Salvation Lake (A Leo Waterman Mystery)

by G. M. Ford

  I went down to one knee and looked around. My foot burned like somebody was holding a blowtorch to it. From what I could see, the recent rains had filled in the low areas of the forest with water, leaving a single tongue of dry land running down the center. I looked up at Lila. One of her braids had come undone. Somewhere along the line, she’d torn the buttons from her sweater. She had a nasty-looking scratch on one of her cheeks. She gave me a wan smile.

  “Let’s go,” I whispered.

  She took my hand again and we staggered forward for what seemed like an hour, but was probably no more than ten minutes. The narrow isthmus of dry land got thinner and thinner, until it disappeared altogether and our feet began to slap water.

  My foot was dragging now, catching on everything. Seemed like I just couldn’t lift it high enough to keep it out of the tangles. I pulled us to a stop, put one knee in the water, and listened. Nothing. Either they’d given up the chase or they were circling around us through the flooded forest. At that point it didn’t much matter. All we could do was keep moving forward.

  Ahead in the darkness, I began to make out a long straight line. The kind of thing that doesn’t exist in nature. Something man-made.

  “There.” I pointed. Lila turned her gaze. “The road,” I whispered.

  We joined hands again and stumbled the last seventy-five yards. I boosted her up onto the raised roadway and crawled up beside her. We sat there hip to hip, trying to catch our breath, when the sudden faraway roar of an internal combustion engine shattered the wet stillness of the night.

  Back in the direction of Nathaniel Tuttle’s former home, headlights swung back and forth across the landscape, like a prison break. We heard the unmistakable sound of a car moving in our direction, the engine straining, the headlights bouncing up and down erratically as it closed the distance.

  Lila and I slid back to the bottom of the berm, found the nearest stump, and squatted in the cold, dank-smelling water. She was shivering. I hugged her close to me.

  As the roaring engine grew nearer, Lila pressed herself harder into my side. The blinding white spear of halogen headlights pierced the forest. I peeked out.

  The square roofline told me the Range Rover was coming. I pulled Lila deeper into the shadows as the SUV limped by, dragging its flattened rear tires with its front-wheel drive, weaving all over the road as it fought for traction.

  We squatted in that squalid bog, Lila and I, shivering in the darkness, listening to the sound of the car receding into the distance.

  Any momentary sense of relief evaporated the second I considered where they might be going. Had to be back to Townsend’s place. Back to finish what they’d started, and then wait for us to arrive.

  Nothing else made any sense. No way they could drag those flat tires all the way back to town. The paved road would flay the rubber from them in a couple of miles, leaving then dragging steel rims down the road in a rooster tail of sparks. No way . . . it was back to the Townsend house for sure. They had no place else to go.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We scrambled up onto the gravel roadway and began limping along as fast as I was able. Lila must have had some innate sense of the danger her parents were in. She kept pulling on my arm, trying to get me to move faster. I did the best I could.

  “Come on, Leo, you can do it,” she whispered as we trudged along.

  Took us ten minutes to get back to where I’d stashed the car. I picked her up, told her to cover her face, and began to force my way through the dense thicket. My foot screamed at me and slipped around inside what was left of my shoe.

  The brush was almost too stout for me to force us through, but I kept pushing, one slide-step at a time, until I quite literally crashed into the front bumper of my car.

  My breath was coming in ragged gasps as I slid us along the fender, muscled open the driver’s door, and set Lila on the seat.

  “Climb over,” I told her. “Buckle yourself up.”

  Took everything I had left to climb up onto the driver’s seat and close the door. I belted myself in and looked over at Lila.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  “I wanna go home,” she said.

  “Hang on,” I told her as I dropped the car into low and punched it. We shot forward about ten feet and then stopped dead. I backed up as far as I was able, dropped it back into low gear again, and floored it.

  We bounced forward, bending the thicket before us, hidden rocks pinballing us left and right, things slamming into the undercarriage so hard I could feel the impact in my feet as the car lurched forward.

  And then the road was right in front of us, and the windshield was filled with nothing but the night sky. I cut the wheel hard right as we blew out into the moonlight. The car began to drift, threatening to shoot off the other side. I held my breath as the passenger-side wheels came off the ground. Lila squealed in the second before the drive wheel found purchase and sent us rocketing down the road.

  I braked to a stop, put the car in park, and slouched behind the wheel, dazed, glazed, and mouth-breathing as I sucked air and tried to reassemble my parts. Out in front of the car, I could make out two deep furrows where the Rover’s back tires had been dragged along the length of the grade.

  I moved the transmission down to drive and started rolling down the road. We were dragging something. I could hear it, scraping along with us. Halfway back to the paved road, I noticed that the temperature gauge was way above its normal range and rising. I was betting that, somewhere along the line, we’d poked a hole in the radiator and were leaking coolant.

  The good news was that we probably weren’t going far enough for it to be a problem. The bad news was that I didn’t have a plan of any sort. What I needed most was a safe place to stash Lila while I checked on the Townsends.

  I looked over at Lila. “Is there any way into your daddy’s place other than the road where you and I met?”

  “There’s the road to the barn,” she said.

  “What barn?”

  “It’s over on the other side of the lake,” she said.

  “How do we get there?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Two minutes later, we reached the pavement of Retribution Road.

  Lila pointed to the right, back in the direction of her house. I followed instructions. As I’d suspected, the pavement had been murder on the Rover’s flat tires. Every few yards a piece of shredded radial littered the road.

  We were approaching the Townsend driveway. “Keep going,” Lila said.

  Just before the entrance to the drive, one of the Rover’s tires had come completely off the rim and lay on the shoulder like steel-belted roadkill. I could see where the rim had gouged a furrow in the pavement, once the tire was gone.

  “Keep going,” she said again.

  We were almost back to the ASCENSION ACRES sign when Lila pointed.

  “There,” she said.

  I crossed the center line and pulled into a narrow indentation in the scrub oak. A massive rusted chain was stretched across the opening. I got out and had a closer look.

  The chain was big enough to anchor a freighter and the lock looked brand new, but the two wooden posts that held the ends of the chain had obviously been in the ground for a while, and in the wet Pacific Northwest that meant they’d probably seen better days.

  I got back in the seat and buckled my seat belt.

  “I’m gonna need to hang on again, huh?” Lila asked.

  “Good idea,” I said.

  I put the front bumper on the chain and fed it some gas. The wooden posts splintered almost instantly. Rather than drag the chain all over creation, I backed up, got out, and pulled the rotted, rusted mess out from under the car. Steam was seeping out from under the hood, and the air was tinged with the acrid smell of boiling coolant. I climbed back into the driver’s seat. The temperature gauge was maxed out. A small red light was blinking in the dash.

  “How far?” I asked Lila as I buc
kled up again.

  She pointed out ahead. “Just past those trees.”

  “What’s in the barn?”

  “Boxes and boxes and boxes,” she said.

  The barn turned out to be a big metal prefab. Looked brand new. Regular steel walk-through door on the left, three big roll-up garage doors on the right.

  I turned off the car and got out. The engine shuddered hard enough to rock the big car on its springs, and then, with a noise remarkably like a death rattle, it conked out. I had a feeling that whatever happened next wasn’t going to include driving my car.

  I pulled open the rear door, found the ammo bag on the seat, loaded everything to the hilt, and stuffed my pockets with as much firepower as I could carry. When I turned around, Lila was standing behind me.

  “I know how to get in,” she said. “Buster and I come here sometimes when we want to be alone.”

  “Show me,” I said.

  She ran around to the side of the building. About a third of the way down the west wall, she stopped and pointed. I hobbled over. She grabbed a piece of metal siding and pried it out about a foot. Looked like the workmen had left out a couple of bolts when they’d put it up. Just the kind of thing kids will find every time.

  She looked up at me. “I’ll let you in the front,” she said as she squeezed herself through the opening and disappeared.

  As I limped back around to the front of the building, I could hear shouts rolling across Salvation Lake, coming from the area of the house. I didn’t like the sound of it at all, but first, I needed to get Lila out of harm’s way. After that . . .

  The door rattled as she fumbled with the lock from the inside, and then it opened a crack. I grabbed the knob and ducked inside.

  It was like she’d said. Boxes and boxes, damn near floor to ceiling. Guiding Light Publishing. All of them. I laid the shotgun on the nearest carton and ripped open the top of another. The Christian Couple. Townsend’s supposed bestseller. Twenty-five copies per box. I looked around. Must have been a couple hundred thousand copies in here. I shook my head in angry disbelief, wondering what, if anything, about Aaron Townsend was on the up-and-up.

  I swallowed my righteous indignation and turned to Lila.

  “I need you to stay here, honey,” I said.

  “I wanna go with you, Leo,” she said right away. “Those men will hurt my daddy.”

  “I won’t let them,” I promised. “But you gotta stay here.”

  “I wanna go with you,” she said stubbornly.

  I went down on one knee and gave her a hug. “No. You stay here,” I said. “If I don’t come back, wait till it’s light out and then walk back in the direction of town. Keep walking till you get there. If anybody comes by in a car, tell them you need to call the cops. You understand?”

  She turned away from me in the darkness. Her little shoulders began to shake.

  “I gotta go now, honey,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  I picked up the shotgun, walked back to the door, locked it from the inside, and pulled it shut behind me.

  I got one step in the direction of the house, when I was jerked to a halt. The sky was bright orange. I could see the yellow blades of flame stabbing above the trees. I groaned out loud and began to stumble forward as fast as my foot would allow.

  The lake was close; I could smell it. A minute later, I burst out of a scrub oak thicket and found myself standing on the shore of Salvation Lake, directly across the water from the Townsend house. The rear of the house was engulfed in flames. Glowing cinders rose like fireworks into the night sky.

  I hurried left, the short way around the water. As I rounded the east end of the lake, I could see the Range Rover crouched on its rims out in the middle of the drive, its headlights pointed at the sky like supermarket searchlights. The closer I got, the louder the roar of the flames became. An anguished cry tore through the air.

  The front door burst open and slammed back against the house. Biggs came out backwards, crouched low, dragging Alice Townsend by the hair, waving the big automatic in an arc, looking for a target . . . any target.

  Unlike his wife, Aaron Townsend was on his feet when he stepped outside. Bostick had the barrel of his gun wedged in the hollow at the back of Townsend’s head. He kept stiff-arming Townsend forward as they stutter-stepped out into the yard.

  Biggs lifted Alice Townsend to her feet by the hair. He screamed something unintelligible into her face and slapped her with the gun. Her knees buckled, but she managed to keep her feet. She lashed out at Biggs, trying to pluck his eyes from the sockets. Biggs snarled and hit her with the gun again. This time she went down in a pile and stayed there. He let go of her hair and started limping toward Bostick and Townsend. “Open it up, goddamnit,” he screamed.

  Bostick shoved Aaron Townsend forward. I got it then. They were going for Townsend’s car in the attached garage, and the reason they’d come outside was that the inside entrance to the garage was in the kitchen, which was presently on fire.

  Two seconds later, they turned away from me and headed for the garage. That’s when I made my move. The pain in my foot was incredible. I ground my teeth as I scrambled for the cover of the Rover.

  Much as it pained me, I couldn’t let Biggs and Bostick drive off with these two either. The Rover wasn’t going anywhere. Neither was my car. It was probably a two-hour walk back to Duvall. If they got out of this yard, they were pretty much home free.

  Townsend was down on one knee trying to unlock the garage door. His hands were shaking so badly, he couldn’t stick the key in the hole.

  I stood up, thumbed the Mossberg’s safety off, and blew Bostick into the middle of next week. The force of the shotgun blast lifted him from his feet and threw him face-first into the garage door. He bounced off and managed two bug-eyed steps back in my direction before I gave him another dose. This time he landed flat on his back, his left arm pointing to the sky and twitching, like he was signaling to eternity.

  I pumped the slide and swung the gun the other way. Biggs was waving his automatic back and forth like a baton, not sure whether he wanted to point it at Alice Townsend or at me. I’d already made up my mind. Either way, I was going to kill him. If for nothing else, then for Carl. At least that was the plan, until I heard the sound of little feet slapping the ground behind me and then heard the high-pitched, plaintive wail. “Buster,” Lila screamed as she ran into the yard. “Daddy. Buster’s in the basement. Daddy—”

  My heart nearly stopped when I saw Biggs swing his gun in Lila’s direction. Without thinking, I made a desperate lunge for her, caught her around the waist, and pulled her to the ground. A slug plowed a furrow right in front of my face, sending a spray of mud into my eyes. I held on to Lila and began rolling. The next shot hit the Mossberg’s walnut stock, nearly tearing the gun from my hand. I was pawing at my face trying to clear the dirt from my eyes as two more shots whistled by my head.

  I picked the girl up and ran for the front door, shoulder-rolling us inside onto the stone floor. I pushed Lila deeper into the entranceway and then poked my head out. Biggs was on the move, firing over his shoulder as he limped for the woods. I raised the shotgun, put the sight in the middle of his back . . . and then Lila, for the first time all night, lost her cool. She came clawing and scratching over me, a whirlwind of crazed kiddie arms and legs, screaming about Buster burning. All I could do was fire a round in the general direction of the fleeing Biggs while I held the girl at bay with my other hand. When I looked out again, Biggs was gone.

  Five seconds passed before the crackling roar of the fire found its way into my consciousness again. Lila was wailing at a pitch available only to girls of tender age and garage door openers. Out in the driveway, Alice Townsend was bruised up pretty good but was sitting up now, trying to clear the cobwebs. Over by the garage door, Aaron Townsend sat with his back against the door, his hands hanging loosely in his lap, his face a mask of broken bewilderment.

  “Whe
re’s the cellar door?” I asked Lila.

  She stopped wailing for long enough to point back over her shoulder.

  “Please, Leo,” she sniffled.

  I mean . . . what was I gonna do, let Buster braise?

  “Go to your mom,” I said, pointing at Alice out in the driveway. “Run.”

  She scrambled over me and was gone. I leaned the shotgun in the corner of the entranceway, grabbed the door handle, and instantly wished I hadn’t. The knob was hot enough to fry bacon. I cursed and jerked my hand away.

  I used my sleeve like a pot holder and managed to pull the door open. A wall of hot smoke poured up from the basement. I waited until the worst of the smoke blew by, got down on my belly, and bodysurfed down the stairs.

  Mercifully, Buster must have heard me coming. He was right there at the bottom step, filthy with soot and pissing all over the floor, but otherwise okay. I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and crawled back up the stairs, through smoke so thick you could chew it.

  I sat in the corner of the entranceway for a couple of minutes, trying to get my shit together and coughing my lungs out. When I felt as good as I figured I was gonna, I grabbed the shotgun from the corner and lurched outside.

  The Townsends were huddled together in the driveway, dog and all, arms loosely thrown around each other, while Aaron Townsend prayed. To what? For what? I couldn’t possibly imagine.

  Much as I hated to interrupt, I limped over and held out my hand. “Gimme the keys,” I said to him. When he kept right on praying, I reached down and pulled the ring of keys from his fingers.

  He looked up at me. “No police,” he said.

  I would have laughed in his face, except that my ears picked up the wail of the siren in the distance. I held my breath and listened harder. Several sirens, actually. A veritable chorus of electronic wailing. Two minutes later, pulsing red and blue lights were bouncing around the treetops, and I could hear the deep roar of the fire truck as it raced in our direction. I dropped the keys back in Aaron Townsend’s lap and walked over to what was left of the Rover. I put the Mossberg, the 9mm, and all the ammo on the hood of the car, then sat down on the ground and waited for the second coming.