Nathan swung the barrel of his shotgun toward the distant cabin and tipped his head in that direction. Clear enough.
10
They marched me down the hill to the cabin, Nathan leading, the other two gunmen behind me. They’d patted me down and relieved me of my field belt, the cell phone, and my weapon up at the cave. The man with the dogs was way ahead of us, being practically dragged back to the dog pen by those two big brutes. None of them had gone into the cave, which was a good thing because I don’t know what would have happened if they had. They’d have probably shot the shepherds and then fed them to the big dogs. If they’d seen me coming back up the hill from the cabin, they weren’t letting on.
Grinny wasn’t sitting in her chair on the front porch like the last time. They took me to one of the side barn buildings and locked me into what had been either a horse or cow stall, I couldn’t tell which. They chained a steel cuff to my right ankle and then barred the wooden stall door. The other end of the chain was made fast to a wooden beam that had to be twelve inches square. The floor was covered in dense straw that smelled of old manure. There were no windows and no lights. I could hear some kind of animals shuffling around in other stalls, but it was too dark to see what they were. The walls of the stall were about seven feet high, rough oak, and harder than any nail. The barn roof beams were a good fifteen feet above my head.
I sat down in a corner of the stall with my back to the plank walls, my leg extended to accommodate the chain. I could hear some of the dogs in the big pen, but no human sounds. The back of my neck was on a low burn.
I was in deep shit any way you looked at it. The shooter earlier had not been firing warning shots, which meant he’d been told to take care of business. I was now locked up in the enemy’s camp. The fact that there was a chain shackle permanently mounted in a stall meant that they’d held people here before. And there was a fair possibility that my only contact with the outside world had also been compromised. Greenberg’s crew had been pulled off to a project well south of the area, and no one in the SBI would be especially concerned that they weren’t hearing from Carrie.
I had to get out of there. I began with the shackle. Like most cops, I carried two knives, a big one on the field belt and a much smaller penknife sewn into a pouch in the back of my trousers’ waistband. I fished that out and went to work on the shackle’s lock. The shackle was actually a work shackle, the kind used on prisoners in a chain gang to keep them from running. It was not tight at all. The lock was an old-style, bar key series lock, but the steel was as strong as ever and my knife not strong enough to make the mechanism move. I took off my field boot and sock and tried to pull my foot through the shackle. I have smallish feet for a guy of my size, but the ankle was a mite too big. If I had some grease it might just work, but I was fresh out of grease guns. I sat back and rubbed my neck. Where there was a thick smear of greasy ointment.
I wiped as much of the smelly stuff as I could on my bare ankle and heel and then pulled the chain out to its full length. I knew I’d have one shot at this, because the tissue would swell immediately when I really forced the issue. I set my foot at as flat an angle as I could, closed my eyes, and exerted a steady pull. It hurt, but it was very close. I took a deep breath, set my jaw, and then yanked hard on my left leg. The rim of the shackle felt like it was planing off the top of my foot, but the heel finally slipped through and I was free of the chain.
I opened my eyes. My instep felt like it was on fire, and I could feel a weep of blood starting up. The rest of my foot did not want to straighten out just yet. I could actually feel the ankle starting to swell. I rubbed more ointment on the raw, abraded skin, then put my sock and boot back on while I still could. Standing was harder than I had expected, and running was clearly out of the question for a while. What I needed was a nice cold creek, preferably a few miles from Grinny Creigh.
Now for the walls.
The stall walls were stacked oak boards, but they had warped over the years and there were finger and toeholds all the way up. I wondered if a one-footed guy could do it. Depends on how bad he wanted out of here, I told myself. I started up the wall, which wasn’t that hard except for my left wheel, which could take almost no weight. At the top of the wall I found out that there were two rows of stalls facing each other across a narrow aisle. There was absolute darkness at one end and the barely visible outline of a set of double doors at the other.
The doors were not locked. They’d assumed that the chain would keep anyone from getting out of that stall. I could hear the noises of the dog pen to the right of the barn and knew that opening that door would rouse at least some of the dogs. That would bring Nathan or one of his helpers. Then I noticed there was a small room at the end of the aisle nearest the door. I opened that door and found a smelly freezer running quietly underneath a window. So they did have electrical power up here. I wondered how-maybe a hidden generator?
The window was dusty, but I could make out the open dog pen and, beyond that, the end of the porch on Grinny’s cabin. There were no lights on in the cabin, and the dogs were lumps of shadow on the dirt floor of the forty-foot-square pen. I opened the freezer and found unwrapped chunks of frostbitten red meat, probably deer, stacked inside. I tested the window. It opened freely. I saw a couple of the dogs look over to the window with sleepy interest. I opened the window wide and threw out a lump of meat. Two dogs got up immediately and went for it. This awakened some of the other dogs. I began throwing meat to the far side of the pen, away from the side I’d be traveling. Soon the whole pack was up and chasing rock-hard pieces of meat around the pen. There was some snarling and growling, but I threw so much out there that pretty soon every dog had something. Then I slipped out the front door and limped toward Grinny’s cabin porch. I was hoping that the noise from the dog yard would bring Nathan to the door, and I was determined to get there before he did.
It was close. I was up on the porch and sneaking as fast as my bum foot would allow, trying to get next to the cabin’s front door. It opened and Nathan stepped through, trusty double-barreled shotgun at port arms. He was wearing long Johns and was obviously not quite awake. I stepped in front of him, grabbed the barrels, and pushed them hard back into his mouth. He was stunned, both to see me standing there and by the sudden pain of getting hit in the mouth. Feeling the barrel still slack, I hit him again, this time on the bridge of his nose. He yelled in pain and tilted to one side, which is when I jerked the shotgun out of his hands, reversed it, and jabbed with the gun butt, the first time between his legs followed by a thump to his forehead as he doubled over. He collapsed with a whoof onto the porch, blood streaming out of his nose and mouth and his hands clutching air, not knowing what to grab hold of first because everything seemed to hurt. Hopping on one foot to get a few feet away from him, I then took a golfing stance and teed off on both of his shins with the gun butt, curling him into a grunting, gasping ball of agony on the porch. You want to keep a really tall guy down, the shins are always the best place to work.
Then I pointed the shotgun into the dark interior of the cabin and discharged both barrels, aiming high in case there were kids in there. I mostly wanted to keep any reinforcements from charging the door. The ten-gauge kicked like a mule, and the noise was terrific. The dogs, frozen meat forgotten, set up a barking frenzy when the gun went off. I heard breaking glass inside the cabin and something solid falling onto the floor. I glanced at Nathan, but he was still curled on the floor, mewling through bloody lips. I spotted the box of shells on the little table by the door and grabbed a handful. I stepped away from the door and over to one of the windows while I jacked out the empty hulls and reloaded. I fired two more rounds through the left-hand window and heard more debris flying around inside the cabin’s front room.
I reloaded one more time and this time blasted two holes into the porch floorboards, one by Nathan’s feet and the other right next to his head. He screamed in terror and scrambled through the front door back into the gunsmoke-filled
cabin. I stuffed another handful of shells into my pockets and limped off the porch, reloading as I went. The dog pen was insane at this point, so I fired two more rounds into the enclosure, which sent most of the dogs yip-ping for cover. Then I hobbled my way down the front field toward the woods, using the warm shotgun to balance myself.
My ears were ringing with the sound of the heavy gun. I wondered if I should have killed Nathan, because if he ever caught up with me, he was going to want me dead. At the edge of the woods, maybe fifty yards from the cabin, I fired two more rounds up at the porch. At that range, I knew they wouldn’t do any real damage, but the rattle of ten-gauge pellets on the front wall ought to encourage anyone inside to stay inside. Then I pushed into the trees and headed downhill for my favorite river road.
I wasn’t afraid of Nathan coming after me, but Grinny, assuming she was there, might loose the dog pack. A tactical police shotgun could keep them at bay, but not an old double-barreled model, so I kept an eye and an ear over my shoulder for canine pursuit as I made my way awkwardly down the dirt road. There was just enough moonlight for me to make pretty good time, especially since I was going downhill. As the adrenaline from the fight with Nathan crashed, I realized how tired I was and that my foot was really hurting now. It was well after midnight, and I hadn’t had any sleep since that brief nap in Laurie May’s hideaway.
Laurie May. Had she told them where I was hiding? And where Carrie was probably staying in Marionburg? Nathan and his dogs had probably come through that crack, so they may have tracked me to the cave. On the other hand, what scent article did they have to set up the dogs? Something I’d left behind in her daughter’s cabin? The blanket on the bed?
The jury was still out on Old Lady Laurie, although I had a hard time featuring her as being an ally of these bad guys.
I stumbled over something in the dirt road and went sprawling, doing my injured foot no good at all. Time to take a break, I thought. I was at least a quarter mile down the hill from Grinny’s place, so I should be able to hear anything coming through the woods after me. I sat down on the ground with my back to a fallen tree trunk. My neck was still hurting, but it didn’t feel like I was battling an infection. My foot had been rubbed raw by my boot, and I wasn’t looking forward to seeing my sock. The ankle was definitely swollen, so I wasn’t about to take that boot off, either. I reloaded the shotgun and counted my remaining shells. Nine. At least I was armed again, as any human pursuers would find out if they crowded me.
After ten minutes, I hoisted my weary ass off the ground and began a highspeed hobble down the road. Getting off my feet for a few minutes may have been a mistake; my left ankle was bigger than it had been and very definitely not happy. I consoled myself by thinking about how Nathan felt right now.
Then I heard something coming fast through the woods behind me, and it wasn’t of the two-legged variety. I swung the shotgun around and took a shooting stance, and then relaxed when Frick and Frack burst out of the trees. I chastised them for waiting to reappear until I’d escaped from the clutches of the Creighs. They went into heavy licking and panting mode anyway. As usual I felt a whole lot safer with my two furry friends alongside. They’d detect anything else coming through the woods long before I would.
In fact, they heard the vehicle coming up the dirt road before I did. My fatigued brain had been on the lookout for headlights, but this vehicle wasn’t showing any. All three of us scuttled off the road and into the underbrush. I put the dogs on a down and hunched behind a briar bush until I finally saw Rue Creigh’s pickup truck grinding up the road in second gear. There appeared to be two people in the truck’s front seat. I couldn’t make out their features but assumed one was Rue and the other-Carrie?
Yes, by God, it was Carrie, and she looked a lot like a prisoner. When the truck was not quite even with my hiding place, I stepped out of the bushes to the side of the road and pointed the shotgun at Rue’s face. She stopped almost immediately, her brake lights painting the woods behind her with a red glow. Her window was open.
“Police officer,” I shouted, out of habit, I guess. “Shut it down, step out, and let me see your hands!”
Rue surprised me, and she might have succeeded had not Carrie yelled a warning. Rue produced a shiny handgun seemingly out of nowhere and pointed it right at me, obviously preparing to shoot right through her own windshield. I pulled both triggers on the ten-gauge, and Rue’s face and head disappeared in a bloody explosion of skin, bone, brains, and windshield glass. I felt something snap by my own head as the big shotgun bucked in my hands, and realized she’d actually gotten off a shot a millisecond before I sent her to see her Maker.
I slowly lowered the shotgun and saw Carrie piling out of the pickup truck, her face ashen and the left side of her blouse and jeans stained with gore. Her wrists were cuffed in duct tape and she was barefoot. Bits of windshield glass glittered on her clothes.
“Sorry about that,” I told her, trying not to look at the practically headless torso canted over to one side in the driver’s seat. “Cop training. See the gun, pull the trigger. Answer questions later.”
“Jesus Christ!” Carrie gasped. “What a mess!” She was trying not to stare at the truck’s bloody interior. My ears were ringing again, and the woods seemed to have gone very quiet after the double blast of the shotgun. I wondered if they’d heard that up at Grinny’s cabin.
“I was hoping to spring you and take the truck,” I said. “Now I think I’d rather walk.”
“Got that right,” Carrie said, a hand over her mouth. “Talk about wet work. Goddamnl”
“Was she the ‘oh, shit’ I heard you say before we got cut off?”
Carrie nodded. “I turned around and there she was, gun in hand. I hadn’t locked the screen or the front door, and I was fresh out of shepherds. She had a roll of duct tape on her wrist like a bracelet and a look of pure, evil pleasure on her face.”
Now she had no face at all. First Nathan and now Rue. Grinny Creigh and what was left of her clan would declare war over this. “We have to get out of this county,” I said. I told her what I’d done to Nathan and how I thought he and his boys had been able to find me.
“Laurie May?” Carrie said. “No way.”
“Either blood’s thicker than water, or they may simply have scared it out of her. Or hurt her, for that matter. Nathan may have used those two dogs to make her talk, not find me.” I took out my penknife and hacked away at the duct tape. Carrie’s clothes smelled of the blood and bits splattered all over the inside of the truck.
“Where’re your shoes?” I asked.
She nodded in the truck’s direction. “In there, in the backseat,” she said. It was obvious she wasn’t going anywhere near the truck, and she was licking her lips as if she were fighting down nausea.
I felt about the same way, but she had to have shoes, and I also wanted that gun. I had to hold my nose and my gorge while I retrieved Carrie’s shoes and socks from the floor of the back seat and also Rue’s handgun, a stainless steel. 357 Magnum. Big gun for a woman to handle, but she’d still managed to get one off and damned hear hit me with it. She hadn’t hesitated one second, either, even while staring at eternity down the barrels of a ten-gauge. I saw her cell phone lying on the seat, but she’d bled all over it, and I wasn’t about to touch it. There were two unopened and unsullied bottles of water on the floor in the back, and I did take those. The smell in the truck was horrible, and suddenly I just had to back out of there.
I called the shepherds while Carrie got her shoes on, and then we got going down the dirt road. I figured it’d be daylight in three hours or so, and we needed to put as much distance as possible between us and the Creighs while we could.
“You okay?” Carrie asked me after five minutes.
“I’ll live,” I said. “I’ve shot one other perp during my career, and I’ve witnessed a few more.”
“Is it always that bad?” she asked.
“There’s always a lot more blood than you’d expe
ct,” I replied, not really wanting to talk about this just now. I knew it had been purely a self-defense shoot, but I still had this cold pit in my stomach. It wasn’t like on the television, where there was a medium bang and a foreboding stain. One moment I’d been looking at and talking to a living human being and, in her own blowsy fashion, an attractive young woman. The next second there was nothing but a pumping stump where her head had been.
She got one off, I kept telling myself. Close enough for you to hear it go by, too. The question was-had she been thinking self-defense, too? Or had she just been that hard-boiled? Someone else in my shoes, without police training and reflexes, might still have hesitated when she produced that gun. That. 357 would have had about the same effect on my face.
“Don’t torture yourself,” Carrie said, as if reading my thoughts. “She told me Grinny had sent her into Marionburg to get close to you and then put a knife in your ribs-her words-but the shepherd alerted and you turned her down. Said you hurt her womanly pride. That most men most definitely did not turn her down.”
“Her mother’s daughter,” I said, calling the dogs in closer now that we were getting nearer to the paved road. “How far is it to the Carrigan County line?”
“Eight, nine miles on the river road,” she said. “What’s the matter with your foot?”
I told her about getting out of the shackle in the barn. As we reached the pavement, I looked at my watch. Three thirty.
“Right is southeast, toward Marionburg. The road follows the river. I was going to suggest we start jogging, make better time, but if your foot’s injured-”
“It’s not like we have much of a choice,” I said grimly. “Let’s boogie.”
We made pretty good time, but only because we were going downhill for most of it. We walked the few upgrades we encountered and stopped often to listen for vehicles. My foot made it clear that it was going to get even with me. At times I wished it would just go ahead and fall off. My main concern was that once Rue’s body was found, they’d definitely get those dogs out. We’d left a clear track down that dirt road, and the pavement wouldn’t disguise the scent very much. I thought about crossing the river to interrupt the scent trail, but the stream was getting wider as it flowed downhill, and I was afraid we’d lose too much time. We badly needed to get out of Robbins County.
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