Turn Left at the Cow (21 page)

It seemed like his voice was coming from a different direction, but I didn't think he was any nearer to me. It was a big dump. I was fine where I was. It didn't even smell that bad anymore. I'd just stay hidden until morning. Once somebody showed up to open for business, I'd be safe.

I wondered what time the vultures showed up.

“Of course, maybe a tough guy like you isn't worried about a little pain. But you've got to remember to think about the big picture, kid. Like your granny, for instance. I mean, I might be willing to swing a little deal with you there.” Deputy Death's voice was still loud, but it had shifted to this slick super-salesman tone.

“I guess you're smart enough to have figured out it's too late to save yourself, kid. You're dead meat. But you can still choose to make things easier for poor old Granny. You cooperate with me, and I'll leave her alone.”

Suddenly I remembered that among the dozens of apps I had loaded onto my phone was a recorder. I crouched over my cell to hide any light and fumbled with the buttons. My hands were shaking but I managed to get it running. Now he could make all the threats he wanted—the more the better. Then, when I managed to escape, I'd have enough evidence to bust him.

“You keep stretching things out this way, and I'll make sure Granny pays a high price.”

I saw a light beam pass high overhead. Was he doubling back?

“Come on, kid. You want the last thing Granny hears to be a description of exactly how I killed her son?”

His voice was definitely closer now. I sank down lower. I tucked my phone into a far corner of the freezer and felt around with my hands to see if there was anything on the floor I could throw at him. Where was Butter Head when I needed her?

“Or maybe it's really worse to let Granny live a nice long life never knowing the truth. When you don't turn up tomorrow, she'll just assume you ran off again. You're good at that, right? When you never come back, she'll box up your stuff and stick it under the bed next to what's left of your old man's life. Both of you gone without her ever knowing where or how.”

I think my heart was bleeding. Gram was as good as dead no matter what; I knew she wouldn't survive having somebody else she loved vanish without a trace.

“You come out now and I'll fix it so she doesn't have to go through any of that.”

The light beam swung overhead again. Maybe I could heave the mannequin at him? Or jump him when he got closer? I tried putting weight on my injured ankle and almost bit through my lip to keep from screaming.

“Granny's been good to you, right? Give yourself up for her, kid.”

I could hear his boots squishing again. Definitely getting closer.

For a desperate couple of seconds I tried to come up with a great lie I could sell him. That was one of my mad skills, right? I could pretend I'd hidden the money somewhere and convince him I had to lead him to it—somewhere buried on the island, maybe? Then I'd find a way to escape on our way out there. Escape and save both me and Gram.

But it was like he was wired for psychic sound or something. “And don't bother thinking up some elaborate escape plan, kid. You're mine.”

The voice was louder. He was definitely closing in. My brain was wiped clean of ideas. It looked as if I had been right that very first morning in Minnesota: the ghosts of all those dead animals in Gram's freezer were going to have their revenge on the son of the man who'd hunted them down.

I made myself as invisible as possible.

“I didn't like having to get rid of your old man, you know. But he admitted to me he'd left his backup flashlight in the bank vault. As soon as he said it, I knew they'd track him down. And get him to talk. Your dad was always a big talker. And I couldn't have that. So . . . he really didn't leave me any other choice. And it was easy to send everyone on a wild-goose chase.”

I was maybe minutes away from dying in a freezer chest because my father had been a bigmouth. And a screwup. He'd even managed to screw up
while
he was screwing up.

I
was a screwup too. I'd pretty much built my own deathtrap. Both Gram and I were going to pay the price. And Ma too, I realized.

“I got a look at the case files myself, once I became a deputy. He'd wiped the outside of the flashlight clean, but he'd never wiped his fingerprints off the batteries.”

The footsteps stopped. I could hear the deputy's heavy breathing.

All of a sudden, I could somehow picture myself cornered like a rat in the appliance of death, like I was seeing it all happen from above. The way people always described near-death experiences.

Ma, I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry
.

Then I saw a really bright light.

“Near-death” was exactly the right name for it. Because it was Deputy Death's flashlight shining straight down on me.

“Gotcha,” he said.

“You make it too easy, kid. Like shooting fish in a barrel.” Deputy Death leaned close and pointed his gun at me again. “Now, we'd counted down through five, I think. One last chance to tell me where the bank money is or I shoot you, right? Four . . .”

I started to open my mouth to tell him I'd lead him to the money. Anything to buy time.

“Three.”

But somewhere between “three” and “two,” something leaped up out of the deepest, darkest part of my brain. And I realized that I
did
know exactly where the money was.

“Two.”

“I know where it is! Help me out of here and I'll show you—”

But before I could say any more, there was a thump and the deputy gave this little sigh. First his flashlight dropped into my lap, and then his gun. He started sliding down the outside of the freezer. His jaw whacked hard against the edge, and then his head vanished from my sight.

I didn't have a clue what had just happened. But now I was the one holding a gun.

I still couldn't get my ankle to work, so I sat there with the gun pointed, waiting for Deputy Death's head to pop back up over the edge like one of those punching-bag clowns that you knock over as hard as you can but always bounce right back up.

I've always hated clowns.

But he didn't. Pop back up, I mean. Instead, the freezer chest rocked as something slammed into the outside of it. I heard a couple of grunts.

Then I swore I heard Iz's voice.

“Quick—get his handcuffs on him,” she said.

Maybe I was hallucinating. Or maybe he had shot me dead after all, but my ghost was too stupid to know that the final bell had just rung.

And then for the second time in a week, I was looking up from the bottom of a freezer chest at Iz's and Kenny's faces.

We stayed frozen like that for a minute, until Kenny said, “Dude, we surrender. Don't shoot.”

I lowered the gun. Iz reached down and touched my cheek. “Are you okay?” Her voice had gone helium high.

I wasn't actually sure I was okay, but nodding seemed like the right thing to do. “Except I think I busted my ankle. You're going to have to help me get out,” I said to Kenny. I handed the gun and the flashlight up to Iz, who put them somewhere.

Kenny leaned over and got his hands under my armpits. Somehow he managed to hoist me over the side. Then, between the two of them, they got me seated against a pile of garbage a few feet away.

Iz immediately started fluttering around me, murmuring and poking at the various places on my anatomy that probably should have hurt. I guess I was lucky; right then everything was just numb.

“I'm okay.” Maybe if I just kept saying it, it would come true. I finally grabbed one of her hands and pulled her down next to me. I figured if I didn't stop her soon, she was going to pull out that mother trick of spitting into a Kleenex and washing my face with it. Besides, I needed something to hang on to. My head was spinning like the time Kalooky had beaned me with a baseball.

Iz had set the flashlight on the ground. In its beam I could see Deputy Death lying on his stomach. His eyes were closed. His hands were handcuffed behind him. Kenny was now sitting on his legs.

I looked over at Kenny. “Hey. Touché. What did you two do to him?”

Kenny pointed at another flashlight on the ground. This one was even bigger than Gram's. The glass was broken.

Iz answered. “We got up as close as we dared, and Kenny threw his dad's flashlight at him. Hit him square on the back of the head. All that football stuff finally paid off.”

“Iz thought of it. We heard him threatening you and saying all that junk about hurting your grandma, and then he talked about the flashlight your dad had dropped, and next thing I knew, Iz was whispering in my ear what I had to do. He went down like I dropped him with my dad's .22. I wasn't actually sure it would work that well.”

Once Kenny started talking, his words came out way too fast. I gave him a closer look. Even in the flashlight beam, he was the approximate color of one of Crazy Carl's little green men. Then suddenly he jumped up, leaned over into the freezer chest, and puked his guts out. I was glad I wasn't still inside.

Iz and I looked away to give him some privacy. When he came up for air, he sat down on Deputy Death again. Maybe it was comfortable—who knew?

“But before that, how did you even get here?” I said.

Iz poked me in the side, hard. “I couldn't believe how stupid you were being, so I woke up Kenny and we followed you. There's this great shortcut through the Theilmann farm, so we got here pretty fast. We were just pulling up to the fence when we saw the deputy's car coming, so we hid out while we tried to figure out exactly what was going on.”

Kenny broke in. “We could hear you guys from where we were hiding. When he started admitting some of the stuff he'd done, we weren't sure what to do. Iz got this idea that we should create a diversion so you could run, but then those raccoons started fighting and did it for us.”

I interrupted. “You mean that screaming—those were raccoons? I thought maybe it was Carl. It sounded like a crazy person—or like somebody getting murdered.”

Iz shivered. “The deputy was so focused on finding you that he didn't notice us stalking him. So when we finally saw our chance with the flashlight, we took it.”

“But what are we gonna do now? We can't call 911. He
is
911. We can't call him.” Kenny was babbling again.

“Kenny!” said Iz. “Don't make me slap you with my flip-flop.”

He took a deep breath. It seemed to steady him some. “I gotta call my dad. He is
so
gonna kill me, but I don't know what else to do. Do you have your cell?”

I felt my mouth drop open.

“What?” Iz said.

“It's in the freezer. Back corner. I hope you didn't hurl on it, bro.”

Kenny got up again and fished the phone out of the freezer. It appeared to be dry.

“Let me have it for a minute,” I said.

I took it from him and turned off the recorder. Then I hit Rewind for just a second and then Play.

“For a minute,” my voice echoed back at me, loud and clear.

Iz and Kenny were both staring.

“Be careful with it,” I said, giving it back to Kenny. “I think I got enough on record here to hang him high.”

Kenny took the phone as if I had handed him a poisonous snake. I didn't know if it was because of my warning or because he was that afraid of calling his dad. His hands were shaking. Seeing them made me realize I was shaking too. Not to mention that I was wishing for the good old days when I had felt completely numb. Every pulse of my blood was starting to feel like a heavy-metal drummer was crashing down on my ankle with his drumsticks.

“How do you dial this stupid thing?” Kenny asked. Iz took it and punched in a number. But she must have been a little nervous too, because she had somehow hit Speakerphone and we could all hear it ringing through. One. Two. She handed the phone back to Kenny as Big Ken's sleepy voice cut off the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Dad, it's me.” Kenny stopped and swallowed real big.

“Kenny?” Big Ken sounded completely confused, and we could hear somebody in the background—Jen, I guessed—mumble something.

Then his voice got more alert. “Kenny, where are you? It's the middle of the night.”

“Dad, listen. You know how you said that I could call you anytime for help, no matter what trouble I was in, and you'd come right away and not yell until later?”

“What's wrong? Are you hurt? Where are you?” Big Ken sounded wide awake now, and there were excited noises from Jen in the background.

“No, Dad, I'm okay—just listen, all right? Me and Trav and Iz, we're out at the dump, and we need you to come. To the dump. Right away. And help us.”

“Kenny! You swear you're okay?” We could hear all sorts of rustling coming from Big Ken's end of the phone now, and then it sounded as if he'd dropped the receiver altogether, because it banged on something. I didn't know what he was doing—maybe getting dressed.

“Dad!”

“All right, it's going to be okay. I'm leaving right now. Kenny, I want you to hang up this line and call me back on my cell if you need me before I can get there.”

“Hurry, Dad.” Kenny clicked off and handed the phone back to Iz. “He is
so
going to kill me,” he said, staring off into space.

I hadn't exactly gotten the impression that Big Ken was racing out to the dump to strangle Kenny. I guess there were ways to interpret dad-speak that Kenny understood and I didn't. And maybe he'd seen some of the same shows I had; Animal Planet was always featuring animal fathers who killed their own offspring.

Iz brought the phone back and sat down close beside me. She probably could tell I was still shaking like Jell-O at a fundraiser, because she pretty quickly leaned in closer and wrapped her arm around my back.