Strawman's Hammock (30 page)

“Rise and shine.”

A rock road jarred her painfully.

“Ah!”

A headache. Her hands raised on instinct to nurse the lump behind her ear.

Something bright and shining jerked them short.

Handcuffs. Laura Anne gasped, still dizzy, to realize that she was handcuffed through the loop of gripbar welded on the dashboard of Jarold Pearson's Jeep. A wrap of duct tape trapped the calves of her naked legs.

“Good morning.”

That skull! Pressed with an unnatural forceps. The eyes almost seeming to touch across its thin bridge of cartilage.

“What are you—? What am I doing here? Jarold?”

She tried to keep the pleading out of her voice. A sudden wave of nausea struck.

“Don't you do,” he warned. “Puke in my Jeep, you're gonna clean it up.”

A growl behind her brought ice to Laura Anne's skin. She turned her head painfully to the bed of the Willys. A massive chain ran through eyebolts and a collar to pin the biggest dog she'd ever seen to the Jeep's steel floor.

She looked outside. Nothing but an endless expanse of palmetto and pine.

“Where … where are you taking me?”

He laughed.

“That is the question, isn't it, Laura Anne? That will be the question on everybody's lips. For now.”

He eyed her.

“But there'll be more later. I guaran-goddamn-tee.”

*   *   *

Barrett Raines came home to find the screen door banging back and forth, flimsily, open to the breeze. A basket of laundry was spilled by the sink. There was fresh blood on the floor.

“Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus, God!”

For the space of seconds Barrett Raines was not a competent lawman, but a terrified and irrational husband.

He would later curse the five or six seconds it took him to regain the presence of mind necessary to dial 911.

“This is Agent Raines.” His breathing was as labored as a long distance runner's. “My wife's been kidnapped. The suspect is armed, ruthless, and extremely dangerous. Yes, I do. He is the county game warden. That's right—it's Lieutenant Jarold Pearson.”

*   *   *

The urgency attending the manhunt for Laura Anne Raines made the search for Gary Loyd seem an Easter-egg hunt by comparison. There were straws of hope at which to clutch. Bear was lucky enough to have discovered his wife's abduction within minutes of the kidnapping. There were plenty of witnesses who saw Jarold Pearson come to town in his Jeep; that time was fixed. Rolly even admitted that Jarold had visited the shop. “But I didn't see him take my dog!”

At least two persons, however, did see a large black dog leashed or restrained in some manner in the bed of Jarold's Jeep.

“He wants to get caught,” Cricket told Barrett. “He's not hiding anything.”

“He's hiding my wife!”

A pair of helicopters came in from the highway patrol to aid the ground search. The sheriff even garnered a separate pair of choppers from the national guard.

“Thanks, Lou,” Barrett thanked him numbly.

“Don't lose hope, Bear.
She
won't.”

The marine patrol had every boat they could get on the water. The coast guard weighed in.

“They got his boat,” Cricket reported. “The bird dog. So he's probably still in the Jeep and on land. Most likely.”

“Likely.” Barrett felt sick. “Jesus.”

Cricket had Thelma take the boys straight to her trailer.

“Just tell them their mother's lost for now. And that we will find her.”

Cricket turned to his partner.

“You ought to go home, Bear. We can keep you in touch there.”

“No.” Barrett pushed off the sagging couch. “Get me a vehicle. I'm going on the ground.”

“Bear, he could be anywhere.”

“He could. But you said yourself, he's gone brazen. He's out in the open. Hasn't bothered to hide a thing. He
wants
to get caught, you said so yourself, Cricket. And Midge told us, too, remember? From the very outset she said this bastard wanted to get caught.”

“So she did.”

“So let's oblige the son of a bitch.”

“Do you have any idea
where?”

“The first place. The most obvious place. The place where he'd figure it would hurt Laura Anne, and me, the most.”

*   *   *

The wind rushing past helped eased the pain in Laura Anne's head. Helped her stay alert. She glanced to the road ahead. To the side. There was no one. No hunter out for deer. No pulp-wooder. Only a game warden with murder on his mind. Still—somebody might hear. Some hunter off the beaten track.
“Killer!”
Laura Anne screamed. Jarold slapped her casually across the mouth. Stars floated in front of her eyes. She threw up, finally, all over herself and the Jeep.

“Time we're through you'll eat it off the floor,” he promised.

“Why me?” she panted. “What have I ever done to you, Jarold?”

“Ask your fucking husband.”

Then she knew. She remembered.

His mama took a fright. Rolled sideways.

Jarold inspected his narrow skull briefly in the Jeep's rearview. “Long as it was whites made fun, I could manage. Least I knew I wasn't on the bottom of the pile. But when the only damn nigger on the bus can shit you to your face—!”

Laura Anne turned to him desperately.

“God's sake, Jarold, you were boys when that happened! Boys!”

“Not a boy, now, though am I?”

Laura Anne tried to clear her head.

“What about Hezikiah? Or Juanita, or Gary? Did they
all
hurt you, Jarold? Surely they didn't. They couldn't!”

The game warden spit.

“Used the boy to git his daddy. Goddamn Linton. Been taking his shit for years. And then he comes out here, in
my
woods! With that Mexican whore.”

He turned hard off the rock road to sand.

“They'd run out three, four trucks full of men at a time. Take 'em to Hezikiah's place. Get 'em drunk or crazy on whatever weed that witch was smoking, pay a hundred, two hundred dollars apiece to get tied up to a post, or have their pale asses whipped. Let the whore do it to 'em. Or tie her up and do it to her.

“They'd be screamin', hollerin'. You'd've thought it was a damn revival. Linton with his camera takin' pictures. Dollin' 'em up. Like some kinda Hollywood director. And then he sells the whole mess over the Internet. For perverts. For kids.”

Jarold shook his plate-narrow head.

“A woman dirties everything she touches. Mama was like that. She had long nails? Always dirty. Always filthy with dirt underneath.”

He spread a hand on the steering wheel to inspect his own nails. Reached then for the reassurance of the Boy Scout knife at his belt.

“Daddy'd be gone working, Mama'd call Linton to the house, jump him at the door. They knew I was watchin'. They wanted me to. Those nails. Time they got through, he looked like he'd screwed a bobcat.

“So first chance I got, I took care of my mama. Yessiree bob. Was a long time 'til the next one. And then my wife. Then I figured it was about time to let the sins of the father visit the son, so I took Rolly's dog and Linton's whore to that shanty by the pond and we made us some
real
pictures.”

His squashed head lowered briefly as he fished a camera from beneath the seat of his Jeep.

“Wish I could tell you this is the original picture-taker, but it's not. I saved everything from the hammock on my first camera, but I knew Bear'd be wantin' to find some original footage, so I gave up my camera. Put it inside Gary's Humvee. So this thing here is not my original picture-taker. It's bought special.

“Just for you.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Laura Anne threw up again.

Jarold dropped the Nikon to cup her breast.

“No!”
She jerked away.

His lips curled as if he had sucked a lemon. The Jeep downshifted into a muddy rut.

“Hadn't been easy, layin' this off. Gary was a problem from the start. Boy knew
he
hadn't killed anybody. Hell, he hadn't even screwed the whore. But he kept asking questions: How long had I known about the shack by the pond? How many times had I got into Strawman's Hammock? That kinda thing. Then he started talkin' to Hezikiah.

“Hezikiah. Now, there's a piece of work. You can hardly kill anybody without that old woman showing up. She was there when I was finishing Mama. You know that? Damn woman walked right in on us. Took the knife out of my hand. Told me if I'd fuck her, she'd lie for me.

“It was like putting my dick in a pile of shit, but she made me do it.”

He wrenched the wheels savagely.

“Sheriff comes out to the house, she put it all off on Daddy, just like she said, but I was always nervous she'd get the itch to change her story. And then she saw me, at the end with the whore at the shack? She tried to tell me she hadn't seen anything, but I knew better. I saw the change in the light. I know a witch's shadow.

“So I took care of Hezikiah, and then I called Gary and told him I had some information on the case might possibly help his daddy. It was easy to meet him on the water. Get him drunk. After I killed him I went fishing. Hadn't been fishing in a long time.”

Jarold slowed to negotiate a ditch filled with water. Laura Anne saw a snake hissing beneath the Jeep's tires. A moccasin. His mouth opened wide and white and full of venom.

Jarold spat.

“I could've killed Linton anytime I wanted. Rilled Barrett, too, for that matter. We got a season on bear, you know.”

He seemed to enjoy that pun hugely. Then became as somber as a mortician.

“But this way is better, don't you think? This way everybody knows what the Straw Man and the Bear are
really
like.”

“You don't have to kill me, Jarold. I know what Barrett did was wrong. He does too! He'll admit it! He'll admit it publicly!”

“Think that would hurt him, do you?”

“Yes,” she said fervently. “Yes, it would.”

Jarold's smile broke wider than the cramped width of his eyes.

“So imagine how much worse he's gonna feel when he sees what I do to you.”

Laura Anne knew then that there would be no appeasement. No remorse.

“He'll kill you,” she said simply. “Badge or no, Barrett will come after you and kill you. With his bare hands, if he has to.”

Jarold's smile split even wider.

“Guess that means you and me better get busy.”

*   *   *

They left the sand road in a bone-jarring detour through a jungle of tangled growth. Laura Anne's head snapped forward into the windshield. Stars again.

She revived to find the world very still. It took Laura Anne precious moments to realize that she was alone in the Jeep, that Jarold was gone and that the Willys was parked and silent. She could hear the tick, tick, tick of the radiator. It took her a moment more to realize that Jarold's vintage vehicle was nosed within yards of some kind of dwelling.

She could see in the painful glare of bright sunshine a cypress shack. But it was circled incongruously with bright-yellow tape. Like an oversized Brownie ribboned for a birthday party. Then Laura Anne realized that this was the crime scene that had for so long consumed her husband's attention.

She turned painfully to see a pond behind her. Dense undergrowth all around. Jarold still nowhere in sight. The dog! She looked. Gone, too. Then a growl rising from inside the shack that made her shiver.

“Stay still, you dick.” The command came muffled with the slap of something hard on flesh. A howl of fury and anger.

If he got her into that cabin, Laura Anne knew, she was worse than dead. She tugged in sudden desperation on her handcuffs. The cuffs were looped through the dashboard's handgrip. Laura Anne slowed her heart, her mind. She only needed to free one hand. The handgrip was plenty large enough to pull a handcuff through—if it were not encumbered with a hand.

But that meant she had to get one hand out of these steel bracelets. Laura Anne relaxed her hands, her arms. Barrett's sweatshirt rode long over her hands; the handcuffs were actually braceleted over that fabric. There might be something there. Laura Anne lowered her head as far as she could on the arm of her sweatshirt, put her teeth into the sweatshirt's stiff cotton, and jerked up hard to expose her flesh.

The shack rocked with a fresh fury. She saw a shuttered window open, then close.

Laura Anne's arms and hands were slick with vomit. It was that sick mess that gave her hope. With the fabric pulled from beneath the handcuff there was now some slight play between the steel keepers and her exposed hand. She made her hand as small as she could and pulled, pulled against those steel hoops. Pulled with all her might.

It felt as though her hand were being cut from her wrists. But she felt some concession on one side through a fire of pain. Some give. She bit her tongue to keep from screaming and jerked hard.

The hand came free! It was cut and bleeding, but it was free! Laura Anne quickly pulled the still-closed bracelet on its short chain through the loop of the dashboard grip. She gathered the empty cuff into her still-cuffed hand. If it came to close quarters she would have a weapon. Of sorts.

There was a lull of quiet in the shack. Would she have time?

Laura Anne used the handcuff's chain to start a tear in the duct tape that bound her calves.

That was easy.

She slipped over to the steering wheel. It was a starter button! A regular vintage starter. But Jarold had an ignition rigged for the Willys. And he had the key.

If Laura Anne were a car thief she might try hot-wiring the ignition. But she wasn't a thief. What she was, was injured, sick, and terrified.

Laura Anne stumbled from the driver's side of Jarold's Jeep and stumbled dizzily for the shelter of the woods. Her legs were jelly at first. But then adrenaline kicked in its blessed benediction. And anger.