Deadline (28 page)

“Okay,” I said. “Where is it?”

“You gonna come yourself?” he asked.

“Yeah, there's nobody else. How do I get there?”

“You know how to get to Roxbury Pond?”

“Yup.”

“Go past the pond. You go up one-twenty, right? Take a right on the Roxbury Road and go past the pond and then you'll come to the Andover Road. You go on that and after maybe four, five miles you'll see a blue trailer. Another half-mile, you come to this tote road on your right. There's pulp piled right before it. Come in there, about a quarter of a mile. You'll see a four-wheel-drive. Black one. That's mine.”

“What's your name?”

“Blaine Cole,” he said.

“I thought you said it was up by your uncle's farm.”

“It was,” he said. “But these critters travel. We tracked him with a dog, found where he was laying up near this deer yard, you know? Trapped him in this friggin' wire pen. You gotta see it. Worked slick as shit.”

Route 120 snakes its way north of Androscoggin along the Swift River up to Andover. I'd swing off before that, going maybe ten or twelve miles all told before I came to the stretch of road Cole was talking about. I'd driven it a few times, usually on my rest and recreation jaunts. There was a camp road off it that led down to Garland Pond, but I'd never been down in there. I thought that might be the road he was talking about, and I hoped it wouldn't be too rough for the Volvo, with its low-slung suspension. Cole had said he'd gotten in with a four-wheel-drive.

I drove as fast as the road would allow, slowing for ice patches as the road snaked between ridges of spruce and granite ledges. A couple of loaded pulp trucks passed me coming the other way, and I swung
way over onto the shoulder as they careened around the bends, bound for the mill and a paycheck. Far be it from me to slow them down on the road to prosperity.

The snow had turned the landscape from rugged to beautiful, and, for the first time in days, I felt a surge of rejuvenation, then a slow-spreading feeling of relaxation. It was beautiful and still up here, and the stillness was contagious. I passed Roxbury Pond, which was white with a dark stain at the center, where it looked like a spring had kept the water open. They weren't ice-fishing yet, but in two months the pond would look like a refugee camp, dotted with ice shacks and crisscrossed by tire tracks.

I watched the odometer and after four miles, I slowed down. I counted six-tenths of a mile and the trailer came up on the left, abandoned, and more rust than blue. Then came the tote road, a brown gash in the wall of spruce. I turned in.

There was a single set of fresh tire tracks in the road, which was really more like a wide path, a pickup truck wide, with deep ruts. I eased along in first gear, trying to keep to the left of the ruts. The road veered to the right after about fifty feet, then wound downhill past the tangles of uprooted birches and spruce, tipped back by the skidder that cut the road. I drove another seventy yards and came to a turnaround. The other tracks made a circle and left the way they had come.

So where were they? Was there another road after this one? Maybe they didn't even consider this a road, and I'd come in on this skidder trail for nothing.

I got out and looked around and spotted footprints that led farther in. Grabbing my camera and notebook, I followed them through the woods, listening to the twittering siskins in the hemlocks and the
dee-dee
of chickadees in the brush. The tracks went fifty yards or so
and then the tote road hit a better road, a camp road, maybe, with more tire tracks. It led down toward where I thought the pond would be, where I probably was supposed to go in the first place. I followed the tracks, thinking in the back of my mind that it would be a nuisance if this turned out to be a wild-goose chase.

Just what I needed with all I had to get done in the next—

The sound was to my left and behind me. A
thump
sort of sound. I started to turn. Was hit and falling, the camera swinging, then grinding into my belly.

I was on my stomach in the snow. I tried to roll to my right. Knees slammed into my back. I gasped. An arm—blue sleeve and glove—wrapped around my neck and jerked against my windpipe. I whipped my neck straight back to get some slack but the arm stayed with me.

I couldn't breathe. I was choking.

My legs kicked up over my back and hit something hard. I kicked again. Again. The grip loosened on my neck and I swung my left elbow back as hard as I could. I hit air.

I bellowed and swung again. Something snapped. Feet pounded in the snow, and mud and hands and knees and chests pressed my face into the ground.

“What the goddamn hell were you waiting for?” a voice sputtered.

“For you.”

“If my friggin' nose is broke, I'm gonna kick your ass.”

I tried to move but I couldn't. I tried to yell and it was like screaming underwater. Something hard and metal, like a gun, jabbed me in the base of the neck.

“Shut your mouth or you're dead,” a voice said.

20

I
diot. Sucker. Dummy. A coyote in a cage. God almighty!

I strained to see through the knit material of the bag or hat or whatever it was that they had jammed over my head, but could only pick out shadowy figures and the outline of a door or a window. The bag was dusty, and I sneezed and felt saliva on my chin.

They'd tied a rag around my head and through my mouth and then put the bag over my head, terrorist-style. The bag was fastened with something tied around my neck. I'd been dumped in the back of a van and driven more than three minutes, because I had counted very carefully, “One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three …” Now I was propped up against a wall, my hands tied behind me.

I counted the shadows. Three of them. Two stood near the window or door and watched. The third was doing something with canvas. Maybe a window shade. The room was cold.

One of the shadows came close and untied the ropes on my wrists. I smelled body odor, cigarettes, and something sweet. Gum or candy. When my left hand came loose, I jerked it straight up, catching a face with the bony part of my wrist.

“You friggin' son of a bitch,” the face said.

A hand gripped my left wrist. I braced and waited. The blow was low and forced the breath from my lungs. I waited but the next blow didn't come.

Cold metal brushed my wrists. Something clattered on the floor. A tool. The metal, a cable maybe, looped twice around my wrists. Hands worked behind me and a tool hit my arm. Once, twice, three times.

The cable tightened. A wrench. They were using a wrench to tighten the cable. That meant nuts and bolts. A clamp.

A shadow passed in front of me, very close, from left to right. I kicked out as far as I could and hit bone.

“Ow!” the shadow yelled. I waited.

This time it was the head. The top. White hot pain. Sickening pain. I bit down on the gag to keep from screaming.

“Jesus,” someone said. “He didn't say to kill him.”

I felt a wrench turn, tightening the cable on my right wrist, and a draft of air brushed by me as someone stood up. A door opened and then shut. There were steps outside. Inside a floorboard creaked.

I wasn't alone.

I slid my legs up and down to ease the stiffness behind my knees. Nothing moved. I worked my arms and found that they weren't bound together. I could stretch my arms out behind me, but the cable was too short to get my arms out in front.

“You can flap your wings there, but you can't fly,” a voice said.

I gave him the finger. He laughed, and I could hear him coming closer. He was at my left. I tried to get to my feet and he pushed me back down by the top of my head.

“Pussy,” he said. “What a little pussy.”

The voice was familiar. Strong Maine accent. High-pitched and young. I wanted to keep him talking. I wanted to know who he was. Why they were doing this.

I kicked to my left. He shuffled and cackled. His shadow passed in front of me, but I didn't let on that I could see him.

He tapped my right cheek. Then my left temple, harder but not hard enough to hurt. The voice came from my left.

“I'm over here, tough guy. Over here. No here. What's the matter? Why don't you run to the cops now, dink? Or do you like it? I think he likes it. I think he's one of those pussies.”

The patter continued. The taps became slaps and light punches. Back of the head. Belly. Upper arms.

As he talked, I listened intently and tried to place his voice. Young. A punk. Maybe I'd seen him in court or the police station. The drunk driver? No, he wouldn't be out, would he? And how would he know me? How would he have had the time to set up the trap that I'd walked right into?

A live coyote trapped with bacon grease.

Back of the head. Right shin. A kick to the thigh. I winced.

Feet shuffled, like a boxer in a workout. I sat and took it, lashing out with my feet when he seemed to be tiring of the game. Keep him talking, I told myself. Keep him talking.

He was breathing hard from jumping around. Probably some skinny-assed guy who hadn't had any exercise since he got kicked off the basketball team in junior high. He stopped and I gave him the finger.

And I heard it.

He coughed and cleared the phlegm from his throat with a guttural, gargling sound and spat.

The driveway. Cormier's friend. That bastard Cormier.

When I had told him I wasn't going to press my complaint, he had said that there were people in town who would be glad to hear it. And then he hadn't passed the word. Or he had and this was pure recreation.

Vigue had said to come back and sign a complaint. I hadn't, but maybe it had gone forward anyway. Maybe a court date was coming up. Maybe they had decided it would be better if the complainant wasn't around and their buddy was safely whisked off to some lumber camp north of Spokane. Of course, they might call him back if there was a kidnapping investigation, but these guys weren't big on foresight.

You don't want him to go to court? We'll take care of that. We'll tie him up until you're gone. We'll tell him we caught a live coyote.

If that was the plan, I could feel a snag coming on, at least for me. The cold was already seeping into my limbs. If I sat here even one night, I could get frostbite. Hypothermia. And I had a paper to put out.

I hadn't even told anyone where I was going. All they knew was that I had picked up my camera and walked out the door. The panic began to well up inside me, and I forced it back down, biting hard on the gag.

The buddy was still coughing, and finally I heard him open the door and go outside. I crossed my hands and felt the cable. It felt about an eighth of an inch thick, fed through U-shaped clamps. There were nuts on the ends of the clamps that tightened and clinched the two strands of cable together. I tried to undo them with my fingers. They wouldn't budge.

I reached behind me and found that the cable was looped around a pipe. A water pipe? A heat pipe? Was it copper or steel? It felt smooth but I couldn't tell.

Sitting still, I listened. I couldn't hear Cormier's buddy. Maybe he'd chickened out. I listened another ten seconds and then decided to move.

If I turned around, I'd get leverage. I pulled my feet up under me until I was in crouch. Inched my feet backwards underneath me and then pitched forward onto my knees, leaving my arms spread-eagled behind me. I knelt there for a moment and then lifted my legs back and over the right end of the cable, between my arm and wall. One leg went over and then the other and I squirmed and kicked until I was on my side, both arms and the cable out in front of me like a steel jump rope. I turned to face the wall, my arms and legs out in front of me. I kicked at the pipe, hard. Nothing.

I sat and rested. Cutting pipes. Who cuts pipes? Plumbers, with hacksaws. And those blades that they turn and tighten until the pipe snaps off. I didn't have a blade and I didn't have a saw. I had four feet of cable.

“Think, McMorrow,” I muttered. “Think.”

Maybe I could rub the pipe with the cable, weaken it. If it was copper it might work. If it wasn't copper, at least I'd stay warm.

I listened for Cormier's friend. Nothing. Maybe that was the idea from the beginning. Tie me up and leave me for hours, or even days. I'd like to see Vigue call this one an accidental death.

My left wrist was cut worse than my right. I dug in my pocket and got out a handkerchief and tried to cram it under the cable on the underside of my wrist. It wouldn't fit, so I let it drop to the floor. And then I began.

The motion was like the arm swing in running, except more compact. I counted fifty strokes and was encouraged by the sound
of the cable on the pipe, a sound like sawing. Too bad the cable was sawing through my wrists faster than through the pipe.

I couldn't think of the pain. I counted more strokes, up to a hundred. I told myself I was like a swimmer, working to keep up the pace. I concentrated on the rhythm until sweat ran down my face in rivulets and dripped down my neck. My shoulder muscles cramped, and finally, I couldn't stand the pain in my wrists anymore.