JOEL OR MR. CHATHAM would be there to witness my murder?
I still couldn’t believe it, but that’s what was going through my mind as I felt the van jolt onto pavement, turn right, and gain speed. Spooner had given one of them an ultimatum. I had heard him clearly enough. If I’m going down, you’re going down…
It was sickening to know I could have been so easily fooled. Me-the fourth Hannah Smith, in five generations of women, to die because of poor judgment when it came to men. I wanted to scream, throw myself against the walls and beg God for another chance. I had told Mr. Chatham the truth about church attendance. I went weekly because I believe in God’s mercy and in the power of prayer. After such devotion, why was He allowing this to happen? And why had He destined the women in our family to repeat the same fatal error? It wasn’t fair!
Life isn’t meant to be fair-so grow up and get on with it.
My Uncle Jake, who was not a churchgoer and who had killed three men in the line of duty, had often said that. Something else he often said was God helps those who help themselves. Both embraced a No excuses, keep fighting philosophy that had guided his life, so had guided mine, too, especially during my rough stretches. It was something to cling to now and calmed the panic that was overwhelming me.
You’re not going to let them do this to you, I decided. Get to work!
I did. It was hard enough to breathe after a needle in the throat, so I had finished nicking away at the duct tape. The tape hung from my face but no longer covered my mouth. Now I focused on freeing myself from the rope.
When Levi had tied me, he’d used what I was convinced was an anchor line. Good braided nylon that had the smell of copper bottom paint and saltwater. He hadn’t cut it-people who know boats seldom cut good anchor line-so the rope lay scattered beneath me like spaghetti. That made it difficult to judge which sections to deal with. My hands were behind my back so I had to make decisions based on touch. Levi had allowed my wrists enough room to move, but not enough to yank my hands free. He’d used what, so far, were good knots, except for an attempted bowline that had cinched down on itself and might require pliers to untie. Then he’d finished by connecting my hands and ankles with half hitches so I was trussed like a steer at a rodeo.
My fingers, though, had already solved the problem of the half hitches. I loosened a final hitch and kicked my legs free of my hands. My wrists and ankles were still bound, but I has halfway there. Next step was to pull my knees into a fetal position, then maneuver my feet through my hands-sort of like skipping rope. Once my hands were in front of me, I could free my ankles, no problem.
That’s what I was doing when I felt the van brake and heard Harris Spooner say, “Shit! I just thought of something. If the cops stop us, we’re meat. We’ve gotta stay closer to home.”
Just as suddenly, he yanked the van to the side of the road. Because I was balled up like a contortionist when he did it, I tumbled sideways while tools went clattering across the floor. When we were stopped, I realized I had been spared hitting the wall by a mound of trash and the body of Birdy Tupplemeyer.
Poor dead girl, I thought, pressing my cheek against the plastic. You’re still warm.
Through the screened bulkhead, I heard Spooner once again say, “Shit!” Then he sought counsel from Levi. “It’ll take forever to turn this sonuvabitch around. Think I should use the Hess station again?”
In a flat tone, Levi replied, “Good.”
Spooner said, “Good? Guess that’s what I deserve for asking a damn retard. We got a headlight out, dickweed. You ever hear of something called the po-lice? I’m gonna swing this wagon train around, then tell the man there’s a change in plans.”
The shredding machine, I realized, made turning difficult. I was also remembering the first time I had seen the van. It had disappeared north onto an unnoticed farm lane that might lead to tomatoes and citrus groves but also had to pass close to the cypress pond. Because of the bad headlight, Spooner was being smart and had chosen an alternative spot to get rid of our bodies.
The pond I’d seen last night, a black mirror of lily pads and glowing red eyes.
Alligators eat them all, I had joked to Birdy after she had asked about snakes on Cushing Key.
I pressed my check to the plastic again and whispered, “I will try…”
28
I will try to stop them from shredding your body…
That’s what I meant, which was the best I could do. A promise to a dead friend is still a promise and I was soon glad I had hedged because the unseen road wasn’t a road. It was a fire trail, possibly, rough, with lots of potholes. Spooner drove fast anyway, so I took a beating while I tried to untie myself. I bounced high off the floor several times; could hear the thunk of my friend’s head hammer against metal-an indignity worse than a strip mall cemetery.
But I kept at it.
If the pond had been farther from the main road, I might have had time, but the van crunched to a stop after only a couple hundred yards. I had freed my ankles and was using my teeth to loosen knots at my wrists when I heard Spooner tell Levi, “Get your ass out there and stand so I can see you in the mirror.”
A door opened and slammed shut. I felt the transmission clunk into reverse. Then the van began backing toward what I knew was the pond because Harris provided a running commentary. “Not there, goddamn it, the driver’s side! Find you a patch’a dry ground-yeah!-now closer to the water. Don’t let me sink them tires, Levi. Okay… okay… but, goddamn it, where I can see, dickweed! This bitch weighs a ton-plus!”
While the van continued backing, I worked faster, using my teeth to pull a series of half hitches free. The anchor line was short by most standards, used for shallow commercial fishing, I guessed, but maddeningly long for what I had to do. Each knot required that I extract several yards of rope through a loop before I could move on to the next knot, so my head fanned back and forth-bite the rope and pull… bite the rope and pull. Two or three more loops and I’d be able to part my hands. Once my hands were separated, and if I didn’t run into another bad knot, I would soon be free.
Then what?
I didn’t stop what I was doing, but my eyes shifted to the tools that had been sliding around in the back. It was too dark to identify much, but the shape of a spade-headed shovel is distinctive.
There was my answer-use the shovel to brain the first man who opened the sliding door, then run. Spooner was too old and fat to catch me. We weren’t far from the cemetery where my SUV was parked. If someone had taken my keys, there was also Birdy’s BMW.
Would that work?
No… I hadn’t thought it through. What if it was Levi I had to outrun? He was twice my size, all muscle, and the legs of a man named Walkin’ Levi would be in good shape.
There was something else wrong with the plan. Even if I managed to escape and bring back help, it wouldn’t be in time to spare Birdy Tupplemeyer’s body the obscenity of being spewed into a pond where alligators were waiting to feed. The thought was horrifying yet didn’t alter a more compelling fact: if I had no choice but to run, I would run. I wasn’t going to die to save a dead friend. But was there a better option?
Yes… a new scenario popped into my mind:
Hit the first man with the shovel, jump behind the wheel, and drive off!
I liked that. Just me and Birdy, towing a one-ton tire shredder in a vehicle that had a bad headlight so was just begging to be stopped by police. If a squad car didn’t appear, there was always the Hess station three miles down the road.