Breaking Point (27 page)

             
I wasn't unconscious for long in that freezer chest they called an Iowa snowstorm. I slowly became aware of the frigid pellets filling my ears and being shoved down around my neck. My left leg was plowing through the snow ahead of me, canted out to one side, as Melanie gripped my right one under her arm and dragged me slowly toward the edge of the hill. We must have already covered most of the twenty feet of level ground, because I could feel the slight angle of the downward slope as I slid along. My head was cradled once more inside the hood and I could feel a sticky warmth spreading along the base of my skull, forming a gelatinous puddle against the cold material.

             
I tried to raise myself up, then to lift my left leg and shove her away, but I wasn't able to do either. Consciousness was returning, but I was too weak to control my body. Melanie must have felt my feeble attempts to loosen her grip. She responded by twisting my right foot in a clockwise turn that hurt like hell, even in my stuperous state. I moaned and relaxed, letting her do the work of dragging me across the hill. Suddenly she dropped my foot. I lay for a moment beneath the falling snow and felt the icy flakes cut into my cheeks, driven by the storm's fierce wind. The back of my head was starting to hurt like hell where she'd smacked me, but the pain seemed to be several feet from my body. Trying to sit up took a lot of effort and after two or three attempts, I flopped down again. I'd raised myself about an inch each time, I think. I heard a moan and realized it had come from me.

             
"Shut up." It was Melanie's voice, somewhere above me. "I still have to go take care of your stupid friend, so don't give me any more trouble." She pushed the sole of her boot into my side and shoved me toward the cabin. I rolled a few feet in the snow and stopped, face down and unable to move. I felt a few more shoves of her boot as she propelled me down the hill, rolling me like a tamale in the wet snow. Finally, Melanie grabbed my leg again and dragged me the few remaining feet, bouncing my head up over the low edge of the wooden porch and skidding my body along the frozen boards before she dropped me with a thud.

             
I could hear everything and even think, up to a point, but I couldn't make my body move. She must have knocked something loose in my circuitry with that rifle butt. I heard the door to the cabin open. A metallic clang vibrated the snow-covered decking near my head and I knew she'd set something heavy near me. Soon, the pungent odor of gasoline choked my airway, as she poured the flammable liquid over me, soaking my clothes. Where it flowed through the openings in my outerwear and seeped across my skin, the gasoline felt warm.

             
This is it, I thought. The end of it all. How stupid can you get, Rudy? I asked myself. I had no acceptable answer. I don't know if it was the gas fumes or a delayed reaction from my bumpy ride over the snow on the back of my already damaged cranium, but in a few seconds, I felt myself losing consciousness once more.

Chapter 29

             
I was hot. Sweat covered my head and rolled down into my eyes. My hair was soaked and clung to the dampness of my forehead. The piercing odor of gasoline permeated my clothes and hung heavily in the air along with the thick gray smoke that was pouring from the cabin. I wasn't on fire, at least not yet. The interior of the cabin was, though and I could see flames leaping up above the sill of the small window above me. I rolled to my left, away from the building and into a crusted wave of snow that had blown against the porch and which now stood frozen above me, like a snow surfer's dream. It looked good to me, even in the frigid night. I immersed myself in the snow, rolling and flopping in it until I felt safe from the incendiary qualities of my gasoline soaked clothing. Most of the gas would have surely evaporated by now, I thought. It was one of those loosely-knit theories of mine that I didn't want to put to the test, and as soon as I was able to, I scrambled to my feet and stumbled past the cabin and onto the narrow road, keeping as much space as I could between myself and the fire lit building.

             
As I fumbled my way down the dirt road, I tried to piece together the events of the past few hours and figure out what had happened. I was having trouble focusing, though, and couldn't remember where Woody was or if I was supposed to meet him someplace. According to my watch, it was after midnight. I was trying to remember when I'd last seen him when I heard a loud boom, like a gunshot, behind me. The force of the blast knocked me forward onto the snowy roadway. I landed on my hands and knees and automatically rolled for several feet after I hit the ground, certain that someone was firing at me from behind, someone like Melanie Goodwin. I thought she'd hit me in the back. I continued rolling until I dropped into the safety of the drainage ditch on the far side of the road. I lay there on my back, propped against the side of the frozen trench and saw fireworks coming from the woods, in the vicinity where the cabin should be.

             
It wasn't Melanie shooting at me, then. The blast I'd felt had been the force of an explosion at Goodwin's place. An explosion that was continuing to send sparks and chunks of material into the air, as a series of smaller blasts began. The distinct pop of gunshots was audible in the midst of the noise. From the rapidity of the sounds, I was fairly certain it was the bullets that had been left inside, exploding now in the heat of the fire. I was suddenly very aware that I had been on the porch of that cabin only a few minutes earlier and said a quick thank you to anyone who was listening, just in case someone was. I didn't know where Melanie was now, but I was intent on finding Woody. While I'd been watching the sparks fly from the cabin, I'd remembered Melanie's words. The last thing I remembered her saying was that she was going to go and "take care of him. I remembered now that he had been shot and that I'd left him in that frozen gully."

             
With the noise behind me changing from the sporadic pops of small explosions to the crackling sounds of a blazing fire, I crawled up out of the ditch and willed my half frozen body to keep moving. I half ran, half stumbled to the spot where I'd last seen Woody. When I got close, I began calling his name, forgetting for the moment that Melanie may have been in the vicinity, bearing both her arsenal and a deadly grudge.

             
"Rudy. Hey, Rude!" I heard his voice somewhere up ahead of me, then a moment later, headlights popped to life and Woody tapped out a signal on the Explorer's horn...shave and a haircut...two bits.

             
Lifting one arm in his direction, I covered the last few yards and opened the passenger door, climbing into the warm truck. Woody was behind the wheel, with his injured right leg stretched out across the seat. I managed to squeeze myself in beside him. He was overcome with emotion at the sight of me.

             
"Shit, Rude. You smell like an Exxon station," he said, holding his nose. "You mind ridin' on top...on the luggage rack?"

             
"New cologne," I said weakly. "You call for help?"

             
"A while ago. When you didn't come back and Mel stopped firing down here, I decided to take a chance and try to get to the car. Where is she?"

             
I shrugged. I didn't know for sure, but I had an idea where Melanie was. As I'd run past the burning cabin from the back porch, the odor of burning flesh had pierced my nostrils. I shucked the parka and tossed it out into the snow. The fur lining I'd turned to the outside had been soaked with gasoline and it wasn't helping me to thaw out anyway. Rubbing my hands up and down over my legs and arms, I finally began to warm up inside the heated car. I was almost thawed out by the time the first patrol car appeared behind us.

Chapter 30

             
Woody had to spend several days in the hospital, mostly so he could get a big dose of antibiotics pushed into his veins. The bullet wound didn't amount to much. He said he'd gotten stabbed with a Bic pen once, and it had hurt worse than this. I spent about thirty hours at the University Hospital, for observation, and was back home by the next afternoon. Melanie Goodwin's remains were found in her uncle's cabin a few days later, when the ashes had cooled enough for the firemen and detectives to go in. The presence of so much ether, anhydrous ammonia and gasoline had made even the authorities understandably hesitant. It appeared that Mel had gone inside to get some matches with which to give me a fiery send-off. She had apparently planned to set the place ablaze, with me on the porch and make it look like an accidental explosion that occurred while I was snooping around, as I'd been known to do once before.

             
The County Fire Marshall determined that the fire had started when the fumes from an opened can of gasoline were set off by a spark of some sort. They found part of one Melanie's boot heels, with the metal cleat still in place. After she'd doused me, she must have dumped the gas around inside the cabin, and was on her way back out to drop a match on me and set the whole thing off, when it happened. The police theorized that the cleats on her boots caused her to slip on the stone hearth, producing a spark that ignited the gasoline fumes. Her remains were found on the hearth, with her head twisted at an odd angle against the corner of the fireplace. The Medical Examiner reported that she had been, at the minimum, knocked out when her head hit the stones and was possibly killed by the impact. If she were alive, he reported, she would have been unconscious when she'd burned to death.

             
I visited Woody every day while he was in the hospital. At first it was because I felt guilty. I was the one who'd gotten him into the mess in the first place. Later, I went over because we needed to talk and to figure out what the hell had happened.

             
The morning after my release, I arrived in time to see my nephew coming out of Wood's room. He waved and called out that he was in a hurry to get to an appointment, so I didn't get a chance to ask him anything. I went in and found Woody finishing a Popsicle.

             
"Still partial to orange, I see."

             
"Hey, they asked if I had a preference," he said indignantly. "Did you see your nephew outside? He just left." I said that I had and that he was in a hurry.

             
"I guess he's still seeing Caroline...Sister Grace," I said. "Hey," I added as if it had just occurred to me. "Does my name ever come up?"

             
He tilted his head to one side, just like his mother, Mrs. Bloom, used to do when I offered her an absurd answer to one of her classroom questions. Once, when she had called on me to describe the city of New Orleans, I'd begun by strolling over to the map and pointing to a spot somewhere near Charleston, South Carolina. She'd interrupted my dissertation by getting out of her seat and stomping her thick heeled shoes all the way over to the map, where she had wrapped her hand around my index finger and slid it across the Eastern United States before poking it nearly through the heavy map at the exact location of New Orleans, Louisiana. Geography was never my best subject. Her son's cocked head was now a near-perfect reproduction of his mother's look on that day.

             
"No." he said after a minute, carefully enunciating each word. "No, your name does not ever come up."

             
"I didn't think so," I said with a grin, as I flopped onto the only chair in the small room. I surprised myself with my own feelings. It hadn't hurt. I propped my ankles up on the side of the bed and Woody what had happened with him and Melanie Goodwin.

             
He said Melanie had periodically asked him how the case was coming, but he'd thought she was just making conversation. Looking back on it, though, he said she always had an interest in the missing negatives. When Matt Barr had called and asked her if we'd found them, and Woody had told her to tell Matt we had, she knew for sure that she still had a chance. It turned out that was what she really was after, the negatives. She wanted to get another picture to prove to Petrick she could ruin him. She'd been planning to continue the blackmail that her boyfriend had started, but Charlie had told her he'd destroyed the negatives. Once she had Woody at the cabin, she'd told him the whole story.

             
"She was really insane, you know," he told me. "She said she fought with Wilson at the dam that night after Petrick left. Charlie wanted to get back with his wife and that really pissed Melanie off. He told her he'd only wanted to get enough money to pay off all his debts so Iris would take him back. Melanie wanted the negatives but he said he'd gotten rid of them. She kept badgering him and he kept walking away from her. Eventually, he went over to the fence above the conduit. She told me he finally climbed over and held onto the fence, crying about his marriage. He told her he'd been begging Iris to stop the divorce but she wouldn't. That was all news to Melanie and it made her even madder. Like a fool, he said he wished he had the nerve to kill himself."

             
"So Melanie helped him out?" I suggested.

             
"Yep. That's what she said." Woody shrugged. "She told me she yanked his hands loose from the fence and pushed him down into the water. The way she said it, it was like she had broken a fingernail instead of killing a man. Like it was a minor thing."

             
"And I'll bet she left there with fifteen thousand bucks tucked in her purse, too," I said. "How did she get back to town? Was her car hidden up there someplace?"

             
"No. When she'd gone to his apartment that night, Wilson was already drunk. She drove his car up to the dam. Petrick didn't know who she was and she didn't want him to see her car there. At that time, she didn't know the negatives were gone and she was still planning to take over the blackmail if Charlie wouldn't. After she shoved Wilson into the water, she just picked up her purse and jogged back to his apartment in Coralville. She said it's only a couple of miles. She picked up her car at his place and drove home." Woody shook his head and smiled. "What a nut," he said. "And I thought I was falling for her. Man!"

             
I assured him that I'd been fooled by her, too. "She did have a way about her that seemed genuine, Wood. She was funny and interesting and all the stuff that seems normal and attractive. And I missed some clues, too. One day she seemed really mad about her dad and her uncle and how they treated her. She talked like she had serious problems in her relationships with them. Then, all of a sudden, she just kind of flipped her happy mood back on. When I look back on it, it was odd. But at the time, I didn't think much of it. I think that she was way out of our league."

             
I changed the subject back to the case and asked him about that last day at the cabin. He said that she'd been fine at first, teasing him and kidding around. They played with the Global Positioning Device for a while, trying to mark and store various sites and then find them again. Then they went back to get the pistols and rifles and try some target shooting. At least that's what she told Woody. As soon as they got inside, the party had taken on a different tone.

             
"I was sitting there in this little living room and she picked up one of the rifles and sat across from me. She was holding it so it was pointing at me while she loaded it," Woody said. "I told her to be careful. I guess she didn't like my tone or something, 'cause she kind of snapped. She asked if I thought she was an idiot. Then she started this tirade about her father and her uncle and Charlie all thinking they were so smart and looking down on her. I could tell she had some serious mental stuff going on and I started looking for a chance to get out of there. She started in on Charlie and how he was just a fool who didn't know a good thing when he had it. So I listened, and eventually she spilled the whole scheme. When she turned her back and I saw my chance, I took off."

             
"So what was the point," I asked, wanting to know, "of taking you up there at all?"

             
"To kill me, and then you. She was going to call you and get you to come up, probably by saying I needed you for some reason. She planned to shoot both of us and torch the cabin with us in it. She figured the cops would think we'd gone back to look around. She seemed to have a story all ready for them. I didn't think they'd buy it, but that wouldn't help us after we were dead. She knew about some ether and a couple of those ammonia tanks that were hidden in the woods near the cabin and she was going to drag them down and set off the fire after we were dead. That stuff burns so hot, we'd have been ashes by the time it cooled down." He stopped suddenly and looked at me.

             
"I guess she used those extra tanks of stuff the other night, huh, Rude?"

             
"I guess. The cops said the remnants of the containers were there."

             
"Hey, Rude? You think she was...uh, still alive when, you know...when you, uh, woke up on the porch?" He ran the last few words together quickly, as if he wanted to say it all before he had a chance to change his mind. I took my time answering him.

             
"I've thought about it, Wood, quite a bit. What I think is...yeah, maybe she was still alive then. And yeah, I probably could have dragged her out if I'd known she was in there...and if I'd wanted to do it."

             
"I didn't mean that I thought you..." he started to say something more but I held up my hand to stop him.

             
"It's OK, Wood. I know you aren't accusing me of leaving her there to die. I," I hesitated, " um, I don't honestly know if I would have saved her. I guess it's something I can think about later...try to second guess what I would have done." Woody nodded, letting it go at that.

             
"So if she knew about the hidden tanks," he said, "that pretty much tells us she was involved in the whole drug business as well."

             
"Seems like it. Or maybe she'd just spied around and saw the stuff. From the way she talked, her uncle didn't exactly treat her like an equal." I was curious about her reason for wanting to kill us and said as much.

             
Wood held his finger up, the same way his mother used to do when she wanted to impress us with some point or another in class. "Now, Rudy," he said, wagging the finger at me. God, he even sounded like his mother. "Think about it. With us out of the way," he went on, "she'd be free to get more pictures made and blackmail Petrick for as long as she wanted. He didn't know who she was, so he couldn't get to her."

             
"But," I said, "she didn't have the negatives. I locked them in the safe." Woody winced and gave me a sheepish grin. I remembered that grin from ninth grade gym class, when I'd found out he was the one who'd been hiding my underwear all semester. "Wood." I shook my head. "You didn't."

             
"Well, she was teasing me and she said I probably didn't remember the combination and I kind of had to prove myself."

             
"Certainly," I agreed. "How else could you maintain your manly image?" I sighed. "So where did the negatives end up?"

             
"Well," he chanced another grin. "She had them at the cabin, so I guess she must have slipped them out when I wasn't looking." He offered an uncertain shrug.

             
I had to laugh and he soon started chuckling at his own expense. After a minute, he realized that his leg hurt when he laughed. I said, "Good," and told him a couple of jokes that I knew he'd like.