I didn’t want to see him die, so I averted my eyes and waited for the thud.
Instead, I heard a sound like a gunshot. I looked up, out, and down, and there he was — not on the ground but twenty feet above it, hanging on to a stout but cracked and cracking limb sticking out of a big pine in the woods behind the motel.
I spun around. “He’s in a tree!”
Bree had been at the back, and now she led the way out of the motel room.
“How in God’s name did he do that?” Mahoney said.
“Fear or lunacy,” Sampson muttered.
“I’m calling the sheriff for backup,” Bree called, scrambling down the stairs.
Mahoney took charge and shouted for me to go around the east side and for Sampson to go around the west. He and Bree would get the vehicles we came in.
Souk, the desk clerk, was by the office door. She looked worried as I raced past her and shouted, “What’s in back of this place?”
“Trees and a swamp?”
“And after that?” I called over my shoulder.
“No idea.”
Over the earbud I wore, I could hear Bree calling for backup as I ran along the side of the motel. The way was choked by weeds and vines. Thorns tore at my skin and clothes. There was trash everywhere.
I got to the rear corner of the building, gun up, and peeked around it fast. The trashy thicket went the entire length of the motel. Dead center of that space, a good twenty feet from the Regal’s rear wall and eight feet up the pine tree, Nolan was looking over his shoulder right at me.
For a split second, I saw sheer terror in his eyes, as if he saw clearly who was pursuing him. Then he launched backward out into space and managed a quarter turn before hitting the ground in something like a parachutist’s roll. He grunted in pain, but rolled over onto his hands and knees and then scrambled over the bank out of my sight.
“He’s heading north into the swamp,” I barked into my radio as I fought forward through the thorny vines and trash.
At the other end of the building, Sampson was doing the same. But there were old mattresses, abandoned refrigerators, and other no-tell-motel relics piled up and blocking his way.
Bree’s voice crackled over my earbud. “Sampson, go east. You’ll hit a north/south road.”
“Copy.”
“I’ll stay on him,” I said into the mike at my collar.
When I reached the spot where Nolan had disappeared, I could tell where he’d gone into the mud from the busted skunk-cabbage leaves and bent little saplings.
I slid on my butt down the steep bank. My athletic shoes sank in the mud when I hit the bottom. They almost came off when I lurched up and tried to gain ground on Nolan. The going was tricky, solid earth one step and then six inches of oozing mud the next, a veil of vegetation ahead of me.
In the distance, I thought I heard thunder, and I noticed the sky clouding fast.
“How wide is this swamp?” I said, breathing hard.
“Maybe three-quarters of a mile?” Bree said.
“Then what?”
“State route. Major artery.”
“Close it off.”
“Already asked.”
“I’m heading there right now,” Mahoney said.
Sirens began to wail far away. The wind was picking up, the clouds gathering.
I reached an opening where the swamp became more of a slough marsh for sixty yards. And there Nolan was, flailing and crawling out the other side of the wetland, caked in mud and swamp grass.
The marsh grass grew in dense, tightly clustered clumps with spiky flowered heads above the water. I jumped to one clump, wobbled for a moment, and then hopped to another.
Luck and stability were with me almost all the way across the slough. But right at the end, with maybe six feet to go, I lost my footing and sprawled on my face in the goop.
I crawled and flailed up the far bank just as Nolan had. I wiped the mud from my eyes and kept on, seeing that he was leaving mud tracks that I could follow.
Suddenly I was aware of engines revving somewhere ahead, gears shifting, and then the clank and scrape of metal on rock.
“Is there a big machine working out there?” I called. “Am I near that highway?”
No answer. When I’d gone into the slough water, my mike must have died.
The machines grew louder. But where was the sound of traffic? I should have been hearing tires whine and the sigh of air brakes.
Two minutes later, the thicket thinned before a large, clear-cut area. Hundreds of pine-tree trunks were stacked to my left beside a flatbed trailer. Two white Chevy pickups were parked to my right about seventy yards. Beyond the trucks, three men in hard hats stood with their backs to me watching a bulldozer and grader at work.
None of the men seemed to see or hear William Nolan running behind them toward a black BMW SUV parked on the far side of the clearing near a red dirt road that snaked north.
Chapter 85
I bolted from the thicket and went down the steep grade, one eye on Nolan, who was closing fast on the SUV, and the other on the three men still watching the machines working. They seemed oblivious to what was happening behind them.
As I sprinted to the men, I happened to glance through the open passenger window of one of their pickups and saw keys on the dash.
Nolan was already inside his car. I felt like I had no choice.
Less than fifteen seconds later, I threw the Chevy in gear, hit the gas, and spun the wheel, throwing dirt and gravel toward the three men, who had finally turned and were running at me.
I didn’t care. Nolan had already left the construction site.
I accelerated across the clearing, bumping over ruts, just as lightning flashed overhead. The skies opened and it began to pour buckets.
If you’ve never driven in a mid-Atlantic spring deluge of three or even four inches an hour, I can tell you it’s a disorienting event. So much rain falls so fast that your wipers can’t possibly keep pace with it, and you’re forced to slow to a crawl.
It was a good thing I slowed because when John Sampson suddenly jumped out in front of me from behind a debris pile, I was able to slam on the brakes and skid to a stop.
He jumped in. “Go!”
I smashed the gas pedal and we slid in the greasy mud but then found gravel and I was able to keep the truck fishtailing toward that dirt road leading out.
“How the hell did you get in front of me?” I asked, peering through the downpour.
“Road goes around the swamp.” He gasped, chest heaving for air. “Saw the clearing from it and came in from the side just in time to see Nolan getting into that SUV and you running for the truck, looking like the swamp thing.”
I had no time to reply or laugh because we’d made the road, which narrowed and offered little improvement over the raw ground behind us. We bounced and slid and almost went off it twice.
“He can’t outrun a truck in this muck,” I said. “My mike’s dead. Call Bree. Tell her what’s happening.”
“Chief Stone,” Sampson called.
“Right here,” Bree called back.
“Suspect is in a black BMW SUV, leaving a construction site on a new—”
“There he is!” I shouted.
We’d come around a curve in the road, and the BMW was sliding all over the place. I was barely keeping us on the road but I sped up. Or tried to.
Neither of us was wearing a seat belt, and we hit one rut so hard our heads smacked into the ceiling of the cab. I let up on the gas, trying to orient myself, and I realized that Nolan had slowed, not stopped, just before we were hit by a spray of mud and gravel slurry thrown by his spinning back wheels. Even with the rain pouring down, it coated our windshield in reddish brown.
I couldn’t see a thing and slammed on the brakes.
“He’s high-centered!” Sampson bellowed. He threw open his door and shot out, only to slip and sprawl sideways in the mucky road.