Trapped (42 page)

medicine cabinet. Nevertheless, the sense of mourning, of

loss that has yet to catch up, seems as deep and insidious as

the black specks of mold on the walls. Whatever flush of ex-

citement came with our little triumph at the Hunt Club has

been erased by the long wait for Leo Fish.

Please. I’m supposed to put my faith in a stranger with a

320

Chris Jordan

ridiculous name? Some hermit who lives in a swamp? Talk

about grasping at straws! Other than Fern leaving a pep-talk

message, no one has phoned my cell with news of the search.

Not the FBI, not the local cops, nobody. Despite Randall

Shane’s encouraging words about not giving up, I’m taking

the lack of news as a bad sign. The man Shane surprised in

Cable Grove has had plenty of time to return to wherever he

kept my daughter, and to eliminate her as a witness. Isn’t that

what mad kidnappers do? Snuff out their victims? I’ve seen

the movie, read the tabloid version. I know how this ends,

with the poor mother weeping and the media vultures shed-

ding glycerin tears.

Shane is in the next room, his television faint but dis-

cernible through the thin walls, tuned, as mine is, to local

news. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, the man who never sleeps

has encouraged me to do so. As if. My exhausted brain seems

determined to clock each passing second. Waiting, waiting.

Two hours have ticked by since Mr. Ponytail zoomed away

in his airboat—sounded like a plane taking off, frankly—and

each minute has been soaked in molasses.

So when 11:05 p.m. finally ticks over, and fat tires spray

the driveway gravel, I’m not at all surprised to see Detective

Rufus Sydell climbing out of his cruiser, adjusting his hat,

looking professionally grim. He has news to impart and my

thudding heart tells me it won’t be good.

Shane and I burst through our doors at precisely the same

moment, like cuckoos out of the same clock.

“Evening,” says Roof, stepping back, a little startled.

Shane glances at me, then reaches out and gives my hand

a reassuring squeeze. “Go on,” he says to the cop. “Some-

thing happened. What?”

“Um, you all mind if I come inside? Skeeters are fearsome.”

Trapped

321

“Of course.”

I follow them into Shane’s room, slapping instinctively at

the mosquitoes that follow. I have to restrain myself from

leaping on the cop’s back and tearing the terrible truth out of

him.

Roof takes off his hat, runs a ruddy hand over the gray

speckles of hair on his shiny, freckled skull. He looks like he’d

rather be elsewhere. Anywhere but here, reporting to a con-

cerned mom. “Ma’am, I need to ask, how tall is your daughter?”

Taken aback, I stare at him stupidly. Why would he want

to know such a thing? Then it dawns on me. They’ve located

a body, need identification. He’s trying to break it gently.

“Ma’am?”

“Kelly is five foot five,” I tell him in my smallest voice.

“Exactly my height.”

Roof drops into a plastic stack chair, causing the legs to

creak ominously. He lets out a breath and breaks into a face-

wide grin. “Well, that sure is good news! Didn’t mean to scare

you, ma’am, but they come upon a body out in the backcoun-

try, and the only thing they took off it so far is approximate

height. Five foot ten is a long ways from five-five.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yes ma’am, it surely had me scared. Lots of tall girls

these days.”

“So the search parties are still out there?” Shane asks, sur-

prised.

“Not as such,” Roof says, fanning himself with his hat.

“The tribal police was attracted by flames. Could be seen for

miles, apparently. Seems there was a fire out that little airstrip

Ricky used. The one Mr. Shane here located. An airplane was

torched and a charred body was located not far from the

aircraft. Body was burned so bad the, um, sorry ma’am, the

322

Chris Jordan

gender isn’t immediately obvious. They’ll know more when

they get the remains back to the lab.”

“So it could be a male?” Shane asks. “You’re thinking,

who, Seth Manning?”

Roof looks around, spots the dented little refrigerator. “You

wouldn’t happen to have a beer, would you? I’m not normally

a drinkin’ man, but I surely could use one about now.”

“Sorry, no.”

“Can’t be helped,” he says, obviously disappointed. “Oh

well, Where was we? Oh, right. No, it’s likely not Seth

Manning, on account of the height I mentioned. Turns out he

ain’t but a few inches taller than the girl.”

“Kelly,” I remind him.

“Right. A course.”

“You have another theory?” Shane prompts gently. “About

the victim?”

“Just a hunch.”

“Hunches can be good,” says Shane.

“Well,” the cop drawls, pronouncing it
wall.
“I got to

thinkin’, after our little talk. Decided maybe I’d take a look at

Roy Whittle, since his name come up. Found he wasn’t home

to talk to, but he had been seen recently in the company of a

fella name Stick Davis. Stick being a pilot with a shady repu-

tation. Come to me that Stick pretty well fits the description

you gave, of the suspects checking out the stolen airplane.”

“Uh-huh. So you had your suspicions.”

Roof grins ruefully. “I’m a suspicious kinda fella, Mr.

Shane. But until I know a fact I tend to keep it to myself.

Made a call or two, and it seems like Roy and Dug and Stick

was seen in Naples, at an airfield there, purchasing two drums

of aviation fuel for cash money.”

Trapped

323

Shane looks puzzled. “And what, they burned the plane?

Getting rid of evidence?”

“Don’t need no drums of expensive fuel to torch a plane,

all you need’s a match,” he points out. “I figure, they go to all

the trouble to buy fuel for a turboprop, they intended to use it.”

“Move the plane?”

“More likely steal it. Wouldn’t be the first time Stick Davis

involved himself in a stolen aircraft. That particular one, a

nearly new King Air 350, they tell me that’d be worth two or

three million on the black market. Sell it no problem what-

soever in Colombia or Venezuela, or maybe closer to home.

All they do is swap out the transponder, change the tail

numbers, and keep on aflyin’. Long as it don’t come back into

the U.S. for inspection, no problem.”

“So what went wrong?” Shane asks. “You have a theory

on that?”

“Not so much a theory as a guess, you might say. I ask

myself a question, what if Ricky Lang found out they was hi-

jacking that plane? Maybe he was in on the deal, maybe he

wasn’t, I ain’t got clue one in that regard. But I ask you, Mr.

Shane, who else do we know is crazy enough to burn a million-

dollar aircraft?”

“No sign of the Whittle brothers?”

“Nope. They ain’t showed their face. Maybe they dropped

off Stick and skedaddled. Or could be I got it wrong altogether.”

“Is there enough left to DNA the body?”

Roof gives me a careful look. “Expect there will be, when

they get down to it. You know how it is with crispy—’scuse

me, ma’am, charred victims. Sometimes it takes months to

make a positive ID. Sometimes never.”

He stands up, plops the hat on his head, gives me an avun-

cular nod. “Glad I wasn’t bearing bad tidings, ma’am. Search

324

Chris Jordan

resumes at dawn, I’m sure they’ll find your girl. Right now

I’m off to locate me a beer, else I won’t be able to sleep.”

We again retire to our respective rooms, cuckoos retreat-

ing inside the clock. And the clock keeps ticking, increasing

the sense of dread with every passing moment. A severed

finger, a burned body, a psycho on the loose—try to make

something good out of those ingredients. Try to find hope.

Who said that, keep hope alive? Whoever it was must have

known how easily hope fades, how the very idea becomes a

cruel joke. As if we have the power to change events by

thinking good thoughts, and therefore when bad things

happen it’s through our own weakness.

As if, say, cancer is caused by bad thoughts instead of bad

cells! Reasoning like that used to drive me crazy when Kelly

was in the hospital. Doctors and nurses will tell you a positive

attitude is important, but succumbing to the disease isn’t a

sign of mental weakness—it’s proof that that human beings

are frail vessels.

That’s where I’m at, here in Glade City. Back to the cancer

ward, praying that my child may live. Bargaining with death.

Take me if you must but please, please, let my daughter live.

Take another child, not mine, please please please. She’s

barely nine years old, she’s already suffered enough for any

ten grown-ups. And now she’s barely sixteen, on the cusp of

being an adult, her whole life ahead of her.

Let her live, God, or I will claw my way into heaven and

bring you my full fury. You think fallen angels are trouble?

Wait until you meet plain Jane Garner, mother of Kelly. Let

her live, God, or I swear I’ll just close my eyes and die and

make You miserable.

Close my eyes and dream I’m searching for Kelly in the

hospital. She keeps fleeing down the long white corridors,

Trapped

325

hiding and laughing because she thinks death is a game she

can win; she’s already won once, she says. I’m trying to

warn her but my voice is too small, it barely gets beyond my

lips, and my feet are so heavy I can’t run fast enough to catch

her. My beautiful daughter running away, laughing at death.

Waking up is a shock because there’s no awareness of having

fallen asleep. But suddenly it’s two in the morning and someone

is knocking on my door. Politely but insistently knocking.

I crawl from the saggy bed fully clothed, stagger to the

door, throw it open.

First thing I notice are his eyes, glaring at me from under

the wrinkled brim of a cowboy-style straw hat with a curled

brim. Eyes so pale and cool they make me want to slam the

door and go back to sleep. Eyes that couldn’t care less, not

about me or anyone who lives in my world.

The rest slowly comes into focus. The leathery, weathered

face that could be forty or sixty. A lean, compact body that

seems entirely composed of sinew and bones, and the

powerful, sloping shoulders of a pole vaulter. His hands,

kept loose and ready at his side, are out of scale, too big for

the rest of him. His feet are bare, and so splayed that no

normal shoe would ever fit. Thick toenails curve like ivory

claws, as if the part of him that touches earth wants to cling

there, like a bird on a branch. He’s a man from another time,

and everything about him says he’s not pleased to be here,

tapping on my door in the middle of the bug-infested night.

“Leo Fish,” he says gruffly. “State your business.”

11. The Squealing Time Is Here

In the darkest hour of a moonless night, ten miles from

the nearest incandescent light, Dug Whittle hunts the girl like

326

Chris Jordan

he’d hunt a wild pig. By stealth and cunning and by using

his nose. You can smell out a pig from heavy cover, if you

know what to sniff for, and Dug figures sniffing out a sweaty,

unwashed female should be easy.

True, she and the fag boy have about a two-hour head start.

But that makes no never mind in the backcountry, which he

knows and she don’t. The girl is weak because that’s the way

females are, plus she’ll be slowed down by the fag boy, who

is bleeding and feverish. Supposed to be the boy he’s after,

turn him over to Ricky Lang, but the blow to the head has

given Dug other ideas. More to the point it’s given him one

very powerful idea: he will kill the girl and gut her like a pig.

Maybe gut her first, see how long she lasts.

He’s pretty sure Roy would agree. His brother being kind

of soft when it comes to women and animals, but surely

getting his throat tore up will have hardened him some. Dug

said as much on the race to the E.R., flooring that Dodge for

all it was worth, but of course Roy couldn’t express his

opinion because of the wire in his throat. Dug not wanting

to pull it out for fear he’d spout like a fountain.

All Roy had to say was gah, gah, like a baby, his eyes wet

with tears. Dug can’t recall a time when Roy didn’t speak for

him, so it’s both a shock but also sort of exciting that he’s

now in charge, making decisions.

He starts, like any good tracker, from the last known

location. The spot where she clobbered him with that chunk

of rock. Easy enough to find where the escaped captives lay

in the saw grass, her and him, and how they then moved off

west. Probably no idea where they’re going, just wanting to

get away. As it happens moving closer to the watery part of

the Glades, where gators prey on anything they can get their

jaws around.

Trapped

327