we trade
For what? I wrote, like I didn’t know.
wp
And there it was. Likely enough, Wendell had driven right into his own abduction.
I’ll have to call Wendell, I texted.
noon bl will tell u where then
I don’t understand, I wrote again.
wp not where u think
I need more time.
He didn’t respond. He had gone.
I called Amanda.
‘Delray’s in it with Lamm. They’ve got your father.’
She inhaled sharply. ‘How do you know?’
‘Delray just texted me. They want to trade your father for the payout, up here at noon.’
She paused, thinking. ‘We should call Krantz?’
‘They’ve anticipated that. Delray wrote that your father’s not where I think he is, meaning not at Lamm’s camp. Since there’s two of them, they can operate from two locations.’
‘What do we do?’
‘We’ve got a big advantage. They don’t know I’m already up here. That buys us six hours, time enough for me to sneak out to Lamm’s camp, to see who’s around before I call the sheriff.’
For a minute, only the rain made a sound. ‘You’re sure this is the best way?’
‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t have spent the night sleeping in a leaking Jeep in the rain.’
SIXTY
A faded brown Chevy Malibu pulled into the DQ and parked next to the overhang above the restrooms. I needed that overhang, too, and I needed hot coffee. I drove across the street, wondering what the hell I was doing, considering a new kind of insurance.
A fiftyish woman with stringy blonde hair dangling limp from her scalp and an unfiltered cigarette dangling just as limp from her mouth got out of the Malibu and ran for the door as I pulled up, covering her mouth so the rain wouldn’t extinguish her smoke. I backed up as close as I could to the overhang.
I got out when the inside lights came on and jumped over the growing puddles to the order window and tapped on the plastic. She nodded and slid open the window, offering up the smell of old grease and new cigarette smoke. I ordered coffee and eggs on muffins. I wasn’t hungry, but I needed to get her away from the window long enough to work at the back of the Jeep. She told me in a hoarse voice that the griddle wasn’t warm yet. I said I could wait, and went around to the side, first to the Jeep, then, after five minutes, to the men’s room. It was puddled too, though I did not linger to determine whether that had resulted from the rain. Fresh from a cold water rinse of my face – there was no soap – I went back to the order window. My coffee was sitting outside on the counter, cooling in the downpour. I took the cup to the picnic table under the side eave, sat, and watched the red clay beside the cement slab dissolve and run toward the road.
‘Up here fishing?’ the woman rasped through the screen.
I went to press as close as I could to the window, out of the rain. ‘I came up here looking for a guy who came up here looking for a guy.’
‘Huh?’
I showed her Wendell’s picture. ‘Have you seen this man?’
‘He was here,’ she said, lighting a fresh unfiltered Camel. It was the same brand Debbie Goring used to hoarsen her own voice.
‘You saw him?’
‘Yesterday. I worked a long shift.’
‘He drove a tan car?’
She nodded. ‘Parked right where you did, ordered coffee.’
‘At night?’
‘Huh?’
‘He came in at night?’
She exhaled smoke. ‘I don’t work nights. Teenagers work that shift because they like to screw when things are slow.’
‘Afternoon, then?’ That would have fit, time-wise. Krantz had said Wendell packed a bag at eight in the morning.
The Camel hung limp from the edge of her mouth, confused.
‘The man came in the afternoon?’ I repeated.
‘About three o’clock. Not that I mind a little screwing.’ The Camel was rising between her lips. Her eyebrows had risen, too. Her hair, though, stayed limp.
‘This man, did he say where he was headed?’
‘I don’t expect much,’ she added, after giving me a head-to-toe look.
I had to look away. ‘Anything you remember will help,’ I said to the clapboards next to the order window.
She pointed down Main Street in the direction of the road to Arthur Lamm’s fishing camp. ‘He gave me a five-dollar bill, told me to keep the change, and shot out of here like his britches were on fire.’
I nodded. It was not hard to fathom.
She went to pull my two egg muffins off the grill. She wrapped them in paper, slid them through the little window. I gave her a five-dollar bill, and told her to keep the change because I was no slouch either.
She said I owed another buck seventy-five.
SIXTY-ONE
The rain came down in sheets of gray glass beads, dissolving my headlight beams into mist and blurring the trees alongside the road into seamless dark curtains. Every few seconds, great jagged spears of lightning gave me enough of a snapshot of the narrow gravel road ahead to speed forward another hundred yards before everything went dark again, and I had to drop back to my snail’s safe crawl.
So it went, for an hour, until a fresh flash of lighting lit the tall, narrow Tinker Toy shape coming out of the gray. The rickety bridge was twenty feet ahead. I downshifted to first gear, unzipped the driver’s curtain so I could see to orient myself with the left side rail, and eased onto the old wood. Lightning flashed again, bringing a huge stutter clap of thunder that shook the ancient span like loose sticks. The rail next to me swayed in the sudden light. It was barely a dozen feet above white caps frothing in roiling water. The river was rising.
Ice needles blew in through the open curtain, stinging my face as I watched the rail to my left. It was the only way I knew to drive straight. But drift too close and I could catch a front tire, knock the left side loose and plunge over the side. Drift too far the other away, I might hit the right rail, and drop off that side.
Lightning flashed; I was halfway over. I squeezed the steering wheel tight and, holding my breath, punched the car forward. After what seemed like an hour, my tires crunched gravel. I’d made it across.
Still, I dared speed up only when lightning cracked to give me a view. Finally, at what seemed like the twentieth flash of lightning, or perhaps the hundredth, the fire lane appeared for an instant. I stopped, downshifted into the ultra-low gear that off-road Jeep crazies use to assault steep hills, and waited. At the next flash of lightning I gunned the Jeep down into the slush of a gulley and up through the gap in the trees, and cut the engine as the woods darkened again into invisibility. I could only hope I’d pulled far enough in to conceal the Jeep from the road.
I found my black knit hat under the passenger’s seat, but left behind the yellow poncho. Yellow would light me up like neon every time lightning flared. Telling myself that courage can only be strengthened by adversity, I stepped out into the rain.
There was a thick tree fifteen paces directly perpendicular to the Jeep’s right front wheel. The soft loamy compost at its base went deep enough to easily bury the aluminum case. I pulled back the loam, dropped the case, and covered it with wet leaves. By now my khakis and shirt were soaked clear through with freshly strengthened courage.
Though the rain was beating harder, louder, the woods felt suspended beneath the din, as if every living thing within it – every bird, every squirrel, every insect – was holding its breath in fear of what was about to happen.
I ran to Lamm’s camp. My footfalls barely sounded above the rain invading the trees, but to my ears now every twig snapped like a gunshot, every breath called out as loud as a shout.