Moon Underfoot (48 page)

“Well, we’ll keep him cuffed even though the hospital hates having their patients handcuffed. We’ll tell ’em about this dude.”

“I promise you, cuffed is the only way to travel with this guy.”

“Gotcha. You’re comin’ with us, aren’t you?” she asked, feeling uncomfortable about being in the back with such a notorious criminal.

“Yeah, I guess so. I sure hate leaving my buddy out there, but I gotta follow protocol,” the trooper answered.

The trooper explained the situation to a young deputy who had just arrived and then asked him to keep an eye on his cruiser until he returned.

Before loading Moon Pie into the ambulance, the state trooper bent to his face and said, “Hey, Moon Pie? Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?”

Moon Pie didn’t move. The two medics and the deputy watched curiously.

“Moon? Open your eyes!”

Moon Pie barely opened them, and the state trooper leaned in until the front brim of his hat almost touched Moon Pie’s face. He said, “I got your sorry, gutshot ass, and I’m gonna stay right beside you.”

As the trooper stood, blocking the view of the medics, he put his hand on Moon Pie’s wound and squeezed. “Is that where it hurts?”

Moon Pie let out a quick whimper and then passed out.

“We really should go,” the female medic said awkwardly.

She and her partner loaded the gurney into the ambulance, and the decorated Mississippi state trooper climbed in too.

The trooper had a deep satisfaction, knowing that, most likely, the last thing the racist, white-trash thug would ever see was a black state trooper smiling down at him.

M
ORGAN AND KATY
rode in the backseat of a black-and-white West Point police cruiser, its blue lights flashing as they sped east on Highway 50. Morgan held Katy’s hand. Katy still hadn’t uttered a word for the last two hours. Tears were steadily pouring down their cheeks.

When they heard the game warden alerting county dispatch that he had Jake, Morgan’s heart jumped for joy, but then hearing that Jake was unconscious scared her. She cradled Katy and prayed for Jake.

Morgan noticed that the young officer driving had both hands on the steering wheel, so she raised her head enough to see the speedometer read eighty. On the bridge, high over the Tombigbee River, she glanced out the window to see a barge pushing downriver with its powerful spotlight like a giant white laser cutting the fog over the black water.

The young officer nervously cleared his throat. “They found your husband up the river…a few miles that way,” he said with a tilt of his head to the left, never taking his hands from the steering wheel or his eyes from the road.

Morgan looked into the gloomy, drizzly darkness. She could see the outline of the wilderness—giant skeletons of dead trees
standing in the flooded sloughs like huge, silent witnesses to hundreds of years of life and death in the swamp.

“How long until we get there?”

“Ten, maybe twelve minutes at the outside. I’m drivin’ as fast as I can. The roads are really slick.”

Morgan considered what she was about to see. She wondered what Jake had been through and about its toll on him. She considered how to protect Katy from seeing her dad, if his injuries were visible. Morgan tried to be strong as she tightly squeezed Katy and again silently prayed for their small but growing family.

T
HE GAME WARDEN
drove like a bat out of hell down the muddy road. The truck’s heater was blasting on high, and the windows were fogging quicker than he could wipe them off.

“Hang in there, Jake…you oughta be feeling warmer soon!” he commented as he wiped the windshield.

“Unit Twenty-Two to base. What’s the ETA of my ambulance?”

“Stand by, Twenty-Two,” she responded immediately. “Unit Twenty-Two, they report four minutes.”

“Roger that.”

He could not imagine what Jake had been through tonight. Jake’s legs scared him. He had never seen skin so dark from blood and wondered how any could have been left for his brain to function. He feared the worst.

When his truck rounded the last curve on the remote property before the gate, he could see Jake’s truck’s lights and several other vehicles. Knowing there were others to help was a huge relief. He passed Jake’s truck in the road and slid to a stop just outside the gate, where multiple police cars were parked, with lights flashing. Before he could open his door, five officers were there to help.

“The ambulance will be here any minute!” one shouted.

“What can we do?” another asked.

He looked at Jake, still unconscious, and said, “I need dry blankets!”

The two deputies immediately sprinted to their cars.

The warden wiped sweat from his face and then turned to look in the back of his truck at the two wet rescuers, who were now trying to stand. He could see them shivering.

The warden got out of his truck and yelled, “I need to get these guys warm and dry too!” He heard the ambulance. It cut its siren when it got close. He grabbed a deputy and said, “Get those guys warmed up, but don’t let ’em out of your sight. I’ve got a lot of questions for them, and I don’t want to lose ’em.”

“Do I need to cuff ’em?” asked the deputy.

The warden looked at the two men who had just risked their own lives to save Jake. They were hiding something, but he didn’t think they were a threat at this point. They were sitting opposite one another on the wheel wells, their heads in their hands, shaking.

“No. But watch ’em,” he said, only loud enough for the deputy to hear.

The warden turned to Trance and Yancey. “Look, guys, I don’t know who y’all are yet, or even why you were back there in the first place, but I wanna thank you for what y’all did. You saved that man’s life, and that means a lot to me.”

Being around so many cops terrified the two grave robbers, and they were nearly frozen, so all they could muster were slight nods.

“One of these deputies will take y’all to the hospital. We’ll talk there.”

“Oh, that’s okay. We’re fine, Officer. We can walk from here,” Trance instantly replied and stood. Yancey nodded his agreement.

The warden, expecting something like this, said, “I’m sorry, fellas, but y’all don’t have a choice.”

When the warden turned around, the gurney was quickly being unloaded from the ambulance. He climbed inside his truck to help.

“Watch his legs. They’re bluish black with blood, and the left one’s broken.”

The medics looked up, wanting a further explanation as they opened the blanket to examine Jake’s legs.

“He’s been stuck in a pipe full of running water. I think it sucked all the blood down into them.”

The medics carefully laid Jake on the gurney. They did a quick assessment. His pulse and respiration were extremely low; the color of his face was pale, verging on blue and puffy. The biggest concerns were his legs and that he was unconscious.

“His legs can’t get above his heart. We gotta move, stat!” one medic said to the other. “Let’s roll!”

As they loaded Jake into the back of the ambulance, the warden heard one say that the electric blanket was already warm.

“You riding?” a paramedic asked the warden.

It would be just as easy to follow in his truck, but the warden really wanted to stay with Jake. An older deputy understood immediately and spoke up, “Go. I’ll bring your truck.”

The game warden, dripping wet, climbed into the back of the ambulance, the doors slamming shut behind him. Through the windows, the ominous blue lights filling the cold night air contrasted with the stark white, warm, sterile inside of the ambulance. He looked down at Jake’s colorless face. His head rocked in rhythm to the swaying of the big van as the driver sped to the hospital.

The warden tried to warm his hands as he watched the young medic, who looked barely old enough to shave, deftly start an IV in Jake’s left arm.

“Hang in there, Jake!” was all that the warden could think to say.

L
EVI WAS WAITING
for Moon Pie outside the Baptist Hospital Emergency Department in Columbus when an ambulance rolled in. He never heard a siren, but the flashing red lights set the stage for bad news for someone. Two orderlies hurried out to help. Levi overheard one of them say that it was a DOA, a gunshot victim from a swampy area north of town.

That got Levi’s attention. He was expecting Moon Pie to drive up, not ride up in the back of an ambulance. He asked, “Huntin’ accident?”

The orderlies didn’t realize anyone could overhear them. They exchanged glances, wondering who this guy was.

“I’m just wondering if it was a hunting accident.”

Levi was dressed respectably and looked like any normal citizen who might be anxiously waiting in the ER.

“I don’t think so,” one replied slowly.

The other orderly crossed his forearms, making an X, signaling the driver to stop backing up.

Levi said thanks and then stood silently as the orderly opened the back doors. The first thing Levi saw was a state trooper sitting inside. No one seemed to be in a rush, and when the gurney and the patient were pulled out, he immediately understood.
Whoever was on the gurney was completely covered in blood, as was the formerly white sheet covering the person’s head.

Levi sensed that it was Moon Pie, which wasn’t a surprise. He had always lived on the edge, cheating death more times than Levi could count, but he needed to know for certain that this was his half brother.

Levi exhaled deeply and then approached the medics as they wheeled the body inside. At the last moment, he decided not to ask any more questions that could raise suspicions about him.

“Car accident?” he asked the trooper instead.

“I’m sorry, sir. We can’t give out any information,” the state trooper replied politely.

Levi trailed several feet behind the covered gurney. He watched a young doctor in scrubs hurry to the side of the deceased. He raised the sheet, did a quick examination of the body, and pronounced the victim dead at 11:23 p.m. He pulled the sheet back over the body and pointed down the hall.

From Levi’s vantage point, he clearly saw Moon Pie’s face. His half brother was dead. He looked around the empty ER and then slowly, calmly stepped though the exit next to the automated doors.

As Levi walked to his truck, he realized that he didn’t feel anguish or sorrow. Moon Pie had tormented him all of his life. Ethan “Moon Pie” Daniels was not a good person, and Levi had allowed Moon Pie to lead him down many a wrong road from an early age.

Levi experienced something liberating from Moon Pie’s death, and it occurred with perfect timing. Levi had been at a crossroads and needed guidance or a sign. Moon Pie’s death was one or both. He needed to find out who had killed him.

He glanced back at the hospital. The state trooper was staring at him through the glass door.