Dog Days (17 page)

“Don’t you think I know that?” He turned on me with his face torn with anguish. His fingers dug into my upper arm so hard that I had to smother a cry, and I shrank back from his fury. “I thought she was dead! I thought she was dead and I couldn’t tell anybody because of that damn transmitter! Mine was the last voice on it—my voice arguing with her, threatening her. The recorder didn’t pick up her phone call to Madison because Cameo was in the car with me when she made it. I thought April was dead and all the evidence pointed to me!”

He gave my arm a single hard shake and I lost my balance and almost fell. Cameo looked at me, and at him, anxiously. If anyone had been around to witness that, surely someone would have come to my rescue. There must have been over a thousand people at the fair today; how could none of them be in this parking lot?

He took a swift, calming breath and started walking again, pushing me forward toward the rows of cars. “I went back to look for Cameo, but by then I’d lost her signal. I didn’t pick it up again for two days.”

I said, “How did you find Madison today?”

“I didn’t,” he replied. “He found me. Called me, to be precise, after someone—I’m guessing you—told him I was here. He had some idea that I’d recorded the murder, and he tried to threaten me with some cock-and-bull story he was going to take to the police if I didn’t turn over the evidence.”

“So you agreed to meet him behind the warehouse,” I said, “and you shot him.” I could see my car at the end of the row just ahead of us. I put my thumb on the panic button of the key fob, having faint hope that it would do any good. No one even noticed car alarms anymore, and if anyone did he would simply think I had lost my car in the parking lot and was using the alarm to locate it. But it might distract Sellers long enough …

“He killed four women!” Sellers said harshly. “He deserved to die! Whoever shot him did the world a favor.”

“I’m not arguing that,” I told him, weighing my options, trying to stay calm. “Maybe it was even self-defense. But you’ll have a better chance of the police believing your story if you go to them now. They already have a county-wide search out for you. Maybe even roadblocks.” Probably not true, but he had no way of knowing that.

“They can’t tie me to Madison. The only thing that ties me to anything is that damn transmitter. As soon as I have it, all our problems will be over.”

My car was only a few dozen steps away. I could not let him get in my car. If he drove to my house he would see the police cruiser that had been dispatched there and I would be a kidnap victim. If by some chance the deputies had the foresight to conceal their presence, Sellers had a gun and the chances of leaving my property without shots being fired were very, very slim.

The first rule of survival: never let the criminal take you to a second location. Not ever.

I said, “I’m parked over there,” and I tried to turn the opposite way. His grip steered me straight.

“Nice try, Miss Stockton,” he said. “I know your car.”

Suddenly Cameo turned around, tugging on the leash, and barked. My heart leapt as I heard an answering bark and I swiveled my head, crying, “Cisco!” I saw him flying toward me, ears slicked back, tongue lolling, a wild and joyful triumph in his eyes. The flimsy canvas crate with its zippered door would not hold a determined golden retriever, and this was not the first time he had broken through it in pursuit of something he loved.

I dropped Cameo’s leash and the two dogs met in a playful bounce a few feet away from us, rolling over in the dirt parking lot, leashes tangling. Sellers took a half-turning step toward the ruckus, surprised enough to lighten his grip on my arm. I used the opportunity to transfer the keys to my free hand and I called, “Cisco!”

He looked up at me happily. “Cisco, fetch!”

I drew back my arm and tossed the keys as far as I could into the field of weeds. Cisco took off after them with Cameo in hot pursuit, and I took advantage of Sellers’s confusion to wrench my arm away and run as fast as I could in the opposite direction.

I knew I wouldn’t make it very far. But I was younger and lighter than Sellers, and, even with a bum knee, I thought I could reach the row of supply trucks and use them to hide long enough to call 911 before he caught up with me. I almost made it, too. I had my phone in hand when a sudden patch of uneven earth sent a shaft of pain through my knee and I went sprawling in the shadow of one of the silver trucks. My phone flew from my hand, the contents of my day bag scattered, and Greg Sellers dragged me to my feet by my hair. I screamed then, but no one could hear. In the background, bluegrass music wailed and children squealed on the Ferris wheel and announcers’ voices boomed through the microphone. It occurred to me that if Sellers fired his pistol, people would think it was the sound of fireworks.

I struggled harder, but the man was twice my size and stronger than he looked. He grabbed my arms and twisted them behind my back, slamming me up against the side of the supply truck hard enough to knock my breath away. In a moment I heard a ripping sound and felt my wrists being bound tightly together. He had found the duct tape that had fallen from my bag and was using it to tie my hands. He growled in my ear, “You’d better hope that dog of yours finds those keys.”

Cisco was a retriever, and more importantly, a search dog. It was entirely possible he would be able to find one set of keys in the vast field of tall weeds, but the point had been to get Cisco to run, not to retrieve. “He’ll never bring them to you,” I gasped, just before he flipped me around and pressed a piece of tape across my mouth, winding it around my neck and my hair in a double thickness.

He grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the back of the truck, where he used his other hand to lift the lever that secured the doors. “You better be wrong,” he said grimly. “Otherwise you’re going to rot in here.”

He lifted me off my feet and pushed me inside. I landed hard on the floor, and before I could even struggle to my knees I heard the metal door slam and the security lever screech down, leaving me alone in the dark.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I
struggled to my feet, nostrils desperately sucking in air that felt like a blast furnace and smelled like oil and sawdust. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but even then I saw nothing, no shapes or shadows; just flat gray-black desert-hot air.

It had to be a hundred ten, maybe a hundred twenty degrees inside the metal container. With no air circulation it felt even hotter. I would not survive here long. I had to find a way out.

I knew that the biggest mistake victims of life-threatening situations made was to panic. The hiker lost in the woods who wanders aimlessly until exhaustion and dehydration do him in. The driver of the car that goes underwater who uses up all her strength trying to escape the car before even determining which way the surface is. The victim of the house fire who desperately runs toward the nearest door and dies of smoke inhalation before he reaches it. Panic kills. I knew that. And I also understood for the first time what a powerful, seductive killer it was.

I wanted to plunge blindly into the dark in search of the exit, and I had to fight back the useless, pitiful screams that tried to rise in my throat. No sound I could make would be heard through the muffling layers of tape, and if I gave in to panic and started stumbling around in this heat I would only use up energy and become hopelessly disoriented. I forced myself to stand still, to breathe slowly, to think.

I tried to remember which way I’d been facing when I was pushed in here, which way I had turned when I stood up. I tried to envision how many steps I was from the door. Then I tried to picture the truck in my head. How many feet wide? How many feet long? The pulsing of terror in my ears slowed, and the breaths I took no longer burned my lungs.

I turned and walked forward. Five steps, six. All I could see was thick gray air. I felt the panic start to rise again. And then I slammed into something hard. It made a dull metal
thunk
when I hit it. I didn’t know whether it was the door or a wall, but I turned my shoulder to it and hit it again. I leaned back a step and threw my weight forward, hitting it again, and again. Sweat soaked my hair and dripped into my eyes and the hot dry air that I dragged into my lungs scratched at my throat, returning too fast with a wheezing exhale. I pounded at the metal until I couldn’t feel my shoulder anymore and then I turned and used the other one. I didn’t really expect to make any progress toward escape, but if anyone passed by surely they would hear me. Surely.

I kept it up until I grew too dizzy and breathless to stand, and then I sank to the floor and used my feet to kick at the metal. My clothing was soaked now, my skin drenched. Bright sparks of light popped in front of my eyes. I had to stop and breathe.

I knew the police were looking for Sellers. If he took the time to search the weeds for my car keys, they might very well find him. If they did, if the police did search this part of the parking lot, the only way they would know I was here is if I kept making noise. And two golden retrievers running loose at the fair were bound to attract attention. Surely Marshall had noticed Cisco’s escape, surely he had chased him here. If he had, he would hear me, of course he would. I just had to keep trying.

That’s what I told myself as I tried to pull enough oxygen into my lungs to keep from passing out. But when, with a gargantuan effort, I lifted my feet again to pound against the door, I remembered that the direction which Cisco had chased the keys was on the other side of the parking lot from this truck; no one, looking for him, would pass this way. And all Sellers had to do was call Cameo to get both dogs to run to him; where Cameo went Cisco would follow. He might be gone with both of the dogs before Marshall, or the police, even thought to look here.

My strength was draining away in rivers of sweat. My skin was so hot it felt as though it was blistering. I had to rest.

My wrists were slippery inside their duct-taped ties, and I tried to wiggle them free, pushing out against the tape to stretch it, turning and pulling my wrists inside the too-tight bonds. It was no use. Whatever give in the tape might have been created by my sweat and the heat was not enough. He had wrapped my wrists too tightly, and used too many layers. Duct tape was meant to withstand extremes of temperature and force. I tried for a while to loosen the tape around my mouth by rubbing my face against my shoulder. It might have worked if he hadn’t wrapped the tape around my head more than once. As it was all I succeeded in doing was painfully ripping out a few strands of my hair.

Okay. I had to think. I couldn’t keep on banging against the door like this; I was losing too much fluid and over-stressing my heart. Heat exhaustion was only moments away, if not already here. Heat rises, so the best thing I could do was to stay low, near the floor, and conserve energy. It was possible there might even be a loose seal near the door that would let in fresh air. Stay put. Stay still. Stay low.

Or get out of here.

What I needed was something sharp to cut the tape on my wrists. A shard of glass, a jagged piece of metal, a bolt or screw protruding from the wall that I could use to saw away at the tape. People did it all the time on television.

I pushed myself to my feet against the wall and kicked off my sandals so that I could sweep the floor with my bare feet for anything that might be useful. Inch by inch I made my way around the perimeter of the truck, pressing my hands and back against the wall to check for screws or nails or loose pieces of metal, sweeping my feet out in front of me along the dusty floor. I found some scraps of packing material, a crushed cardboard box, some cigarette butts, an empty paper cup. There were no nails, no broken bottles, no conveniently forgotten box cutter lying in a corner. By the time I returned to my starting place I was weak and light-headed, the heat pulsing around me like slow-boiling syrup. I was about to brace myself for the excruciating search of the middle of the floor, away from the safety of the walls, when my foot struck my shoe.

My shoe.

I dropped to a sitting position, pulling the sandal in to me with my toes and maneuvering myself around until I could grasp it with my fingers. Clumsily, I undid the buckle, dropping the shoe more than once and painstakingly picking it up again, until I held the loose strap between my fingers, buckle facing upward. I had to stop and rest, drawing in deep breaths through my flared nostrils. It took several tries, but I managed to position the buckle, with the prong held between my thumb and forefinger, against the bottom of the duct tape. I scraped the sharp point of the prong against the tape, trying to tear the fibers. Nothing. I tried again. And again.

It was only three o’clock in the afternoon. The hottest part of the day was still to come.

Time lost its meaning. I knew hours were passing only because I felt the heat building as the sun moved slowly, inexorably closer in the western sky.  I worked at the tape with the little prong until my arms hurt so badly I could not make them move any longer. Then I rested for a while, and tried again. I thought I was making a little progress. Some of the bottom of the tape was beginning to fray, but as it did it became harder and harder to lift the buckle high enough to saw away at more fibers. I was dizzy, and I had to rest more and more often. The heat was searing.

For a time I tried to listen for signs of movement outside—voices, cars, police sirens. Dogs barking. Sometimes I thought I did hear those things and I would stop sawing at the tape and start kicking the door again, but then I began to worry I was hallucinating the sounds and I stopped wasting my strength. I could hear the sound of calliope music, muffled and far away, and sometimes the shriek of a happy fairgoer. But maybe I imagined that too.

My throat was like sandpaper, and I was so thirsty my stomach hurt. I didn’t even know thirst could be like that, an ache that spread through every cell of your body. I thought about the liter bottle of water in my day bag. I thought about ice floating in the red-and-white striped soda cups they sold at the concession stand. I thought about paper cones filled with ice and drizzled with fruity syrup. Thinking about those things made me want to cry, but I didn’t have any tears.

My wrists inside the tape weren’t quite so slippery anymore. I wasn’t sweating as much. And I remembered enough about heat exhaustion to know that was not a good sign.

I thought about white water rafting on the Nantahala River, and how the cold spray hits your face and drenches your arms when you steer into the rapids. I remembered how Buck and our friend Andy and I used to hike up the mountain as kids to a hidden spot in the woods and crawl out on the ledge overhanging a waterfall then cannonball into the pool below. It was crazy dangerous but, oh, that moment when the cold water shocks your sweaty body and then embraces it, the cool bright shower of the waterfall tumbling over your head and splashing off your shoulders … there’s nothing like it in the world.

Funny how some things stay with you forever, just as sharp and real as the moment they first happened. I could almost taste that clear cold water, see the sun sparkle and glisten on the wet rocks, hear the roar of the falls. But Andy was dead, and Buck was married, and the three of us would never climb that waterfall together again.

And then the oddest thing happened. Somehow, deep inside I came to realize for the first time that it was okay. I still mourned for Andy, who had died too young, and I was sad for the loss of my marriage, which should have worked but hadn’t. But that, like the childhood foolishness that allowed us to believe diving from the top of a waterfall was a good idea, was in the past now. It was over. And it was okay.

My head started to throb, and my neck grew so stiff I could barely move it. The shoe slipped from my fingers and I rested my head against the hot metal wall, focusing all my effort on breathing; just breathing. I tried to remember the symptoms of heat stroke, but I couldn’t. All I knew was that when I closed my eyes to rest I saw swirling red lights and had crazy dreams about my skin frying on my body like bacon and then falling off in strips. I tried not to dream. I tried to keep my eyes open and think about cold things. Like snow. Last winter, when I’d been trapped in a blizzard up to my waist in snow I thought I’d had my fill. But now I clung to the memory of howling winds and ice-numbed fingers as though, if I thought about it hard enough, I could transport myself back there. It didn’t work.

Cisco had saved me then, and everyone else on that mountain. Cisco, with the curiosity of a puppy and the heart of a hero, and Miles, who refused to give up on me even though I’d done everything in my power to make sure he did.

Cisco was still out there. He would find me. He was a search and rescue dog, after all. That was what he did. He would find me, of course he would, and he wouldn’t give up until he did. All I had to do was hang on until he got here.

Miles was still out there too, and Melanie, and the unrealized future we might all have had together stretched out into the distance like the road not taken. Maybe that road was filled with pitfalls and dangerous curves and steep, twisty hills. But it was also filled with adventure and excitement and the thrill of possibility. I found myself desperately and unexpectedly hoping that Miles had not given up on me, either.

In the back of my head I heard Sonny saying,
I’ve never known anybody who worked as hard as you do for what you don’t want.
But those days were over. Perhaps for the first time in a really long time, I actually knew what I wanted, and I was willing to fight for it.

I fumbled around on the floor for the shoe and positioned the buckle against the tape again. My fingers were stiff and aching and it was hard to make them work, but I started plucking at the tape with the prong again, catching fibers, pulling them away, gritting my teeth with the effort. It seemed I was making some progress this time, and when I pushed my hands apart, stretching out the tape, I actually felt it tear a little. I gripped the prong again, plucking and stretching, wiggling and tugging my hands inside their prison. And then, abruptly, one of my hands slipped free.

I was so surprised that I fell against the wall, chest heaving, eyes staring at absolutely nothing, for a single long moment unable to move. Then I tore away the tape from my face, and took a long gulp of thick, hot air, and another and another. I flung my hands against the metal but the sound it made was feeble and ineffectual. I tried to scream. All that came out was a croak.

I hit the wall again, and again. I sucked in hungry, wheezing, dragging gasps of air. My lungs were burning; my throat so dry that I couldn’t even swallow. The rush and roar of my struggles for breath obscured every other sound, even the pathetically weak sound of my hands slapping against the metal. Every sound except one, and it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

It was the barking of a dog.

At first I thought I was hallucinating, and I stopped moving, stopped breathing, desperately trying to clear my head. Listening, heart pounding, lungs bursting, until it came again. The single, sharp bark of a dog.

“Cisco!” I cried, only no sound came out. My lips were too swollen to move, my throat too dry to make sound. But the joyous sound repeated over and over and over in my head as I pounded my hands on the wall,
Cisco! Cisco! Cisco!

There was a mighty screech and the door against which I had been flinging myself fell open. I tumbled forward into sunshine and noise and swirling color and sweet fresh air. The last thing I saw was a blur of gold scrambling toward me; the last thing I felt before I sank into the cloud of unconsciousness was a sweet golden retriever licking my face.