Two Graves (45 page)

“Why are there so many Germans in this region?” the naturalist asked.

“In 1850, the Brazilian government started a program of German colonization. You know about that? Germany was overcrowded and nobody had any land, and Brazil had land that needed settling. So Brazil offered any Germans who wanted to come free land in remote areas of the country. That’s how Blumenau was settled, along with Alsdorf, Joinville, and several other cities in Santa Catarina. Thirty, maybe forty percent of our citizens here are of German descent.”

“That is most interesting.”

“Yes. The colonies were so isolated that they developed completely along German lines, with German language, architecture, culture—everything. That all changed completely in 1942, of course.”

“What happened?”

“That is when Brazil declared war on Germany.”

“I never knew that.”

“Very few do. We joined with the Americans in World War Two.
Brazil made it a law that these German colonists had to learn Portuguese and become Brazilian. Most of them did, but some in the remote areas did not. And a lot of Germans left Brazil to go back to Germany and fight for the Nazis. And then some came running back again, to hide from the Nuremberg courts. Or so people say. But that was a long time ago. They are all gone now. As we say in Portuguese,
água debaixo da ponte
: water under the bridge.”

“No Nazis in Nova Godói?” The naturalist almost sounded disappointed.

Mendonça shook his head vigorously. “No, no! That’s all a myth!” He underscored that with another series of vigorous puffs before jettisoning the chewed cigar stump overboard. Of course, the rumors about Nova Godói never seemed to end, all sorts of ridiculous, superstitious nonsense. But Mendonça had lived twenty years in Queens. He had seen the world. He knew the difference between rumor and fact.

The boat continued on at a steady pace, the fields now disappearing completely, the araucaria forest closing in, casting a pall of darkness over the brown river. And despite having lived in Queens, Mendonça felt a distinct chill of fear creep down his spine.

T
HE FIRST SHOT HAD CAUGHT JACK SWANSON IN THE
shoulder as he’d leapt for the cover of the shrubbery at the rear of the cabin. A second shot passed over his head.

He lay on the ground for a moment, stunned, listening to the nearby sounds of struggling, a grunt of effort. Then came the slamming of a car door. And with that, Jack was up and running into the woods. The sky was dark and a wind rattled the branches, shaking the dense thickets of mountain laurel that formed the understory.

He knew these woods. And the laurel, an evergreen shrub, made for perfect concealment. He charged into the laurel, bashing through the thicket, putting as much distance between himself and Foote as he could. When he felt he was deep enough, he dropped into a crouch and began moving laterally, zigzagging through the thickest stands, worming his way ever farther into the thicket. He already sensed, with growing relief, that he’d gotten away—Foote would never find him in this dense underbrush, riddled with low animal trails that formed many escape routes. But what had gone wrong? Why Foote? Foote was trying to help them…

A voice rang out.

“Jack!”

He froze. It was Foote.

“Jack! We need to talk!”

He stopped, crouched, breathing hard. Reality began to rearrange itself in his mind. It was true, then—it had to be true. Foote was part of the scam. Everything he’d told them was a lie. And now Foote had Corrie.

“Can you hear me, Jack? I’ve got your daughter! Hogtied in my car. So we’ve got a lot to talk about, right?”

Jack could hear Foote walking into the forest now, crunching through the thickets of mountain laurel. “Oh,
Jackie
! We need to
ta-alk
!”

Jack moved laterally, away from the line that Foote was taking into the woods. Christ, he had to think, to collect his thoughts.

Foote has Corrie.

That thought threatened to undo what little rationality he had managed to gather. What was he going to do? He couldn’t run. Somehow he had to overcome Foote, save his daughter. Except that the bastard had a handgun, and he himself had nothing beyond a penknife. As he crouched, he realized with a certain sense of surprise,
I’ve been shot.
His shoulder was soaked in blood, his left arm dangling uselessly. Strange that there was no pain, only numbness. So he only had one arm, too.

What was he going to do?

Jack tried to think, but as he did so he could hear Foote getting closer, crashing through the brush.

He began moving laterally again, as silently as possible, keeping low and threading his way through the bushes. The gusts of wind covered his movements, masking both the sound and the motion of the brush caused by his passage.

“Jack, if you don’t come out now, I’m going back to my car and I’m going to kill her. Do you hear me? Talk to me or she dies.”

Fear and paralysis gripped Jack. His hand slipped into his pocket and brought out the penknife, flicked open the blade, tested it with his thumb. Dull.

“Talk to me!” Foote screamed.

Jack tried to make his mouth work. “All right. I’ll talk.”

He could hear Foote moving, triangulating on his voice. He shifted position, his mind racing. There had to be something.
Something
. He felt a stinging drop of icy rain, and another. The patter of rain—or was it sleet?—started to fill the woods.

“Listen, Jack. We’ll work it out. Nothing’s going to happen to you or your daughter if you cooperate. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jack said. He heard Foote move closer, and he once again shifted his position, moving along a low animal trail into denser brush.

“Sure, I was involved in a scam,” Foote went on in a soothing voice. “Not what you think. Not ripping off customers.”

“What, then?”

“GMAC. The big boys. Get them to finance nonexistent car sales. Been working with the GMAC auditor, the guy who comes to the lot every month to count cars, punch in the VINs. It’s a great scam and we make a
lot
of money. You’ll get a nice cut of that.”

Jack continued to move laterally.

“How does fifty grand sound? And I let your daughter go. It’s all good.”

He was continuing to move closer, slowly.

“So you framed me,” Jack said.

“Yeah, it’s true, I framed you for the bank robbery. I’m really sorry, Jack. I couldn’t have you going to the feds, triggering an investigation. Any investigation—even one about that stupid pansy-ass credit cozen—might have ultimately blown up in my face. You understand? Nothing personal.”

A silence.

“Jack? I can’t talk to the bushes. We need to talk face-to-face.”

Foote was about fifty yards away, a long shot for a handgun. Jack stood up, immediately dropped back down as the shot rang out.

Foote came crashing toward him through the brush, firing again. Jack ran at a crouch, diagonally away, another shot pursuing him, snipping leaves and twigs off.

“Your daughter’s dead meat!”

Jack continued on as fast as he could, weaving through the narrow gaps, moving in unexpected directions, the sleet and wind covering his tracks. But something happened, something snapped. The fear and paralysis vanished, replaced by anger. Searing, furious rage. The bastard had kidnapped his daughter,
bound
her, tried to kill him—and would surely kill them both at his first opportunity.

With the rage came a sudden clarity of mind. He could think again. And his thoughts were terrible indeed.

Foote, in his noisy pursuit, had lost track of Jack’s position.

“Ha, ha, Jack. I wasn’t aiming for you. Look, let’s just talk. We can work this out, and you’ll get your daughter back. Make it a hundred grand.”

Jack recalled hearing the slamming of a car door after he’d been shot. It had been close to the house. No doubt that’s where Corrie was being held. But where, exactly, was it?

Orienting himself, Jack began moving swiftly but stealthily through the densest part of the woods, making a loop around Foote, who continued to broadcast his position by alternately cajoling and making threats. Finally he heard the man say: “That’s it! She’s dead!” And then he heard him moving decisively through the forest.

Jack paused and picked up a pebble. With his good arm, he lofted it behind and to the side, where it rattled in some bushes. He could hear Foote stop, move quickly in that direction.

“Jack! I know where you are! One… two… three…!”

Jack used the man’s movement and his loud voice as an opportunity to move quickly himself, once again laterally, but now in a new direction, based on where Foote seemed to be heading. Foote called out a few more times and then began to move as well—very fast—through the forest.

Jack picked up another pebble and tossed it, but it ricocheted off a tree—not as artfully placed as the other.

“Throwing rocks, are we? It ain’t gonna work, asshole!”

Just keep yelling
, thought Jack as he used the opportunity to sprint across an open area into another thicket. The sleet was coming down hard now, soaking him to the bone.

As he moved, he realized he was significantly behind Foote. He had to move faster. He threw another rock, which was answered by several shots aimed vaguely in his direction. He could indeed hear Foote continue pushing his way back toward the cabin, repeating his threats and describing in graphic detail what he was going to do to Corrie.

“I’m gonna do her brown, Jack—think about that! And then I’ll strangle her, slowly!”

Jack sprinted at a crouch, scurrying through the laurel. The lashing of the storm allowed him to move almost at a run. He could hear Foote’s yelling getting louder. He had to hurry, hurry.

Ahead, Jack saw an opening in the dark, cold forest—the track. Foote had stopped yelling. He pushed forward through the brush, keeping parallel to the road, as silently as possible, until he saw a dull gleam. There it was, parked pretty much where he thought it would be.

But Foote was closer to the car than he was—too close. The gun was visible in one bleeding hand. Foote was chuckling as he opened the rear door.

“Get ready, bitch,” he said.

All the strength fled from Jack’s limbs and he collapsed to the ground. This was it. He was too late. It was all over.

At that moment, something dark in color—one of Corrie’s boots, followed by a jeans-covered leg—flashed out from the rear seat toward Foote. The boot caught him squarely in the crotch with a savage impact. Foote gasped in pain and staggered backward, dropping the gun.

In an instant, Jack was on his feet. In another, he was atop Foote, ignoring the gun in the grass, instead bringing the penknife down into the man’s face with one smooth, swift motion, the blade going straight into his eye. The knife sank into the orb, the ocular jelly squirting out, the knife scraping against the thin bone in the back. Foote jerked and thrashed with an inarticulate roar, hands flying to his face. Jack fell on the gun, grabbed it, then trained it on Foote while the man lay rolling in agony, blood leaking between the hands gripping his face. Jack raised the gun, pointed it at Foote’s head.

“No!” came the voice from behind him.

Jack turned. It was Corrie, lying in the backseat, hands tied behind her back.

“We need him alive,” she said. “We need him to talk.”

For a moment, Jack said nothing. Then, slowly, he lowered the gun. His eyes fell to her ankles. They were free, a pair of plastic cuffs lying scuffed and severed on the floor of the rear seat.

Corrie followed his glance. “There was a burr in the metal rail behind the driver’s seat,” she said.

And now Jack came forward. Wiping off the bloody penknife, he used it to cut through the plastic handcuffs. In another moment he was wordlessly hugging his daughter like he had never hugged anyone before in his life, the tears streaming down both their faces.

I
T WAS A COOL MORNING AFTER A NIGHT OF RAIN, THE
mists drifting over the surface of the river, as they set off from the last town on the Rio Itajaí do Sul, the southernmost tributary of the Rio Itajaí.