Asshole.”

I got a bad feeling. Then, he pivoted to display the erotic patio gate, and fell back on the infrared grill, knocking the kettle lid to the cement and popping the screws out of two of three legs. As he turtled on the patio, I could see the charred pin-striping on his Ralph Lauren.

“I’m fucking suing your ass!” he shrilled, and it fell into place. The man hauled himself up, and staggered out my enteric gate. Halfway down the walk, he pirouetted like Natalie Portman on Stoli. “I’m gonna own, what’d you say the number was?”

“755,” I supplied.

“755,” he echoed triumphantly.

I restored the pole, and was gratified Gil Grissom had again commandeered the streaming feed. I yelped as a specter in a Susan Komen tee and fleece sweats emerged from the darkness.

“Could you please, please turn that thing down?” Sarah growled.

**

“Barry Gustafson, Barry Gustafson,” Sarah pondered over Wheaties and Hoda.

“’The Gustafson Law firm. We take a personal interest in personal injury.’ I would’ve gone with ‘taking personal injury personally,’ but hey…”

She dropped her spoon. “That’s the jerk who stuck it to Cousin Julie’s insurance after that guy in the van T-boned her? The guy who claimed Julie jamming on the brakes as he plowed into her caused an ACL injury?”

“You may have mentioned it,” I suggested. “He also got that big $25 million settlement off a trucking company few years back. Think he’d have done better than this. ” 

**

Gustafson turned up as I was clearing the patio of the debris blown our way by the landscapers. I lowered the blower in a reluctant effort to avoid further litigatory wrath.

“About last night,” Gustafson began.

“It’s all right.” Until I had to pan-fry our burgers.

“No, it is not,” the attorney said.

I smiled, the Great Peacemaker. “We all overindulge from time to time.”

Gustafson blinked. “You misunderstand. I wanted to see what you had to say for yourself before I proceed with any action.”

My fingers tightened about the blower trigger.

“You trespassed on my property in the middle of the night, menaced me with your, your fist-pounding, and then murdered my Grillmaster.” I stated. “You know what? Gimme your e-mail.”

“I’m not giving you shit,” he declared stiffly.

“The video’s probably too big for a text. I want to give you first dibs before I hand it over to the HOA board and, if you want, the Gilbert PD or Action 17 News.”

Gustafson backed up a step, and I feared for the further desecration of my grill.

“Let’s just call it an unfortunate misunderstanding. No harm, no foul,” he said, sidestepping the Grillmaster’s remains.

**

The shiny new Grillmaster appeared two days later while we were at the Wallyworld.

“Well, that was nice,” Sarah remarked as I wrestled the box through the open gate.

I plopped onto the lounger. “I think it’s less an olive branch than countersuit insurance. He could’ve at least assembled it.”

“That’s what I’ve got my big old handyman for,” Sarah cooed, patting my knee. “By the way, they’re bumping the HOA fee another $20. One of the owners sued to take out all the pines and oleander bushes.”

I glanced down the walk, past our oleanders and the huge evergreen that shaded our patio at high sun.

“Well,” I sighed, “I guess they are an attractive nuisance.”

**

“Hey, buddy.”

“Jesus,” I muttered. I supposed it was 5 o’clock somewhere in Finland.

“The new grill working for you?” he slurred as he ushered himself into a patio chair.

“Yeah. Thanks. What’s up?”

Gustafson sighed as if passing a kidney stone or a kidney. “Look, I realize I may have contributed to our misunderstanding the other night. All I can say is, Rita’s fucking holy roller cousins were coming up from Payson for a couple days, and I’d just gotten (sexually graphic verb deleted) at the course.”

“Sure.”

“Lemme ask. You been retired, what?”

“About 10 years.”

“What’d you do?”

“Reporter.”

Gustafson winced, slightly. “You miss it?”

“Almost never. I mean, I still freelance every once in a while, but no, I don’t miss the politics.”

The attorney nodded slowly. “What I should do. This place is paradise, and just ripe for litigation with all the old folks and rednecks and” -- Please don’t, I prayed – “the fucking Mexicans. Yeah, a little freelance consulting. Maybe even get licensed out here. Upshot is, could I appeal to your goodwill to um, get rid of that video? If it ever turned up anywhere, it could destroy my legal credibly.”

“Hey,” I lied. “It’s like it never existed.”

**

December 2023

Lincolnland

That resolved, we never heard from the Gustafsons again, though the board moved our parking slot so the new curb cut down could accommodate the lovely Rita’s recurring tendonitis. Then, Curtis’ call.

“Before they vanished off the highway, Gustafson texted the wife’s relatives that they were ‘halfway to Hell,’ then a few seconds later, a couple of names. ‘HG and a V. Christopher. Either of those ring a bell?”

I considered. “Nope. His circle was a few levels either higher or lower than ours.”

“Well, a second or two later, he texts the cousins to delete the second message, that he accidentally sent it to them. Then radio silence, and when the Gustafsons didn’t show, they called the state cops, then the Gilbert PD.”

“Who reached out to you.”

“Bigshot lawyer, at least in our little fishbowl.” Det. Mead chuckled. “Sorry — dude’s a douchebag and a racist piece of shit besides. Kinda agree with the cousin — Gustafson had the Mark of the Devil.”

I frowned, and Curtis waited.

“I don’t get the text – the first one,” I finally murmured. “Gustafson seemingly couldn’t wait to get away from Illinois and onto the course full-time. He called the place paradise. So why would he refer to Snowbird Country as Hell? Was something or someone waiting for them out there?”

“You have exceeded my probable level of interest,” Curtis stated.

“Any case, I don’t believe it had a thing to do with their text.”

“You realize, when you have the actual stroke, nobody’s going to know.”

“I’ll be the boy who cried something that sounds much like wolf. Let’s move on to Gustafson’s second cryptic text. The two names – HG and V. Christopher.”

“The Gilbert folks couldn’t find anyone connected to the Gustafsons initials HG or last name Christopher. There’s a cousin on the wife’s side named Chris, and on a hunch, I checked the Christopher Law Partners, you know, down by the City Complex? No Victors or Vernons or Vikkis or Veronicas, and what Christophers there are are estate lawyers who like most of the local bar don’t especially care for Gustafson. The Gilbert detectives are working on possibilities from their end. Soooo, when you guys heading out?”

“Right after the New Year, I hope. Less you want me to stick around , maybe close a few cases—“

The phone seemingly malfunctioned. There’d be time for goodbyes later.

**

On The Road Again

It came to me somewhere between Amarillo and Santa Rosa, as the billboards for truck stop DQs and Indian buffets and gen-u-wine indigenous pottery and blankets and old Route 66 curiosities sucking their last oxygen and pleas for the unborn and guns and the politicos who love them equally and the lawyers, oh, the lawyers, whizzed past. I hadn’t heard back from Curtis, but even with what I’d given him, it could be weeks.

“Curtis checked out lawyers who might have consulted him at the Millington end of the line, but I think they were probably just happy to have one more shark out of the pool,” I told Sarah. “But what about Gilbert or Mesa or Phoenix? The three-ring circus of showbiz shysters. That blustering band of billboard barristers. The loquacious late-night litigatory —“

“Do I commandeer the wheel and steer us into the guardrail?” Sarah inquired.

“I wondered if any of these guys might specialize in highway stuff, like car-truck accidents. Remember that case where the semi-driver killed that old couple on 39 back home? Gustafson proved the guy was violating hours of operation and falsifying logs to stay on schedule? And then sued the trucking company for coercing drivers to disobey the regs? Then teamed up with a big national firm to bring a class action suit against the industry?”

“Nope.”

“Well, you might be interested to know the name of the firm that worked with Gustafson on the case. Hudson/Gregg, AKA The Road Rangers, offices in L.A., Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, and Phoenix.”

I spotted the Love’s truck stop off to the right, over a trio of rises. “I need a pit stop. You?”

“We just stopped an hour back. And we’re not that far out of Holbrook.”

“The male bladder works in mysterious ways.”

I’ve never long-hauled, never led a big old convoy truckin’ on into the night. But I had worked the infrastructure beat for decades.

“Hey,” Sarah snapped as I turned to left instead of following the tourists to the Land of Slushees and Whoppers. I pulled over to a grassy knoll beyond the lumbering giants.

“So I had a good idea H/G was looking to tap their snowbirding former co-counsel. But why? Then I realized the cops weren’t looking for a Violet or Vaughn Christopher. If Gustafson was hooking up with The Road Rangers, then V. Christopher likely wasn’t a name, but legal shorthand for the case at hand. Versus Christopher. Given Gustafson’s and H/G’s specialty, Christopher would be the defendant.”

“I thought you had a biological emergency.”

“Mysterious ways. Look over there, the truck with the red cab. The one with what looks like a coin on the trailer. You ever heard of Hermes? One of the major intermodal shipping/global e-commerce companies, out of Germany. Named after the Greek god of commerce and travel. Hermes’ Roman equivalent was Mercury. As in the defunct car company, the aircraft manufacturer, the bouquet-totin’ mascot for FTD. Goodyear Tire’s logo is the winged foot of Hermes. Atlas, the moving company, was named after the Greek titan forced to carry the heavens on his shoulders.

“So once the big-time pagan gods are taken, where do you go for corporate hyperbole? Especially in the Glorious 21^st, where the Right buys its scrapbooking supplies and chicken sammies from God-fearin’ corporate opportunists. And trucking? OMG. Go on Google, and you’ll find beaucoups shipping and logistics companies that make God your co-driver. The closest to a Hermes or a Mercury in Christian theology is probably St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers.” I nodded again toward the red-cabbed semi. “That motto under the art, ‘Go on reassured?’ That’s a translation of a French inscription engraved on some St. Christopher’s medals like the one on that tailer.”

“OK,” Sarah announced. “Class is over. Now, I need a pit stop.”

“Miracles of miracles,” I proclaimed, crunching out for the tourist pumps.

Moments later, my refreshed and refocused bride handed me a Slim Jim as an expression of her love language. It wasn’t until we were cruising past Holbrook’s vintage dinosaurs and the Mexican cafes and motels of a temporarily postwar America that Sarah sighed loudly.

“All right,” she conceded. “How do you get from a saint to Hell?”

“Halfway to Hell,” I corrected. “And the Christopher folks are no saints. There’s some question about whether the Christopher driver who wiped out that seniors tour bus on the 17 last year had been properly vetted and licensed, plus the rumors the company’s hooked up with some Mob and cartel types. Curtis told me the Gilbert PD checked in with H/G, which lawyered up until they realized Gustafson and Wife might have been offed by the company they planned to sue on behalf of the families of the Boulder Red Hat Nomads. An internal check of H/G’s phone records showed a recent paralegal hire had been chatting it up with Christopher’s Albuquerque and Chicago’s offices.

“The big problem will be locating the Gustafsons within all those square miles of desert and plains. I offered the cops a more precise starting point – somewhere between about 45 miles east of Holbrook and Payson. When his ‘Holy Roller’ cousin asked for an ETA, Gustafson gave him a passive-aggressive comeback. The cousins maintained Gustafson bore the Mark of the Devil, and Gustafson thought he’d needle them back.

“My guess is the cops will raid Christopher Trucking’s service facility near Holbrook and maybe even track down the semi that forced the Gustafsons to the side of road and, shades of Banacek, loaded their tank of a car and Barry and Rita into a trailer or onto a car transport. Now remember – when Gustafson sued the trucking company back home, he’d have poured over tons of police reports, CDL logs, diagrams, and maps. The Mark of the Devil, if you remember your Omenverse, is the number 666. Gustafson told his wife’s cousins they’d just passed Mile Marker 333.”