Hunting Season (40 page)

The ratcheting sound as the cuffs were tightened stopped the skittering of her brain. The gun was still hard at her temple. Randy's right hand, closed over hers on the steering wheel, clamping so tightly she could feel the blood being pressed from her fingers as they were crushed between his and the hard plastic.

"Do what I tell you," Randy said shortly. Either nerves or the exertion of moving quickly had set him to panting. The smell of stale cigarettes on his breath was intense.

"Why don't you eat a mint or something," she heard herself say irritably. "You smell like a rancid ashtray." Part of her was scared stiff, another part, evidently the part controlling the vocal cords, really didn't give a damn. Disassociation; she'd heard Molly mention it. Was that what she was doing?

"Randy, you are such a piece of shit. If you kill me, I swear to God I'll never live it down. You wrecked my office chair, smashed my car up, what the fuck do you think you're doing now?" Again with the mouth. The saner Anna shook her head, feeling the barrel of the gun grind half an inch across the flesh of her temple.

"There's something wrong with you," Randy growled. Emotion edged his voice. Fear maybe. Excitement. Probably a mixture of both.

"Oh, man," Anna said and was shocked at the exasperation and contempt she heard in the words. "You've never killed anybody before, have you?" It sounded as though she sneered at overripe virginity. "If this is going to be like Paul Newman and what's her name in
Torn Curtain
with you flopping me around sticking my head in the oven and whatnot, just give me the gun and I'll shoot myself." If she didn't focus, and soon, this split personality business was going to get both personas killed.

From the corner of her eye she could see beads of sweat forming on his forehead. "Shut up," he said. Her verbal sniping had unbalanced him; she could hear the dangerous teetering when he spoke. Instinct and reason reunited behind her eyes, and Anna realized she'd needed to shake him but hadn't realized she had the balls to do it. Balls had been found, the terrified mother lifting the tractor off her infant in microcosm.

"Turn right to Emerald Mound," he said. Randy's hand over hers, they'd traveled several miles south of Mt. Locust. Emerald Mound, the finest Indian mound Anna had ever seen, was on Trace property at the end of a narrow unlighted road. Several ramshackle homes edged the lane. If the residents happened to be looking out their windows on such a night as this, seeing a park service car checking the mound would arouse no comment.

Anna did as she was told. "Turn out the headlights," Randy said. She did that, too.

In less than a minute they were at the mound.

"Pull off." Anna did. Randy dropped her hand long enough to switch off the ignition, then grabbed it again. She'd known Randy was a big man. She'd not realized he was huge. His hand covered hers to the wrist. His bulk, behind the barrel of a gun, filled the Crown Vic's cab. The terror she'd kept separated from by mental alchemy broke through taking an old familiar form: claustrophobia. Suddenly she could see herself snapping, struggling, clawing for air, a loud noise, then her brains mixed with the window glass on the dirt outside. Even then none would venture out of their snug homes. It was hunting season. The sound of gunshots was commonplace.

"Here's where we get out." Randy's voice cut through the panic rising in her chest. "This is the end of the line."

Inches from her ear Anna heard the hammer of his revolver falling gently, slowly. Terrible calm came then, a sense of utter timelessness. An explosion, a bullet to the brain did not follow. Randy was decocking the pistol. Life clamored back, and Anna was almost sorry. Almost. "It doesn't have to be the end of the line," she said. "So far you're not in much trouble. Poaching's no big deal. What'll you get? A slap on the wrist. Two months and you're retired. Don't screw it up."

She sounded as desperate as she felt. Randy liked that; she could see it in his face no more than a foot from her own. He wanted more of it. Her humiliation was a balm to his withered soul. That was good. She had something to offer in trade.

"You didn't kill anybody. You weren't even there, were you? What? Did they call you in to save their own skins? Get you to move the body?"

Randy's lower lip tightened, and Anna lost the teensy-weensy opening her obvious fear had bought her. Gun pressed hard to her temple, he reached behind him with his other hand and opened the passenger door. Not for a second did his eyes leave her.

There would be a moment when he opened her door. He was heavy. She could get out more quickly. If she could keep her feet under her, she could get to cover. Randy wouldn't want to carry the body far. He was lazy, out of shape and knew better than to get blood on his uniform. He'd want her to walk to her place of execution. Anna's mind raced. The farther he took her from cars, road, houses the less time she had to live.

The moment was not given her. Grabbing the cuff chain between her wrists, he snapped her seat belt free and lurched backward, dragging her face down onto the seat. An elbow cracked into the dash, Anna's head struck the radio on the floor. Her boot twisted as her legs wrenched, awkwardly trying to follow her body. She registered these assaults but felt nothing. Helpless as a rag doll she flopped and slid. Fight and she died now. Allow the inevitable and she died later. Later was good. Randy grunted. Cigarette breath washed over her, then a welcome gust of cold air. He got his feet on the ground, pushed his butt over them and hauled on the chain. Anna felt herself slide. Then she was jerked to a sudden halt. The cuffs cut hard into the underside of her wrists, but her body wouldn't move. Pain sharpened and maddened.

"Don't fuck with me," Randy hissed.

"Or what? You'll kill me?"

Randy put his considerable weight behind the next yank. Cuffs cut deeper, Anna's arms were stretched in their sockets and she cried out.

"Shoulder strap, you dickhead."

When he'd cuffed her Anna'd been wearing her seat belt. He'd inadvertently cuffed her hands, one on either side of the shoulder belt that effectively kept her tied to the car.

Anna pushed her head up to look at him. There was little light. Nothing from the dead dash, nothing from the sleet-weeping skies. She sensed rather than saw his fear. Something had gone awry. He would kill her now, get it over with. She lay absolutely still, legs twisted under the steering wheel, upper body pulled across the seat. Over the beating of her heart other sounds came to the strained peace of the cab: Randy panting, sleet—almost hail—striking the roof of the car, a tiny snick of metal releasing. Randy had recocked the pistol.

"No. No. Please don't kill me. I'll do anything," she whimpered. "Please. Oh, God. Don't hurt me."

"You just had to have a man's job didn't you?" Randy sneered. Her sniveling was soothing him, taking the edge off his panic. Anna kept it up. The act came easily, and she despised the ring of sincerity her groveling conveyed. She didn't want to die trussed up like a prize pig on the front seat of her own patrol car, become the poster girl for why women shouldn't be allowed on the front lines. If Randy killed her she half hoped her body would never be found and he would never be suspected. It would be too humiliating to have it known she was bested by a dink like Thigpen.

"Please, please," she whined.

"Nobody wanted you here," Thigpen said. "Things were fine till you horned in." He brought the pistol close to Anna's head. She cringed smaller. Another inch and she would strike out like an adder, bury her teeth in his wrist. If nothing else, maybe the son of a bitch would get rabies and die.

Two shots fired in quick succession near her face. So close, the muzzle flash struck her eyes like lightning and the thunder of the reports left her deaf and disoriented. Blind and dazed, she felt herself being delivered from the suffocating confines of the car and onto the cold wet earth. Randy had shot twice through the webbing of the shoulder strap and dragged her free.

Before Anna recovered from the shock of having two rounds fired from a .357 less than a foot from her face, she felt herself lifted by the scruff of the neck like a half-drowned kitten. Randy had the hood and collar of her coat clamped in one huge hand and was yanking her to her feet. He was talking; Anna could hear the sound distortion past the ringing in her ears, but couldn't make out the words. Sparks of white and red light blurred her vision; retinal ghosts from the muzzle flash.

Noise separated, began to resolve into sense.

"Stand up," Randy was urging, yelling without volume.

As her mind blew clear of the stench and clamor of cordite, Anna toyed with the idea of playing possum, making Randy carry her to whatever dense thicket he had in mind for dumping purposes. There'd be no hole, he was too lazy to dig and damned if she'd dig her own for the meager privilege of a few more minutes topside.

"Stand up." He shook her with the violence of a terrier onto a rat. She decided to comply. Perhaps it would be tactically wise to tire him with her dead weight, but she didn't like the idea of being manhandled any more than she already had been. And, too, he might decide it was too much work and dispatch her prematurely.

It took a couple tries but Anna got her feet under her. Her legs felt rubbery at the knees and for a second she didn't know if they would support her weight.

The flares dazzling her eyes were fading but nothing took their place. At first Anna thought powder burn had blinded her or a freak of the explosion so close had caused the same effect. The pale cruiser swam into vision, and she knew her eyes were all right. It was the night that was blind. Seldom were nights truly dark. Starlight, light pollution from distant cities, the moon, brought shape and form out of the black.

At the pullout for Emerald Mound there were none of these.

"Stand up," he hissed. "I'm not screwing around with you much longer." He shook her again.

Pain rattled from ear to ear and her flimsy purchase on the vertical was compromised. "Enough already," she snapped. "I'm standing. What now?"

Anger had brought back Anna's butch side. Hearing it she backed off, slumped her shoulders forward and dropped her chin. Snuffling through mud, snot or whatever else had worked its way into her nose while she sprawled on the ground, she repeated. "What're you going to do? Look Randy, I'll never tell anybody. Swear to God. Just let me go."

"What we're going to do is get rid of your gun." Randy had hold of her coat with one hand, a six-shooter in the other. She could feel him hesitate, not wanting to let go of her, not willing to holster his own weapon to reach for hers. Schooling her body not to signal readiness, she waited.

"You get it," he said at last, and her hope of striking out at him died. "You do it slow. You even wiggle or twitch wrong and I kill you."

Anna believed him. Hands chained together, she awkwardly fumbled under the thigh-long tail of her Gore-Tex jacket. "I'm not going to try anything. Real slow. Here goes," she said pitifully. Reaching under the coat she unsnapped the leather keeper on the pouch where she kept her extra magazines. One snap sounds like another and she was satisfied. "Lifting it out," she said. His grip tightened on her coat, choking her with her own collar. The barrel of the revolver pressed hard into the bone of her skull.

"Dropping it," she said and let the magazine fall to the ground augmenting the sound it made when it hit by a surreptitious stomp. "Don't shoot," she whispered. "Please don't shoot."

Because of the jacket and the handcuffs, there was no way to retrieve her gun quickly. Anna had it in her mind to ease it out under cover of darkness while they walked, their joint movements she hoped would cover the groping for the Sig-Sauer.

"Show me your hands," Randy said and gave her a shake. The barrel of the pistol pressed so hard against the base of her skull that she could barely keep her head up.

She raised her hands.

"To your shoulder."

She did as she was told. In a movement as quick as it was brutal, he adjusted his grip till he held not only the back of her coat but the chain between her hands in one great beefy paw. Anna's shoulders ached, her wrists chafed. The inside of her left elbow, wrapped in a wet bulky Gore-Tex sleeve, was pulled hard across her face making it difficult to breathe. Claustrophobia reasserted itself despite the fact she was out of the car and under the sky. Darkness and constriction choked her mind with a cavelike sense of the walls closing in. Enough air could be drawn around the fabric to keep her alive, but still a sense of suffocation took hold of her mind. Her vision was probably impaired as well. As it was too dark to see, she set that aside and concentrated on not succumbing to panic.

"Now we walk. I'm going to handcuff you out in the woods. I got a plane to catch. Then I'll call and tell them where you are. You do what I say and I'm not going to hurt you. Just buying time is all."

The old joviality that had always set Anna's teeth on edge was creeping back. A round of crying, a couple of pistol shots, a chaser of physical abuse had restored his confidence. Anna was relieved. In the car he'd been on the brink of panic. Should he fall over that edge, shooting her would be the obvious panacea. He shoved and she staggered over to the rickety wooden gate that let the public through the fence to the mound site.

Emerald Mound, though little visited, was one of the true wonders of the Trace. It's magnificence put the modern structures—buildings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that were so meticulously restored and lovingly toured—to shame. For reasons of their own, and eons before white settlers had come straggling up the Mississippi River, the Natchez Indians had created it out of swampy forest lands. Dirt, the rock-hard clay and powdery loess of the land, had been carried in, heaped up until a mound over fifty feet high, longer than a football field and at least half that wide, had been created. The top was flat and level. On either end of this great elevated field more dirt was piled, sculpted into two squared-off hillocks, the westernmost higher than the eastern.