Buried Alive (22 page)

The clouds released the moon and I was spotlit on the trail. Another shot from Crayline. A rifle that sounded somehow blunted and dull.

“Here, coppie, coppie, coppie …”

The forest went black. I crouched and waited for the moon to light the path. It blazed and I moved forward, staying low, the trail a maze of shadows. I heard Crayline angling behind me. I had left my weapon tucked in a closet in the cabin. Sweat dripped from my forehead, my heart seemed to engulf my chest. I could find no avenue to set an ambush.

The moon poked through again. The trail veered into rhododendron and all I saw was rock and more rock, rising into the night sky until it disappeared into black. I had no escape route left. I had come to the end of a hollow, a box canyon.

I heard laughter at my back, a hundred feet? Less? Bobby Lee Crayline was moving with caution, tree to
tree. Safe in the cover of the hemlocks and pines, he had only to slowly advance until I was in his sights.

I was in the point of a V, with nowhere to go. Nowhere at all.

Up,
said a voice in my head.
There’s nothing left but up.

I craned my head back as the moon shone through a wisp of cloud. Four stories above me in the sandstone I saw a hueco - Spanish for “hole” - a depression eroded into the cliff face, common in the sandstone cliffs. I heard a trampled branch, a crunch in the black air. Crayline had moved one tree closer. He was silent now, fully focused on gliding in for the kill.

I looked back to the cliff face. There was cover of a dozen feet of rhododendron before I’d be lit bright on the sandstone. Sweat stinging my eyes, I hid my shoes under leaves and leapt on to the rock, hand grabbing upward at a small shelf. I missed, tumbling to the ground. My clothes were binding me and I stripped to skivvies and pulled off my socks. I hid the clothes with my shoes.

I leapt again and made the jump, fingers holding. I pulled, straining, until my scrambling toes found purchase.

A dull pop and I heard lead splat against the cliff a dozen feet away. Crayline was guessing at my position, firing blind into the point of the V. The moon broke through the clouds and the world turned spotlight white for twenty seconds. I saw a vertical crack, used it to pull ten feet higher, leaves tickling at my back. I emerged above the rhododendron, now an easy target on the cliff face.

The moon disappeared and I recognized the impossibility of my task. The only way to see hand and footholds was in the moonlight. But the same light displayed me like I was centering a snow-white screen at a movie theater.

The moon filtered through a thin cloud and I saw a handhold two feet above me. My feet scrabbled, found purchase. I brought my right foot to the tiny outcrop now holding my hand. With my foot secured, I slipped my hand away, slapped it upward. My face pressed into the stone. Even my breath was an enemy, inflating my chest, pushing my center of balance back an inch or so. I heard Crayline move another tree closer, the sound now as much below as behind. I prayed his upward view was cluttered by limbs or brush.

I saw another hold four feet up and three laterally, a handhold no larger than a pack of cigarettes. An impossible move, almost, the edge of my limits.

The world went black, a thick cloud rolling over the moon.
Come back!
my mind screamed at the moon.
I need you!

I froze against the sandstone, heart pounding in pitch-black. I heard a gnome in my head: Gary, my rock-climbing instructor.
Make the move before you make the move,
he constantly lectured, promoting visual and physical visualization. I pictured the rock’s surface, the small holds I needed to catch, felt how it would feel to make the move.

I launched myself upward, exploding like a coiled spring, scrabbling for something only seen in my mind, feeling nothing, then …

My right index and forefinger fell atop a one-inch outcrop, left toe on a tiny shelf, the rest of me stretched tight between hand and foot.

Another shot from Crayline, a dull pop aimed into the rhododendron below. The moon returned. To my right, waist-level, I saw a small stone rumple that might hold a foot. My fingers burned, shivered, muscles filling with lactic acid, strength dying away. I checked the position of the rumple, brought my leg up … easy, easy … Visualize as the moon tucked under cloud. See the move and …
Got it!
I pulled upward with every ounce of strength, sweat searing my eyes.

“Here, coppie, coppie, coppie …”

Crayline returned to the taunt, trying to spook me into making a move, but still looking for me at ground level. He was almost to the cliff. I tried to pull up another few inches for stability but my toehold crumbled into dust, my foot kicking wildly. My body canted sideways, falling, hands flailing uselessly, slapping at the rock,
falling, goddammit it’s over why now falling
…

My fingers slammed something pushing from the rock. A metal circle. I grabbed. My fingers howled in pain, but held.

It was a bolt. A freaking BOLT!

I’d found a regular climbing route, a path pioneered up the cliff. The rock had been drilled, bolts jammed in to hold safety ropes affixed to harnesses.

I had no rope. No harness. No chalk to enhance my grip. But I was on a pre-built route. The moon blazed again, white light now revealing the series of bolts above me, tiny lighthouses in the rock. I tried to recall everything Gary had taught me. Every move. Every technique.

The moon fled. I dangled one-handed from the bolt for several seconds until my feet found holds. My hands patted rock above, knowing the metal circles were there, waiting. I found one and grunted upward, crossing my body length through the dark in seconds.

Moon. I looked up and saw the dark hueco just feet above me, beside a cleft in the rock. I heard a muffled pop and the stone inches beside me splintered. Seen! I held my scream of terror and pulled for the hueco like a man swimming vertically, waiting for the second shot.

I tumbled into the hueco seconds later. Below me I heard cursing and the sound of stripping tape. I realized Crayline was using a soft-drink silencer - an empty plastic bottle duct-taped over the weapon’s muzzle - to blunt the shot’s sound. A fresh bottle had to be taped on for each shot.

Crayline knew an open gunshot could carry for miles. But the semi-silenced shots sounded numb and inconclusive, liable to be mistaken for a falling branch if noticed at all. He probably had a backpack full of bottles.

Another pop. The bullet whanged off the roof of the hueco, buried in the dust three inches from my knee. I rolled against the rear of the hole and tucked fetus-tight. “HELP!” I yelled into the night, hoping the cavity performed like a giant megaphone. “HELP! CALL THE POLICE!”

I heard my words echo back to me, no idea if they were carrying a hundred feet or a thousand yards.

“HELLLLLLP!”

I screamed for two more minutes, until I saw a flashlight through the trees, moving quickly away. Crayline had decided it wasn’t worth the risk. I watched his light diminish until I knew I was out of range. I crawled into the crevice at the side of the hueco, wormed the final dozen feet to the ridge and circled toward my truck.

Rain had started when I found it an hour later, shoeless and limping from countless stumbles, listening into the dark before I approached. I tried my phone, but recalled the nearest cell tower was miles away and this section of the forest was a dead zone.

I fired up the engine but kept the lights off, snapping them on only when shadows indicated I might be nearing a precipice. I was afraid Crayline was lurking in the trees. I continued several miles until the service road intersected two-lane. I was still deep in the backcountry, but felt safer using headlights and speed. The rain escalated as I tapped a phone button, finding no reception. I flicked on the dome light and checked between the map and the road. Cherry’s home was about three miles away.

I saw headlamps ahead on the highway. They shifted to dim as I cut mine back. Then they blazed bright and blinding between my wipers. I held my hand in front of my eyes to cut the glare. The vehicle passed by, a high-sprung mini-pickup painted with camouflage blacks and greens.

A hunter’s truck.

I looked in the rear-view and saw the scarlet lights of braking. I knew in my gut it was Crayline. My eyes returned from the rear-view to see a tight curve ahead. I braked too hard, skidding from the road into a shallow ditch, wheel spinning in my hand until I grabbed tight, losing valuable seconds. Crayline roared up and banged my bumper, pushing me ahead. I downshifted, slid through a bend, straightened.

He was on me in an instant, another ramming. I heard a gunshot as my side window crumbled away. I braked hard for a switchback, rain sweeping my face. Crayline’s lights seemed in my back seat.

“History’s getting fixed,” he roared incomprehensibly. “You ain’t stopping it.”

I ran another blind curve, Crayline cutting low and trying to clip me into a spin. I watched him miss by inches, screaming out his window between shots. Rain blew into my eyes like a gale. I downshifted and gained a few feet. Somewhere ahead was the turn-off to Cherry’s home. Crayline was on my bumper.

Our combined lights showed a lane between trees. I jammed on the brakes, cut sideways and slid off the road a hundred feet before Cherry’s drive. I clipped a tree,
fought for control, made the turn on to the lane to Cherry’s house.

Crayline was behind me seconds later. I blinked away rain and saw the lights of Cherry’s house, the tree-studded yard, the drive appearing to continue beyond the cabin.

Crayline was closing fast. A shot screamed off the cab.

I roared past Cherry’s house, waited a millisecond beyond hope, downshifted to second. The truck slowed with a jolt but without brake lights. I aimed into a tree, hit a glancing blow. The air bag exploded. I shoved it aside as Crayline roared past, probably wild with glee at seeing my wrecked truck.

But there would be no stopping and no coming back for Bobby Lee Crayline. I pictured his hideous grin freezing as he looked ahead and saw nothing but air.

Crayline jumped on the brakes. His taillights were horizontal for a split second, then arced inexorably into the valley. I pushed from my truck as the door opened on Cherry’s cabin, I saw a shotgun muzzle sniffing over the threshold.

“It’s OK,” I yelled. “It’s me.”

She stepped outside, wearing an outsized T-shirt and little more. It seemed appropriate, given that I was standing in her yard solely in sodden boxers.

“Sweet Jesus, Ryder. What’s going on?”

I waved her to follow me to the edge of the cliff. We stared into the valley. Forty stories below the trees were orange with the gasoline-fueled glow of Bobby Lee Crayline’s funeral pyre.

Eight thirty a.m. found Cherry and me at the largest of the pair of park cabins the Feds used as their Woslee field HQ. Krenkler had arrived, her hair even brighter and stiffer than I remembered, the out-curling side points like she’d honed them in a pencil sharpener. She was on her cell and sending her harried agents to and fro solely with irate glances and fingersnaps.

She jabbed her fingers toward where we should sit: the dining-room table. Krenkler finished her call, popped a stick of gum between her scarlet lips and gave me her best cross-examination stare as she strode over.

“You knew this guy, Ryder. You interviewed him in the Alabama State Prison. You were at the mental institute when he escaped. He died trying to kill you. That’s three too many coincidences for me. What’s the story?”

Questions I’d been asking myself for hours. I rubbed my face with my hands.

“I’m flummoxed. Utterly mystified. There’s nothing I ever did to Crayline to piss him off. He probably had grudges against half the people in his life, but he picked—”

“You. He wanted you here.”

“There’s no reason for it. I was never anything to him.”

Krenkler had big hands with several shiny rings aboard. She set the hands on the table beside me and leaned close. “You sure it was a woman’s voice that called you to the guy with the tool up his pooper?”

I said, “It sounded like a woman’s voice.” And it had, that being the gender my brother was imitating.

“You’re absolutely sure?”

“Yes,” I said, frazzled and sore and feeling like I was still clinging fifty feet in the air with bullets slapping beside me. “Why?”

Krenkler stood and backed away, leaning against the knotty pine wall, her arms crossed. With her black pantsuit and flared lapels, she resembled a looming raven, only blonder.

“Ryder, can you think of any reason Robert Crayline would want to kill any of the three others he’s killed here?”

I rubbed my face. “I don’t have any idea what he’d have against…” I paused, hearing Crayline’s words the day of his escape, right after the lawyer’s hired goon had spat on Bobby Lee and called him a genetic moron.

“Don’t go dumb on me Ryder,” Krenkler said. “What is it?”

“Bobby Lee threatened a guy the day he escaped. Last name was Bridges. I don’t recall the first name. Bridges was half-bright muscle, probably an occasional employee of Crayline’s legal firm. Call Arthur Slezak, of Dunham, Krull and Slezak in Memphis. Ask Slezak if he’s seen Bridges lately.”

Krenkler frowned. “You think the guy with the tool up his tailpipe might be this Bridges?”

I thought back to the horror show in the reeking shack, saw the body wired to the bed. “The corpse’s face was ruined,” I said, “but the body size fits. Hard and fit. Crayline said he was going to fry Bridges’s guts for supper.”

I heard one of the agents at my back mutter
Holy shit.
Krenkler glared at the agent. “How about checking on this Bridges?” she snapped. “That too much to ask?”

In the past dozen hours I’d been to my cabin only long enough to put on clothes and note with despair I was still sans dog. I stood.

“Where you think you’re going, Ryder?” Krenkler growled.

“I’m going to shower and go to bed for a couple hours,” I said quietly. “Anyone thinking different better be ready to use their gun.”