He’d left Kellen beside the gulf not five minutes earlier and begun the trek back up the hill, thinking that help was a few minutes away. His hands were shaking and his head throbbed but he’d told himself that he needed to think of Kellen, because Kellen needed help of the kind that could be found—normal, human help, different from that required by Eric. So he’d walked up the storm-ravaged slope, intent on finding rescue for Kellen, and now he was staring at his wife bound and gagged.
For a moment nobody moved or spoke. They all just froze there, looking back at one another, and then Eric started forward at a run, and Josiah Bradford’s face split into a grin and he lifted the shotgun and laid the barrel against the crown of Claire’s skull.
Eric stopped running.
“What are you doing?” he shouted. “What do you want?”
“Only what’s owed to me,” Josiah said. His voice didn’t sound anything like it had two days ago. It seemed to have gained a deeper timbre, gained power. It was the voice of an old-time revival preacher, primed to stir the crowds into a frenzy.
“Take that gun away from—”
“You come on up here. Walk slow, but get closer. I don’t want to shout.”
No, Eric thought, I believe we should shout. Because Kellen’s back there and he isn’t going to hear us unless we’re shouting. Don’t know what he could do with a broken ankle anyhow, but it’s something. I left him to get help. Now I need it.
He moved forward to join them.
Devastation. That was the word across the shortwave bands—reports coming in from around the area to Anne’s basement while she waited for the police. The tornado that had passed overhead while Josiah Bradford was still in her home had touched down just west of Orangeville and moved northeast into Orleans. Houses had been torn apart, cars overturned, utility poles ripped from the ground. At least two fires started in the aftermath. Highway 37 was closed between Orleans and Mitchell, keeping many rescue crews from reaching the scene.
A second tornado had touched down within minutes of the first, this one just to the southeast. It had flattened a group of trailers and then moved back into farmland, taking a cellular phone tower out in its path. Early estimates said that one had stayed on the ground for at least six miles.
She had no view of the sky from down in the cellar, but the spotters to the west were issuing frantic warnings that things were not done yet. The supercell was shifting and realigning and, they warned, possibly preparing to spit out another funnel cloud.
Tornado outbreaks generally spanned a wider area, sometimes putting up as many as forty or fifty or even a hundred tornadoes spread out across a wide, multistate region. To have a cluster outbreak like this, so many tornadoes in one county, was rare but not unprecedented. She remembered studying a similar event that occurred in Houston in the early nineties, when six tornadoes spawned from four separate storms hit one county over the course of about two hours. At one point, three of them were on the ground at the same time. Things like that could happen. You could never predict the behavior of a truly furious storm. All you could hope to do was see the warnings.
That was her role—to see the warnings and hope that people heeded them. She had frequencies for the security outfits with both the French Lick and West Baden hotels, and she contacted them immediately after finishing her initial conversation with the sheriff’s department, explained the threat, and suggested they post some guards at the property entrances. She couldn’t say whether they believed her, but she’d done what she could. She’d issued the warning.
Fifteen minutes after she’d made initial contact, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher came back to Anne to report that a detective named Roger Brewer from the Indiana State Police had arrived at Josiah Bradford’s home.
And found it missing.
It appeared, the dispatcher said, as if the tornado had in fact touched down almost on top of Josiah’s house before beginning its path into Orleans.
“No sign of the truck?” Anne asked.
No sign of the truck. The state police were reaching out to the FBI for assistance—with every available unit out on storm-related calls, the kidnapping called for focused attention that the locals could not provide. But the nearest FBI contact was in Bloomington, which was a forty-five-minute drive in the best of conditions, and these weren’t the best of conditions. So there was one detective on the search.
One.
The dispatcher, who was talking to Anne with detached calm, which was of course part of the job but which was also frustrating beyond measure to someone trying to convey a sense of urgency, said that the detective was “making a sweep.” Then she told Anne that there were too many other emergency calls going on to prolong this one.
“He was headed toward his property,” Anne said. “Some area of woods near his property. Keep looking. And remember that he said his truck was full of—”
“I remember. I’ve advised our officers. They understand the threat.”
No, Anne thought, they do not. I’m not sure anyone could.
She couldn’t say what she knew to be true: that the storm and Josiah were linked, that something evil had come to town today, and it wasn’t leaving soon.
“What do you want?” Eric Shaw repeated, advancing up the trail toward Josiah. “This doesn’t have anything to do with us. Not with her, not with me.”
“I think you’re wrong on that score,” Josiah said. “It has much to do with you.”
“How?” Shaw said.
“You give my name to another,” Josiah said. “The one who took me from my home, who shed my blood and took me from my home, and you honor him with my name. Don’t even see that you brought me back home, you dumb son of a bitch. You brought me home, and there’s scores to be settled.”
The words had left his mouth without a beat of hesitation, and though they were not his own words, he believed them.
“Brought me home and then thought you could control me,” he said. “Hold me back with water. A fool’s notion, Shaw. There’s not a force in this valley stronger than me.”
Shaw tilted his head and blinked at Josiah. “He’s in you,” he said. “Isn’t he?”
Josiah didn’t answer.
“What do you mean?” Danny said, and Josiah didn’t care for the intense interest in his voice.
“Campbell,” Shaw said to Josiah. “You sound just like him now.”
Above them the sky had darkened to near black, the wind rising to a howl though the rain had ceased altogether. The next wave of storms was here.
“How would you know the sound of his voice?” Danny said.
“Trust me, I know it. I’ve been listening to him for a few days now. Seeing him and hearing him.” He turned back to Josiah. “You don’t look like him yet but you carry his voice. He’s in you now.”
“Always was,” Josiah said. “Did you not hear what I said? We’re of shared blood, you ignorant son of a bitch. The years don’t matter—we’re linked, and always have been.”
“No,” Shaw said, “not like this. He’s in your mind, damn it, he’s turned you into something—”
Josiah stepped forward and swung the shotgun, caught Shaw in the temple with the barrel and knocked him down into the wet grass. Danny gave a little grunt and stepped forward and Josiah turned and stared at him.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Nothing. I’m not—”
“You move toward me again, and I’ll shoot you just as fast as either of them.”
“Damn it, Josiah, he just told you the truth.”
“Hasn’t been a word of truth left his mouth since he set foot in my valley.”
“Bullshit. Campbell’s infecting your damn brain just like he says.”
Shaw spoke up again, his voice thick with pain. “Let Claire go, at least. Let her go, and whatever problem you’ve got with me, we’ll figure it out. But she’s not a part of this.”
Josiah stared down at him and watched blood seep out of a wo
und near his hairline and trickle down the side of his face and drip into the grass. The blood looked black in the shadows, but then the lightning flashed again, and in that instant he saw the bright red of the blood stark against the white of Shaw’s face.
“Think for a minute,” Shaw said, speaking as if his tongue were hard to move. “Think about what you want, and what you can actually get. You want some money? Okay, I’ll get you money. But what else can you hope to get out of this? Why do you have her tied up like that? What does it bring you?”
“It’ll bring,” Josiah said, “what’s been owed.”
“What’s owed to you?”
“This valley,” he said.
“I don’t know what that means. And I don’t know how hurting my wife can help you get it.”
“It’s a matter of power,” Josiah said. “I would not expect a man of your dull mind to conceive of just what that means. I ran this valley once, held it in the palm of my hand. I’ll do it again.”
There was blood still dripping off the side of Shaw’s head. Josiah must have hit him a good one; his left arm was shaking as if caught by palsy.
“Stop letting him talk for you!” Shaw shouted. “Just think for a minute, think about what’s real. You’ve got police after you. If you stay here, you’ll be arrested. But I can get you some money and then you can leave—”
“Shut your damned mouth,” Josiah said. “If I required a suggestion from you, I’d let you know with my gun.”
But Shaw’s words were getting to him, crawling in his head and clouding his sense of purpose. What did he want? Why was he here? He turned away from the others, toward the western woods, and let the wind fan hard into his face. He could smell the storm on it, could taste its anger. He wanted to be alone with that wind for just a moment. Just one long blink.
Shaw went for him when he closed his eyes. Josiah hadn’t been paying attention to the gun; it hung loose at his side, leaning against his thigh, and Shaw almost got to it. Got a hand on it, in fact, clawed at the stock and almost tore it from Josiah’s grip.
Almost.
Josiah snatched it away from him and swept his left fist down like a hammer, caught Shaw square in the forehead. He hung on, though, keeping one arm wrapped around Josiah’s waist and throwing punches with the other. Josiah staggered backward and got his free hand on Shaw’s belt and heaved. Then he had space to lift the gun as Shaw came back at him a second time. Josiah twisted it so the butt was pointed down and slammed it at Shaw’s face, missing and hitting his shoulder. There was a snapping sound and a cry of pain and Shaw fell back into the grass and the mud. Josiah lifted the gun again, hoisting it high this time, and as the woman gave a choked scream against the tape over her mouth, he had a flash of memory, saw himself down in the ditch with that detective again, swinging the cinder block. This time he tempered the blow. Brought the stock of the gun down with wounding force but not killing force. He caught Shaw on the top of the head and he dropped and stayed down. Conscious still, groping around in the dirt as if he intended to rise but eliminated as a threat for the moment. Josiah wanted to hit him again, full strength, but he held back, thinking of the man he’d killed too early last time.
He wouldn’t make the same mistake now. The dead couldn’t remember you, and Josiah wanted this son of a bitch to remember him. Long may he live and remember. That was Campbell’s instruction. Shaw had wanted to tell tales about the family? Wanted to exploit the Bradford name? Let him tell this story.
Josiah dropped to one knee beside Shaw, felt through his pockets. No weapon, but there was a phone. Two phones, in fact; one looked already ruined by water. Josiah set both of them on the ground and smashed them with the butt of the shotgun while Shaw lay at his feet and moaned, writhing. Josiah knelt again, took him by an ear, pulled his head back, and looked down into the faltering eyes.
“You ever heard a dynamite blast? Up close, in person?”
Shaw’s lips moved but no words came. His eyelids fluttered, then jerked open again when Josiah twisted his ear.
“Picture a full case of it going up, with fifteen gallons of gasoline to help it along. Think you got an idea of what that’ll sound like? I hope you do, because you’re not going to be there to listen. Won’t hear the sound itself, but you’ll hear plenty about it. Might start hearing it in your dreams. I’d imagine you will. When they take her bones out of the fire, you won’t be able to stop imagining just what it was like. Be imagining for a long time, I expect. Enjoy that.”
He slapped Shaw’s head back down and straightened up, walked over to the wife, wrapped his hand in her long dark hair, and jerked her to her feet. Danny made another sound of disapproval, and Josiah turned the gun barrel toward him.
“Back up the trail, Danny boy. We’re going back up the trail. You walk ahead now. I’ve got a sense you can no longer be trusted to stand behind me.”
“Damn it, Josiah, leave her here. Leave her with him. Ain’t no reason to take this thing any farther. We’ll get in my car and get you out of this town. Wherever you want to go, man, we can get you there.”
“That’s where you’re confused,” Josiah said. “You think I want to go somewhere else. That’s not the case. I just got home.”
He moved his finger onto the trigger and tilted his chin up the trail, spitting a stream of tobacco juice in its direction.
“Start walking. We got a piece of work left to do.”
58
THERE WAS NO WORD of Josiah Bradford or his pickup truck. Anne sat alone in the cold basement that smelled of trapped moisture and dust and scanned the shortwave bands, trying to stay hopeful, trying not to remember the sound his palm had made on that poor woman’s face.
Nothing came in to reward her hope.
There were plenty of reports—she couldn’t remember a day with this level of activity, in fact—but they were all storm-related. The damage in Orleans was severe. Just to the north, in Mitchell, line winds had brought down trees and blown windows out of buildings, and in the tiny speed bump town of Leipsic, there were reports of a fire that started when a power line came down on a pole barn. The second tornado, in Paoli, had scattered a cluster of trailers, some probably with people inside.
Urgent problems, sure, but what held Anne’s attention now were not reports of damage to the north and east, but those of clouds to the south and west. They were accompanied by savage lightning that had been missing in the day’s first round—a school nine miles away had been struck—and the area beneath the storm was being raked with nickel-size hail. Two spotters whom Anne knew and trusted called in observations of a beaver’s tail, a trailing cloud formation that indicated a supercell with rotation.
Even more alarming, though, were the reports from spotters just outside this new storm. In regions around it, the storms that had been building were dissipating. That might please the novice, but it was anything but a good sign, suggesting that the energy from those outlying storms was being absorbed by the larger front. Feeding it.
The storm was moving swiftly to the northeast. Right back into Anne’s valley.
She made contact with the dispatcher again, was informed curtly that Detective Brewer still had no sign of the truck.
“Tell him to make another drive through that area. He’s out there.”
The dispatcher said she’d ask him to make another pass.
The world would not hold still. Eric blinked and squinted and tried to find steady focus, but it kept shifting, the trees and the earth and the sky undulating around him. Frequently the dark woods were lit with flashes of lightning, and thunder crackled in a way that made the ground seem to tremble, but there was no rain.
He ran his tongue over his lips and tasted blood, tried to sit up and felt a bolt of pain in his collarbone. He reached for the head wound but his shaking hand could not find it, sending his fingers rattling over his face like a blind man searching for recognition.
He was alone.
That meant that Claire was gone.
He gave a grunt and shoved himself onto all fours, then crawled over to a tree and used it to pull himself to his feet. The world tilted again but he held firm to the tree.
Where had they taken her? They’d just left; it could not be far. And he had to follow. Had to follow quickly, because Josiah had a gun and hadn’t he said something about—
Dynamite. With fifteen gallons of gasoline to help it along…
He’d heard those words, hadn’t he? Was it true? Did Josiah Bradford have dynamite in the back of that truck?
When they take her bones out of the fire…
There was no one there who could help. Kellen was back at the gulf and his car was probably destroyed and Claire was with that man, who was no longer himself. He was infected by Campbell now, Eric was certain of that, had heard it in his voice and seen it in his eyes.
He had to catch up.
He had to catch up fast.
Finally Josiah had a purpose, understood it, and knew how to carry it out. He felt like a man who’d long been searching in the dark and finally realized he’d been carrying a matchbook in his pocket the whole time.
His detour to this place, one that had taken him far from the hotel and his ultimate goal, had been puzzling but necessary for reasons he couldn’t entirely comprehend. Now, after seeing Shaw, he understood it well—Shaw and Campbell were linked, a part of one another in a way that differed from Josiah and Campbell’s bond. Shaw had returned Campbell’s spirit to this place, and, somehow, he understood that. Understood the significance. Campbell needed him to be left to tell the tale; nobody else was capable of giving true credit where credit would be due. Eric Shaw was the exception. In the question of Campbell Bradford’s legacy, Eric Shaw was critical.
They moved swiftly up the trail, with Josiah dragging the woman along and keeping the gun pointed forward, toward Danny. The loyalest of friends he’d been for years, and yet Josiah had looked into his eyes and seen the deceit that lurked there and knew well that Danny Hastings was an ally no longer.
So Cold the River Page 37
