I don’t remember the exact name of the rapid where the accident happened. A tree had fallen into the river, and the first boat in our troop didn’t see it coming, couldn’t get out of the way, and flipped over. The second boat did the same, and so did the other five boats behind it; like a chain of watery dominoes, we all went over.
It was complete pandemonium. I managed to climb back into my raft as everyone screamed and flailed through the water. Once I had climbed back into the raft, I heard Alan scream for me. He was still in the water and reaching for the raft. I leaned over and grabbed his hand, but I could feel something pulling him. Maybe it was an underwater current. Maybe his foot had caught on some of the vines and branches along the side of the river. I wasn’t sure.
“Don’t let go!” he screamed.
I can still remember his face. I had never seen anyone so terrified. His face was ghostly white, his eyes wide and frightened, and he looked right at me.
His grip started to loosen, and even though I tried with all of my strength, I could hardly keep my grip. “I won’t let go!” I cried. “I won’t let go!”
“Don’t let go!” he screamed, and then his hand slipped through mine like wet fish and he went under for good.
His body was found later the next day.
But I lost more than just my kid brother that day. I lost my parents’ laughter. They were divorced within two years, and by the time I graduated from college, my mom had taken her life with sleeping pills and my dad, who became a roaring alcoholic in the years following Alan’s death, developed lung cancer. All of it could be traced back to that day on the Kern River. That was when I learned that this world is one cruel villain and it’ll take everything from you if given the chance.
I dove headfirst into writing. At first, it was just journaling my feelings; my therapist told me it was a good way to work through my thoughts. But it wasn’t long before those turned into stories, and my wife has told me on more than one occasion that behind all those stories is a little boy trying to get his kid brother back. In every story I wrote, it seemed, there was a brother saving another brother from something terrible. The funny thing is that I didn’t even see those things when I wrote the books; it took my wife to point it out.
I stayed in my office for a while and held my wife in the silence of the room, but knowing that Jesse was waiting at the front door for me, I decided to get going. I kissed her passionately, told her how much I loved her, and reminded her that this would be a real short trip. We’d go to the bridge, get the guns—if they were there—and come right back.
“Remember, he’s not Alan. You don’t have to prove it to yourself,” she reminded me as I left the room.
“I know,” I told her and headed to the front door.
Jesse was outside, and I was surprised to find him leaning against the wall of my house with his head down. With his chin touching his chest it looked like he’d nodded off while standing there.
“You asleep?” I asked.
He looked up at me immediately. “Asleep? Why do you think I’m asleep?”
“I don’t know. You’re leaning against the wall with your head down. Looks like you’re sleeping.”
“Nah,” he said. “Just praying. We can use some praying.”
“Praying?” I said. “Really?”
“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, nothing at all. I just . . . I just didn’t think you were the praying type, that’s all.”
He shook his head as if he’d heard this before. “Why do all of you Southern California folks think God fearing-men are pansies?” he said. “You ought to get out a little bit.”
He took his revolver out from under his belt and led me into the street.
Chapter Twenty
There was little rain that afternoon. As I followed Jesse along the canal toward the bridge, I only felt a little drizzle coming down. I looked up at the sky and saw the dark and bloated clouds oscillating just above the island. There wasn’t a single gap in them through which I could see blue skies; the only blue skies were beyond the island, where it appeared to be a beautiful summer day in July. The cloud-to-cloud lightning was still a constant flicker up there as well; at any given moment, there appeared to be a countless number of lightning bolts electrifying the cloud cover.
And the clouds still looked lower to me than they had days before. Significantly lower.
Jesse had brought a very long orange picker that he’d found in my garage; I didn’t understand at first why he’d brought it, but then it made sense. Once we got under the bridge, we would need something to reach up and get the weapons with if Drake really had stashed them there.
As I ran behind Jesse, the storm was the least of my concerns. I couldn’t get my mind off the reality that Drake might still be out here somewhere. Maybe Jesse was right; maybe he’d committed suicide after the mass killing, but something in my gut assured me that he was still alive and he was still running around out here. It terrified me.
We reached the bridge quickly and found a small dinghy tied up alongside one of the docks. It was wedged in amongst the Duffies and cruisers. This was one of the many small bridges connecting the canals─not one of the main bridges leading off the island and onto the mainland.
“It’s perfect,” Jesse said, pointing, and he didn’t even have to explain his idea.
We climbed into the dinghy. Jesse kept his firearm in his hand the whole time, alert and ready. I could find only one paddle lying amongst some ropes on the dock, and sitting in the back, I dipped the paddle into the water and pushed us forward the short distance to the bridge.
Once we were under the bridge, it was much darker than I would have imagined. Jesse, who had been wise and conserved the power on his phone when we all realized there was no reception whatsoever, used his flashlight app and probed the underside of the little bridge. There wasn’t much of interest there. Just lots of concrete and some graffiti that, unlike the type you may have seen in some other areas of downtown Long Beach, was mostly benign. These were the marks of high school teams, friends, and lovers immortalizing their journey through Naples Island, not gang members claiming territory.
I kept the dinghy centered under the bridge while Jesse moved his spotlight along its underbelly, and we both saw it at the same time: a duffel bag wedged behind some piping. I was thrilled and horrified at the same time because, in a way, it made the mass killing that much more real. A wave of sickness washed over me when I saw it; a part of me wanted to lean over the side of the dinghy and hurl.
“There it is,” Jesse said. I paddled closer. The bag was stashed close to the bridge’s edge and was not difficult to reach. It was a black bag and larger than the other ones I’d seen him with. Once I brought him close enough, Jesse stood up and used my orange picker to reach up and dislodge the duffel bag. He handed me his phone to keep the light on him so he could see what he was doing.
It freaked me out at first. If there were firearms in the bag—and it was hard to believe we’d find anything else in it—then would dislodging it make them accidentally fire? It would be completely ironic to think I had survived a mass killing only to die there, sitting in a little boat under a bridge. Death by Duffel Bag didn’t seem a very noble epitaph for my tombstone.
Jesse poked and prodded the bag with the orange picker and was able to hook it and gently lower it into the dinghy. When it was down, he unzipped it, and sure enough, our suspicions were accurate. The bag held two rifles, a shotgun, handguns, knives, and ammo. None of the weapons were loaded.
It was sickening. What had Drake planned to do? Hide out after the killing in some back alley because someone might track him to his house? And then what? Come here, resupply, and do the same thing over again? It was disturbing to say the least. He must have made numerous trips to this place, unloading his supplies and transferring them to this one duffel bag. I don’t know why he hadn’t done it all at once. Was he even sane enough to know? Maybe he was stealing weapons from some
one or changing his plan and how many weapons he thought he needed. Like a wicked bird, he’d returned again and again to build his dark nest.
Now that we had retrieved everything, I paddled back to the dock, and once the boat was tied up, we began to walk back to my house. Jesse stopped for a moment and took the twelve-gauge shotgun out of the duffel bag. He loaded it, showed me how the safety worked, and handed it to me. It was a strange feeling. I’d never fired a shotgun, only handguns, and those had been at a shooting range.
“It’s got a shoulder pad that will keep your shoulder from getting all purple and bruised,” Jesse said, carrying the duffel bag. “But hopefully you don’t have to shoot it that much, or at all. And remember, it sprays. You’re gonna hit everything in front of you, so be careful if you do have to shoot.”
“Okay,” I said weakly.
We hadn’t walked far when we both looked across the canal at Drake’s house. Almost instinctually, we both came to a stop. We didn’t have to say anything because we both knew what the other was thinking. If these guns were under the bridge, then there could easily be more weapons in that house, and there might be more clues as to where Drake had taken Hot-rodder. It was pretty obvious that Hot-rodder’s kidnapping hadn’t been premeditated, but maybe there would be more notebooks in that house with crudely sketched maps of hideouts. He could easily be hiding out in one of those. We were sure he wasn’t in the house; we’d kept an eye on it for days and hadn’t seen anything. No candles or flashlights. Nothing.
“It might be worth it,” Jesse said.
“I know.”
When he said that, I’m pretty sure he was talking about the weapons, but honestly, all I could think about was Hot-rodder. If there was anything in that house that might offer some kind of clue as to where he was, how could I live with myself if I didn’t at least make the effort? I owed him at least that. I’d felt one child’s hand slip through my own as it was pulled into the depths of death, and I wasn’t going to let another—not when I had a chance to do something about it. And so much of it was my fault. I’d seen the notebook with the map and should have put it together. I should have called the police. Jenna would be alive, Hot-rodder would be indoors with his parents, and I’d have a burden the size of Texas lifted off my shoulders.
So in the end, it was guilt that led me to Drake’s house.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
Jesse didn’t say a word, but nodded knowingly.
My wife probably wouldn’t understand and would most likely be irate when we returned home. I’d promised, hadn’t I? I’d told her that I would go straight to the bridge, get the weapons, and come right back.
But she would have to understand—at least, I hoped she would.
Chapter Twenty-One
A thought seized me as I climbed through the bathroom window of Drake’s three-story Victorian home: What if we were wrong? What if Drake had come back and had been holed up here ever since the afternoon of the killing? We hadn’t seen any sign of life or movement, but it wasn’t like Drake was going to advertise the fact that he was hiding out here.
After I slid through, Jesse handed me the shotgun. He had gone in first, and I’d handed him his gun and my shotgun through the open window; we had stashed the duffel bag in the bushes along the perimeter of the house until we were done with our search.
I realized, as I took the weapon into my hands, that I was shaking all over; my whole body was trembling. The fear I’d felt in going outdoors and searching the underside of the bridge for weapons was absolutely nothing compared to this; this was downright terrible.
“You okay?” Jesse asked in a hoarse whisper. He probably saw that I wasn’t doing well.
“What if he’s here?”
It felt good to vocalize my fear, even if it was a hardly audible whisper.
“Take it off safety,” Jesse whispered, pointing to my gun. “Just in case.”
Not encouraging words. I looked for the pin along the gun and couldn’t find it. Flustered as well as overcome with trepidation, I couldn’t even remember if it was on safety or if it was off. How was I supposed to know? Jesse, noting my confusion, took it off for me.
“It’s hot,” he whispered again. “Watch where you point it. And keep your finger off the trigger.”
“Got it.” Sweat dripped into my eyes and stung.
Jesse slowly opened the bathroom door and looked into the living room. Things were dark with all the cloud cover, and it was hard to see. It was eerily quiet, which was mostly a good sign. Chances were that Drake wasn’t here.
Jesse looked across the dining room and into a long galley kitchen, gazed left into a large, vacant sitting room, and—seeing nothing and hearing nothing—stepped forward into the room and waved for me to follow. The oak floors creaked loudly beneath the weight of his work boots, and Jesse stopped instantly the moment the sound reverberated through the house. We both stopped, anticipating some kind of flustered response somewhere in the house, but there was nothing. This was a good sign. I felt some of the tension dissipate throughout my body.
There was a rank odor. We weren’t sure, at that point, what it was.
The living room was beautiful yet somewhat ostentatious for my tastes. Antique couches lined the walls as well as bookshelves with large portraits of English castles and manors hanging above them. The books’ bindings advertised the fact that they were all important and the property of a learned family. A massive brick fireplace—the centerpiece—greedily drew attention to itself, and a row of antique vases sat atop a great wooden mantelpiece. The room, like the rest of the house, was thick with humidity. It was difficult to breathe.
Jesse motioned for me to get behind the couch. He had something in mind, but I wasn’t sure what. I followed his command and took refuge behind the couch while he crept over to the front door. He loudly knocked three times, listened closely, and waited. We didn’t hear the sound of anything stirring within the house. At that point, I realized what his plan was: imitate the sound of a visitor, wait to see if someone came down the stairs or moved in the house, and then shoot him. Fortunately, there was nothing.
After the third time knocking, Jesse looked at me and nodded. We were pretty convinced that the house, as we had presumed, was empty. Drake was out there somewhere, and Hot-rodder too.
Walking a little more assuredly, we peeked into two other downstairs rooms. One was a guestroom that looked like it hadn’t seen a guest in quite some time. A wooden sleigh bed, an empty nightstand, and an empty closet were the only things within. A second room, which was completely barren, was the only other place of interest downstairs.
I think we both assumed that if we were to find more weapons, and if I was going to find anything that might give insight as to where Drake had taken Hot-rodder, it would be in Drake’s room. I imagined it would be a cluttered, dark, gloomy room, because that’s what bedrooms often are—a reflection of the mind that inhabits it.
Jesse pointed upstairs, and I followed closely behind. Even though we’d knocked on the front door, the shotgun was heavy in my sweaty hands, and I was still shaking. We had only gone halfway up the flight of steps when both Jesse and I noticed that foul, terrible smell emanating from one of the upper rooms. We didn’t have to say anything, but we both knew exactly what it was: a corpse. Could anything else account for that acrid, decomposing vapor filling those upper chambers?
We looked at each other with grave understanding, because both of us knew exactly what this meant. Perhaps Drake was home, or at least, his body, because he’d already taken his life as Jesse had predicted. Maybe he’d looped back around during his flight away from the mass murder and ended his life at his house. It was entirely possible—likely, even. In all of the crazy thunder and lightning that afternoon, who would have noticed another gunshot or two?
With this revelation came a harrowing second question: If Drake had come home to put a bullet through his own head, had he brought Hot-rodder with him?
An image, as
terrible as the stench I found myself in, assaulted me. I imagined Drake’s body lying in a puddle of blood in one of these upper rooms, the gun he’d killed himself with by his side, and next to him and in a smaller puddle, the body of Hot-rodder. It took me a long time to get the image out of my head. The thought of Hot-rodder, who should have been out in the sun, pumping the pedals on his BMX bike, covered in blood churned my stomach in a way that was most terrible. I hoped against all hope that the image in my mind would be anything but prophetic and that the smell would be Drake’s body and his body alone.
Knowing well what we might stumble upon, Jesse and I looked at each other, nodded solemnly, and finished our climb up the stairs. We found ourselves in a grand hallway with several doors, the largest of which was ajar. Two things became clear to us: the large open door, based on its enormous size, was most likely the grand entrance to a master bedroom, and we were confident that the smell was emanating from there. Although there were hardwood floors up here as well, we walked along a blue oriental runner that led directly down the hall and to the doorway of that master chamber. On the walls, portraits of men and women—family ancestry, perhaps—glared at us as we made our morbid trek down the hall.
When we stepped into the master bedroom, I was happy to discover that my suspicions weren’t true; I didn’t see Hot-rodder lying dead on the floor, and I didn’t see Drake either. Instead, the smell was coming from the corpse of a man lying in the bed. He appeared to be asleep, though his face was nearly as pale as the white sheets covering him.
I assumed this was Drake’s father, the one nobody had seen for months. Several prescription bottles were on the nightstand beside him, and some had fallen onto the floor. Perhaps he had killed himself several days ago, just as the storms began, and had drifted to sleep under the influence of the drugs. Maybe Drake overdosed him just before he began his killing spree that afternoon. We had no idea.
Storm Taken: A Supernatural Thriller Page 14
