HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down (28 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Trooper Jim Cruickshand’s Chevy Caprice Classic rocketed towards the dawn. The early morning sunlight was low in the trees. Jared sat in the back, his cigarette long finished. He was clutching the seatback in front of him so fiercely that his fingertips were white.

“Once we get to the ferry,” said the cop with the buzzed neck to Jared, “we’ll lose them. Takes fifteen minutes between ferries. So, that’s how much time we’ll have when we get to the hospital.”

“Won’t they be waiting for us on the other side?”

“No. Something will keep them.”

Jared watched that thick neck for a second, then looked out the front at the rushing road. They had been on the interstate, only briefly, for just two exits north. As they’d rounded the winding entrance ramp, rising up in elevation to the interstate, Jared had seen the frenetic lights coming after them.

There was a caravan of four, maybe five vehicles on their heels. He wondered why they hadn’t been roadblocked yet, or intercepted. Surely someone would have radioed to Plattsburgh.

Something will keep them.

Now that they were off of the interstate, the cop had backed down on his speed some, but as Jared leaned to the right to look around the man’s neck and shoulder, he saw that they were still doing well over ninety. They were losing the low sun now. The sky, in front of them, was murky; only a band of lighter grey and blue shone on the horizon in the cloud cover. Soon, Jared was sure they would be spackled with a mixture of snow and rain. They were driving headlong into a storm.

Jared knew he needed to be careful. He had managed to win the trust of this grim Statie, as much as it was possible to do so. Jared had been scared at first. It wasn’t so much dying he feared, but the period before, in the hands of this very peculiar officer of the law, a man who had clearly turned the screw too far and cracked the surface of the grain.

He had been pissing his pants at the beginning, yeah, okay. But he’d connived his way onto the officer’s side. He’d placed a bet and beaten the house. The old fucker was sadistic, a woman hater — Jared had pegged him right. Why else had he imagined the dead women in the shed, and come up with a conspiracy between Jared and his girlfriend’s ex?

That part was really interesting.

He needed to plan his escape. Whatever insane agenda the Statie had, it wasn’t going to shape up so good, Jared was sure of that. He knew now why the cop had brought him along. It had to do with Elizabeth. When the trooper had mentioned her, Jared had understood. The cop planned to use him.

He’d be long gone, looking for this Christopher, because the whole thing had started with him, hadn’t it? Him and Liz together. The old detective had been asking questions about him. Because no doubt she was seeing him behind Jared’s back. No doubt they were going at it like rabbits while Jared was out having a few innocent beers with the guys, thinking his sweet woman was at home. Hadn’t she acted strange the other night? Washing all the towels? She and the ex were soiling the place with their infidelity. Jared would have to set them both straight.

“Fuck,” said the big cop. “Fuck!”

Jared caught sight of a deer in the road.

The animal was far enough off — they were on another flat, straight stretch — but it was standing still. It was like a snapshot, that deer just standing there, a doe, maybe, and they were going too fast, too fast.

Rather than slow or try to swerve, the trooper accelerated. The Caprice couldn’t have had much left, Jared thought, but it still managed to lurch forward that last little bit, the needle pushing a hundred — everything happening, not in slow motion, not like people always said it did, but with a kind of hyper-reality. Everything was starkly clear, for as instantaneous as it was, it was staccato; just pictures. The deer on the single-yellow dashed line, standing there, looking at the onrushing car, painted white by the headlights.

The speedometer, racking to triple digits.

The trooper’s hand on the wheel, tightly gripping, those coarse black hairs curled.

The impact.

They sailed right along, both of them jerking forward a little, as if they’d only hit a raccoon or a skunk. Jared thought he saw the deer flung off to the left, thrown into the ditch, but it was only a blur. But he saw that it hadn’t tumbled, the front of the Classic was too square and wide for that, the animal had been
launched
.

After the impact and the little jerk forward, Jared watched the big cop settle back and slowly shake his head. Then Jared heard him say, in a low voice he wouldn’t have otherwise associated with the man, “Sorry, there, little critter.”

Then the voice reverted back to the gruff, terse way of speaking Jared had come to expect. “Fuck. That little sumbitch fucked up my baby.”

“Holy shit,” was all Jared could reply. His mind was racing as the road disappeared beneath them. It was almost impossible to hang on to a thought. He did grasp, for a second, that the experience could work in his favor, that, without having to contrive anything of his own, the deer-crushing was something they now shared, a bond. He sat back, only realizing as he did, that his hands didn’t just come away from the seatback in front of him, but that he had to make an effort to pry them free.

* * *

A short time later they heard sirens in the distance again. Jared couldn’t be sure if they had actually faded for a while, or if the incident with the deer had temporarily distracted him.

The trooper had to slow the big car down as they came to a stop sign.

They then began moving again (he came to a complete stop; Jared thought he was even able to count one-Mississippi) on a two-lane, winding road through a small, bedroom community with a posted speed limit of 25. The trooper doubled it, but in the Caprice it didn’t seem that fast. Jared wondered, for a moment, if this would all simply end with the lunatic Statie just giving himself up, weeping at the wheel, his head in his hairy hands, confessing all of his crimes.

They got up some more speed, and soon the dark-navy chop of Lake Champlain was on their right, and Jared realized it was still going to happen, that whatever was going on, the trooper still planned to see it through to the end.

As they reached the ferry, minutes later, the encroaching storm had built and blotted out the dawn. They seemed to have gone backwards in time, retreating into night.

Then the rain swept in, rain that looked cold, each drop somehow brighter and fuller, like shards of crystal coming down.

In the distance, the hulking ferry came into dock, the tall pilings of the port jostling in the heaving water, the white eye of the big boat shining out at them.

The headlights of the waiting vehicles winked on. Dozens of bright eyes moved through the dark.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Tom ran down the west hallway, his shoes squeaking. He rounded the corner and came out at the nurses station, arousing glances from the people there — two RNs and an intern. The intern opened her mouth as if to ask him what was going on, but Tom turned away and jogged a few more paces until he was in front of Caleb and Elizabeth’s room.

They were still there, sleeping as before, undisturbed. Unsatisfied, though, Tom walked into the room. He could sense the intern coming up behind him.

He stopped at the foot of the bed, then rounded it on the left side so that the girl and baby boy were both facing him, their faces unreadable in the dark room. He determined that they were both breathing. As he started to walk away, he caught movement — in the far corner, along the same wall where the door was, a dark blur.

Then, a glimmer. Something reflective, catching light thrown in from the open door. A sparkle of it along the base of the wall. Finally a shadow snuffed it out.

The intern was standing right there in the doorway and seemed not to notice anything. She looked in, her hand on the door frame, and whispered, “What’s wrong?”

Tom went over to her, his eyes fixed on where he’d seen the movement. He pushed her out into the hallway.

“Hey,” she said.

Tom glanced back into the room to see if they’d been disturbed by his intrusion, and saw that they hadn’t. He didn’t want to turn on the light and wake them up.

“I need a mop, something,” he said in a low voice.

“What?”

“Anyone been in there?”

“What? No.”

Tom turned and looked into the room again. They were only a few feet away from the door. It was dark and still. And then, just then, movement again, this time in the hallway. Tom’s breath caught in his throat. He watched as a scuttling shape rounded the corner of the corridor, headed away from the room. He’d seen it! Dark red color, a sort of matted fur or feathers. Just the tail end of it going around the bend and out of sight.

“Did you
see
that?”

The intern looked where he was looking. “See what?”

Tom had a thought. He thought of Mahoney. He thought of the officers who had been at the door of Caleb’s room, and now weren’t there. He thought of the five young boys, the ones with the coins. The coins they had taped to the—

Tom turned. He spun, really, on one heel which uttered a loud squeak, and faced the door again. He ran his hand over its smooth surface. The coins were gone, too. Only a single piece of the scotch tape remained. He pulled it free and wadded it up with his finger and thumb.

“What happened to these?”

The intern’s mouth was open again. She hadn’t been here earlier; she didn’t know.

Tom moved past her, ignoring her, and went back into the one empty room nearby. He went to the window, put his hands on the glass, and looked down. The Burlington police were where he’d last seen them, one squad car, with its flickering red and white lights, parked at the entrance of the lot. Two policemen in clear rain-slickers over yellow vests.

No Mahoney.

He turned and saw the intern behind him, nervously fiddling with her hands. He realized he was behaving erratically, rude.

“Where is she?”

“Who?”

“The nurse who’s been here the whole goddamn time. I was just talking with her. Maddy. Where did she go?”

“I don’t know, sir. Maybe you’d better—”

He pushed past her again, bringing a fist to his mouth as a coughing fit overcame him. He needed to get outside, to contact Mahoney, to find out what had happened to the whole place in the five minutes he’d turned his back.

He pitched himself toward the elevator, drawing more looks, coughing as he went.

CHAPTER FIFTY

Headed across the water, the ferry rose and fell, slamming against what felt like concrete. Great fans of dark water came smashing up over the deck, breaking and thinning into sliding sheets. The boat launched up again and again, each time seemingly suspended in the air for a moment, touching neither water nor sky, and then slapping back down, hard, rocking the shocks of the Caprice.

“Jesus,” said Jared. The rain spat against the side of the car. It was impossible to tell whether it was the rain or the lake spray. At least they were underneath the upper deck, on the right side of the ferry, in a single car lane.

Ahead of them was a dark, empty-looking minivan. Behind them, a Camper. Jared had thought he’d seen a motorcycle while they’d been waiting to board, and instead of feeling sorry for the bastard, Jared wished it was him.

“It’s a rough one, she was right.” said Trooper Jim. It was the first thing the cop had said to him since the deer incident. The booth attendant had warned them about the highwater. Trooper Jim had taken the ticket and his change wordlessly as she had carried on with her speech, a woman in her fifties, with tangled brown hair.

“It’s bound to be a bumpy ride,” she’d said. “Water’s very high — if you’re returning more than twenty-four hours from now, there’s talk of shutting down if another snow or rainstorm really hits.”

Jared had looked east, over the lake, into the fisted thunderheads of the storm that was, indeed, coming. He’d wondered about damage to the car, blood, matted fur, something. But it was dark and the attendant either hadn’t noticed or had chosen to keep her mouth shut about it.

Jared decided now was the time to bring it up himself. The plan to escape by asking to use the bathroom, banking on the good graces Jared felt he had maneuvered into with the big cop, now seemed stupid and dangerous.

The ferry lurched. The night had practically returned. He was lost at sea with a lunatic. Perhaps the only chance was to get the big fucker to worry about drawing attention with a banged-up, bloody vehicle. The rain could’ve already washed it away, and the trooper might not even care, but, it was worth a shot. Jared opened his mouth.

Trooper Jim surprised him by speaking first. His tone was conversational.

“You ever been across when the ice is still breaking up? Probably only a month ago, now. Cold. That water is cold. You’d freeze to death in a matter of seconds, even now. Paddle all you want, you’d freeze up and sink like a stone into all that blackness.

“It’s deep across here,” he went on. “Champlain’s floor is a deep swathe. Carved like everything else by the glaciers; this one here was a son of a bitch. You ever been across in the ice? Big chunks of it, loud as shit, ferry just pushes on through.”

The trooper leaned forward and cocked his head to the side, looking out.

“Water seems high, for sure.”

Then he sat back.

“Macmaster pond is glacial, too. It’s a deep scoop. You wouldn’t think to look at it, but it goes down a long ways.”

The trooper was now looking at Jared in the rear-view mirror, the whites of his eyes illuminated by the headlights behind them.

“You ever think about something down there, something entombed in all that blackness? What if something, like an earthquake, some kind of destruction, sets it free?”

Oh boy, here it comes
. “I don’t know.”

“Me neither.”

Jared didn’t dare say anything else for a moment. Here was the confession he’d been expecting. Maybe not exactly, but certainly the cop was starting to loosen up.

“We’re gonna run smack into that storm,” said Trooper Jim.

He uttered the statement with that same casual tone. He didn’t sound crazy, Jared thought, even though there were crazies who sounded like anybody else, luring who they lured, scheming how they schemed. That the trooper didn’t sound like a nut, as they lurched across the lake, plastered by its backlash and the freezing rain, was perhaps most unsettling of all.

The trooper seemed to be checking his hands —
he’s going to break down now
— but Jared heard the lighter pop, and the cop lit up again. He didn’t offer one to Jared. He smoked and his body rocked with the car and the boat as Jared sat in the back and just watched it all.

Jared heard the sirens again and looked out through the back windshield. He could only see the vehicle behind them, the Camper, which had only now doused its lights, and the bulwark of the engines in the middle of the ferry and a bathroom door that read “Sailors” on it. He couldn’t see the shore.

“Go ahead,” said Trooper Jim.

Jared looked and saw, with some strange, upsetting displeasure, that the trooper had turned around and he was smiling, smoke pealing slowly out through his teeth.

“Get out and look.” He dragged on the cigarette. “If you’re not afraid to get washed away.”

“Yeah?” Jared said. He was careful to control his voice. “You don’t mind?”

“Mind? No.”

The grin had faded and his face, lit only by the orange bulkhead lights, seemed to grow ponderous.

Still careful to not sound excited, Jared said, “Cool, I’ll check it.”

He opened the back door of the Caprice Classic, and stepped out.