Sendoff for a Snitch (7 page)

No such luck. The front window on the passenger side rolled down, and a woman’s head and shoulders emerged. She inched herself up so she was sitting on the door, her legs still inside.

Was she going to climb out and try to wade out of the water?

A few cars had stopped at the edge of the water. The driver of one got out and shouted something to the woman, but I couldn’t pick up what he said, and I doubted she could, either, over the sound of the pounding rain and the rushing water.

I stepped over to the man. He had on an expensive overcoat. It was probably as soaked through as my grungy jacket, but had cost a lot more. He had to have a cell phone.

I leaned close and raised my voice. “She needs help. You gonna call 9-1-1?”

He looked stricken. “I tried. It’s busy.”

“9-1-1 is busy?” That shouldn’t happen.

The man shook his head. “I’ve tried a few times. I just can’t get a call through.” He looked toward the stalled vehicle. His voice rose even louder. “Oh my God! She’s got a kid in there.”

Sure enough, the woman was wrestling to shift something from inside the SUV and through the window. It was a toddler. She finally got him—or her—free of the window and hefted the child onto the roof. We couldn’t hear much, but he was struggling and crying. When the woman got him deposited up there, she ducked back inside and came up again, this time shoving an unwieldy car seat through the window and upward.

She finally got it heaved up on top and struggled herself to a half-standing position on the door frame.

The water was still rising, coming precariously close to the window opening.

Scrambling up on top of the SUV herself, she gathered the child and the car seat to her and looked pleadingly at us, panic in her eyes. The thin fabric of her shirt was plastered to her shoulders and breasts. Her hair hung in strands to her shoulders. She must be freezing.

Somebody had to do something to help the little family. Surely a first responder of some sort—police or fire rescue—would arrive any minute.

If one happened by. Or someone managed to get through to dispatch.

I glanced around, but aside from the apparently futile fumbling with a cell phone, no one was inclined to try to do anything to help.

There would be assistance just a few blocks away, where I’d been turned back. It shouldn’t take me more than five or ten minutes to hurry back there, and less for them to get here, since they’d be driving.

A big tree branch hurtled down the street, carried on the torrents of water, and slammed into the side of the vehicle, moving it a foot or so.

Ten minutes might be too long.

Chapter 7

I
tossed most of the stuff I was carrying onto a bench by the bus shelter and fished out the clotheslines I’d just bought. Maybe I could stretch a line from the side of the street to the SUV.

Stuffing the other clotheslines into my jacket’s voluminous patch pockets, I tied one of the clotheslines to the trunk of a sturdy tree by the side of the road, using a clove hitch, and tugged on it. The knot held, but the rope didn’t feel very sturdy at all.

Tying two others around the trunk of the tree, I backed away, braiding as I went.

It was only a couple of hundred feet from the sidewalk to the SUV, but it felt like a mile.

As I worked on the rope, the man put his cell phone in his pocket and stepped into the swirling water.

He stumbled, arms flailing, and almost went down. Stepping back up on the curb, he shrugged and shook his head. Then he looked toward me and the rope.

Another car pulled up. A big BMW, a luxury car. The window rolled down. “Shall I call 9-1-1?” a shrill female voice called.

“If you can get through,” the man shouted back.

She busied herself with her cell phone. “I’m getting a busy signal!”

The bystander nodded.

I’d backed to the edge of the water, holding my line tight as I braided it. I turned around and glanced at the woman and her children on top of the SUV. She sat on the roof, watching me intently as she clutched her toddler close to her with one hand and gripped the car seat with the other.

I reached the end of the first set of clotheslines and pulled the second three out of my jacket pocket. I tried to tie one of the new lengths onto the old one, but the rope slackened and my fingers slipped on the wet plastic.

The man stepped to the curb, but didn’t step off again. “Can I do anything to help?” he shouted.

Taking a few steps back toward the edge of the road and handing him the braided rope, I yelled, “Hold this taut so I can try to tie the ends.”

He took the rope, but looked at me doubtfully. “Will the knots hold?” he asked.

“I hope so.”

Skipper had taught me different kinds of knots, including the grapevine bend, which should work here. I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer to Skipper, if such an appeal could be called a prayer. I practically heard him saying, “You want to be real careful with your knots. If you tie them right, any weight you put on the whole thing will tighten them. But if you get them wrong, they can slip. You don’t want a knot to slip when you’re halfway down a wall or something.”

I didn’t want a knot that would slip now, either.

The man watched as my frozen fingers worked on the slippery ends. I could hardly feel the stiff plastic, but I forced my numb fingers to maneuver the ends into the correct formation.

When I’d gotten all three new ropes tied to the old ones, I pulled the whole thing as tight as I could, praying that this slippery line would hold.

It did.

The man raised his eyebrows. “That’s good,” he shouted. “Where’d you learn to tie knots like that. Boy Scout camp?”

In spite of the situation, I had to grin at the contrast of a Boy Scout camp vs. the prison cell where I had really learned to tie knots. I shook my head and yelled, “Nope,” as I gave the whole assembly a final hard tug.

“Then you must have been a sailor,” the man persisted.

Ever since Skipper, that idea had appealed to me. But the fact that I was facing close to another twenty years on parole, when I wasn’t supposed to leave the state, might put a crimp in any plans for that career.

I just shook my head and kept backing into the water, manipulating the clotheslines.

The water rose over my knees. If I’d thought I couldn’t get any wetter, I was wrong.

“Take off your jacket and boots,” the man called. “They’ll weigh you down. And if you fall…” He didn’t complete that uncomfortable thought.

He was right.

But I couldn’t see walking out there without the protection the boots gave my feet. I stripped off the jacket and tossed it over to him.

He put it on the bench with the rest of my stuff.

I backed toward the SUV. After the swirling water got over my hips, I had trouble staying on my feet. When it got to my waist, it was all I could do to stand upright. The water was now circling in a large swirling, surprisingly powerful current as torrents flowed down the streets and into the underpass.

Taking what line I had left, I passed the rope through the open windows and tried to make a clove hitch around doorframes. I didn’t have quite enough rope, and my hands were so cold I wasn’t sure I was getting the ends of the rope where I needed them to be.

When I let go, the line wasn’t as taut as I would have liked. But when I pulled hard on it, it held.

I turned to face the frightened face of the woman on top of the SUV.

“You wanna give me one of the kids?” I hollered.

“Will the rope hold?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I sure hope so.”

As she hesitated, the vehicle lurched a few inches in the water, tightening the line.

I didn’t blame her for not trusting me. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself. I said, “Or I can stay here with one kid while you take the other one.”

That didn’t seem like as good an idea. She was tiny. I wasn’t huge—a little over six foot and a hundred and eighty pounds—but I’d been doing physical work, and those were pretty solid pounds.

She closed her eyes for a minute, then handed down the struggling toddler.

I turned him so he was facing me and clutched him to my chest with one hand, while I hung onto the rope with the other. “Put your legs around my waist and your arms around my neck,” I told him.

He was frightened and sobbing, but he did what I told him.

“Now hang on tight.” I began the trip through the water back to the sidewalk.

With the rope to hang onto, it was easier to make it to the sidewalk than it had been to get out to the SUV, even with the extra weight of the kid hanging on to me.

A floating plastic recycling bin swept toward us. I turned my back to shield the kid and braced myself. It bounced off my back and continued on its way. It didn’t knock me over, but I’d have a nasty bruise there.

The man held his arms out for the kid as soon as I got close enough for him to reach. The kid didn’t want to let go of me, but I moved in next to the curb and let the man grab him. I had to pry his arms from around my neck.

I turned around and made my way out to the SUV again without waiting to see what they were going to do with the kid. I hoped someone had a dry blanket and enough sense to take his wet clothes off, wrap him in it, and put him in a car out of the rain.

The woman was kneeling on the edge of the SUV’s roof when I got back out. She handed me the car seat. A tiny figure in a pink hooded outfit wailed, arms thrashing. “Try to keep her out of the water,” the woman said.

What did she think I was going to do? Dunk the car seat in the water to see if it floated? I hefted it onto my shoulder. The baby continued to scream. I didn’t blame her in the least. I felt like screaming myself.

“You need to climb down and come along behind me,” I shouted to the woman over the noise of the baby and the rushing water.

She looked frightened and shook her head. “The rope might not hold!”

She had a point.

“Okay,” I shouted back. “As soon I get to the edge, you get down and follow.”

“I can’t,” she wailed.

Jeez. I was making two trips with the kids, and she wouldn’t even try to get herself over there? The water was getting deeper, lapping at the roof of the SUV. But we didn’t have time to argue about it now. I turned and waded toward the sidewalk.

When I got to the sidewalk again, the man stepped out and reached for the car seat. I couldn’t see who had the toddler, but I wasn’t about to waste time worrying about it.

Another car, a little green one, pulled up to the edge of the water. I hoped it was someone who could help. I was getting awfully tired, and I just wanted to close my eyes for a minute and take a rest. I was just coherent enough to realize what a mistake that would be.

As I looked toward the new arrival, the line jerked in my hand and I heard a noise behind me. The man, baby and car seat still in his hands, gasped and stared.

The SUV had lurched again, this time moving noticeably. It was listing slightly to one side.

The mother, still stranded, threw herself down flat on the roof. She made no effort to climb down to the rope and make her way to where we stood.

The hell with her. She was the one who’d driven into the flood, she could get herself out. I was so cold. Besides, I might not be able to make a third trip without falling from exhaustion.

The man looked at me doubtfully. “You gonna go get her, too?”

I just looked at him.

“She doesn’t look like she can make it,” he said. “She’s crying.”

Forcing myself to look at the SUV again, I had to admit he was right. She was just lying there, crying.

The vehicle slipped a few feet sideways and tilted further.

With a resentful glance at the small crowd gathered, I plunged back into the flood. I made my way back to the SUV. She got to her knees at the edge of the roof, still crying.

“Come on,” I said as she slipped into the water toward me. “Hang onto me the way the kid did. Arms around my neck and legs around my waist.”

She clung to me, trembling. Under ordinary circumstances, I’d have been pretty uncomfortable with a woman clinging to me like that, but this wasn’t an ordinary situation. With one hand, I kept my grip on the rope and put the other hand under her bottom. She had enough sense to lean into me.

The line slackened, then pulled taut again. I looked over my shoulder at the SUV. It was starting to float. A big branch crashed into it. It lurched and practically yanked the rope from my hand.

Turning back to face the group watching, I clung to the rope and headed toward the sidewalk.

When we were almost there, the rope slacked in my hand, then sagged and began to twist around my leg. I tried to shake it off, but almost lost my footing.

I let go of the rope and shoved it away from me as best I could. I changed my course to a diagonal toward the sidewalk and away from the now-useless rope.

The woman clung to me, and I could feel her shudder as she sobbed.

A flash of light almost blinded me, followed by another and another.

Anxious hands reached for the woman, pulling her up onto the wet concrete of the sidewalk.

I tried to keep going, but my knees sagged and my feet refused to move. I looked up at the source of the light flashes.

A reporter for the
Rothsburg Register
, the local newspaper. Carissa something. She’d written articles about me before, none of them flattering. With pictures that made me look like a deranged, violent fool. I couldn’t worry about what she’d come up with this time. At least, not now.

As I swayed on my feet, my boots feeling too heavy to lift enough to clear the curb, the thought occurred to me that she could have held out a hand to help me up onto the sidewalk, but she was too intent on taking pictures. And she stood in the way of anyone else helping.

Finally, the man shoved her aside. He grabbed my shirt and pulled me forward.

I stumbled on the curb and went to my knees. I was so cold. And tired. If I could just lie down for a little while and rest, even in this rain, maybe in a little while, I would feel well enough to get up and see if I could find someplace out of the weather.

Before I could act on that thought and collapse, someone grabbed my arm. “Can you stand up?”

Dumbly, I nodded and struggled to my feet, trying to keep upright by leaning heavily on the person’s shoulder.

“How’re the kids?’ I mumbled. If for some reason they weren’t all right, this whole thing would have been a waste.

The person—a woman—said, “They should be fine. Howard is taking them to the hospital. Calling 9-1-1 still doesn’t work.
It’s a good thing you got everyone when you did. Look at the SUV.”

My head was heavy and wanted to fall to my chest, but I lifted my head to look. The vehicle had rolled over on its side and seemed to be floating in the swirling water.

“I think we should get you to the hospital, too.”

“No! I’ll be fine.” I struggled to take my weight off the woman’s shoulder and stand up straight. I managed, but I could tell I was teetering uncertainly.

“Why not?” she asked.

I searched my foggy brain for the reasons it seemed like such a bad idea. Partly the cost—I had insurance through my job, but the co-pay would be hefty. I hated hospitals. And if anyone, like the cops, were looking for me, I’d be easy to find.

Why would the cops be looking me? I seemed to think they might be looking for me, but I couldn’t remember why. Had I done something recently? My mind was blanking.

But I wasn’t about to say that to the woman who was helping me. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. Mistake. I would have fallen over if she hadn’t caught me.

“Why not?” she repeated. “You’re freezing, and you might be hurt.”

I found words surprisingly hard to form and harder to say loud enough so she could hear me over the rush of the water. “I’m not really hurt. But I am cold. And tired. I just need to find someplace to warm up and rest.”

“You’re slurring your words. You probably have hypothermia. I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

“No. Too expensive.”

She made a tsking sound. “It’s a bargain next to dying or getting really sick and having to stay in the hospital instead of just going to the emergency room.”

I knew she was right about that. But the last thing I wanted was anybody asking questions while I was this confused and vulnerable. I said, “They’re probably overwhelmed by more serious cases. And what would they do anyhow besides give me someplace warm and dry to get some sleep?”

“You might be right,” she conceded. “Come on. I’ll take you to my house.”

“Your house?” Why would someone I didn’t know want to take me to her house? And did I have an obligation to tell her I was on parole? For murder? “I think there’s a shelter at the high school. You could give me a ride there.”

She steered me toward her car, the BMW. “The shelter is probably just as overcrowded as the hospital. And they wouldn’t take you in this shape. They’d send you to the hospital. It’s either my house or the hospital. Come on.”

I took a few steps in the direction she had aimed me. What was I forgetting? I stopped. My jacket and other clothes. “I need to get my jacket and stuff.”

“It’s right over there on the bench. You get in the car, and I’ll go get that.”

I was too tired to argue with her. She opened the car door, and I eased myself into the passenger seat. I ran my hand over the soft leather of the seat.

“I’m all wet. I’m gonna ruin your seats,” I said.

“Nonsense,” she answered.

The inside of the car was warmer, and it wasn’t raining in there. I leaned my head back against the headrest. I wondered what time Kelly would be home and if I could make it over to her place. Still too early. I didn’t really want her to arrive home and find me passed out on her front porch.

Maybe the shelter in the high school would take me. They’d have dry clothes and blankets. Probably a place I could lie down. I was just cold. And tired.

My hands were shaking violently. All of me was shivering uncontrollably. Maybe I should be going to the hospital.

Maybe I just didn’t care that much what happened to me. My eyes closed.

The car shook as someone yanked open a back door and then slammed it shut. The driver’s side door opened, and the woman climbed in.

“I really ought to try the shelter at the high school,” I said. My teeth were chattering, and the words came out weird.

The woman started the car. Warmth flowed out of the heating vents. I thought about moving my hands nearer to them, but I didn’t have the strength.