First Blood (1990) (18 page)

Organize. That was it. Now be remembered it all.

I know how to organize.

The kid's a better fighter. But I know how. to organize.

For Orval.

For Shingleton and Ward and Mitch and Lester and the young deputy and all of them. For me.

I'll cream that fucking bastard.

He lay there at the side of the road, repeating that over and over to himself, closing his eyes to the glare of the sun, snickering at how his pants were in shreds, at how bloody he was, the blood seeping through the mud on him while he grinned, repeating his idea, telling it to the state trooper who said 'My God' and gave up trying to lift him into the cruiser and ran for the car radio.

*

PART THREE 1

It was night, and the back of the truck smelled of oil and grease. A sheet of stiff canvas had been pulled across the top to form a roof, and in under it Teasle sat on a bench, staring at the big map that hung on one wall. The only light was from an unshielded bulb dangling over the map. Next to the map was a bulky two-way radio on a table.

The radioman wore earphones. 'National Guard truck twenty-eight in position,' he was saying to a deputy. 'Three miles down from the bend in the stream.' The deputy nodded, shoving one more red pin into the map next to the others along the south side. To the east, yellow pins showed the deployment of state police. Black pins in the west were police from nearby towns and counties; white pins to the north were police from Louisville, Frankfort, Lexington, Bowling Green, and Covington.

'You're not going to stay here all night, are you?' someone said to Teasle from outside the back of the truck. Teasle looked, and it was Kern the captain of the state police. He was out far enough that the glare from the bulb lit just part of his face, his eyes and forehead in shadow. 'Go home and get some sleep, why don't you?' Kern said. 'The doctor told you to rest, and nothing serious will happen here for a while.'

'Can't.'

'Oh?'

'Reporters are looking for me at my place and the office. The best way I know to rest is not go through everything again for them.' 'They'll be coming around here looking for you soon anyhow.'

'No. I told your men at the roadblocks not to let them pass.'

Kern shrugged and stepped toward the truck into the full light. It was stark and accented the lines in his forehead, the pinched skin around his eyes, making him look older than he was. It did not reflect off his red hair, making even that seem lustreless and dull.

He's the same age I am, Teasle thought. If he looks like that, then after these last few days, how must I look?

'That doctor came close to making a career out of bandaging your face and hands,' Kern said. 'What's that dark stain soaking through your shirt? Don't tell me you're bleeding again.'

'Some kind of ointment he spread on too thick. I have bandages under my clothes too. The ones around my legs and knees are so tight I can hardly walk.' He made himself smile, as if the tight bandages were a practical joke from the doctor. He did not want Kern to realize how very bad he felt, sick, dizzy.

'Any pain?' Kern said.

'I hurt less before he put these bandages on so tight. He gave me some pills to take every hour.' 'Any help?'

'Enough.' That sounded right. He had to be careful how he talked about it to Kern, minimizing his pain, but not so much that Kern would stop believing him and insist that he go back to the hospital. Before, at the hospital, Kern had shown up damn mad at him for rushing into the forest after the kid without waiting for the state police. 'It's my jurisdiction, and you took advantage, and now you can just stay the hell out of this,' Kern had said. Teasle had taken it all, letting Kern get rid of his anger, and then slowly he had done his best to convince Kern that more than one person was needed to organize this wide a search. There was another argument that he did not use, but he was sure that Kern was thinking it: as many men could die this time as at the start, and somebody ought to be around to share the responsibility. Kern was that son of weak leader. Teasle had seen him rely on others too often. So now Teasle was here helping, but not necessarily for long. Despite Kern's faults, he did worry about his men and how much work they could stand, and if he once thought that Teasle was in too great pain, he could easily decide to send him away.

Outside, trucks were rumbling by in the night, big lorry trucks that Teasle knew would have soldiers in them. A siren started, coming up the road fast, shrieking by toward town, and he was glad to talk about something besides how he felt. 'What's the ambulance for?'

'Another civilian who just got himself shot.'

Teasle shook his head. 'How they're dying to help.' 'Dying is about the word for it.'

'What happened?'

'Stupidity. A bunch of them were up camping in the woods, figuring to be right with us when we start in the morning. They heard a noise out in the dark and guessed it might be the kid trying to sneak down and across the road, so they grabbed their rifles and went out to see. First thing, they mixed up in the dark. One guy heard another guy and thought it was the kid, started shooting, the other guy shot back, everybody else started shooting. God's mercy nobody was killed, just hit bad. I never saw anything like it.'

'I did.' For a time earlier, when he had been staring at the map, his head had felt like it was stuffed with satin, and now without warning it was like that again. His ears felt stuffed too, and the words 'I did' seemed to have come in an echo from outside him. Off balance, faintly nauseous, he wanted to stop and lie down on the bench, but he could not let Kern know what was happening to him. 'When I worked in Louisville,' he said, and almost could not continue. 'About eight years ago. There was a little town near us where a six-year-old girl had been kidnapped. The local police thought she might have been assaulted and left somewhere, so they organized a search, and some of us off-duty that weekend drove over to help. Trouble was that the people who were organizing the search put out a call for help over the radio stations and in the newspapers, and any guy who wanted a free meal and some excitement decided to come.'

He was determined not to lie down. But the light was going gray on him, the bench he sat on seemed to be tilting. He finally had to compromise and lean back against the wall of the truck, hoping he looked at ease. 'Four thousand,' he said, concentrating to keep the words straight. 'No place for them all to sleep, to eat. No way to co-ordinate that many. The town just grew overnight and split at the seams. Most of them drank half the time and then showed up hung-over on the buses going out to the search area. One guy nearly drowned in a swamp. One group got lost, and the search had to be stopped so everybody else could go find them. Snake bites. Broken legs. Sunstroke. It finally got so confused that all civilians had to be ordered home, and just the police kept on the search.'

He lit a cigarette and dragged deeply on it, trying to numb his dizziness. He looked and the radioman and the deputy were turned to him, listening. How long had he been talking? Ten minutes it seemed, although it could not have been. His mind was skimming up and down in a smooth undulating pattern.

'Well don't stop,' Kern said. 'What about the girl? Did you find her?'

Teasle nodded slowly. 'Six months later. In a shallow grave off a side road about a mile from where the search originally ended. Some old guy drinking in a bar in Louisville made a few jokes about feeling little girls, and we heard about it. A long chance there was a connection, but we followed up anyhow. Since I had been on the search and knew the case, they had me question him, and forty minutes after I started on him, he came out with the whole story. How he'd been driving by this farm and saw this little girl splashing in a plastic pool in the front yard. It was her yellow swimsuit attracted him, he said. Grabbed her right out of the front yard and into the car without anybody seeing. He took us directly to the grave. It was the second grave. The first grave had been in the middle of the search area, and while the civilians had been wandering around

screwing things up, he had come back one night and moved her.' He took another deep drag on his cigarette, feeling the smoke fill his throat, his bandaged fingers thick and numb holding the cigarette. 'Those civilians will screw things up here too. Word about this should never have been let out.'

'It's my fault. There's a reporter who comes around my office who heard my men talking before I could keep them quiet. I've got some of them herding all outsiders back to town right now.'

'Sure, and that bunch in the woods might get jumpy again and take a shot at your men. Anyway, you'll never round every one up. Tomorrow morning there'll be civilians all through those hills. You saw the way they've taken over town. There's just too many of them to control. The worst hasn't come yet. Wait until the professionals show up.'

'I don't know what you mean professionals. Who in hell are they?'

'Amateurs really, but they call themselves pros. Guys with nothing better to do than chase around the country to every place that has a search. I met a few of them when we were looking for that little girl. One guy had just come from the Everglades where they were tracking down some lost campers. Before that he'd been to California helping search for a family out hiking caught in a brush fire. That winter he'd been to Wyoming after skiers hit by an avalanche. Between times he went where the Mississippi was flooding or where miners were sealed off by a cave-in. The trouble is, types like him never work with the people in charge. They want the power of organizing their own groups and going off on their own, and before long they confuse the search pattern, interfere with official groups, run ahead to places that look exciting, like old farms, leaving whole fields unsearched -'

Teasle's heart suddenly fluttered, missed a beat, sped up, and he held his chest, gasping. 'What's the matter?' Kern said. 'You're-'

'Fine. I'm fine. I just need another pill. The doctor warned me this would happen.' It wasn't true. The doctor had not warned him at all, but this was the second time his heart had done that, and the first time a pill had brought it back to normal, so now he quickly swallowed another. He certainly could not let Kern know there was anything the matter with his heart.

Kern did not look satisfied with his answer. But then the radioman adjusted his earphones as if he were listening to a report, and told the deputy 'National Guard truck thirty-two in position.' He traced his finger down a list on a page, 'That's at the start of Branch Road,' and the deputy shoved one more red pin into the map.

The chalk taste of the pill remained in Teasle's mouth. He breathed, and the tightness around his heart began to relax. 'I never could understand why that old guy moved the little girl's body to a different grave,' he said to Kern, his heart relaxing even more. 'I remember when we dug her up, and how she looked from six months in the ground and what he had done to her. I remember thinking, God, it must have been a lonely way to die.'

'What just happened to you?'

'Nothing. Fatigue, the doctor said.'

'Your face matched the gray of your shirt.'

More trucks rolled by outside, and in their noise Teasle did not have to answer. Then a patrol car pulled up behind Kern, its headlights flooding him, and Teasle knew he would not have to answer at all.

'I guess I have to go,' Kern said reluctantly. These are the walkie-talkies to hand out.' He stepped toward the cruiser, hesitated, then turned back. 'Why don't you at least lie down on that bench and catch a little sleep while I'm gone. Staring at the map won't tell you where the kid is, and you'll want to be fresh when we start tomorrow.'

'If I get tired. I want to make double sure that everybody is where he should be. I'm in no shape to go into those hills with you, so I might as well be good for something here.'

'Listen. What I said at the hospital about the poor way you went after him.' 'It's done. Forget it.'

'But listen. I know what you're trying. You're thinking about all your men shot and you're straining your body to punish yourself. Now maybe it's true what I said - that Orval might still be alive if you had worked with me from the beginning. But the kid is the one who pulled the trigger on him and the rest. Not you. Remember that.'

Teasle did not need to be reminded. The radioman was saying 'State police unit nineteen in position,' and Teasle was dragging on his cigarette, watching intently as the deputy shoved another yellow pin into the eastern side of the map.

Chapter 2

The map had almost no interior details. 'Nobody ever wanted a breakdown of these hills before,' the county surveyor had explained when he brought it. 'Maybe if a road goes through there someday, we'll have to chart it. But surveying costs a lot of money, especially in that kind of rough country, and it just never seemed practical to use up our budget on something nobody would ever likely need.' At least the surrounding roads were accurate. To the north they formed the top part of a square; but the road to the south curved like the bottom part of a circle, joining with the roads that went straight up on either side. Teasle's communication truck was parked on the lowest part of the south road's arc. That was where he had been found by the state trooper, and since the kid was last near there, it was the point from which the search was being directed.

The radioman looked at Teasle. 'A helicopter's coming in. They're talking, but it's not clear enough to understand.' 'Our two just left. None of them should be coming back this soon.'