Death Benefits (38 page)

The silence returned, a much deeper quiet than there had been before. The frogs’ chirping had been replaced by the silence of many beings stopping in place and listening. It lasted for five seconds, and then the woods seemed to erupt with sound. There were shouts, branches breaking, heavy footsteps. Beams from flashlights appeared and swept back and forth, then danced crazily on bushes and trees as men ran with them.

Stillman and Walker both turned at once. Mary was already sixty feet downriver from them. She waved to beckon them toward her. It was not a strategy, just the simple need to go in the direction the sounds weren’t coming from, and to move away from lights into darkness. Both men went after her, trying to reach the bend in the river, the next spot where there might be something to hide them.

Mary disappeared beyond the turn, then Stillman. When Walker was about to slip past the end of the curve, he took a last look. The lights were converging. He could see a few of them playing about the mudflats, then finding something and staying on it. They had found the body of the man he had drowned. In a moment their eyes would pass across the deep footprints in the mud, and follow them into the river.

43

When Walker swam around the curve, Stillman and Mary were still ahead of him, floating downstream. Looming above them was the dark rectangle of the covered bridge. Mary was the first to be swept under it. She grasped one of the bridge’s new concrete supports and held on. Walker took a couple of strokes to bring himself into line with it and stopped himself beside her. He looked around for Stillman and saw him clinging to the one beside theirs. Stillman pushed off, holding the shotgun above the water, caught their support, clung to it with one hand, carefully set the shotgun on top of the block of concrete, and lowered himself deeper into the water.

The tumult was growing. There was the sharp, hollow sound of men running across the bridge above their heads, shouts and footsteps from around the bend where the bodies had been found. From somewhere above them, they could hear a police radio. The female dispatcher’s voice was unperturbed and unchanging. “Unit Ten, please proceed to Main and Washington to assist in clearing the bridge. Unit Three and Unit Six, please return to the station . . . ” The answers were gruff and so muffled as to be incomprehensible from here.

Stillman moved closer to the others and whispered, “They’re all going upstream to the bodies.”

Mary said, “We left tracks in the mud. They’ll know we’re here.”

“By the time they see tracks we can’t be here,” said Stillman. “Give the rest of them a couple of minutes to reach the bodies, and then we’ll go up by the bridge.”

Walker looked in the direction Stillman was indicating, and saw that the spot where the bridge rested on solid ground formed a wedge-shaped space that was protected a bit on each side by the steel girders that lay under the original structure. “All right,” said Walker. “This time I’ll go first. I’ll try to get a car. Then you come behind me with the shotgun in case—”

“I know,” Stillman interrupted.

Mary said, “We’ll all go at once. It’s harder to shoot three people before one of them gets to you.”

Walker hesitated, but she said, “You know I’m right.”

“Move into the shallows now and up onto dry land,” said Stillman. “We’ve got to get some of the water out of our clothes, because the dripping makes noise.”

The three drifted quietly to the shore under the bridge, then crawled higher into the low space at the end. The water ran off them, and Walker noticed that Stillman had been right about the noise. While they were lying on the ground the water streamed off them in small rivulets and soaked in without a sound. The night air felt cool on their wet bodies.

Walker waited for a shiver to pass, then pointed upward, and the others nodded. Walker turned and slowly, quietly made his way out along the bank until he could stand, then climbed the bank to the grassy, level space beside the outer wall of the covered bridge, and stopped to listen. The shouts of the searchers were rarer and farther off now, and the flashlights threw a dim glow in the trees beyond the bend in the river.

Walker stepped around the wall and looked into the bridge. There was a police car parked in the middle of the bridge facing the town. There was a man behind the wheel with the door beside him open.

Walker went down on his hands and knees and began to crawl toward the rear of the car, trying to stay in the blind spot to the right along the wall. The dispatcher’s cool voice said, “The Main Street bridge is now clear. Units Five, Four, Twelve, Nine, and One, please proceed to New Mill Systems. All other units please stand by at your present locations and wait for instructions. We are now in a Code One Hundred situation. I repeat. Code One Hundred is now in effect.”

The driver of the car seemed to be affected by the news. He straightened in his seat and flicked a switch on the dashboard as Walker reached the rear bumper of the car. The siren made a loud, shrill scream, then went lower and up again.

Walker rose to a crouch, dashed around the car to the door, and reached inside. He hooked his arm around the man’s neck and dragged him from the seat onto the rough wooden planks of the bridge. The man groped at his side for his pistol, but Stillman came from behind, grabbed it out of its holster, and held it to the man’s forehead, where he could see it.

Stillman held the shotgun out to Walker, and Walker released the man and took it. He peered into the interior of the car, then stood. “The key’s in it.”

Mary slipped by him, sat in the driver’s seat, and started the engine, but there were other sounds now. Men were calling to one another in the woods. “Come on,” she said. “That siren was to call them in.”

Stillman dragged the man to the opening at the side of the bridge, the gun still at his head. He growled, “One chance. Jump or I kill you.”

The man rolled over the sill of the opening and disappeared into the darkness, and a second later there was a splash. Walker got inside with Mary and rolled down the window. Stillman got into the back seat and said, “Go!”

Mary had backed up almost to the end of the covered bridge when Walker said, “Wait.” She stopped.

They looked out through the opening at the far end of the bridge. Across the field, there were lights. The whole stretch of highway from the woods to the Main Street bridge and beyond looked like a river of white headlights, coming their way.

Mary said, “Maybe we can outrun them,” but there was no conviction in her voice.

“We’ve got to do something to the bridge,” said Stillman. “Give me the keys.”

She handed them to him. He ran to the back of the car, opened the trunk, and stared inside. There were three kinds of fire extinguishers, a first-aid kit, a road-emergency kit. He opened them all as Walker came up beside him.

Stillman took a pair of scissors from the first-aid kit, then cut the hose from one of the fire extinguishers and stepped to the side of the car and handed the hose to Walker. “Siphon some gasoline onto the bridge.”

Walker stuck the end of the hose down into the gas tank, sucked hard on it until he tasted the gasoline coming into his mouth, then lowered the hose as far as he could and tried to spit the poisonous taste out. There was a clear, steady stream of gasoline dribbling out and soaking into the boards of the bridge.

Stillman appeared at his side holding a highway flare. “That’s enough gas. Get in.”

As Walker got inside, Stillman yanked out the hose, capped the tank, and said to Mary, “Back out of here at least fifty feet, turn the car around, and wait.”

Mary backed out across the clear approach to the bridge, turned and backed into the brush, then swung forward to aim the car at the highway. Walker spun in his seat, looked out the rear window, and watched Stillman.

Stillman stepped out of the covered bridge, bent double, and scraped the flare on the pavement to light the match on the end of it. There was a sputter of sparks, then a brilliant red glow like a slow-motion explosion. Stillman backed away a few steps, tossed the flare in a high arc, whirled, and ran.

The flare spun crazily in the air. Walker could see Stillman’s broad body like a black void in the middle of the rosy glow, sprinting toward the police car. The flare reached apogee and started its descent, but before it could hit the boards of the bridge, it ceased to exist. There was the flash of the gasoline fumes trapped in the enclosed space igniting, and there were bright orange flames billowing out the entrance over Stillman’s head like a hand reaching out to snatch him, then receding into the interior.

The dry, seasoned boards of the bridge’s sides caught instantly, and the faint breeze that Walker had barely been able to detect a short time ago was now funneled into the tubular bridge as though the fire was sucking it inward. The superheated air had no place to escape, so it spread, rippling along the ridge beam to the other end in seconds. The boards of the roof began to issue whitish smoke, and in a moment it suddenly ignited, like the smoke above a candle.

Across the bridge, Walker watched the first of the cars pull up a short way off and stop. A figure got out on the driver’s side, and Walker leveled the shotgun on it, then held his fire. Other doors opened, passengers scrambled out to stand on the road and watch. As they gathered together to gape at the tall, snapping flames that were engulfing the bridge, Walker gaped at them. The first figure that had exited was the young woman Walker had seen hours ago in her kitchen. He recognized the shining blond hair pulled tight on her head, and the dark green sweater. She held her arms out from her sides, and the two children came close to her, letting her hold them.

Stillman threw himself into the back seat and the car began to move. Walker could not take his eyes from the rear window. He stared past the woman at the road that was now lit up by the burning bridge. Other cars had been blocked, and drivers and passengers were getting out and walking ahead to stare at the fire. Walker said, “They weren’t coming after us. They were trying to get out.”

Mary was steering the car with the intense attentiveness of a person driving through a blizzard. “What do you mean?”

“It’s families. Women, kids. They’re evacuating the town.”

Stillman had been peering out the back window too, the policeman’s pistol in his hand. “He’s right. It can’t be anything else. When they found the guy in the water, they must have thought we’d already gotten out.”

As the road came out of the woods and curved to head into the cleft between the two hills, Walker felt the car jerk to a stop. As he whirled to face the front, he saw the dark shapes of vehicles blocking the road, and then he was blinded by bright lights. The shapes of armed men seemed to emerge from the darkness on all sides at once. A man’s voice came out of a speaker. It was loud and disembodied, but was not strained or tense. “Drop your weapons, and step away from the car with your hands in the air,” it said calmly.

Stillman snapped, “Do it,” and got out. Walker and Mary each took one step forward, and then Walker lost his bearings. What felt like a dozen hands threw him to the pavement on his belly, patted him down, took his wallet, wrenched his arms behind him, and snapped handcuffs on his wrists. He was aware of several pairs of men’s feet striding back and forth near his head, and low voices conferring. A female voice said sharply, “Max Stillman.”

Stillman’s voice came from nearby, but Walker could not see him from here, because the three had been placed in a triangle with their feet toward one another. “I’m Stillman.”

Walker could hear shuffling as men raised Stillman to his feet.

The woman said, “Special Agent Nancy Atkins, FBI. We’ve got two agents in that town, and all I want to hear from you right now is exactly where they are.”

“I think they’re in jail,” said Stillman. “Before they started hunting us tonight, the cops rounded all the strangers up and took them to the police station.”

Walker heard a murmur of muffled instructions, the sounds of running feet, men talking into radios, car engines. A minute later, he heard the deepening growl of helicopters as they swooped in overhead.

It was already afternoon when Stillman, Walker, and Mary walked down the road along the line of empty cars. The cars had been pushed to the side of the road, searched, and left with doors and trunks open. Federal officers were slowly, methodically taking fingerprints and making lists of the items they were finding, removing, and putting into large plastic bags with labels. Far down the line behind them, a second team was coming along more slowly. This group had toolboxes and a variety of electronic devices. They would come to a car and begin dismantling it: taking door panels off, probing the padding of seats, opening hoods, and peering up under the dashboards with gooseneck flashlights.

A convoy of four big panel trucks came up the road, slowly wobbled over the prefabricated surface that had been laid over the skeleton of the bridge, then accelerated toward them. They stepped off the road onto the shoulder to let the trucks pass, and Walker felt the hot, dusty wind from their passing. He stared after them.

Stillman said, “Damned convenient of the people of Coulter to load all their valuables into cars for us.”

They walked toward the town. “All I want right now is to claim my rental car,” Mary said. “Then I’m going to drive it to my hotel and take a bath.”

Stillman said, “If they give you yours first, don’t leave before you talk to me.”

“Why not?”

“I want to see the notes you left in the car—the ones you took when you were in the public records office in Concord.”

Walker turned to look at him. “You’re staying here? What are you doing?”

“I want to hang around the FBI people and see if I can get a copy of their list of all the people in the town.”

“But we made one when we were looking for Scully’s cousin.”

“Of course we did,” said Stillman. “But I’m waiting for the official, revised edition. Between the car registrations and house deeds and fingerprints, they’ll probably come up with a good list by the end of the day.”

“Why are you doing all this?” asked Mary. “They’re all in jail already.”

“I don’t work for the FBI. What I’m getting paid for is finding out what made these people pick McClaren Life and Casualty.”

“I’m not sure how my notes are going to tell you that,” said Mary.

Stillman shrugged. “We’ll see.”

When the three reached the police station, the FBI agents who had set up a temporary headquarters there released the cars to them. Mary Casey’s rental car and Stillman’s vehicle were both in the police lot with their doors open. Mary took her keys out of her pocket, opened the trunk of her car, looked inside, and muttered something under her breath.

“Something wrong?” asked Stillman.

“My notes were in my laptop. It looks like the Coulter police noticed it after they towed the car. Want to see it?”

Stillman and Walker looked in the open trunk. The computer looked as though it had been broken up with a sledgehammer, then run over by a car.

“I don’t see the hard drive,” said Walker.

“We never will,” said Mary. “That’s just the mess they made getting to it.” Then she slammed the trunk, got into the driver’s seat, and started the engine.

Stillman nudged him. “Go ahead,” he muttered. “She’ll look once, and if you’re not on your way, she’s gone.”