Deceived (A Hannah Smith Novel) (24 page)

I jumped from the van expecting starry darkness so was instantly disoriented by all the light—a Coleman lantern hissing near the pond; headlights of a truck that had just arrived, its beams framing a scene from a nightmare: Levi, cloaked in a rain poncho, hood up like the Grim Reaper, but holding an axe, not a scythe. Behind him was the pond, its surface blacker for red eyes floating near the shredder, which was trailer-sized, painted yellow, the machine’s feeder box a yard higher than Levi’s head.

I froze for an instant, my hands partly tied, stumbled, then put a foot on the rope I was dragging and gave a yank. My left hand pulled free. I was struggling to free my right hand when I heard, “If you run, girl, I’ll put you in there alive!”

The tire shredder, Harris Spooner meant, a machine so loud the man had to scream to be heard. He was coming toward me, his arms spread as if to herd me back into the van. He was draped in a poncho, too. Add a sun mask, shark’s teeth bared, either he or Levi Thurloe could have been my earlier attacker. Spooner’s hood was down, though, so his beard and yeti-sized face blazed in the light of the truck’s high beams.

The truck.
Only fifteen yards away, the silhouette of a man’s head watched us from behind the steering wheel. It was Harney Chatham. Had to be. I had heard Spooner say Mr. Chatham’s name—even a monster like Harris Spooner conceding his respect—and I knew the former lieutenant governor was my only hope. I began to slide toward the truck while facing Spooner, then I turned and ran, yelling, “It’s me! Loretta’s daughter!”

Even blinded by the headlights, I saw the driver stiffen when he recognized me. The reaction gave me hope. No doubt Harney Chatham was a monster, too, but he couldn’t deny the bond we shared and at least the few small honesties that linked us to my mother.

Or could he?

I was only a few strides away when the truck started backing up, the man’s hands working in a blur at the steering wheel.

I hollered, “At least talk to me!” but Chatham wouldn’t do it. He spun the truck around in reverse, then shifted into forward and floored the accelerator. Came so close to clipping me that I finally got a good look inside and was momentarily bewildered—I had been wrong about the person driving. Even so, I ran along for a few steps, banging at the window, and pleading for help while the truck fishtailed away.

I would have kept running, too, but that’s when Harris Spooner caught up to the anchor line I was dragging and nearly yanked my arm off. My feet flew out from under me and I landed hard on my side. Spooner didn’t give me a chance to get up. Instead, he turned and looped the rope around his waist like a plow horse and began towing me toward the pond while he screamed at Levi, “You ain’t just an idiot, boy. You’re
retarded
.”

The sound of the fleeing truck had already been consumed by the whine of the tire shredder. I had no hope the truck would return. The driver had been Mr. Chatham, true, but it was
Delmont
Chatham, drug addict and collector of antique fishing gear, not the former lieutenant governor.

I was on my own and I knew it.

The rope was now knotted so tightly around my wrist, I feared my wrist would break if I didn’t pull myself along as Spooner dragged me Clydesdale-style. So that’s what I was doing, scrambling along on my knees, using my one free hand like a crutch, to actually help a man who intended to kill me. The pain was bad enough, but the humiliation was worse.

God helps those who help themselves.

The actual phrase didn’t come into my mind but the spirit of its meaning did. Crawl to my own execution? No, by god, I would not! I had to do something. Question was
what
?

We were almost to the shredder when Harris provided the answer. He stopped for a moment to touch one ear, then the other—adjusting his earbuds, I realized. The bastard was listening to music! No explaining why I found such cold-blooded behavior intolerable—he had already knifed Birdy Tupplemeyer to death, after all—but it was the spark I needed.

It was also the opportunity because, for just an instant, the rope went slack. When it did, I rolled to my feet and charged the man.

•   •   •

IN HIGH SCHOOL,
I’d been a middle-distance swimmer and played the clarinet, not football. Even so, I have tried to ignore enough Super Bowl games to know how small players dealt with bigger men. Plus, I’m a sizable woman and I can
run
.

Because of the tire shredder—or possibly the music he was enjoying—Spooner didn’t hear me coming. He sensed a lack of resistance, however, and was turning when I hit him and crashed full speed into the back of his legs. I used my shoulder, tried to stay low so I could roll like a football player when his three hundred pounds of muscle and blubber came crashing down. But, instead of falling, Spooner only staggered to his knees while I ricocheted off like a Ping-Pong ball and landed on my butt.

I felt dazed—a
Now what?
moment that lasted only an instant. Spooner screamed a profanity and lunged for my ankles. When he did, instinct and panic took over. I snaked the rope clear as I got to my feet, then sprinted away. I also resumed chewing at the knot that had become a tourniquet above my right hand.

The knot was beginning to loosen!

It was darker now that Delmont Chatham’s truck was gone—just the gas lantern and the van’s solitary headlight, but they created a basin of dusky visibility. I had no idea where Levi had gone. He had abandoned his station near the shredder, which offered some hope and caused me to risk angling toward the van. Back to plan A: jump inside, lock the doors, then my dead deputy friend and I would attempt our first carjacking.

But the anchor line seemed determined to have me killed—and so did Harris Spooner. Once again, he snagged the rope’s bitter end, which spun me and slammed me onto the ground. For Spooner, it had been a close call, apparently. He thought about it for a moment, then came up with a solution—he looped the rope around his waist again but this time knotted it, which made it impossible for me to run away—not as long as we were tied together.

I had to get my hand free!

Spooner didn’t give me the chance to do that either. He kept the rope taut as he walked toward me, coiling the line with each step, taking care not to allow any slack now that he had outsmarted me and I was so near the shredder. Moving slower, too, doing things right, a man who didn’t mind letting his confidence show. No—not just confidence. Spooner was letting his mind settle, savoring the moment. It was in his mountainous swagger, his relaxed way of moving now that he had me cornered. Harris was already enjoying what came next.

What came next was him pulling a knife as I struggled to my feet and asking me, “Don’t that rope hurt your wrist? Let me cut ’er off for you!”

A joke.
He had to holler over the noise, which only added a taunting quality that pleased him. The man’s ZZ Top beard parted, a wedge of dark teeth grinned. Knife in hand, he came toward me, adding another loop to the coil even though only a few yards separated us. I maintained that distance by backing away, working furiously the whole time at the knot, which was now loose enough to slide off my hand—
if
the man made the mistake of allowing me a foot of slack. I couldn’t count on that, so I was also prepared to run if Spooner charged.

But where?

Behind me, the shredder remained hitched to the van; the van’s lone headlight a dusty beacon to the road. To my right, the Coleman lantern showed red eyes waiting in the water, plus something else that was unexpected: Levi Thurloe had reappeared, still hooded like the Grim Reaper and carrying the axe.

I was debating which was a better risk—gators and an axe or a known woman killer?—when Spooner noticed Levi, too. It caused him to pause and yell, “Where the hell you been?”

It was the distraction I’d been waiting for. I dug the fingers of my left hand under the knot and pulled the loop wide . . . only to have the loop instantly reseal when Spooner snapped the rope tight.

The man’s eyes had never left me.

“Second thought, think I’ll feed her to my dog!” he called to Levi, then surprised me by giving the rope a mighty yank as if hauling in a cast net. No . . . it was a tug-of-war trick because when I planted my feet, he dropped the rope, which sent me backpedaling into the shredder. The noise of the machine was so loud, I felt nothing when I crashed against the metal sheeting and fell.

It didn’t matter. A slack rope meant freedom. I pulled another length toward me in reserve, slid the loop off my wrist, then got up—but too late. Nearby, the gas lantern illuminated every detail: Levi and Harris Spooner were converging on me, two huge men in monkish rain ponchos, both carrying cutting tools; to their left, red eyes aglow where steam tangled with shadows above the pond—a vision from hell.

I screamed, “Levi, you’ve got to help me!”

In reply, Walkin’ Levi shouldered the axe and kept coming.

Without looking, I backed myself against the shredder and took a quick look at the thing. I was hoping I could scramble under the machine, which sat on a frame braced with trailer tires. It was possible, but what if I got stuck? There was only a foot of clearance, and even the noise issued a lethal warning: the whine of worn gears, the chatter of cutting teeth fed by a spindle that augered relentlessly, indifferent to what might fall into the hopper.

I didn’t have to look to know the hopper was above me: a flanged open rectangle,
Moline Industrial Shredder
stenciled on the side. The memory of the tire Mica had fed into it was too graphic to forget.

Yes . . . crawling under the machine was my only escape. And that’s what I was preparing to do when the rope at my feet jogged a fresher memory:
A slack rope means freedom.

Was that true now?

I had dropped to my knees to crawl under the trailer but risked a glance at Spooner, who smiled his yeti smile, confident he had me cornered. Definitely no need to hurry now that he was only a few steps away. Even if I did dive under the machine, he could wait there with his white-handled fillet knife—a cheap stainless knife he had probably used to stab Birdy Tupplemeyer. Levi, with his axe, could wait on the other side.

Spooner was right. For me, there was no escape. No wonder he was savoring the moment, not bothering to rush. But there was something else the man had not bothered to do, I noticed—the rope was still knotted around his waist.

Crawl under the shredder that would soon consume me? Or fight back by taking a risk?

Spooner made the decision for me when he stood alert for a moment, then hollered, “Levi, you see them blue lights? Cops out there on the highway! Shit! Let’s finish up here in case I’m right!”

Police? It was more likely a squad car had stopped some trucker, but I couldn’t wait even if help was on the way. I jumped to my feet, rope in hand, and began throwing loops over my arm while I kept my eyes on Spooner. He was close enough to grab me with one step and a lunge if he wanted. But he didn’t; just stood there, surprised, while his brain tried to explain my behavior.

Funny.
That was the first expression that registered on the man’s face. But the smile faded gradually as his eyes moved from me . . . to the words
Moline Industrial Shredder
stenciled above my head . . . then finally, finally to the rope knotted around his waist, and that’s when Harris Spooner made the biggest mistake of his life. Instead of cutting the rope, he turned, knife in hand, to look at Walkin’ Levi, as if to say,
No problem!

Levi misunderstood . . . or pretended to. He was standing the length of an axe handle away from Spooner and that’s what Walkin’ Levi used to break Spooner’s arm, an axe handle. He flipped the tool around and swung it like a baseball bat, hit his tormentor so hard that the knife and a tangled white blur of earbuds went spinning into the air.

The ZZ Top giant didn’t fall, only gave a woofing scream . . . grabbed his dead arm . . . then staggered a couple of steps while his crazy eyes searched for someone to blame.

Me
, that’s who his eyes found, and I was ready when he came at me. Holding the rope, I jumped away, then tossed the whole coil high toward the stars. The hopper was the size of a bathtub and impossible to miss.

I didn’t miss . . . nor did I stop running even when Spooner screamed, “Somebody help me!” his voice piercing the percussion thump of his own body being tractored over sheet metal, then spun higher by an auger toward the feed chute above him. Alice Condor’s pleas for mercy were stuck in my mind, but my real fear was that Levi Thurloe was on my tail. If he caught me, the man I had protected from bullies in childhood might have spared my life a second time, possibly would have even murmured,
You’re
nice,
but I wasn’t taking that chance. I had been lied to enough for one night.

Even minutes later, when I flagged down the sheriff’s cruiser bouncing toward me, I wasn’t convinced I was safe. My suffocating fear didn’t provide a clean breath until I recognized one of the two deputies who jumped out to reassure me. One was a man wearing a uniform, his gun belt shiny as plastic. The other deputy—a person I knew and trusted—was dressed in hospital scrubs and still groggy from drugs.

It was Birdy Tupplemeyer—a sight so shocking but also welcome that it dulled my guilt later when police told me the name of the woman I had left behind, wrapped in plastic.