Bones to Pick

by Linda Lovely

  I crawfished, wriggling back through the watery tunnel between the seats. When I rose up, it took forever to reach air. Water had climbed within two feet of the backseat roof. I sputtered and gasped, guzzling oxygen like I’d been water boarded. I’d been under sixty seconds, maybe ninety. My old synchronized swimming buddies would be ashamed of me.

  “Did you get it?” Mollye asked.

  “Think so.” I raised my manacled right hand to show her the puny-looking plastic prize. “Glad you told me it could pass for an obese key holder. Otherwise I’d have looked for a hammer.”

  “Hand it over,” Mollye said. “I’ll do the honors. Mom showed me how. Just press this gizmo against the window to release the spring-loaded steel point.”

  “You sure? I can do it. The water’s gonna pour in as soon as the window cracks, and I haven’t a clue what happens to the shattered glass.”

  “I’m dead sure. If I bust open the window, I’ll know when to take my last breath.”

  “Won’t be your last,” I promised. “Wait! Take off your shoes and that scarf.”

  “My scarf? Why?”

  “Hey, I’ll buy you a new one. We can’t afford extra baggage. With my luck your scarf would wrap around my head like a blindfold. I need to see the Camry’s headlights to tell which way is up.”

  “Okay, I’ll shuck the shoes,” Mollye nodded. “But not the scarf. Danny gave it to me. Don’t worry, it won’t flutter.” She whipped off the sodden scarf and stuffed it inside her pants.

  “If you don’t save me, I’ll come back and haunt you,” she added. “I have experience with the spirit world, you know. Take a big breath. Here goes.”

  I’d barely gulped a mouthful of air when an exploding wall of water flung me backward. If there was broken glass, I never saw it in the liquid hurricane. Mollye put her shoulder to the door. I breast-stroked through the opening.

  Mollye’s eyes were wild and every appendage she owned thrashed at the surrounding water. I jived left, snuck up behind her, and clamped my right arm with its clunky unwelcome jewelry across her ample chest. Had to muster all my strength to pin her tight to my body. Couldn’t let her turn and hang on me. A death sentence for both of us. I kicked and stroked. Mollye, bless her, quit thrashing.

  The flow of water caressed my body as we edged higher. Adrenalin fueled my strokes. I no longer felt icy pinpricks; they’d merged into a raging bonfire that licked at every scrap of exposed skin. Exhaustion lurked. My lungs burned. Keep going!

  We broke the surface. I gulped air. Thank God.

  Mollye sputtered and choked. “I’m drowning!” Her head bobbed under.

  I’d loosened my grip as soon as I felt air on my cheeks. Bad mistake. Mollye couldn’t swim, didn’t know how to float. Her panic ignited a tornado of agitated motion. She flung herself at me and tried to lock her handcuffed arms around my neck. I ducked, took a big breath, and dove. I ambushed her from behind and once again locked her against my body.

  “Stop fighting,” I gasped. “Or I swear I’ll knock you silly.”

  Bang! Bang!

  Gunshots. Fear ignited a new interior chill. My heart stuttered. Were they shooting at us? Were Andy and Paint up there in the dark? Were they still breathing?

  FORTY-FIVE

  Bang! Bang!

  This time I heard metal pings after each shot. Ricochets off either the sheriff’s cruiser or the rescue truck. Was it Andy’s or Paint’s ride? I hadn’t seen anything except headlights prior to our baptism.

  I tried to block out the gunplay. Getting out of the frigid lake was priority number one. I swam as fast as I could, given I had a fidgeting, swearing friend clamped to my side.

  With my body on autopilot, my mind whirled. Did the shots suggest a gun battle or a shooting gallery with Paint and/or Andy as clay ducks?

  The shore looked reasonably close, maybe one hundred feet. Cupcake swim for even a back-of-the-pack triathlete like me. In normal times. Not in cold water dragging a sodden, fully clothed body.

  The truck’s headlamps served as a lighthouse beacon. I kept them to my left as I angled toward shore. Beaching in the sheriff’s lap wouldn’t help our posse—or us. Once ashore we’d make an end-run to the truck. If our luck held, we could all flee the mountain together.

  First, reach shore. The clock was ticking. My arms possessed all the strength of stretched-out rubber bands. I hoped Mollye wouldn’t recall she had me by two inches and forty pounds. If she panicked and set her mind to it, she could twist me into a pretzel and sit on my head.

  A clump of bubbles rose from below and airbrushed my arms. I flinched. A fish? No. Mountain lakes didn’t boast anything bigger than trout.

  A geyser shot up beside me. Holy Havarti!

  A scream tore from my throat. Jones or West had come for us. We hadn’t escaped.

  Mollye screamed, then gagged on the geyser’s falling spray.

  A man’s large hand clamped over my mouth.

  “Shhh. Sound carries.”

  I tried to bite, then torqued my neck enough to take a gander at which monster the lake had spewed up—Jones or West.

  “Andy! You scared the deviled ham out of me. What are you doing?”

  A brief smile flicked across his face before his need to gulp air took priority. The veterinarian was definitely down a quart or two on oxygen.

  I struggled to tread water and keep Mollye’s head high and dry as we waited for Andy to suck in enough air to talk.

  “We flipped for it…” The need to gasp air pushed the pause button on Andy’s answer. “I got to play Jacques Cousteau. Paint got Rambo. He’s keeping the sheriff busy.”

  He paused to take two quick breaths. “We called state troopers as soon as we figured out Jones snatched you.” Andy panted. “I snuck past the sheriff. Swam out. Dove on the Camry’s headlights. Empty. You’d rescued yourselves.”

  “Not quite. We haven’t made shore. We need to swim now, talk later.”

  “Want me to tow Mollye?” Andy asked.

  “Hey, I’m not a barge,” she sputtered.

  Relief at having a new ally helped restore my humor. “Could have fooled me. Andy, you can tote this barge soon as you get your breath back.”

  My sidestroke sliced through the water. Again and again. I kicked, too, though a budding cramp pulsed in my calf.

  My strokes got shorter. My nerve endings grew indifferent to the cold. Numbness, cramps, exhaustion. A depressing trifecta. Time to swap. Let Andy lug Mollye a while.

  I reached to tag him, when my foot scraped something ragged. A rock? A tree stump? Had I touched bottom? “Mollye, I’m gonna loosen my grip. Don’t go crazy. I think we’ve reached the shallows.”

  I quit stroking and let my legs feather down. Yes! I could stand. Sort of. Fear and exhaustion turned my legs to Jell-O.

  Andy stood, the water little more than waist deep on him. He took Mollye’s arm to steady her as she found her feet. “We can wade in. Quietly,” he said. “Can’t give Jones and West our position.”

  Mollye let out a relieved whoosh of air. “Thank the Lord. I swear I’ll never take a bath again. Only quick showers, maybe spit baths. Had enough dunking for a lifetime.”

  Her whisper was barely audible. Either she’d taken Andy’s admonition seriously about the need for quiet or she was too hoarse to boost her volume.

  Slimy rocks lining the bottom of the lake made walking a slip-and-slide adventure. But driven forward by the promise of dry land, we slogged from waist-deep to knee-deep in no time.

  “Let’s head toward that stand of pines.” Andy motioned to a spot about twenty feet farther left. “The embankment’s real shallow and the trees offer a little cover.”

  We clambered ashore and fell in a sprawl on the soft pine needles. For long minutes, we engaged in a communal wheeze-a-thon, hoping to inhale enough oxygen to find that elusive second
wind. Dry land hadn’t brought total relief. A slight breeze snuck beneath the pine boughs and tried its best to turn us into human Popsicles.

  Andy sat up. “Imagine Paint could use a little company. No sirens yet. Hope the state troopers get here soon.”

  “What about that baby-faced killer on the gate?” Mollye whispered. “What if he called in reinforcements? Heck, he could be sneaking up on Paint right now.”

  “He won’t sneak up on anyone any time soon.” Andy’s white teeth flashed in the moonlight. “I shot him with my tranq gun. Same dose I’d use to knock out a bear. Left him on the floor of the guard hut and the gates wide open for the cavalry.”

  “Will they come—the state troopers?” I asked. “This is the sheriff’s bailiwick, right? What if the troopers call Jones to see what’s happening? The sheriff has a radio, and he can spin convincing yarns. He could say your call was bogus, and he’d handle things. Cheeses! Maybe more of his deputies are on the way.”

  Mollye shook her head. “Don’t think so. Danny’s introduced me to other deputies. They’re not dirtbags like West. Remember? After Jones murdered Victor he made up a cock-and-bull tale about us to keep Max, that other deputy, in the dark.”

  “What?” Andy looked back and forth between Mollye and me. “Jones killed Victor?”

  “We saw him do it,” Mollye said.

  “Oh, pickled pigs’ feet.” I suddenly remembered the cell phone wedged in my undies. Andy’s eyes grew bigger than Frisbees as I began a foray into my panties. Probably looked like I’d picked an inopportune time to scratch an itch. Awkward, too. My right hand with its dangling handcuff wasn’t in play. Had to pretend I was a leftie.

  Eureka. I snaked my mitt back out of my sodden panties and waved my iPhone in victory. “Hid it after I texted you. Hope we can save the pictures we took of Jones and West wiping down Victor’s car after they smoked him.”

  Andy’s mouth hung open. “You are certainly the most interesting woman I’ve ever dated.”

  “Enough lovey-dovey crapola,” Mollye grumped. “Let’s make sure our friend Paint remains ‘unleaded.’ We need to haul ass to the truck and boogie on out of here.”

  Andy slid a knife out of a sheath on his belt. “Paint has my gun, but I have a little something to give Jones or West if they jump us.”

  We trekked through the woods single-file—Andy, me, Mollye—trying our dangdest to lurk in the shadows and avoid twigs that might snap-crackle-pop under our bare feet. Not a single gunshot since we reached shore. That scared me. Could it mean the sheriff didn’t need to waste any more bullets because he’d already killed Paint?

  A pine branch snapped. So loud it sounded like a gunshot. In the woods just ahead. My heart tripped as Andy’s knife hand flew up. He’d heard it, too. An animal or a two-legged critter?

  A hand shot out from behind a tree and grabbed Andy’s forearm.

  “Easy with that knife, partner. It’s me.”

  A whoosh of air escaped Andy’s lips as Paint released his arm.

  “You ’bout gave us all heart attacks.” Mollye thumped Paint’s chest with her handcuffed fists. “Why’d you leave the truck?”

  Paint shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea. Ran out of ammo. Maybe you ought to stock more firepower in your vet-mobile, Andy.”

  Andy looked my way. “When I saw the SOS, I swung by and picked Paint up at his store. Knew Mollye must have clued you in on your phone’s new feature. When you didn’t answer our calls, we figured we’d better hurry. Didn’t think to grab an extra box of shells.”

  “Glad you hurried,” Mollye said. “Five more minutes and we’d have been primed for a permanent sleep in Davy Jones’ Locker.”

  “What now?” Andy asked. “Hide until—”

  A wail of sirens interrupted. We started stumbling toward the road.

  Paint stopped short and we almost tumbled like a row of cascading dominoes. “Stop at the edge of the woods,” he warned. “Let’s make sure our new arrivals are really the white hats before we put our hides in plain sight.”

  “Agreed,” Andy said. “Even if they’re troopers, there’s no guarantee one of them won’t have a jittery trigger finger. Running at them in the dark would be plain dumb.”

  We stopped five feet short of the clearing. The moon was high, and my eyes had become accustomed to the dark. The two new vehicles were clearly state patrol, not Ardon County Sheriff’s cruisers.

  Four troopers exited the cars, but stayed behind them for protection. A bright spotlight lit up the sheriff’s cruiser like it was mid-afternoon.

  “Sheriff Jones, please come out where we can see you with your hands up,” the lead trooper yelled. “We need to sort this out. Maybe you can explain everything that’s going on. Maybe you’re just doing your job. But the calls we got, well, we have to investigate, have to take it seriously.”

  Jones stepped into the light, holding his empty hands high, and started talking a mile a minute. “Glad you’re here. We thought we were dealing with an ordinary trespassing complaint. But the gate-crashers—two women—fought us like alley cats. Had to handcuff ’em. We put ’em in the backseat of their car while we decided our next move. That’s when their car rolled into the lake. We wanted to dive in and try to get ’em out but then this truck barreled up. Someone opened fire. I’m guessin’ they called their boyfriends. They’re hiding around here somewhere.”

  My anger boiled up like a volcano. The weasel had spun the truth a complete one-eighty. Well, he wouldn’t get away with it. I opened my mouth to scream, “He’s lying!” when Andy clamped a hand over my mouth. This was getting to be a bad habit. If we ever got out of this mess, I’d explain his big fat paw was not one of the parts of his anatomy with a permit to access my lips.

  Andy’s eyes pleaded. “Jones thinks you and Mollye are dead and can’t contradict him. He’s discrediting Paint and me as deranged boyfriends. But he’s got a surprise coming—you two are alive. Let’s see what else he’s got up his sleeve. And West hasn’t shown himself. That worries me.”

  The sheriff sauntered toward the troopers like a total innocent. “Can I put my hands down now?”

  Instead of answering, the lead trooper asked another question. “Who’s the ‘we’ doing the arresting? Sheriff, tell whoever’s with you he needs to come out with his hands up.”

  Jones hollered, “Come join us, Deputy. These troopers can see we were just defending ourselves.”

  Nothing happened. West didn’t pop up.

  “Come on, Deputy, hustle it up,” the trooper ordered. “Don’t make us come get you.”

  I held my breath. Why didn’t West show himself? Was he going cowboy or planning a suicide by cop?

  A minute went by, then two. Nothing.

  “Oh, God,” Paint whispered. “Maybe I killed West. I aimed high, over the truck. I just wanted to keep them pinned down.”

  Jones lowered his hands as he stood beside the troopers.

  “Jenkins, stay here with the sheriff,” the lead trooper said. “Swihart and I will go collect the deputy. Maybe he’s injured.”

  The leader motioned Swihart to go to the right of the sheriff’s cruiser, while he took the left wing. I prayed West wasn’t planning to shoot his way out of this.

  The troopers disappeared behind the cruiser.

  “Call an ambulance,” the leader yelled. “The deputy’s dead. It’s a crime scene.”

  “Dammit,” the sheriff raged. “Those peckerheads murdered my deputy. Hunt ’em down before they kill one of your men. Those assholes are still out there, and they’ve got guns.”

  FORTY-SIX

  “We don’t have guns,” Paint yelled.

  He stretched his hands high above his head as he stepped out of the woods. “There’s one shotgun in the truck, empty. I only fired a few shots over the sheriff’s cruiser, way over their heads. We’re unarmed. Didn’t want to c
ome out till we were sure the sheriff wouldn’t gun us down.”

  Andy, Mollye, and I lurched out of the pines to join Paint.

  “Damn you, Jones, you lying scumbag,” Mollye yelled. “Thought we were dead, didn’t you? Too bad. We’re alive to tell what a lowlife murderer you are.”

  “She’s right. Don’t listen to anything that dirtbag sheriff says,” Andy shouted. “We asked you to come. Why would we invite state troopers if we were trying to gun down the sheriff and his deputy?”

  Assuming the posture of what we figured was I-give-up protocol, we all waved our empty hands on high. The clink of handcuffs provided audio accompaniment to Mollye’s and my waves. Her hands-up gesture lasted maybe two seconds.

  “Look, guys, that freakin’ sheriff tried to drown us,” she said. “We’ve been soaking in ice water for half an hour. You’d dern well better get us someplace warm and dry before we croak.”

  That’s when things became a blur. The troopers patted everyone down and administered breathalyzer tests before removing Mollye’s and my handcuffs and handing out blankets. Trooper Swihart shepherded Mollye, Andy, and me—the water-logged trio—into the back of a patrol car, cranked up the heat, and told us not to talk. He kept watch from the driver’s seat.

  Since Paint was an admitted shooter—and wasn’t drenched—they led him to another patrol car. Guess they didn’t want us conspiring to fabricate a common story. Imagine they also wanted to avoid accusations of using hypothermia as a torture technique to elicit confessions.

  The sheriff slumped in the back of his own cruiser. He’d been assigned a front-seat minder, too. Encouraging. Guess the state cops hadn’t swallowed Jones’ story hook, line, and sinker.

  More sirens. More troopers. Two ambulances.

  A gray-haired paramedic peered in the window at us, then opened the car door. “I’m Steve,” he said. His intense blue gaze roamed over us, assessing, yet concerned and kind. “First, let’s get you out of those wet clothes. You girls can undress behind the ambulance doors.”