The Confessors' Club

by Jack Fredrickson

  So it went, for an hour, until a fresh flash of lighting lit the tall, narrow Tinker Toy shape coming out of the gray. The rickety bridge was twenty feet ahead. I downshifted to first gear, unzipped the driver’s curtain so I could see to orient myself with the left side rail, and eased onto the old wood. Lightning flashed again, bringing a huge stutter clap of thunder that shook the ancient span like loose sticks. The rail next to me swayed in the sudden light. It was barely a dozen feet above white caps frothing in roiling water. The river was rising.

  Ice needles blew in through the open curtain, stinging my face as I watched the rail to my left. It was the only way I knew to drive straight. But drift too close and I could catch a front tire, knock the left side loose and plunge over the side. Drift too far the other away, I might hit the right rail, and drop off that side.

  Lightning flashed; I was halfway over. I squeezed the steering wheel tight and, holding my breath, punched the car forward. After what seemed like an hour, my tires crunched gravel. I’d made it across.

  Still, I dared speed up only when lightning cracked to give me a view. Finally, at what seemed like the twentieth flash of lightning, or perhaps the hundredth, the fire lane appeared for an instant. I stopped, downshifted into the ultra-low gear that off-road Jeep crazies use to assault steep hills, and waited. At the next flash of lightning I gunned the Jeep down into the slush of a gulley and up through the gap in the trees, and cut the engine as the woods darkened again into invisibility. I could only hope I’d pulled far enough in to conceal the Jeep from the road.

  I found my black knit hat under the passenger’s seat, but left behind the yellow poncho. Yellow would light me up like neon every time lightning flared. Telling myself that courage can only be strengthened by adversity, I stepped out into the rain.

  There was a thick tree fifteen paces directly perpendicular to the Jeep’s right front wheel. The soft loamy compost at its base went deep enough to easily bury the aluminum case. I pulled back the loam, dropped the case, and covered it with wet leaves. By now my khakis and shirt were soaked clear through with freshly strengthened courage.

  Though the rain was beating harder, louder, the woods felt suspended beneath the din, as if every living thing within it – every bird, every squirrel, every insect – was holding its breath in fear of what was about to happen.

  I ran to Lamm’s camp. My footfalls barely sounded above the rain invading the trees, but to my ears now every twig snapped like a gunshot, every breath called out as loud as a shout.

  The Mercedes rested in its same place, still filthy with its fuzzy carpet of sap, pine needles and a thousand pats of green-white bird guano. But here and there the hard rain was loosening the crusted blanket into spots of bubbling paste that had begun to run down the sides of the car in dirty little rivulets, like the car had become something evil, molting, shedding its skin.

  There were no other cars there, no tan Buick. The clearing and the back of the cottage appeared deserted, yet something flashed bright in the gloom, down by the water. Staying inside the trees, I moved to the shore. An orange rowboat with an outboard motor attached to its stern bobbed high, despite the rain, at the end of Lamm’s dock. I edged closer to see into the water. The barely floating boat I’d bent to look at last time, the instant before I’d been shot at, had gone. Canty had said it had been a second boat. I hadn’t believed it then; I didn’t believe it now. There’d been no other boat. Someone had bailed out the one I’d seen earlier, attached an outboard motor, and used it to go off somewhere.

  ‘We’re gonna be rich!’ a man screamed in a strange, singsong voice from inside the cabin.

  I crouched, and moved back deeper into the woods. I knew the voice. It was Delray Delmar, no doubt yelling at Wendell.

  I pulled out my cell phone to dial 911. There were no bars. No service.

  I backed farther into the woods. Still no bars.

  I did the minutes in my head. Fifteen to run back to the Jeep, maybe forty-five minutes to make it through the storm either to the sheriff’s department or to the pay phone in Bent Lake. No matter which way I chose, the sheriff might not get there for two hours.

  Still, the cops would arrive well before noon, when Delray told me I had to be up in Bent Lake.

  ‘Son of a bitch!’ Delray screamed.

  I turned to run back into the woods, to the Jeep.

  A bolt of lightning lit the dark sky, and a second later, thunder shook the ground.

  A gunshot fired.

  I turned around, charged the back door, twisted the knob and shouldered it open.

  And got clubbed on the back of the neck with a million-pound bat.

  SIXTY-TWO

  I came to on my belly, trussed like a hog. My wrists were tied together behind my back with rope that was then crisscrossed down to tug up my ankles before it was knotted behind my knees. A blanket was thrown over my head. I could barely breathe through the suffocating wool. I couldn’t see a thing.

  ‘Dek Elstrom to the rescue.’ The unnaturally high voice giggled faintly.

  ‘You’re a shit, Delray,’ I said to the floor.

  ‘You’ve brought treasure?’ His voice was skittish, insanely wrong.

  ‘Wendell Phelps.’

  ‘The money, honey,’ Delray sang.

  ‘Wendell,’ I called into the floor.

  In an instant, a steel rod, likely the barrel of a gun, was jammed through the wool into the center of my neck. It surprised me. I thought Delray was across the room.

  I didn’t resist, concentrating instead on keeping my body loose. There was play – an inch, maybe two – in the rope. Tugging would only tighten the loops around my wrists and ankles.

  He pressed down on the big knot. Pain like I’d never known shot through my shoulders and legs as they were drawn closer together. I shut my eyes, and tried to focus on sucking more air through the wool.

  ‘The money!’ Delray screamed, so seemingly distant. Strangely, he’d said nothing about me arriving hours early.

  ‘Wendell!’ I shouted. ‘Tell me where he is, and I’ll tell you where I’ve got the money.’

  He pressed harder on the knot, ripping new pain into my shoulders, knees and legs. But there had been a lag for just a fraction of a second. For sure there was play in the rope.

  ‘The money,’ he called out in that faraway voice.

  ‘Wen—’

  A gun fired just above my ear, shattering glass somewhere and filling my head with thunder.

  I yelled fast, for surely Delray had gone insane. ‘Follow the road to town, go into the fire lane. My Jeep’s there. I buried the case at the base of a tree, fifteen paces perpendicular to the right front wheel.’

  ‘See?’ Delray shouted from far away. ‘All is good!’

  Footsteps, loud in heavy boots, thudded across the plank floor. The door creaked open.

  The gun fired twice, something thudded, and the door slammed shut.

  The thud, I was sure, was the sound of a body falling. Wendell.

  ‘Damn you to hell, Delray; damn you to hell,’ I managed, in little more than a whisper, beneath the wool. ‘Damn you too, Wendell; damn you as well.’

  I had to get away. Delray would come back to kill. Ten, fifteen minutes was all he’d need to get to the Jeep, walk off the paces, paw through the leaves and find the metal case. He’d check it and he’d come back, wild-eyed and furious, eager to torture. He’d want everything, and then he’d want me dead.

  ‘Delray!’ I shouted, to be sure.

  No answer. He was gone. I was alone, but only for a few minutes more.

  I tried to roll up onto my side, to shake away the suffocating blanket. Pain tore at my shoulders as the weight of my legs tried to tug them from their sockets. I teetered up for only an instant before I fell back on my belly, still covered by the blanket, and now even more desperate for air. I counted one, counted two, and lunged again. This time, I made it up on my side and held. The blanket fell away.

  He was slumped against
the front door. Laying on the floor, all I could see were his pants, his shoes. And the fresh blood puddling back toward the center of the room.

  I took in a breath, and another. Another precious minute had gone, maybe two. Delray was pacing off the steps to the tree by now.

  I flexed my shoulders back. Daggers shot deep into my back and arms, but the rope slipped an inch. I flexed again and my legs dropped another inch. I raised them back up, as tight to my back as the pain would let me. It was enough. The rope slacked enough to get my thumbs inside the loop around my wrists.

  My mind flitted to the dark fury that would be contorting Delray’s face when he returned. I bit at my lip, pushed the image away, and kept working my thumbs. They were numb, unfeeling stubs, but somehow the cord around my left wrist loosened even more, and then my left hand slipped free. I pulled the cord from my right wrist, and then from my legs. I almost wept.

  I rolled onto my knees and started to stand. Too soon. I fell back. I crawled across the room.

  The body had two gunshots: one to the head, one to the heart, leaking red on the floor.

  Not Wendell.

  Delray Delmar looked back at me through dead eyes.

  SIXTY-THREE

  There was no time to make sense of it, only to get away. Surely Lamm – for it had to be Lamm; Wendell wouldn’t hunt me – was coming back with hellfire in his eyes. By now he knew what I’d done.

  I staggered out the front door on trembling legs, braced for the sudden bark of a gun, the cold fire of a bullet tearing into my skin. Incredibly, nothing sounded in the now softly falling rain. I still had a minute, maybe more. I looked back. The Mercedes was still parked there; he’d gone through the woods. I hobbled down to the water and into the trees, for it would be the fastest way back to the Jeep. I could only hope to spot him and drop down before he saw me; he had the gun.

  I stumbled into a jog along the shore. When Lamm returned to the cabin and saw I’d escaped, he’d race back to the Jeep. He’d run better than me, quicker. I had to get to the fire lane first.

  Sooner than I dared hope, the red of the Jeep appeared faintly through the gray of the rain. I dropped to the sodden ground and crawled the last few yards to see.

  To my left, the fire lane stretched clear back to County M. It was lined thick enough with trees to hide anyone waiting to squeeze a few shots into the Jeep. But Lamm couldn’t be there. He’d be racing back to the cabin.

  I moved forward a few yards, enough to see that the leaves had been clawed from the base of the tree. Lamm had found the aluminum case. He would have opened it, to be certain.

  He would have seen.

  I ran for the Jeep, holding the ignition key in front of me like a sword. Jumping in behind the wheel, I fired the engine and ground the gears, shifting loudly into reverse. The Jeep slammed back into a tree, killing the engine.

  I spun around to look. The spare tire was pressed too hard against the tree. I jumped out; I had to know. The spare was still solid on its bracket. Back in, I restarted the engine, and shot up the fire lane and onto the gravel of County M. My tires grabbed at the stones, spraying them back into the wheel wells, rat-a-tat, like machine-gun fire that must have been loud a mile away.

  Though the rain had slackened, County M was even more blurred now with fog, and Lamm was somewhere close by, in the murk of it, enraged, with a gun. There was no time for caution. I sped into the gray, foot hard on the gas, arms rigid, not daring to use my headlamps for fear of giving him lights to shoot at, wherever he was.

  I’d gone only a few hundred yards when headlamps rose up faint out of the mist at the side of the road ahead, like some dim-eyed primordial beast trying to claw itself free from a steaming swamp. I slowed as the car in front teetered up at an angle, its fang-like grill aimed at the sky, shaking and rumbling before its front end dropped, its wheels caught, and it lurched forward, kicking back dark spray like it was venting its own entrails. It fish-tailed for an instant, straightened and took off down the road.

  It was a tan car with dark, tinted windows. A Buick.

  Lamm, in Wendell’s car. Or Wendell himself.

  I pressed down on the accelerator and switched on my headlights. He was going to damned well see my face.

  Red brake lights flashed for an instant; he’d spotted my headlamps.

  He sped up, surging and sliding on the gravel, fighting to keep the car straight, speeding forward. I pressed down harder on my own accelerator. Jeeps aren’t worth much on highways. They vibrate like blenders, chuck and skitter at the smallest bumps and potholes. But shifted into four-wheel drive, on the loose marbles of County M, the Jeep charged straight forward like it was on rails.

  The distance between us closed; three hundred feet, two hundred feet, then a hundred. From somewhere close by, I heard a man yelling. Only in the next second did I realize it was me.

  Fifty feet separated us when the Buick’s window powered down. A pistol came out, wavered, then steadied, pointing backward at me. It might have fired, I couldn’t tell. We were speeding through gray mist, and I was deaf to everything except the gravel blasting up beneath the Jeep and the rain beating on my hood and vinyl top.

  His tapped his brakes, slowing for a steadier shot. I dropped back a few yards and tucked in directly behind him. The gun recoiled once, and again. No starbursts appeared on my windshield; no glass exploded. I was in his blind spot. He sped up. We raced on.

  County M dipped us into low-lying thick fog for an instant, and then the road rose up. And when it did, the black, spindly one-lane wooden bridge filled the soft rain in his headlights. His gun wavered, firing back at me. He wasn’t looking ahead.

  His brake lights flashed. He’d turned and seen the frail timbers rushing towards him, but it was too late. He hit the right edge of the bridge at thirty miles an hour. The Buick reared up like a frightened horse, then slammed down hard on the loose planks and inched forward, its still-spinning front wheels tugging him tighter against the right side rail.

  Some faint part of my brain shouted to slam on my own brakes: I was charging a one-lane bridge that was already filled with a car. There was no room.

  But I, too, had gone insane, at least a little. I needed vengeance. I had to see the eyes of the man who’d trussed me like a pig, the man who’d just tried to shoot me. And he had to see mine.

  I aimed for the narrowing space between Wendell’s Buick and the rickety rail to my left. He had to go over the right side, to crash on the boulders below.

  I hit him on his left rear fender, sending up a thousand sparks as the Jeep tore into the Buick. I tugged the steering wheel all the way to the right and pressed harder on the accelerator, grinding the Jeep further up into his car. The sagging side rail only a foot to my left was too frail to prevent my own plunge to a wet death on the boulders below.

  It was no matter. I fed the Jeep’s engine more gas; he had to die. But my wheels wouldn’t move. The Jeep and the Buick were pinned between the uprights at the entrance to the bridge, trapped together like they were welded.

  The Buick groaned as it shifted forward. His right front wheel dropped off the right side of the bridge. He turned to look back over his shoulder at me, wide-eyed and frantic.

  It was Herman Canty, and he was seeing the Devil and his own death reflecting off my eyes.

  He pulled at his shift lever, struggling to raise it into reverse. Lurching backward would be his only escape.

  The whine of my engine was deafening, the stench of my spinning tires acrid in the rain. The Buick slid forward another foot. He let go of his steering wheel, turned for something on the seat.

  The gun.

  I tugged harder at my steering wheel. Only another foot or two would send him off the bridge, but the Jeep’s wheels were spinning uselessly. I shifted into ultra-low, the mountain-climbing gear, and let out the clutch. The Jeep shuddered for an instant, and then began grinding slowly forward, one inch, then two, pushing the Buick farther off the edge.

  Wood snapped, not
loud, but almost gently, and the right side rail beyond his windshield fell away.

  Canty didn’t see. His hand had come out with the gun. I ducked down below the plastic passenger curtain, keeping my right foot on the gas pedal, my left above the brake, tugging the steering wheel hard to the right to keep grinding into the Buick. A shot ripped through the plastic curtain, another sparked off the roll bar above my head.

  And then the Jeep lurched forward several sickening feet. I slammed on the brake and pulled myself up, terrified I was about to plunge over the right side.

  The nose of the Buick had slipped all the way off the bridge and was angling slightly downward toward the rocks in the river below. The frail wood uprights to either side of the teetering car were snapping away almost lazily, one after the other, as the Buick was slowly being tugged off the bridge by its own gathering momentum.

  Canty had dropped his gun and was scrambling to push himself out of the driver’s side window. His eyes locked on mine, pleading, begging.

  A great new scream of ripping wood filled the air and the entire right side of the bridge fell away. The Buick’s nose went down after it, the car’s trunk rising now like the stern of the Titanic, gently, almost beautifully. The Buick creaked, and settled backward, its left rear tire catching between my bumper and my hood, stopping its slide over the edge.

  Canty was now halfway out of the open side window, not four feet from my face, kicking at the steering wheel to propel him the rest of the way out before the car fell into the river.

  His frenzy shifted the balance of the Buick, and it again began moving slowly over the edge. The Jeep began sliding with it, hooked by the Buick’s rear wheel.

  I jabbed hard at the brake, but it was no use. The Jeep was going over the edge, too.

  I fumbled open the driver’s door and pushed myself backward out of the Jeep. Fire shot up my left arm as first my shoulders, and then my back hit the planks. I dug my heels into the wood and scrabbled backward, kicking back from the carnage.

  Herman Canty was still only halfway out when the car’s trunk rose up to the sky. Gravity had trapped him, pulling him back into the car.