The Devils Punchbowl

She doesn?'t cry often, but there are tears in the corners of her eyes. Behind the tears seethes anger?and wounded vanity. No one likes

to be played for a fool, but some people, usually the vainest among us, truly cannot handle it.

Despite wrestling with my own guilt, I nod.

?I'm going to bury Golden Parachute,? Caitlin vows. ?

Bury

them.? Then her eyes snap to mine. ?What do the clues mean? Do you know where the disc is??

In the maelstrom of guilt swirling inside me, childhood memories spin and flicker like buoys glimpsed through heavy rain. ?Not yet. I'm thinking.?

?They could be passwords.?

?To what? Tim found a physical object and hid it somewhere.?

?Right, right.?

?

The Great Escape

is a movie. Tim and I were kids when it came out.?

?Did you watch it with him??

?I don'?t think so.? I think frantically, trying to grasp images that float away like leaves in a swirling current. ?The part about the birds was separate from that, right? From ?dog pack? and

The Great Escape

??

?Yes.?

?Because he said that guy?s birds could say movie lines.?

?Yes, but that first part wasn'?t connected to the birds. The first clues were for you alone.?

I'm trying to make the missing connections, but Caitlin?s urgency feels like an overcurrent shorting out my neural processes. ?Just don'?t say anything for a minute. I'm thinking.?

She nods, but I know silence requires extreme effort from her. She?s a puzzle-solver by nature, and not having the tools to solve this one must drive her mad.

?Could ?dog pack? have something to do with the dogfighting?? she asks.

?Caitlin!?

?Sorry?I'm sorry.?

I try fast-forwarding through my childhood friendship with Tim Jessup, but the memories are blurry, like stock images, shot poorly and faded with age. Many involve bike riding or playing steal the flag, but nothing related to dog packs comes?

?Oh my God,? I groan, first amazed, then appalled as the significance of the second clue drops into place.

She grabs my arm. ?What is it??

?I can?t believe I was that stupid.?

?What? Do you know what it means??

?Yes.? I reach for the doorknob. ?Come on!?

?Where??

?The cemetery! It?s been there all along!?

?I thought you already searched the cemetery.?

?I did. But it?s huge. Now I know where to look.?

Something vibrates in my pocket. At first I think it?s my cell phone, but then I realize it?s Kelly?s Star Trek. ?Peek outside,? I tell Caitlin, suddenly nervous. ?Hurry.?

She opens the door and freezes.

?What is it?? I ask, trying to pull the gun from my pocket.

?I'm helping him get the things fitted,? Caitlin says awkwardly.

?It?s

Sunday,

? a woman says with disgust. ?There?s kids out here. Why don'?t you just get a

room

??

Caitlin closes the door. I click the TALK button on the Star Trek and say, ?It?s me.?

?We?'ve got a problem,? Kelly says in my ear.

?Short of a death, it doesn?'t matter. I think we?re at the endgame.?

?Tell me.?

?Not over the air. Not even on these things.?

?You found what we?re looking for??

?I know where it is. Can you cover us to the cemetery??

?Screw that. You?re in the store now??

?Yeah.?

?You have the satphone with you??

?In Caitlin?s purse.?

?Walk straight back to the staff area like you own the place, then leave by their private exit door. Use a fire door if you have to. I'?ll be waiting out back. If anybody tries to stop you, tell them you?re the fucking mayor. If that doesn?'t work, pull your gun. Just get to my car. The game has changed.?

When Kelly?s voice gets tense, I know we?re in trouble.

?We?re on our way.?

CHAPTER

29

Linda Church sits on a folding chair in the corner of a small kitchen and studies her left knee, which is swollen and blue at the front, and purple in back. The joint doesn?'t hurt too bad, but she knows some gristle in it is torn because her skin is stretched tight as a drumhead and the bones slip when she walks. The lower part of her right leg looks worse. There?s a tear in the bruise, and the skin around it feels like it just came out of a microwave oven.

She remembers leaping from Quinn?s boat but has no memory of hitting the water?only a white flash coming out of darkness. She awakened in terror that she was drowning, but the sound of a motor in the dark told her she couldn'?t afford to splash. Quinn was trolling slowly back the way he?d come, searching for her with a spotlight that lit the fog yellow. She felt sure he would find her since she could hardly swim with the leg, but as the boat drew near, and she prepared to slide under the water, she?d heard something strike the hull?not hard?more like the sound of kicking shoes.

Then she remembered Ben Li.

The spotlight arced up into the sky, and some sort of commotion broke out on the boat. She heard more hollow impacts, then two shots cracked over the water. The echoes seemed to go on forever, and before they died, the big motor revved up and the boat turned south again.

Then God had saved her. She?d had no idea whether she was near the bank or in the center channel of the Mississippi, about to be run down by a barge weighing thousands of tons. But as she floated downstream, thankful for every ounce of body fat she?d cursed until then, she felt her good leg scrape sand. The river was lifting her onto a gently shoaling sandbar as surely as if God himself were holding her in his hand. When she came to rest, her eyes filled with black sky, she felt like Moses in the bulrushes.

Unlike Moses, however, no one found her lying by the river. How long she lay there, she had no idea. But sometime before dawn, she got to her feet and started limping toward the levee. Soon the sand had dirt mixed in it, then she was dragging herself over rich soil, the farmland her grandfather used to hold to his nose and smell as if it were pipe tobacco. She?d wanted to scream as she climbed the levee, but she didn't dare do more than