Deep Shadow

Perry was an angry man, but it wasn’t just anger I was hearing. He had seen something in the lake that scared him. I was sure of it now.

Arlis, I remembered, had said the rancher who sold him the property had behaved the same way. He had refused to come near the place.

“Even the roustabouts who work for the man,” Arlis had told me, “are afraid to go near that lake.”

NINE

THE THING THE PROFESSOR-LOOKING DUDE, FORD, called a “jet dredge” reminded King of a pressure washer he’d used to clean aluminum siding at a motel where he’d worked for a few months outside Kirkland, Illinois.

It was the same motel where King had robbed guests’ rooms half a dozen times, but then pushed what was a sweet setup a little too far. He had surprised one of the guests showering—a decent-looking brunette, although a little chunky—then exposed himself to the woman, who turned out to be a librarian from Moline who didn’t take shit off anybody, particularly a skinny maintenance man wearing a soiled blue uniform that smelled of wine and Pine- Sol.

When King had tried to calm her down, telling her he was on leave from the Air Force, that he didn’t know a soul in town—he was just lonely, that’s all—she had thrown an ashtray at him, and that’s when things had really gone to hell. A military man deserved respect, after all, and King had tried to force the issue by forcing the woman, naked, onto the bed.

Next stop, Statesville Correctional. King had been sentenced to seven years but got out in three. At Statesville, the work coveralls were orange, not Air Force blue.

The pressure-washer gizmo that the old man and Ford had brought—the dredge pump—was the size of a bread box but heavy. It floated on an oversized inner tube, connected by a waterproof cord to the generator onshore. Coiled beside the pump was a hundred feet of commercial garden hose, the end clamped to PVC pipe and fitted with a nozzle. Hit the trigger, and water jetted out in a stream finer and harder than any pressure washer King had ever used—Ford had tested it, even though he was in a hurry.

The rig was homemade, with redundancy kill switches in case water breached the power contacts. Ingenious, King had to admit. The old man and the professor dude were smart, he had to admit, too.

So what?

He had met a ton of men like these two. Superior acting. Always so sure of themselves. Smart, yes, but all of them born with a sort of governor inside their heads that stopped them from crossing certain lines of behavior. They were like dogs chained to a wall, which made them easy to tease. Self-important suits, too good to sink to the King’s level.

King hated them for it. He always had, he always would.

Early on, King had learned that he would never be accepted by these superior asshole types. He would always be considered an inferior. It was pointless to challenge their tight-ass behavior one-on-one, so King had learned how to choose his shots. He had learned how to erode their authority, and how to get even, by picking away at their weaknesses like a crow picks at garbage.

Sabotage and slick tricks. Bosses, his asshole sister’s friends who had dissed him, his teachers—especially his pompous eighth-grade science teacher—King had become expert at disrupting their plans, at screwing up their work, at inflicting small, sly wounds without them even knowing.

Common examples: Spitting in drinks, when no one was looking.

Robbing wallets, a few bucks at a time. Dragging his feet when someone was in a hurry or making excuses when an important job needed to be done.

Like now, pretending to help Ford.

It was best when the superior assholes suspected that he was doing it but couldn’t prove it. It gave King a tight, glowing feeling of victory in his belly. If they failed, the King won.

That feeling was in his belly now, as King held on to the inner tube, floating neck-deep in the chilly water, following the professor dude toward the orange buoy that the man claimed marked the wrecked airplane.

King wasn’t totally convinced there was a plane full of gold down there, but he sure as hell wanted it to be true. He was desperate to believe. Five counts of first-degree murder in a state that still strapped killers in the electric chair? Man, King needed all the help he could get.

That goddamn Perry and his goddamn knife!

Shit! Loading that shiny diesel truck with gold bars and coins was their only hope. If they actually got the stuff, if the asshole, Ford, wasn’t lying—man, what a break. First, they would fence enough to buy passage on a boat to Mexico. After that, they’d be in the clear, living rich, kicking back with enough wine and young girls and cash to finally tell the world, Screw you!

What had convinced King was the way Ford had rattled off his story, detail after detail, never once hesitating. No way he could have made up a tale like that. King was sure because he couldn’t have done it, and he had spent his life making up stories about himself.

No, Ford was the straight type. Just another dog chained to the wall—a tight-ass suit with boundaries—which only made the man easier to tease. It also made it more unlikely that the guy could invent some wild lie about a plane crashing, loaded with Cuban gold.

“Hurry up, come on! What’s your problem?”

Ford was yelling at him again. King looked over the inner tube, seeing the man’s dive mask tilted up on his forehead, seeing the man’s assholish superior expression of contempt as they swam the jet pump toward the orange buoy.

Truth was, Ford was doing all the work, pulling the heavy load, kicking with his fins. King was making it harder for him, mostly by just hanging on, but also by letting the fins he was wearing create drag. Sometimes King even backstroked to slow things down.

No way Ford could prove it, although the man knew. King let him read the truth in his innocent Who? Me? smile as he replied, “Take it easy, Jock-a-mo. We’re almost there.”

“No thanks to you. Look over there—see that?” Ford motioned to a yellow scuba tank that had just popped to the surface near the buoy. The tank was floating away.

“What about it? It belongs to your friends?”

The expression on Ford’s face said Dumb-ass.

“It’s my tank. I left it down there for them and it means we’re almost out of time. Quit fighting me. I’m not stupid, I know what you’re doing!”

No, Ford wasn’t stupid. But there wasn’t a goddamn thing in the world he could do to change the fact that King didn’t give a damn about the man’s two friends who were running out of air beneath them. Ford’s friends had screwed up. So what? It was their problem, not the King’s. Besides, why help save the assholes when it was easier to deal with only two people—Ford and the old man, who Perry would soon kill, anyway.

Perry had whispered that to him as King stripped down to his Fruit of the Looms.

“I’m thinking a knife in the throat is the only thing that will make the old bastard shut his mouth,” Perry had said. That was true, but it was more than that. Perry wanted to do it. He had a thing for knives now after using the switchblade on the brats and the Mexican girl back in Winter Haven.

Perry had said to him as they’d pedaled the bikes south, “You ought to try it—using a knife, I mean. It’s kinda cool the way they just lay there when they know it’s happening. Like, they want me to finish—you know? Get it over with, so they lay real still all of a sudden, wanting me to end it for them.”

His former cell mate wasn’t asking for permission to use the knife on the old man. Perry was asking to borrow King’s switchblade because he’d lost his during all the excitement—this was before he’d snagged the professor’s big stainless dive knife, of course.

Perry wasn’t like Ford. Perry had no boundaries. Not anymore. Perry hadn’t even realized he was no better than a dog on a chain until two nights ago at old man Hostetler’s house. But Perry had a taste for it now. King had seen the same sort of change in cons back in Statesville, two- or three-time losers who had discovered themselves when they finally tasted blood.

Not King, though. He’d never killed anyone, ever. Not even at the Hostetler place, although he had helped in certain ways. What choice had he had? Perry, who had been speed crazed and drunk, was nuts enough at the time