The Missing and the Dead: A Bragg Thriller

by Jack Lynch

  I got up and shook my brains back into place in time to see the Parsons' trail vehicle roar past. They'd abandoned my own car. Big Mike was driving, staring grimly ahead with his hands clenching the wheel, and Minnie sitting upright beside him chattering a streak, as if she were continuing the argument. Probably it was over whether to continue on to the cabin or just to make a run for it. I figured Big Mike wanted to see if Lind's body had been found. Minnie wanted to cut their losses and get out. She was the smarter of the two, I decided.

  I worked my way back out onto the road and started trotting again. The road made a couple more loops then ran straight for about a hundred yards before ending in a clearing that surrounded the cabin. I got a glimpse of the four of them—Mike and Minnie, Joe and Allison, standing in the clearing with Parsons going through one of his windmilling arms and gosh and by golly routines. I left the road and tried to make my quiet way through the woods toward the cabin. I felt a brief wash of relief. Parsons wouldn't have gone into one of his routines if they'd found Jerry Lind's body. Allison and Dodge would have been dead already, I was sure of it.

  I circled around until I was behind the cabin, near the edge of the woods about thirty feet from the structure. I could hear just some of the conversation in the clearing. Big Mike was talking about Stoval's body being found. Allison sounded disappointed. She said something about looking forward to spending a night in the woods with dinner already on the stove and some other things that made me wish I could clamp a hand over her mouth.

  I didn't dare cross the open space to the cabin. I kept tugging and hauling on the ropes that bound me. There was more indecisive chatter from the clearing. Then Allison turned toward the cabin and said something about water boiling. Big Mike had one arm around Dodge's shoulders and was gesturing and carrying on his hayseed act. Minnie stood there with a tight little smile.

  I knew that with my tumbling out of the car and the ensuing scraping along the road, then the clambering through the brush with my arms tied, I couldn't have presented too good an appearance just then. I didn't want to startle Allison into a yelp, but I had to get her attention, so I stayed back out of sight. Minnie had turned back to their wagon. I hissed at Allison just before she entered the cabin, then nearly strangled in an attempt to suppress a sneeze.

  Allison hesitated and looked toward me. I whispered as loudly as I dared. "Allison, it's Peter Bragg. Don't make a sound, but come around in back. I need help, and you're in danger."

  She stepped around the side of the cabin appropriately astonished. "Whatever on earth..."

  "Shhhh! Please keep it quiet. Come back here. I'm not a pretty sight. The going's been tough. And my arms are tied behind me."

  When she got back to where she could see me I thought she was going to cry out or laugh nervously or turn and bolt, in about that order.

  "My God," she exclaimed. "What happened to you?"

  "Keep it down or I'm a dead man. I've been running for my life. From them," I told her, jerking my head toward the clearing in front of the cabin.

  "Mike and Minnie? Come on..."

  "Allison, it's true, I swear to God. I don't have time to go into it. But Mike is a killer. He has been for years. He admitted to me that he killed Jerry Lind and buried his body around here somewhere. That's why they drove out here, to see if you and Joe found it. If you had, he was going to kill the both of you too."

  "You are insane," she said slowly.

  "Okay, I'm insane. But at least I didn't tie myself up like this. There's a knife in my right front pocket. How about getting it out and cutting me loose?"

  "I think you're safer tied up."

  "Come on, Allison. I can prove it. And they want to kill me because I'm on to them. They were bringing me out planning to kill and leave me back down the road a ways. I jumped out of the car and ran like hell. That's why I look the way I do. Please, the knife."

  She was skeptical, confused and maybe still angry. But she finally roused herself and got the knife out of my pocket to begin working on the ropes. "I still don't believe you."

  "You had better start to believe me if you want any of us to get out of here alive. Parsons isn't their real name. For years Big Mike made his living by killing people. He almost was caught about five years ago down south, and the two of them changed their identity and dropped out of sight. Now don't tell me Big Mike and Minnie are an old, established family around here."

  "No," she admitted, looking up at me. "But they came here from the Midwest."

  "So they told everybody, and for God's sake keep working on the ropes." She continued to saw away. "Big Mike started killing people again just recently to protect his gory past. He killed the cop I found up on the Stannis River, he killed Jerry and today he killed the man Joe Dodge was running from."

  She cut the last piece binding me and I shook myself free like a dog just out of the washtub. I now had another dimension of pain to enjoy as the blood flowed back through restricted artery and vein. "Does Joe Dodge have any sort of weapon with him?"

  "Of course not."

  "How about—did he bring an axe?"

  Allison took a step backward. "You are really out of your ever-loving skull crazy."

  But at least she was keeping her voice low. Perhaps it was the beginning of belief, but I was one running-scared man and I couldn't stand around any longer trying to interpret the day's events.

  "Allison, before I ruined the evening for both of us the other day, I felt something very strong and very special for you. And you've just got to believe I still do. And the only reason I'm telling you is because I sincerely don't want any harm to come to any of us—but especially I don't want it to come to you. I could die tonight and it wouldn't matter much to anybody. It's not the same with you. I'm a hard old rock. You, lady, are a piece of the sky."

  She glanced away.

  "Go back there, now. Don't tell them you've seen me, and get cracking to do what they want. Get your stuff together in a hurry and you and Joe get out of here as soon as you can. And don't take any last looks around."

  She turned back with a little shrug. "There's no harm in that, I suppose. But what about you?"

  "I'll get by."

  She nodded and turned back to the cabin. I started my great circle route back around through the woods. They were the same old woods I'd staggered through on my way in, but I felt as if I were floating. I had two arms swinging as I went, a little the worse for wear, but they were free, and their movement made everything a lot easier.

  It didn't take me long to get up to where I could get on the road again. I looked back and saw thankfully that Allison was doing as I'd asked. She was carrying a couple of sleeping bags from the cabin to Joe Dodge's car. She hadn't bothered to roll them, even. I hustled on up the road. I was improvising every step of the way now, but then so was Big Mike.

  When I got back to the gully I'd crossed earlier, I decided to just plunge down and back up the way I'd come. The road was easier going, but several minutes longer, judging by the time it took Parsons to catch up with me on the way in. I had to pause once, climbing the far side, to catch my breath, but a couple moments later I was up to where they'd left my car. It was parked to one side of the road. Minnie had creamed into the rear trunk nicely, buckling it so I couldn't get in to get my heavy automatic. I opened the front door and reached around until I found the holstered revolver. It gave me a keen sense of having done something right for a change. And to think years ago I used to wonder why so many cops carried a second, personal handgun with them when they were on duty.

  The Parsons either had my car keys or had pitched them away. But I'd gone off and locked my car with the keys in the ignition enough times to finally wise up and tape a spare key to the back of my AAA card. I got in and started it up and with only a half-formed idea in my head, maneuvered the car around to straddle as much of the road as I could. I got back out, removed the .38 from its holster and planted myself behind the busted-up rear end of the car on the gully side of the road.
It was a couple minutes before I heard the Parsons' trail vehicle across the gully, rolling back out from the cabin. There still was a tinge of daylight, but shadows had deepened in the timbered area and Big Mike had his headlights on. I heard them slow to make the bend at the end of the gully and a few moments later he came over the rise in front of me. He slowed at the sight of my improvised roadblock, probably startled that I'd been able to move the car around. I braced myself, took careful aim and blasted away his left headlight, just to show him I was back ready to play hard ball with him.

  I'm not sure what I was expecting. Certainly not what Parsons did, which was to step on the gas and try to ram his way around my car on the gully side where I was standing. I fired once more then started to packpeddle as he banged into the crumpled rear of the car and then me along with it. I went sailing and lost my grip on the .38, but the Parsons' wagon came to a precarious stop with its right front wheel over the roadbank. I got up, couldn't see my weapon and decided my only chance now was to crowd them. Minnie apparently had banged her head in the collision, and Mike was momentarily shaken himself. I wrenched open the door, poked him once in the eye and got a tight grip on the collar of his shirt.

  He wasn't thinking too fast and put his hands out toward me instead of keeping a grip on the steering wheel. I braced myself and pulled him out of the car like a wine cork. But these things never go as you expect them to. He landed on top of me and we rolled around in the dust for a minute. Having moved first I still was more or less in charge and got to my feet before he did. More headlights were approaching. Big Mike was on one knee, getting up, when I kicked him as hard as I could in the chest, about where I figured his heart to be. It was a tactic that was supposed to slow down a person. I'd read that one time, only I didn't know if it was supposed to take a matter of seconds or until sometime the following week. At least it dumped him back on the road again and I started toward him when there was a sharp bang somewhere just behind my left ear and something singed my cheek. It was Minnie, now leaning out of the car with her little pistol pointing in my direction.

  Joe Dodge's car had ground to a halt nearby and Allison was stupidly clambering out and screaming something. Minnie fired again, and missed me again, but I knew she wouldn't miss for the rest of the evening. I feinted once toward Big Mike on the road then hurled myself back around my own car. The scene was approaching general pandemonium by now, and for about the first time since some very scary days in Korea I wondered what in the hell I was doing where I was. Both Minnie and Allison were screaming. Joe Dodge was half out of his car shouting when he snagged his arm on something and started his car horn blaring.

  I made a quick move toward the gully, thinking maybe I could get around to Minnie's side of their car. It was too quick, in light of all the work I'd given my legs to do recently. I twisted an ankle and fell to the ground, wincing with pain and feeling absolutely silly. But then I saw my .38 about ten feet away, scrambled over to it and hauled myself painfully around to the front of my car where I could get a bead on Big Mike, who was back on his feet and staggering toward his wagon.

  I took careful aim, and just then from out of the night came this big, healthy blonde lady with her arms raised and outstretched as if she were trying to block the punt of a football, only I was the ball. She foolishly and literally threw herself at me and my gun and sent me sprawling backward onto my can for what seemed like the fortieth time that evening, all the while bawling into my face.

  "No Pete! For God's sake no! You can't shoot him. Don't do that!"

  "What the hell," was all I could manage while gargling dust and trying to squirm out from under her. I don't know if it was all the excitement I'd been through the past hour, my throbbing ankle or the work Allison had done with hammer and saw, but she managed to keep me pinned and spinning around like that for the few seconds necessary for Big Mike to struggle back into his vehicle, swing it back onto the road and ram my car the foot or two more necessary so he could roar past in a cloud of dirt and gravel. I heard it more than saw it, because Allison could really play hard ball herself, and was using every device she could think of to keep me down, including butting my head with her own, which both hurt and put an effective screen of blonde hair all over my face and eyes.

  She kept it up until the Parsons' wagon had roared off, then went limp. I shook her off and staggered to my feet and jammed the .38 into my belt.

  "Thanks a lot everybody," was all I could manage.

  Joe Dodge was standing nearby with his semi-permanent stricken expression on his lined face. "You people are all crazier than hell."

  Allison was crying, sitting with her face buried in her tucked-up legs. When she tried to speak her voice was very tiny and childlike.

  "I'm sorry...I'm sorry."

  Maybe I was going crazy. Maybe there'd been too much gin and too much knocking around over the years, but at that moment I felt a great, sudden, inexplicable surge of love for her, and I didn't know what the hell anything was all about any longer.

  "It's okay," I told her, spitting out some of the dirt and trying to wipe my face. "I guess you were doing what you had to. But now I gotta go do what I have to."

  I hobbled over to my car, hoping the damn thing was still functional. It was, and I seesawed around as Allison called my name once. Then I was roaring on down the road in pursuit of Big Mike and Minnie. I came over the brow of a hill that opened onto a fairly long, straight stretch and saw Big Mike's tail lights in the distance. I snapped off my own headlights and stood on the accelerator. It was a futile exercise in concealment. A couple minutes later Parsons turned off onto another road, one different from the way we'd come up. I had to turn on my lights. A couple more miles we were back in the lowlands and the road intersected with a paved road that was well traveled, with traffic in both directions.

  I was about three hundred yards behind him and gaining. Between the lights of oncoming traffic Big Mike passed a couple of cars. I passed one of them but then had to lay back a minute in frustration as he sped on down the road. I finally got around the second car. It was an auto full of teenagers, and the driver shot me a look of macho indignation as I swooped past. He started to ride my tail, or tried to. We were all doing about eighty miles an hour, and it had been a long time since I'd driven that fast. It bothered me.

  A blue and red winking in the rear-view mirror gave me a little surge of hope. It had to be a sheriff's or highway patrol car, about a quarter mile behind me. I murmured a small prayer for him to hurry and continued to burn along the highway in pursuit of a man who had murdered four hundred human beings, including a foolish young man I'd been paid to find and bring back. And I hadn't done it.

  I was slowly gaining on Big Mike again until he wasn't more than a couple hundred yards ahead of me. There was a station wagon ahead of him now, and beyond that a curve. It would be a very tight judgment to make, especially traveling at speeds you weren't used to. I don't know what I would have done in his place, but Parsons decided to go for it and swung out around the wagon, flashing his highbeams and spurting forward, and that's when forty tons of fully loaded lumber rig trying to beat the federal park deadline roared around the curve ahead of us, and despite a heroic attempt by Parsons to get back into his own lane, the load of logs slammed into the trail vehicle and blew it away in an explosion of metal.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The station wagon Big Mike had tried to pass missed being involved by a matter of inches. The driver of the lumber rig, other than having his dinner shocked out of him, escaped injury and managed to stop a ways up the road. I hadn't realized it at the time, but Joe Dodge and Allison had been following along behind us as best they could. The car with flashing red and blue lights had been a sheriff's deputy. It made my chores a bit easier, because he'd been involved in the plane search on Sunday and recognized my name as being the one who found Tuffy. And from my busted-up, dirty appearance, he knew I hadn't just been out for a joyride. This was some time after the collision. He had his hands
full the first twenty minutes or so just trying to keep traffic snaking around the wreckage that was strewn along the highway until he was joined by other law officers.

  Then he listened to my story, but just briefly. I tried to keep it concise, but finally he just rolled his eyes and said I should just answer the questions on his accident report form and make a fuller statement somewhere else some other time.

  Allison stood nearby. She didn't approach the larger piece of wreckage where the bodies were. She just leaned against the side of Joe Dodge's car, which Dodge had parked behind my own, with her arms folded across her chest.

  Dodge said there was nothing more to be done, and suggested they leave. Allison shook her head and told him to go on back to town. She walked the few paces to lean against the side of my own car and resumed an unblinking vigil into the night.

  Dodge approached me with a troubled expression, started to say something, then shrugged and went back to his car and drove off.

  Allison didn't say anything to me the whole time. When the deputy finally told me I could leave, she just went around to the other side of my car and wordlessly got in.

  "I guess you want a ride back to town," I told her.

  "I guess."

  "Why did you stick around?"

  "I don't know. Maybe to back up your story with the sheriff, if you needed it. Maybe to see if something would fall into place for me. I'm all cockeyed inside. I'm not used to this sort of thing."

  We rode back into Barracks Cove. I told her I had some phone calls to make. She just nodded.

  "You look as if you could use a drink," I told her.

  "I could. Brandy. But I don't want to be around other people."

  She directed me to a store that sold a variety of things and stayed open late. She went in with some money I gave her while my sore ankle and I stayed in the car. She came back out with a bag of stuff and I drove over to my motel and limped in while she poured us a couple of glasses of brandy. I began making my calls. Chief Morgan was the first. I got him at home. He'd heard about the accident and listened quietly while I recapped things for him. Allison was listening closely.