Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted

by Robert J. Crane

  A sound like thunder but louder and more violent caused Lauren to jerk, smacking the back of her neck on the door. Little pieces of shattered glass fell out of the door and down into her shirt. One of them caught on the back of her sports bra before it shook out. “Goddammit,” she said, and caught Arch Stan’s eye under the hanging deputy. “The fuck was that?”

  “Gunshot,” he replied.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” Lauren asked.

  “Don’t you need to get her down?” he asked.

  “I can’t,” Lauren said, not bothering to be polite. “She could have a neck injury. Moving her could be fatal, or it might mean she never walks again.”

  “She’s bleeding awful heavy,” he said.

  “I noticed that, too,” she mumbled, one step from ignoring his helpful words. “Do I need to worry about that gunfire? Because you don’t seem too alarmed by it.” Lauren was one step away from freaking out on him, but since he wasn’t exactly running to deal with it, she assumed he knew what he was doing. Though it did make her question her sanity.

  “That’s our covering fire,” Arch said. “Still got some … bad guys … coming down the mountain.”

  She looked up at him, only mildly incredulous. “Are the bad guys you’re talking about those assholes on the bicycles?”

  “One and the same,” Arch said. “They’re the ones who killed Tim Connor and that other … person.” She wondered if that corpse had been identified yet and realized he’d just given her the answer as he knew it.

  “So you’re up here on the mountain trying to stop them?” she asked. “And they what? Resisted arrest?”

  She didn’t need to be a psychologist to tell he was pissed. “You could say that.”

  ***

  Arch was lying. It wasn’t coming natural, either, so he tried to let Lauren Darlington fill in as many of the blanks herself and just work around that. So far he wasn’t having to get too out on a limb. The problem wasn’t with her, though, it was with what was following her.

  And what was following her was Sheriff Reeve, at some point.

  “She’s got … her abdomen,” Lauren said stiffly. Arch couldn’t tell if she was being so short with him because of the situation or just because she was short with him all the time. He didn’t have much cause to run across her, but when they had she had made it abundantly clear she didn’t want anything to do with him. Arch was fine with that; would have preferred to avoid her himself—because of how she acted, not because he had any personal grudge against the woman—but lately it hadn’t been real easy. “Put pressure here.”

  Arch was not in an easy position to maintain. His frame was long and not exactly small, but he’d managed to crawl up in the front seat of the Sheriff’s Crown Victoria by shimmying in on his back like a mechanic changing oil. His chest was pinned under the center console and he didn’t have much mobility in his arms. “Need me to do what?”

  “Put your fucking hands right here!” she shouted at him, and it echoed in the car. He didn’t flinch away, though, because it was like trash talk on a football field to him. No big deal. Heck, the louder she got, the cooler he tended to get in response. It was just his way.

  He put his hands up there where she pointed, and he could see a dark blood spot on Erin’s khakis. Lauren had been able to get up a little higher and pull it down, but he couldn’t see over the ridge her clothing made hanging down. “You’re gonna have to guide my hands, I can’t see.”

  “Superman’s got no x-ray vision, huh?” she snapped, and he wondered again how much of that was the situation. She grabbed his hands roughly and pushed them onto Erin’s belly. He could feel the wetness, and something sticking out of her skin, something metal maybe? He wondered what it was. “Now hold there,” she said.

  “Yes ma’am,” he replied, as another of Alison’s big gunshots echoed down the mountain. He didn’t even flinch.

  ***

  Alison took a breath and let it out slow. How many of these demons had they left behind? She waited until three of them had come around the curve and started to open up on them. She didn’t know whether they had ill intentions or not, but she knew she wasn’t going to give them a chance either way. It was possible they would have just pedaled on by the crash scene, but she didn’t live her life staking on possibilities and she didn’t much plan on letting her husband’s life hang in the balance, either.

  She dropped the last one with a double shot. Missed the first time, hit the second. She wasn’t exactly a dead shot with the rifle, but she was getting better. Shooting was a perishable skill, and while she was good, handling a .50 was a whole different league of shooting.

  But she knew—had known all along—what it took to just hobble these things, and she didn’t feel like hunting bear with a squirtgun. That was why she’d chosen the Barrett, the prize of her father’s gun collection, rather than something a little more manageable, like, say, a .223.

  She stayed down, rifle still resting on the hood of the car. She knew the sheriff and paramedics had to be close by. It wasn’t like Midian was that far away. But it didn’t matter now, things were about to come out in the open in a big way, and she knew—

  “We gotta get out of here,” Hendricks said, and she jerked her head around to see him standing a few feet distant, still clutching his side. He wasn’t standing straight, either, but leaning against the back of the Explorer like he was about to keel over any second.

  “Pretty sure leaving the scene isn’t going to win us any points,” Alison said, and turned back to her scope. She kept an eye on the road. Didn’t they teach this guy anything in the Army? “Probably get us and Arch in a mess.”

  “We’re already in a mess,” Hendricks said. Alison kept looking through the scope, popping back up to make sure she wasn’t missing anything in her field of vision. Three bikes remained up the road a ways, upturned and fallen where their masters had burned up. “Getting caught here with Lerner and Duncan isn’t going to make it any better.”

  “There’s a witness,” Alison said, evenly, “in case you missed it. Even if we were to leave, I doubt she’s inclined to just forget about us being here. That’s likely to cause Arch and Erin more trouble than it’s worth. Even if Erin’s trouble might take a while to settle, if ever.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He sounded ornery, and she wondered if it was from the pain or from her half-assed way of saying his girlfriend might die.

  “It means what you probably think it means,” she said.

  She could practically hear him stuffing a response deep inside. When he came back at her again, it was with a thin veneer of civility. “What do you think is about to happen here?” he asked. “Shit is going down. We’re all going to get questioned, and when our answers don’t match up—and they eventually won’t, because unless we tell the truth, which will land us in a crazy house, the effort of getting just the four of us to lie like fucking dogs is going to tangle us real quick. Which means we either get Lerner and Duncan in the car and get the fuck out of here to leave Arch to come up with the lies on his own, unimpeded, or we all wrap a big fat fucking stone around each of our necks and jump in the water with him.”

  Alison froze and pulled her eye off the scope to survey the road. There weren’t more than three, were there? She couldn’t recall. She’d been viewing the world through the scope when Arch had hit the bastards with his Explorer and turned them aflip, so while she’d seen the bikes and riders fall, she hadn’t had the best view to count them. If there were any left, they were being damned crafty, though. “We can’t leave Arch to do that. He’s terrible at lying.”

  She could feel Hendricks easing up behind her, but she didn’t turn, she just kept her eyes on the curve, waiting to see if one more of these dumb, life-sucking, black-hearted demons emerged. “Either he lies terribly on his own, or we all drown in this trying to do it better than him.” She didn’t look back at him as he spoke. “By himself, he’s got enough credibility with the sheri
ff he might make it out of this. With us …” She could hear his voice turn nearly dead. “Well, you ever see a man try to swim carrying four dead weights on his back?”

  ***

  Lerner could hear the conversation even before they were coming. Sirens in the distance were getting louder, too. He was looking up into the round face of Duncan and it was all grimness. Having a crack wasn’t necessarily the end of the world, but it wasn’t sunshine and fucking lollipops, either. He knew it, Duncan knew it, and what would need to happen next was hanging over both of them.

  “We need to go with them,” Lerner pronounced.

  “I know,” Duncan said.

  “Glad we’re in agreement,” Lerner said and steeled himself. This part was not going to be easy. “Help me up, you sad sack bastard.”

  Duncan reached down and did just that, slowly, getting him onto his feet over the course of about thirty seconds of levering. Lerner could hear Alison and Hendricks coming, could hear the lady rattling the rifle over her shoulder as she moved. She already had the case in the back of the town car, so at least there was that.

  “Arch?” Lerner called as Duncan steadied him, wrapping Lerner’s arm around his shoulder. It was pretty important that Lerner didn’t move that hip—hell, that whole side of his body—for the immediate future, until they could figure things out. “We’ve got to pursue the suspect.” He laid it on thick, throwing out the agent-y words like he was playing a role. It was second nature to him after watching episodes of CSI and shit.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” This from the lady with the bloody knees. She didn’t emerge from the car, but he could hear her, and she sounded pretty damned unhappy.

  “Lean on me,” Lerner said, and Duncan deposited him against the upturned Crown Vic for support. “Flash her the badge.” Duncan nodded. Lerner probably didn’t need to say it; Duncan knew what had to happen here to try and make it stick. He disappeared around the car, and Lerner could hear him squatting and pulling out his badge to show her. All she’d need to do was look at it and it’d make Arch’s story a little stronger—whatever that story ended up being. “We are federal agents in pursuit of the suspects that caused Deputy Harris’s accident and are responsible for multiple homicides here in Midian and elsewhere.” He kept laying it on thick, like he was using the verbal equivalent of a shovel. He couldn’t see the lady he was speaking to, but as long as she took one look at Duncan’s badge, she’d get the impression that he was a federal agent. As for the rest of the story? Hopefully just the impression would make it hold together, but this wasn’t exactly an exact science, was it?

  “We gotta go,” Hendricks said, and Lerner looked over at him. Alison had the rifle over her one shoulder and was trying to support Hendricks with the other. “Over the—”

  “Shut up,” Lerner said. “Duncan, we good to go?”

  “We’re good,” Duncan said, emerging from behind the upturned wreck. He scrambled around to get his grip on Lerner again. Lerner could feel it, the crack, and he kept that side of his body still and let Duncan take up the weight for him. He waved his right hand at the town car, and Hendricks started toward it with Alison following in his wake to help catch him if he pitched over.

  Lerner was betting on it happening, but he hoped the cowboy would at least have the decency to wait until they were in the car before he dropped. Otherwise, it was gonna hamper the hell out of their getaway. And those sirens in the distance were not all that distant anymore.

  ***

  Lauren saw the guy’s badge, just for a second, long enough to know that they were federal. The other guy threw it all at her pretty quick, the guy with the hip injury. She couldn’t see him while he was talking, but he sounded like he was in a hurry to get after the bicyclists. She didn’t have a lot of attention to give, what with trying to save Deputy Harris’s life with nothing more than her clothes and her own hands to do it.

  She’d found a new problem, too, and it was giving her fits. Harris’s knee was all manner of fucked up, probably from hitting the underside of the dash. Lauren was lacking in bandages and couldn’t send Arch to his cruiser for the first aid kit lest Harris bleed to death from the wound he was keeping pressure on, so she made the next most reasonable request. “Take your shirt off,” she told him.

  He looked up at her from where he was lying on his back, reaching up to hold her insides in. “For bandages, right?”

  “No, because I really want to admire your fucking awesome gym body,” she snapped. “Yes, for bandages.”

  He looked like maybe he wanted to say something back to her on that, but he stifled it. Good. She didn’t need any of his shit today, anyway. He just pulled a hand down and went to work taking his uniform top off. Once he got the second button down, it was obvious he was wearing an undershirt anyway, the fucking prude.

  ***

  Hendricks made it to the car and got in before he slumped against the window. He even waited until the door was closed to do it, falling over against the passenger window like he was going to take a nap. He wasn’t, though, he was just in so much pain he couldn’t hold himself up anymore. He let a loud grunt, like he trying to hold in the world’s biggest fart, and he laughed a little at that thought, which hurt even fucking more.

  Alison slid into the driver’s seat next to him, and he heard Lerner and Duncan squeeze into the back somehow. He turned his head a little and glimpsed Lerner’s long legs butting up against the door immediately behind him. Based on the angle, he guessed the poor bastard was sitting in a pretty fucked-up manner. He didn’t have a clue how Duncan would get in there, either.

  “Drive,” Duncan said from somewhere behind Alison. That wasn’t even a direction Hendricks could bend at the moment.

  “Your shell casings,” Hendricks mumbled as the thought occurred to him.

  “They’re gonna have to stay,” Duncan said from the backseat. Lerner had gone quiet, which was distinctly unlike him. Could he have passed out, too?

  Hendricks heard the roar of the town car’s ignition, and Alison took it into a gentle three-point turn before she gunned it up the slope of the mountain. She wasn’t taking it easy, and she drove the first curve with a grace that told him she might maybe have done this before.

  “Slow it down!” Duncan ordered from the back seat. He was quiet for a second. “We’ve got wounded here.” Hendricks had to agree with that, on every level. Then the pain he’d been pushing down caught up with him on a curve, and he really agreed with it, strongly, with everything in him as it came bursting out in a scream that followed him into the blessed blackness of unconsciousness.

  9.

  Arch was standing off to the side when they loaded Erin into the ambulance. His part was done, he figured, the paramedics tending to her along with Lauren—Dr. Darlington. He was just standing there, night coming on mingled with the smell of the burned rubber tires still lingering in the air and the engine of the overturned police car still making a ticking sound as it drained or something.

  The paramedics were talking some gobbledygook, all medical terminology that Arch didn’t fully understand about IV’s and such. Lauren was making her presence known, and Arch caught the paramedics giving each other looks that said they weren’t as impressed as they were clearly supposed to be.

  There were other personnel on scene now—Reeve was here, milling around, looking at the crash and all the mess that had come from it. He hadn’t said much once he’d heard the phrase “Federal agents in pursuit.” Arch hadn’t gotten too in-depth with it yet, and now he was just standing off to the side, staring at the paramedics loading Erin into the ambulance. He’d retrieved a spare shirt from the Explorer, an old t-shirt he kept in a gym bag, and was standing there with it clashing against his khaki uniform pants, feeling like this was the last place on earth he belonged.

  She was a real mess, Erin was. Her face was bloody, though how much of it was from anything on her face was an open question. She hadn’t regained consciousness the entire time, and from t
he doctor’s offhand comments on the matter, that was either to be expected or a really bad sign. Hard to say which.

  “We need to take her to Red Cedar in Chattanooga,” Lauren said, and her word sounded like the final one on the matter.

  “Ma’am, SkyRidge is closer—” One of the paramedics made the mistake of speaking up.

  “I know Red Cedar,” Lauren said, and that one had the cut of finality as well. “You will take us there, right now.” The paramedic took it a lot better than Arch would have, shutting the back doors to the ambulance as Dr. Darlington climbed in with him. Arch got the feeling that there was going to be more to it than that, but his part was over with. The flashing red lights on the top of the ambulance glared in the night as it started down the mountain road. It weaved between the two other police cruisers, the volunteer fire engine and the wrecker parked below, and Arch watched it disappear slowly into the night, brake lights flaring one last time before it rounded a bend.

  There were a thousand noises around him—conversations, firemen doing things he didn’t have any idea about, Ed Fries trying to examine the scene for whatever clues he could come up with. Arch was aware of them, but not one of them made an impact, stuck. His mind was like Teflon, slippery, not absorbing a thing beyond that ambulance heading down the mountain road and a growing discomfort for what was coming. It let out its first wail now that it was out of sight, a piercing sound that cut through the conversation and all else like the sounding of a horn or like a train passing through on a quiet night.