Cemetery Road

by Greg Iles

  Using a pace count I developed long ago running track, I cover four hundred yards in a minute and a half. This brings me to within forty yards of the turnaround. Slowing to a walk, I cross the last twenty yards as quietly as I can, in case Jet and Max are sitting in his truck.

  The turnaround is empty.

  There’s no way Max could have driven down the hill without me seeing him. Looking around the clearing, I see a place where the undergrowth has been pushed down by a vehicle. Max must have used his F-250 like a bulldozer and driven right up to the pool.

  Instead of walking up on them from the footpath, I backtrack about seventy yards and start working my way through the trees, which should bring me out on the opposite side of the water from Max and Jet. This way, even if they detect my approach, they’ll assume the noise is being made by deer or an armadillo. Progress is slow and difficult. The brush under the trees is thick, thorn bushes plentiful. Also, the risk of stepping on a copperhead or rattlesnake is significant this time of year, especially in the darkness under the canopy.

  Halfway through the ring of trees that surrounds the pool, I hear music. The truck’s radio. It’s Creedence, the music of Max’s youth, and the last thing Jet would choose. Confident that the music will mask my approach, I push harder through the brush. Another thirty seconds’ struggle takes me to the edge of the trees, where ten feet of muddy ground separates the woods from the water.

  It felt like night under the trees, but here twilight still diffuses through the clouds, and the water picks it up like a mirror. A hundred yards across the pool, the running lights of Max’s truck shine like red beacons. The tree line on the far side looks black, but staring through the dusk I see two figures silhouetted against the white paint of the truck. For a moment I’m confused; then I realize Max and Jet are standing on a little pier that juts out at an angle from the far bank. If it weren’t for Max’s truck parked behind them, I wouldn’t have seen them at all.

  It’s unsettling to find Max and Jet where she and I spent so many hours together. They appear to be facing each other and standing close together. I can’t hear their voices, only John Fogerty singing “Someday Never Comes.” A waxing gibbous moon is rising in the southwestern sky. What are they doing here? I wonder. Did she want to be close to water, so that if she can’t steal his phone outright, she can destroy it?

  As I stare through the dusk, a sharp cry cuts through the music. The smaller of the two figures runs down the pier and vanishes against the trees. The larger follows, but only at a walk. A sound that must be Max’s voice rolls over the water, and then he disappears as well. My heart starts to pound again. If they get back into the truck and drive down the hill, I’m screwed. I can’t possibly get back to the Explorer before they reach it. Risking exposure, I step out of the trees and crouch in the mud, squinting through the darkness.

  At first I see nothing. Then Jet darts across the whiteness of the truck. Max follows, and suddenly I’m watching a shadow play staged against the backdrop of his F-250. As the song fades, Max bellows something. Three feet away from him, Jet screams back. He moves forward, reaching. Jet lets him take hold of her, pull her to him. They spin in a circle. I can’t tell if they’re arguing or kissing. Dizzy with confusion, I feel relief as Jet violently shoves him back, removing all doubt. They’re fighting. I’m rising to my feet when Jet ducks down, then pops back up and raises her right arm as though swinging a tomahawk.

  I gasp in disbelief as she drives her arm forward.

  Max staggers back, wavers on his feet, then drops to his knees. Jet draws back her arm again, but Max topples over onto his back. Jet falls to her knees and starts grabbing at Max’s body like she’s going through his pockets.

  What the hell has she done? Has she killed him?

  Shaken from my trance, I start racing around the pool, but I haven’t covered twenty yards before Jet raises her arm again, preparing to slam whatever she’s holding into Max’s motionless head once more.

  “Jet!” I scream. “Don’t! Jet . . . ? STOP!”

  She freezes, probably looking my way, but it’s too dark to tell. For a second she kneels motionless, like a cave woman in some museum diorama. Then she scrambles to her feet and jumps into Max’s truck. The engine roars, and two seconds later, she’s backing through the woods as though fleeing a forest fire.

  If she races down the hill road at full speed, she’ll slam into the Explorer. My only chance of stopping her is to cut her off at the road, and I’ve got maybe twenty seconds to do it. I charge into the trees, bulling through the brush without regard for consequences. Thorns and branches tear at my face and arms, but my only concern is avoiding the trunks.

  I burst from the woods as Max’s truck rounds the curve above me, accelerating with a roar. Seeing no alternative, I run to the middle of the road and start windmilling my arms like a sailor waving off a fighter jet during a carrier landing. Max’s high beams stab my eyes, but I stand my ground. Surely Jet will recognize me before she runs me down—

  The F-250 shudders to a stop six inches short of crushing me.

  I run around to the passenger door and bang on the window glass.

  “I’m sorry!” Jet cries in a muffled voice. She hits the unlock switch. “I had no idea who yelled back there! That was you?”

  I yank open the door and climb up into the big Ford, which smells like a wet baseball glove. “What did you do to Max? What did you hit him with?”

  She reaches down to the floor and brings up a claw hammer with blood and hair on its head. “I stole it from his toolbox.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s why you were about to hit him again?”

  She hesitates, then nods.

  “Jet, what the fuck? What’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you, I swear to God, but can we please get out of here?”

  “No! We have to see if Max is dead or alive.”

  Terror lights her eyes. “Why?”

  “To know what to do next! A lot of people could have seen you riding in this truck with him. Plus, you can’t steal this thing. Not after what you did. You have to leave it here, and your prints are all over it.”

  “How did you even get here?” she asks. “Were you following me?”

  “Yes and no. Too long a story. Pull back up to the turnaround.”

  Terror lights her eyes again. “No! Marshall, please. We have what we need. Look!” She digs a large cell phone from her pocket.

  “Is that Max’s phone?”

  She nods with excitement. “No more video! No more blackmail.”

  “Great. You’ve traded blackmail for a murder charge. Jet, back this thing up to the turnaround, or I will.”

  “Let’s just leave the truck!” she yells. “We can talk somewhere else. Anywhere.” She grabs my arms. “Please get us out of here. I’ll throw Max’s keys into the woods. If Max dies, he dies. Nobody will ever know we were here.”

  “Jet—” I reach down and yank the door handle, then push the door open.

  Her eyes go wide again. “Where are you going?”

  “To check on Max.”

  She looks like a cornered animal. “Okay, okay . . . shit.”

  Jet jams the truck into reverse, looks down at the rearview camera, then starts backing around the curve that leads up to the clearing. As we roll uphill, I notice that her blouse is badly torn. She’s shoved it up under her bra strap to stay covered.

  “Max tore your top?” I ask.

  She nods but says nothing. Five seconds later she kicks the brake pedal and stops. “What now?”

  “You’d better come with me,” I tell her, suddenly worried that she’ll bolt while I’m checking on Max.

  “Do you have your gun?” she asks.

  “Yeah. Does Max still have his?”

  “No.” She reaches into the console and brings up the .380 I saw in Max’s ankle holster yesterday afternoon.

  “Bring that,” I tell her.

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nbsp; She opens her door and climbs down to the ground. Using the LED light on my iPhone, I lead her along the footpath toward the pool, gun in hand.

  “What are we going to do if he’s alive?” she asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not taking him to a hospital or anything? He’ll lie, Marshall. He’ll say I tried to kill him.”

  Would he be lying? “Let’s just see what shape he’s in.”

  We’ve come to the band of grass that separates the trees from the water on this side of the spring. I see the deep ruts Max left behind when he drove his truck up to the water’s edge. Emerging from under the trees, I make out the wooden pier in the moonlight.

  What I don’t see is Max.

  “He’s gone,” Jet gasps beside me. “Holy fuck, he’s not here.”

  The raw fear I felt when confronting Paul in my office returns, jacked to double intensity. The urge to run blindly is almost irresistible, but instead I focus on the ground. From the marks in the mud, it looks like Max belly-crawled into the underbrush beneath the trees, like a wounded alligator.

  “We have to find him,” Jet whispers.

  After checking the tree line to make sure Max isn’t sneaking up on us, I kneel in the mud and shine my LED down on the spot where I think he fell. Blood loss is hard to judge, but there’s a lot of bright red on the ground. It looks like somebody kicked over a tester can of paint. That came from Max’s head, I realize. I can’t believe he could move after a blow like that.

  “Where’d you hit him?” I ask. “Front of the skull? Or the side?”

  Jet looks almost too rattled to function. “Um . . . right side, I think. My right. His left. He was facing me, and I swung right-handed.”

  “Did you hit him with the ball of the hammer? Or the flat side?”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “Ball would probably be worse. He’d have a depressed skull fracture. I know a little about those. He could definitely die.”

  “I think it was the ball.” Her voice has a frantic edge. “When he fell, it sounded like Paul dropping a bag of pool salt on our patio.”

  “He could have a subdural hemorrhage . . . a cerebral contusion. He could die five minutes from now or tomorrow.”

  “He can’t have gone far,” she whispers, her eyes on the trees. “Let’s find him.”

  “No,” I say, getting to my feet.

  “Why not? He can’t—”

  “Jet! He can’t what? Fight back?” I grab one shoulder and pull her face close to mine. “Did you bring Max up here to kill him?”

  Even in the dark I see the whites of her eyes growing. “God, no! If I’d got him up here to kill him, I’d have been in control. I was fighting for my life.”

  “He attacked you?”

  “He tried to rape me, okay?”

  This stops me cold. “He tried to rape you? But . . .”

  “My God,” she says. “Not one more word until we’re safe.”

  I nod slowly, my gaze on the tree line again. “Okay. We’re going back to town.”

  “Without knowing whether he’s dead or alive?”

  “We’re sure as hell not going into the woods after him!”

  “Why not? We have the guns.”

  “Jet, Max did two tours of duty in Vietnam. Most of it jungle fighting. He was hit by an AK-47. He fell on punji stakes smeared with shit and survived. So far as we know, he’s alive right now. You want to go crawling through that brush in the hope of finishing him off? Max could kill us both before we even knew he was close.”

  She’s staring at the long scar in the mud as though she wants to drop to her belly and crawl after him. Instead of arguing further, I turn and walk back along the path to the turnaround.

  “Wait!” she calls. “I’m coming!”

  Chapter 38

  Once we reach Max’s truck, which I approach with great care, we spend two minutes wiping down its wheel, its dash, and the brown leather of its interior. Jet uses the remainder of her blouse, while I use my shirt, keeping my pistol in my left hand. Though it makes the job harder, I also keep the truck doors shut. If Max is still alive, doing this work under the dome light would qualify as suicidal behavior.

  “Wipe your fingerprints off Max’s keys,” I tell her. “We’ll toss them in the woods on the way down. Max won’t find them tonight, but if he dies, the police eventually will.”

  “Are you going to call the sheriff or anything?”

  As we wipe down the door handles and shifter, I remember what Jet said beside the pool. With this memory comes an image of Max sitting in my kitchen, warning me never to have sex with her again.

  “You said Max tried to rape you,” I say softly. “Tell me what he did.”

  “Not till we’re safe. We’re sitting ducks out here. You said it yourself.”

  “Okay,” I tell her, twisting to pull my shirt back on. “That’s the best we can do. Bring the hammer. We’ll dump it far from this hill.”

  After we climb out, Jet cocks her arm to throw Max’s car keys into the dense woods lining the edge of the road.

  “Not yet,” I warn her.

  She freezes. “Do you think he’s watching us?”

  “He might be. Do you feel like you can run?”

  “How far? I feel like I might vomit.”

  “Fifty yards.”

  “Go. I’ll keep up.”

  Ten seconds of jogging brings us within sight of the parked Explorer.

  “Wait!” Jet cries as it materializes in the road ahead of us. “Somebody else is up here!”

  “That’s mine,” I explain, reaching for her hand. “Take it easy.”

  We’re both breathing hard, and even in the dark, she looks paler than I’ve ever seen her. She’s staring at the Ford Explorer like it might hold a squad of hit men.

  “Whose truck is that?”

  “Dixie Allman ran out of gas on Highway 36. I was helping her out when you and Max rode by. I switched cars with her so I could follow you without Max noticing.”

  “Why’d you block the road?”

  “To make sure Max couldn’t get away with you while I was climbing up. Come on, this is our ride home.” I pull her forward and we run to the Ford.

  “We’re leaving?” she asks hopefully.

  “Not yet. But soon.”

  The Explorer’s doors open with a grating of steel, but the engine cranks readily. Is Max lying up on the hill somewhere, listening? I wonder.

  “Why can’t we go yet?” Jet asks, climbing into the seat beside me and dropping the hammer on the plastic floor mat.

  “We need to make sure Max doesn’t come walking down this road. And that nobody comes to pick him up.”

  “How could they? He can’t call anybody. I have his cell phone.”

  “I know. And Max is probably bleeding to death up there right now. But let’s just give it a half hour to make sure.”

  Jet groans with frustration, but she doesn’t argue.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?” I ask.

  “Are we just going to sit here in the road?”

  “No.” Shifting the SUV into reverse, I back down the narrow hill road with only the brake lights for illumination.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “I want to be farther down the hill, and I’m not going back up to the top to turn around. I also want to be on the front side, so we can see the gate. Watch for an opening in the trees where I can get this thing turned around.”

  “Up there on the left. You already passed it.”

  I hit the brakes, then pull forward twenty yards, shift into reverse, and back into the opening between an oak and some popcorn trees. The rear end of the Explorer dips, then kicks up hard, but I manage to go far enough back to rotate the steering wheel and get our nose pointed downhill. Shifting into low, I nurse us back onto the road. There’s enough moonlight to see under the overhanging branches, but just. We coast forward in the darkness, steadily descending.

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nbsp; “Look for a spot where we can hide but still see the gate down on the flats.”

  “Thirty yards ahead, on the right,” Jet says. “Can you fit through there?”

  She’s pointing to a narrow gap between two pine trees. It looks iffy, but with careful use of the pedals, I manage to back us off the road and under cover. We end up nose-down about thirty-five degrees, but the trees on the other side of the road are thin enough to give us a clear view of the fields below. A half mile away, a lone pair of headlights moves west along Cemetery Road.

  “Do you think Max is dead?” Jet asks.

  “Anybody else would be.” I kill the engine, then reach over and gently take her left hand. She’s shivering. “How did you end up with Max this afternoon?”

  “He surprised me in the alley behind my office. After work, when I was going to my car. He said he needed to talk to me about Sally. He was freaked out. He told me his partners were trying to kill him. The Poker Club. Half of them, anyway.”

  “That might be true.”

  “He said he was being followed. He was yelling about microphones everywhere. He said he’d swept his truck with some kind of wand, and the truck was the only space he trusted. Even though he was in a wild state, I figured that might be my best chance to get hold of his cell phone.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “The thing is, once I got in with him, he asked me to give him my cell. Like a fool I did, because I was so intent on stealing his from him. He shut mine off, wanded it, and slipped it into his pocket. Then he drove us out of town on Highway 36.”

  “That’s where I picked you up.”

  “He was headed out here the whole time. I think half that paranoia was an act to get me to come out here with him. He wanted me where no one could hear me scream.”