Accused

by Michael Kerr

“Who was that?” Betty said after hearing a man’s voice.

  “His name is Logan. He saved my life and is looking out for me, Mom.”

  “Put him on, I’d like a word with him.”

  Ellie Mae leaned forward and handed Logan the phone. He frowned but took it and said, “Yeah.”

  “My daughter tells me that you saved her life, Mr. Logan. Thank you. Will she be safe with you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll do what I can to get us both out of a tight spot.”

  “Are you her best bet?”

  “At this point in time, I think so. As for you, take heed of what Ellie said. Pack a bag and move out, now. Some seriously dangerous guys could be heading your way as we speak.”

  “How will I keep in touch?”

  “Do you and Ellie have a coffee shop or somewhere that you regularly go to when you meet up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t tell me where, just be there at nine p.m. each evening and Ellie can call and let you know the state of play.”

  Logan handed the phone back to Ellie Mae to finish off the call, and started paddling west along the arrow-straight waterway that he had no idea led to a junction of the much wider Kenta Canal.

  The sun was coming up as Logan made the decision to head south and keep on the water till they found somewhere to stay for a few hours.

  As time went by Ellie Mae’s back, shoulders and arms were aching. Logan had insisted they keep up a fast pace, and now she was almost spent as she placed the paddle on her lap and leaned forward, exhausted. It struck her that she was far from physically fit. Too many cigarettes and spending most of her free time sitting on the sofa in her trailer watching TV was a poor choice of lifestyle. It crossed her mind that if she survived this ordeal she would turn herself around, stop smoking, be more active and maybe consider a career change, though at her age that would be a difficult feat to accomplish.

  “What’s the matter?” Logan said as he stopped paddling and turned to see her hunched over with her forearms on her knees and head hung low.

  “I’m bushed, Logan. This is the most strenuous exercise I’ve done in maybe twelve years. I need to rest up for a few minutes and have a smoke.”

  Logan shrugged. He could see that the woman was almost at the end of her tether. He nodded and steered the canoe into reeds at the side of the canal.

  Mosquitoes started to bite as the temperature rose. All around them was the hum and buzz of insects and the cacophony of birdsong.

  “I need a shower, a change of clothes and some food,” Ellie Mae said as she lit a cigarette. “This wilderness crap is not my idea of fun. Daniel Boone I ain’t.”

  “Coming face to face with more of Cassidy’s crew wouldn’t be fun, either,” Logan said. “Being uncomfortable, tired and hungry for a while won’t kill us, they would.”

  “You sound as though this is just a walk in the park, Logan. As if it’s some kind of adventure. To me it’s a freakin’ nightmare.”

  “You’ve got to adapt to what is, not how you wish it was. We’re safe for the time being, and when we find somewhere to stay I’ll deal with the situation and you can go back to your life.”

  “Problem is I don’t have much of a life to go back to,” Ellie Mae said. “I’m forty-five, in a rut, and don’t have a dream to chase.”

  “A lot of it’s a state of mind, Ellie,” Logan said. “It’s easy to keep the status quo. If you want change you’ve got to step out of the rut and move on. If you have nothing to keep you tied to that trailer, pack what you need and drive away from it.”

  “Easier said than done,” Ellie Mae said as she flicked the butt of her cigarette into the weed covered water. “It all comes down to having the money to make a difference. I’ve got a couple thousand bucks in the bank and not much else in the way of assets. For people like me it’s a case of just having a roof over their head and being able to pay the bills. That governs how we live.”

  Logan shrugged his broad shoulders. He supposed that she was right, but her life up to this point in time, and how she had reached it, was not his responsibility. He would do what he could to ensure that she remained safe, and then, if it worked out, would do what he always did; hitch a ride or take a bus to somewhere else.

  “Okay,” Ellie Mae said after she had got what she supposed was her second wind. “Let’s get going. This is no place to sit around getting eaten alive by bugs.”

  Betty got dressed, filled a case with the bare necessities, including her less than expensive jewelry, switched everything off and left the apartment, to take the stairs down and leave by the rear door. A cab ride and fifteen minutes later she was knocking at the door of Elmore Crosby, a divorced friend, who’d wanted to be much more than a periodic lay since Betty’s husband, Arnold, had keeled over and died three years previously. Arnie, as everyone that knew him called him, fell over the BBQ in the back yard of the Creole cottage that they’d lived at for twenty years, to sustain striped grill burns to his face that he was ignorant of, due to having been delivered up to the good Lord as he ‒ not the Lord ‒was flipping a burger. Too much beer, cigarettes and fatty food go hand in hand with heart disease, and Arnie paid the price.

  Elmore was surprised but more than happy to open the door to Betty.

  “I need a place to stay, Elmore,” Betty said. “Do you have any objection to it being here?”

  “Hell, no,” Elmore said. “Come on in, girl.”

  “Don’t girl me Elmore,” Betty said. “I’m sixty-five, and you’re pushing seventy. We ain’t kids no more.”

  Elmore lifted the zebra-striped rolling suitcase from where Betty had placed it next to her on the step and carried it inside, and Betty followed him in.

  “You hungry or thirsty?” Elmore said with a barn-sized smile on his gaunt face.

  “I guess some scrambled eggs and bacon would hit the spot. And don’t you go getting some dumb idea that I’m here to stay, Elmore. I’ll tell you what brought me to your door while I do the cooking and you make some coffee.”

  They had eaten half the early breakfast and Betty had told Elmore what she knew with regard to Ellie Mae’s predicament.

  “That sounds like some TV show,” Elmore said. “I hope that this guy Logan knows what he’s doing.”

  “Me too,” Betty said. “Ellie Mae and I haven’t been too close in recent years, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”

  When Logan rang off, Lucy gave Rod a call at home and told him that there had been a double homicide at the motel where Logan and Ellie Mae Sawyer had been holed up at, and relayed what Logan had said to her.

  “I’ll make the calls,” Rod said. “You swing by my place and pick me up. I just made a large hole in a fifth of Old Crow, so I best not drive.”

  A couple of prowler cars were already at the Pilgrims’ Rest when Lucy and Rod pulled into the lot. A trooper – paper white in the face and visibly shaken – checked their IDs and told them that Trooper Ralph Meakin was dead in his vehicle, that the motel owner, Juan Perez, was in the office, in the same lifeless condition as Ralph, and that there was a guy hurt but still breathing in room nine.

  “The ME and CSIs are on the way,” Trooper Roy Worth said. “The immediate area appears to be clear. Whoever else was here has fled the scene, and I’m waiting for a call back on the pickup that Perez was known to own and is now missing.”

  Lucy checked on the dead trooper and motel owner, while Rod entered room nine.

  A trooper was standing at the bathroom door, and behind him a man was sitting in the tub, shivering. His face was bloodied and he looked dazed.

  “I’m a fuckin’ victim,” Dwayne said, addressing Ron. “So how about untyin’ me and helpin’ me out of here. I’ve been badly assaulted and I need medical attention.”

  “His wallet was on the floor,” the trooper said, “and despite the state of his now spread nose, he matches the driver’s license photo in it. This sorry-looking felon is one Dwayne Nash, and he’s known to us as being a pe
rson of interest with bad connections.”

  “Where’s your buddy, LaSalle?” Ron said.

  Dwayne shrugged.

  “You came here to murder two witnesses that could put you at Dicky’s Diner last evening. Looks as though you fouled up and got a small taste of what you deserve. Which of you shot the trooper and motel owner?”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about, and I don’t have a weapon,” Dwayne said. “I was by myself, about to enter and rob the room when I got dragged in the bathroom window and pounded on by some big guy with a bad attitude.”

  “You’re wearing a shoulder rig.”

  “But it’s empty, and you can’t shoot shit with a holster.”

  “If you came here on your own, where’s your vehicle?”

  “If it isn’t out on the highway, then the big guy must have stolen it.”

  “Fine,” Ron said. “There are more holes in the bullshit you’re feeding me than bayous in the state of Louisiana. What’s the make, model and plate number of your car, and where is it?”

  “It was a stolen Ford Taurus, and I left it out front on the highway. If it isn’t there, then like I just said, the big ape that assaulted me took it. I’ve got no knowledge of anythin’ else that’s gone down here, cop” Dwayne said. “I do not possess a firearm, and I’m tied up in a bath and have obviously been injured. I was just at the wrong place when somethin’ bad went down. Maybe the big guy shot the cop and the motel owner.”

  Ron had nothing more to say to Nash. He wasn’t going to tell them anything but lies: “Book him for the attempted robbery he admitted to and have him kept in custody,” he said to the trooper.

  “Hey, my wrist and nose are broken,” Dwayne said. “I need to have them looked at.”

  “All in good time, Nash,” Rod said, giving Dwayne one of his gruesome grins before turning and walking out through the bullet-ridden door.

  Dwayne said nothing. He had a lot of thinking to do.

  “Anything?” Lucy said as they met on the walkway outside the room.

  “Not yet. There’s no smoking gun. Logan must have taken it with him. All we have in there is an injured scumbag tied up in the bathtub with an empty shoulder rig. He says he was here on his ownsome to commit robbery and that he has no knowledge of the killings. I asked him where his vehicle was, and he says it was a stolen Ford Taurus, and that Logan must have taken it to flee the scene.”

  “I think that Nash and LaSalle came out here together, murdered the trooper and the motel owner, and then attempted to force their way into the room and deal with Logan and Ellie Mae,” Lucy said. “Logan obviously dealt with Nash, and LaSalle must have then got back in his car and driven away.”

  “So do you reckon that Logan and the woman are on foot?”

  “No. He’ll have taken the motel owner’s pickup. If he doesn’t dump it for another vehicle or change the plate, we’ll locate them.”

  “Being an ex-cop, he’ll know exactly what we’ll do,” Rod said.

  Lucy realized that Rod was right. Once a cop, always a cop. Logan would know how to stay lost for as long as he needed to.

  “What do you think he’ll do?” Rod said.

  “Stay in the area and lay low, or worse, go it alone.”

  “Wouldn’t it be more sensible for him to get as far away from here as he can; just keep moving on?”

  “Yes, Rod, but I see him as being the kind of guy that doesn’t run away from trouble. I think that he’ll meet it head on. He’s taking this personally.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THERE was a thin column of gray wood smoke rising above the treetops just a few hundred yards from the side of the canal.

  Logan steered the canoe through a thick patch of reeds, climbed out, reached back for his rucksack, dumped it on the grass and took Ellie Mae’s hand and helped her onto the grassy bank.

  Taking the nine-millimeter pistol – that he had confiscated from Dwayne Nash – from inside the rucksack, he removed the silencer and pocketed it, then tucked the gun down the back of his chinos, under his jacket.

  “What now?” Ellie Mae said.

  “We go find out where the smoke’s coming from and hope that whoever has a fire going also has coffee and something to eat.”

  They made their way across a meadow, into a forest of mainly pine trees, to follow what could have been a deer trail. The sound of a guitar being played grew louder with every step they took.

  “I don’t like this,” Ellie Mae said. “It reminds me of a scene from that old movie Deliverance, or some horror movie where backwoods’ weirdoes prey on tourists.”

  “You’ve got a vivid imagination, Ellie,” Logan said.

  “Damn right I have after what has happened since those bastards walked into Dicky’s and did what they did.”

  “I’ve got my hand on the gun in my pants, so if push comes to shove we’ll be fine.”

  “You blow my mind, Logan. You seem to be able to take all this shit in your stride, as if it’s normal in some way.”

  “I just go with whatever comes along and do my best to deal with it, Ellie. The world is full of assholes that deserve to be taken down. If they involve me, then I do my best to put them out of business. It’s one of my biggest faults. I find it impossible to turn a blind eye and walk away.”

  Mike Audley had been playing some blues on his acoustic guitar. He was never going to be in the same class as BB King had been, but he liked some of the stuff he played, and wrote his own ditties to sing along to in a voice that was a cross between Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan; an acquired taste that had never got him within a country mile of a recording contract.

  As he paused to drink a little of the shine that he brewed in the woods, well away from the cabin, Mike heard voices, so put the steel-stringed ax down and went over to the open door and looked out, ready to pick up the shotgun that he kept leant against the wall behind it. It was a little early for customers to be calling, but he wasn’t particularly worried. Anyone with bad intentions wouldn’t be talking, they’d be approaching stealthily, or so he reckoned.

  Logan stopped at the edge of a clearing. The smoke that had led them here was curling up from the chimney of a small log-built cabin at the far side of it, with what appeared to be a workshop of approximately the same dimensions next to it.

  What were standing in the clearing ‒ between them and the cabin ‒ stopped Ellie Mae and Logan in their tracks. There were three or four horses, a giant grizzly bear, many other creatures, and even a totem pole on display, all carved out of wood or made from shaped tree branches.

  “They’re terrific,” Ellie Mae said.

  “Must be an artist lives here,” Logan said as he walked across the clearing to the cabin.

  “Help you folk?” Mike said from the doorway as he assessed the couples’ body language and decided that they were not here to rob him.

  “You can if you’ve a mind to,” Logan said. “Our canoe sprung a leak and is half sunk in the reeds. We’re lost.”

  “Don’t you have a cell phone?” Mike said. “Or did you drop it in the river before you wandered inland instead of following that old canal back in the direction you came from?”

  “We saw the smoke from your chimney stack,” Ellie Mae said. “And I left my phone back in the car at the canal head where we rented the canoe from.”

  Mike grinned. The young woman was lying through her teeth, and the tall guy with her was looking a little fidgety and uncomfortable. The trouble with starting out with an untruth was that you had to keep adding to it and digging a deeper and deeper hole to eventually attempt to climb out of.

  Turning to look inside the cabin, Mike whistled and called out, “Henry,” and a dog the size of a pony appeared at his side and just stood and stared at Ellie Mae and Logan.

  Logan had a quick flashback at the sight of the massive hound. It was lighter in color but reminded him a lot of Bama, the part Boerboel that he supposed Kate Donner still had as a pet, up in Carson Creek,
Colorado. He had the urge to phone Kate, just to check in and see how she was doing, but that would have to wait.

  “Nice mutt,” Logan said. “Is he friendly, or do you have the inadvisable notion to put his life at risk?”

  “I live in the boonies, so it’s comforting to have ole Henry willing, able, on hand and ready to earn his keep if trouble comes to my door.”

  “We didn’t walk in here to cause you any grief,” Logan said. “If it suits you, just part with some fresh water and point us in the direction of the highway.”

  “Come on in,” Mike said. “I guess it won’t harm to have some manners and look out for people in need.”

  “I’m Ellie Mae, and this is Logan,” Ellie Mae said as Mike led them into the combined living room and kitchen and bade them take a seat.

  “I’m Mike Audley,” Mike said as he shook hands with them. “What can I get you to drink, coffee, water or moonshine?”

  “Coffee black for me,” Logan said as he slipped the rucksack from his shoulder and set it down next to him.

  “Just water, please,” Ellie Mae said. “Cold and long. The bottled stuff we drank was tepid and had a funny taste.”

  As Mike went over to the counter to switch the coffeemaker on, Logan took three steps back to the still half open door and picked up the shotgun, to break it open and shake out the two shells. He had seen the old weapon on entering the cabin and looking around him, taking everything in.

  Mike was a single breath away from uttering the word that would have instigated a ferocious attack by Henry, which would have resulted in either the dog being shot or Logan being ripped to pieces. He’d hesitated, to be relieved to see the other man remove the shells and lean the 12 bore back against the wall.

  Placing a glass of water on the table in front of Ellie Mae, Mike then poured coffee for Logan and himself and sat down opposite them.

  “Did you make all those wood sculptures out there?” Ellie Mae said, needing to talk to lessen the tension.

  “Yes. I make my living as a carpenter, and also by carving animals and other stuff on the side,” Mike said. “It amazes me just how many people want them cluttering up their back yards.”