Bloodfire (22 page)

Murray said, “Looka this.”

Carver looked and saw white granules around the edge of the fill pipe. He knew immediately what it was.

Murray screwed the gas cap back on. Both men listened as it made a grating sound. Murray said, “Some sonuvabitch poured sugar in your tank. Sugar don’t dissolve in gasoline; you start this car up an’ it’ll get into the engine an’ the metal parts’ll grind themselves till they bind together. ’Scuse me for sayin’ so, but it’d turn an old car like this the resta the way into junk. I mean, these vintage Olds’s has got engines powerful as Arnold Schwartzenwhatever, but as you can see, rust is startin’ to take over the body.”

“So what do you have to do to get us on the road?” Carver asked.

“Aside from replacin’ the tires, I gotta drain the gas tank. Take it off the car an’ flush it out good. Drain the fuel line, too, just to make sure we got all the sugar outa the system. Then we let everything dry off good an’ put it back together. Pump in some fresh gas, turn the key, an’ hope we got it all an’ the motor’s the way God an’ Detroit intended.”

“How long’s all that gonna take?” Carver asked.

“Realistically, you ain’t goin’ noplace till tomorrow mornin’. I ain’t even sure I got tires’ll fit. Might have to send outa town for some.”

Carver stared out at the swamp, close and looming and green and thrumming with life and death. Something back in the ooze emitted a throaty, primitive cough. An alligator? “Okay,” he said to Murray, “whatever it takes.”

He gave Murray his Visa number, then watched as the Olds’s back end was hoisted and Murray made sure the steering was locked.

When the tow truck dragging the raked, bouncing car had disappeared in a haze of dust, Beth said, “Guy’s a kinda greasy Mr. Goodwrench.”

“I hope so,” Carver said. He did have the impression Murray knew cars. Loved them the way some men loved all women.

Dust settled in the sunlight, and Carver and Beth went back inside Carver’s room.

They locked the doors and lay side by side on his bed, knowing they were stuck in Dark Glades, but glad to be out of the heat. They didn’t make love, didn’t even talk much, both of them listening to the labored, lulling hum of the air conditioner and thinking.

Finally, when it was a few minutes past one, Carver got restless and climbed out of bed. Pacing around with his cane, he talked Beth into admitting she was hungry.

Then he borrowed Watts’s battered Ford pickup, and they drove into town to get something to eat and check on whatever progress Murray was making with the Olds.

C
ARVER AND
B
ETH RETURNED
to Whiffy’s after Murray had run down a list of needed parts with a greasy, authoritative finger. He’d informed Carver he had only two tires in stock that would fit the Olds, then told him the car would be ready sometime tomorrow morning. Some kind of rare gasket and the tires were due in around sunup on a truck from Haines City.

Marlene the waitress kept their coffee cups filled. That was fine with Carver; he figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stay up and alert most of the night, maybe in shifts. He and Beth let Whiffy entertain them with tales of dropped pop flies and outrageously called third strikes. To believe Whiffy was to be convinced that only a blind spot in his batting eye had prevented him from becoming another Hammering Henry Aaron, only better looking.

It was almost dark when Carver jockeyed Watts’s old pickup truck back over the rutted dirt road to the motel. As he steered into the lot, he noticed three other cars parked in front of cabin doors. A long Lincoln with Canadian license plates, a red Toyota with clothes piled high on the backseat, and the blue Plymouth with the rental decal on its trunk. None of the guests were staying within two rooms’ distance of Carver and Beth, Watts making sure that if anything did happen, victims would be kept to a minimum.

Carver parked the truck near the office, then sat and waited for the dieseling engine to
palump! palump!
to silence in the heat. The swamp was hard on things mechanical as well as people.

Beth opened the passenger-side door and hopped to the ground. Envying the way she could move, Carver struggled out of the truck with his cane.

He locked the truck, then limped into the office and saw Watts seated behind the desk, watching a “Mayberry RFD” rerun. Watts glanced over at Carver from his perch on a high stool. “Goddam Barney’s a scream, ain’t he?”

Carver agreed, then dropped the truck keys on the desk. “Thanks, Watts.”

“Car wasn’t ready, I s’pose.” Watts didn’t avert his eyes from the TV. Barney had bought a used motorcycle and was showing it to a skeptical Sheriff Andy.

“It’ll be ready tomorrow,” Carver said. “Anything happen around here?”

“Nope. No messages, no gunfire.”

Beth had gotten tired of standing in the doorway. She walked all the way into the office and stood near Carver, gazing over at the TV. She said, “I always thought Barney was a prick.”

Watts looked at her as if she’d spat on a holy object. “Hey, he’s just a harmless little deputy.”

“Yeah? You get hassled by assholes like that and see how harmless they strike you.”

Watts stared at her and chewed the inside of his cheek, then gave her a nod as if maybe she had a point.

Carver watched as Barney sped away on the motorcycle, leaving the embarrassed sheriff sitting in the sidecar that had come unattached. Watts howled. The laugh track liked it even more. Carver grinned. Beth shook her head sadly.

Carver said, “We’ll be in our rooms the rest of the night.” He limped toward the door.

Watts waved a hand in acknowledgment, engrossed in something Floyd, the Mayberry barber, was saying.

As they were walking across the gravel lot to their doors, Beth said, “What now, a holding action?”

Carver ran the backs of his knuckles gently down her cheek. “Sounds like a good idea.”

She shoved his hand away. “Get serious, Carver.”

He was, he thought. He said, “We’ll lock ourselves in tight, put the Uzi and the Colt by the bed, and in the morning we’ll drive Watts’s truck in and pick up the Olds. Murray said he’d drive the truck back for us.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“Should work; the Brainard brothers
are
simple.”

She laughed. “So’s the atomic bomb, once you hear it explained. Still lethal, though.”

Carver considered pointing out that she was the one who originally wouldn’t leave Dark Glades. Then he decided he’d better not. They’d both underestimated the homicidal sincerity of the Brainards.

Insects were screaming. Carver waved away what felt like a moth fluttering against his face and paused, peering into the night. The dark swamp lay around them, like entangled terrain of the mind, the genesis of nightmares.

He was hot and coated with oily sweat. Suddenly he had a hard time breathing the thick, damp air and wanted to get out of it.

He quickly unlocked the door to his room. Opened it and limped inside. Flicked the light switch, then leaned on his cane while Beth came in. He closed the door and carefully locked it with the knob latch, the dead bolt, and the chain lock. The solid clicking and snicking of the locks made him feel more secure, even though he knew Junior Brainard could jolt the door off its hinges with one kick. The locks, the four walls, kept the swamp at bay, held off the nightmare.

Their packed suitcases were still on the floor, where they’d been left after Carver discovered the Olds’s slashed tires. There was something unsettling about the abandoned luggage. All packed up and no place to go.

Beth said, “I need some stuff outa my bag. Toothpaste, nail polish.”

Her body gave a slight jerk and she stared down at the Gucci suitcase,

Carver tightened his grip on his cane. “What’s the matter?”

“A piece of a dress is caught in the zipper. I think my suitcase has been opened.”

Carver and Beth both moved toward the suitcase. Beth was bending over it when the connecting door to her room opened.

Junior waddled in, cradling a high-powered rifle, B.J. followed. He was holding Beth’s Uzi submachine gun aimed at Carver.

Junior grinned like a schoolkid about to pull wings off flies. “Betcha we know what you’re lookin’ for.”

B.J.’s lean face was creased leather. He said, “We found it”—gave the Uzi a little bounce in his hands—“but we never found that handgun of yours, Carver. Be so kind as to get it out from under your shirt or wherever and lay it down there on the bed.”

Carver didn’t move. Beth had straightened up beside him. He could hear her tight, rapid breathing.

B.J. said, “I squeeze this trigger and your heart’ll be hamburger. Nigger’ll be next to go, only slower.”

Junior said, “Lots slower.”

Carver raised his untucked shirt. Holding the Colt delicately between thumb and forefinger, he drew it from his waistband and laid it on the bed. Junior swaggered over and picked it up. He examined it briefly but intensely, as if it were a new toy, then poked it down in his bib overalls. He was shirtless beneath the denim bib and straps of the dirty overalls; his stale body odor filled the room as if the fetid rot of the swamp had intruded.

B.J. said, “We figured it’d be a good idea to let ourselves in afore you locked us out. So we jimmied the bathroom window in the bitch’s room and in we came. Been waitin’ for you about an hour.” He spat on the floor. Smiled. “You was about to lock the connecting door and barricade it, wasn’t you?”

“You guessed it.”

Junior said, “We wasn’t gonna let you do that. One sign of it and we’d’a come bustin’ in here like the fuckin’ SWAT team.”

Carver said, “Now that you’re here, what?”

“First thing,” B.J. said, “is you toss that cane on the bed next to the gun, then you move away and sit yourself down on the floor over there by the wall. Nigger’ll sit next to you.”

Carver obeyed. He placed the cane on the bed, then jack-knifed his body at the waist and used the mattress for support as he edged toward the wall.

“No, no,” Junior said. “Go ahead an’ crawl, fuckin’ cripple. First night we seen you, we knew you was gonna crawl.”

“Best do it,” B.J. said laconically. Carver heard the Uzi’s action snick.

He dropped down and crawled the last few steps, dragging his stiff leg behind him, then sat down and leaned his back against the wall. Beth glared furiously at Junior, then sashayed over as if she were in control of things and lowered herself to sit next to Carver.

Junior plopped his bulk down in the room’s one chair, making it groan in helpless protest. B.J. sat on the end of the bed. Both of them were staring at Carver and Beth in a way Carver didn’t like. He knew they had ceased to be people to the Brainard brothers; they were business now. To be disposed of in a way the Brainards would enjoy, but still business. Mercy would play no part in it.

The night insects screamed louder. Bullfrogs croaked behind the motel. B.J. said, “We’re gonna wait right here till it gets darker.”

“Then what?” Beth asked. Carver heard her throat work as she swallowed. She laced her long fingers together and tightened them. She couldn’t hide her fear.

Junior’s imagination raced ahead. He grunted like a hog in sexual thrall.

B.J. grinned at Beth and traced a slow, tight circle in the air with the nasty barrel of the Uzi.

He said, “Yeah, then what?”

W
HEN IT WAS MIDNIGHT,
B.J. and Junior led Carver and Beth outside at gunpoint. There were no lights in the motel other than the softly glowing road sign with the neon outline of the Spanish castle. Carver’s cane had been returned to him. He was sure no one saw them as they crossed the gravel parking lot and walked along the dirt road through the swamp.

They turned onto a narrower, rutted side road. Walking was difficult in the dark. Carver’s pace with the cane slowed them down, and he feigned more difficulty than he was having, trying to gain time to think. The swamp was black and ominous and screaming around them. Wing and fang and claw. Now and then Carver heard a splash and wondered what had made it. He was sweating from heat and fear. His shirt was plastered to his flesh, and insects flitted against him and occasionally bit or stung his bare arms. Beth was moving easily beside him. She had her fingers hooked in his belt almost casually, as if she might catch him if he started to fall. He could hear B.J. and Junior trudging heavily behind them. Now and then Junior would say, “Jus’ keep on walkin’. Walk on . . . walk on.” A kind of chant that was perversely soothing.

Suddenly B.J. said, “Hold it. Gotta look around here afore we go on.”

Carver felt a gun barrel prod the small of his back, causing an ache in his spine.

He stood leaning on his cane, putting on a rapid-breathing act, as if he were exhausted from the walk over rough terrain. His daily bouts with the ocean had given him stamina. He could take this. This and more. He glanced up. Saw no stars. He and Beth looked at each other with blank faces that denied panic. They were wrapped in thick foliage in the deep swamp.

“Over there,” B.J. said. He shoved Carver toward a blacker shadow just off the road. High and boxy. It was the knobby-tired Blazer.

Carver and Beth sat on the rubber-matted floor in back while Junior kept the Uzi trained on them. B.J. drove.

The inside of the Blazer smelled like oil and rotted fish. Tools or fishing equipment rattled around in a padlocked, battered steel box bolted to the floor behind the seats. Blackness pressed against the windows. There was no way to gauge direction, but the rumbling, bucking truck made several sharp turns. A front window was open, but it admitted only the saturated warmth of the swamp, along with mosquitoes, and occasional large beetlelike bugs that ricocheted crazily around the inside of the truck and dropped, buzzing and dying, on the floor.

After about fifteen minutes B.J. braked the Blazer to ajar-ring halt. The abrupt stop caused Beth’s head to bounce off the side window. She gave no indication she’d felt it.

Junior grinned in the shadows behind the black eye of the Uzi’s bore. Said, “Home.”

B.J. got out first, then stood behind the Blazer while Carver and Beth crawled out the back. Beth helped Carver until he was standing with his weight bearing down on the cane. For a moment her mouth was near his ear and he thought she might whisper something, but she was silent.