The Girl from Felony Bay (28 page)

A
s Bubba started the car
and pulled away from Felony Bay, I tried to summon some hope, but it was a huge stretch. I really believed we had lost, but I knew we had to keep fighting to the very end.

“You know you're not going to get away with this,” I said from the backseat. “You're gonna get caught.”

I saw Bubba's hands grip the wheel tighter and his shoulders hitch up toward his ears.

“Uncle Charlie and Ruth are back there. Everybody saw us leave with you. You're the only kidnapper, not either one of them. They won't go to jail, but you will.”

“Quiet down!” He cranked his head around and glared back. If there hadn't been a wire screen separating us, I'm sure he would have started hitting.

“You want to slap me, don't you?” I said. “Just like you slapped Jimmy that day I saw you together in your truck.”

Bubba slammed on the brakes, and for a half second I thought he was going to get out, come around to my door, and haul me out. But when he turned around in his seat, I could see the fear in his eyes. He must have been scared, starting to wonder if he really might be hung out to dry by his partners in crime.

“You,” he said in a hoarse rasp. He had dried spittle at the corners of his mouth. “Keep your trap shut 'fore I come back there and show you what slapping really is.”

I glanced at Bee, who looked at me and nodded.
You go, girl
, she mouthed.

Bubba sped up again. We were playing with fire where he was concerned. If he totally lost his temper and self-control, we would have no way to protect ourselves, but at the same time his fear was all we had to work with. Our only hope was that he would get rattled and make a big mistake.

“Grandma Em knows almost everything we know,” I lied. “She's gonna figure out the rest when we disappear. You gonna kill her, too?” I paused for half a second. “Jimmy knows, too,” I said.

Bubba's head snapped around. “Liar.”

“I just told him five minutes ago behind the cabin. He'd snuck back there to smoke a cigarette. When he saw me, he was going to beat me up, so I told him everything.”

Bubba stopped the car again, but this time he didn't even turn in his seat. He just sat staring straight ahead with his hands on the wheel. After another moment or two, I heard a strange sound and realized Bubba was muttering to himself. I figured he was thinking about what I had said and trying to come up with a way to deny things to his son. I also knew there was no way he could.

Nearly half a minute went by before he started driving again, but even then he went slowly. We hadn't gone far from the cabin yet, and we were still on the dirt track that led up from Felony Bay. I could see the township road about fifty yards ahead, and I knew we were going to turn right toward One Arm Pond.

I hadn't said anything else to Bubba, because fear was scrambling my brain and I had run out of words. I closed my eyes and felt my throat clamp shut as I tried to shake off the picture of Green Alice. I only opened them again when Bubba slammed on the brakes once more, and Bee and I pitched forward, almost smashing our heads against the seat back.

“What the hey?” Bubba said to himself.

When I looked up, I saw two state police cars blocking our way on the single-lane dirt track.

“You're dead,” I said from the back, finding my voice once again. “You better surrender.”

Bubba turned and looked at me out of the corner of one fear-yellowed eye. “I told you to shut up,” he snarled.

He jammed the shift into Park, got out of the car, and walked ahead. The driver in the front police car rolled down his window and stuck his head out, and he and Bubba talked for a moment. I caught only snatches of what the policeman said, but I did hear something about an arrest order.

When Bubba replied, his voice barely reached us through the car windows and over the sound of the air conditioner, but I heard him say something like “I don't know nothing 'bout no arrests. A couple kids started acting up. I'm just taking them back to where they live. How 'bout y'all back up into the road and let me get past.”

I was hoping desperately that the state police would refuse to let him leave, but the policeman just smiled and rolled up his window, and then he and the police car behind him began to back up to let Bubba pass.

Bubba was as pale as new cotton as he walked back to the car. I knew that if he'd been scared a minute earlier, he was positively panicking now.

“What's the matter, Deputy Simmons?” I asked. “Did I just hear something about the police arresting somebody? It isn't Uncle Charlie, by any chance, is it? He's a big talker, you know. Wonder who he's gonna pin everything on? Better turn yourself in before he hangs you.”

“I'm tellin' you for the last time, girl, you shut your trap.”

Once the other vehicles were out of the way, Bubba started forward. We inched past the two state police cruisers, which had pulled off on the side just where the dirt track emptied onto the township dirt road. Bubba was doing his best to look relaxed and normal, but he was doing a lousy job.

We turned right, and I swung around and got on my knees and looked out the back window as the two police cars grew smaller. We had come so close, but we had failed. The state police had been our last chance. My head dropped down into my shoulders, and I felt my heart fall into my stomach. As scared as I was, though, I was also mad, and I wanted him to hurt bad for what he was about to do.

“You really think anybody's going to believe that Bee and Skoogie and I ran away from you and jumped in a canoe and paddled out to get eaten by an alligator?”

Bubba didn't answer. The car slowed, and we turned into Reward.

“Tell me you're not really stupid enough to think you can get people to believe that story.”

“I'm a deputy,” he said, half grunting the words. “People'll believe what I tell 'em.”

“No! They're gonna believe what Uncle Charlie tells them. He's gonna say you did this all by yourself, and then he and Ruth are gonna keep your share of the money.”

Bubba shook his head like he was trying to clear his brain. He'd been backed into a corner, and he knew it. The question was whether he was smart enough to realize he had choices. We were heading up the drive, toward the last turn that would put us on the dirt track that led to One Arm Pond. I felt it when Bubba took his foot off the accelerator. The car slowed, but it didn't stop.

“Even if other people believe what you say, you think Jimmy's gonna believe you?”

Bubba's neck was red as a beet, and in spite of the air-conditioning, I could see sweat breaking out of his hair line and dripping down his neck and onto his collar.

“Jimmy's gonna know you're a murderer, and nothing you say will ever make him think different.”

Bubba sagged in his seat all of a sudden. If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn he reacted like somebody who just took a hard punch to the stomach.

I was starting to feel a surprising sense of hope when a half second later Bubba's eyes went to the rearview mirror, and he stomped down on the accelerator and cranked a hard turn toward One Arm Pond. Right away I realized that what I had just said had pushed him over the edge. He was going to kill us as fast as he possibly could just to shut me up.

I felt tears burning at the corners of my eyes. I was about to tell Bee and Skoogie how sorry I was when instead of driving all the way down to the pond, Bubba cut the wheel hard and pulled into a tractor shed where Daddy used to keep his corn harvester.

The harvester was still there, and Bubba tucked his car in between it and the wall of the tractor shed. I was too stunned to say anything as I watched him lean forward against the steering wheel and watch as two state police cars went speeding down the dirt track we had been on just seconds before.

“Hey, police,” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “We're here!”

The police cars were already past us, and I knew there was no way they had heard me. That wasn't why I shouted. I was trying to bother Bubba.

“Better give up, Bubba,” I said. “They're after you already.”

Bubba lashed his elbow back, but it just slammed into the metal screen. “Shut up,” he growled.

He shoved the car into gear and shot out of the barn, spraying clouds of dust and heading back toward the township road. When I looked back, I saw that both of the police cars had turned around and were coming after us, their light bars flashing.

Bubba must have sensed them, because he turned on his own lights and accelerated even more. Anybody watching us would have thought all three police cars were heading to the same emergency. They wouldn't have guessed that two state police cars were chasing a Charleston County deputy.

We were starting to pick up serious speed. Trees whipped past. We slammed through the bumps in the dirt road. Several times the back tires bounced off the ground, and when they hit again, the car would slide to one side or the other.

As we shot through the Reward gates and onto the township road, I looked back but could barely see the police cars through the huge cloud of dust we kicked up. I knew the paved county road was just a half mile ahead, but so did Bubba. He mashed the accelerator, and I could feel the engine roar as we went even faster.

Bee and I jammed our feet against the seat back, because it seemed obvious that Bubba had no intention of slowing down when he turned onto the paved road. I glanced ahead, praying a truck wouldn't be coming along just then, and that's when I noticed the other flashing lights. There were two more police cars, and they had spread out across the road, blocking the way.

Bubba must have realized there was no way to get around them, because he slammed on his brakes. The car went into a skid and came to a jarring halt with the front end nosed into a drainage ditch. Bubba wrenched open his door and jumped out.

The two police cars behind us had already slid to a stop, and policemen from each car were already running toward Bubba. More policemen were approaching on foot from the two cars that had been stopped to block the road.

Bubba stood in the drainage ditch and stared angrily at both groups. He made one last attempt to bluff his way out. “What the heck you boys think y'all're doing? I told you I got me some prisoners, and I'm on my way to lock 'em up. You boys best be outta my way right now.”

“Deputy Simmons,” one of the policemen said, “stand away from your car. Place both hands on top of your head. You are under arrest.”

Bubba looked at eight guns aimed at him, and he did as he was told. “What're you boys talkin' about? Arrest me? For what?”

“Kidnapping, for starters,” one of the state policemen said as he stepped down into the ditch, grabbed Bubba's shoulder, and jerked him out of the water. As they came up the bank, another policeman stepped in and took Bubba's pistol from his holster.

“Th-that's a b-big lie,” Bubba stuttered. “Who told you that?”

“Right after we passed you the first time, dispatch got a call claiming a deputy sheriff was kidnapping two girls with intent to do grievous harm. At first we just wanted to ask you a few questions, but you answered them for us when you ran.”

I realized Jimmy Simmons had made that call, but it had no time to sink in. The policemen were on all sides of Bubba now, and the one who had jerked him out of the water took Bubba's hands, put them behind his back, and tried to cuff him. As he did, Bubba threw an elbow into the man's stomach. The policeman grunted and took a step back, but in the same instant the others were on Bubba like flies on honey.

Bubba went down with two of the policemen on top of him. I heard some painful grunts, and a second later they dragged him back to his feet. He was cuffed and now bleeding from the nose and a cut on his lip.

After they slammed Bubba into the backseat of one of their cars, one of the policemen came over to our car, opened the back door, and looked at us. “You kids okay?” he asked.

Bee and I nodded. Skoogie grunted. I held out my hands to the policeman. “Please take these off,” I said.

He smiled, unlocked our handcuffs, and took the tape off Skoogie's mouth.

I looked around at the policemen and felt a tremor of alarm, because they were acting relaxed, like they thought catching Bubba had been everything they needed to do.

One of the policemen walked toward us with a pad of paper and a pen. “I'm going to need to take some information,” he said.

“There's no time for that,” I said. “My uncle, Charlie Force, and his wife, Ruth, are all involved. They stole a bunch of gold and jewels from Miss Lydia Jenkins and framed my dad, and we know all about it, and that's why Deputy Simmons was going to kill us. They already tried once, but we got away.”

The policemen all looked at one another and then at us, their faces wrinkled like they weren't sure what to believe. Finally the one who had taken off our handcuffs came over, squatted down, and looked into our eyes. “Those are a bunch of very serious allegations,” he said. “Do you have any proof?”

My mind raced, and I opened my mouth to tell him everything. But then I thought about the blackened pot we had found in the cabin and the plywood table, and I realized they were probably buried somewhere by now. And I thought about the books Uncle Charlie had checked out from the Library Society. But even as I thought it, I realized checking out books wasn't a crime. I thought about the canoe in One Arm Pond, but what did a busted-up canoe prove?

My heart plummeted as I realized it was basically Bee's and my word against Uncle Charlie's and Ruth's and Bubba Simmons's. We had seen them dig the hole and bury the crate, but who would believe us? Who would believe me when I said I had seen the yellow ball gown Ruth had cut up to make the bags for the diamonds? Who would believe us when we said they had shoved us into One Arm Pond in a broken canoe so Green Alice could eat us?