Текст книги "Lost"

Автор книги: Chris Jordan

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

All gone now, that beautiful flying machine. Reduced to twisted metal, a blackened path on the runway. A man dead, millions of dollars up in smoke, all because the former Nakosha chief is in a bad mood, wants to make an impression on his subordinates.

Kill the girl. Just issues the order without explanation. Like saying burn the money, only worse, because even if he and Dug survive the madness of Ricky Lang, the abduction and killing of a minor in the state of Florida almost invariably leads to death row. If they get caught. If? A zillion FBI agents combing the area, what are the odds of not getting caught on a stone-cold murder?

No, no, no. Roy knows he has to play it smart. Play it smart and he can still come out the other end with something to show for his troubles.

His mind ticks over the possibilities as he approaches the cooler. The old walk-in cooler, ripped out of a failed Miami restaurant and dumped here in the middle of nowhere, had once been used to store wax-sealed bales of marijuana. Somehow it had been missed when the rangers swept through. Probably because it had been neatly hidden within a stand of overgrown cypress. Now its thick, insulated walls make a handy cage of galvanized steel.

Nice thing, the girl can scream her lungs out, all that emerges is a faint, birdlike shriek. Plus with the foot-thick door padlocked from the outside, she can be left unattended for hours or even days. Really too bad they can’t keep her in the cooler, but eventually the search parties are bound to find it. Plus there’s the Dug problem.

Roy is thinking about Dug when he opens the cooler door and steps inside, flashlight roaming. Before he can react, something flies out of the darkest corner, something deeply furious, something with a long sharp claw that pierces the softest part of his throat, penetrating his esophagus.

As he falls to his knees, choking on his own blood, the furious thing flies past him, out the door and into the night.

9. Oof Says The Monster Man

Pure adrenaline carries her out of the steel prison, into the muggy darkness. Clawlike branches scratching at her face, tugging her hair, raking her bare arms. There’s no up or down, no direction home, just the explosive desire to get away.

Wherever she imagined she might be, it is not here, in the absolute wilderness. The steel box made her think of buildings, maybe a village near the remote airstrip where she had Seth had put the Beechcraft down, enjoying their big adventure. A real live Indian chief! What a kick, what a tale to tell her friends. The real thrill, though, had been piloting the aircraft all the way from New York. Seth finally taking control for the tricky landing on the narrow strip, but that was it. And then, of course, the dream flight turned into a total nightmare moments after they touched down.

Heedless of the branches and thorns and vines, Kelly crashes headlong through the stand of cypress, arms shielding her eyes as best she can.

Is he dead? Did she kill him? She’d been aiming for an eye—hours she’d waited, crouching in the corner like a taut-wound spring. Psyching herself up. Telling herself this was her one chance. Go for the eye. Blind him, kill him, whatever it takes.

Get out of the box or die trying. And then run for your life, girl. Run as long and as far as you can.

All of a sudden she stumbles into a clearing. An area large enough that the edges melt away into the night. She looks at her scratched and bleeding hands, realizes she no longer has the weapon she honed so carefully.

Hide. She must find a place to hide until the sun comes up, whenever that is. The man she attacked may be alive, or there may be others. She has formed a firm conviction that more than one man has been keeping her captive. Changing the foul bucket, leaving behind the bag of pasty, white-bread sandwiches and the jug of water that has kept her alive, barely. Two at least, maybe more.

At that very moment, heart slamming and lungs heaving, she imagines footsteps following her.

Run!

Weakened by her captivity, half-starved, the adrenaline takes over, making her legs pump furiously. Kelly sprints through the clearing, then through grass up to her knees. Runs like a madwoman until the rough ground reaches up, catches a foot, sends her sprawling facedown.

Wham. Knocks the breath out of her.

Lying in the rough grass she manages to roll over, searching the sky for stars. Fearful that if she doesn’t find something to judge direction she’ll end up running in circles. Her eyes detect a few faint stars intermittently obscured by low clouds, and somehow that calms her slightly. Her breathing returns to something like normal.

Stay where you are, she decides, until you get your bearings. Then choose which way to run.

Gradually her heart slows to match her breathing and she begins to discern sounds. Insects buzzing. A bird squawking some distance away. Heron? Owl? Something wild that’s for sure. The low-pitched bellow of something far away—could that be an alligator? Does that mean she’s close to the Everglades? Miles from where they landed, if true. Crickets, very close, mere inches away. And then another sound that pours like chilled water through her veins.

A human voice.

“Move along, you little shit!”

Kelly flattens herself, trying to blend into the ground. Is the grass deep enough to hide her? In a panic she tries to dig herself into the rough ground. Impossible, too hard.

Lie still, her instinct urges. Be quiet. Be small.

“I ain’t carryin’ no full-growed man,” the voice says. “Walk or be dragged, them is your choice.”

“My legs don’t work,” says another voice. Faint and obviously in a lot of pain.

Seth!

Kelly lifts her head until her eyes just barely clear the grass. At first she can’t see anything. Gradually her vision adjusts and she can make out what looks like a dark, humpbacked creature slowly making its way along the edge of the clearing, barely visible.

The humpbacked thing becomes two men, one of them hobbled, barely able to walk.

“That just cramps in your legs. Walk ‘em off.”

The hobbled man—it has to be Seth—is tied up somehow, hands bound, a rope around his waist. The other man, medium size but strong looking, is all coiled impatience. Jerking the rope as if he enjoys the grunt of pain it produces.

“You want me to chop off another finger? I can do that, you want.”

Eyes narrowing, Kelly begins to search the ground for a weapon. Hands encountering nothing but hard dirt beneath the blades of grass.

Having convinced herself that Seth’s oppressor is focused on tormenting his victim, Kelly crawls and slithers until she reaches the edge of the clearing. Has to be something, a branch or a stick, something to poke the monster in the eye.

What she finds, belly flat to the ground, is a chunk of rock about the size of her head. Charred and smelling of a campfire.

Her hands explore the weapon, finding it very rough and not quite as heavy as expected.

Whatever, it will have to do.

Gathering the meaty rock into her hands, she waits for her moment. That’s the hardest part as her fury rises, waiting as the monster continues to torment her friend.

“What are you,” the monster demands, “some kind of fag? There’s nothing wrong with your legs! You tryin’ a trick me, huh? We’ll see about that!”

The monster does something and Seth collapses.

“Get up and walk like a man! We ain’t got all night!”

The monster bends over Seth, a fist raised.

Kelly explodes across the clearing, the hefty chunk of limestone raised high. And as the monster turns, astonished—the thing has human eyes, is that possible?—Kelly brings the rock down on his head with every ounce of her adrenaline-charged strength.

“Oof!” says the monster man, falling backward.

A moment later she and Seth Manning are running for their lives.

10. Eyes That Couldn’t Care Less

The Irish have their wakes, the Jews sit shiva. At the Glades Motorcourt Inn there are no kegs of whiskey, no mirrors to cover, unless you count the cracked glass over the medicine cabinet. Nevertheless, the sense of mourning, of loss that has yet to catch up, seems as deep and insidious as the black specks of mold on the walls. Whatever flush of excitement came with our little triumph at the Hunt Club has been erased by the long wait for Leo Fish.

Please. I’m supposed to put my faith in a stranger with a ridiculous name? Some hermit who lives in a swamp? Talk about grasping at straws! Other than Fern leaving a pep-talk message, no one has phoned my cell with news of the search. Not the FBI, not the local cops, nobody. Despite Randall Shane’s encouraging words about not giving up, I’m taking the lack of news as a bad sign. The man Shane surprised in Cable Grove has had plenty of time to return to wherever he kept my daughter, and to eliminate her as a witness. Isn’t that what mad kidnappers do? Snuff out their victims? I’ve seen the movie, read the tabloid version. I know how this ends, with the poor mother weeping and the media vultures shedding glycerin tears.

Shane is in the next room, his television faint but discernible through the thin walls, tuned, as mine is, to local news. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, the man who never sleeps has encouraged me to do so. As if. My exhausted brain seems determined to clock each passing second. Waiting, waiting. Two hours have ticked by since Mr. Ponytail zoomed away in his airboat—sounded like a plane taking off, frankly—and each minute has been soaked in molasses.

So when 11:05 p.m. finally ticks over, and fat tires spray the driveway gravel, I’m not at all surprised to see Detective Rufus Sydell climbing out of his cruiser, adjusting his hat, looking professionally grim. He has news to impart and my thudding heart tells me it won’t be good.

Shane and I burst through our doors at precisely the same moment, like cuckoos out of the same clock.

“Evening,” says Roof, stepping back, a little startled.

Shane glances at me, then reaches out and gives my hand a reassuring squeeze. “Go on,” he says to the cop. “Something happened. What?”

“Um, you all mind if I come inside? Skeeters are fearsome.”

“Of course.”

I follow them into Shane’s room, slapping instinctively at the mosquitoes that follow. I have to restrain myself from leaping on the cop’s back and tearing the terrible truth out of him.

Roof takes off his hat, runs a ruddy hand over the gray speckles of hair on his shiny, freckled skull. He looks like he’d rather be elsewhere. Anywhere but here, reporting to a concerned mom. “Ma’am, I need to ask, how tall is your daughter?”

Taken aback, I stare at him stupidly. Why would he want to know such a thing? Then it dawns on me. They’ve located a body, need identification. He’s trying to break it gently.

“Ma’am?”

“Kelly is five foot five,” I tell him in my smallest voice. “Exactly my height.”

Roof drops into a plastic stack chair, causing the legs to creak ominously. He lets out a breath and breaks into a face-wide grin. “Well, that sure is good news! Didn’t mean to scare you, ma’am, but they come upon a body out in the backcountry, and the only thing they took off it so far is approximate height. Five foot ten is a long ways from five-five.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yes ma’am, it surely had me scared. Lots of tall girls these days.”

“So the search parties are still out there?” Shane asks, surprised.

“Not as such,” Roof says, fanning himself with his hat. “The tribal police was attracted by flames. Could be seen for miles, apparently. Seems there was a fire out that little airstrip Ricky used. The one Mr. Shane here located. An airplane was torched and a charred body was located not far from the aircraft. Body was burned so bad the, um, sorry ma’am, the gender isn’t immediately obvious. They’ll know more when they get the remains back to the lab.”

“So it could be a male?” Shane asks. “You’re thinking, who, Seth Manning?”

Roof looks around, spots the dented little refrigerator. “You wouldn’t happen to have a beer, would you? I’m not normally a drinkin’ man, but I surely could use one about now.”

“Sorry, no.”

“Can’t be helped,” he says, obviously disappointed. “Oh well, Where was we? Oh, right. No, it’s likely not Seth Manning, on account of the height I mentioned. Turns out he ain’t but a few inches taller than the girl.”

“Kelly,” I remind him.

“Right. A course.”

“You have another theory?” Shane prompts gently. “About the victim?”

“Just a hunch.”

“Hunches can be good,” says Shane.

“Well,” the cop drawls, pronouncing it wall. “I got to thinkin’, after our little talk. Decided maybe I’d take a look at Roy Whittle, since his name come up. Found he wasn’t home to talk to, but he had been seen recently in the company of a fella name Stick Davis. Stick being a pilot with a shady reputation. Come to me that Stick pretty well fits the description you gave, of the suspects checking out the stolen airplane.”

“Uh-huh. So you had your suspicions.”

Roof grins ruefully. “I’m a suspicious kinda fella, Mr. Shane. But until I know a fact I tend to keep it to myself. Made a call or two, and it seems like Roy and Dug and Stick was seen in Naples, at an airfield there, purchasing two drums of aviation fuel for cash money.”

Shane looks puzzled. “And what, they burned the plane? Getting rid of evidence?”

“Don’t need no drums of expensive fuel to torch a plane, all you need’s a match,” he points out. “I figure, they go to all the trouble to buy fuel for a turboprop, they intended to use it.”

“Move the plane?”

“More likely steal it. Wouldn’t be the first time Stick Davis involved himself in a stolen aircraft. That particular one, a nearly new King Air 350, they tell me that’d be worth two or three million on the black market. Sell it no problem whatsoever in Colombia or Venezuela, or maybe closer to home. All they do is swap out the transponder, change the tail numbers, and keep on aflyin’. Long as it don’t come back into the U.S. for inspection, no problem.”

“So what went wrong?” Shane asks. “You have a theory on that?”

“Not so much a theory as a guess, you might say. I ask myself a question, what if Ricky Lang found out they was hijacking that plane? Maybe he was in on the deal, maybe he wasn’t, I ain’t got clue one in that regard. But I ask you, Mr. Shane, who else do we know is crazy enough to burn a milliondollar aircraft?”

“No sign of the Whittle brothers?”

“Nope. They ain’t showed their face. Maybe they dropped off Stick and skedaddled. Or could be I got it wrong altogether.”

“Is there enough left to DNA the body?”

Roof gives me a careful look. “Expect there will be, when they get down to it. You know how it is with crispy—’scuse me, ma’am, charred victims. Sometimes it takes months to make a positive ID. Sometimes never.”

He stands up, plops the hat on his head, gives me an avuncular nod. “Glad I wasn’t bearing bad tidings, ma’am. Search resumes at dawn, I’m sure they’ll find your girl. Right now I’m off to locate me a beer, else I won’t be able to sleep.”

We again retire to our respective rooms, cuckoos retreating inside the clock. And the clock keeps ticking, increasing the sense of dread with every passing moment. A severed finger, a burned body, a psycho on the loose—try to make something good out of those ingredients. Try to find hope. Who said that, keep hope alive? Whoever it was must have known how easily hope fades, how the very idea becomes a cruel joke. As if we have the power to change events by thinking good thoughts, and therefore when bad things happen it’s through our own weakness.

As if, say, cancer is caused by bad thoughts instead of bad cells! Reasoning like that used to drive me crazy when Kelly was in the hospital. Doctors and nurses will tell you a positive attitude is important, but succumbing to the disease isn’t a sign of mental weakness—it’s proof that that human beings are frail vessels.

That’s where I’m at, here in Glade City. Back to the cancer ward, praying that my child may live. Bargaining with death. Take me if you must but please, please, let my daughter live. Take another child, not mine, please please please. She’s barely nine years old, she’s already suffered enough for any ten grown-ups. And now she’s barely sixteen, on the cusp of being an adult, her whole life ahead of her.

Let her live, God, or I will claw my way into heaven and bring you my full fury. You think fallen angels are trouble? Wait until you meet plain Jane Garner, mother of Kelly. Let her live, God, or I swear I’ll just close my eyes and die and make You miserable.

Close my eyes and dream I’m searching for Kelly in the hospital. She keeps fleeing down the long white corridors, hiding and laughing because she thinks death is a game she can win; she’s already won once, she says. I’m trying to warn her but my voice is too small, it barely gets beyond my lips, and my feet are so heavy I can’t run fast enough to catch her. My beautiful daughter running away, laughing at death.

Waking up is a shock because there’s no awareness of having fallen asleep. But suddenly it’s two in the morning and someone is knocking on my door. Politely but insistently knocking.

I crawl from the saggy bed fully clothed, stagger to the door, throw it open.

First thing I notice are his eyes, glaring at me from under the wrinkled brim of a cowboy-style straw hat with a curled brim. Eyes so pale and cool they make me want to slam the door and go back to sleep. Eyes that couldn’t care less, not about me or anyone who lives in my world.

The rest slowly comes into focus. The leathery, weathered face that could be forty or sixty. A lean, compact body that seems entirely composed of sinew and bones, and the powerful, sloping shoulders of a pole vaulter. His hands, kept loose and ready at his side, are out of scale, too big for the rest of him. His feet are bare, and so splayed that no normal shoe would ever fit. Thick toenails curve like ivory claws, as if the part of him that touches earth wants to cling there, like a bird on a branch. He’s a man from another time, and everything about him says he’s not pleased to be here, tapping on my door in the middle of the bug-infested night.

“Leo Fish,” he says gruffly. “State your business.”

11. The Squealing Time Is Here

In the darkest hour of a moonless night, ten miles from the nearest incandescent light, Dug Whittle hunts the girl like he’d hunt a wild pig. By stealth and cunning and by using his nose. You can smell out a pig from heavy cover, if you know what to sniff for, and Dug figures sniffing out a sweaty, unwashed female should be easy.

True, she and the fag boy have about a two-hour head start. But that makes no never mind in the backcountry, which he knows and she don’t. The girl is weak because that’s the way females are, plus she’ll be slowed down by the fag boy, who is bleeding and feverish. Supposed to be the boy he’s after, turn him over to Ricky Lang, but the blow to the head has given Dug other ideas. More to the point it’s given him one very powerful idea: he will kill the girl and gut her like a pig. Maybe gut her first, see how long she lasts.

He’s pretty sure Roy would agree. His brother being kind of soft when it comes to women and animals, but surely getting his throat tore up will have hardened him some. Dug said as much on the race to the E.R., flooring that Dodge for all it was worth, but of course Roy couldn’t express his opinion because of the wire in his throat. Dug not wanting to pull it out for fear he’d spout like a fountain.

All Roy had to say was gah, gah, like a baby, his eyes wet with tears. Dug can’t recall a time when Roy didn’t speak for him, so it’s both a shock but also sort of exciting that he’s now in charge, making decisions.

He starts, like any good tracker, from the last known location. The spot where she clobbered him with that chunk of rock. Easy enough to find where the escaped captives lay in the saw grass, her and him, and how they then moved off west. Probably no idea where they’re going, just wanting to get away. As it happens moving closer to the watery part of the Glades, where gators prey on anything they can get their jaws around.

Dug has an old carbide Autolite affixed to his hat, the identical kind he uses when night hunting for alligator—pop that light on and you see the eyes looking back at you from the dark—but decides not to fire it up unless absolutely necessary. Pop a light, she’ll know he’s coming and he prefers an element of surprise. Plus, as he knows from experience, human eyes don’t show red in the dark.

Best way to night hunt, move slowly, keep an ear cocked. Many’s the time he’s heard a pig panting in the underbrush. The pig is fearful, knows it’s being hunted and should be silent, but it can’t help itself. It will pant, sometimes even grunt like a person will grunt, thinking things over. Wants to get downwind and that’s the challenge, to keep the scent advantage. Even a night like tonight, with the air so still, there’s motion, a direction to carry smell.

Once, hunting raccoon at night, Dug killed one with his knife, just to see if he could. Was it possible to stab a moving coon in the dark? Turned out to be not that difficult, just hafta know which way the coon would jump.

Dug has always known which way a hunted creature will jump. He has no doubt he’ll know which way the girl will jump, when it comes to that. He carries with him, into territory he knows like the landscape of his own flesh, a skinning knife, a pump shotgun, and his vast experience killing things.

He crouches, using the tips of his fingers to find the ragged trail they’ve left. He sniffs, holding the air in his nose, loving the flavors. Flavor of swamp, flavor of grass, flavor of girl.

Kelly lies flat on her belly, sucking dirt. Her right arm hugs Seth, keeping him down. He’s not exactly delirious but she can feel the heat of his fever and knows he isn’t thinking clearly. How could he, after what he’s been through?

After the first dash to freedom it became clear that Seth wouldn’t be going anywhere fast. She could help him along, carry most of his weight, but that made for slow going over uneven terrain in the dark.

“I was supposed to rescue you,” he’d mumbled, when they finally stopped running and collapsed to the ground.

“Next time,” she’d said brightly, still high on adrenaline.

“I thought you were dead.”

“Me, too. I mean, I thought you were dead.”

“They cut me,” he’d said, showing her the wound.

Amazingly enough, it didn’t repulse her. Maybe in daylight it would, but in the close darkness it didn’t really seem all that bad. A little finger missing, no big deal. The rest of him was half-starved and filthy, but intact. The problem was that the wound had become infected and the infection had spread most of the way up his arm. He was in terrible pain, shivering from the fever, and it was absolutely essential that, with the monster man so close, Seth remain absolutely motionless.

That’s how she thought of him, monster man. Obviously she hadn’t hit him hard enough to do any real or lasting damage.

When first she realized they were probably being followed, she’d found a cluster of mangroves on a little mound of soggy ground surrounded by water. The water was shallow, no more than ankle deep, but she figured it would help cover their tracks. That’s how they always did it in the movies. Sometimes in the movies they submerged under the water, breathing through reeds, but Kelly was pretty sure that wouldn’t work in real life, and anyway this water wasn’t deep enough for that.

The cluster of mangroves is thickly overgrown on the outside, less so on the inside, and she believed that once she and Seth had wormed their way inside their little hideaway they’d be as good as invisible. There were lots of these small overgrown areas dotting the area, hundreds probably, and monster man couldn’t possibly search all of them. They’d be safe so long as they didn’t move, didn’t give themselves away.

Or maybe not. She has no idea how he managed it so quickly, but monster man prowls along the water’s edge a mere fifty yards from where they’re hiding.

Kelly touches Seth’s lips with her fingers, meaning silence, and he nods that he understands.

Monster man blends into the darkness. He seems to be going away, following the wrong track. She feels some of the tension drain and hauls Seth closer.

Hot and muggy as it is, he’s shivering. With all her experience as a long-term patient in intensive care, she knows the signs. She has to get Seth to a hospital in the not too distant future or there’s a chance he will die from a raging blood infection. Septicemia they call it. They’ll need to hang a bag, drip him full of antibiotics.

In a few hours time Kelly Garner, age sixteen, has gone from being totally focused on saving her own life to being totally focused on saving the life of her best friend.

Best friends, as she knows, are not easy to come by.

When Kelly met Seth in the flesh for the first time her impression was, the guy is too good to be true. Too handsome, too smart, too kind, too generous, too everything. Later, after he’d been tutoring her for several weeks, demonstrating in his calm clear way exactly how to fly safely, she decided that sometimes first impressions are correct. He was the real deal, a decent guy who wanted to help her without trying to get into her pants.

Later on, when he’d finally taken her into his confidence—he really had no one else to turn to—Kelly realized she’d never been in any danger from Seth Manning. Not that kind of danger, anyway. Not that being gay had diminished his perfection in her eyes. If anything he was more perfect because he was unobtainable, even if she’d decided to cross the age barrier.

To see him like this, shivering in the heat, weak as a kitten, his left hand wrapped in a bloody rag, it makes her want to weep. “Hang on,” she whispers. “We’re gonna make it, I promise.” “Leave me,” he says. “Get away while you can.” “Never,” she says. “You’re my favorite flyboy and I’m keeping you. That’s final. Now try to snuggle closer.”

Monster man holds the air in his mouth. He’s picked up the faintest whiff of human perspiration not his own. He forces himself to relax, to melt his way into the landscape. Not only smelling the smells, but sorting through the background noise of birds, water frogs, tree frogs, whining mosquitoes, scrabbling raccoons, splashing baitfish, gators small and large, the whole wilderness mishmash.

What can’t be heard can help, too. A place where the animals have left to make room for human. And he’s picking up a beacon of silence, a quiet zone in one of the smaller mangrove islands.

Thinking, as he glides into motion, you’re mine, little pig. The squealing time is here.

12. Best Keep Your Hands Inside The Pan

Zooming through the Everglades on an airboat at night is like riding a dirt bike full speed through a pitch-black forest. Not that I’ve ever been on a dirt bike, or in pitch-black forest, for that matter. But it has to be something like this, the sheer exhilarating terror of not knowing what’s out there and when it might suddenly crash into you. Shadows, mangroves, grasslands, open water, all blending into one dark and scary blur. Every bump and scrape and feral swoosh of grass against the flat bottom of the aluminum boat hits me like a jolt of electricity, frying my nerves.

Leo Fish says not to worry. Fine. What I’m experiencing isn’t so much worry as paralytic fear. Clinging to the little seat, mouth tightly closed so the bugs can’t get in (more advice from our improbable guide) muscles so tense they’ve petrified, I can’t even scream.

First impression of Mr. Fish, he’s not exactly a people person. He listens to Shane’s pitch—help us find my daughter by finding Ricky Lang—nods his unenthusiastic assent, and then gravely tells us that chances are we’re already too late.

“I can find him for you,” he says with a shrug. “But I can’t fix what might already be done. Just so’s you know that from the get-go.”

Shane apparently decides that the best thing is to be affable. Ignore the morbid, misanthropic streak and engage the man in conversation. The window of opportunity being the trek between the motel and the Hunt Club dock, where Ponytail has obligingly loaned his airboat to Leo Fish. On foot, because Fish makes it clear he “can’t abide a car,” meaning he won’t ride inside a vehicle. Too soon to say whether that means he’s claustrophobic or just plain weird.

“We understand that Ricky was married to your sister,” Shane begins.

“Yup. My half sister Louisa Mae. My daddy took up with a Seminole woman in his old age, and little Louisa Mae was the result. Beautiful child. Beautiful woman, too. Ricky never seen fit to marry her, being as she wasn’t Nakosha, but they made ‘em some babies. Two lovely girls and the cutest little boy you ever did see.”

“I understand they died in a fire.”

“Died in a fire, yup, all of ‘em.”

“And Ricky blames the tribe?”

The question stops Leo Fish in his tracks—he has the look of a man who’s taken a surprise punch to the gut. “He tell you that?”

“No, sir. Got it from the FBI, who got it from his girlfriend.”

“So that’s what he told his girlfriend? The tribe did it?”

“Apparently.”

Leo Fish grunts, spits copiously. He stares down at his naked feet, as if trying to decide who to kick. “That’s a damn lie. Tribe ain’t had nothin’ to do with it. Ricky Lang set fire to that house himself. Killed Louisa and the kids, whether he meant to or not. It’s on him, all that death.”

Now it’s Randall Shane who looks stunned. “Lang killed his own children?”

Fish responds with a curt nod and says, “He’d had this fancy new house built on the reservation, and then he and Louisa Mae got to fighting—might have been over this girlfriend you mentioned. Upshot is, she refused to let Ricky into his own house, and that’s when he said he’d sooner burn it down then let her live there. Louisa Mae, she’s a feisty one, she called the tribal police, but they refused to intervene ‘cause Ricky was the big man.”

“So he burned the house down with them in it?”

“Not exactly. Man always had a crazy temper. What happen, he come out one night when they were all in bed, woke ‘em up, and forced ‘em all out of the house. Standing there in their pajamas, the three kids, and Louisa Mae cursing him for the devil. Then he sets the place afire with gasoline, to prove he can do what he likes with his own house. After he throws the match and sees the fire spreading, he takes off in his boat, in case the tribal police showed up after all. Leaves the kids weeping but alive. What he didn’t figure on, after he was gone, little Troy ran back inside to get his new puppy, they had it in one of those puppy crates for training purposes, and Louisa and the two girls ran after him. The roof came down and they all perished.”