back to the little girl. She was smiling up at the man and he was smiling at the camera, like he was the cat that just swallowed the canary. Then she read the headlines.
ARE THERE WEDDING BELLS IN DANI’S FUTURE?
“ Your girl?” she asked.
“ My girl,” he said.
Chapter Four
Sheriff Earl Lawson heard the buzzing of the flies a few seconds before he inhaled the repugnant odors of dried blood and human feces. The nauseating smells filtered through dry and dusty air and assaulted him as surely as the plague of flies that attacked his face, tickling, biting, itching. Frantically he tried to move his hands to brush them away, but couldn’t. He shook his head back and forth, but it didn’t seem to bother them. He tried to move, but he was frozen in place, wedged in tight or paralyzed. Shivers tingled along his spine, sweat fed the flies on his neck and face.
He opened his eyes and was swallowed by the darkness. He strained to see, but flies attacked his open eyes and he forced them shut in an effort to keep them out. He fought a rising urge to scream. He squeezed his eyes into slits, trying in vain to see some light. Nothing but flies and more flies. The constant buzzing, combined with the roasting heat, made him feel like he was in an oven being baked alive, the pig in the pit, buried for the luau, flies on his face instead of an apple in the mouth.
He tried to speak, to call out, but couldn’t. Something was wrapped around his face, wrapped around the back of his neck, wrapped around his mouth. He forced his tongue between his lips and touched something sticky. Tape. His mouth was taped shut.
He struggled to bring a hand up, to pull it off, but his arms were frozen behind his back. He moved his wrists. Handcuffs. He tried to roll over, to bury his face into whatever he was laying on, anything to keep the flies off. They were at his nostrils. He felt one crawling in and he snorted it out, but it came right back, it or another, there seemed to be thousands. Terror gripped him. They were going to flood up his nasal passages, he was going to drown in flies.
No, the thought screamed at him, no, not like this. He fought for control, fought against the rising panic, fought the fear, fought the terror, and like a scalded snake, he bucked his body and managed to flop onto his side. That chased the flies away from his face and gave him the renewed energy for another jerk and twist. Then he was on his stomach, face against an oily, dusty carpet. In an instant the flies were back, but with his face pressed into the carpet they couldn’t get up his nose or into his eyes, but they were at his ears and on the back of his neck, crawling under his shirt.
Where was he? What happened? What went wrong?
Then he remembered the briefcase and shooting Johnny Lee Tyler. Somebody smacked him in the back of the head. Kids must have had an accomplice. How could he have been so stupid? There must have been two cars, of course. Darren’s father, it had to be.
He wondered if they got Jackson, too. They must have, otherwise he’d be home counting the cash. They must have come in that garage quiet and careful. Must have snuck up behind them. One clobbered Jackson and the other got him. He tried to slow his breathing, tried to think. There had to be a way out. He wondered again where he was and how long he’d been unconscious.
His legs weren’t straight. Before he’d rolled over they were bent at his side, now they were bent unnaturally and uncomfortably against something, a roof of some kind. He tried to straighten them, but they were wedged firmly against whatever he was encased in. He thought of a coffin and shuddered, but it couldn’t be, not with the flies. Besides, it was too big.
He heard the sound of an engine starting. Then he felt movement. All of a sudden he knew where he was. The car hit a bump or went down a curb, then accelerated, throwing him toward the back of the trunk and scattering the flies. He smacked into something warm. Not warm like human warm, but not cold like stone either. Something in between. A dead man turning cold.
Johnny Lee Tyler, Darren or Jackson. He wondered who, and he shivered, despite the heat. Maybe all of them were in here with him. Maybe one of them was alive, like him. Maybe Jackson. Between the two of them they could get out of anything. He moaned through the tape, a mournful sound, like a poisoned dog.
No answer.
He moaned again, louder.
Still no answer. Whoever was in the trunk with him was dead. He tried to think. The man next to him was dead, and he wasn’t. That was fact. Again he tried moving his legs, but still he couldn’t. They were tied together. Whoever taped, cuffed and bound him obviously wanted him alive. That was a good sign. You didn’t go to that much trouble with a man if you wanted him dead. He wondered what they wanted with him, what they’d ask of him.
But he didn’t wonder about what he’d do for them, because he knew the answer. Anything.
Please, God, let me make it.
A spasm of cold fear shot through him as he sucked hot air in through his nose. The dry air brought along other smells besides the coppery scent of blood and the revolting smell of shit — grease, oil, dust and death. He fought the rising bile. To vomit now was to die. He thought about death for a second and he wanted to scream and rage, but he was trussed up tighter than a rodeo calf.
Please, God, please.
The car accelerated, swerved, fishtailed and he tasted the rising dust as it swirled around in the trunk. He felt something slam into the back of his head and he wanted to cry out, because he was butting heads with a dead man.
Please, God, please.
Then the car was on the pavement and going fast.
It made another hard right and he pulled his head to the side to avoid smacking into the body again, and he banged his head into something harder, something made of metal, like a jack or a tire iron.
“ Shit,” he murmured through the tape, angry now, and ashamed. He tried to think, but the shame rode over rational thought. He was Earl Lawson. Big Earl Lawson. Sheriff, sportsman, strong as an ox, tough as they come, hale and hearty, leader of men, ex marine, and now a coward. They’d broken him in seconds. All it took was a few flies, a dead man and a trunk and he was whimpering like a woman, praying to a god he didn’t believe in.
Please, God, please.
He felt sick. They hadn’t put a hand on him and he was a broken man, ready to fall on his knees the minute he met his tormentors, ready to beg for his life. No, that’s not the way it was going to be. If he was going to die, he’d go like a man, head up, proud. He was Big Earl Lawson, sheriff, marine, hunter.
No more praying, he told himself, grabbing his fear with a mental fist and squeezing it away. He bit into his tongue and curled his fingers into tight fists. The fear gone now, all he had left was anger, all he had to do was endure. Sooner or later the car would stop and sooner or later he’d get his chance. Nobody fucked with Earl Lawson. He felt an erection building. It happened every time he sighted in on an animal, every time he pulled the trigger, every time he dealt death. It was getting hard. It was starting to throb. He was going to get even. Oh yeah, somebody was going to die.
The car came to a skidding stop, throwing him against the dead man. The scraping sound of the screeching tires echoed through the trunk sending icicles shivering up his spine, but he met the cold terror with hot fury, clenching his teeth and firming his resolve. The car banked quickly right and his head smacked into the hard metal of the jack. He blacked out again.
When he came to he was bent over a round bar or tube, like a dead outlaw slung over a horse. Hands hanging down one side, feet over the other. He heard the rushing of the river and he knew where he was even before he opened his eyes. His hands were flopping below his head, swaying in the brisk breeze. His feet were on the other side of the fence, the safe side. His legs were bound together at the ankles, the ropes were tight, cutting off the flow of blood to his feet. Eyes wide, looking down, he saw the Guadeloupe River. He was just above the rapids.
