Larkspur Cove (45 page)
I leaned against the tree and caught my breath, taking advantage of the opportunity to call for backup. If the situation turned out to be nothing more than a couple poachers whose hunting dog had run off in the woods, and Len was up there in his cabin, and Andrea had left hours ago, I’d come out looking like an idiot, but that was a chance I was willing to take. There was an uneasiness up my spine that told me something more was going on.
I moved up the hill, staying off the path and working my way through the woods to the edge of Len’s field. Before stepping into the clearing, I stopped, listened, looked around. The lights were on in the cabin, but the rest of the place was dark. It seemed quiet enough. Peaceful, but something didn’t feel right. The place was too quiet. No puppies scuffling and yipping. No dogs barking.
There wasn’t any way those dogs would let me come up after dark without raising a full-out ruckus. What were the chances that Len had packed up all the dogs
and
Birdie and gone somewhere? Not too likely.
Something was way south of normal.
I slipped from the tall grass and rounded the yard from behind, staying in the shadow of the barn, thinking it’d be just my luck that any minute now, I’d find out the dogs weren’t gone; they were just dozing. But the eerie quiet thickened, the only sign of movement coming from Len’s milk cow stomping and calling out long, low complaints, her bag in need of an evening milking. Len wouldn’t have gone off and just left her in that condition.
Moving closer to the house, I turned on the flashlight and shined the beam around, called out Len’s name. The back door was hanging open, the bottom section of screen flapping loose. No one who’d experienced the Texas-sized mosquitoes around the lake would go to bed and leave a door open at night.
The makeshift gate to the backyard was hanging loose on its bailing-wire hinges, which explained why the dogs weren’t barking. They were out . . . somewhere. Stepping through the gate, I called Len’s name again, moved into the yard. A long, low whine answered from inside – a dog whimpering.The grunting and whining of puppies followed. I slid my gun out, shined my flashlight beam on the door, then downward to the rock steps. A sticky red trail glistened against the light. Blood.
My pulse sped up and my stomach squeezed tight. I had a vision of Len and Birdie dead inside, the dogs making a meal of them. It wouldn’t be the first time dogs had turned on their owners. What if Andrea had walked in on it, and the dogs came after her, too? In a heartbeat, the past was there with me, burning like a scalding pot. I was at the coast, watching the boat pull in with Mica’s small body wrapped in a plastic sheet. They’d find Aaron a couple hours later.
Not again. Please, not again.
I ran the last few steps, took the stairs in one jump, kicked the door out of the way and braced myself behind one side of the frame, called Len’s name and Birdie’s, shined the flashlight and pointed the gun inside.
There was a dog on the floor, panting in a pool of blood, a gunshot wound in her hip. The puppies were clustered around her, some curled up sleeping, some whimpering and licking her fur.
I called out again, waited, listened. No answer. No sound except from the pups, which scampered to my feet, looking for help or food, or both. Stepping in the door, I hit the light switch with my elbow, radioed my backup, then moved into the kitchen. The place looked like a tornado had passed by, shattered glass and bits of dishes everywhere. A chair lay splintered to pieces on the far end of the room, a kitchen cabinet hanging off-kilter, Len’s home-canned goods splattered on the floor like finger paints. The door to the bedroom was partway open. Drops of blood led through it.
I followed the trail, stood aside at the entrance, stretched out an arm and pushed the door. The hinges yawned as the opening widened, fanning light into the room. With a quick sweep, I took in the details. The white dog was on the floor in pretty bad shape, shot or beaten – I couldn’t tell. The window was open on the other side of the room. A half-dozen loose sheets of paper lay strung across the floor, fluttering in the breeze. The bed was in oddly perfect shape – not a wrinkle in the faded quilt. The picture of Len in his army uniform had been knocked off its nail and now rested against the baseboard, the glass broken. Something beside it caught my eye. A wallet. I crossed the room, skirting anything that might be evidence, slid a pen from my pocket, opened the wallet, looked at the driver’s license. The picture landed in the pit of my stomach. Andrea. A lipstick had rolled under the edge of the bed, a set of keys lay nearby. Was her truck here? Having come in from the back, I wouldn’t have seen it. But if her vehicle was here, where was she?
Leaning through the open window, I spotted a couple of grocery store receipts and a plastic comb clinging in a scrappy cedar bush below. The grass was mashed and muddy. No distinguishable footprints, but someone had gone out this way. Apparently Andrea. What’d happened here tonight? Where were Andrea, Birdie, and Len?
A radio call let me know that Jake Moskaluk was coming up Len’s road. He’d gotten an ETA on the sheriff ’s deputies. Another ten minutes yet.
“We need them now,” I said. “We need them ten minutes ago.” My mind was working in fast circles, trying to figure out where Andrea and Birdie might be and whether they were all right.
They had to be all right.
Jake’s truck lights bobbed over the uneven ground on the far side of the cedar break as I walked through the front room of the house. “Mart, there’s someone out here in a vehicle.” His voice was low over the radio. I turned down my volume and pressed the unit to my ear. “They’re headed your way, and . . . Yeah, they’ve made me out and turned for the woods.” Outside, Jake’s engine revved. He flipped on the floods and lit up the field, then sped through the high grass and over the slab wood fence. Whoever he was chasing wheeled around at the end of the field and took a run at the driveway. I got a make on the vehicle. Bronco. White. We’d been looking for these guys all day. Jake cut them off again, and they started my way, the headlights blinding. I squatted down behind the corner of the porch, pulled my side arm, hollered, “State game warden. Stop where you are!”
A shot rang out, struck the cabin wall a couple feet away. I hit the deck. Another shot struck, closer this time. I returned fire, even though all I could see were headlights. Their next shot splintered wood and tar paper on the corner of the cabin right above my head. Flattening myself to the floor, I belly-crawled backward to a better position, saw Jake’s truck whip around, heard him return fire. A siren sounded across the cornfield near the front gate. The sheriff ’s boys had arrived a little ahead of schedule, right where we needed them to be, for once.
Another bullet flew over my head and grazed a porch post; then the driver in the Bronco saw the posse at the front gate and spun his truck around, heading for the woods. We had him now. There wasn’t anyplace for him to go over there. Whoever he was, he wasn’t messing around. We were onto something big. With that idea came another. Andrea and Birdie and Len were mixed up in this, too.
They’re all right
, I told myself.
They’re all right.
But self-assurances weren’t what I wanted. What I wanted was to find them, get Birdie someplace safe, then take Andrea in my arms. If we all made it out of this, I wasn’t wasting one more minute worrying about how things ought to happen between us, or how long it might take for her to be ready to tell Dustin about it. I was just going to enjoy the moments for what they were and figure the Big Man Upstairs had the game plan under control.
One thing I finally understood, pinned down on the porch with shotgun pellets peppering the cabin walls, Jake’s truck slinging mud in the pasture, and the sheriff ’s boys charging up the lane – you’ve got to take your chances as they are. God gives what He gives, and only He knows why. If you’re smart, you open the gift while it’s on the table. Enjoy it. Be thankful for it. Live every minute of it while it’s happening. Aaron and Mica and what had happened to them was in the past. I couldn’t change it. They ran out of time before they should have, but I was still here, and there had to be a reason for that. Maybe this was the reason.
If I got the chance to take Andrea in my arms again, I wasn’t letting go.
The birds of the air nest by the waters;
they sing among the branches.
– Psalm 104:12
(Anonymous senior citizen,
the Bus Birders tour group)
Andrea Henderson
I heard shots echo somewhere in the distance, the sound reverberating against the trees, bouncing off the hills, skimming the carpet of last year’s leaves, seeming to come from everywhere at once. I pushed into the cedars, the branches raking my arms as I dragged Birdie with me.
Please, God,
I thought.
Don’t let it be Len they’re
shooting at.
There had been shots once already – how long ago? Maybe an hour? Longer? There were three shots just after we’d slipped out the window of Birdie’s bedroom. I’d heard dishes breaking in the house, Len yelling, the dogs going wild, a man screaming in a way that curdled my blood, then three shots, and the dogs went silent. I hadn’t turned around. I’d just grabbed Birdie’s hand and bolted to the woods. There was no other choice.
Now there were more shots – several in rapid succession, but faint and far away. Had we traveled that far from the cabin, or were they on the road somewhere, or in the woods, trying to find us? What would happen if they did?
If they found us, would they shoot me to get Birdie? After what had taken place in the cabin, I knew the answer to that question, even though my mind couldn’t process it. The last hour seemed like a scene from a movie, something horrific enough that you were glad it wasn’t really happening.
I’d seen them coming across the field with Len just a moment after I’d noticed the extra vehicles behind the barn. They were jostling him around, demanding something. Birdie had already trotted back to her bedroom with her sack of new clothes. She was singing to herself. Then she stopped, listened. Ducking against the wall, I slid soundlessly into the house, rushed across the living room. Birdie was wide-eyed in the bedroom doorway. She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the bedroom, pushed the door closed behind us. They were coming. Several men, three at least, and a woman. When Birdie heard the voices, she crouched behind the bed, tugged my hand and pulled me with her.
As they entered the house, Birdie’s bedroom door fell open slightly. Through the narrow crack, I heard the ongoing argument, saw figures moving in the living room like shadows. They wanted to know if Len had any money stashed away.
“I bet he’s got a bunch,” a man’s voice asserted. “Prob’ly been cashin’ them big ol’ government checks all the time and buryin’ it in the backyard.You been buryin’ money in the backyard, old man? Huh? You got a million bucks out there?” He laughed, a razor-edged vindictive sound.
Len stuttered, attempting an answer.
A second man laughed, then did something that wrenched a gasp from Len. Afterward, he demanded that Len produce the
bags
Norma had left in the old school bus.
Norma
. . . Len’s daughter? She was with them – ordering Len to give her the bags one minute, defending him the next, pleading with the men not to hurt him, saying in a sticky-sweet slur, “C’mon, C.J., give ’im a minute. You know he’s dumb as roadkill. Give ’im a minute to think. What’d you do with the bags I left in the school bus, Pops? The black plastic trash bags with stuff in ’em. That’s C.J.’s stuff. I shouldn’ta took it, and he wants it back. You gotta tell us where it’s at now.” Her voice rose on the last note, quivering, fearful, desperate, conveying that she was far from in control.
Len’s answer was slow and slurred. I couldn’t make out all the words – something about having burned the bags when he burned the trash.
“You better not’ve!” C.J. exploded. “You better come up with my bags, old man. Where’d you put ’em? You and Norma hide ’em somewhere? You holdin’ out on me, Norma? You been dealin’ my stuff while I’m stuck in the stinkin’ county jail?”
I heard the
thwack
of a fist on flesh. Len moaned. Something metal crashed to the floor and rolled across the room.
C.J. roared, spitting out a string of expletives. “You gimme my stuff or I’m gonna find that little snot-nosed kid, wherever you got her hid, and you ain’t never gonna see her again.”
Birdie shrank against me, her body quivering, her hands pressing over her ears, her eyes widening in silent anticipation of what was coming next. She’d been through this before.
“You hear that, you little brat?” C.J. roared. “It don’t matter where you’re hidin’. You know I’ll find you out.”
My heart seized in my throat, stopping the flow of air. What now? What should I do? Confront them? Hide? Make a run for the back door? The dogs were in a frenzy out there. I could hear them growling and clawing at the screen. They knew Len was in trouble.
A breeze touched my cheek like the back of a hand, slid under my hair, stilling my thoughts, causing me to look up.
The window . . .
If I could pop the screen out without making too much noise, we could slip through, sneak around to my vehicle on the other side of the old school bus, get in, and go for help. I had to get Birdie to safety. We couldn’t stay in the bedroom. Even if we hid, sooner or later, they’d see my vehicle and know someone was here. They’d find us.
Thank goodness the mud had caused me to park on the other side of the school bus. Otherwise, they would have discovered us already. If we were lucky, we might be able to get to the truck, start it, and drive away before anyone could stop us. . . .