American Crow (15 page)

Chapter Fifteen

‘the forest’

W
hen I woke up it was dark as it could be, and I was tied to
a tree, which judging by its smell was in some sort of pine forest. It felt
late too - perhaps the early hours…

I blinked several times willing my
swollen eyes into focus, then stared at the two imposing figures slowly
morphing out of the darkness opposite, sat on what appeared to be an uprooted
tree as they enjoyed a smoke.

As if on cue, a streak of moonlight lit
up their faces suddenly, revealing one with scruffy brown hair and pig eyes
that were far too close together, and another with wispy red locks, sporting a
blank expression.

I scanned them warily, my head thumping.
They both looked thickset and in relatively good shape from what I could make
out, but not heavy in intelligence judging by their agricultural haircuts and
dress sense. I wasn’t there for a picnic whatever way you looked at it... 

‘What do you want with me?’ I said
calmly, trying to appear unfazed.

‘We want to know where the girl is you’ve
been looking for?’ the guy with pig eyes asked, sounding agitated.

‘A girl?’ I said playing it dumb.

Red-head walked forward, clicked on his
torch and shone the powerful beam in my face, making me turn my head to one
side in an attempt to escape its brightness. He looked like the guy who’d
attacked me at Nancy Stringer’s house.

‘We also want to know what your business
is with that biologist bitch?’

Red-head’s tone was more menacing than
his partner’s.

‘I was looking for somewhere to stay. A
friend of a friend said to tap her up if I was in town. That’s why I went
around to her house.’

‘Bull-sheeit,’ Pig-eyes said
sarcastically, strolling up to join the interrogation.

‘Yeah, why were you sneaking around her
house carrying a poker?’ Red-head pushed, his body tensing like some coiled
spring about to snap.

‘Well, you can’t be too careful these
days can you?’ I said, bracing myself for what I knew was coming. ‘I was
worried her house may have been burgled when I got there. You don’t know
anything about it do you?’

I heard his hand cut through the air
before it struck the side of my face. I took the hit well even though it was a
heavy blow, then stared back at Red-head unfazed.

‘Now let’s quit all this nonsense speak.
We know why you’re here, boy,’ he continued, a little calmer for his outburst.

‘You do?’ I said my face stinging in the
cool night air.

‘Sure.’

He edged closer, so that his face was
inches from mine, so that I could smell the tobacco on his breath, see the violence
in his eyes.

‘Just like the other two fellers who have
been sticking their noses in. You’re not wanted around here, boy, and if you
value your balls, you’ll just turn around and head back to where you came from.
You geet it?’

He prodded a thick finger into my chest,
reinforcing his point. I didn’t like that.

‘Look, I don’t want any trouble, guys.
I’ve come down here looking for someone’s daughter as a favour. And I haven’t
found her okay...so I’ll be heading home.’

Red-head pulled away slightly and looked
over at his partner.

‘What do you reckon, Irwin? Do we believe
him?’

‘Don’t reckon we do,’ Pig-eyes replied
lightly, making him sound all the more sinister.

‘You’re right. I don’t trust this one,
at-all...’

‘It’s alright, it’s not the first time,’ I
said, trying my best at humour.

It fell flat.

‘Maybe we need to teach him a lesson,
like we did the other guy,’ Red-head said casually.

‘Yeah, this one’s a snake in the grass, I
do declare. You gave our friend the slip on the way down here, didn’t you, boy?’
Pig-eyes probed with an unnerving smile. ‘You see, we tried being nice to the
last snooper who came around these parts, and he ended up not getting the
message either.’

Now I knew why Henry Deacon had been
dumped by both detectives. They were leant on big time, because they’d been
treading on the wrong toes...

‘I’m sure he was taught a very severe
lesson...’ I replied eventually, feeling more and more uneasy.

‘Very severe,’ Pig-eyes said, walking
away as if to get something of importance from his truck.

When he returned I knew what it was, and
why he needed them. He was holding a pair of vicious-looking pliers.
Industrial. The other guy stared at me without expression, as his partner
walked behind me, whistling as if he were on some Sunday stroll.

I readied myself for the torturous pain
that I was sure was forthcoming, then cracked a smile to show Red-head I still
wasn’t intimidated. I’d been subjected to worse in the past after all. Much
worse...

‘Look guys...we can talk about this,
can’t we?’ I said, trying to save my fingernails.

‘You know where the girl is?’ Red-head
pushed again.

‘No. That’s why I’m here. I told you
that.’

‘What do you want with the Stringer
woman?’

I looked at him confused.

‘I was looking for somewhere to stay.’

He shook his head as if disappointed.

‘You were thinking that she might know
where the girl was, right? You’re just another of them private investigators,
aint ya?’

‘No.’

Red-head changed tact.

‘When was the last time you saw the
girl?’

‘I haven’t, yet.’

‘Why are you trying to find her?’ he
snapped, his patience wearing thin.

‘Because her father is worried about
her…I’m just a friend trying to help out. He hasn’t heard from her in over six
weeks, okay. She’s only just turned eighteen for Christ’s sake...’ 

I looked into his dead eyes and knew my
explanation had fallen upon deaf ears.

‘You’re in the wrong place at the wrong
time, boy,’ Pig-eyes whispered from behind, his rancid breath violating my
eardrum.    

Red-head cracked a smile as I felt his
accomplice’s hands grab mine. Then I tensed as the cold, hard flange of the
metal pliers clamped firmly around one of my fingernails.

‘So if we let you go, you’re going to
head straight back to Minnesota and just fly right on home, is that it?’ 

‘I swear on my mother’s life, the Queen’s
and anyone else worth knowing…yes,’ I said, bracing myself for the excruciating
pain that was about to hit me.

‘And you’ve never met the girl?’

‘No.’

He looked me up and down.

‘What do you reckon, Irwin?’

‘I think he might cause some trouble if
we don’t teach him a lesson first, Billy. He’s just like the other guy we
caught…a lying-Commie-fag.’

Red-head tilted his head to one side as
if thinking about it.

‘Yep, that’s why we buried him…alive.
Let’s do it, Irwin.’

I felt the pliers press down hard onto
the nail, then clamped my teeth tightly as the nail was wrenched from its
housing in one easy action, the resulting pain burning its way up my arm as if
I’d been plugged into the mains.

‘Fuck!’

‘You don’t know who
you’re
fucking
with, boy,’ Red-head sneered, pulling out a cigarette from his top pocket
casually.

‘Sure I do,’ I said, grimacing in agony.

‘Now, in the morning, you’re going to
tell us everything you know about the girl, and why you
really
want to
find her,’ he reiterated, spraying me with flecks of spittle.

‘I’ve told you everything already,
okay?’ 

‘We’re going to leave you to cool down
for a bit and think things over, then later if the bears haven’t got you during
the night, we might just come and cut you down...’

Pig-eyes checked my bindings then headed
off after his colleague, melting back into the darkness as if he’d never been
there. Eventually I heard their pick-up growl into life, then saw its
tail-lights flicker and fade like some prowling monster that had come to check
on its prey.     

When it was quiet again I started
wrestling furiously with the bindings, intent on not being there when they next
returned. After five minutes of struggling I realized it was futile. These guys
knew how to tie a rope if nothing else…

I rested my head back against the bark,
cursing under my breath as I tried to think of a plan. A few seconds later, a
twig snapping close-by, curtailed my ramblings. I stared out into the darkness
for a shape or an outline. Nothing. Just the heaving shadows of the damp forest
where I’d been left for the night.

Did they get bears in this part of the
world as they’d said? Or were they just trying to scare the hell out of me?
Hell if I knew. A bird squawked overhead suddenly making me tense further. Was
it warning me that some beast was indeed lumbering my way, sensing defenceless
prey?

I wrestled in my bonds desperately,
puffed out my chest and pushed out my arms trying to create a millimetre of
slack, trying to create something to work with, without success. Gradually
everything fell silent again; unnervingly so…I took a deep breath and exhaled
heavily then decided to save my energy until morning when I’d need it more.
There was nothing I could do. Nothing…

My mind drifted. Who in the hell were
these guys working for anyway? Whoever it was, they’d tailed me since Minnesota
and were connected to Tony Lutz. So either they knew about me before the
gallery and were just waiting for me to turn up there, or Finch himself was
under surveillance and I’d walked straight into some other heap of crap that
Olivia had got involved in as well.

If it was the latter, then it looked as
if Tug’s brother-in-law was being watched because of something that was going on
down in Kentucky. Was he linked to Nancy Stringer and the protests in some way?
He didn’t seem the type to be interested in any environmental concerns. If
anything, he hated that sort from what he’d said.

Whatever way you looked at it, a straight
forward search for a teenage girl had become a damned quagmire, one that I now
had unwittingly walked into, right up to my frigging neck…

I worked through all the possible
scenarios, over everything Lenny had told me before I’d left, then Henry, his
housekeeper, and finally Izzy. Something was glaringly wrong and I just wasn’t
seeing it. Had Olivia jay-walked into something seriously heavy, and it was
just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or was there
something else going on that I hadn’t been privy too from the very beginning,
that Lenny knew about as well?

I thought about the private investigators
who’d been scared off, then the last who sounded as if he’d been killed.
Whatever these thugs were trying to protect, it was something serious enough to
warrant a load of guys armed to the teeth, tailing people, trashing people’s
houses, and pulling peoples’ fingernails out over.

I shook my head bewildered then felt
exhausted all of a sudden. My mind was in a fog, as dank and murky as the
Kentucky forest I was now tied up in. I tried to relax and think of a plan then
quickly gave up. I was just going to have to wait until morning to find out
then face the consequences. Whatever they ended up being...

*

I
must have fallen asleep, for how long I wasn’t sure, until another set of
headlights yanked me back to the sinister forest. Instinctively I tried to
raise my hands to shield my eyes from their glare, until I realized that I
couldn’t again.

The lights went off for a few seconds,
then on again, just as my eyes were re-adjusting to the darkness. The same
sequence continued for a good half an hour, until the truck retreated slowly
back into the trees leaving me alone once more.

I drifted for a while semi-conscious,
then fell asleep for a few more hours until the growl of an engine roused me
again. I looked up in a numb haze as the same set of headlights worked their
way back to the clearing and repeated the same pattern of torture. This time I
kept my eyes closed until I heard the truck reverse away and finally fade back
into the night.

When I woke for a third time it wasn’t
bright lights or the sound of the truck that greeted my awakening, it was the
snap of branches behind me. This time closer...

‘What the…’ I murmured, coming around.

I stared into the night, my heart
thumping wildly. Jesus, I hoped that it wasn’t some fucking bear fresh out of
hibernation that had picked up on my scent. Whatever it was, I couldn’t do a
damned thing to protect myself. I was easy meat.

Another eerie sound echoed out. I
wondered if it was simply pig-eyes and his friend returning, trying to mess
with my head.

‘Fuck you…I know you’re out there, you
idiots!’ I yelled feeling exhausted.

No reply.

I heard a muffled crunch, as if a rotten
log or branch had given way under the weight of something
sizeable.       

‘I said I’d leave in the morning, okay.
I’ve got the message...’

No response again. The sound worked its
way nearer. I felt the vein thump painfully in my neck as my pulse rate increased.
God, was this how I was going to go out? Eaten alive in the fucking wilderness,
my remains never to be found?

Something rough and wet flicked the back
of my hand suddenly, making me jump. The beast was directly behind me now.
Behind me.

‘What the...’

I felt a warm tongue curl itself around
my fingers, stinging the open wound where the nail had been pulled.

‘Mother of God…’

I shut my eyes as the beast snorted, then
watched in muted horror as its massive silhouette lumbered slowly out of the
darkness to my left. I drew a sharp breath and held onto it, fearing it would
be my last, then saw the faint outline of antlers shape-shifting through the
night towards me. Antlers. It was a deer. A fucking deer…

‘Oh my god.’

I lowered my head with relief as it trotted
harmlessly back into the trees, then laughed hard for a while, feeling almost
euphoric that I hadn’t been attacked or eaten. Jesus, I’d almost shit myself
there for a moment...

I shook my head in disbelief as my
exhaustion returned, then felt the darkness of the forest wrap itself gently
around me as I slipped slowly into unconsciousness once again, just happy to be
alive…

*