Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

by Jackie Lynn

  A line of sweat formed just above her lip. Rose kept driving north, hoping she would soon come across a road sign or some state park notice; then she saw something she had not even considered.

  A small red light was flickering on the instrument panel of her Ford Bronco. Rose was out of gas.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Rose felt her heart racing. She knew that she had only a limited distance that she could travel once the small panel light came on. She had dismissed its warning once before, thinking she could make it twenty more miles. She had only gotten ten before the engine began to sputter and kick.

  She took in deep breaths, trying to stay calm. She knew that it would do no good to panic. She looked ahead and saw the brown sign that signified a state park was ahead. She relaxed a bit when she realized that she was close to Village Creek, the place where the man was waiting with Chariot.

  Rose slowed down and found the entrance. There were no rangers anywhere around and the gate was open. She pulled into the park and watched for the directional signs to the camping loops. She drove along the narrow main road that was situated high on a ridge overlooking Village Creek and then made a quick right into the campsites.

  She moved to the last loop and saw a brown sedan in the space nearest the bathroom facilities. She slowly drove toward it and pulled in beside it. She glanced down at the clock on the dashboard and noticed that she was five minutes late. She hoped the kidnapper hadn’t gone ahead with his threat. She hoped she wasn’t too late.

  Rose took in a deep breath, turned off her engine, and unbuckled her seat belt. She opened her door and stepped outside.

  She could see that there was no one in the car and no one anywhere around in the vicinity. She knew that it was early in the season for campers in the Arkansas state parks, but she had expected to find Chariot and her abductor somewhere close by. Rose had also expected to see a South Dakota patrol car since someone had managed to convince the deputies on duty at the jail to release Chariot into their custody. She figured that it was a police officer or at least an impersonator who had placed the call to Shady Grove, instructing her where to come. And yet, all that was there was this empty brown sedan.

  “Hello?” Rose called out. She assumed that someone was watching. She looked all around, but saw no one. She turned to the bathroom facility, wondering if someone was inside there.

  “You’re late.”

  Rose spun around and suddenly felt something slide across her eyes. She was being blindfolded. She couldn’t see anything, but she felt the man tying the blindfold behind her head and she felt his hot breath on her neck.

  Rose wondered if this was the man she had talked to on the phone, the one who had given her the orders. She wasn’t sure if this was the drug dealer or one of his goons. And even though she was worried about herself and the decision she had made to come to the park alone, she was also very concerned about the whereabouts of young Chariot.

  “It was farther from West Memphis than I expected,” Rose replied.

  The man threw her against her car, and she felt him give her a swift pat down.

  “You act like a cop,” Rose said, holding up her arms and spreading her legs apart as he slid his hands across her. Having been raised by a police officer, she had often been used as a demonstration by her father for her teenaged friends. It had been a kind of game for him and Rose had always hated it.

  “Right,” he responded, not amused by her observation. “Where’s the card?” he asked.

  “Where’s Chariot?” she asked, feeling very disoriented because of the covering over her eyes. She felt the man behind her, but still she couldn’t see anything.

  Suddenly, she heard a voice from far away. Still, she recognized it to be Chariot’s.

  “Rose, is that you?” She sounded small, frightened.

  “Chariot, are you okay?” Rose asked, turning her head in the direction in which the voice had come.

  “Shut up.”

  It was another male voice.

  “I think so,” Chariot replied. “I can’t see anything,” she added. “And my ankle really hurts, but I think I’m okay.”

  Rose then understood that Chariot had been blindfolded as well. She could hear footsteps coming toward her. She thought they were moving over to the car parked next to hers. She felt herself being spun around again just as she heard a car door open.

  “Give me the card,” the man said. He was now standing in front of her. He seemed tall, his voice going above her head, but Rose wasn’t sure.

  Rose reached down into her pants pocket and pulled out the small card. She felt the man moving in front of her and then grabbing it. Rose couldn’t tell what he was doing, but she thought she heard him move slightly away from her and insert the card into something, a digital camera, she guessed.

  There was a kind of whirring noise as if he was loading photographs. She wondered if the other man had walked over or if he was still standing next to Chariot. Finally, she felt a push from the man with the memory card.

  “We’re done,” he said loudly.

  “Is the little girl okay?” Rose asked. She was still unable to see anything. She didn’t know where either man had gone.

  No one answered her. It sounded as if someone was walking away. Rose tried to listen to where he was going.

  “Get her and put them in the car,” she heard the man by her say to his colleague.

  The other man pushed Chariot toward the rear of the car where the door was opened and shoved her in the backseat of the sedan. Then he moved over to where Rose had been standing and grabbed her.

  “Wait a minute.” Rose fought back. “I did what you said!” she shouted. “Let me go!”

  But the man yanked her by the wrist and pulled her arm high behind her back. She felt a sharp pain in her shoulder and she dropped to her knees. He clasped handcuffs on her wrists.

  “Get up!” he yelled.

  Rose stood up.

  The other man, the one with the camera, the one who had blindfolded her, had walked away. Rose assumed that there was another car somewhere in the park. She also knew that if she got in the car with Chariot that the two of them would be in even greater danger than they were standing alone with him in the parking lot. She moved ahead with the man until she could tell that she was standing right beside the car. He turned to say something to the other man who was apparently moving away from them.

  “You want me just to take them to the woods?” he called out.

  “Do whatever you want,” the other man replied.

  Rose thought it sounded as if he was heading toward the direction from which Chariot had just come. And then she heard the sound of a motorcycle for the first time. There was a loud roar from the engine. At first it sounded as if it was coming toward them and then it was clear that it was heading away from the three of them.

  Rose heard the motorcycle as it pulled out of the camping loop and away from the state park. She suddenly became very afraid of what was going to happen next to Chariot and to herself. She tried to think of what she could do. She thought maybe that if she could talk to the man, she could stop whatever he was planning.

  “You work for a drug dealer?” Rose asked, her voice a bit shaky. It was the only thing she could think to ask.

  “A drug dealer?” the man replied with a sneer.

  “Isn’t that Lincoln?” she asked, trying to sound as if she knew what she was talking about.

  The man laughed a kind of jeering laugh. “That makes for a good story, sweetheart, but I set my standards a little higher than working for a drug dealer.”

  “Wasn’t that who Jason robbed?” Rose asked. “Isn’t that the guy who killed for that memory card?”

  “Oh, the young lad robbed a dealer, but when he broke in the safe he should have just stuck to stealing cash and not messed with digital cameras. Once he took more than his buddies he moved way beyond pulling just a simple burglary of a dumb dealer.” Then he turned to push Rose into the car. “And you ask too man
y questions.”

  Once held by the back door of the sedan, Rose quickly turned around and raised her right leg as high as she could and then came down with as much force as she could muster right on the top of what she hoped was her abductor’s foot. He screamed and dropped down.

  He yelled out an obscenity and jumped to his feet and swung his fist across Rose’s face, hitting her squarely on the jaw and knocking her back into the car. He kicked her legs inside and slammed the door shut.

  “Rose!” Chariot screamed as the man walked around and got into the driver’s side. “Oh, my God!” She was still unable to see anything because of her blindfold.

  Rose opened her mouth and felt the tightness and swelling beginning in her jaw. She didn’t think he had broken it, but she knew that she had never been hit that hard before. She tried to sit up, but with her hands cuffed she was clumsy and unable to pull up from the floor onto the seat. The man had made his way behind the wheel and he started the car. He gunned the engine, driving fast out of the camping loop, and sped toward the park entrance. Rose and Chariot were immediately thrown against the front seat and both of them fell to the floor.

  Rose was trying to pull herself up, trying to find a way to get back into the seat, when she heard a siren and immediately felt the car starting to leave the road. There was a very sharp pull to the left and Rose sensed that the car was up on two wheels, getting ready to roll over.

  The last sounds she heard before they began to tumble down the embankment toward the narrow creek below the road was the crash of splintering glass, the tearing away of metal, and the scream of the young woman on the floor beside her.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Rose didn’t regain consciousness until she was in the trauma room of the emergency department at Caldwell Community Hospital. Her injuries were not life-threatening, but she had two broken ribs, a large gash across her forehead, and a nasty bruise on her cheek. She tried to lift her head, but suddenly felt a wave of nausea come over her.

  “Whoa there, little sister,” came a voice from beside her.

  Rose immediately recognized it to be Lucas. She turned in his direction. “What happened?” she asked as the big man suddenly came into focus.

  “You rolled down a hill,” he replied. “But you’re okay. Thank you, Lord,” he added and bowed with a quick prayer.

  “You may have a concussion,” someone noted. It was a voice Rose didn’t recognize. Then a woman appeared. She was dressed in blue scrubs and was wearing a white lab coat. She was a nurse or a doctor, Rose wasn’t sure. She finished cleaning the wound on Rose’s forehead and stuck a small bandage on it. Rose winced at the pressure applied to her injury.

  “What is it with you and these bad guys?” Another voice rang out.

  It was Rhonda. She stood next to her husband. Together, they leaned over Rose. Rhonda was referring to the fact that Rose had been hospitalized once before because she was hit in the head by the person who had killed Lawrence Franklin. She had also received a slight head injury when she was trying to figure out who had killed Jacob Sunspeaker, a camper from New Mexico who was murdered at Shady Grove.

  “You and head trauma?” Rhonda added.

  Rose smiled a bit, glad to see her friends, glad to know that she was all right. She still felt very confused about what had happened.

  “Chariot?” Rose asked, suddenly remembering who was in the car with her.

  Rhonda nodded, understanding what Rose was asking. “She’s a little more banged up than you. She’s gone into surgery. She had to have her spleen removed. But she should be fine, too.”

  She reached out and smoothed down Rose’s hair while the woman in scrubs moved around them and finished her work. Another hospital employee came in and talked to the other one. They checked an IV line and looked at the X-rays.

  “How did you find us?” Rose asked, becoming clearer about what had happened and where she was.

  “Montgomery saw you heading west on the interstate outside of town. He thought something was wrong and sent one of his guys to follow you.”

  Rose smiled at that. The sheriff did seem to know her pretty well. She wondered if he was angry at her and if he was somewhere in the hospital.

  “Then Willie called us, said you seemed spooked or something, drove out of the campground like a race-car driver. Mama went to the office and figured out that star 69 thing on the phone and we knew you had gotten a call from a South Dakota cell phone. So, we all just hit the road until we caught up with you.”

  “But how did you know where to find me?” Rose was trying to understand. “The phone?” she asked.

  Lucas shook his head. “He wasn’t answering his cell phone,” he replied. “But we did find out it was a Pierre exchange.”

  Rose tried to remember the phone call she had received at the office, the one that set all the other actions into motion.

  “You had written the park name on a little piece of paper by the phone,” Rhonda explained. “So, even when the deputy lost you when you exited off the interstate, we thought we knew where you were going.” Rhonda smiled at her friend.

  Rose tried to recall what had happened when she arrived at the park to find Chariot. She suddenly remembered the driver. “What about the guy?” she asked.

  Lucas shook his head. “He died at the scene.”

  “Do you know who he was?” Rose asked.

  “A bad cop, turns out,” Rhonda replied.

  Rose thought about the man. She remembered how he had cuffed her hands behind her back and thrown her and Chariot into the car. A brown car, she thought, but wasn’t exactly certain.

  She recalled what had happened before the accident, how she tried to kick him and was then hit hard across the cheek. She remembered how it felt once the car started rolling down the embankment, the way she thought she was going to die.

  “When did you get there?” she asked her friends.

  “Just after the accident,” Rhonda said. “The deputy drove in the park first and then the kidnapper lost control of the car, and once that happened, you went tumbling. We came up on the scene just after the car landed near the creek.”

  Rose blinked her eyes and tried to clear away the cobwebs from her mind. She felt along her body to see what else hurt. She raised her upper body off the gurney a bit again and felt a sharp pain in her chest. She dropped back down.

  “You broke a couple of ribs,” Rhonda said, noticing how Rose was trying to ascertain her injuries. “But we think that’s the worst of it for you,” she added.

  Rose nodded. She was glad not to have been more seriously wounded in what must have been a very bad accident. Suddenly she thought about something else, someone else.

  “What about the other guy?” Rose asked. She thought about the man who had taken the memory card, the one who seemed to be the mastermind of the whole event.

  “What other guy?” Rhonda asked.

  “The one who was in charge. The one on the motorcycle,” Rose responded, trying to remember anything about the man who blindfolded her, how tall he might be or some other characteristic that would identify him. She was trying to recall if, in fact, there were two men. Suddenly, she wasn’t certain.

  “We never saw another guy,” Rhonda replied.

  “He was the one who took the card, the one who threatened the little girl …” She paused. Then she remembered Chariot’s plea for her little girl’s life, how Rose had done what she had done to save Chariot’s daughter.

  “What about Constance?” she asked.

  Lucas smiled. “She’s fine,” he replied. “We called the foster mother and she said that Constance was fine, that she was never in any danger.”

  “Are you sure there was another guy?” Rhonda asked.

  Suddenly, everything seemed fuzzy to Rose and she couldn’t remember who was at the park. She thought there were two men, but then she couldn’t say for sure. She thought the man who was driving was not the same man who had placed the call to her at Shady Grove, the one who met her
when she arrived. Yet, she couldn’t be sure about anything except the pain throbbing across her eyes and the tight way she felt across her chest.

  “I, I don’t know,” Rose confessed, remembering that she had been unable to see anything.

  “Okay, you two, I need to do a few more things to our patient here and then we’re going to send her up to a room,” the woman working on Rose said to Rhonda and Lucas. There were now two other hospital employees standing next to Rose. “I’ll come and find you when we know which room she’s in.”

  The couple nodded in response.

  “Little sister, we’ll be right outside waiting on you. Thomas is on his way with Lou Ellen.” Lucas smiled and patted Rose on the hand. “They’re worried sick about you, both of them.”

  Rose smiled. She was glad to know that Thomas was going to be with her in the hospital soon.

  Rhonda and Lucas turned to walk out.

  “Wait,” Rose said suddenly.

  The couple turned back around.

  “I’m pretty sure that there was somebody else,” Rose said, suddenly remembering the tall man who had emerged from the woods. “He left first,” she added. “He left on a motorcycle.”

  A sharp pain shot across her eyes and everything went dark.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  She was dreaming about falling. Head over heels, tumbling and careening, and moving toward something she couldn’t see. Darkness or a thick wall, she wasn’t sure. She only knew that she couldn’t stop heading in that direction. She couldn’t stop her fall.

  “Rose,” she heard a voice calling.

  “Rose,” there it was again.

  Suddenly, she felt herself being shaken and she was lifted out of the act of tumbling and pulled into the light above her. Her lids were heavy and stiff, but she was finally able to open her eyes.