Salvation Lake (A Leo Waterman Mystery)

by G. M. Ford

  “Get dressed,” I said. “Both of you get dressed.”

  I waited until they were gone, then pulled out my phone. I’d made a mistake with Richard Seigal by not calling the cops. I wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

  NO SERVICE, the screen read. No bars on top either. This was God’s country. I cursed and hurried out to the kitchen, grabbed the receiver for the landline. No dial tone.

  She’d dressed quickly. A pair of jeans and a thick green sweater that looked like it probably belonged to her husband. Her face was flushed and streaked with makeup, but otherwise she seemed to have recovered her wits, which, considering what she’d been through tonight, was pretty damn remarkable. I could see what it was that Roscoe Templeton had found admirable in her. She did, indeed, have a certain kind of tough-minded pluck.

  “Where’d they take Lila?”

  “If they see the police, they’ll kill her,” she said.

  “Where’d they take her, damn it?”

  She looked toward the bedroom. The door remained closed. “There’s another house here on the property,” she said after a moment. “It’s where Nathaniel lived until he went into hospice care. They’ve been living there ever since they came back.”

  “When was that?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  “What do they want?”

  “First . . . it was a place to stay, then it was Nate’s car, then it was the money. They’re convinced Nate left a bag of money around here someplace.” Her eyes filled up. “We tried to tell them . . . they wouldn’t . . . they . . .” She began to sniffle, but held it together.

  “Tell them what?”

  “That there wasn’t any money and that Aaron had already signed Nathaniel’s properties back over to the church council. Day before yesterday. That there wasn’t any money, just the properties. And that now, this house and land was all we had left.”

  “How do I get to this other house?”

  I could hear water running in the other room. She looked for her missing husband again. The running water stopped.

  “We’re not getting any help from in there, honey,” I said. “That one’s all talk and no action. If we can’t call the cops, then I’m the only hope Lila’s got. So . . . where is it?”

  “Half a mile north,” she said. “There’s a driveway on the other side of the road.”

  As I started for the door, Aaron Townsend came lurching out of the bedroom. He was holding a bloody washcloth to his face. It was like he’d been listening at the door, waiting for this moment. “Wait,” he said. “I’ll come.”

  I could tell he didn’t mean it. He reeked of fear and self-pity. He was only offering to come along because he felt he had to.

  “You’re the last thing I need,” I said. “See if you can’t figure out where they cut the phone lines. See if you can splice them back together. Call for help.”

  The front door was hanging open. I jogged through and kept on running, across the grassy yard and then up the rutted track of a driveway. Jogging at half speed, making sure they hadn’t doubled back to ambush anyone who followed.

  Apparently losing the back window to a shotgun blast had proved sufficient motivation to keep on driving. I was panting like a racehorse and drenched with sweat by the time I got back to my car.

  I left the headlights off and drove blind, my head on a swivel as I moved along. The gravel drive was right where she said it would be. I eased in and rolled ahead slowly, then thought better of it. Instead, I staged a quick K-turn in the middle of the road. Back and forth three times until my car was perpendicular to the roadway, at which point I took a deep breath, threw it into reverse, and floored it, crashing into the undergrowth backwards, bouncing over the uneven ground until something stout enough to stop the big car’s momentum rocked me to a neck-snapping halt. I forced open the door and then fought my way through the twisted thicket to the back of the car. I yanked open the rear passenger door and grabbed as much ammo as I could carry. My pockets bulged like saddlebags as I started forcing my way back to the roadway.

  I crawled up onto the gravel track and looked back. The car was rammed so far into the undergrowth that it was invisible. Whether I’d be able to get it back out was a bridge I’d have to cross later.

  I carried the shotgun in front of me like an infantryman as I trotted along. There was no wind. Overhead, the moon was moving in and out of a thick bank of clouds.

  Seemed like Nate Tuttle hadn’t exactly looked to encourage visitors. The road was narrow and serpentine, twisting among the enormous, first-growth trees, seemingly with no rhyme or reason, as if it had been laid out without a particular destination in mind.

  My eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness when a sudden rustle in the undergrowth jerked at my attention. I raised the shotgun and slid my finger under the guard. I waited, eyes straining, breath caught in my throat, trigger finger quivering in anticipation. Two black-tailed deer stepped into view. The sound of my relief sent them bounding off into the blackness. I stood still for a minute, waiting for my heart to stop hammering, and then forced myself on.

  Quarter mile later, I thought I saw an eye shining in the darkness. Maybe another deer. A glimmer of light that winked out before I could be certain it was there. I took another step forward and it glimmered again. It was the house, intermittently visible through the thick underbrush. I kept moving, slower now.

  Another hundred yards and the clearing flashed into view. I stepped off the road and worked my way into the thick tangle of the forest. I could see the back of the Range Rover now. Its rear window a jagged mouth of broken glass. Beyond the car, a Greek Revival mansion looked completely out of place, as if it had fallen from the sky on the way to somewhere else.

  I made my way around the house, trying to find a natural line of approach, but Nate Tuttle had been smart enough to keep a fifty-yard fire lane all the way around the place. No matter which direction I approached from, I was going to be faced by fifty yards of coverless no-man’s-land, so I retraced my steps back to the only cover I had, at the rear of the Range Rover.

  I crept forward until I was resting my back on the rear bumper. The ground behind the car was littered with beads of shattered safety glass. The moon peeked out from under the clouds, casting an eerie glow over the forest.

  I heard raised voices coming from inside the house. Then heard the front door slam open, and the voices get louder. “Come on, C-Man,” Biggs yelled. “I’ll get the damn kid. Meet me at the car.” I shivered at the possibility of Lila being driven off into the night by these two maniacs, and I knew, without a doubt, that there was no way I could let that happen.

  So I did the only thing I could think of. I moved all the way over to the passenger side, reached over, and put the barrel of the Mossberg on the driver’s-side rear tire and pulled the trigger. The tire disintegrated.

  I then repeated the process on the other rear tire. Whatever was going to come down was going to happen right here, right now. They weren’t taking Lila anywhere.

  I pumped another shell into the chamber, fumbled around in my pocket, found some more shells, and fed them into the Mossberg’s belly.

  They’d turned off the house lights. Biggs’s voice rattled through the trees.

  “Throw out that gun, or I’ll kill her,” he yelled.

  I trained the shotgun on the front door and waited. The way I saw things, Lila was their only ace in the hole, and I was betting both our lives that even those two bozos were smart enough to figure it out.

  “Let the girl go,” I yelled, “and I’ll let you two walk out of here.”

  They came out the front door in single file, Biggs holding Lila in front of him like a shield. Bostick ducked to the left, throwing himself behind one of the big fluted columns that held up the portico. Biggs just stood on the porch, squeezing Lila hard against his chest, daring me to take a shot.

  He brought his other hand out from behind his back. He was holding a big silver automatic. He put the muzzle on
Lila’s head. “Throw that goddamn gun out or I’ll blow her fucking brains out,” he yelled. Lila began to squirm and kick her legs.

  What I was certain of was that giving up my gun would get both Lila and me killed instantly, so there was no way I was gonna do that. Biggs pointed the automatic in my direction and touched off a round. The slug ricocheted off the side of the Range Rover, throwing sparks into the night. He fired again. I rolled over to the other side of the car.

  In my peripheral vision I saw Bostick dash from the porch into the woods. He was going to flank me, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. A cold ball bearing rolled down my spine.

  Biggs was taking the aggressive approach. He was coming straight at me, gun in one hand, Lila in the other. The girl was struggling for all she was worth. Kicking, arching her back, squirming as only kids can do, but Biggs held on like a vise.

  He was half a dozen steps closer when her gyrations nearly wrested her from his grasp. Biggs made the mistake of hitching her up higher on his chest, finally giving me a field of fire. He was out at the edge of shotgun range, but I allowed for the drop, flattened myself on the ground, and let one go. He screamed like a panther and dropped to one knee. Lila fell from his grasp with a resounding thump.

  “Run, Lila!” I screamed. Didn’t have to tell that girl twice either. She rolled to her feet and began running awkwardly in my direction. They’d duct-taped her hands behind her back and sealed her mouth, but the kid was game.

  Enraged now, Biggs took a shot at the fleeing girl and missed. He cursed and began scrambling back toward the house; I stood up, sighted out over the roof of the car, and emptied the gun at his fleeing shadow, hoping I’d get lucky. I didn’t.

  What I got was a bullet from the bushes that came within an inch of burying itself in my skull. In the excitement, I’d forgotten about Bostick. He wasn’t quite behind me yet, but it wouldn’t be long. I had to move.

  I crawled around to the passenger side. Found the 9mm at the small of my back and let loose three rounds in the general direction of where I imagined Bostick to be, hoping like hell I could buy enough time to reload the shotgun.

  The sound of running feet jerked my head around. My breath froze in my chest. I raised the 9mm, certain that Biggs had reversed his field and was coming at me with that big silver automatic. Instead, Lila came staggering up to the car. I grabbed her and pulled her down to my side. For reasons I can’t explain, getting that tape off of that little girl seemed more important than reloading the Mossberg.

  I held a stiff finger over my lips as I found an edge and ripped the tape from her mouth. The hands were more difficult. I couldn’t find the end and had to tear it with my teeth before I was able to rip it the rest of the way.

  Another slug slammed into the car. And then another. I saw the muzzle flash of the second round, picked up the 9mm and aimed at the spot and fired twice. By my count, I only had four rounds left in the pistol. I needed to get somewhere and reload.

  “We’ve gotta get out of here,” I whispered.

  She nodded that she understood. I stowed the 9mm in my belt, grabbed the shotgun, and put my face right up into hers. “Ready?”

  She nodded again. I took her hand and we made a dash for the woods. Muzzle flashes spewed from the front door of the house. The sound of high-caliber bullets crashing through the trees and undergrowth surrounded us as we picked our way through the dense underbrush. She tripped and fell. I pulled her back up. I kept telling myself that the deeper we got into the forest, the better off we were. They had to be careful that we weren’t lying in wait for them. We didn’t have that problem. There was nothing in front of Lila and me but trees. All we needed was to put enough distance between us and them to allow me a minute or two to reload. After that, I was willing to take my chances.

  We kept stumbling on, tripping over roots, finding our way blocked by fallen trees and impenetrable thickets. Always moving west, toward the road.

  Above the sound of my own labored breathing, I could hear Biggs and Bostick crashing through the underbrush behind us, shouting back and forth as they forced their way through the tangled forest. I heard Biggs shout, “Stay left. Stay left. Make sure they don’t get to the damn road.”

  Something huge loomed in front of us. I tripped and fell, taking Lila down with me. We struggled back to our feet. The sounds of our pursuers were closer now. Her breath was coming harder. Her face was covered with a sheen of sweat. She looked like she was just about out of gas.

  I took her hand and hurried forward. A massive old cedar tree blocked the way ahead. One of those first-growth monsters that pioneers used to fell and then discover they couldn’t move, even if they cut it up to firewood length.

  My peripheral vision caught the jagged outline of the stump, and I veered in that direction. Hand in hand, we wheeled around the butt end of the ancient tree and threw ourselves to the ground behind the massive trunk.

  The ground was uneven; the trunk was straight. Several dark hollows offered sanctuary and cover. I leaned the shotgun against the fallen tree and lifted Lila up on top of the trunk. “Watch,” I whispered. “Tell me when you see them coming.”

  I went to one knee as I reached for the box of shotgun shells in my pocket. It was gone. I stifled a groan. Must have fallen out one of the times I’d tripped and fallen. I cursed silently and pushed my hand deeper into the pocket. All that remained were three loose shells. I thumbed them into the Mossberg’s belly and then jacked one into the chamber. I told myself, three was better than none.

  Took me another thirty seconds to reload the 9mm and jam it back into my belt.

  Lila came sliding down from her perch. Her eyes were huge. She pointed back out into the forest. She opened her mouth to speak, but I covered it with my hand.

  I threw my hand around her shoulder and pulled her down into a big loamy hollow beneath the fallen tree. I could hear them now. They were close. We waited.

  They were skirting the downed cedar at both ends, trying to squeeze us between them. I could hear the nearest one’s breathing. I flexed my hands around the shotgun, trying to stay loose, and then out of nowhere, Lila began jerking on my pants leg.

  One of them was parallel with our position now. Trying to peek over the stump but finding it too tall and then inching forward again. Lila grabbed my leg.

  I looked down, and my heart did a backflip. My head felt like it might blow up.

  My ankle monitor was blinking. Red and insistent.

  I poked a frightened finger at the blinking red eye. Lila got the message. She grabbed my pant leg, pulled it down over the monitor, and then held on with both hands.

  They were past us now. Down at the far end, I caught the reflection of moonlight off Bostick’s glasses as he crept through the woods. Biggs was no more than twenty feet away, his eyes rolling back and forth over the terrain as he limped silently forward.

  Had I been alone, I would have blown Biggs away right there and taken my chances one-on-one with Bostick. But with an eight-year-old girl clinging to my leg like a life preserver, it seemed a better idea to let them creep out of sight and then disappear into the forest behind them. I put the shotgun sight on Biggs’s broad back and left the bead there until he melted into the darkness.

  That’s the moment when the ankle monitor’s little electronic brain sent a message to its little electronic lips and it began to beep, just like that idiot Prichert had told me it would.

  I grabbed Lila by the back of her sweater and lobbed her out from under the tree, and then crawled out after her. I had no idea how long the monitor would continue to beep. Maybe forever. What I did know, however, was that as long as it kept beeping we didn’t have a chance in hell of getting out of there alive.

  “Come over here,” I whispered to her.

  I reversed the shotgun, putting the business end down next to my ankle, then angled the gun in such a way that, if we got lucky, it might not blow off my foot. Finally, I reached down and held the plastic monitor strap
directly over the bore. I turned to Lila. She was slack-jawed with fear.

  “Pull the trigger,” I said.

  She put both hands over her ears and looked at me. I reached out and gently pulled one of her hands down. “Trust me, baby. Pull the trigger.”

  She dropped to her belly, put two fingers inside the trigger guard, and looked up at me once again. “Do it,” I said in a low voice.

  She sobbed once and gave it a yank.

  The boom nearly broke my eardrums. For a moment, I was blinded by the fog of dirt thrown into the air by the blast. Lila was snuffling and trying to wipe the dirt from her eyes. I could hear Biggs and Bostick in the near distance, shouting back and forth, trying to make sure they were both all right.

  I looked down. The monitor was still on my ankle and still beeping. I pulled the foot up onto the other knee so I could see better. All that was left of the security strap was about the thickness of a pencil.

  That’s when I noticed that the blast had blown off part of my shoe. I bent and looked closer. I could see the bloody mess that used to be my little toe and feel warm blood seeping into my shoe. Inexplicably, I felt no pain at all.

  I got up on one knee, squeezed my fingers under the remnant strap, got a good grip, and pulled for everything I was worth. About the time I was sure my heart was about to burst, the plastic snapped and I was thrown back against the ground, panting and dazed by my own momentum.

  I struggled to my feet, grabbed the Mossberg in one hand and Lila in the other, and took off running. Every step seemed to awaken the pain in my foot a little more. By the time we were fifty yards from where we’d started, the foot was beginning to throb, and I was having trouble putting my full weight onto it.

  We kept moving forward. Heading in what I hoped was the direction of the road.

  Lila tripped and fell again. I pulled her back to her feet. The ground was getting boggy. Most of the trees were snags now, gray and bare in the moonlight. The moss was thicker here and more iridescent. On our left, swamp grass was poking up through a foot of water. Another hundred yards and the ground on our right was gone too.