chapter 97
MOON PIE’S GUNSHOT wound was beginning to burn white-hot. While straining to load Jake into the backseat, he caused the wound to open up. He could now feel blood running down his side from both the entrance and exit wounds, only six inches apart above his hip. With his right hand, he could apply pressure with his middle finger and his thumb, but the pain intensified as he did so. To combat the intense throbbing, he swigged straight Jack Daniels as he drove toward the massive swamp.
In warm weather, the area was home to water moccasins, timber rattlers, wild hogs, alligators, and enough chiggers and mosquitoes to drive the unprepared crazy. In November it was just cold, muddy, and desolate. Migrating waterfowl sought refuge in the shallow sloughs, and white-tailed deer bedded in the river-cane thickets. Beavers flourished, coyotes howled, and mythical black panthers were thought to inhabit the vast oak flats surrounded by half-circle-shaped old river sloughs. This was the ancient hunting ground of the Chickasaw Indians. The Spanish conquistador and explorer Hernando de Soto traveled these same woods on his journey to the Mississippi River. As the crow flies, just a few miles south was an Indian village that had been home to thousands. Now it was at the bottom of Columbus Lake, forever preserved, albeit under silt and river water.
The leafless trees were devoid of color in the truck’s headlights as Moon Pie pulled up to a locked gate on a seldom-traveled gravel road. Moon Pie knew this area well. He was familiar with every logging road, and he knew of a forty-acre pond that the Corps of Engineers managed strictly for ducks. On the river side of the pond was a corrugated steel pipe. The pipe was just wide enough to drop a man into it. It went straight down ten or twelve feet and then turned ninety degrees and continued another fifty feet under a manmade levee, discharging into another wetland. This pipe functioned to maintain a maximum water level so ducks could feed on the native plants in the shallow water. If the water level rose above the top of the pipe, it flowed down and out the other side.
This simple, effective water level control worked flawlessly, until beavers packed mud and limbs around the lip of the pipe, causing the lake level to rise several inches. Moon Pie knew the busy beavers had this lake holding at least six inches of water more than normal. He planned to stuff Jake into the pipe and leave him. Moon Pie would tear out some of the beaver construction, allowing the water to slowly drown Jake inside the pipe. Moon Pie relished the idea of Jake’s slow death. Even if he didn’t drown first, he would die from hypothermia. It didn’t matter to Moon Pie what the ultimate cause of death was just so long as it was slow and terrifying. Since the pipe was full of tree limbs and debris, Moon Pie thought Jake’s body—whole—would never flow out the other side. Moon Pie smiled at the thought of Jake stuck inside a dark pipe with ice-cold water washing over him, knowing that death was coming and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it, slow it down, or even speed it up.
Moon Pie realized that, since he was in Jake’s truck, he didn’t have his universal gate key—a stolen pair of Klein thirty-six-inch bolt cutters. He glanced back at Jake, who had started to come to on the drive, but another jolt from the stun gun knocked him out again. Moon Pie grunted as he opened the door and stepped outside to search Jake’s gull-wing toolbox for something he could use to cut off the lock.
“Damn Goody Two-shoes,” he muttered, slamming closed the lid after not finding anything helpful.
Moon Pie grabbed his pistol from under the driver’s seat and shut the truck door. The third shot disabled the lock.
The gunshots woke Jake. He was extremely disoriented and tried to sit up but couldn’t. His body wouldn’t respond. Each pistol shot made him flinch. What’s going on? Where the hell am I? he thought.
When Moon Pie opened the truck door, the dome light illuminated a pink Mississippi State ball cap lying on the floorboard that Jake had bought for Katy but hadn’t given to her yet. Jake’s mind immediately raced to the thought that he would never see her again. He wouldn’t see her first date or her high school and college graduations. He’d miss walking her down the aisle. Grandkids. He would miss sharing all of these things and more with Morgan. Oh God, Morgan and our baby!
Adrenaline flooded him, and he fought his restraints, the effects of the electrical disruption of his nervous system, and the confines of the small backseat. He then tried again to sit up, grunting loudly, but couldn’t.
“Oh, goody, you’re awake,” Moon Pie said excitedly. “Got any last requests, a*shole?”
The words shocked him. “Let me go! You don’t have to do this!”
“I know I don’t. I ain’t gotta do shit. But you see, I wanna do this. Besides, I made a promise. And a promise is a promise, ya know.”
“I have a wife and a little girl—please.”
Moon Pie slammed the truck door. He pressed his hand against his wound and took a big swig of Jack with the other.
“Oh, I know. Believe me, I know. I’ve seen ’em, remember? Oh yeah, that little Katy’s gonna be a hottie too, and you ain’t gonna be here to do anything ’bout all them guys that are gonna come sniffing ’round,” he said with a lascivious snicker.