At the Crossroads

by B. J Daniels

  The front of the van hit the first sign, sending it cartwheeling off to the side as the second sign crashed into the windshield before being flung off. And suddenly they were up on the wooden planks that had once spanned the river.

  That’s when Bobby saw how many of the boards had rotted away. He hesitated, and Gene saw him. The bullet tore into his side, burning through his stomach and lodging in the door panel. He hadn’t had to look at Gene to know he would shoot again. He stomped down on the gas harder. He could feel the boards breaking under the tires, under the weight of the van. He could see the rushing water and boulders below them, feel the bridge groan and shudder under them.

  As the searing heat of the bullet doubled him over the steering wheel, all he could do was keep his foot pressed to the gas pedal. It no longer mattered. And yet, a part of him was determined to see if he could reach the other side of the river before he died.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CULHANE SLOWED TO a walk at a rise in the road. He could smell the water and the scent of decomposing leaves in the air. He could see the willows and cottonwoods growing along the edge of the water and hear the wind blowing through their bare branches. He stopped to listen, but all he could hear was the wind rustling the dry leaves at his feet.

  Dropping down into the barrow pit next to the road, he edged his way to the top of the rise until he heard a sound that made him stop—the roar of an engine and then the sound of a crash, the kind that twisted metal and broke glass.

  He topped the rise, his weapon drawn, to see a cluster of old, dilapidated buildings squatting next to the river. The water looked deep and dark, as it rushed over large boulders in the middle of the stream. That’s when he saw the bridge. Or what was left of it. Surely they hadn’t tried to cross it. Even from where he stood he could tell that most of the bridge had rotted away.

  He knew before he dropped down the slope to the water. The sound he’d heard had been the jarring sudden impact of a vehicle crashing into something solid. Beyond the old structures, he looked across the river and saw steam rising from the van’s engine that was now wedged into the far bank on the other side of the river.

  The fools had tried to cross the bridge—and they’d almost made it. Following the fresh tracks the van tires had left, he ran to the edge of the river—and the tumbledown bridge over the water. Off to one side a weathered warning sign lay in the dirt. At the edge of the water lay another sign of caution. This one had been split in two after apparently being hit by the force of the van.

  The vehicle had to have been moving at a high speed when it hit the signs blocking entry. Bobby, if he were still driving, would have had to be out of his mind to try to cross what was obviously an abandoned bridge. He could see where the missing boards had rotted away and plunged into the river. More of them were broken and hanging loose.

  Culhane quickly climbed up onto the bridge and looked across to the other side. The wind tore at his clothing and kicked up dust along the shore. He squinted, thinking he saw movement next to the van. Bobby had almost made it all the way across before going off and driving into the embankment on the other side with obvious force. The back of the van lay in the river, water rushing around it.

  The driver’s door stood open, and so did the passenger door. Culhane couldn’t tell if there was anyone still inside or not. He couldn’t imagine how anyone had survived the crash. But with the doors open, it was possible they had gotten out. So where were they?

  Gene was badly injured from the knife wound. He couldn’t have gotten far. If Bobby had survived the crash, he could be anywhere. The man in the back, Gus, had to be dead. Culhane had known that the man’s gunshot wound was serious when he’d seen Earl Ray’s grim expression when he’d returned to the café to wash the blood off his hands the first time. They’d thrown out Tina to give them time to escape. But faced with the river and no way out but the bridge, they’d taken a gamble that he doubted had paid off.

  But there was only one way to know if anyone was still alive. Culhane told himself that crossing over the bridge—especially after the damage the van had caused—was a fool’s errand. They were probably all dead. Or someone could be lying in wait inside the vehicle.

  Either way, Culhane had to find out. He could only hope that Bobby was alive. Bobby could clear him of the murder charges. Or at least tell him if Jana was still alive and where he might find her. His future depended on it.

  He considered the deep, swift current of the river with its large boulders just below the surface. Swimming it wasn’t an option. The bridge was even more dangerous. A gust of wind sent the dry leaves whirling past. Somewhere close by, a hawk cried out before the scene took on an eerie wind-scoured quiet for a moment.

  Cautiously, Culhane began to pick his way along the rotted boards.

  * * *

  ALEXIS DROPPED TINA off at the hospital’s emergency entrance after calling her mother to let Vi know she was all right. Tina also got to speak to Lars. Chloe was fine. The police were there. Bessie was on her way to the hospital by ambulance but expected to survive.

  Alexis didn’t hang around long enough at the hospital to get involved in the police investigation. “You understand why I can’t stay with you,” she’d said to Tina after they’d made the call.

  “It’s all right. You’re worried about him.”

  She’d nodded, afraid of what she would find when she returned. “I hate just leaving you, though.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Tina had assured her as they’d neared the entrance. “Does he know?” At Alexis’s confused look, she added, “About the baby?”

  She felt a moment of surprise, then shook her head as she pulled into the emergency lane and helped Tina to the door. As she pushed the button, she could see a nurse heading in their direction with a wheelchair.

  “He’ll do the right thing,” Tina said.

  Alexis felt tears burn her eyes. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  The emergency-room door opened, and Alexis hurried back to the truck. Starting it up, she headed west again as fast as she could go without getting pulled over for speeding.

  She kept checking her rearview mirror as she left town. Once on the highway, she began to relax a little. She knew Tina was right. Culhane would do the right thing. He’d marry her. Just as he had Jana.

  Once she’d heard about his first marriage, she’d known she couldn’t tell him about the baby she was carrying. She didn’t want that kind of marriage. She wanted Culhane to love her so much that he couldn’t live without her. She wouldn’t trap him with a baby as Jana had done.

  She knew why he’d never told her about Jana. She suspected there was more he’d been keeping from her. In the almost four years that she’d known him, he’d never told her much about his family or obviously any other part of his life before they’d met, when she’d gone to work as a deputy at the sheriff’s department and they’d been thrown together.

  All she knew was that he and his father didn’t get along. She’d never met the man before attending his funeral a few months ago. Culhane had been dry-eyed at the viewing, which was well attended. It surprised her that he hadn’t seemed to know almost all of the people who’d come to pay their respects, except for his friends that were there.

  “My father had a life completely separate from mine after my mother died when I was twelve,” he’d told her.

  She’d wondered how that was even possible and said as much.

  “Right after her funeral he sent me to boarding school. I went to friends’ homes during holidays and summer break.” When she’d tried to question him further, he’d shut down. She’d been horrified that a father would do that to his own flesh and blood. But between his father and Jana, she figured she now understood why he’d said marriage and kids weren’t for him.

  Alexis was watching for the turnoff when she caught the flashing lights in her rearview mirror. Her heart dropp
ed as she slowed down and started to pull over. At least she was driving Earl Ray’s pickup. But by now the law might already know that.

  She rode the shoulder as the sound of the siren came closer and closer. She thought she might be sick. She had to get back to where she’d left Culhane. She couldn’t help being worried about him. Maybe if she told the patrol officer what was going on...

  The cruiser streaked past her, siren blaring, lights flashing in a blur. Alexis stared after it and tried to breathe. Her heart was a thudding drum in her chest. She willed her stomach to settle down, and hastily she wiped at her tears.

  The patrol hadn’t paid her—or the pickup—any mind at all. Instead, he was probably looking for a gray van with bank-robber killers inside. Lucky for her. Lucky for Culhane, she thought as she got the truck going again.

  But as she did, she wondered if she should have waved down the officer. After all, she knew where the gray van and the men were. She also knew where Culhane might be found. What she wouldn’t know was what had happened since she’d been gone, and that’s what assured her that she’d made the right decision. At least she hoped in her heart of hearts that she had.

  She drove, watching for the road where she had to turn, unable to shake the feeling that if Culhane needed her, she was going to be too late to help him.

  * * *

  A BOARD CRACKED under his boot and fell away, throwing Culhane off balance for a moment. His pulse thundered in his ears as he looked down at the long drop to the water and the large boulders just below the surface. He had to stop for a moment to get his balance, to get his breathing under control.

  He tried not to look in the direction of the van and instead concentrated on his footing. If he was walking into a trap, he was giving them plenty of time to take him out. The wind whipped around him, kicking up dust and dried feathers along the shore. The air held the promise of a new season, one that would bring cold and ice and snow, even as the sun beat down on him.

  Just a few more steps, and he would be at the spot where the van had gone off the bridge. That Bobby had almost made it all the way across was nothing short of a miracle. He must have just floored it. He had to have known he wouldn’t make it. Otherwise, the van would be fully in the river, the current rushing through it.

  Stepping around the gaping, massive hole in the bridge, Culhane found a little better footing on the opposite side. Just a few more yards, he thought, picking his way carefully. He would hate to make it this far and then have the rest of the bridge collapse, dropping him to the rocks and rushing water below.

  A board snapped under his left foot; he quickly shifted his weight to his right and then froze there for a moment, the wind buffeting him. As he’d seen from across the river, the driver’s-side door was hanging open. The passenger’s-side door though was only partially open. Something appeared to be lodged in the door, keeping it from closing. The wind whistled through the open doors. Were the men still inside?

  Culhane took another step, then another. He had to watch where he stepped and yet, at the same time, he was trying to keep one eye on the van. He was close enough now that even a bullet from a handgun could find its mark.

  Almost to the other side, he caught sight of what was stuck in the door. A leg. The pants were covered in blood. He took a misstep at the sight of the mangled limb and almost fell through a yawning hole in the bridge floor. He swallowed back the bile that rose up his throat and froze, not even breathing until he got his balance again.

  As he stood, he listened for any sound coming from the van, but all he could hear was the wail of the wind as it rushed downriver. Nothing moved in the vehicle. He took another step, then another until he reached the other side of the river and bounded off the bridge.

  Weapon drawn, he approached the wrecked vehicle. He had no idea how much time had passed since Alexis had left to take Tina to the hospital. She would come right back, he had no doubt about that. The next town wasn’t that far away. He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake by sending her. If she came across the law... Then she might not be back at all with both of them wanted for questioning in the café shooting.

  The van had gone off the left side of the bridge. As he moved along the edge of the embankment, Culhane could see Gene slouched in the passenger seat. It appeared that he’d tried to get out before the crash—his leg getting wedged in the door. Was it possible he was still alive?

  As Culhane neared, he realized there was no need to check for a pulse. The front of the man’s face was caved in much like the windshield that now butted up against the facade of the riverbank.

  Of course Gene would have unfastened his seat belt to try to jump out before the crash. Had the embankment not been there, Gene would have been thrown from the van—that’s if his leg hadn’t been caught in the door. As it was, he’d gone face-first into the windshield and the rock and dirt. The impact had probably broken his neck.

  Whose idea had it been to try to cross the bridge? he wondered. Back at the café, right before Gene and Bobby had left with Tina, Culhane had seen the moment when Bobby had remembered where he’d seen him.

  He doubted, though, that Bobby had shared that information with Gene. Bobby would have known that Culhane would come after him and why. He’d know that Culhane was desperate. Was that why Bobby had tried to cross?

  So whose idea had it been to throw Tina out to slow him down? Maybe Gene was hoping anyone after them just wanted the woman.

  He edged closer, gun trained on the van and caught the coppery smell of blood as he approached the van and what was decaying inside it. Something creaked inside.

  Culhane froze.

  His gaze shot to the bloody leg trapped in the door. Had it twitched? Or had he imagined it? He knew he was going to have to look inside. Making his way down to the water’s edge, he waded in and approached the side of the van. He could feel the current trying to pull him down and sweep him under the van and away. Another creak as if someone was in there moving around. Or was it the river slowly pushing the van out deeper?

  Avoiding looking at Gene’s destroyed face or breathing in the smell of death, he leaned out and grabbed the van’s side-door handle with his free left hand and jerked it open. As the door slid back and water began to pour inside, Culhane pointed the barrel of his gun into the darkness inside.

  Nothing inside the van moved. From the looks of the man lying there, Gus had been dead for some time. The van creaked again as the river swept in and the back of it groaned against the pressure.

  The report of the gunshot was almost lost in the wind howling through the van. The bullet shattered the driver’s-side window and lodged in the side of the van only inches from Culhane’s head. From the trajectory of the shot, he now knew exactly where Bobby was. He stepped back, making himself less of a target and flattening himself against the side of the vehicle as he edged toward the front again. In order to get to Bobby, he could either swim around the back end or climb up over the embankment. It was an easy choice. He started to backtrack to the bridge, when a bullet whizzed past so close it felt as if it had brushed his cheek.

  “Bobby, I just want to talk!” he called across the wrecked van before he ran back to the bridge and up the slope of the road until he was on top of the riverbank. Crouching down, he moved as swiftly as he could to the spot where he thought he’d find Bobby. That was, if he hadn’t moved.

  Bobby had to be hurt. Otherwise he would have taken off or found better cover, Culhane told himself. But how badly hurt?

  He slowed and peered over. He could see a spot where fishermen had made a path down to the water yards down from the crash site. He hurried to it, staying low, and dropped down to the water’s edge. He couldn’t see the van because of a bend in the river. Working his way along the rocky edge, he finally reached a spot where he could see the rear bumper.

  Between gusts, he thought he heard a moaning sound. Cautiously, he edged closer and cou
ld see where Bobby had crawled up onto a stretch of shoreline out of the wind. He sat with his back against the earth. His gun lay in his lap, his hands and body covered with blood.

  “Bobby, I just want to talk.” No answer, but from here, he could see that Bobby hadn’t moved to pick up the gun. “Bobby?” Nothing. Maybe he had died from his injuries. First Leo. Now Bobby? Another dead end when it came to clearing himself?

  Then he heard another moan and carefully approached the man. When he was close enough, he reached over and picked up the gun lying in Bobby’s lap. He saw why the man hadn’t bothered to try to shoot him. He was out of ammunition.

  He squatted next to him. Blood still oozed from a bullet hole in the man’s side. Who’d shot him? Had to have been Gene. Bobby was struggling to breathe.

  “I need to know about Jana.”

  Bobby raised his gaze but seemed to be having a hard time staying focused. “I know you were there that night. I saw you coming out of her house after she was allegedly murdered. You saw me, too.”

  There was a moment of recognition. When Bobby spoke, his words came out as gasps. “I don’t want to die.”

  He wished he could give the man hope, but he figured Bobby knew that even if Culhane called for an ambulance, it would never get here in time. “Do you know where Jana is hiding?”

  Bobby swallowed and shook his head, his gaze starting to slide away.

  “Bobby, please. Is Jana dead, or did she fake her death?” Another shake of his head. “If she’s alive, who is she running from?” He could see the young man’s lips moving and leaned closer.

  He coughed. “Water—”

  “I’ll get you some water. Tell me why she would fake her death. It has to be more than a shoplifting arrest.”

  Bobby began to wheeze. “Wat—”