That was fine. Josiah was not alone on this day and in this struggle. Campbell rode with him, and the valley knew no fiercer ally. They’d finish this piece of work together, all opposition be damned.
They reached the trailhead and pushed through the fields and back toward his truck. Now that they were out of the trees he could look across the farmland and to the road, and he saw that the flashing emergency lights that had been there when they arrived were gone. Called elsewhere to some other crisis. He reckoned wherever they’d headed, it was the wrong damn direction.
The truck was where he’d left it, covered with dents and scratches but still ready to run. All he needed out of it was one last drive, a handful of miles.
“Here is where we part,” he told Danny as they passed the overturned Porsche. “You’ll hear the rest of the story soon enough, I expect.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not something I have the time or desire to clarify.” He shoved the woman toward the back of his truck, but for the first time she began resisting, twisting against his grasp. Her hands were still bound but her legs were not, and she kicked at his knee. He slapped her hard, wrenched her arm, and slammed her up against the side of the truck. Her sudden show of fight told him that the bed of the truck might not be the place for her. He’d put her in the cab instead, keep her close.
He found the roll of duct tape in the bed of the truck and held her while he wrapped some around her lower legs. Then he dragged her around to the passenger side, paying no mind to Danny, and jerked the door open. She was still struggling, thrashing around so much that she caught his face with the back of her head and he tasted blood in his mouth. He grabbed her by the neck and shoved her forward, slamming his knee into her ass as he did it, and got her inside. He’d just shut the door when Danny said, “No more, Josiah.”
Josiah turned back to look at him and saw the knife in his hand.
It was a folding knife, with a blade no more than four inches long, one of those that had a little metal nub so you could flick it open fast with your thumb and fancy yourself a badass. Josiah looked down at it and laughed out loud.
“You going to cut me?”
“Going to do what needs to be done. You can decide what that’ll be.”
Josiah laughed again and lifted the gun and wrapped his finger around the trigger.
“Knife at a gunfight,” he said. “If that doesn’t describe your entire pathetic life, I don’t know what does, Danny boy.”
“Whatever you’re fixing to do, you’ll do it without her.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Danny, I squeeze this trigger, I end your life. What don’t you understand about that? This bitch hasn’t a thing to do with you.”
“It ain’t right, and I won’t stand for it.”
“Well, aren’t you a noble bastard.”
“What her husband told you back there, it was the truth,” Danny said. “This ain’t you anymore. I don’t understand what’s going on, but you aren’t yourself, Josiah. Not even close.”
“What did I tell you about using that name?”
“That’s what I mean—it’s Campbell’s ghost has got in your head, just like he said. You been talking so damn strange, talking about Campbell like he’s sitting at your side. The man’s dead, Josiah, and I don’t know what in the hell has gotten into you, but that man is dead.”
“Right there’s a mistake that’s been made for far too long,” Josiah said. “Ain’t nothing dead about Campbell.”
Danny had shuffled a little closer. There wasn’t but five feet separating them now. Josiah was enjoying this little exchange, amused by Danny’s attempted show of heroism, but he didn’t have time to waste.
“Stand down and step aside,” he said. “Me and the missus have to be getting on.”
“She’s not going with you.”
“Danny…”
“I’m telling you as a friend, Josiah, best friend you ever had in your life, that you’ve lost your damn mind.”
“That may be,” Josiah said, “but I’ll tell you something: I’m not going to ride into the fire alone. That bitch is coming with me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re leaving. Go on and get in your car.”
Danny paused for a long time, and then he looked at the woman in the truck and pushed his fat pink tongue out of his mouth and wet his lips.
“Anybody going to take this ride with you, it ought to be me.”
“You’d take her place?”
Danny nodded.
“And I’m the crazy one? She ain’t nothing to you, boy.”
“And she ain’t to you neither.”
Josiah felt unsteady again, his mind shifting on him as it had been all day, and that angered him. He didn’t have time for it, knew exactly what he had to do and had been on his way to do it until Danny’s fat freckled ass slowed him down with this bullshit.
“Get in your car,” he said again, emphatically this time.
“All right,” Danny said, “but she’s getting in with me.”
He held Josiah’s eyes for a moment, like he was searching for the bluff in them, and then he wet his lips a second time and stepped toward the woman and Josiah squeezed the trigger.
It had been a long time since he’d fired the shotgun, and he’d forgotten the sheer force of it. It bucked in his arms and sent a tremor through his chest and cut Danny Hastings damn near in half.
Eric Shaw’s wife let out a low, anguished wail under the tape and pushed herself down to the floor of the truck, squeezing against the dashboard as if she expected him to put another round into the window. Josiah ignored her completely, staring at what he’d done. Danny had been at such close range that the damage was catastrophic. There was blood on the truck and on Josiah’s shirt and on his face, hot and wet as tears against his skin.
He wiped at his face with a shirtsleeve and stared down at the corpse.
Best friend you ever had in your life…
Something trembled inside him, a weakening of the resolve that had filled him on the way up the trail, and he swallowed hard and ground his teeth together as Danny’s blood ran through the grass and formed pools at Josiah’s feet.
He hadn’t wanted to do this. Danny had forced his hand, yes, but he hadn’t wanted to shoot. Not at him. Anybody else but not him.
“Damn you,” Josiah said and dropped to one knee, staring at Danny’s left side, where his torso had almost been freed from his legs. Would have been different if he’d had a handgun; he could have put a bullet into his leg or something and just backed his ass off without killing him. That shotgun had no such option; fired this close, it didn’t just kill, it destroyed.
He reached out and touched the grass near his feet, dipped his fingertips into Danny’s blood.
Ain’t your blood, Campbell’s voice whispered to him. And ain’t your concern.
But it was hard to focus now, hard to listen. The warm, wet touch of his old friend’s blood held him like cinder blocks strapped to his feet. He couldn’t move away.
He’s no kin to you, boy, and you got work left to do.
Campbell’s voice, so steady and strong throughout most of this day that it had become Josiah’s own at times, suddenly seemed softer. It was hard to hear him, hard to hear anything but the echoing roar of the shotgun.
Josiah had no recollection of having met Danny. They went back that far. Had just walked through their shitty world together from the start, more like family than friends. And the dumb son of a bitch had never stopped walking with him. Not even through this. Shit, he’d come driving up to that timber camp, bringing supplies long after he knew Josiah had killed a man. Had come out here following Eric Shaw at Josiah’s command, had waited on him through a damned tornado.
Had offered to take the woman’s place in the truck right now.
Who in the hell would do that? And why?
Damn it, boy, get your hands out of his blood
and step back! You were to listen. That’s all. Only thing you’re required to do is listen, and now you’re not doing it.
He didn’t want to listen, though. Campbell would tell him to go, to leave this spot, and it didn’t feel right to leave Danny where he’d fallen. No, he couldn’t leave him alone…
It was the woman who jarred him loose. He’d taped her wrists together behind her back, but her fingers were free, and somehow she’d managed to reach the door handle. He heard the click of the latch opening, and with it his mind spun away from Danny Hastings and he turned to see her feet go flying through the cab as she fell backward and out of the truck.
He got up quickly and ran around the bed of the truck, found her down there in the dirt. She had nowhere to go, was just thrashing around like a fish on the sand, but he had to give her credit for trying. Josiah reached down and grabbed her by the back of her jeans and got her upright, then dropped the shotgun long enough to use both hands to shove her back inside. He hadn’t gotten the door closed yet when he heard an odd, faraway cry.
He slammed the door and snatched the shotgun with both hands, then turned and looked at the woods around him. He heard the cry again, understood the word this time: don’t. Eric Shaw was on his feet and had reached the trailhead, was just across the field from them. Josiah’s finger went to the trigger and for a moment he considered letting it blast in Shaw’s direction. He held off, though.
“You watch!” he bellowed. “You watch, and you listen! Isn’t a thing you can do to stop this!”
He walked around to the driver’s door and jerked it open and climbed inside, setting the shotgun between his legs, muzzle pointed down. The engine roared to life as Shaw continued on his drunken stagger through the field. Josiah threw it into gear and pulled away. In the rearview mirror, he could see the man begin to scream.
At the end of the gravel drive he turned left and pushed the pedal down to the floor, the worn tires howling on wet pavement. He drove south, figuring to return to town the same way he’d come. It would require passing the wreckage that was left of his home again, but he was determined to speed past it without a pause or even a sidelong glance.
That was the idea for the first mile at least, until the house came into view and he saw there was a car pulling out of the driveway. A police car. Josiah hesitated but didn’t touch the brake pedal. They were looking at the damage, not looking for him.
That idea held until the cruiser pulled all the way out, blocking the road, and hit the lights.
59
ERIC WAS TRYING TO hurry, but his legs were prone to buckling. He fell twice and got back to his feet, reeling, and pushed on. Toward the middle of the field his head began to clear and his legs steadied. There was a terrible burning just above his shoulder and he could feel a wet, pulsing heat along his scalp where bleeding continued—wounds left behind by Josiah’s shotgun butt. The pain in his skull was lost between the headache that had been building all morning and the impact of the gun.
He was a hundred yards from Josiah Bradford’s truck when the tires spun and it pulled down the gravel drive and toward the road with Claire inside. Eric stopped moving and screamed at them to stop, but the truck flashed through the trees and was gone from sight for a moment. Then it appeared again, marked by a shriek of tires as Josiah made a left turn out onto the road and sped south. Eric stood in the field and screamed until the truck was gone.
The wind blew up in a sudden commanding gust and pushed him sideways, and that got him moving again. The air temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees, and it was as dark in the field now as it had been in the trees.
Up ahead he could see two vehicles remained—a white sedan and a twisted black mess that had once been Kellen’s Porsche. It was upside down now, demolished, but the white car was upright and looked functional. He ran toward it. Made it to within thirty feet before his eyes took in the splash of red across the hood and then dropped to the grass below it. What he saw there took his legs. He stumbled and fell, landing on his hands and knees in the mud.
There was a body in front of the white car. A huddled, blood-soaked mass.
He got up and moved forward, unable to take a breath, the world seeming to go still and silent around him despite the raging wind. There was so much blood. So much…
It was Josiah’s partner. Edgar Hastings’s grandson. He’d been shot in the left side of his torso, had a massive, ragged hole blown out of him. It looked nothing like a gunshot wound. More like something chopped away with an axe. After he’d gotten close enough for recognition, Eric stumbled away from the body as if it could stand up and hurt him.
Not Claire. That is not Claire. And you only heard one shot…. You saw him put her in the truck, and she was alive. She had to be, because there was only one shot…
There had been only one shot. Right? He felt sure of that, and now he was sure of what that shot had accomplished. But Claire wasn’t here, which meant that she was in the truck with Josiah Bradford—a man who’d just murdered his own friend.
Dynamite. With fifteen gallons of gasoline to help it along. When they take her bones out of the fire…
“No,” he said aloud. “Damn it, no.”
He circled around the body and came to the white car, jerked the door open, and looked inside. No key in the ignition. Who had driven it here? Josiah was gone in the truck, so that probably meant the dead man, Danny, had driven this car.
No time to hesitate. He had to move fast, just do it without thinking.
He crossed to the body and knelt beside it, felt bile rise in the back of his throat, squeezed his eyes shut and reached with one of his shaking hands toward the blood-soaked jeans. He felt for the pocket, almost shouting when his fingers touched warm, wet blood, and pushed his hand inside.
The keys were there.
Forty minutes after the first tornado of the day touched down near Orangeville, the third made contact in Martin County, at the point where the Lost River emptied into the east fork of the White River. The funnel cloud tore into the riverbank and then blew northeast, cutting a straight line across the Lost River’s snaking course, as if it intended to follow it all the way upstream. Then the storm ran into the hollows of the Hoosier National Forest, two natural wonders colliding, and lost its strength in the uneven wooded terrain. It was as if, one spotter said, the forest had swallowed it.
Anne had been focused on the storm reports, listening to the arrival of this third tornado and quite certain that it would not be the last, that the valley was in the midst of a cluster outbreak now, when the Orange County dispatcher cut in on her.
“Ma’am? Mrs. McKinney? Detective Brewer thinks he has the truck.”
“He does?”
“A white Ford Ranger? That sound right? It’s a little pickup truck?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it came up to Josiah Bradford’s house and then pulled a U-turn. The officer is following it now. He’s got the lights and siren on but the driver isn’t responding.”
“That’s it,” Anne said excitedly. “That’s him. Tell him to be careful. There’s dynamite in that truck!”
“He’s been advised.”
“Is there anyone else in the truck?”
“He can’t tell.”
“She should be with him. She should be inside.”
“I understand that. I’ve advised to exercise caution.”
“I don’t know if that’s a strong enough word,” Anne said. “It’s going to be hard to stop that truck without…”
Her words trailed off. She didn’t want to voice the possibility.
“I understand,” the dispatcher said.
Josiah barely pulled the U-turn off. The right-side wheels slid off the pavement and into the grass but the four-wheel drive spun him free and then he was moving again, away from the cop.
Maybe this guy was intending to stop Josiah just to ask what he knew about the house. Maybe he was just going to offer a warning about the storm…
The sir
en came on then, and such thoughts disappeared. The cop was in pursuit, had gone into it immediately, and that meant he was reacting to the sight of Josiah’s truck, and not simply to his behavior.
He was going to have to think fast now, damn it, because his little Ranger was not going to outrun that Crown Vic. If the dumb son of a bitch started shooting at him or tried to force a collision, he’d be in for one hell of a surprise when the truck blew a mile into the sky. Only problem with that, Josiah’s load was intended for another target, and he was going to get it there. It was the last task he had, and he could not fail.
That was going to require some time, though, time he couldn’t buy as long as this damn cop stayed in pursuit. He dropped his hand to the stock of the shotgun, considering his options. He couldn’t fire the shotgun from the moving truck with any accuracy and he wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t blow the dynamite. Far as he knew, the stuff required a direct electrical charge to safely detonate, but he figured a fire would do the rest. You didn’t set dynamite on fire and expect it to quietly burn out. Gunfire might do the job, too, and Josiah wasn’t ready to blow this truck up just yet. Had a few miles to go first.
He needed time. That was all he needed—a little bit of time.
He took the truck up to seventy, and now he was aware that the cop was trying to speak to him through the cruiser’s loudspeaker. Dumbass didn’t even turn his siren off for the attempt, and even if he had, the wind would have washed the words away. It was blowing fierce now, the sky gone coal black, sporadic lightning flashes making the world beneath carry an odd green glow.
The cruiser was keeping pace and not attempting to close the gap, which was surprising. Probably the cop was on the radio right now, explaining the situation and asking for advice. How much did he know? Odds were, a description of the truck had been issued after the detective was murdered on this road, but there was a chance—however slim—that the damned old lady had somehow found a way to contact help from her basement. And if that was the case, this guy knew Josiah had a hostage.
So Cold the River Page 38