“Two more steps, Walter, and we should be done. Go see how he’s doing.”
The bodyguard, Walter, walked over to Cashdollar, on his back on the ground. He leaned down, touched Cashdollar’s face. “You all right, rev?”
Thomas LeRoy, division head of financial affairs, walked up to Walter, raised his arm and pulled the trigger on the pistol. I watched the gun jerk in his hand as the bullet hit the bodyguard in the side of his head and he went down like a ton of bricks. In the dim light I could see blood and brains spattered against the limo door. I thought I was going to be sick on the spot.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
W e were almost burrowed into the ground. I don’t believe I will ever grab onto anything as tightly as I grabbed the earth beneath me. Terra firma. It was the only thing giving me any protection, and there wasn’t much of that. All LeRoy had to do was turn around and I don’t know how he could have missed us. Thank God, he didn’t. I don’t think I heard a breath from the two people next to me. Not one.
I didn’t even look up. I heard LeRoy’s voice, soft and low. “Cash, where did he hit you?”
Then the deep resonance of Cashdollar’s voice. “Upper thigh. Didn’t hurt that much.”
“I’ll get you up into the trailer, then I’ll take care of the rest. Can you walk?”
There was grunting, and the rustling of clothes. Twice I heard someone cry out, then the sound of footsteps on the wooden entranceway, and finally the door to the trailer closing.
We waited, none of us saying a word. I could feel the wet grass pressing against my face, soaking through my T-shirt and jeans. The cut on my head throbbed, and with every breath the still morning air and the heavy humidity were thick in my throat. Then I heard the sound of the door opening and LeRoy walking back down the wooden steps. It had to be LeRoy. I doubted if Cashdollar was walking on his own. If the deacon walked toward us, if he took two steps in our direction — he didn’t. The footsteps went in the other direction. Toward the far end of the tent, the slap of his shoe leather growing fainter and fainter. Then there was no sound at all. And suddenly, as if they hadn’t been there before, I heard morning birds, calls and answers, the crickets that had been strangely silent, and the sound of running water inside the trailer.
I slowly raised my head. The trailer door was closed, but I couldn’t see a padlock. I assumed that Cashdollar was still inside.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.” James was up on one knee.
Em lifted her head and the two of us gently stood up. The red sky cast a rust-colored light on the grisly scene in front of us. Sprawled on the ground, next to the Cadillac, was the body of the burly bodyguard. The side of his head was covered in blood, the thick red substance spattered on the side of the limo. One of his legs was bent at a strange angle and his eyes were wide open in total surprise as he stared at the sky.
Beside me, Em grabbed my hand with her free one and shuddered. The pistol clutched in her hand, we turned and walked as fast as we could toward the end of the tent and back to our truck, all three of us strangely silent. My headache and the sharp pain in my forehead were totally forgotten.
As we rounded the tent, we made a dash for the truck.
“What just happened? Somebody please tell me.” She was shaking.
I shook my head, trying to put the events back in sequence and see if any of it made sense.
“The big guy tried to kill Cashdollar.” James spoke for the first time. “The bodyguard must have put five or six rounds into that car. If the reverend had been in the Caddy, he’d be dead.
I nodded. “But he wasn’t.”
“And apparently he’s going to be all right.”
“I can’t believe we saw it. And LeRoy, shooting the bodyguard. My God.” Em looked back at the tent, now an orange color as the early presunrise light highlighted the yellow canvas. Behind that temporary temple, that massive church made of stiff, heavy cloth, was a dead man and a wounded religious icon.
“We’ve got to be careful who we tell this to.” James opened the back of the truck and the sliding metal door rattled and shook as the small steel wheels rolled the door up. The sound seemed to bounce down the row of trailers and trucks.
“It was almost staged. I mean, the way it all played out. Like somebody scripted it. Am I the only one who saw it that way?” Em watched the two of us, waiting for a response.
“Whoa. What about Crayer?” I glanced at the donut trailer.
“Oh Jesus.” Em looked into my eyes and I could see this was all catching up to her. “Skip, we should go. Now. Let’s leave the truck, and the three of us get out of here.”
“You hit him pretty hard. We should at least see if he’s alive.”
“He was going to shoot us. I had to do something.”
“If you hadn’t hit him, we probably wouldn’t be here right now.” He surprised me. I can’t ever remember James actually giving Em much credit for anything and he’d thanked her twice tonight.
“I didn’t know what else to do.” Em shrugged her shoulders.
“I know this sounds strange,” James sounded hesitant, “but there was something that struck me about what we saw behind the tent.”
“Strange?” Everything about what we saw had been very strange, sick, and perverted.
“I said that. Scripted, staged.”
“No, man. Something wasn’t there.”
“What?” Em didn’t like James’s drawn-out explanations any more than I did.
“Something Cashdollar has with him morning, noon, and night.”
“James.” He was starting to piss me off.
“Think about it. What does he always have with him?”
I thought about it for a moment. Cashdollar was always dressed well, worked a crowd well -
“What are you talking about?” Em threw her hands up.
“You’ve never seen Cashdollar, in person or in pictures, without his gold Bible. Am I right?”
We both thought for a moment. Even going back ten years ago with Uncle Buzz, I remember that the preacher, who turned out to be Cashdollar, carried a Bible tightly clutched in his hand. He never, ever let that gold Bible out of his sight, and almost never out of his touch. When he came down to our truck, he carried the gold Bible. Tonight, or rather this morning, there had been no sign of the gold Bible.
The three of us looked at each other, wondering what it all meant. We’d just witnessed an attempted murder, a killing, and we’d all three been involved in bashing someone in the face and taking his gun. And here we were, standing behind the truck that was supposed to make James and me wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations.
We couldn’t ignore the situation, since we’d become part of it. It was very iffy to take the story to a higher authority, and I didn’t think the three of us were strong enough to take matters into our own hands. There weren’t any other options I could think of.
As the sun made its first appearance of the day, breaking a brilliant tangerine orange over the horizon, we heard the sirens. They were in the distance, but getting closer. I had a good idea of where they were headed.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
“Y ou look.” Em stood back from the truck.
James watched from a distance. Halfway between our vehicle and the donut wagon.
Crayer’s pink apron was draped over the counter where he served the fried dough, as if he’d just taken it off. I walked around Crayer’s trailer and noticed the door to the inside was ajar. I should be the one with the pistol. Something to defend myself. I kept thinking that someone who had been smashed in the face with a cast-iron skillet would not be in the best of spirits. And I’d already witnessed a death this morning, and I wasn’t looking forward to another one. Especially mine. But Em held the gun. James had looked at the weapon and said it was almost identical to Stan’s Smith and Wesson.
I eased the door open. James and I had lifted him up the two metal stairs that led to his wagon and had put him on the floor. Then we’d tied him with some sort of plastic rope we’d found in his trailer. Now, he wasn’t there. I stopped for a moment, thinking I was mistaken. Could we have moved him somewhere else? I looked around the inside of the small trailer. Nobody. No body. Someone had found him and moved him, unless he’d regained consciousness, found a way to cut the plastic rope, and walked away. For some reason I doubted that had happened.