The Deader the Better (39 page)

“We left it in,” said Robby. “Figured it would give people
time to call their friends.”

Tressman comes out of the bathroom wearing a glazed expression and
a black condom. At first he thinks it’s maybe some little
hide-and-seek game, so he takes a lap of the bed. Halfway around he
realizes his clothes are gone, tries the closet. Empty. The adjoining
door. Locked. Sees the paper on the bed. Picks it up. He’s at half
mast. I can read it over his shoulder. Big letters. Red lipstick
SMILE, YOU’RE ON
CANDID CAMERA
. The condom heads for
the floor like a dowsing rod over a water main. Fade to black. Wild
applause.

“He drove home wearing the bedspread,” said Floyd.

“It wasn’t his color,” Narva added.

Carl turned off the monitor. “It’s been swell,” he
announced. “Unplug me on your way by, will you, Robby?”

Robby said he would and stepped out.

“Let’s roll,” I said. “The shit has officially hit the
fan.”

I walked Kurtis, Boris and Narva around the front of the motel to
their cars. I shook hands with the fellas and watched as they bounced
out of the lot. As Kurtis faded from view, first the cherry picker,
then the RV came rolling out from behind the building; rocking in
divots, they eased out onto the highway. Carl tooted. Robby waved.

Narva stood by the side of the Miata. “You were back early, last
night.”

“You know us old guys.”

She gave me the eyeball. “Yeah…sure,” she said.

“What…are you fishing for a story again?” I said. She
laughed. Handed me a card with a phone number. “If you’d like to
talk sometime,” she said. I took the card and gave her a hug. The
little Miata U-turned in its tracks. She tooted the horn and purred
off down the highway.

Monty appeared at the motel door. “Ya gotta see what’s on the
boob tube,” he said.

THE RIVERS RAN CHOCOLATE BROWN. THE VOLUME OF water ironed out the
riffles and eddies, turning the flow fast and featureless. Between
the river and the rain, I practically had to shout to be heard. “I’m
going to close up and get my gear,” I said.

Floyd patted the rifle hanging from his shoulder. “Except for
this, my stuff is already in the car,” he said. His curly hair
seemed to keep the rain at bay, like wool on a sheep, while mine
seemed to serve no purpose other than to funnel the water more
efficiently down my neck.

“I’ll grab mine and be right with you.” I started for the
cabin.

“We leaving the birds?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“The motion sensors.”

After two weeks of throwing Claudia Springer’s money around, I
had a sudden spasm of frugality. “Why don’t you get them while I
close up?”

I jogged inside, dripping all over the floor, stuffed all my gear
into the black Nike bag. Sat at the kitchen table and tried to call
home. Forwarded, forwarded and then finally offered voice mail. The
joys of technology. I turned off all the lights, locked the front
door. Changed my mind. Unlocked. Turned on the porch light and then
locked up again. I ducked my head into the roar of the rain and ran
for the car. Got halfway there before I looked up and saw Nathan
Hand’s black and white sitting in the driveway. I kept walking and
tried to look as honest and nonchalant as a guy wearing a shoulder
holster could look. Bobby Russell stepped out of the car and aimed
the riot gun at me over the top of the car. Hand got out of the car
like he was going to the beach. I watched as the rain began to cover
and darken his hat.

“You got a warrant?” I asked.

Hand emitted a bitter chuckle. “We’re not playing that charade
anymore, Waterman. This isn’t about the law anymore. Isn’t about
you or any of your smartass dirty tricks or any of that shit. This is
about survival.”

“Where’s that son of a bitch spit on me?” Russell demanded.

“Gone,” I said, as loud as I dared. Hoping like hell that,
somehow, above the rush of water, Floyd heard what was going on. I
had an overpowering desire to look up at the tree line but bit my lip
and squelched it. I kept my eyes on the deputy as he walked over to
me. He stopped in front of me. Gave me a smile he didn’t mean and
then dug the butt of the shotgun hard into my ribs. I gasped for
breath.

“Bobby,” Hand growled.

The deputy reversed the weapon and gave me a matched set. I bent
forward at the waist, hugging myself, massaging my ribs.

“Yes sir.”

“Gimme the shotgun. Get Waterman’s gun.”

Bobby did as he was told, laying the automatic on the hood of the
cruiser next to Nathan Hand. “Check the house and the cabins,”
Hand said.

He kept the shotgun trained on my middle as Russell went through
the house and then worked his way through the cabins. “There’s no
point in this, Hand,” I said.

“Shut up,” he said. He put the riot gun on the hood and picked
up my automatic. Checked the safety and the load. Satisfied about the
Glock, he put it on the hood of the car by his elbow. His hat was
three shades darker now. A steady stream of water ran from the front
of the brim.

“What’s the point?” I asked. “It’s over.”

I kept my hands in sight and moved a couple of steps forward.
Floyd was my only chance. I had to make sure that whatever happened
next wasn’t shielded by the house. Huge drops of silver rain
drummed on the hood of the car. “You just don’t know when to
quit, now, do you, Waterman? Just couldn’t let things be, could
you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“You probably think that stuff you put on the TV is funny, now,
don’t you?” he said.

“What stuff on the TV?”

I saw pure hatred in his eyes. “I learn from my mistakes,”

he said. As he picked up the shotgun, his eyes darted about like
spotlights at a prison break. Out of the blue, he said, “They’ve
got nothing. They’ve got nobody to put me at any crime. Nobody who
can say they ever heard me admit a damn thing.”

Bobby Russell stepped down off the porch of Cabin Number Eight.
“No people. No gear,” he announced and started our way.

Hand looked over at the deputy. “Nobody but Bobby Russell there.
And he’s hardly in a position to tell anybody anything. Is he,
Bobby?”

Russell swabbed his face with a handkerchief. “What’s that,
Sheriff?”

“I was saying how you were hardly in a position to be saying
anything about some of the unfortunate instances we’ve had around
here lately. Especially considering you’re the one who screwed up
and shot your friend Springer in the face. Huh? Lethal injection
don’t sound any better to Bobby here than it does to me, does it,
Bobby?”

“Dumb shit shouldn’t of grabbed my gun.”

Hand shook his head sadly. Water ran off the back. “An other
goddamn month and Springer would have gone on his own. And none of
this would have been necessary.”

Russell turned my way, as if he felt some inner need to explain.
“We was just bustin’ his chops. The sheriff was tellin’him how
much better his life would be if he’d just sell out. How much safer
it would be for his wife and kids…and the dumb shit reached out and
grabbed the barrel.” He shrugged.

“Next thing I knew, he was all over the place.”

A bitter laugh escaped Nathan Hand. “Turns out it was an
accident after all.”

“Kind of like Bendixon’s dog,” I suggested.

“Nah,” the kid said. “Sheriff shot that old cur on purpose.”

“Bobby,” Hand said. “Get me the flashlight.”

“The flashlight?”

“You heard me.”

I admit it. Hand had me fooled. It wasn’t until Bobby Russell
leaned into the passenger side and bent down for the flashlight. Then
Hand picked my automatic from the hood of the car. Then I got it. So
did Deputy Russell. When Russell straightened up holding a black
rubber flashlight in his right hand, the sheriff shot him in the
chest. He pointed the gun my way. “You just stay nice and easy,
now,” he said. “Nice and easy.”

He kept the automatic trained on me as he backed slowly around the
front of the car, talking to himself as he moved.

“Just going to clean up after myself a little here,” he
muttered.

“Give those state boys something they can get their teeth in.”

He bumped his butt off the hood and began to step around the open
door. I moved forward. “Easy. Easy,” he chanted. I moved again.
Three steps this time. If I figured the scene correctly, there was no
way he was going to shoot me with my own gun. He fired again. Down at
the ground and then momentarily squatted out of view. I hurried up to
the corner of the house, stepped around. Bobby Russell lay on his
side. The second shot had entered his head just beneath the hairline.
Nathan Hand held Deputy Russell’s revolver in one hand and my
automatic in the other. He set the Glock on the roof of the car,
moved the revolver to his right hand and thumbed back the hammer. I
began to cringe in toward myself like a dying star. His hand was
steady as he brought the gun to bear. I couldn’t tear my eyes form
the single bead of water that dripped from the yawning end of the
barrel. The exit wound exploded his upper lip before I heard the
crack of the rifle. His nervous system instinctively moved his left
hand to the back of his head, as if he’d been stung by a bee,
dislodging his hat, which landed upside down at his feet. The hand
came away red, but even as he held it in front of his face, I don’t
think he saw it. He was dead before he hit the ground, first with his
knees, where the revolver slid from his fingers, and finally,
awkwardly, over onto his back, where his body came to rest half on,
half off Deputy Bobby Russell. I began to breathe again.

Floyd ran down from the tree line. Pine needles and oak leaves
were plastered all over his soaking jacket. “What the hell was that
about?”

“Our friend the sheriff here was going to stage a fatal shootout
between me and the deputy. Russell was the only one who could put him
on death row. I guess he figured with the two of us gone, he might be
able to take his chances in court.”

Floyd paced in a circle. “Son of a bitch,” he snarled. “This
is deep shit, man.”

“Let’s fix it,” I said.

“We got two dead cops here, man. Tape isn’t going to patch
this shit.”

I told him what I had in mind. By the time I was finished, he was
standing still.

“Still leaves us a big problem,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Each other.”

“Oh…you mean the fact that one of us would be a lot safer if
the other guy was in the trunk with Hand and Russell.”

He smiled. “Crossed your mind, too, huh?”

I said it had. “Until you found yourself fresh out of weapons,”
he said quietly. The tone suggested that whatever I said next better
be good.

“No…until I thought it through.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s no way they’d let anybody plea-bargain for two dead
cops.”

“No matter how dirty,” Floyd said. “Sure as hell we both get
the needle, and they clean up after their own.”

“That’s the way I read it,” I said.

“Kind of makes us blood brothers,” he said with a touch of
irony.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

It took an hour. Longest, wettest hour of my life. Working like
hell and waiting for a squadron of state cops to come and put an end
to life as I knew it. If they showed up before we finished, we were
both doing twenty to life. End of story. If we got it done right, we
might walk. As far as motivation goes, it was real simple.

We dug a couple pairs of rubber gloves out of the cruiser’s
medical kit and drained everything we could find. Oil, coolant,
transmission fluid. Didn’t need any oil slicks floating around the
river. Took every loose object out of the cruiser, put it in a
plastic bag and threw it in the trunk with Russell and Hand. Dug up
three square yards of blood-covered driveway. Shoveled the soil into
the trunk with the rest of it. Replaced the dirt with some of
Chappy’s. Spread gravel over the top. Closed the lid. Locked it
shut and then wired it for good measure. Rolled down the windows.

“You sure?” Floyd yelled above the rain. “The other day when
the water was clear, I could sorta see the bottom. That car goes down
there and ends up being visible, our ass is grass.”

“When you’re standing in a boat, you can feel the hole under
your feet.”

“What if it’s not deep enough?”

“J.D. said it was at least twenty feet deep.”

“What if he’s wrong?”

“You got a better idea?”

I slid into the driver’s seat, pulled the gearshift out of park.
Floyd put his back to it. The car began to roll on its own. I eased
the Crown Victoria down the boat ramp until it was about six feet
from the water. I didn’t want the car to hit the water with any
speed. I wanted to ease it in and let the current do its thing. I set
the emergency brake and got out. Looked back up the incline at Floyd.
He gave me the thumbs up. I reached into the car, popped the brake,
slammed the door as it rolled by…watched.

The big car drove slowly into the river, lurching slightly as the
front tires slipped on the slick stones of the river bottom. And then
for a moment it seemed to stop moving altogether. Then to float. My
heart stopped beating for a second as the car began to turn to the
right, following the current toward the ocean.

Suddenly, as if gripped by some massive hand, the cruiser
straightened and stood on its nose, the whip antenna now parallel to
the water, as the car began to bounce forward on its front
bumper…grinding over the rocky bottom…turning a hundred eighty
degrees until the roof and the red and blue lights were pointed my
way. Then, with the grace of a dancer, it began to sink nose down
into the rushing water, turning on some invisible axis, shuddering
occasionally as if it were being sucked down some vast cosmic drain.
And then…it was gone. Quiet again, except for the silver hiss of
the rain. I waited. The Stephen King in me expected the car to bob to
the surface, lights ablaze, siren wailing, corpses pointing fingers,
but it didn’t happen. Just more silence. I turned and trotted to
the top of the ramp. Threw him the keys to the Malibu.