Home Repair is Homicide 13 - Crawlspace (22 page)

The flashlight smacked the rock with a small, sharp
click
and went on, its yellow beam like an arrow shining directly at the sandbar.

Or if you looked at it from Randy Dodd’s point of view, at Jake and Bella.

“Get it,” Jake whispered, struggling to rise. But something was stopping her, something around her ankle. It burned

Bella scampered down the beach, crouched swiftly, snatched the flashlight up, and snapped it off in one quick motion. But too late; an answering light appeared on the far shore of one of the islands out there.

Bobbing and bouncing, it proceeded swiftly toward the pale, shining path of the moonlit sandbar, then snapped off. A dark shape where it had been started across the bar toward them.

“Quick,” said Bella, tugging at Jake’s arm. “Get up.”

But whatever was tight around Jake’s leg wouldn’t let go. She twisted to try getting a glimpse of it, then wished very hard that she hadn’t, because the driftwood she’d tripped over wasn’t merely a chunk, she realized now.

It was an entire waterlogged tree trunk. Washed up here by the tide, it must have been leaning precariously, propped up on a thin stick of branch now lying a few feet away.

And when Jake tripped over the branch, she’d broken it, so the tree trunk had rolled right onto her ankle. Sitting up, she strained forward, pushing with both hands against the massive old tree’s dead white corpse.

It didn’t budge. The shape across the water bobbed nearer. Now it was halfway across. “Bella, I can’t—”

Bella bent beside her, saw the problem. “Here. Dig. Do it fast.”

She shoved the cup top from their thermos bottle into Jake’s hands, crouched, and began digging furiously herself. Jake gouged sand and pebbles from around her trapped ankle, flung them away, and dug up the next cupful.

A depression formed. But there was her whole foot remaining to be unearthed… . It struck her that this was serious.

“Go,” she said, thinking about the gun in her sweater. In reply, Bella just grabbed Jake’s pants leg and pulled.

But the chunk of tree might as well have been an anchor, as meanwhile a new sound came from the sandbar: boots, releasing one after another from each wet step with an awful sucking sound.

A low, scrubby screen of sea grass still hid them from that direction, but soon whoever was approaching would reach it. Bella gazed around wildly, then snatched up an old plank, part of some dock or collapsed boat shed that had floated or blown here.

It was about six feet long and not sturdy-looking at all, but it was something. She shoved one end under the tree trunk. “Lean back. Out of the way …”

Then she jumped on the other end with both feet. The tree trunk lurched up a scant inch.

“Now,” Bella said urgently as Jake scrambled back, kicking with one foot and dragging the other. The instant her ankle was free, the old board snapped, hurling Bella backward and letting the tree trunk fall again.

Backpedaling, Bella reached out and snagged Jake’s collar as the massive, waterlogged thing slammed down with a thud. Half crawling, Jake let herself be hauled along across the wet stones toward the relative shelter of the trees.

Scooting into the brush, they hustled back from the exposed beach area until Jake fell into a mucky depression full of wet leaves and slimy washed-up masses of rotted seaweed.

“Shh,” Bella whispered, crawling into the depression, too.

“Get down,” Jake whispered, yanking Bella’s sleeve. Through a scrim of weeds between the beach and the trees, they watched as a man stepped from the sandbar onto the beach itself.

He stopped, peering around, then spotted the tree trunk and hurried toward it. Leaning down to examine it, he picked up half the broken plank, swung it experimentally a couple of times, and flung it away.

Jake felt a moment of relief at the thought that she wasn’t about to be bludgeoned to death with a hunk of wood. But then—

Then she saw what was in his other hand: an iron boat hook.
The better to bash you with, my dear …

“Bella?” But Bella didn’t reply, staring at the man who now came closer, following their footprints. Swinging the boat hook.

Jake dug in her sweater pocket. She hadn’t wanted to shoot Randy at all, since if she did he might not be able to lead them to Sam and Carolyn.

Now, though, things were really getting serious. She put her hand in her pocket.

No gun. Disbelief flooded her. She’d put it there, and she hadn’t taken it out, so—

Fifty yards distant, Randy Dodd paused, looking down at his feet. Seeing something. Picking it up, he peered around slowly, tucked it into a pocket of whatever it was that he was wearing. An army jacket, it looked like.

The .32, she realized. It must’ve fallen from her own pocket when
the tree trunk hit her or when she was writhing on the sand, trying to get free.

And now Randy Dodd had it.

He began walking toward them again, taking his time, making sure he didn’t lose sight of the footprints they’d left for him. He had a slight limp but it didn’t impede his progress. Still swinging the boat hook, he reached the far edge of the sea-grass meadow.

Close enough now for Jake to see the confident smile on his face. Confidence, mingled with anticipation … But then a sound came suddenly from above and behind them, a low, guttural roar that rose very fast to a sharp
whap-whap-whap!

It was a helicopter. Coast Guard, probably; the minute the sky cleared, they’d have begun sending out search crews by water and air.

Bob would’ve told them about the map tracing from the Dodd House even if he put little confidence in it himself.

But Digby Island was on the Canadian side of the border, and like it or not, the Coasties weren’t going to provoke an incident. They couldn’t chase bad guys to Canada any more than Los Angeles cops, say, could follow their own suspects into Mexico.

Randy’s shape vanished as he crouched by some boulders at the water’s edge. From above, motionless, he would seem to be one of them and nothing more, or so he obviously hoped.

Still, Jake’s heart lifted hopefully as the craft came in low. She didn’t know where the international line was, precisely, but they obviously did, and for an exultant moment it seemed they were coming straight at her, wind from the copter’s rotors ruffling the water and searchlights crisscrossing on it.

Minutes passed, and then more of them, as the craft swept back and forth. But it never came near Digby. And even if it had, an air search at night on the water was no guarantee of anything being found.

The strobing lights stabbed the night again and again. But they showed nothing but waves and the roiling, river-like rush of the racing
currents. At last the near-deafening sound faded, the helicopter and its hoped-for salvation whapping away back toward the west.

Staring, Jake couldn’t believe it.
Come back
, she wanted to shout, but of course she couldn’t; Randy still had that gun. Once the aircraft was gone, he resumed his progress, slapping the boat hook he still carried into the palm of his free hand.

Something about the helicopter must’ve spooked him, though, because after only a few more steps he stopped again. Then he turned and went back toward the shore and the sandbar he’d come from, as if he’d suddenly thought of something.

As if, pleasurable as it might’ve been, he’d realized that it just wasn’t worth it to find them and kill them. Watching him go, Bella let her breath out. “Now what?”

Jake shifted painfully. “I don’t know. I guess he must think the he li copter might come back.”

Another thought prickled at the edge of her mind, but she was too cold, scared, and hurting to be able to concentrate on it. “He’s got my gun. And I think my ankle is sprained.”

Also, they were sitting in a muck pit. “Let’s try to get out of here,” she said, feeling heartsick. Because the helicopter had probably saved their lives by stopping Randy’s search for them, but it hadn’t done anything for Sam.

In fact, for him it had probably made things worse, because now Randy knew people were after him, and that they had at least a general idea of where he might be.

Not that we’ve helped in that department, either
, Jake told herself bitterly as she and Bella clambered up the side of the gunk-filled hole in the beach. With the copter gone, the night felt empty and desolate. The moon shone down coldly, turning the beach to a silvery sheet.

The car was half a mile away and no more help was coming anytime soon; not for them, not for Sam or for Carolyn Rathbone. Or for Chip Hahn, wherever the hell he’d gotten to.

Jake pulled her smashed phone out and tried it. But nothing happened when she opened it. She hurled it away.
Sam, I’m …

“Sorry,” she began aloud. “Sorry, sorry …”

But Bella didn’t let her finish. “If your ankle really is sprained, and not broken …”

“Oh, there’s a happy thought,” said Jake as regret went on flooding her. In retrospect she could think of a dozen things she should have done differently, but now it was too late for any of them.

“If it’s only sprained, then what’s good for it is a soak in cold water.”

Bella wiped her muck-smeared hands on the front of her jacket. Jake put her weight testingly on her bad foot. The result was not good in either case.

“Bella, you’ve got to get to the car. Get out of here and get help, send them …”

Bella just looked at her. “He knows we are here and he knows we’re not just kids looking for an isolated place to park, have a party. To drink and fool around, and so on.”

“Yes
, I realize that. He found my gun, heard the helicopter. He knows pretty soon people will be back, that even though they didn’t find him this time …”

“Daylight will come,” Bella finished for her. “He needs to be away before then. And if he has Sam and that girl—”

She didn’t need to finish. Two hostages would only slow him down. Bella bent and seized Jake’s arm. “Just come on along with me now. You need to soak that ankle.”

Jake let herself be grabbed hold of and urged forward. If she didn’t, she thought she might just sit again. “Bella, I’m not sure I—”

“We’ve got to.” Supporting most of Jake’s weight, Bella put her shoulder under Jake’s arm and took a step, and then another.

Toward the sandbar. “The tide’s turning,” she said. “It’s why he started back. We’ve got to get over there, too, before the water’s too deep to walk across.”

In the moonlight, her bony face was terrified. But her words didn’t match her look. “Once we’re there, I’m not sure what we’ll do,” she said.

She’s still scared to death
, Jake realized.
Like me
.

“But if we don’t go,” Bella continued, “you know as well as I do he’s going to kill them.”

It was enough to get Jake moving. Letting go of Bella, she tested the ankle once more, winced, and sucked in a breath as it signaled its determination not to function, or at least not without torturing her.

Screw you
, she thought at it, and at any other body parts that thought they could run the show just because they happened to be attached. Then she took another step. It wasn’t quite so painful this time.
Probably because I’ve already severed all the important nerves in there
, she thought.

Moments later she stepped into the cold salt water, now already lapping at the edges of the sandbar. As Bella had said, the tide was coming in.

Soon it would cover the temporary land bridge leading to Digby. But an icy bath, just as Bella had also said, did indeed make Jake’s ankle feel better. And …

Sam
. She couldn’t leave him here. She just couldn’t. Not without at least trying …

“Fine. Let’s take it a step at a time,” she gasped to Bella, who went on struggling along beside her.

So they leaned on each other and did.

THE HELICOPTER WOKE CHIP HAHN OUT OF A FROZEN HALF
sleep. He’d been drifting out here for hours, it felt like, in the cold, fogbound darkness, just letting the tide and currents take him where they wanted to go, in the engineless boat.

He’d had no other choice. Even waiting for daylight wasn’t a great
bet, he’d figured out, since when it did come he might find himself in open water.

On the ocean. Far out on it, since for all he knew, that was where the current he was riding went. It sped him along as if an engine were pushing him, he just couldn’t tell to where. When the copter came, he’d thought for an instant that he was rescued.

But no such luck. The searchlights had come within a few hundred yards of where he’d stood in his small, disabled vessel, yelling and waving.

But that few feet might as well have been miles, for all the good the searchers had done him. They simply hadn’t quite seen him, hadn’t quite been close enough.

He sank back against the transom. The jagged rocks and arrowhead-shaped trees he was beginning to be able to make out in the moonlight now that the fog had cleared were all he could see. He was in a cove, surrounded on three sides by a pale shoreline, here and there a few feet of beach studded with indistinct shapes and a lot of trees behind them.

The shapes were probably rocks. With the life jacket on, he might be able to swim to them. What he would do then, he didn’t know. Getting to the shore would be hard enough, but getting from there to any kind of help could be an even more difficult task.

He didn’t know how far it might be, or in which direction. He wouldn’t even know which way to try.
Useless
, he berated himself bitterly,
just a freaking useless little …

Then he saw the fishing boat. It floated very nearby, tucked under a dead, fallen tree whose matted branches formed a sort of awning over the water.

No light, no sound came from the vessel. Just a dark shape in a dark place. The waves lapping at its side made a faint gleaming line in the moonlight.

Soundless, ghostlike. Chip wasn’t making any sound, either, and
he resolved to go on not making any for as long as he could. The current kept rushing him toward those branches and the boat.

And because his engine was dead and he couldn’t steer at all without it, there was nothing he could do about that. Or …
Wait a minute
, Chip thought. He was under power. Just not engine power.