When next I came to, it was even darker. Remembering what happened the last time I moved, I slowly lifted my head and looked around. The car seemed to be slightly canted on its right side now so that I still hung in the seat belt like a trussed calf. The front end pointed down the side of the mountain at what felt like a forty-five-degree angle. To my infinite relief, though, it appeared to be blocked from further slippage by the sturdy trunks of two large maples, not to mention that I was jammed in by so many laurel bushes that I could barely see the sky through all the thick leaves and the shattered windows.
At first I couldn’t understand where I was or how I had gotten myself in such a fix, then, as my head cleared, I remembered the tattooed kid from court, the black Ranger, the whole terrifying incident.
I tried to push myself upright and discovered that the car roof was now several inches lower, almost even with the top of my headrest. Dwight’s always complaining about the cramped interior. He’d go ape boxed in here now.
I strained to reach the cell phone that had been thrown into the well on the passenger side, but my seat belt kept me too far away. Between the jackhammer that pounded through my head and the pins and needles in my arm, it was difficult to concentrate, yet I did realize that my first order of business was to get out of this seat belt.
Easier said than done. Even pushing against the floor with my feet to take a bit of the tension off, nothing happened when I pressed the release. I tried again and again, moaning with frustration at each failure.
Jammed.
It was so dark down here under this canopy of leaves that I could barely make out the numerals on my watch.
6:10.
I was two hours late for my meeting with Billy Ed, the only one who knew where I was headed. Would he assume I’d changed my mind? If he thought I’d decided to blow him off, he might head back over toward Tennessee without saying anything to anyone. I could dangle here forever.
The twins wouldn’t be home till midnight. If they noticed I was gone, the way their minds work, they’d probably think I was in bed with Lucius Burke somewhere. I couldn’t count on a search party until tomorrow morning when I didn’t show up for court.
If only that guy with the jackhammer would knock it off, take a cigarette break, sit down on the curb for two minutes so I could think. I tried to press my temples with both hands. That’s when I noticed that my left arm didn’t want to track with the right. Broken?
I tentatively squeezed along the top of my forearm with my right hand and it hurt like hell. Fortunately, the pain felt more like a bad surface bruise than something deeper.
I assessed my damages. Sore arm. Banged head. A burning area on the front of my neck where the seat belt must have rasped me. No nausea, though. No blurred vision. Nor did I feel an overwhelming urge to sleep. If I was remembering correctly everything that nurse had said when I was seven and fell off a barn roof where I wasn’t supposed to be climbing, then I probably didn’t have a concussion.
With the top of the steering wheel blown off by the air bag, I couldn’t seem to locate my horn, but at least the light switch was in its usual spot on the dashboard.
I turned the knob. It got me nothing except more darkness.
There was barely any wiggle room. I could get my arm free, not that it did me any good. Not when the roof and seat kept me from eeling out. It was like being strapped into one of those MRI machines. All the same, I scrunched over till most of my weight was on my other hip and pressed the seat belt release again.
Still jammed.
There was a nail clipper in my purse, but my purse was down there with the cell phone. Both might as well have been in China for all the good they were doing me.
The console yielded up Johnny Cash tapes, a nearly full plastic bottle of water, a wad of gas receipts and fast-food napkins, scraps of notepaper, a ballpoint pen, and a foam coffee cup. Safety glass is all well and good and has no doubt saved a lot of lives but it meant no sharp shards. Why hadn’t I brought a regular mug? Something I could break and use as a knife.
Knife? I automatically reached for my keys before I remembered.
After 9/11, the penknife I used to keep on my keychain had been confiscated the first time I went through an airport safety check. What about the keys themselves, though?
They were still in the ignition. I pulled them out and felt the shafts till I found one that was sharp and crisp—the key to the front door of my house, a brass key I’d maybe put in the lock once just to make sure it worked because nobody in my family ever uses a front door. Everyone pulls up at the back and enters through the kitchen.
I shifted around till the seat belt was as taut as I could make it, then, using that key, I began to saw at the tough woven nylon just above the metal clasp. I kept it up till my hand cramped and my body ached, then I relaxed so that the belt went slightly slack, and examined the spot I’d been working on with the tiny light on my keychain. The edge of the belt was barely starting to look frayed. At this rate, it was going to take me hours.
“Well, it’s not as if you’ve got anything else to do,” said the pragmatist over the pounding in my head.
CHAPTER 28
THURSDAY EVENING
“Jason Barringer? And he’s got a Tanser-Mac student card?” The name on the victim’s driver’s license did not register with George Underwood, but the bailiff had started hanging around the sheriff’s department past quitting time after his wife died the year before, and he was standing at the dispatcher’s station when Deputy Elkins radioed in. As soon as he heard that name, he poked Underwood’s shoulder and said, “Ask him if he’s got a tattoo of a naked woman on his shin.”
Underwood relayed the question to Elkins.
“Affirmative,” came the reply.
“Well, hell!” said the bailiff. “He was in court this afternoon. Him and his buddy busted up a place down in Howards Ford, and the judge, she come down on ’em pretty hard. Kid had a real attitude.”
The lawmen looked at each other apprehensively. They knew about kids with attitude. What was this particular Tanser-Mac student doing on that road, the same road Judge Knott had taken? It was miles out of his way back to the college.
“Shit!” said Fletcher. “He followed her.”
“No sign of Judge Knott’s car?” Underwood asked Elkins.
“Negative, sir, but Alpha Unit just arrived and one of us will keep looking.”
By the time Underwood and his team arrived, the third patrol unit had been there long enough for the three deputies to form a working theory. They were aided by a second body, that of a deer that lay mangled and torn a few feet down the slope from Barringer. Scraps of bloody fur were caught in the Ford Ranger’s grille, and blood spattered the windshield.
“Elkins found a mirror that could’ve come off the judge’s Firebird,” said Deputy Carter. “About eight-tenths of a mile further on, down toward the bottom of the hill. If Barringer was trying to force her off the road, it probably happened somewhere past where the mirror was. We haven’t yet found the spot where she actually went over, but from the skid marks, we can tell she was going west toward Eagle Rest. We figure he runs her off the road, then he turns around and is heading back toward Cedar Gap and Howards Ford when he comes around the curve too fast here, sees the buck right there in front of him, and just automatically swerves to miss it.”
“Sniffing for a doe in heat,” Sheriff Horton grunted. “Damn things are all over the roads. Be glad when hunting season opens.”