The Devils Punchbowl

?I'?ll never forget her,? Caitlin says, still looking westward toward the place of their captivity.

?She?d be glad to know that.?

?She would. She had a high opinion of me, for some reason. She taught me how lucky I was to have the childhood I had. I'm not a poor little rich girl anymore. Linda gets the credit for that.?

I smile at this rare display of self-deprecation.

?You want to know a secret?? she says, removing the lid from the urn. The breeze catches some dust from the opening and sends it dancing over the water like a swarm of gnats.

?Sure.?

Caitlin raises her eyes until we?re looking directly at each other. ?I sprinkled some of this over Tim?s grave this morning.?

?Did you really??

?I couldn'?t see the harm. Julia will never know, and it would have meant the world to Linda.?

?To Tim too.? I can?t help but smile. ?Just when I start believing you?re a real cynic, you show your romantic streak.?

Caitlin turns back to the water. ?I?'ve always been a romantic. You know that. Here goes nothing.?

Lifting the urn by its base, she flings the ashes far over the orange-red water. A hiss like falling rain reaches the boat, and then only a small cloud of dust hangs over the river, dissipating slowly in the wind.

?How long till she gets to New Orleans?? Caitlin asks.

?That depends on a lot of things. No more than a week. Maybe sooner.?

She watches the ashes drift away from the boat. ?The other day, you asked me if I?d learned anything about Tim?s last minutes while I was with Linda. I did, actually. Quinn told her about it between the rapes. To torment her.?

?Christ.?

?I'm going to tell you, but I don'?t ever want to talk about it again. Nothing about Quinn.?

?All right.?

Caitlin sits on one of the padded seats and crosses her legs. She tugs at the end of her ponytail as she speaks, her gaze on the fiberglass deck. ?When Tim stole the DVD from the

Magnolia Queen,

there was already a homing device on his car. Quinn tracked him sometimes to see if he was at Linda?s apartment. Ben Li woke up and called Quinn to warn him just after Tim left the casino. Quinn and a couple of goons tracked Tim up to the cemetery in a security van. Then they switched on a cell phone jammer and started hunting. They found Tim?s car right away. They left one guy guarding it, then fanned out through the graveyard. Tim must have been hiding the DVD in the tree about then.?

?Because he couldn'?t find me.?

Caitlin pauses, then nods in sober agreement. ?After he hid the disc, Tim somehow got back to his car and overpowered the guard, then took off for town. But Quinn had already called for help. The second vehicle blocked the road, so Tim turned and headed out Cemetery Road as fast as he could.?

?That'?s when he made the voice memo in his phone.?

?Right. The plan he mentioned in his memo was simple. He ran his car off the cliff into the Devil?s Punchbowl and dived out at the last second. He was trying to make them think he?d spun out and killed himself.?

?Why didn't it work??

?Think about it.?

This takes only a moment. ?Dogs.?

?

Dog, singular. The backup team had brought Sands?s Bully Kutta in the second vehicle. Tim hid in the woods across the road from the Punchbowl, but he didn't have a chance with that monster hunting him.?

?My God,? I whisper, remembering the massive white dog pinning me to the wall of my house.

Caitlin closes her eyes. Recounting this is obviously a struggle for her. ?The dog mauled Tim pretty badly, as you saw. But the real torture happened in the backseat of the SUV. They were taking him back to the Queen to question him with electricity, but naturally Quinn couldn'?t wait. He beat Tim with a club to subdue him, then started on him with a cigarette.? She wrings her hands as though unsure what to do with them. ?Quinn told Linda a lot of horrible

things, but I think he was just trying to make her suffer. Tim was only in the SUV for a couple of minutes. At least I hope he was.?

?A couple of minutes of fire is more pain than most people can imagine.?

Caitlin pulls her jacket tighter around her. ?Tim had passed out by the time they reached the bluff?or so they thought. But just as they passed Bowie?s Tavern, he exploded off the seat and started hitting everyone in sight. Then he grabbed his cell phone and jumped out of the SUV.?

?Where the witnesses first saw him.?

?I doubt Tim even knew where he was when he started running.?

My throat constricts when I think of Tim giving his last reserves of strength to escape his torturers. By then he must have been thinking only of Julia and his son. But now I remember Logan telling me that Tim tried to call me just before he went over the bluff. This memory brings blood to my face and tears to my eyes.

?It was Quinn who chased him?? I whisper.

?Yes. I think Quinn panicked. They switched on the jammer to stop Tim from calling anybody, but Quinn wasn'?t sure he could get Tim back into the vehicle before a crowd gathered. That'?s why he shot him.?

?They would have killed him in the end anyway.?

?Yes.? Caitlin reaches out and touches my hand. ?Penn, there?s a reason I told you this story. I wouldn'?t want you to have that stuff in your head unless I thought it was necessary.?

?What do you mean??

?You blame yourself for Tim?s death. I know it. I don'?t think you could have done what we did at the lake unless you did.?

My throat is so tight that breath can hardly pass through it. She?s right. When Kelly shoved Quinn off the boat, I didn't protest because I had focused all my guilt and self-disgust on him. But Quinn?s death has not lightened my guilt?or eased my suffering.

?Look at me,? Caitlin says. ?Sit down and look at me.?

I do.

?You think Tim died because you were late for that meeting.?

?didn't he??

?No. He died because he put himself into a situation he didn't understand, with some very bad people. Only one thing would be

different today if you had showed up at the cemetery on time. You?d be dead too.?

?You don'?t know that. I had a gun with me.?

Caitlin shakes her head. ?Don?t kid yourself. You and Tim were no match for Quinn, his gang, and that dog. You were lucky to get off the

Queen

alive the other day, and you were only fighting Sands.?

She?s right again. ?I know that. My real mistake was letting Tim go forward at all. I knew what could happen when??

?Stop,? she says sharply. ?You have to stop. You?ll drive yourself crazy. Do you want me to spend the rest of my life torturing myself for not saving Linda??

?You couldn'?t have?? ?

Stop.

You have to let go, Penn. Now, out here, today. And I mean all of it. Tim, Quinn, everything. When you start this boat again, we?re going to leave it behind us, in the river.?

She stands and comes to my seat, then pulls my head against her abdomen and runs her fingers through my hair. I haven'?t been this way with her in so long that a dizzying feeling comes over me.