Missouri Loves Company (Rip Lane Book 1) (7 page)

CHAPTER 22

I
F
P
LAN
A fails, move on to Plan B.

My next option was to find the trunk release cable. It connects the trunk lock to a trunk release located near the driver’s seat. Tugging on the cable could pop open the trunk.

I hoped the car was equipped with one.

What I needed were pliers. They could grip cable better than bare hands. There were probably pliers in the compartment under the trunk floor. But I was lying on top of the compartment, so there was no way to get it open. Unless I levitated like Yoda. I tried. The force was not with me.

On the driver’s side of the trunk I began to feel around for the trunk release cable. I pulled up carpet, popped off cardboard panels. Snaking from the hinge area was a tangle of cables and wires. I tugged on them. The trunk did not pop open.

Next I searched the area where the center of the trunk lid meets the lock assembly. I did not find the trunk release cable.

Options were running out.

Time was running out.

Fat drops of sweat ran down my face, stinging my eyes, blurring my vision. It was the least of my concerns.

Of more importance was my escape plan. What should I do once I got the trunk open? I knew that my first reaction would be to jump out of the speeding vehicle. But then I would roll into the oncoming traffic and probably get pancaked by a Mack truck. Nevertheless my adrenaline would tell me to jump. And so would my ex-wife. Which was why I never listened to either.

I decided that the best escape plan would require my patience. If I actually got the trunk open, I would not jump out right away. I would wait for the car to slow down. Which it would do at a stop signal, or in a school zone, or through a residential neighborhood.

I had been unable to find either an emergency trunk release or a trunk release cable. My next option was to pry open the trunk latch.

First I had to find it. Which I managed to do despite darkness and bound hands. I fiddled with the trunk latch. Pulled it from side to side. Pressed my thumb on it while simultaneously pressing up on the trunk lid. Nothing worked. I could not pry it open. I stopped trying.

I decided to push out one of the brake lights. My plan was to signal motorists for help by sticking my hand out through the hole. But pushing out the light proved to be much more difficult than I had anticipated. Kicking it out would probably work, but it would be close to impossible to maneuver myself into a kicking position. And so what I did was rip out the wires. I figured maybe a state trooper would stop the car for having a faulty brake light.

Minutes passed.

No state trooper came to my rescue.

But I felt the car slowing.

It made a turn.

Tires crunched on gravel.

The car radio came on. Full blast. An AC/DC song told me I was on the highway to hell. Which I already knew.

The car did not stop. It kept on going. Hell was apparently down the road a bit.

The shock absorbers were no match for the gravel. I bounced in the trunk like popcorn in a popper.

Finally the car stopped.

There was movement from inside.

Car doors slammed.

The car radio was loud. It drowned out all other sounds. I wanted to hear my abductors talking. I wanted to hear their footsteps. All I could hear was AC/DC singing about dirty deeds.

The trunk lid opened.

Harsh sunlight blinded me. I blinked and squinted.

Hands seized my limbs and yanked me from the trunk. My face landed in the dirt and my world went sideways. Boots hammered my back, my side, my chest. It sounded like a buffalo stampede. It got louder when they beat me with baseball bats.

Then it got quiet for a moment.

Car doors slammed.

Tires crunched on gravel.

They left me for dead.

CHAPTER 23

“W
HERE AM
I?”

“You’re in the hospital, Rip.”

It was Sally Moran, the woman who lived in the rusty travel trailer that was parked beside my motor home at S’mores and Snores Campground. Sally was standing at my bedside, looking down on me. Her husband, the lawyer, was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s Harry?”

“Back at the campground. He’s organizing his papers. He thinks you might want to file a lawsuit against your attackers.”

“I don’t plan to sue them.,” I said. “I plan to
pur
sue them.”

“What happened to you? Do you remember?”

“Like it was yesterday.”

“It
was
yesterday.”

“Oh. How long have I been unconscious?”

“Doctor says twelve hours or so.”

“Last thing I remember’s getting beat up. How’d I get here?”

“According to the paramedics you crawled all the way through a cornfield until you reached a road. A passing car stopped to help. The driver called for an ambulance.”

“A good Samaritan?”

“A good Samaritan.”

“Who was it?”

“Nobody knows. She was gone when the paramedics arrived. I guess she didn’t want to be involved any further.”

“I know how that goes.”

“Yeah, you’re lucky to be alive.”

“How do I look, Sally?”

She frowned.

“That bad, huh?”

A nurse came into the room. He checked the IV taped to my hand. He checked my chart. He looked at me without expression, the way a medical student looks at a cadaver.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Lane.”

“Like I was kicked and beaten by four guys.”

He patted my arm, nodded sympathetically, and left the room.

Through the open doorway I could see a doctor in blue scrubs. Four years of medical school and you get to wear pajamas to work. Seems worth it.

“How’d you know I was in the hospital, Sally?”

“Harry told me. He was soliciting clients at the hospital when your ambulance arrived. He saw them wheeling you into the emergency room.”

“Harry get any new clients?”

“He was hoping you were one.”

I nodded. It made my neck hurt.

“Thanks for coming, Sally. It’s nice having a visitor.”

She tossed her hair, parted her lips.

“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away,” she said.

My face felt flushed. It was probably pink with embarrassment, and brown with facial stubble, and black and blue with bruises. As multicolored as oil on wet pavement.

I didn’t expect to have any other hospital visitors—except maybe Harry. I considered contacting my parents to let them know what had happened to me, but then thought better of it. No point in having them worry. They had done enough of that during the twenty-five years I worked as a marshal. And besides it wasn’t like I had been shot, stabbed, or killed.

Sally touched my arm.

“Rip, I almost forgot to tell you. You know that mechanic works at the campground?”

“You mean Bob?”

“Bob, yeah, that’s the guy. He found your motorcycle parked on the side of the road. Your taillight was busted out. So Bob hauled your motorcycle back to the campground and fixed the taillight.”

“Two good Samaritans in one day? How could I get any luckier?”

“I can think of a way,” Sally said, and winked at me.

I was in no condition to flirt back with her. Just to wink would have been painful.

Sally stayed and talked to me for a while. Mostly she talked and I listened. It was nice. But then I started to have trouble keeping my eyes open. My energy was low.

“You look tired,” Sally said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to leave now so you can get some rest.”

I waved weakly and then drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER 24

W
HEN
I
GOT
out of the hospital I was on crutches. I hobbled like an old geezer, with my body bent forward. It seemed as if my height had shrunk from six feet two all the way down to three feet one. My face was stitched up like Frankenstein, my chest was wrapped up like a mummy, and my hair had grown out like a werewolf.

It didn’t matter to Sally. Nothing could have kept her from taking care of me, not even my assurance that I could manage on my own. She told me it was no inconvenience, that her RV was only feet away from mine, and that she liked helping people out.

I wasn’t sure how her husband felt about it. Some husbands get jealous when I’m around their wives. Harry seemed to be okay with it. He wasn’t a bad guy—for a lawyer.

Sally cooked meals for me, did my laundry, kept me company. We watched movies together. Inspirational movies.
Rocky
.
The Karate Kid
.
Payback
.

I slept a lot. Took a lot of naps. Read some crime novels.

After a few days of recovery I started to go for some short walks outside. I could walk without the crutches, though not without half dragging my leg.

One cool morning, rain misting down, I decided to try some bodyweight training. I dropped to the grass and started to do push-ups. I managed to do ten before I collapsed.

Normally I can do sixty. At least. When I was younger I could do a hundred.

I lay still for a long moment. Then I tried again.

My arms trembled, my jaw muscles pulsed. Pain surged through my battered body. I kept at it. Yet all I accomplished was to rise a few inches from the ground. Which was nothing. I could have done that without even using my hands—just by mentally undressing Scarlett Johansson.

I took a minute to hum the theme to
Rocky
. Then I tried to do some more push-ups. I did three of them. It took a lot of grunting and straining to do it.

“The hell’s all that grunting for?” a voice said to me.

It was a man who had to be in his eighties. Nineties, maybe. His hair was so white and his skin so tan that he looked like a photo negative. On his leathery forearm was a Marine Corps tattoo. The guy reminded me of a drill sergeant.

I grunted to my feet.

“Son, you got more bruises than an overripe banana,” the aged man told me. “What happened? You get run over by a steamroller?”

“I did. But at least I left a dent in it.”

“Along with a lot of your skin.”

“I’m Rip.”

“Lance. Pleasure to meet you.”

“You remind me of one of my mentors, Lance.”

“Good-looking guy, huh?”

“That sounds like something he’d say.”

Lance chuckled.

“Bet you saw a lot of the world,” I said, pointing to his Marine Corps tattoo.

“I’ve seen more places than Christopher Columbus and Anthony Bourdain combined.”

“Favorite place?”

“Okinawa.”

I nodded.

“You a military man, Rip?”

“Law enforcement.”

“Active?”

“Retired.”

“Me too, believe it or not.”

I believed him.

“That’s my truck camper over there,” he said. “The Arctic Fox.”

“Nice. You like it?”

“Not as much as the luxury motor home I used to own. But I needed to downsize after my wife died. The motor home was just too damn big for one person.”

“Sorry about your wife.”

“Happened six months ago. Ever since then I’ve been revisiting our favorite spots around the country. At each location I scatter some of her ashes.”

His eyes stared at a misty image from his past. After a moment he shook his head and shrugged the memory away.

“Anyway,” he said, “my Arctic Fox gets me where I want to go.”

The rain had stopped but the air was still damp. Some people were starting to come out of their RVs to walk their dogs. The dogs, panting and grinning, seemed happy. One kept wagging his whole rear end back and forth.

Lance dropped to the ground and ripped through twenty push-ups. Then he sprang back to his feet and grinned at me.

“Drop and give me twenty push-ups,” he said.

I did it.

CHAPTER 25

N
OT FAR FROM
S’mores and Snores Campground stood an abandoned building. Plywood covered the windows, graffiti covered the walls, weeds covered the ground. I had discovered the building about a week after I got out of the hospital.

Each morning I would walk there and enter through a doorless entranceway. I would go to the stairs and climb as many flights as I could. It was dim inside the building, but not too dim to see.

The first day was rough on my battered legs. I wanted to run up the stairs like a deer but I could only waddle like a penguin.

The second day wasn’t much better. I had to stop on the third flight of steps. My legs throbbed and my breathing came in painful gasps. I sat down on a step and watched sweat pool at my feet for a while. Then I went up another flight. Climbing to the fourth flight was like climbing Mount Everest, but with a less spectacular view at the peak.

It was a tall building. Ten stories. Twenty flights of steps. By the ninth day I could make it as far as the tenth flight. Halfway to the top. It was progress.

Later that evening I saw Lance again. He had built a little campfire at the edge of the lake that lay in the middle of the campground, and he was sitting there roasting hot dogs on a long stick. The stars were reflected in the lake.

“Where can a man get a hot dog around here?” I said.

“I don’t mind sharing my hot dogs with you,” Lance said, “but the potato salad’s all mine.”

“You won’t get any argument out of me.”

“Here, take that one on the end of the stick.”

“Thanks.”

“Mustard and buns are right over there.”

“No onions?”

“They give me gas.”

“I wouldn’t want you blowing out the fire.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Nothing tastes better than food cooked on a campfire. Not food cooked at home. Not food cooked in a restaurant. Maybe because the smoke adds flavor. Or maybe because the food is eaten farther away from civilization.

“Before I met my wife,” Lance said, “there was a woman I was madly in love with. A beautiful woman. Classy. Elegant. We dated for a long time. I don’t know what she saw in me, except that I loved her.”

“But you didn’t marry her,” I said.

“No. Her older brother ran me off. He didn’t like me for some reason, and didn’t want me around his sister. I couldn’t stand being apart from her. I joined the Marines to escape the pain.”

“The pain go away?”

“Never.”

Lance poked his stick at the embers of the fire. Red sparks flew skyward and floated off with a gentle wisp of wind.

“You ever see her again?”

“Only in my dreams.”

I nodded.

“She still alive?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“You want me to find out for you?”

Lance looked up from the fire and stared at me.

“I don’t know where she’d be living now.”

“Doesn’t matter. I know how to find people. I was a deputy U.S. marshal.”

Lance stared at the glowing embers for a long time. He looked like he was giving it a lot of thought. Finally his eyes came back to me.

“Okay,” he said. “I want you to find her, see if she’s still alive.”

I nodded.

“Tell me more about her.”

He did.