Method 15 33 (26 page)

I shouted for him to put his fucking hands up in the air.

Lola followed by demanding something. I heard only “piece of shit.”

I watched as Lisa stopped blinking when the man turned to see me. Watched as she pushed his shoulder and grabbed his gun.

Did she really just do that?
I was so thrown to see such an act by a child. But again, my vision. I was only ten yards away. I saw exactly what I saw as if I was in the car with her and watching her actions in a slow-mo replay.
The girl took his gun
.

Still, I held my aim.

I think something must have hatched in me. A calmness I
had never known. I believe I felt nothing, actually, which was comforting. Maybe all I felt was relief that I would again scratch that ancient itch in me, be able to once again maim an awful human. I had so many accomplices to help: Lola, Boyd, and even the victim. I’d read her file, knew she was gifted, recalled her struggle with emotions. She appeared so calm in that car as she took his gun.

I even saw her slight smirk in holding the handle. A look of pride.

I knock and I knock and you answer
.

The devil indeed is a she
.

Why didn’t I take the shot when I could have? Why didn’t I burst his skull? Yes, I surely could have. It would have all been over so much sooner. But from where I stood, the only shot I could take would have been fatal. The man sunk so low in the low VW seat, and the door was so high, only his beedy head stuck up in the glass of the door. A head shot would surely be the end. I didn’t mind killing him. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was I truly wanted him to suffer for the rest of his life. I wanted him disfigured, hurting, and holed up in solitary confinement, or even better, embroiled in the general population of a state run prison. I may have been a federal agent on a federal mission, but I’d work behind the scenes to place his case on a silver platter for the state. A low-resource Indiana prison would be so much better for this bag of meat, especially if I could—and I would—send word to fellow inmates of his crimes against children. Oh yes I would, and Lola would too, but only after she’d taken her own turn with him. In private. For which I’d play the fool.

Why is Lola like she is? Look, that’s her backstory, and damn, I dare you to try to crowbar the past out of her. All I know is the foster families took a toll on her, and that’s all I’ve ever got, even after all these years. But hey, if you want to pry, go right ahead, Barbara Walters.

Now I know I could have taken the shot, and I would have clicked to reason and done so had I been given just two more seconds to contemplate what I was doing. Surely, in just two more
seconds of thought, my lovely Sandra would have whispered in my ear, just by my memory of her. I was robbed of introspection, however, when in a flash he sped ahead. Lisa fell back in her seat, jostled off whatever game she was surely playing, and struggled to find her balance. And though I was relieved she was still alive, when they disappeared through the trees and over a ridge, I felt nothing but awful dread.

Boyd directed us left to a winding path through the woods. He said not one word to us, only led a compliant train under a canopy of cold trees. The sky was a darker gray with spots of black, a cancer mold in the pockets that were once a nice fighting blue.

At a clearing, a piling of granite slabs arched up in a circle. A quarry appeared, and suddenly my experience forced me to accept that whatever Boyd was about to show us would destroy any strain of relief at finding Lisa alive. Lola was motioning wildly, running like mad to the quarry’s edge. Ahead of me, she turned and screamed by the looks of the veins popping from her neck. But a weird whistling blocked her words, and then a whoosh, and suddenly sound returned, and the bubbling of water met my ears. I raced to meet Lola and Boyd at the quarry’s edge, only to see the Bug’s taillights sink under the black surface. Ripples of water splashed the granite walls, but oddly, in a slow way and without much force, as if the water was as thick as syrup and thus difficult to displace.

Lola and I kicked off our shoes, scuttling to a low spot that would provide an easier entrance.

“Now don’t, y’all. Don’t just go flopping in there, now,” Boyd said, halting our quick progress.

“What the hell are you talking about, chicken man?” Lola shouted, her forehead crinkled in pain. She pointed her gun at Boyd. I did too. Neither Lola nor I trusted anyone, usually. We only needed the smallest of reasons.

Boyd placed his rifle on the ground and his hands in the air. I lowered my weapon, relieved my chicken farmer was still a good man and all my senses intact.

“Now, now, I just mean, now. Be real careful and all,” he
rushed to say. “This here a mine they abandoned some forty years ago. Before this here place was a school an’ all. My daddy and Bobby’s daddy use-ta hunt this here property. They say old cars been thrown in there. Scrap metal. Junk. Y’all go jumpin’ in, you’re likely to get a leg tangled and drown yourself.”

Do you see how following a bureau procedure might have gotten me or Lola killed? Sometimes trusting the locals really can help. Yeah, well, tell the chiefs who run the Bureau about deviating from the game plan. About abandoning their damn metrics. Go ahead, tell them all about how instinct and heightened senses really should rule. See how far you get. And then come talk to me and Lola.

Sandra would probably stop me here with a gentle look of warning, a squint of her eye and a subtle tuck of her head. She’d place her rose-lotioned hand on my arm as her silent way of calming me. She’d say I’ve gotten a little heated and out of my regular character in remembering and retelling all of this. And she’d be right, as she typically is. Back then, before entering the quarry, I did try to find one humorous item about the scene around me. But then I thought, why would I even think it’s appropriate to consider comedy now? Perhaps I was simply stretching hard for Sandra to save me, feeling bereft at being so separated from her, out there, cold, diving into dark, trying to save a drowning girl and her baby. A chain of safety is what I wanted: Lisa saving her child, me saving Lisa, Sandra saving me. But Sandra wasn’t there. Sandra was never with me when I trudged into hell.

Cautiously, gingerly with testing feet, but as quick as I could, I stepped into the water. That’s when I noticed the rope tied to the side of the well.

I was buckled in. Brad was not. As we nosedived into the water, I calculated our fall at about a slight ten-degree angle. We were, thankfully, on the low end of the quarry. Across the way, the wall was about thirty feet high from surface to ledge; a fall from that end would have been much harder to take. Our fall was only about four feet. So really, it was more like we were driving down a boat ramp. Nevertheless, although short-lived, our descent was pretty fast, so we entered the water hard.

Only days before, my now dead but then alive captor informed that the quarry was forty feet deep in some spots, so I braced to keep falling and falling. But actually, we stopped short almost as soon as the car was submerged, hood first. All in, I’d say we were ten feet deep. No big deal, as far as I was concerned. Still, let’s not minimize the situation. People have drowned in as little as two inches of water. Exhibit A, the man in my cell.

The back end of the VW began to sink and we settled flat. We’d landed on a cliff in the quarry, and I could tell it was a cliff, because although we’d kicked up a ton of sediment and the water was murky, out before us the water was lighter on top, and darker below, much darker below. This meant, just ahead, the water dropped steeply to a deeper hell.

Also, something floated on a rope in front of us, and the rope seemed to extend further down from where the car rested. I knew exactly what was on that rope, even though the grainy water needed to settle for clearer view.

Beside me, Brad slumped on the steering wheel, passed out from hitting his head or out of sheer shock over his dumb self, I have no idea. Either way, I was thankful I didn’t have him thrashing about like a fool. Asset #48, Unconscious Brad.

Water began to rise in the car, creeping in the cracks in the doors and the up-rolled windows. My too-big Nikes were covered, next my shins. Rising, rising, rising to my hips. The water around us became clearer and clearer; I marveled at how fast this quarry recovered herself, as if all she had done was swallow yet another victim, another pile of metal, into her vast, dark stomach.
Ho-hum
, her liquid body seemed to groan.

The floor of the quarry was a junkyard: bent rebar, a child-size metal tractor flipped upside down, buckets, bricks, chains, and indeed, a chain link fence that crawled out of the depths in front of the car and onto the cliff, as though a long, curling tongue reaching out of a devil mouth.

The water kept washing in, like liquid being forced through closed teeth. Next, my hips were covered, my wide belly, my baby. I sat still.

Out before me, the picture was opaque, but she was visible, floating on the wakeboard, the rope harnessed around her cut torso. She shifted slightly in her underwater grave, tethered and buoyed in death, her hair slowly waving in the scant movement of the water. Together, her and her contraption appeared like a shriveled balloon, inexplicably flying high above a deserted car dealership, somewhere out West, somewhere where no one drives anymore, unless lost and out of gas. Waiting for vultures.

To my right, that man agent began crashing his flat hands on my passenger door window, pounding, pounding, pounding with his palms. Bam, bam, pounding, pounding, and so returned the school gunman, firing his gun. The pop, the screams, the banging, the ringing of his bullets through the classroom.

I fought my anger switch from turning on. I stayed the course; I sat still. I clutched my own fists, fist in fist. I turned to the agent, who remained furious at the window—his thuds dulled
by the water—and yanking on the door—his strain slowed by aquatic gravity. Of course all of his flailing was useless.

I held up my hand to stop him, fanning my palm against the glass. Because my head was still in breathable air, but the water up to my neck, I said, “The water has to equalize on both sides first. Then the pressure will be even and the door will open. Calm down!”

Doesn’t anyone remember anything from high school physics?

The water covered the roots of my hair. I unbuckled. I reached for Brad’s ring of keys, hanging from the ignition, and turned to the agent, who was foolishly still banging like a wild school shooter on my window.

Will this noise always haunt me? Will I forever be reminded of that day? Who can I hunt down to stop this infernal racket? Who can I torture with this sound?

I eyed the agent and raised my hands to gesture, “Well, what are you waiting for?”

He tried the handle once again and opened the door.

I swam ten feet to the top.

I followed Lisa to insure she got to the surface and into Lola’s arms. Once secure, I swam back down, and although weighed with reluctance, I snatched the driver from what should have been his watery grave. I pushed him to the surface, and Big Boyd yanked him out at the armpits. Only Boyd had the wherewithal to give him mouth to mouth, which, as a farmer, he somehow knew. I don’t know how. I really don’t care. I wouldn’t have put my lips on that cold fish.

The driver coughed into a fighting life, screaming and wailing and flopping on the granite rocks. Lola waltzed over and kicked him in a thigh. I was bent, laboring for my own breath, and standing close to Lisa.

“You’re going to wish we left you down there, scumbag. Keep your mouth shut. Keep your damn mouth shut before I yank every single one of your teeth out.” Twisting her head to Boyd, she added, “Chicken Man, hold his hands behind his back.”

“His name is Brad,” Lisa yelled over, calmly, but with definite distaste, as though “Brad” were a laughably embarrassing name.

“You have the right to remain silent…” I delivered the Miranda in a quick monotone, letting him understand how perturbed I was to have to read him rights he didn’t deserve. I had to do the Miranda, because Lola never would have. She cuffed him roughly, and because he wouldn’t stop wheezing for breath and whining about everything, she ripped a scarf from within her blouse and tied it tight around his mouth. Only a muffled groaning continued.

Boyd stepped back and raised his rifle at Brad.

“Ah, shit, Chicken Man, don’t shoot him. I like the sentiment, but we can’t shoot him now,” Lola said, thawing toward Boyd.

“Ma’am, I ain’t gonna shoot the bastard ‘less he try to run. And if he do, well, now, I need another trophy head for my wall,” Boyd said, never losing his gaze on Brad. “Hey there, boy, you like these here kiddies. Well now, know this, I’m the state’s record holder in single shot huntin’. Uh, huh. So’s, I sorta want you to run an’ all. Go ahead. Go ahead. Run like a rabbit.”

Lola smiled at Boyd. And I did too. He was now firmly part of our gang.

Lisa, standing with her arms crossed at the side of the quarry, leaning close to that rope I’d seen tied to the wall, lifted one side of her mouth, which I soon learned meant she smiled too. So, there we were, all four of us, a newfound band of vigilantes. At least we had the legitimacy of my and Lola’s badges for cover. I considered the oddness of the coincidence that Boyd should sell our kidnapper his van and this kidnapper should park said van on Boyd’s family property, miles away from where he’d purchased the vehicle. To others, it sure would sound suspicious on one end of the believability spectrum and impossible on the other. But I remembered too the words of the woman who witnessed the “Hoosier State” on the license plate and how she and her husband watched “Hoosiers” the night before. “Divine coincidence,” she’d said. Divine coincidence, indeed. It was as if she’d provided a clue or a premonition, perhaps a subtext to the whole investigation.