The Cypress House (54 page)

    There
was no time for recognition or understanding—the bullet entered his back and
blew through his chest and drove him forward. He pulled the trigger on the
Springfield as he fell, an instinctive move, and his final bullet merely blew
out the window of the Ford, taking Arlen's skeleton image with it. Then the
rifle was out of his hands and he was down on the boards of the bridge.

    He tried
to move, tried to hide, just as any animal in its last moments will. He made it
as far as the rail on the north side, thinking he could slip off the bridge and
into the creek, and then he knew it was hopeless and he stopped moving and
turned back to see Solomon Wade standing before him.

    
Under
the bridge, he thought. He hid under the bridge, but on the opposite side of
his car. Just where he should have been. Just where you should have thought to
look
.

    It
didn't matter now. Arlen's blood was running freely across the boards, and Wade
was walking toward him with a pistol in his hand. He wore that white Panama
hat, rain shedding off its brim. He smiled when his eyes met Arlen's.

    "You
liked that trick with my sheriff, did you?" he said. "Hanging him up
to greet me. You'll wish you hadn't done that."

    Arlen
didn't answer. The pain was radiant right now, and his blood looked very bright
on the worn planks of the bridge.

    "Don't
you go so easy," Wade said. "Wanted to drop you, not kill you easy.
You're going to beg me for another shot. Beg."

    Wade
had never so much as turned to glance back at the sheriff's car. The last lobe
of Arlen's numb brain that retained capacity for thought registered that and
whispered,
Good. He doesn't know. He'll drive right past Paul without a
look.

    Wade
stepped over Arlen and picked up the Springfield. He hefted it, gave it one
curious glance, and then tossed it over the bridge and into the creek.

    "Your
mistake," he said, "was in doubting my reach. You're not the first
man to have schemed against Solomon Wade. Won't be the last, I'm certain. But
you know what? I'm still standing now, and you're down there choking on your
own blood. That's how it goes. That's always how it will go."

    Wade
shoved his pistol into his coat pocket and then withdrew a knife. It had a
six-inch blade with a hook at the end, the sort you used for gutting deer. When
Arlen saw it, he closed his eyes.

    
Picture
Paul,
he told himself
, picture him driving fast and far. Driving north. Chasing
the coast as far as he can go, all the way to Maine. Rebecca's waiting there.
He can find her
.

    Wade
knelt beside him, said, "No, no, no. You stay awake, tough boy. You stay
awake for this."

    
You
should have told Paul the town,
Arlen thought sadly
. The place where
she's going. Camden. You should have told him, so they could find each other
.

    Wade
registered the sound of the engine before Arlen did. One second he was kneeling
over Arlen's body with the knife in his hand, and the next he was gone, on his
feet. The sound was clear in Arlen's ears, but it had no meaning, not right
away. Then he got it. A car. Coming this way, and coming fast.

    
No,
he thought, anguished, and tried to lift his head
. No, Paul, damn it,
all you had to do was wait
...

    The
sheriff's car barreled on toward them, the engine howling and the tires
spraying mud as it neared the bridge. Solomon Wade took one step back, into the
center of the bridge, cleared the pistol from his belt, and began to pull the
trigger.

    Arlen
opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out was blood.

    Wade
looked entirely calm as he worked the trigger. Looked calm for his first shot,
and his second, and his third, and only then, when the front wheels of the
sheriff's car hit the bridge with a bang, did his face show any concern. He
fired once more, and then the trigger clicked on empty, and he turned to run.
The edge of the bridge, and the safety on either side of it, was three steps
away.

    He
made two of them.

    The
car missed Arlen, stretched on his side beneath the rail, by maybe a foot. It
might have been less. It did not miss Solomon Wade.

    He
was diving to his left when the hood caught him. The impact threw him into the
air as the sheriff's car came to a squealing stop with its front wheels on the
road and its back still on the bridge. The side of Wade's head smacked the top
of the windshield and spun him sideways, and he landed on the bridge near
Arlen.

    The
door opened and Paul ran out of the car with the pistol in his hand. He went to
Arlen first, but Arlen called him off. There was blood in his mouth when he
spoke, but he got the words out.

    "Shoot
him."

    Paul
turned and looked down at the man he'd just hit. Solomon Wade's neck seemed to
point in two directions at once, and the side of his face was a fractured,
bleeding mess.

    "He's
dead," Paul said.

    "Shoot
him," Arlen said again, and blood dripped from his lips.

    Paul
shot him. Once in the head. The body jolted and then was still. Paul came back
to Arlen and dropped to his knees on the bridge. He looked at the wound and
then pulled his shirt off and pressed it against Arlen's ribs. His face was
very pale.

    "You'll
make it," Paul said, but his voice was shaking. "It went in below the
ribs. That's good, isn't it? You'll be fine. You're going to be —"

    He
was talking too much and hearing too little. Arlen was trying to speak, trying
so hard to get the words out, but it had become a terrible strain. Finally the
boy heard him trying. He leaned closer.

    "What?"

    "Camden,"
Arlen said.

    "Camden?"
Paul echoed, his face registering nothing, and then he looked away from Arlen
again and back down at the wound, and his lips pressed into a grimace as he
began to work with his fingers. He was no longer paying any attention to Arlen,
but that was fine.

    He'd
heard the name.

    Camden.

    He
had heard it. Arlen was sure of that. They would find each other.

    Barrett
was in his garage with five federal agents from Tampa, counting the hours until
they moved on the Cypress House, altogether unaware of the bloody swath that
had already been cut through the county, when Paul Brickhill arrived in Solomon
Wade's Ford with Arlen unconscious in the backseat.

    One
of those narcotics agents, a tough old-timer named Miller, had been a field
medic in France. He took one look at Arlen and told Barrett and the others to
shut the hell up and let him focus.

    They
did.

    He
was still alive when they got him to Tampa, which surprised everyone but
Miller, who was confident in his work. Last thing he'd said before they'd
started along the road was "We're good. Just need blood."

    It
was an accurate diagnosis. The internal damage was minimal; the blood loss
tremendous. It was a day before he was conscious again. In Tampa, then, in a
hospital with guards outside his room.

    By
then they thought they had the leak figured out. It hadn't been Cooper, the man
in charge of the planned bust in Corridor

    County,
but one of his agents, who'd taken off as soon as word of the disaster came,
leaving behind a bank account that was surprisingly well stocked. The manhunt
for him ended five days later, when his body turned up in a Louisiana bayou,
missing its hands.

    All
three of the McGrath boys had been arrested at their home. They didn't put up
any struggle. By the time the police got there, the oldest had his leg wrapped
with blood-soaked blankets, and Tate McGrath's body, bloated with venom, was
resting on the front porch.

    They
told Arlen all of this amid their endless questions, and he didn't care about
any of it. What he cared about was missing. They asked about her hundreds of
times, with techniques ranging from gentle prodding to outraged shouting, and
he gave them nothing. What held him through it was one word, a word that became
a talisman for him, a prayer: Camden.

    It
was Barrett who seemed most dubious of Arlen's account of the fight in the
swamp. He never questioned it in front of the others, but once, he stood at the
foot of the bed and asked if Arlen was willing to tell him the truth of what
had happened out there.

    Arlen
looked at him for a long time and then said, "It was a mighty strange
journey, Barrett. And I don't think you'd like to hear the details. Or that
you'd believe them if you did."

    Barrett
seemed unhappy, but he nodded. "I'll give you this much," he said.
"I believe they are questions that don't need answers."

    "You're
right about that," Arlen said, and then he asked for his reward. Barrett
told him he was crazy. Arlen said he didn't believe that was the case. A lot of
blood had been spilled in Corridor County because of the ineptitude of a
federal police agency. Arlen could do some talking on that to the press, or he
could not. He wasn't sure yet. A certain reward, a bounty, could impact his
decision.

    It
was only two days later that Paul came in to tell him the incredible news. They
were sending him to Pennsylvania once all this was done. To the Carnegie
engineering school. Someone had arranged it as a token of gratitude. Arlen did
his damnedest to act surprised.

    Arlen
had been ten days in the hospital when Thomas Barrett returned to Tampa with an
envelope in his hand. He tossed it onto Arlen's bed.

    "That
was mailed to me direct. Inside another envelope. The one for me came with a
note that said she'd trusted me once and saw what had come of it, but she was
going to try it again. She asked that I deliver this to you unopened."

    It
was unopened. Arlen's throat felt tight, but he kept his eyes on Barrett.

    "I
should open it," Barrett said. "You know that. There's plenty of
people who'd like to talk with her and are probably entitled."

    "I'm
sure there are."

    Barrett
nodded. "When you talk to her," he said, "you tell her that I'm
sorry."

    He
turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Arlen waited until his footsteps
were no longer audible, and then he opened the envelope. Inside there was
nothing but a sheet of stationery with a telephone number.

    Rebecca
didn't answer his call. It was a boardinghouse, evidently, and the woman who
took the call went wary as soon as Arlen asked for her.

    "Tell
her it's Arlen Wagner," he said, and something changed in the strange
woman's voice, and she went away for a time, and then Rebecca was on the line.
At the sound of her voice, Arlen closed his eyes.

    "You're
okay," she said.

    "Yeah."

    "It
made the papers at first, but then it went away. I wanted to come back, but
you'd told me not to, and so —"

    "You
did the right thing. You should never come back here. Barrett didn't open the
envelope either. Nobody saw it but me."

    He
was talking low because there were people passing nearby, but no one was
interested.

    "Paul's
safe?" she said.

    "He's
safe, and Solomon Wade's dead. Tolliver, too. And Tate McGrath." The
weight of it was settling on him now as he put it into words for her in a way
it never had when he'd explained it over and over to the police. The memory of
the Springfield bucking in his arms and the feel of the mud on his face and the
damp heat of the marsh and the whispers of dead men in his head . . .

    "Will
you come?" she said.

    He
laughed. It was all he could think to do. Then he said, "Yes. You better
believe I'm on my way. Soon as they let me out of this place, I am on my
way."