Strangers in the Night (12 page)

Jackson wondered how many sheriffs were bossed around by their dispatchers. He wondered just what the hell he was supposed to do, since Jo had just told him the only way to get to the Jones place was by boat. And he wondered, not for the first time, whether or not he was going to survive this damn blue moon.

Well, until it killed him, he had a job to do. He assessed the situation and began solving the most immediate problems. “Call Frank at the Rescue Squad and tell him to meet me at the launch ramp on Old Boggy—”

“You don't want one of the Rescue Squad boats,” Jo interrupted. “They're too slow, and the guys are all helping with the cleanup at the tractor-trailer wreck out on the big highway, anyway. I
called Charlotte Watkins. Her husband's a bass fisherman—you know Jerry Watkins, don't you?”

“I've met both of them,” Jackson said.

“He's got one of those real fast boats. He's gone to Chattanooga on business, but Charlotte was going to hook up the boat and take it to the ramp. She should be there by the time you get there.”

“Okay,” he said, “I'm on my way.” He pinched the top of his nose, between his eyebrows, feeling a headache beginning to form. He wished he could ignore Jo's intuition, but it was too accurate for him to doubt her. “Send some backup as soon as someone comes available. And how in hell do I find the Jones place?”

“Just go upriver, you can't miss it. It's about five miles up. The house is hard to see, it kind of blends in, but it's dead ahead and you'll think you're going to run right into it, but then the river curves real sharp to the right and gets too shallow to go much farther. Oh, and be careful of the snags. Stay in the middle of the river.” She paused. “You
do
know how to drive a boat, don't you?”

“I'll figure it out,” he said, and flipped the phone cover down to end the call. Let her stew for a while,
wondering if she had made a bad mistake sending the sheriff out alone into a possibly dangerous situation, on a river he didn't know and in a piece of powerful equipment he didn't know how to operate. He'd driven a boat for the first time at the age of eleven, but Jo didn't know that, and it would do her good to realize she wasn't omnipotent.

He didn't use his lights or siren, but he did jam his boot down on the accelerator and keep it there. By his estimation he was at least fifteen minutes from Old Boggy Road, and he had no idea how far down the road the launch ramp was. In a powerful boat he could easily go sixty miles an hour, putting him at the Jones place in five minutes or less, once he was on the water. That meant it would take him at least twenty minutes to get there, probably longer. If Thaniel Vargas was up to no good, Jackson was afraid he would have plenty of time to accomplish it.

He felt a surge of adrenaline, the surge every law enforcement officer felt when going into a potentially dangerous situation. He hoped he wouldn't find anything out of the ordinary, though. He hoped like hell he wouldn't, because if he did, that would mean Miss Jones—had Jo actually said
her name was
Delilah?
—was either hurt or dead.

Witch?
Why hadn't he heard anything about this before? He'd lived here for three years, been sheriff for two, and in that time he thought he'd learned about all the county's unusual citizens. There hadn't been a peep about Delilah Jones, though, not from his deputies, not from the mayor or her secretary, who was the most gossipy person Jackson had ever met, not from the bar crowd or the women he dated, not from the blue-haired bingo circuit, not even from Jo. He hadn't missed the fact that Jo seemed well-informed on how to get to the Jones house. How would she know that, unless she'd been there? And why would she go, considering everything she'd said about the Jones woman being reclusive and her father being strange?

If anyone was practicing witchcraft in his county, he should have known about it. It was all bullshit, in his opinion, but if anyone else took it seriously then there could be trouble. From the sound of things, that was exactly what was happening.

First there was the general blue-moon craziness, then the wreck between the two idiots, and now this. He was hungry, tired, and had a headache. He was beginning to get severely pissed.

J
ackson reached Old Boggy Road in record time and churned down it, his tires digging in and throwing sand. The river was to his right, so he kept an eye in that direction, looking for the launch ramp. The old road narrowed and became one rutted lane, with massive live oaks on each side intertwining their branches to form an almost solid canopy. The dense shade gave relief from the heat for about a hundred yards, then he drove out into the sunlight and there the ramp was, down a shallow slope that curved back to the right and was hidden from view by the thick trees until that moment.

He spun the wheel and headed down the slope,
the rear end of the Jeep slewing around before he deftly corrected. A blue Toyota pickup, with an empty boat trailer hooked to it, was pulled to the side. Another truck, a red extended-cab Chevy, was backed onto the ramp, and Charlotte Watkins was standing on the bank, one hand holding the rope to a long, sleek, red and silver fishing boat and the other hand slapping at mosquitoes as they swarmed around her bare arms and legs.

Jackson grabbed his shotgun and Kevlar vest and vaulted out of the Cherokee. “Thanks, Mrs. Watkins,” he said as he took the rope from her. He put his right foot on the nose of the boat and pushed off with his left, agilely transferring his weight back to his right foot and stepping up into the boat as it floated away from the bank.

“Any time, Sheriff,” she said, raising her hand to shade her eyes from the sun. “Mind the snags, now. If you get too far to the left, there are some mighty big stumps just under the water, and they'll rip the lower unit right off the boat.”

“I'll watch,” he promised as he carefully stowed the shotgun so it wouldn't bounce around, then slid into the driver's seat and hooked the kill switch to his shirt. As an afterthought, he tossed
her the keys to his Jeep. “Drive the Cherokee home. I'll bring your truck and boat back as soon as I can.”

She deftly caught the keys, but waved off any concern about the boat. “You just be careful upriver. I hope everything's all right.” Worry etched her face.

Jackson turned the ignition switch and the big outboard coughed into deep, rumbling life. He put it in reverse and backed away from the bank, turning the boat so he was headed upriver. Then he pushed the throttle down and the nose of the boat rose out of the water as it gained speed, before dropping down and settling on the plane, skimming across the water.

The river was slow-moving and marshy, filled with snags, shoals, and weed beds ready to snare anyone unfamiliar with its obstacles. Mindful of Charlotte Watkins's warning—another woman who seemed to know an awful lot about the way to the Jones place—Jackson kept the boat dead center and prayed as he tried to balance urgency with caution, but urgency kept getting the upper hand. Maybe Miss Jones was having a peaceful summer afternoon, but maybe she wasn't.

The rush of air cooled him, drying the sweat on his body and making the thick heat of summer feel almost comfortable. As he skimmed past the little sloughs and cuts in the river he looked at all of them, hoping to see Thaniel doing nothing more sinister than feeding worms to the fish. No such luck.

Then he rounded a bend in the river and saw a flat-bottom boat pulled up on the bank and tied to a tree. Thaniel was nowhere in sight.

Jackson didn't slow. The Jones place couldn't be much farther up the river, because it looked as if Thaniel had decided to walk the rest of the way, so he could approach unnoticed. That gave Jackson a little more time, maybe enough time to head off any trouble.

Even as he had the thought he heard the shot, a deep report that boomed out over the water and was easily audible over the sound of the outboard motor. Shotgun, he thought. He eased up on the throttle and reached for the Kevlar vest, slipping it on and fastening the Velcro straps. Then he shoved the throttle down again, the boat leaping forward in response.

Fifteen seconds later the house was in sight,
taking form dead ahead of him, just as Jo had said. The river seemed to end right there. The house was built of old, weathered wood that blended into the tall trees surrounding it, but in front of it was a short dock with an old flat-bottom tied to it, and that was what he saw first.

He had to back off the power to bring the boat into the dock. He reached for his shotgun as he did, holding it in his left hand as he steered the boat. “This is Sheriff Brody!” he bellowed. “Thaniel, you stop whatever the hell it is you're doing and get your ass out here.” Not the most professional way of speaking, he supposed, but it served the purpose of announcing him and letting Thaniel know his identity wasn't a secret.

But he didn't really expect things to settle down just because he was there, and they didn't. Another shotgun blast boomed, answered by the flatter crack of a rifle.

The shots were coming from the back of the house. Jackson nosed the boat toward the dock and killed the engine. He leaped out while the dock was still a foot away, automatically looping the mooring rope around one of the posts as he did so, ingrained training taking hold so
everything was accomplished while he was in motion.

He ran up the short dock, the thudding of his boots on the wood in time with the hard beating of his heart. The old familiar clarity swept over him, the by-product of adrenaline and experience. He'd felt the same thing every time he jumped out of a plane during airborne training. Lightning-fast, his brain processed the details he saw.

The front door of the old wooden house was standing open, a neatly patched screen door keeping out the insects. He could see straight through to the back door, but no one was in sight. The porch looked like a jungle, with huge potted plants and hanging baskets everywhere, but there wasn't any junk sitting around like there was at most houses, his included. He took with one leap the three steps up to the porch, and flattened himself against the wall.

The last thing he wanted was to get shot by the very person he was trying to help, so he repeated his identity. “This is Sheriff Brody! Miss Jones, are you all right?”

There was a moment of silence in which even the insects seemed to stop buzzing. Then a woman's
voice came from somewhere out back. “I'm fine. I'll be even better when you get this jackass off my property.”

She sounded remarkably cool for someone who was under attack, as if Thaniel was of no more importance than the mosquitoes.

Jackson eased around the corner of the wide, shady porch that wrapped around three sides of the house. He was now on the right side, with thick woods both to the right and ahead of him. He couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, not a patch of color or a rustling of bushes. “Thaniel!” he yelled. “Put your weapon down before you get your stupid ass shot off, you hear me?”

There was another moment of silence. Then came a sullen, “I didn't do nothin', Sheriff. She shot at me first.”

He still couldn't see Thaniel, but the voice had come from a stand of big pine trees behind the house, practically dead ahead. “I'll decide whose fault it is.” He edged closer to the back of the house, his shotgun held ready. He was safe from Miss Jones's shots, for the moment, but Thaniel would have a straight bead on him if he
chose. “Now do what I told you and pitch out your weapon.”

“This crazy bitch will shoot me if I do.”

“No, she won't.”

“I might,” came Delilah Jones's calm voice, not helping the situation at all.

“See, what'd I tell you!” Thaniel's voice was high with anxiety. Whatever he had planned, it had gone sadly awry.

Jackson swore under his breath, and tried to make his tone both calming and authoritative. “Miss Jones, where exactly are you?”

“I'm on the back porch, behind the washing machine.”

“Put down your weapon and go back inside, so I can have a little talk with Thaniel.”

Again that little pause, as if she were considering whether or not to pay any attention to him. Accustomed to instant response, be it positive or negative, that telling little hesitation set Jackson's teeth on edge. “I'll go in the house,” she finally said. “But I'm not putting this shotgun down until that fool's off my property.”

He'd had enough. “Do as you're told,” he said sharply. “Or I'll arrest both of you.”

There was another of those maddening moments of silence, then the back door slammed. Jackson took a deep breath. Thaniel's whiny voice floated from the pine trees. “She didn't put down the shotgun like you told her to, Sheriff.”

“Neither did you,” Jackson reminded him in a grim tone. He eased to the corner of the house. “I have a shotgun, too, and I'm going to use it in three seconds if you don't throw down that rifle and come out.” The mood he was in, it wasn't a bluff. “One … two … th—”