Rock-a-Bye Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  Expecting any second to hear a blast and feel the buckshot penetrate my back, I made for the woods.

  “Hey! Stop!” Potter had seen me. “Stop or I’ll shoot.”

  I kept running.

  “Hey, POS, I’m the one you want.” Pleasant stepped out of the woods. “You’re going to prison, asshat. I’ll see to it.”

  Holy cow, that girl had a set of brass ones. And she was going to get herself killed.

  I’d made it to the edge of the woods. I turned around, my pistol ready at my side. “Sheriff Coleman Peters is on the way. He reserved your bunk in Parchman. Let’s go.”

  Potter shifted the gun from Pleasant to me. We were both valueless to him, and I didn’t doubt he’d shoot us if he had a clear opportunity. It had never occurred to me that Pleasant had been taken for her child. That Potter and DeLong were going to sell her baby made me furious. I still had my gun, and if he lifted the shotgun, I would shoot him.

  As if he read my mind, he lifted the gun to his shoulder. “You’ve been begging for this a long time.” He aimed at Pleasant.

  I braced myself as I’d been taught, aimed, and fired. The bullet missed Potter’s crotch, but not by much. Wood chips flew from the house. He was so shocked, he stumbled backward and dropped the gun. I took another shot, deliberately high.

  “Run!” I yelled at Pleasant. We took off in opposite directions.

  A crashing from the woods to my right sent my heart into my throat. When I realized it was Sweetie Pie, the relief was so delicious I wanted to cry. My hound was unharmed. Potter had missed.

  I’d never been a fan of jogging and I hated sprinting even more, but I put everything I had into a long, fast stride as I ran for my life. Limbs slapped my face and my boots skidded in the mud, but nothing slowed me down. It was run or die, and I really, really wanted to live.

  Sweetie edged me toward the creek, and I let her pick the way. She had a homing device in her hound dog brain, and while I might guess the correct direction, she was true as a compass. Fifteen minutes later, huffing painfully for breath, I heard something else in the woods. I prayed it was Pleasant, and my prayers were answered when she crashed through a thicket. A long streak of blood covered her hip, and her legs were a mess of scratches and bruises, but her face held radiance. She was free, and her baby girl was safe. I shrugged out of my jacket and offered it to her but she refused.

  I signaled her to keep going and I forced myself to jog. We stumbled through more deadfall as we drew close to the creek. The rain was petering out, but night had begun to kiss the eastern sky. Darkness might be a helpful cover, if we didn’t freeze to death. Where in the hell was Coleman? He’d had plenty of time to arrive. We weren’t so far off the path that we wouldn’t hear the four-wheelers.

  Had something happened to Tinkie? Had she met Potter coming in as she was going out? Surely word was all over town by now that Tinkie and Oscar had a new baby. If Potter felt the Richmonds had thwarted his plan to sell Libby—and I had no doubt he could get ten to twenty thousand for a healthy baby girl so beautiful—then he might have taken his wrath out on Tinkie.

  “Did you say the sheriff was coming?” Pleasant gasped out as we struggled through the woods.

  “Yes, he’s coming.” There was no point sharing my doubts with her. “He’ll find us any minute now. Just keep going.”

  I stumbled and went down just as the tree I’d been beside exploded. The gunshot blast made my ears ring.

  Luther Potter was not fifty yards behind us—and he was closing in. He had no incentive to keep either of us alive. If he dropped us in the woods, he could leave the bodies for the animals to scavenge and wouldn’t even be bothered with disposal of our remains.

  Pleasant was panting with exertion, and her body trembled from the cold. We didn’t have much time left for a rescue. She was about to fall in her tracks. Hypothermia would kill her as effectively as a bullet. What the hell had happened to Tinkie and the cavalry?

  I judged we’d made it half a mile from the cabin. The terrain was brutal, and the wet, slick ground often made us trip and slide. Potter faced the same elements, but he wasn’t afraid, freezing, and exhausted from having had a baby and being mistreated for weeks.

  To Pleasant’s credit, she never complained. Her gaze remained on the ground in front of her, and she was focused on the extreme will it took to put one foot in front of the other. She faltered and almost went to her knees, but she caught herself on a small tree, pulled up, and forged ahead. She had a baby to live for. I’d never seen anyone display such courage and determination.

  “Give it up,” Potter yelled. “I’ll make it quick and painless. If I have to keep tracking you, I’ll shoot you in the gut and leave you for the coyotes.”

  Pleasant sobbed. She stumbled and fell, hard, onto her knees and hands. She tried to get up but couldn’t.

  “Go,” she said. “Leave me.”

  “I’m not leaving you here.” I wasn’t courageous, but I couldn’t leave a helpless woman to the abuse I was certain would befall her.

  She tried again to rise, lost her footing and tumbled to her side, and I knew she was done for. “My baby. I never got to hold her.”

  “Get up.” I tugged her arm. “You can’t quit. You have to make it. Libby needs you.”

  Her eyes had gone dreamy, and the shaking had stopped. She was dying right in front of me. “Libby.” She whispered the name. “I like that.”

  I didn’t have cell phone reception, but I damn sure had pictures of Libby. I whipped out the phone and found the cutest one where she wore a red and white polka dot onesie with a big matching peony bow on her red hair. “Look!” I commanded Pleasant, shaking her back to consciousness. “This is your baby. Get up and fight for her.”

  For a moment life came back into her eyes as she stared at the picture. “My baby. Love her for me and tell her I’m sorry,” she said, and that was it. The black tide of unconsciousness pulled her under. Her breathing was so shallow and her body so cold I knew it was only a matter of moments before she was dead.

  Rage consumed me. The injustice of what had happened to Pleasant washed red behind my eyeballs. I gripped the pistol and faced toward where I knew Potter was. “Luther Potter, I’m going to kill you.” It was wrong and I knew it. Vigilante justice wasn’t my normal operating procedure, but this man had tortured and imprisoned a young woman. A child, really. She would die in the woods because of this man. He’d generated a world of suffering for a lot of people, and he stood between me and rescue. If I had to kill him, that was fine by me.

  “Little girl with a pop gun, you’d better watch your step. I’m gonna have some fun with you before I gut you.”

  He was a stupid, stupid man. And arrogant. And a misogynist, among many other unpleasant things. I wanted to stay with Pleasant, to hold her hand as she moved from this world to the next. I grasped her fingers, which were icy cold. She didn’t seem to be breathing. She was already gone. The realization that I might have played a role in her death by dragging her into a freezing November rain when she could have stayed in the cabin, chained but warm and safe, was the final blow to my reason. I would kill him.

  Potter was so self-confident, he stepped out from behind a tree. Either he’d forgotten I was armed, figured I was a bad shot, or was so deluded he didn’t think I’d pull the trigger. He failed to consider the red rage that blinded me to everything, even danger.

  Holding the pistol at my side and hidden by my jacket, I walked toward him as fast as I could move.

  Concern flitted across his face, but it didn’t stay.

  “You’d best back up, girlie. I ain’t playin’.” He brought the shotgun up.

  I’d closed the distance between us to within thirty feet. I brought up the pistol and pulled the trigger in one smooth motion. I didn’t aim. I didn’t have to. Righteous fury sent the bullet deep into his thigh.

  Disbelief crossed his face, then fury, then pain. He dropped to his knees. When he tried to bring the gun around, I kept
moving forward until I was on top of him. I put the barrel of the pistol against his head. “Drop the shotgun.”

  He did, immediately.

  I’d never considered myself irrational. Or capable of killing someone in cold blood. But Luther Potter was the exception to many things. Pleasant Smith was dead because of him. She’d had her child stripped from her moments after the baby’s birth. She’d never even held her infant girl. Potter’s crimes extended beyond Pleasant to Charity, Faith, the Smith clan, Frankie, and Rudy Uxall’s murder, and Tinkie’s heart would be broken because of Luther Potter and the crimes he committed.

  I cocked the hammer. In the middle of a hardwood forest in Bolivar County, Mississippi, I intended to take a man’s life. The reasons were numerous and correct.

  “Don’t kill me.” Potter’s fear stank. Now that he was the victim, he was a coward. “Don’t! You can’t just shoot me.”

  “Yes, I can.” My finger tightened on the trigger.

  He started crying, which only made me want to pull the trigger more. My hand was steady. I didn’t want to mess this up. One clean kill shot.

  “Please, don’t do this.”

  His sobs didn’t touch me. Watching his blood spill from the hole in his thigh and seep into the forest floor didn’t mean a thing to me. I felt nothing but a desire to end him.

  I inhaled and pressed the barrel harder into his skull. He wailed. I began to squeeze the trigger.

  I had no clue what hit me, but I went flying and the gun went off in a wild shot. I landed on my side, but the barrel was still trained on Potter. He looked longingly at his shotgun, some five feet away, but he didn’t try for it. He finally believed I’d shoot him.

  When I glanced around to see what had happened, Sweetie Pie stood beside me. I sat up, my weapon still on Potter. In the distance ATVs roared through the woods toward me. At last, Coleman was here. It was too late for Pleasant, but Sweetie Pie had saved Luther Potter. The moment when I’d been capable of pulling the trigger had passed.

  My hound gave a sharp howl and took off through the woods. Chablis and Pluto were hot on her heels. They disappeared into the underbrush without a backward glance.

  The shaking started in my hand and then moved into the rest of my body. Aunt Loulane would say that I suffered from Saint Vitus Dance. Had Potter been less of a coward, he could probably have gotten up and run away, because I was incapable of stopping him. The bullet hole in his leg, which was actually bleeding a lot, was as effective as a chain around his waist. A pale blue tinge had settled on his features, from either cold or blood loss. I didn’t really care. If Coleman took much longer, maybe the bastard would bleed out.

  Alas, it was not to be. A four-wheeler crashed through the underbrush, and Coleman zoomed down the slight hill toward me. He jumped off the ATV and rushed to me. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m good.” I pointed at Potter. “He’s shot and Pleasant is dead. She’s over there. Owen DeLong is back at the cabin.” And then I burst into tears.

  Coleman clutched me to him, but he was taking no chances with Potter. As soon as DeWayne came to a stop, Coleman told him to radio the sheriff’s office and ask Francine to call the air flight helicopter service out of Memphis immediately. “Then cuff Potter.”

  “He doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere,” DeWayne said.

  “Cuff him anyway.”

  I’d managed to compose myself, and I pushed back from the comfort of Coleman’s arms. “I’m sorry. I’m okay.”

  “Can you show me where Pleasant is?” he asked.

  I didn’t want to, but I had no choice. We needed to get her body out of the woods. Someone would have to tell her grandmother. And Frankie. It was going to be a long, hideous evening.

  When I saw Pleasant stretched out on the ground where I’d left her, I was shocked to see all of the critters around the body. Sweetie was lying on top of her back, and Chablis was on her thighs. Pluto had curled up on her calves. They were protecting her, and that made me burst into tears again.

  “She was so cold, and we got wet. She’d been starved and was weak.” Fury gave me strength. “She died because of the way they treated her. I should have shot Potter while I had the chance.”

  “No, Sarah Booth.”

  “I meant to. I had the barrel against his head and my finger on the trigger. Sweetie knocked me down. I was going to blow his brains all over the woods.”

  “I know.” He put an arm around me. “I saw you. I was terrified you’d pull the trigger. Thank god Sweetie Pie stopped you.”

  “He needs to die.”

  “But not by your hand. You are not judge and executioner. You are not. You would never have been able to live with that. You owe your future to your dog.”

  I knelt down beside Pleasant. “Sweetie, you can move now. We’ll take care of her.”

  Coleman knelt beside me. He checked her pulse, a routine action.

  “She’s alive, Sarah Booth. Just barely, but alive. The animals are warming her body.” He stood and took off his dry jacket and wrapped it around Pleasant’s still form. Sweetie returned to the job of body heat exchange.

  “DeWayne, get that helicopter here now! She’s alive. Hypothermia.”

  Moving quickly he gathered sticks. They were wet, but Coleman had built more bonfires and campfires and marshmallow roasting fires than anyone I knew. In a few short moments he had a blaze going beside her, and I had my jacket off drying and warming it over the flames. When it was heated, I put it on her legs and we warmed Coleman’s jacket and returned it to her shoulders.

  “Bring Potter’s jacket,” Coleman called out to DeWayne.

  “What?” the deputy said.

  “Bring him over here. He can sit by the fire. I need his jacket. And yours.”

  In five minutes Coleman had organized a rotation of warm coverings for Pleasant. He’d hold the jackets by the fire until they were toasty and then apply them to her body, exchanging them as they cooled. Luther Potter hunkered by the fire, weak and defeated. To my dismay, DeWayne had fashioned a tourniquet and stopped Potter’s bleeding.

  As Pleasant’s body temperature began to rise and the outlook for her survival improved, my anger began to seep away, leaving me shaken by what I’d almost done. I kept looking at Potter, imagining him dead by my hand. Coleman was correct. I would never have been able to live with myself. Taking another’s life, except in self-defense, could only be called murder, and I was no murderer. Had Sweetie not stopped me, though, I wondered if I would have been able to stop myself. That question would stay with me for the rest of my life.

  I shifted over to sit by Sweetie Pie and stroke her long, silky ears as we waited for the helicopter. Pluto curled up in my lap, and Chablis nuzzled under my arm. It was only then that I thought to ask, “Where’s Tinkie?”

  “She called me and told me how to find you. She said she’d be right behind me.”

  Coleman frowned. “We’ll call and be sure she’s okay as soon as we get somewhere with a signal.”

  “What about Owen DeLong? He’s back in the cabin.” The cohort, who was just as evil as Potter, could be on the loose in the woods and he might have grabbed Tinkie. Such a scenario made me stand up.

  Coleman patted his radio. “Not anymore. Sheriff Kincaid picked him up about ten minutes ago. DeLong’s telling everything he can to Hoss. Hopes to work a deal.”

  “Don’t give him anything. No deals. He beat Pleasant whenever he felt like it.”

  “Don’t worry. These two are going away for a long, long time. Probably the rest of their lives. We have enough on them to put them away, and Pleasant’s testimony will be the red ribbon on top of the package. I believe we’ll prove Potter killed Rudy Uxall, and that’s an automatic life without parole.”

  And while it was justice of a kind, it wouldn’t undo what they’d done to a mother and child and all the rest of us. Even me. I’d carry the scars of this day.

  25

  Coleman had given the helicopter specific landing ins
tructions for an area that had been clear-cut by illegal timbering. While the rape of the land upset me, this was one time I was glad to have a cleared area for the chopper to set down.

  In no time at all, Pleasant was loaded and on her way to the hospital in Zinnia. With Coleman’s care, her condition had improved to the point that the EMTs felt the long trip to Memphis was unnecessary. She could stay at the local hospital, and as soon as Doc said her condition was stabilized enough, I would put her baby girl in her arms.

  Potter was in no danger, so his transport to the local hospital would be on a four-wheeler and then in the backseat of a patrol car. I only hoped that he felt every bump along the way. While I was immensely glad I hadn’t killed him, I was not over wanting him to suffer.

  Coleman and DeWayne stood on either side of me as we waved the helicopter off. Potter was cuffed to one of the ATVs. I heard the sound of additional machines, and Hoss Kincaid and two deputies came out of the woods. Owen DeLong rode behind the Bolivar County sheriff. When he saw Potter, he cursed a blue streak. I couldn’t tell who his spleen was directed at and didn’t care to investigate. If I saw a chance when someone wasn’t looking, I’d kick him in the crotch as hard as I could.

  Hoss pulled up beside us. “Want me to take the other one?”

  “Sarah Booth shot him in the leg. I’d better take him to the hospital.”

  Hoss laughed. “You’re a tiger, Ms. Delaney. I underestimated you, but I won’t ever do that again.”

  “He meant to kill me. It was self-defense.”

  Hoss shared a long look with Coleman. I could almost read his mind. Was it really self-defense?

  “Potter was tracking Sarah Booth and Pleasant Smith. He meant to kill them—said as much to Sarah Booth. He also underestimated her.”

  “Sometimes good things happen to bad people,” Hoss said with a grin that lifted the corners of his big mustache. “Good job, Sarah Booth.”