She was right; it did sound quiet up there. I felt relieved, but I also felt let down and expendable. “Sounds like you’ve gotten along just fine without me.”
Miranda could read me like a book. “I lied,” she cheerfully lied. “We’re up to our eyeballs in bodies and bones, the phone is ringing off the wall, and I’m tearing my hair out. For God’s sake, hurry home. Please.”
I smiled. “Aww, y’all do need me up there. Okay, then, I’ll drive home tonight and see you on campus tomorrow.” I said good-bye to Miranda and stopped again, this time for a last look at the vine-covered chimneys and charred vestiges of the school buildings—the buildings where boys I now felt I knew had lived and suffered and even died.
Angie, Stu, and I had agreed to rendezvous for a parting dinner at the Waffle Iron before I hit the road for Knoxville. On the way to the diner, I detoured to the Twilight to retrieve my meager wardrobe and toiletries. I phoned Angie, who—along with Stu—had headed straight to the diner. “Y’all go ahead and order for me,” I said. “I’ll be there by the time they get the cat skinned and fried for me.”
As I caught sight of the motel’s sagging sign a hundred yards ahead, a truck, painted in the splotchy greens and browns and grays of camouflage, pulled onto the blacktop and accelerated hard in my direction. By the time it passed me, it must have been doing eighty. As it rocketed past, I saw the driver’s grizzled, hard-featured face staring at me with venomous eyes. His window was open, his elbow was resting on the door frame, and his short-sleeved shirt was whipping in the wind.
His arm ended at the elbow.
Without stopping to think about what I was doing, I made a sand-slinging U-turn in the parking lot of the Twilight and gave chase. By the time I was well under way, he had a half-mile lead on me, and the gap seemed to be widening. I fumbled for my cell phone and hit redial. It rang four times, then Vickery’s voice mail answered. “Stu, it’s Bill Brockton,” I heard myself shouting. “This probably sounds crazy, but I think I just saw Cockroach. He was tearing away from the Twilight when I got there. I’m following him now, or trying to. Call me back.” I was fumbling with the buttons to end the call so I could try Angie’s cell phone instead, when my right wheels drifted off the shoulder and the truck lurched wildly. As I jerked the steering wheel and the truck fishtailed back onto the pavement, the phone flew from my hand and vanished under the passenger seat. In the distance, the truck disappeared around a slight curve, and when the road straightened—just beyond the faded road sign that marked the Miccosukee County line—it was empty clear to the horizon, where the asphalt shimmered and flowed into the darkening sky.
Dumbfounded, I continued hurtling down the road, but suddenly I caught sight of a pair of fresh, heavy skid marks. They ended in a sharp turn to the right, where a small dirt road threaded a gap in the line of pines and scrub growth. I stomped the brake, laying down two skid marks of my own, then slammed the truck into reverse and careened backward to the turnoff. A weathered mailbox clung to a leaning post; the four faded letters that had not peeled off read DSON. Peering down the road in the fading light, I thought I saw fresh tracks on the ground and dust in the air. I turned and followed, slowly now, and when I glimpsed a clearing ahead, I eased the truck to a stop, got out quietly, and continued on foot.
A hundred yards farther down the dirt lane, an unpainted house and a small barn shared a small, blighted yard. I didn’t see the camouflage truck I’d been chasing, but I tasted its dust.
The door of the barn was open, and through it I heard the faint sound of crying or whimpering. I crept forward, and the closer I got, the more certain it seemed that someone was in distress or pain inside the barn. I risked a quick peek through the door, but could see nothing in the dim interior. Then I heard a hoarse whisper from inside. “Help me. Please help me.”
The words sent chills through me, and I slipped through the doorway. Two steps in, as my eyes began to adjust, I froze. Dangling from a beam just ahead of me was a thick leather strap, five feet long and four inches wide, with a wooden handle at one end. The handle dangled from a wrist thong, which was looped over a peg in the beam.
I was just beginning to notice that the strap was swaying gently to and fro—I was just realizing that the sway was worrisome and the plea for help might have been a trick—when I felt myself pitch forward to the dirt floor.
The first thought I had, as I began to come to, was that my head was clamped in a vise, and that somebody had cranked the vise down hard enough to hurt like hell. The second thought I had was that someone had whacked me in the back of the head, and hard.