Watkins - 01 - Blood Country

by Mary Logue

  “Hey, I’m trying to drive here,” Bridget snapped at him.

  He let her hair go and then stroked her shoulder. “We don’t have too much farther to go.”

  Bridget drove quietly for a while. Not too much farther. They were getting close to Prescott, she thought. Maybe that’s where they were headed. She needed a plan. She glanced in the rearview mirror. There was already a pile of something covered with a tarp in the back. She wondered what was under there. Her eyes leaked a little more, and she snuffled up her tears. She really didn’t understand why she was crying. She was scared, but that wasn’t it. It felt like she had a lot of pressure building up inside, and maybe that just forced the tears out. Let this jerkball think she was a wimp. She’d show him. She was getting herself and the little life growing inside of her out of this mess.

  “So how did you come to know Claire?” she asked him.

  “Your sister Claire fucked up my life, and I don’t mind returning the favor.”

  21

  Bruce stopped in the doorway of Claire’s house to watch her. Claire was still in her uniform. Bruce hadn’t known her when she was working as a uniformed cop in Minneapolis. They hadn’t met until they were partnered up. This tan-colored uniform didn’t do her justice, and yet there was something about seeing a woman in a uniform, seeing her breasts squeezed into the same shirt that the men wore, that he liked.

  She was directing two other deputies, and they were listening to her. Claire had always been good at giving orders. Bruce had loved to have her order him around. He didn’t always follow her orders, but it was as much fun to thwart her. The years they had worked together were such good times for him. He wanted it all again. He wanted her back in his life on a daily basis. Seeing her working made that even clearer to him.

  He could hear her telling them to put out an APB on a gray or dark pickup truck, possibly heading north. One of the men got on the phone, and the other asked her what they should do next.

  Two dots of red stood out on her cheeks. Claire was on a jag, definitely. He knew her well like this. It wasn’t good for her, she would crash in a day or two, but while she was up, she was incredible. He watched to see if she was falling apart, but she wasn’t. She was funneling all the anger and energy this loss of her daughter had brought into organizing her rescue.

  He stepped inside the doorway, and she saw him.

  “Oh, Bruce, thank God you’re here. No time to meet everyone.” She waved her arms. “This is Detective Bruce Jacobs from Minneapolis Police. He’s here to help out.” Men nodded at him. Civilians were mixed in with the tan Pepin County uniforms. Bruce was wearing a blue-and-white-striped shirt, a tie, and a blue blazer, his slightly dressed up spring uniform. He didn’t like to have to think in the morning when he put his clothes on, so he always laid his clothes out the night before.

  He moved up next to the table and saw a spread-out map with sections marked off on it, the town of Fort St. Antoine and the adjoining township. The blue areas showed the wetlands along the river. He wondered if they had checked through there yet. “What about these slough areas?”

  “We’ve got a couple of people in boats and canoes down here,” Claire answered. “They’re not very deep, and they’re thick with reeds around them. Hard to get to. But we are looking there.”

  “What’re you doing about the possibility that she was picked up?” He had to bring it up to Claire. After all, it was more than a possibility.

  “A dark pickup truck was seen in the vicinity by two witnesses. Unfortunately, neither of them saw the driver. But we’ve put out a call on that truck. She’s been missing two hours. But Bridget’s only been missing an hour.”

  “Bridget?” Bruce was stunned. “What about Bridget? Was she with Meg? What is going on here?”

  Bruce watched Claire’s face drain. She closed her eyes and pressed the back of one hand to them as if to press back tears, but when she spoke, her voice sounded calm. “No. All we can figure is she came over to see me, and the guy grabbed her too.”

  Bruce slammed his fist on the table. He wanted to take Claire in his arms and promise her that no one would be hurt. What was going on here? “Shit. Claire, I’m so sorry.”

  Claire pulled her hair back from her face, which cleared of any emotion. It was an expression that Bruce had never seen on her before. “No time for sorry. I need you to get right back in your car and drive back toward the Twin Cities. If he’s one of the guys we think he is, that’s the way he’ll be going. I’ll go with you. I don’t think we’re going to find them around here, but we have to keep looking.”

  CLAIRE CLIMBED INTO the car, and Bruce took off. He turned the squawker on and they both listened as the car dropped down the hill and he turned onto 35 going north.

  She reached out and grabbed his hand. His big fingers wrapped around her wrist. “Bruce, I don’t know what—”

  He squeezed her hand and then held it gently in his. “Don’t waste your breath. We’ve got one thing we’ve got to do right now, and that is find Meg and Bridget. I’ve been kicking myself. I should have checked in with you on my way down. What if he drove right by me?”

  “Let’s not go there, as we used to say when we worked together. We’ve got to move forward on this one, and fast.”

  “Listen, we’ve got more information than this guy can imagine. We know what color truck he’s driving, we’ve got a good idea of the direction he’s headed in—hell, that’s more than we’ve had to go on most of the time. You put out that all-points bulletin. We’ll hear it on the squeal box if anything is reported.”

  Bruce pushed down on the accelerator, and the car sped down the road. He still held her hand, and Claire didn’t let go of him. The sun was dropping into the edge of the earth on the far side of the lake. Soon it would be dark, no moon. The last light of the sun poured molten red along the shore of the lake, and the lake blazed up in answer.

  With Bruce next to her, she felt calmer. They had worked so well together as a team, having the highest success rate of any detectives on the force. When she faltered, he knew and said the right thing to antagonize her or whatever it took to pick her up again. She had done the same for him. Right now, she was relying on him more than she ever had when they worked together. He had to help her find Meg before it was too late.

  As they drove by a farmhouse, a golden dog loped across the yard in the twilight. He was running for the fun of it, not chasing anything. Claire watched him, and he seemed to represent a way of life she could vaguely remember but hardly hoped to achieve again. A run in the wind just to feel air on your skin, not because someone was chasing you, not because you were trying to catch someone. A way of moving in the world, moment by moment.

  Claire lost the dog as they turned a corner in the road, and the loss pulled at her stomach, at her bones.

  RICH WALKED HOME from town. It was only a half a mile, and he watched the road as he walked, looking for anything that might tell the story of a small girl wandering alongside the highway—a ribbon, a piece of paper, a small shoe print.

  He didn’t hope to find anything. It was getting too dark, and he didn’t think she had walked down this road. He was afraid she had been spirited away. Just as Claire had been. This big, hulky guy had taken her, and they had sped away into the dangerous night, while the Pepin Police Department traipsed around town looking down alleys for Meg. But the consensus was, Meg was gone. The men were disheartened. Stuart was still out looking, checking back at the house every half hour or so. Rich told him he’d come back after he fed the pheasant.

  Rich felt like there was a whole huge story lurking behind Claire, and they were just seeing the edges of it. She reacted too strongly to everything. She was too brave, too scared, too aggressive, and too removed. He had watched her go away when he was standing right next to her in the kitchen. It was as if her body stood by itself without moving as the inner part of Claire—the soul, the spirit, the unconscious—had flown away. He had stayed close to her, ready to catch her body
if it too dropped away, but then someone had come to the door, and she had returned.

  How do you ask someone where they are when you were standing right next to them? How do you ask them what has happened in their life that they jump to the worst conclusions?

  He hiked up the hill of his driveway. His house was dark and probably cold, as he had left no heat on today. He would check his messages, feed the pheasant, and go back to wait for Stuart and pray a little girl, the quintessential apple of her mother’s eye, would return so that he could get to know her mother better. So that her self would return and make a home of her body once more.

  “I HAVE TO PEE.” Bridget slid the words out of her mouth, emphasizing the last one like a kid.

  “Can’t you wait? We’re almost there.” Red slammed his fist against the dash, and Bridget focused on keeping the truck on the road.

  She decided to get even whinier. Who would suspect that someone who was whining was up to something? “No, I can’t wait. That’s the problem. When I have to go, I have to go. I’d rather not piss in this truck.”

  “Okay. Pull over. You can go squat in the bushes. But I’ll have to keep an eye on you.”

  That’s what Bridget was counting on. She slowed the truck down and stopped it near a thicket of scrub trees. They had turned off 35 a few miles back, and she was afraid of what would happen to her when they got to where they were going. She would give him a little show. And see if he wouldn’t go for it She was remembering her aikido from her years that she took it at the university. Move into the aggression. Make it a dance. She had to try something.

  Red got out his side and then made her climb out right behind him. The gun, which she had studied a bit, was in his right hand, but he wasn’t gripping it tightly. It was a revolver with a long barrel, and she knew it was loaded because she could see the bullets in the cylinder. He was using it more like an extension of his hand, pointing the way for her with the barrel. “Get over there.” He pointed to the clump of trees.

  Bridget walked to where he pointed and watched that he followed behind. She turned her back on him and unzipped her jeans and pulled them down. She crouched, leaning over her pants, and hoisted her butt up in the air so she didn’t pee on them. She knew he was watching. That’s what she intended. He was razzed enough to go for her now. She could feel it. If she waited any longer, she might not have another chance. When she was done, she stood up and pulled up her pants. She wanted to get him to make a move for her while it was just the two of them.

  When she turned around, he was only a few feet away. “How’d you like the show?”

  “You’ve got a great ass.”

  Bridget backed up a step, and he followed. When he reached out to grab her neck, she was expecting the move and stepped into him. She slipped under his arm, grabbed his wrist, and threw her hip into his side. He grunted and tried to scramble, but she had the advantage. She knew what she was doing, as she had done it thousands of times in aikido class. But what had worked in class did not happen in the woods. When she tried to flip him, he pulled her down with him. She kicked him away and scrambled up. He landed on his side and then bounced up, the gun still held in his hand.

  This had not been her plan. He still had the gun. He wouldn’t get close to her again. Her only chance was to get away from him now. She turned and ran. She had decided he could shoot her if he wanted to; she’d rather get shot and killed than be subject to his idea of firn. Dropping down and into the woods, she grabbed tree branches and flung herself through the underbrush. This early in the year it was easy to move through the woods.

  She heard him behind her. He sounded a fair distance back, but she guessed he was a sprinter. If he was going to catch up to her, it was going to be soon. If he was going to shoot her, he’d have to stop to aim. She was counting on that to get away from him.

  In the dim light of dusk it was hard to see where she was going. She wasn’t trying to watch her footsteps, just run as fast as she could and not hit a tree. She was running like a horse; she even changed her pacing, galloping through the trees, breathing in lunges, and going faster than she could ever imagine herself running. Branches grabbed at her, her feet tripped over roots, but she kept charging forward.

  Bridget could hear Red behind her. His were the other feet in the woods, the breathing that was coming up behind her. However fast he ran, she would run faster. She didn’t want him to touch her, to touch what was growing inside her. She would never go in that truck with him again. Nothing could make her get back in it and go anywhere. She would make it out of these woods and find safety. She had to believe that to keep running.

  She ran even harder, and then she heard a shot. It sounded like a huge wind blowing over her, and then she felt the sting on her arm, electric like a wasp bite, only an enormous wasp. She didn’t stop running. Her hand flew up to her arm and came away wet. The woods were darker and deeper than she would ever have imagined. She kept running away from him.

  Even while she was moving forward, trying to run in a straight line, the woods circled around her. Another shot rang behind her, but it didn’t touch her. She was counting them. One, two. He had six bullets. She knew blood was running down her arm, but she couldn’t take time to look at it. If she looked, she would stop running. She would give up. She needed to sail through the forest and get to the clearing that was waiting for her. She thought of Jester and how he loved to gallop down the path in the woods, she tried to imagine riding him, and then she felt him falter. Her horse was getting tired.

  Another shot cut through the trees, and she was afraid that it had hit her horse, because something seemed to have gone out of her. Don’t quit running, she told herself. Don’t count the bullets. That was three. Count your steps. She slowed down to a trot, but it was constant. She grabbed at tree trunks and pushed off them to help her keep going.

  And finally she came out of the woods. Just when she thought it would never end, she broke through into a field. She ran into it and saw it was freshly plowed. The ground pulled at her feet. She stumbled and caught herself and kept running.

  A bullet tore past her face, and she felt covered in sweat. That was four. The field shone black in the night that was falling. She stood out in her white shirt. She couldn’t disappear, and he would follow her with those last bullets.

  She couldn’t run anymore. Her legs were burning, and her arm was on fire. Her throat rasped raw, and she was whinnying with fear. She turned and saw him on the edge of the field. He lifted the gun, and she knew another bullet was coming.

  IT WAS DARK out. When she had crawled into her hidey-hole, she could still see light filtering through the screen of tree branches she had built. But now it was pitch black in her hole. She must have slept. Meg remembered curling up and closing her eyes and praying that she would be all right. She wasn’t sure it was okay to pray for something like that. She wondered if you weren’t supposed to just pray for the poor people in China, but she decided to send out a prayer so it would keep her mind busy. The prayer had melted into sleep, but she didn’t know how long she had slept.

  She blinked her eyes, and it didn’t get any lighter. She shrugged out of the leaves that surrounded her and poked her head up. Dark all around. Meg came out of her hiding place and let her eyes grow into the darkness. She wouldn’t move forward until she was sure that the man wasn’t around anymore. She figured if she hid long enough, he’d have to go away. Her mom would catch him otherwise, and she was a cop and could put people in jail.

  Rocking in the dark, her knees tucked right in front of her, Meg hoped that her mom would put that man away in jail. Otherwise how would she ever go to school again, or anything? She’d have to be watching all the time, and that would take away all the fun of walking around by herself.

  Meg could see through the tree branches now. There was a light on in her house, and there were cars parked around it. She needed to go down there and tell her mom she was all right. She stood up and took deep breaths. Her feet felt like they had
gone to sleep on her, but she kicked the needles out of them.

  Meg walked slowly down out of the hillside, holding tree limbs as she went She walked as quietly as she could, like the Indians moved through the forest, not making a sound. When she got to the edge of the woods, she looked carefully. There were some pickup trucks. She’d have to walk in slowly and make sure it wasn’t a trap.

  Meg dropped to her knees and moved across the ground like a woodchuck. They snuffled through the grass, and she wouldn’t make the noise they made, but she moved like they did, rocking gently back and forth, wiggling forward. She made her way down to the fence line, and then she froze. Someone was standing on the side of the road. She could see the tip of a cigarette floating up and down, and she heard a cough.

  Then Meg saw the white hair on the person’s head. It was a woman, an older woman. She was watching Meg’s house. A woman had to be okay, especially one this old.