I wasn’t going to give her another chance. The only weapon I had was a few feet away, so I used my free hand to grab Dr. Alice Candor by the hair and dragged her to the sand mound. Still holding her wrist, I forced the woman’s face deep into the sand and she instantly dropped the hypodermic. Even so, I wasn’t foolish enough to reach for the needle and I held her there for only a few seconds… then I crawled away in a rush.
A fire ant nest was not a place to linger.
I was staggering toward the lights of my SUV when the screaming started. I glanced over my shoulder and didn’t want to look again. As I had told Birdy Tupplemeyer, fire ants attack in mass, their bites like burning coals. Dr. Candor was covered with them, her face a crawling mask of black. She was running in crazy circles while she clawed at her eyes and shrieked for help.
The woman tried to abduct you, even kill you, I reminded myself. Maybe she killed Birdy.
I couldn’t convince myself to leave her, though. It wasn’t in me. I couldn’t abandon a person who was terrified and in pain-even someone like Alice Candor. People died from fire ant bites.
When I felt a series of stings on my left ankle, it was a reminder. I slapped the ants off my shoe, then went staggering toward the doctor, calling, “I’ll help-stop running!” But I was thinking, You’re a fool, Hannah Smith… a fool.
No doubt about it, because, moments later, a van roared into the clearing-a commercial van with only one headlight and pulling machinery.
The driver was Harris Spooner, his ZZ Top beard angelic silver when he leered at me through an open window. Walkin’ Levi Thurloe was beside him, riding shotgun while staring straight ahead.
The machinery they were towing was the tire shredder.
27
Harris Spooner was in a rage but speaking to someone in authority so tried to sound respectful as he said into a phone, “I know… I know, but shit happens. If she hadn’t swung at me, she’d still be alive. And now Dr. Candor is having a reaction ’cause of them damn ant bites. Eyes all swollen-gezzus, a mess. So it’s not like she can give the woman a shot and bring her back to life.”
When he said that, I knew the body I had been placed next to was Birdy Tupplemeyer. Until then, I had only feared the possibility because she had been wrapped in plastic and covered by bags of trash, all thrown there in one heap by Spooner or Walkin’ Levi.
Either man was strong enough to do it, as I’d found out. When I tried to fight my way to my SUV, Spooner had grabbed me by the shoulders, lifted me off the ground, and shook me like a rag doll while screaming, “Cops searched my trailer ’cause of you! Now you’ve pissed off the doctor, so it’s not like I don’t have a reason.”
I stopped fighting then. It was smarter to pretend I was woozy, almost unconscious, from the drug Alice Candor had given me. The last time I’d seen the doctor, she was having trouble breathing but still coherent and mad enough to tell the men, “Get rid of that vicious bitch, too, or no more fentanyl! Either one of them could’ve ruined it all.”
Meaning, they should kill me, then put my body through the shredder along with Birdy. When I heard that, I was so shaken it had taken all my willpower not to struggle while Levi used what smelled like anchor line to tie me, then duct-taped my mouth. It was my hope he wouldn’t tie my wrists and ankles as tightly if I was passive.
I was right. Levi did as he was told-tied my hands behind my back, then lashed my legs-but he’d left the knots so loose I was now wondering if it was because I had defended him from bullies when we were younger. If that was true, maybe I had an ally. Levi hadn’t said a word to me-or anyone, for that matter-but had handled me gently while lifting me into the back of the van, which had no seats, and was empty but for a bunch of tools, and what might have been garbage sacks piled on the body of my dead friend.
Another point in my favor, I hoped, was that Harris Spooner was sporting white earbuds and Levi was still missing his. I had managed to knock the iPod from Levi’s shirt during our struggle, and Spooner had called Levi the foulest of names when Levi attempted to retrieve his favorite source of music.
But did any of that matter? Alice Candor had a hold on both men, as I found out when Spooner said into the phone, “I don’t give a shit what you say, she’s the one who fills our prescriptions. Levi’s jonesing so bad, he’s shaking-and I’m right there. So I hope you told the clinic to send something along when they come get her. No… a couple of vials, not just patches!”
There was a long silence. Finally, Spooner said, “Even if you get a judge to sign, she’s gonna be a problem,” which confused me. There was a third woman somehow involved in tonight’s events? It sparked a brief hope in me that it wasn’t Birdy they had killed-but that ended when he got back to Dr. Candor, saying, “She’s sitting in the goddamn BMW with the air-conditioning, what do you expect? Now I’ve got to get rid of that, too-as if I don’t have enough shit to deal with! Car’s gonna have to sit here ’till midnight unless you find Mica and he comes with the wrecker.”
When he said that, I wondered: Why didn’t he mention my SUV? Did the person he was speaking with know I was in the van? Spooner didn’t offer any clues when he told the person, “Damn it, at least four vials! After what we’re doing for that quack tonight?”
For several minutes, I had been lying in darkness, the van’s engine running, while the men waited for someone from the clinic to arrive with transportation and a shot of Benadryl, which Dr. Candor had ordered. Now another drug, fentanyl, had been added to the list.
Fentanyl. Was that what Candor had injected into my neck? It was addictive, obviously, and not long-acting because my sense of euphoria was long gone. No wonder Spooner and Levi were so desperate. No matter how many times I’d stood up to the bullies, I realized, Levi would do as he was told.
But what about the person Harris Spooner was talking to? It was someone Spooner had to at least pretend to respect, so maybe the person would help me. Only two possibilities came into my mind: Joel or Mr. Harney Chatham. Alice Candor had known I ignored the false texts from Birdy’s phone-probably last-minute information, so she’d had no choice but to be here waiting for me. I already suspected that Joel or Mr. Chatham had hidden a GPS on my vehicle, so only they could have warned her. But would either man allow me to be murdered, then put into a tire shredder?
No… Joel had a temper, but he liked me. Mr. Chatham’s tears for my mother had been real. It wasn’t possible.
I had been working at freeing myself from Levi’s knots but now concentrated on the duct tape, using a loose floor rivet as a cutting edge. Scrape the tape from my mouth and I could shout out Joel’s name, yell a reminder that Loretta’s daughter was about to be killed.
Too late-and pointless, it turned out.
“I’m not doin’ shit until you get here,” Spooner told Joel or Mr. Chatham. “If I go down for this, you’re going down, so get moving.” Then he said in a rush, “Guy from the clinic’s here,” and hung up the phone.
I was lying on my side. Car lights sailed across the roof of the van; a window opened to allow a muffled conversation. A minute later, I heard air bubbles being tapped from syringes, then the Awwwww sound of a man who felt relief.
“Let’s get ’er done!” Harris Spooner said, sounding optimistic for a change.
Walkin’ Levi replied, “Good.”