Dead Creek

by Victoria Houston

  “Oh, Brad, stop it,” Judith said mockingly. “You hate him because he’s my buddy. You hate him because sometimes I think he’s kinda cute.”

  It was becoming clear that Judith was running the show. “Ray, I do hate to leave you like this—I’ve always thought you’d make a great bartender. If I could leave you alive, I’d give you Thunder Bay. I really would. I know you’d clean it up, which is too bad, but you could do good things with that place.”

  “I could do that,” said Ray. “I guess for the moment, it doesn’t sound like a viable option.”

  “It isn’t. Sorry, sonny.”

  “She’s leading you on,” said Brad, “payback for your lousy jokes.”

  “Mind your own business, Brad,” said Judith sharply. “We’ll talk payback all right—for your six-hundred-million-dollar mistake.”

  “Like what? What do you mean?” Brad whirled around to face his partner. Osborne heard fear in his voice.

  “That isn’t my fault—”

  “It’s never your fault. Forget it. Get down to the plane and check—” “But—”

  “But nothing, Brad. Just do it. Okay? Just follow my directions this one time.”

  “Judith?” Ray turned to face her. “I’d like to raise a nonhumorous subject if I may?”

  Judith checked her watch. Brad still stood before her. He had planted his feet like a stubborn child. “I’m not going. I want to hear what he has to say.”

  “Brad …” Judith raised her hand and leveled the pistol at her brother. “Move. Get down to that plane. Count the boxes in the back, and make sure that fool Marie packed every one. We should have seven, not including the suitcases. We got about thirteen minutes to takeoff and I want no delays. My customs connections work tonight and tomorrow only. If we miss them, we can’t get out of Canada. Do I make myself clear?”

  Brad gave Judith a sullen look, then shrugged and walked slowly out of the room.

  “Why did you kill all those men? Why not just Robert Bowers?” Ray asked.

  “Oh, that’s a good question,” said Judith, shaking her finger. She chuckled.

  “That was another one of Bradford’s little schemes that went askew. He thought he could take over Robert’s identity. Have you noticed how he lost weight? He had a special beard designed, he practiced speech patterns. He was going to impersonate Robert and return to Kansas City with the YPO guys, then transfer all the assets of the Bowers estate abroad, but he forgot one thing: those YPO assholes have these ridiculous secret handshakes and signs—a small detail that Brad overlooked.

  “So we have them out here for an artsy-fartsy party, give them an artistic excuse to watch one of my girls dance and plenty of booze, then Brad gets in the car to drive back with them, and the asshole from Des Moines asks him some dumb question in code, some philosophical bullshit question. He blows it, of course.

  “I was standing there watching it happen. I saw this look pass between the three of them. I knew right away they were suspicious. That was it. I couldn’t risk blowing this deal that way. We had to kill ‘em all. Too bad, too. Can you imagine if Brad had made it back to KC undetected and got—what did you say, Julie—another six hundred million bucks? That’s real money. But we got a hundred ‘n’ thirty mil out of the art, and that’s not to sneeze at. Of course …” She winked at them. “It counts for even more when you don’t have to share.”

  “What about me?” asked Julie. “I would have known he wasn’t Robert. You could never fool me!”

  “You were the least of our worries,” said Judith. “He could just say he broke off the relationship, and you were a spurned lover making up stories.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m respected in Kansas City.”

  “Respect isn’t worth shit when someone’s looking at making a few million bucks off a deal, honey.” Judith’s eyes through her horn-rimmed glasses looked amused. She started to back out of the room.

  “Remember Billy Spencer?” Ray interrupted as if anxious to keep her talking. Osborne felt a flash of anger and tried to get Ray’s attention with an angry look.

  What on earth was Ray thinking? What’s with this inane topic of conversation? Who the hell cares about Billy Spencer, for God’s sake! Time was running out for them.

  The baby was looking bad. Where earlier the little guy had appeared to have fallen asleep, now it looked like he’d lost consciousness in the cold. Erin’s eyes above her gag caught and held Osborne’s in panic. She thought so, too.

  Tears filled Osborne’s eyes. He felt his heart breaking. He felt everything he’d done in life worth absolutely nothing in this moment: He was helpless to help his children. Helpless to help the woman who was in his thoughts almost every hour of every day, a woman who might have been the finest fishing pal he could ever wish for.

  But he might have time to tell Erin how he loved her—if they could get Brad and Judith out of the freezer. He wanted time to put an arm around Lew and tell her that she had changed his life—and he hoped he had made some small difference in hers. It wasn’t the worst way to go, he decided, with your arms around the ones you love most. But he needed time to do that. Time alone together. Thirty minutes from now, and he knew he’d be close to unconscious himself. If Ray would just shut up, they could have a few precious moments together before death.

  Osborne tuned back into the words that were passing like an endless slow dance between Ray and Judith.

  Judith had stopped and turned. “Yes. I knew Billy. He lived next door to Ruth Minor when I was living there. Why?”

  “I was in Billy’s backyard that Sunday morning.” Ray’s voice had taken on a slow, deliberate cadence, and Judith stood frozen, her flat, wide eyes fixed on Ray’s. “I was watching through a hole in the fence, and I saw old Ruth working on her roses, and I saw you come up behind her….”

  “Shut up,” said Judith. “Just shut up.”

  “I saw you push her,” continued Ray. “I watched you swing at her with the shovel. She was crawling into the house and you …” He paused. Judith said nothing.

  “She was a grown woman, Judith, and you were … what … nine or ten years old?”

  “Hate makes it easy,” said Judith. “You’d be surprised. It makes many acts easy. Remember,” she snorted, “I was big for my age. So you saw it all, and you never told anyone? Well, Ray, that perturbs me,” said Judith, sarcasm in her voice. “Now, why would you keep your mouth shut all these years? Waiting to blackmail?”

  “Before that terrible day, I had been spending the night at Billy’s a lot that summer,” said Ray. “One night we snuck out to catch nightcrawlers, and we saw a man going into Mrs. Minor’s store real late. We snuck up to the window….” Ray paused. “Do you want me to continue?”

  Judith nodded, but her eyes looked glassy. As Ray’s low voice went on, Osborne remembered the small Minor house with its one-room little grocery store, its shelves of gums and candies by the cash register, and the short aisles with boxes of saltines and cereals and cans of soup. And old Ruth, heavy, ponderous, and mean. When little kids tried to swipe a piece of bubble gum, she didn’t call a parent, she just grabbed the kid by the shirt, pulled him back to the cash register, made him put his hands on the counter, and whomped his fingers with an old wooden ruler as hard as she could.

  “We watched Mrs. Minor take money from him and then we saw her pull you into the room….”

  “Go on.” Judith’s voice was steely.

  “We started to watch, but Billy got scared and ran off. I watched everything. I shouldn’t have. I lost my innocence that night. I knew why you killed her. I knew that I would have, too. When I was in high school, I learned that the statute of limitations never runs out on murder, so … I’ve never told anyone.”

  Judith took a deep breath. She gave a slight smile and shook her head, “You know, Ray, if you’re trying to soften me up, it’s too late.”

  “I wanted you to know because I want just one favor in return, Judith. I want you to let Erin and her baby out o
f here. Doc and Lew and I—hey, we know the world is oversupplied with muskie hunters. But these two, please. Whatever Brad’s feelings are toward the rest of us—they have not hurt anyone. Please?”

  Judith looked over at Osborne. “Dr. Osborne?”

  “Yes?”

  “You have daughters….” “Yes.”

  “Do you remember a certain October night after a football game in the early sixties?”

  Osborne did not think he could possibly feel any colder, but he did at this moment. He felt the ice deep in his gut.

  “Do you mean the night that you were beat up?”

  Judith looked at him and gave a wide, deliberate grin. “I mean the night that I made the mistake of thinking that a boy really liked me and was taking me to a beer party with all the rest of the kids. The one night that I let my guard down and began to think that I might have a life with some happiness like everyone else. The night when I went in to the woods to pee, they followed me. They all followed me … the boys and … the girls. You know the rest, don’t you, Doc?”

  Osborne did indeed. He first heard the story from Mary Lee who had heard the news from a close friend whose daughter was at the party. It started with about seven of the high school boys watching one pull Judith into a clearing and tear off her clothes. They’d crowded around to poke and look at her. Then one of the boys raped her. Two others followed. The rest said they found her body too disgusting. Then one swung a fist, and others followed. Toward the end, the girls had crowded around watching, too. They left her there, naked and bleeding.

  Weeks later, Judith was brought to Osborne by her foster family for a final round of reconstructive work on her face. The injury to the jaw had been so severe than a portion of bone had been removed, necessitating dental surgery. That’s why her face appeared so much thinner than her siblings: as a result of the beating, she lost an inch on each side of her jaw.

  But she lost much, much more. That was the night the town learned exactly how she was different from other women. Hair grew down from her navel in a pattern familiar to boys her age. It grew between her breasts, across her back, and along the insides of her upper thighs, just enough to make her different.

  But that wasn’t all. Puberty had been cruel, arriving earlier than normal and causing her to have overdeveloped in every way. She grew too tall and too big, filling in with muscle when the other girls were turning soft and curvy. She had the shoulders of a linebacker but breasts that stopped traffic. She was more than a woman and armored like a man. No one understood. From that time on, she was the object of ridicule and an absurd, humiliating sympathy. If Judith had been excluded before, now she was shunned. Jokes were cracked that if she hadn’t inherited her old man’s looks, she wouldn’t have had a problem.

  “No one helped me, Doc. No one has ever said they were sorry. No parent ever stepped forward to say to me or anyone that a terrible thing had happened. Did they, Doc? Did you, Doc?”

  She paused and looked hard at Osborne. “Do you know I lay in that field until dark the next day? I was unconscious, my right arm was broken. I went to the police station. They never did a thing. No one cared.

  “So guess what—I sure as hell don’t care either.” Backing up as she spoke, Judith grabbed Ray’s rifle, then turned abruptly around the corner and slammed shut the door to the freezer. Osborne heard the lock catch, then seconds later, the door to the wine cellar slammed shut.

  twenty-five

  The man that weds for greedy wealth,

  He goes a fishing fair,

  But often times he gets a frog,

  Or very little share.

  Anonymous, circa 1629

  “Lew, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, just bit a chunk out of my lip. I’ll live. Can you untie me?” Lew asked from where she lay on the floor. Ray bent over to untie Lew while Julie wiped the blood from her face. Osborne rushed to untie Erin.

  “Oh, Dad,” Erin blurted and burst into tears when he took off the gag. “I’m so cold, I think I’m going to faint. I’m so worried about the baby.” She cradled her son close in her arms. Osborne pulled off his jacket and doubled it over to wrap around the baby just as Julie did the same with hers.

  “Here, bundle him in this.” The three of them huddled around Erin and the baby, while Ray bent over to pick up his hat.

  “Who is that poor person?” said Julie, glancing over the body of the woman in the chair.

  “That’s the dancer from Thunder Bay,” said Lew. “You can’t do much to help her. She’s been in here a good six weeks.” Julie stepped back from the frozen figure.

  “Everyone listen to me,” Ray said, yanking at the lure that had been stitched onto his hat. “There!” He took the lure and twisted it. “Here’s one of the unsung virtures of the mud-puppy surface lure.” In his fingers, he held one of the metal disks that turn like propellers in the water when reeled back to the boat. He pointed to the freezer unit set high in the wall behind them. “If I can unscrew the casings around that unit, we should be able to push this right through and out. Say a prayer this is a Harvey unit out of Wausau. I worked for them one summer, and I know how they install these mothers.”

  Ray jumped up on one of the chairs and worked quickly. The disk was a good, hard metal, and the screws loosened easily. He pulled the screws and washers out. The metal casing on the front of the unit slipped off to expose the coiled wires of the motor right behind.

  “Yes,” said Ray with serious relief in his voice, “it’s a Harvey—customized, but the basics are the same—we’re outta here.” With one hand he yanked the wires loose, then he shoved at the edge of the metal case that held the motor. With one heave, the entire freezer unit was pushed through to the outside. They heard it fall to the ground with a large thump. No one took a breath. No sound. No one coming. No one heard. They waited a full minute.

  “Okay,” said Ray. “Me first. I want to be sure it’s safe for the rest of you. Brad or Judith may still be in the house so stay very, very quiet. If we can, let’s move everyone through and into the woods as quickly and quietly as possible.”

  With a boost from Osborne, he was through the opening, and he rolled onto the ground outside. “It’s clear,” he whispered back. “Erin next, then hand up the baby.” They all worked quickly. Osborne was the last one through. Lew stood waiting with Ray.

  “Julie’s rushing Erin and the baby to the hospital in Ray’s truck,” said Lew quickly before he could even ask. “I need you here, Doc.”

  The three of them rubbed their arms and tried to quietly stomp their feet in the air that now seemed almost hot compared to the freezer. “Jeez, I’ve got to get my blood moving,” said Lew.

  Just then, they heard an outboard motor kick on somewhere on the other side of the house. They ran to the corner. It was dark, but lights near the boathouse were brightly lit. The plane, its headlights off, was being pulled away from the dock by a small boat lit with a single headlight. They ran down toward the dock but stopped safely within the darkness of the trees. With the clouds still obscuring the moon, Osborne found it impossible to make out who was in the boat. Then his eye caught something glinting on the deck of the fully lit boathouse.

  “Ray,” said Osborne, “I see your rifle—right beside the boathouse door,” but even as he whispered, Ray had already spotted it and was on his way toward the boathouse. The door was wide open, the gun resting in an area that was brightly lit and visible from the lake. Even so, Ray moved swiftly to grab it. He paused by the open door for a brief moment. Suddenly he dropped to the deck and lay still.

  “Someone’s in there.” Lew’s hand suddenly clutched Osborne’s. “My God, I hope he’s …” She didn’t finish, but Osborne had the same panicked thought: don’t let Ray get shot full face by someone waiting for him in the boathouse. Ray stayed where he was for a full minute or more before quickly scrambling to his knees and jumping back into the blackness of the pines. If anyone saw him, there was no reaction from the plane or the boat. Within seco
nds, Ray was back with Osborne and Lew.

  “Little surprise down there, folks,” he said, his whisper matter-of-fact but so low that Osborne and Lew bumped heads trying to hear him. “The good professor has his legacy all right—a bullet hole in the head.” “Dead?” asked Lew.

  “I didn’t see any movement,” said Ray. “I had a pretty good angle, and looks like he got it right through the temple.” He looked up at the sky and out toward where the small light from the boat was bobbing in place.

  “Let’s move down to the water’s edge. These clouds are breaking up. Pray for moonlight. My only chance to get a shot off is when or if I can see the damn plane.” They started forward, slipping on the pine needles that covered the ground. Shards of moonlight were starting to break through the dense clouds. Osborne thought he could make out a figure standing in the boat and reaching toward the door into the plane.

  Suddenly, Lew grabbed both Osborne and Ray and yanked them to a stop. She put her finger first to her lips, then she pointed off to their right. Bobbing silently on the water, hiding in the branches of a fallen Norway pine but outlined off and on by the moon as it moved between the clouds, was a long, dark shape.

  “That’s a canoe,” whispered Ray. “Now who the hell—?”

  The cloud cover was definitely breaking up. With nearly a full moon about to break through, Osborne realized Ray would have an excellent opportunity to see his target. As if the pilot knew this, the plane’s motor suddenly hummed, two bright headlights went on, pinpointing its location as it started to move across the lake. The clouds broke, and Ray raised his gun to his shoulder. The plane lifted off.

  But just as Ray took aim at the aircraft, a shot rang out. From under the fallen pine, the canoe had moved out onto the lake. Though they could make out only the outline of a figure in the boat, they could see a rifle raised against the sky.

  Boom! The gun went off. Boom! It fired again.

  The plane poised in midair, then dropped straight down toward the water. It hit at an angle with one pontoon, then appeared in the moonlight to tip forward and sideways.