Strawman's Hammock (31 page)

Briars and brambles cut her legs like barbed wire as she broke into a ragged run. She ran anyway. She was thirty yards into an utter blind of vegetation by the time Jarold Pearson had his dog settled. She had torn another thirty yards into the bush before he came from the shack for his prize and found it gone.

“You
biiiiitch!”

She heard his angry scream.

“I'll gut you, whore! I'll cut your fucking guts!”

“Not without a fight…”

She panted it over and over, with legs and lungs on fire. And then she saw it, just a flake of flint exposed in the understory's damp earth. She dropped to a knee.

It was an arrowhead. One of many to be found in the region of the mound near Hezikiah's shack. Laura Anne snatched that artifact from the sand. A good four inches of shaped stone. Something she could use to cut, to punch, to puncture. Laura Anne gripped her found weapon tightly.

“Not without a fight, Jarold,” she vowed and rose from the sandy floor.

He'd have to find her first. Even with a Jeep it would not be easy. She would not go where it was easy. Laura Anne knew that if she could just hold on she could outrun that grouper-headed son of a bitch. There weren't many men anywhere she couldn't outrun.

But then the hoarse challenge of an angry animal floated over the tangled underbelly of the hammock, and her heart quaked.

Could she outrun a dog?

*   *   *

They were hurtling down a sand road at seventy miles an hour.

“Faster, Cricket,” Barrett grated.

The sheriff's cruiser was not ideal for touring the flatwoods, but no other vehicle was readily available to Barrett and his partner.

“Besides, if he's taken her to the shack, it'll do,” Barrett said as he accepted the sheriff's offer of his police-packaged sedan.

Cricket gunned around a tight curve, keeping the back end from breaking away. Heel and toe, heel and toe. Straight again and back to seventy. Barrett unlimbered the twelve-gauge from its hold and was loading buckshot.

“How much of a headstart you think Jarold's got?”

“Can't be much over a half hour,” Cricket answered.

Barrett steadied himself on the dash.

“Jesus, Cricket. What if he's killed her?”

“Barrett, he thinks he's got plenty of time. He couldn't have counted on you coming home early. He doesn't want to kill her. Not right away.”

Barrett squelched the car's radio.

“You told everybody to stay off the police channel?”

“They know, Bear. They've got phones.”

“Turnoff's just ahead.”

“I got it.”

“Faster, Cricket. Jesus! Get this bitch in gear.”

Sixteen

Cricket slid the cruiser in a controlled skid to the space between pines leading to the wandering track that terminated on the site of Juanita's horrible death. The Crazy Canuck gunned the cruiser along a path marked previously with crime-scene tape. Next thing Barrett knew, pine trees were flashing by his window like a picket fence.

“Keep her coming, Cricket. Don't let up.”

*   *   *

Jarold Pearson stood cursing at his Jeep. He had a rottweiler when he needed a hound. A hound could track the bitch in no time. But then—Jarold was no slouch at tracking himself.

It just took a little time.

“Easy, dog.”

He would lead Rolly's dog to her. She would be running. Bleeding and scared. Scented with sick and scared. Exactly the kind of behavior and smell that triggered an aggressive response from the animal he had leashed in his hand.

“Find you first,” the warden promised his quarry. “Then you get the dog.”

A pair of tracks were easy to spot, in the soft earth beside his vehicle. He kneeled and drew a bead from that intial indicator to the bramble beyond. A vine of blackberries was trampled ten yards away where she entered the thicket.

“There you go.” His smile was without mirth. “Come on, dog.”

This bad boy was strong! Concerned about losing the leash, Jarold slipped its loop over his wrist and gave it a couple of tight wraps. Even so he had to lean back on the dog's leash to keep from being hauled off his feet. He broke into a jog. The dog fell in easily.

Jarold tossed aside his hat, loosened his tie. He was calmer now. He knew he could find her. He could tell that Laura Anne was literally tearing a path that led away from the lake and directly into the heart of the hammock. There were no exits in there. Jarold actually smiled. So he'd be hunting this morning. And without a limit!

A mirthless laugh boiled with anger.

“Come on, dog.” He stepped up the pace. “Let's get us some meat.”

*   *   *

Barrett and Cricket slid Session's cruiser through a cordon of yellow tape and practically into the shack that Jarold Pearson used to torture and kill Juanita Quiroga. Barrett spotted Jarold's Jeep and was out of the cruiser before it had fully stopped, barging into the shack's open door with a shotgun leveled.

“FDLE, get your fucking hands…!”

Moments later he came out cursing.

“No sign?” Cricket covered from the car.

“He was here. Goddamn it!” Barrett cursed. “LAURA ANNE?! LAURA ANNE!”

No reply. But then they heard that heavy, punctuated bark. Distantly. In the woods.

“Was that—?”

The dog again, the deep, throaty lust of a rottweiler.

“That's him!” Barrett was running like a fullback into the thicket. “He's taking her into the hammock!”

*   *   *

Laura Anne's lungs boiled. She paused, fighting to find air. Her head was splitting.

“Oh, God.” She leaned heavily on a pine tree's slender pillar. “I don't care if I starve. Die of thirst. Just don't let this man take me.”

God did not answer her prayer, and for a brief moment there was silence in the hammock. Then she heard it, the muffled challenge of the beast behind.

“He's … not a hound.” She staggered into a palmetto barrens. “I'm … upwind … long as … he can't see me!”

She ran into the stunted palmettos, loping with lungs on fire, deeper and deeper into the hammock. But her strides became shorter. The hammer in her head would not quit.

“Oh, God!”

She fell on her knees and vomited.

Laura Anne cried for the first time. She had a concussion, she knew. And it would not let her run. She was going to have to find another way. Some other way to hide, or to fight.

The rottweiler's rough bark came again:
rope-rope. Rope-rope.
Like Morse code from the hammock.

He was closer. Which meant that Jarold Pearson was closer.

“I'm walkin' the Valley, Lord!” Laura Anne rose limping this time, looking for she knew not what, hoping for salvation in the unforgiving terrain ahead. The arrowhead that earlier had given her a shred of confidence seemed woefully inadequate now. Its serrated edge cut into her uncuffed hand.

*   *   *

Barrett and Cricket could see the fresh signs of Jarold's trail. They could hear the dog.

“Oh … Baby!”

Barrett could barely breathe, but he would not stop. Laura Anne would not stop. She wouldn't quit. Bear cursed himself for being in such lousy shape, for giving up his runs along the beach, his bouts with the heavy bag. He cursed himself for cigarettes, for beer—

He had to keep running, he had to keep running.

Barrett's legs felt like blocks of wood. The shotgun weighed like a log in his hand. The tendons over his shoulders burned into his neck like strands of heated wire.

He kept on running.

“Laura Anne … Laura Anne!”

*   *   *

Jarold Pearson could not tell whether he was gaining on his quarry, but her trail had begun to wander, had become more erratic. She had to be tired, bitch. Lick on the head and sick, she shouldn't be able to run at all.

The dog was pulling him along the path now, whining eagerly, sensing the game that was well afoot.

Then Jarold saw something, the slightest sway of mulberry from a limb ahead. It might be a squirrel, chasing. Or a bird.

“Come on, dog!”

He broke into a run, plummeted through a stand of palmetto and past a thin boundary of scrub oak to a stand of mature yellowheart pine.

There she was. There was the wife of the man he had hated for years, not forty feet away. Sprawled out like a sick puppy, those long legs spent, just waiting for him in a clearing that spread damply between the pines. She looked up. Those big eyes. Like a deer. And then she began to crawl, a handcuff clutched in one still-cuffed hand. And in the other hand—what was that? What was brandished there? What pitiful weapon?

Then he recognized the flint-hard point.

“My, my,” he wheezed. “Kitty's done found a claw.”

“Don't … you come … near me!”

Oh, this was good! He laughed. This was better than he had hoped.

She was crawling on elbows and knees now. Crawling to get away.

“Ain't you a sorry sight?”

He was surprised she had gotten this far. She could barely breathe. He wondered what she'd look like with that sweatshirt off. That glossy skin covered with puke and mud.

“Just keep your black ass where it is,” he commanded. “It's just a little time, now. And it'll all be done.”

But then to his amazement she pulled to her feet and began to run.

“Git her, dog!”

The rottweiler jerked Jarold like a toy across the short divide that separated him from the panting, helpless target beyond.

Laura Anne offered a labored scream.

Jarold shouted like a cowboy. He had her now! He had her! But then the dog lunged and Jarold felt the earth give way suddenly beneath his sure foot.

“The fuck?”

He was floundering waist-deep before he saw what she had done.

But it was too late.

“Dog!
Dog,
back to me!”

But the dog kept churning, churning. He was trying to swim. Not a bad thing to try. Either spread out and try to float, or, if you can, swim.

“Bitch!”

The leash was still wrapped tight around his hand. And as the dog churned, Jarold was pulled after him. Farther into the mire. Farther.

“Dog!”

Jarold scrambled to retrieve the knife in his belt, the Boy Scout knife that had been so useful to him, so very useful, in so many situations before. But it took precious seconds to retrieve that tool from its pouch. Seconds more to fit a thumbnail now slick with filth into the indentation of steel that would allow him to open the blade. His nail slipped off that shallow flange. Slipped again.

“Bitch!”

Jarold used his teeth to open the jackknife.

“Fuck you!”

He pulled a well-honed blade across the nylon leash. The dog lurched inches ahead, as if trying to swim in a barrel of butter. His pink mouth filled now with mud. A snarl turned into a choke. And then the rottweiler's flat skull dipped into the bog. An angry howl strangled. He came up with a whimper. Once more, briefly, paws churning. Then down again. That sucking sound. Like a swig of cherry cola.

“Bitch! Wait 'til I get … hold of you!”

Jarold was chest-deep and sinking. He tried to turn around. Tried to backtrack.

“Shit!”

Up to his neck, now. Up to his neck in deep, deep shit.

“Gemme … gemme outta here. Bitch…! Gemme out!”

She tossed the arrowhead aside.

“I will fear no evil…”

Laura Anne edged back to the boundary of the bog. A pine limb no thicker than her wrist stretched across the mire. Jarold saw it, too. A lifeline not three feet away. Just out of reach.

“… for Thou art with me.”

Laura Anne stretched on her belly to find a purchase on that slender tether.

“… Thy rod … and Thy staff…”

“Cunt!” His chin mopped the liquid earth.

“Oh,
God!”

She snatched the pole away.

Barrett came crashing through the scrub minutes later. He saw his wife ashen and covered with mud and blood, propped up beside the stump of a fallen yellowheart.

“Laura Anne!”

Her head jerked up.
“Quicksand!”

Barrett skidded to a stop. He saw, now, what Laura Anne had used to disguise the bog.

It was straw. Years and years of pine straw had accumulated from countless sheddings of fat-hearted pine trees onto the hammock's damp floor. That straw floated now at the boundary of the quagmire, a gentle, golden camouflage. But Barrett could see as clearly as you could see ruts in a sand road where a man and a dog trailing into the sucking mud had cleared a path through a needle-thin veneer.

“Okay. I see. Just stay where you are, honey!”

She was too spent to acknowledge.

A bubble broke languidly from the bowels of the mire. It burst slowly, like bubblegum.
Plop!

Barrett backed carefully away.

“I'll go around.”

*   *   *

Laura Anne refused to spend that evening in the hospital, and the doctor at the ER, showing remarkable common sense, agreed.

“She should see somebody with experience in counseling victims of trauma,” the young M.D. told Barrett. “The physical wounds aren't what we need to be concerned about so much as the inevitable confusion, anger, or fright that come afterward. I understand you're in law enforcement?”

“Yes,” Barrett answered.

“So you will be required to undergo some counseling, won't you? In the aftermath of this situation?”

Barrett had not thought about that.

“I s'pose I will,” he said.

“You should,” the young woman directed. “And I would strongly advise that your wife see the same group of counselors. She needs to see someone who is used to helping victims of violent crime. I could give you the name of a local psychologist, but I can tell you that anyone who routinely helps cops get over the trauma of a shooting will be better suited than anyone here to help your wife overcome the aftermath of her kidnapping—and the fact that she was forced to take a man's life.”