“Mrs. Odom—Beulah’s sister-in-law—takes a medication called Epiklor. It’s potassium chloride. And it can be deadly when injected.”
Lupe Vasquez nodded. “Nolan said you’d shared that with him. He said he’d share it with Jarvis and see what Jarvis wanted to do.”
Hopefully Jarvis would do something. While I was positive Yvonne hadn’t poisoned Beulah, I was less certain that the Odoms hadn’t. If nothing else, someone would look into it.
“So things are moving forward,” Lupe Vasquez said, as Rafe came back out of the repair shop. He had his phone to his ear.
The call ended before he made it to the car, and he dropped the phone into his pocket. “Change of plan,” he said, when he’d opened the door and fitted himself into the front seat. “Sorry, darlin’.”
This was directed at me, not Lupe Vasquez. At least I hoped so. He glanced into the back of the car at me, and his lips twitched.
“What’s the change?” Lupe Vasquez wanted to know, as she turned the car and headed out of the lot.
“We gotta go back up to the Devil’s Backbone before we can go to Sweetwater. Our old friend who called to tell us about the marijuana grows, called again. He wants us to meet him there.”
“How do you know it was the same guy?” I asked. He hadn’t talked to him yesterday. Mother had.
He glanced back at me. “Guy with a handkerchief over the phone to disguise his voice? I don’t figure there’s more than one of them around. And he knew about the greenhouses. He wants us to drive up there and meet him.”
By now, I assumed rather a lot of people knew about the greenhouses. But OK. “So he has some more information for you?”
“Said he knew who killed the Skinners,” Rafe said. “Sorry, darlin’. But I don’t wanna put him off while we drive all the way down to Sweetwater and back.”
Of course not. “I don’t mind,” I said. “Pearl and I will just go along for the ride. It’s not like we have anything else to do.” Without transportation, our only option was hanging around the mansion all day, and to be honest, I’d rather tag along with him and Lupe Vasquez. At least I wouldn’t be going out of my mind with boredom. “I don’t suppose you got any kind of indication who this guy is?”
“Sorry. Coulda been anybody. Coulda been the sheriff, for all I know. That handkerchief, or whatever it was, did a good job.”
Too bad. I had wondered whether, if Rafe had picked up the phone yesterday instead of Mother, he would have recognized the voice. Now I guess we knew that he wouldn’t.
“It was a guy, though? Not a woman?”
He shook his head. “Definitely not a woman. Not unless she was a baritone, and that’s unlikely.”
It was. If nothing else, I guess we could eliminate Kayla and Sandy.
“He said to come in the back way,” Rafe added. “The route I walked yesterday. I’ll talk you in.”
Lupe Vasquez nodded. I settled back in the seat and put my hand on Pearl’s head. At least now, I’d get to see how Rafe had spent such a large part of yesterday.
* * *
It was a bit of a drive. We passed the entrance to Robbie’s place, and then another driveway a mile or two further on, to Art’s and Linda’s place. Then after that, another. “Darrell’s place,” Rafe said. “In another mile or so, there’ll be what looks like another driveway, but there’s no mailbox next to it. That’s what we’re looking for.”
We kept driving. In another mile or so, there was the driveway with no mailbox, and Lupe Vasquez turned in.
“There’s a gate just up ahead,” Rafe told her, “so don’t get going too fast.”
“On this surface?” She shot him a look. “No chance of that.”
The road here was no better than Robbie’s drive, and might have been worse. The car bumped over ruts and the wheels sank into holes and puddles. I kept my fingers crossed, praying that the shocks would hold out.
A few yards in, we did indeed come to a cow gate. It was open, and leaning drunkenly to the side.
We kept going. Lupe Vasquez’s hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel as she fought to keep the car moving forward.
“What a horrible road,” I said.
Rafe glanced into the backseat. “The better to keep you out, my dear.”
I guess so. The Skinners wouldn’t have wanted anyone accidentally wandering down here. And to make sure no one did, the sides of the road were festooned with the same kinds of signs that had lined Robbie’s driveway: No Trespassing with pictures of automatic weapons.
While it isn’t nice to rejoice in someone’s death, I had to admit—to myself, at least—that I was happy that the Skinners were gone and nobody would be shooting at us.
After some harrowing minutes, we came to another narrow road that led up to the right. Rafe told Lupe Vasquez to turn. “This is the track that leads back to the greenhouses.”
It looked familiar. The same two ruts in the ground that we’d walked along yesterday, from Robbie’s pot operation to Art’s. Except there was more vegetation down here. Up on top of the hill, the track was sort of open. Here, branches brushed the sides of the car and swatted at the mirrors.
Lupe Vasquez gunned the engine to get up the hill. I held onto Pearl. I’m not sure exactly why, because gunning the engine on such a narrow and badly surfaced track didn’t result in a whole lot of speed. We might have been going thirty-five or forty by the time we reached the summit, and burst out of the trees into the more open area.
And that’s when the shot came. Loud and close. I screamed. So did Lupe Vasquez, as she fought to keep control of the car. It rocked this way and that, and life slowed down as the wheels left the furrows in the ground and plowed across the grass. I saw the treeline come closer and closer, in slow motion.
“Shit,” Rafe said, and that was the last thing I heard before we hit a tree trunk with a grinding crunch of metal and tinkling of glass.
Twenty-Four
For a second we just sat there with our ears ringing. Rafe gathered himself first, and I guess that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. “Savannah? You OK?”
“I think so,” I said, my voice shaky. “I’m not noticing any pain.”
I’d strapped in when I got into the car, so while I’d probably have some bruises from the seatbelt, everything else seemed fine. I’d been strapped over and under the baby, so I didn’t think the baby had been hurt when I’d been yanked forward and then back.
I’d let go of Pearl in the impact, and she had flown off the seat and slammed against the wall separating the backseat from the front. I think she must have had the wind knocked out of her, because she wasn’t barking. She also wasn’t moving, but was just lying on the floor, and on my feet. But she was breathing, and her eyes were open. Hopefully she hadn’t broken any ribs or anything like that.
“How are you?” I added.
“I’ll live.” Rafe’s voice was grim. He had not been strapped in, nor had Lupe Vasquez. Cops often have to exit and enter their squad cars quickly, and can’t always take the time to buckle up properly. And out here, I guess they’d both figured there’d be no danger of getting in an accident. We’d been going so slowly.
“How about Vasquez?”
It was hard for me to see through the grid separating me from the front seat. Rafe leaned over with a wince. “She’s out. I think she slammed her head against the steering wheel.”
She was so short she probably would have. Rafe’s head looked like it might have connected with the windshield. He’d probably bruised his torso on all the instruments and gadgets on the dashboard when he was flung forward, too.
“She didn’t get shot,” I asked, “did she?”
He shook his head. “I think what happened was that the shooter took out the front tire, and she couldn’t maintain control of the car, so we crashed. She just knocked herself out, I think.”
He reached over and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. “Her pulse is strong. I don’t think she’s hurt.”
&
nbsp; “We should check and make sure.” I fumbled for a door handle, but couldn’t find one. “What the hell—I mean, heck?”
“Squad car,” Rafe said. “They transport prisoners. You can’t give them a chance to open the door and just walk away.”
I guess not. “Can you let me out, then? So we can make sure she’s all right?”
“Not on your life,” Rafe said. “There’s somebody out there with a gun. What do you think’s gonna happen when one of us opens the door?”
“He’ll shoot at us?”
Rafe nodded. “I need you to stay right where you are.”
Since I didn’t have any choice, I nodded. At my feet, Pearl began to stir. She whimpered and then panted.
“She OK?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “She’s down here on the floor, and I can’t lift her. She hit the wall, so she might have broken something. Or just banged herself up.”
“Hang on.” He opened his door.
My voice rose. “Have you lost your mind? Stay inside the car!”
“He hit the tire on the other side,” Rafe said. “He’s over there.” He nodded to the woods on the other side of the car.
“How do you know there aren’t two of them? There were two guns!”
“I think there’s only one shooter,” Rafe said.
“With respect, I’d rather not take your word for that. And I don’t want you risking your life for Pearl. I love her, but I love you more.”
He didn’t say anything to that, but he didn’t get out of the car, either. In front of me, Pearl was getting to her feet. I put a hand on her head. “You OK, sweetheart?”
She looked up at me for a second.
“Would you like to come up?” I patted the seat next to me. Pearl contemplated it before she gathered her haunches and jumped. Up on the seat, she walked in a circle twice and lay down.
“I think she’s all right,” I told Rafe. “We can have her checked out again later, but for now, I think she’s the least of our concerns.”
He nodded. “Check your phone. I don’t imagine it works, though. Mine didn’t yesterday, when I was walking through this area. I had to get out close to the main road before I could call the sheriff.”
I dug my phone out of my bag while he was talking, and... nope. No service bars.
“We’re as far as we can get from the trailers while we’re still on Skinner property,” Rafe said. “Back that way,” he gestured beyond where we’d been driving, “is all wilderness. That’s the Devil’s Backbone up there. Not much coverage. We’re either gonna have to make our way closer to the trailers, or back down to the man road, if we wanna call for help.”
“What about the police radio? Doesn’t this car have one?”
“I imagine the crash prob’ly took it out.” But he searched the dashboard for it and flipped the switch. “Dispatch? Anybody there?”
Nobody answered.
“That’s not good,” I said.
Rafe shook his head. “Somebody’s gonna have to walk back to where we can get a signal on one of the phones.”
Sure. “I expect you’d want that somebody to be you?” As if he hadn’t gotten enough exercise walking this road yesterday.
“I don’t want it to be you,” Rafe said. “Somebody’s out there with a gun.”
“If you walk away, he could shoot you, and then come back for us. And you won’t be here to protect us.”
“Vasquez can protect you. When she wakes up.”
“I think we should stay together,” I said, while inside I marveled at the fact that we were here, within about twenty minutes of Columbia by car, and within an hour or so of civilization on foot—if you could call the Skinners’ trailers civilization. And we were cut off from everyone.
It wouldn’t have been a problem but for the man with the gun, of course. If we’d just been dealing with a broken down car, all we’d have to do is walk to where we could get cell service. But the fact that someone was out there taking potshots at us with a rifle complicated things.
“Whoever was out there mighta left by now.”
Maybe, maybe not. “Maybe we should open the door and see. If he wants us to stay inside the car, and the door opens, he’ll shoot at it, right?”
“Or maybe he’ll just wait until one of us is outside the car and then pop us in the head.”
I didn’t like that idea very much, and said so. In the front seat, Lupe Vasquez was beginning to stir. We watched in silence as she twitched, and moaned, and finally opened her eyes and sat up. “Shit.” Her voice was weak, and edged with pain. “What happened?”
“We think someone shot out the tire,” I said. “But we haven’t been outside to check.”
She turned her head a half turn, and must have thought better of it, because she focused on Rafe before she got close to looking at me. “Why?”
“We figure he’s still out there.”
Lupe Vasquez nodded, and immediately regretted it. “Oww.” She lifted a hand to her forehead. “I have a bump.”
“You slammed into the steering wheel,” Rafe told her.
“How long was I out?”
“Just a couple minutes. Two, maybe three. If it’s a concussion, it ain’t a bad one.” He gave her a second or two to digest that before he added, “We’re still trying to figure out what to do.”
No sooner had he said it, than another bullet sang through the air and smacked into the side of the car. I squealed and ducked. Lupe Vasquez did the same. Pearl jumped up and started barking, and Rafe swore.
“I guess he realized I woke up,” Lupe Vasquez said, her voice shaky.
Rafe nodded. “We gotta get outta here.” Another shot zinged the car, emphasizing his point.
“Isn’t that what he wants?” Lupe Vasquez asked. “To get us out and running so he can take us out, one at a time?”
And leave us here, up in the woods on private property, where nobody was likely to find us.
“If he hits the gas tank,” Rafe said grimly, “the whole car goes up.”
And if we were inside it, we’d go, too.
“I vote for taking our chances outside.” Not that anyone had asked my opinion, but I didn’t like this feeling of being a sitting duck. I hadn’t liked it before the question of blowing up the car had come up, and I liked it less now.
“At least a nice explosion would bring some help out here,” Rafe said.
“That won’t matter if we’re dead.” I waited a second and added, “I don’t want to be dead.”
He shook his head. “It’s something to think about, though. But I’d rather control it than sit here and wait for someone else to blow us up. Let’s go.”
He opened his door, on the side of the car away from the shooter. I opened my mouth, but closed it again. If there was another shooter on this side of the car, we’d find out. But he might be right, and there was just one guy with two rifles.
What that did to my suspect list, was something I didn’t have time to think about right now.
He slithered out and onto the ground, staying low. I held my breath, but nothing happened. “C’mon.” He gestured for Lupe Vasquez.
She began to make her way across the car to the passenger side, climbing over the big console between the two front seats. Meanwhile, Rafe crept the few feet to the back door and pulled it open. “C’mon, darlin’. Let’s go.”
I started inching my toward him, expecting, at any second, to have a bullet slam into him from the other direction.
But nothing happened. I swung my legs out of the car and crouched on the dry grass. “Come on, Pearl. Time to go.”
“Take her leash off,” Rafe said softly, as Lupe Vasquez scrambled out of the front seat and onto the ground. She had a bump and a cut on her forehead, the blood smeared from where she’d touched it earlier. I opened my mouth to argue, and Rafe added, “We don’t have time to stop and untangle her if she gets stuck. Better to let her make her own way next to you.”
Since that made sense, I unc
lipped Pearl’s leash from her collar and slipped it into my pocket. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go.”
With us all outside the squad car now, and crouching on the ground behind it, we took stock of the situation. Or the other two did. I felt a bit out of my element, to be honest. So I contented myself with scratching Pearl’s ears while they were discussing options and peering through the car for a muzzle flash on the other side.
“There,” Rafe said, a second before another bullet hit the car with a loud ping. “I’ve got him.”
I looked over at him. “You’re not going over there, are you?”
He looked back at me. “Somebody has to. Or he’ll just keep us pinned here. His weapon has more range than ours, and he’s prob’ly got more ammunition, too.”
While that might be true, I still didn’t like the idea of him going over there.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do.” He glanced at Lupe Vasquez and then at me. “Savannah and the dog’ll go straight back from here. Hopefully the car’ll provide enough. Besides, he prob’ly doesn’t even realize they’re here. He was expecting the two of us. So you,” he looked at me, “get lost in the trees up there, and once you’re clear and outta sight, you head up the track toward Darrell’s place. Keep checking your phone. Once you get close to the nearest greenhouse, you should be able to call out.”
I nodded. “What are you going to do?”
“We’re gonna split up,” Rafe said. He looked at Lupe Vasquez. “You’re hurt. It’s better if you stick around here. And—” He hesitated a second. “If that’s who I think it is, it’s better if it’s me taking him on anyway.”
Lupe Vasquez looked like she wanted to demand an explanation. I certainly wanted to. But Rafe gave neither of us the opportunity to ask. “You head down that way.” He pointed away from the car, down the way we’d come. The brush was thicker down there, and would provide more cover. “Take a couple of potshots at him. Your weapon doesn’t have the range to actually get there, but it’ll keep him occupied and in place. Meanwhile, I’ll cut through the woods with Savannah until we’re outta sight, and double back around.”
Bad Debt (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 14) Page 27