Pilate nodded. “My agent wants me in the top 20 media markets, at least. Has to be done, though. I’d hate to think I spent all this time writing a book that nobody will ever read.”
“That happens more than you think, I’m told. Well, try to enjoy it,” he said. “And let’s remember that writing that book may have helped, but it probably didn’t work out all the demons inside you about what happened at Cross.”
“I hear you, doc,” he stood. “Well, I think our time here is up,” Pilate said, looking at his watch.
“Isn’t that my line?” Sandburg said, smiling. He extended his hand. “Good luck, John.”
Pilate had to break his pace to tie his shoe.
“Dammit,” he said, stopping beside the path.
“You okay, old man?” the kid said, breezing by.
“Ha ha,” Pilate said, tending to his shoe. “And screw you, too,” he said under his breath.
“What?” the heavy lady in yellow spandex said over her shoulder as she trudged past.
“Um, nothing,” he said. “Sorry.”
She made a face and didn’t break stride.
Pilate enjoyed the break. His muscles ached, but in a more pleasurable way. To think, he still had miles to go before he slept. Even walking home now would be a major feat - yet he had to run. Finishing a half in more than three hours is just embarrassing.
I really should have trained better. At least I managed to keep off the smokes. He smiled again, this time more of a grimace.
As the heavy runner disappeared at the crest of the next hill and he finished tending to his shoelaces, the roar of the Missouri River filled Pilate’s ears. It was a few dozen yards off, just a stand of trees and some heavy brush between him and the waters.
He was tempted to get off the trail and look at the rushing waters. The big chunks of ice had vanished weeks ago, breaking off and melting in the rush to get to the next bend in the muddy river. It wasn’t like he was going to finish the half with a race record anyway.
He decided against it. The muddy but majestic Missouri is an impressive sight, but also the watery touchstone to the evils of Cross Township. For fifty years, the Missouri was the resting place of the body of a young black man, entombed in an old Chevy. The unfortunate teen’s bones waited patiently long after the rest of him had become fish food, chained inside the rusting, finned hulk until John Pilate solved the mystery of Cross College.
Pilate broke his reverie and looked around. He saw no other runners, only the thick woodland that obscured the Cross College campus a few miles to the east. In fact, the only sounds he heard were those of his labored breathing.
“It’s quiet,” he said. “Too quiet.”
“John, let’s get out of here.”
Pop! Pop!
Before he could get to his feet, he heard the pop of fireworks in the middle distance - except his recent experiences with firearms told him different. These were rifle shots.
“What the?” Pilate muttered, diving into the brush.
Pop!
Another crack from the unseen rifle, but this time he felt something sharply graze his cheek. He lay in the brush beside the path, trying to make himself one with the earth, warmth trickling down his cheek.
What the hell? Hunters know there’s a race going on…
“John, that’s not a hunter, at least not in the drink-a-beer-or-ten-shoot-at-rabbits sense,” Simon said. “You need to get out of here.”
Jesus, my legs are killing me and I think I’m hit. Pilate worked his left hand to his cheek. He felt a small scratch and a piece of what felt like tree bark stuck into his skin. Ricochet. He pulled the bark out and dropped it. More blood oozed.
Pop!
Another shot flew over and he heard the hornet-like whine of a bullet passing no more than a foot or two above his shoulders. He lifted his head an inch or so, checking for an exit. Nothing. He was firmly boxed in beside several small oaks and heavy brush. All he could do was wait it out.
“Just going to lay here and die, John?”
Simon, what would you have me do?
“Lay here and not die would be good.”
Pilate slowed his breathing and listened. He had one possible escape route - getting back on the path and running until he found a better way out of the wooded area. It was still a mile or so back to Cross, but perhaps he could evade the hunter.
“John, you’re already exhausted. Your legs are stiffening up,” Simon said. “You have to move now or else.”
This sucks.
“You really should have trained better.”
Pilate rolled over on his right side and slid his feet underneath him. Crouching in agony, he rolled headfirst onto the path and sprang to his feet.
He expected another shot immediately, but this hunter was either very patient, caught by surprise, or had moved on.
Pop!
“Still there.”
The shot missed, but was like an injection of adrenaline. Scared for his life, he shoveled the last coals into his furnace. His calves burned and felt as if they were tearing to shreds as he ran up the hill.
Dig! Dig! Dig! Pilate heard his dad’s voice, his Okie twang in full flare, screaming at him to run faster around third base in Little League. Pilate hated baseball but would do anything to get his dad’s approval. So, he played right field. And when he got a base hit, he dug.
Now it would just be everything he wanted in the world to live to see his dad again. Maybe catch a game.
Pop!
The shot struck the dirt beside the path, sending up a spurt of dirt just as Pilate crested the hill and part-ran, part-stutter-stepped down the other side.
“Shiiiiiiiiit!” he said.
Thirty feet down the hill, Pilate’s left calf exploded in pain. He fell.
“Damn, damn, damn,” he said through gritted teeth. It felt as if acid were flowing through his leg. Am I hit?
He rolled off the path under a wilted bush and checked his leg. No blood from the leg, no bullet hole, just excruciating pain.
“Torn muscle,” Simon said, somber in his skull. “Death sentence.”
Pilate winced as he tried to flex his ankle under the torn calf muscle, but his efforts were rewarded only with more agony.
He was finished with this race, and if the person shooting at him had enough nerve to crest the hill in pursuit of his quarry, John Pilate was finished with everything. A fresh wave of pain joined forces with his exhaustion and fatigue, and together bore him down into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER THREE
“Mr. Pilate? You okay?”
Pilate blinked at the sunlight. A familiar face hovered over him.
“Abbey?” he blinked. “Get down.” He pulled her down on top of him.
“What are you—what?” she said, looking around them wildly, then back at Pilate, her face an inch from his.
“Shooting,” he said. “Did you hear the shooting?”
“No,” She said, looking around again. “Shooting?” Abbey Prince was Pilate’s student in his first semester teaching at Cross last year. It seemed so long ago. Now she was set to be a student teacher at Cross Valley Middle School in the fall.
“There were shots—”
She pulled ear buds from her ears. “I’ve been listening to my music.”
“Okay, stay down,” he said, pulling her closer.
“Mr. Pilate, you’re bleeding. Did you fall?”
“No…well, yes, I fell, but that’s not why I’m bleeding. A ricochet got me.”
“Abbey, what the heck are you doing?” a male voice called from behind them. “Did he have a heart attack?”
“No, Riley, he just fell,” Abbey said.
Riley Pierson, who Pilate had always secretly stereotyped as the typical Big Man on Campus, ran to them, yanking his own ear buds out as he ran. “He fell and you’re lying on top of him?”
“I was shot at. Did you hear any shots, Riley?” Pilate said.
“Seriously?” he snorted.
“Yes, god dammit, I’m serious.” Abbey flinched at his cursing. “Now listen, both of you. I was running and somebody started taking shots at me. One of them ricocheted off a tree and that’s how I got a damn Lincoln Log stuck in my cheek.”
“Mr. Pilate, I see it – looks pretty deep. But are you sure you didn’t get it when you fell?” Riley said, helping Abbey off Pilate.
“Yes,” Pilate said. “It seems that whoever was shooting at me has gone, so help me up.”
The pair helped him to his feet. His body felt as if it had been dragged behind a truck over a few miles of gravel road. His cheek throbbed, but his left calf was the star attraction on the pain parade.
“Thanks, guys,” he said, Abbey and Riley were both sweaty from the run, but Pilate was soaked with cold, damp perspiration. Pain and lack of training took their toll; terror probably helped a little as well.
“No problem Mr. P,” Riley said. “Maybe I should run ahead and get a cart for you,” he said.
Pilate thought about it for a moment. “Well, it would seem we’re safe for the time being, so if you want to run ahead…”
“Okay,” Riley said. “I will.” He took a small water jug off his belt. “Here, drink this. You’re probably dehydrated.”
“And shot at,” Pilate added.
“You bet. Shot at,” Riley said. “Should I bring the sheriff’s deputy?”
“Just tell them when you get there,” Pilate said. “Then get back as soon as possible, Riley.”
The couple helped Pilate to an overturned log beside the path and gently helped him sit down.
“You got it,” Riley said, running. “It will probably take me another twenty minutes to get back to campus. Abbey, be careful,” he said over his shoulder.
Abbey waved him off. “Drink that water, Mr. Pilate,” she ordered.
“Abbey, I’m not crazy from the run or from anything else,” he said.
She looked at his cheek, took off her knit cap and dabbed at the cut. “I know that, Mr. Pilate. If you say somebody shot at you, I believe it.”
Her expression was one of concern. Abbey’s post-adolescent crush on him – along with her muddled hero worship - was intact but now that Pilate was married and she and Riley were, as he had noted recently, closer, he felt a proper, adult distance forming.
“She still has that thing for you,” Simon said. “Too bad you never did anything about it while you could’ve.”
Oh, would you please stop?
“Thanks,” he said. “Though even if somebody hadn’t been shooting at me I’m pretty sure I would’ve blown that calf muscle anyway. I didn’t exactly train right for this.”
“Well, this is only my second race,” she said. “I did a 10K last year and thought it would be fun to do a half before I got too old,” she said.
“Seriously? How old are you? Twenty-one?”
“Twenty-two,” she said with the gravity of a commuted death sentence.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he said. “I turn forty in a few months.”
“Wow, I would never have known that,” she said, all sincerity. “I figured you were maybe thirty-one or thirty-two at most.”
“Abbey, in my class, did you make good grades?” he said, looking around them for signs of life.
“Yes. I had a 4.0,” she said. “Why?”
“Because if you didn’t I was going to go back and give you straight A’s for that remark,” he said.
Her freckled face broke into a toothy grin.
“John, there shouldn’t have been any hunters anywhere near the race course,” Dean Trevathan said from a soft chair by the cold corn stove at Kate’s house, which was now Pilate’s house, too. His exotropic glass eye gazed blindly at the stove, his good eye remained fixed on Pilate.
Pilate shifted in his chair, an athletic bandage around his calf and a large Band-Aid on his cheek.
“Exactly my point,” Pilate said, accepting a mug of hot tea from Kate. “Thanks babe.”
“No problem,” she said, glancing at Trevathan inquiringly.
He waved her off. “No tea for me. It’s late. I wouldn’t look askance at a shot of something stronger, though,” he said, smiling.
“I’ll see what we have,” she said, padding back to the kitchen. She had her hair tied back, no makeup. She wore running pants and a Cross College sweatshirt. In that outfit, you’d never guess she was pregnant - not that she was showing much.
“There shouldn’t have been any hunters, and yet somebody took not one, but four shots at me,” he said.
“John, the sheriff went over the area with a fine tooth and didn’t find anything,” Trevathan said. “No bullets in trees, no tracks. Nothing.”
“Oh my god,” Pilate said. “You’re taking that idiot’s word for it?”
“Welliver may not be the ideal guy for county sheriff,” Trevathan said. “But he won the election fair and square. Hell, even Lenny is working for him.”
“Well, that settles it. If Lenny the silent deputy likes him…”
“John, I know you’re worn out and pissed off, but you can be the most disagreeable son of a bitch…”
Kate cleared her throat as she entered the room, handing the shot of Jim Beam to Trevathan. “Little ears upstairs,” she said. Six-year-old Kara was in bed, but certainly not yet asleep.
“Sorry,” Trevathan said, sipping from the shot. “I…” before he could get another syllable out, Trevathan started to cough ferociously.
“You okay?” Kate said, hovering.
He waved her off again, placing the shot glass on a small reading table beside the chair and covering his mouth with a fist. His coughing persisted a few seconds.
“Jeez, you okay?” Pilate said.
Trevathan’s face looked like an old barn with red paint splashed on it.
“Fine,” he said, his voice ragged. His face returned to a normal shade of pale.
“That stuff isn’t made to go down the wrong pipe.” He cleared his throat. “John, why would somebody take a shot at you?”
Pilate looked at his mug of tea. Steam rose from it like a wraith and disappeared.
“Oh no, not this again,” Trevathan said, reaching for the shot glass.
“What?” Kate said, sitting on the sofa between the men.
“Tell her,” he said.
“Tell me what?” Kate said, leaning in.
Pilate sighed and put his mug down on the floor beside his chair. He groaned as half his body responded in outrage.
“Lindstrom.”
Kate’s mouth dropped open. “Lindstrom? Lindstrom who? I ask because I know you’re not talking about the former president of Cross College. We settled that. He’s dead.”
“I’m not so sure,” Pilate said flatly.
“I am,” Kate said, pointing at him. “Listen John, the police said it was him, there is no evidence to the contrary, and…”
“Kate, they didn’t even do an autopsy,” Pilate interrupted. “And the fingerprint records of the body are conveniently missing from the coroner’s files.”
“John…” Trevathan started.
“Hold on a minute,” Kate said, holding her hand up to Trevathan, her eyes never leaving Pilate’s face. “Jack Lindstrom was on the run for what he did here at Cross. He knew he was going to jail for a very long time. He killed himself in Florida, shot himself in the face. It was obvious he had done himself in and that’s why the coroner allowed for the quick cremation.”
“It doesn’t explain the fingerprints being missing from the report…”
“No, it doesn’t, but I can explain it,” she said, her voice sharp. “They screwed up. They probably didn’t bother to do the fingerprints or maybe they messed them up and threw them away. Either way, he’d dead.”
“Kate, I got…”
“John, please,” Trevathan started.
“No, let me say it,” he said.
“Say what?” Kate said.
“The phone calls,” Pilate said. “I got phone calls f
rom somebody when I was in Key West.”
“Who? Who is ‘somebody,’?” Kate said.
“I don’t know for certain,” Pilate said, “but I think it was Lindstrom.”
“You think that why? Did they say they were Lindstrom?”
“Not exactly,” Pilate said.
“Well, what then?”
“He just said weird things,” he said.
“Such as?” Kate leaned back on the sofa.
Pilate looked at Trevathan, who put up his hands as if to say you’re on your own, buddy.
“Just stuff like ‘dead end’ and a nursery rhyme.”
“A nursery rhyme?” Kate said. “Like Hickory dickory dock?”
“No…Brother John,” Pilate said. “Remember in the carriage after the wedding, that weird call?”
Kate’s eyes looked up and to the right, her arms folding over her chest. “Um, yeah. You started acting weird right after that call. You said it was a wrong number. You didn’t loosen up for hours – hell, I thought you regretted marrying me.”
“Not even close,” Pilate said. “Honey, look, it was a weird voice that said ‘wedding bells are ringing,’ don’t you get it? The caller knew what we were doing and was warning me to stop looking into the Lindstrom thing.”
Kate sighed. “John, it was probably one of those Key West weirdoes yanking your chain.”
“No doubt,” Trevathan said, coughing quietly into his fist. “Place is full of ‘em.”
“Need I remind you, sir, that you own a home there?” Pilate said, shooting Trevathan a dirty look.
“John, you thought somebody was shooting at you – OK, fair enough. I have no doubt you heard shots, but I think it was some dumb ass poaching game,” Kate said. “Or do you think it was Jack Lindstrom?”
Pilate looked at their faces: Kate’s plaintive; Trevathan’s a blank stare.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “I hear you.” He mustered a weak smile. “It was probably some idiot hunter. It just seemed so…real.”
Kate moved from the sofa and kneeled beside Pilate, taking his hand into hers. “John, you’ve been through a lot. From nearly getting killed here in Cross to…”
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