Turtle Island (43 page)

‘I can't see a damned thing.’

‘Trust me…drive straight on.’ Leroy tried to peer through the
blackened night, but he knew that even a rabbit with carotene
overdose would be as blind as crooked boxing referee on a night
like this. The four-wheel drive bounced through a few potholes
before finally lodging itself firmly in a crater. The tyres span
uselessly, churning mud and the last vestiges of grass in the
waterlogged field.

‘Great. Now what?’ Georgina looked at Leroy. ‘Maybe you could
push?’

Leroy opened the door. ‘We don't have time.’ He set off on
foot. ‘Georgina, c'mon. We ain't got long.’

Catching a final glimpse at the clock inset on the dashboard,
Georgina headed into the pouring rain and the black Missouri night.
As she ran, following the darkened figure ahead, Georgina auto
dialled Harley. Her footing was treacherous, many times sinking
into the muddied field. The phone went through the routine of
dialling, oblivious to its owner’s desperation. The line
connected.

‘H…hel..lo Harley?’ Georgina gasped, trying to wipe cold
stinging rain away from her eyes while she ran. ‘What's…the
…sit…u…ation?’ The syllables were interrupted by pants of
exertion.

‘She's still alive I think, though the feed went dead a couple
of minutes ago. Something happened. They had a fight, then he ran
away and the live feed went down. The detective was lying on the
floor near the foot of the stairs…he wasn’t moving.’

Georgina didn't know if it was good news, though she was
pretty sure that he would want to claim his pound of
flesh.

‘G…g…good…shit!’ The line went dead as Georgina slipped down a
grassy bank, her ear pressed the disconnect button as she fell. Mud
and wet grass plastered itself to her. As she fell her mobile phone
bounced out of her hand, landing somewhere in the
darkness

‘Fuck.’ Georgina tried to halt her fall but scrambled messily,
grasping air, awaiting impact with the sodden ground, which
inexorably rose to meet her. ‘Uh!’ She rolled down a sharper
incline, calling out in surprise, hoping Leroy would hear. Suddenly
her body was encased in freezing cold water and her voice shut off
by water rushing in through her mouth. Between shock and fear, lay
panic. Georgina instinctively coughed out the water, before her
head submerged beneath the blackness.

Leroy stopped and turned, taking a moment to look around. He
called out low through the driving rain. ‘Georgina!’

A light ahead briefly distracted him. It flicked on and off
seven times in succession before plunging finally into darkness and
the still of the night. The house disappeared but at least Leroy
knew in what direction to head. ‘Georgina?’ He waited but knew he
had to move onwards toward the house, alone if
necessary.

Georgina was carried along; her head jarred off something that
seemed too hard to be an embankment. As her senses returned, she
could smell the stench of effluence, decay and death. This was no
river; it was a tide of decay, the overspill from the abattoir
combining with the flood and sewerage outlets. Somewhere it would
meet the river but for now Georgina was carried along on a fast
moving current of death. Too cold and weak to swim against its
relentless force, she hoped that she would be able to grasp
something and hold on until she could pull herself out. In the near
distance she saw a light flicker on and off several times. She held
her breath to try to stop her teeth chattering but it was as though
her whole body was being frozen, her fingers and feet had already
begun to lose their feeling. Her head banged off something hard.
Before blacking out, Georgina sensed the motion of
falling.

Georgina awoke knee deep in water with a torrent bouncing off
her back, over her head. The ground beneath her hands and knees was
solid, not a riverbank but something man made. She looked at her
watch, blinking away water, trying to focus. Her head pounded and
when she placed her hand to the point of pain it returned covered
in blood. She staggered forward out of the Niagara that was
bouncing off her and collapsed, letting the current, now much
subsided carry her along until she came to a halt. For a while she
sat there dazed and concussed, trying to think straight, trying to
see straight. Georgina noticed rows of strip-lights along the
ceiling in what appeared to be a storm tunnel or flood chamber. Her
watch read eight o'clock and a wave of uselessness threatened to
overwhelm her. She hoped against hope that Leroy had managed to
save Jo-Lynn.

Leroy moved forward carefully, the light came once more.
Encouraged, his pace quickened, he was now a couple of hundred
yards away and could see the outline of a child silhouetted against
the drawn blinds when the light was on and instantly recognised Ray
Montoya. He began to run faster, his hand reached inside his jacket
and unclipped the retainer on his holster allowing access to his
weapon. About 100 yards from the house an automatic movement sensor
picked Leroy's presence and a one thousand-kilowatt halogen lamp
floodlit the entire house, which in turn triggered one at the back
of the house. Like a rabbit motionless in car headlights, Leroy was
temporarily frozen. Immobile and blinded, he felt extremely
vulnerable. To his left there was nothing but open space, to his
right there was nothing but a lightning tree, the branches reaching
out, screaming at the injustice of a life cut short, at the same
time offering protection. Leroy began to run toward it, half way to
it he heard a loud rapport. Another thunderclap and a burst of
white lightning, though this time it was followed by a searing pain
and Leroy fell to the ground. The lights went out.

Inside the house, Fortune was a mass of confusion. He placed
the rifle down and breathed in the smell of cordite from the spent
round. His finger circled the tiny hole in the reinforced pane of
glass, the sharp edge drew blood just as he had drew blood, and for
the briefest of moments he felt a sense of satisfaction but soon
his mind was returning to more serious matters than one rogue
policeman. The boy was nowhere to be found. A noise from the room
next door brought his mind back into sharp focus; the night was not
over yet, not by a long way.

Jo-Lynn scrabbled around under the water, her hands feeling
for the knife. She had seen it fly from his hand and made a mental
note of approximately where it had landed. She began her frantic
search not knowing how long she had until he returned, and suddenly
there it was, her fingers ran across the blade, knocking it
slightly further away. She scurried after it, panicking that it
would fall irretrievably from her grasp, but she found it and held
on to it for all her life was worth. Jo-Lynn ran through the water
to the decking and her husband. With mixed and confused emotions
she checked frantically for a pulse. A steady rhythm, Rick was
still alive. The next part of her plan was something she had been
thinking of ever since she realised the function of the chamber she
was in. She knew that there was a lever somewhere that opened the
trap door to allow the floodwaters to enter the sewage system
below. The only obstacle now was to find it. The only place in the
room she had not access to was the space underneath the stairs. She
ran through the water as fast as her legs could carry her, driven
by fear and hope, the water the only impediment to her progress.
Jo-Lynn stumbled and fell once but got up straight away. Sunken
away, on the far wall beneath the stairs was, as she had hoped, a
lever mounted on a board. She didn't stop to analyse the finer
points of the mechanism. She grabbed hold of the cold metal handle
and pulled down with all her might, nothing seemed to happen. An
enormous wave of despair started to fill every pore of Jo-Lynn
battered and beaten existence. As she turned and looked with
desperate hope at the centre of the chamber, a hydraulic 'phut'
sound made her heart begin to race. Something was
happening.

Georgina thought she heard a gun being fired, the sound echoed
down the tunnel making the water around her feet ripple. But now
there was silence. She wanted to do something, wanted to act, to do
her duty, serve and protect, the words came to her mind but never
had she felt so impotent. She looked around, nothing but endless
tunnels, sending water and worse to an unknown destination. Nothing
overhead but the occasional working strip light followed by
florescent tubes that danced through the night, flicking on and
off. She wondered for a moment whether they were permanently on or
was it her presence that activated them fooled into thinking that
she was a sewer worker. A noise a few yards down the tunnel made
her look upward. She stood and wandered down, sloshing through the
water, trying not to think about the smell of the floating
effluent. She wondered if the FBI would pick up her cleaning tab
and smiled at the surreal nature of her predicament. The strip
light on the ceiling illuminated the rough brickwork and a small
oblong inset within it. Without warning the oblong swung outwards
and a deluge of water followed and with it a loud claxon wailing in
distress. Georgina was covered in water once more; hardly able to
breathe she staggered backward, searching for air. The water pinned
her to the wall and all she could do was cough and splutter, hoping
that the deluge would stop before she needed to breathe again.
Georgina thought she saw a blur of something fall with the water.
The sound of a heavier splash impacting on the water confirmed her
suspicion.

The klaxon rang through the house.

Fortune turned, the boy could wait. He knew that the boy would
never be able to open the front door, and the windows were
constructed from toughened glass, he could not break them, not a
boy. He slung his rifle over his shoulder, now was the time to
finish what he started. He entered the hall and stopped at the door
to the cellar. As he unbolted it, another alarm sounded. He
couldn’t believe it. Prentice Fortune’s hands unfastened the
retainers, urged on by a sense of panic. He would not be denied his
moment of triumph. He ran down the stairs as soon as the door was
open, then along a narrow passage to another door. This time a
steel reinforced door, more bolts. Fortune began to curse his own
security. The last bolt pulled back, he grabbed hold of the handle
and yanked the cumbersome door before taking the final set of
stairs two at a time. Instantly he knew she was gone. The final few
gallons of water poured through the opened trap door. Fortune
stepped forward, close to the opened hatch, then knelt down and
placed his head into the opened space, looking,
searching.

The chair lay below, being carried along with the
current.

He shouted through to the network of tunnels.

‘You won't escape.’ His voice echoed. As he straightened into
a kneeling position, he heard movement from behind and a
voice.

‘
Yes I fucking will.’

Fortune turned just in time to see the large blade enter his
shoulder and run downwards fully to the hilt, sinking into his
flesh. Jo-Lynn pushed with all her might and he toppled backward
through the open hatch.

Georgina watched the body, arm and legs splaying widely,
grabbing air, as it hurtled through the opening. She stepped back a
few paces to make sure he did not catch her as he plummeted to the
ground. His body impacted on the water like a mistimed high diver,
displacing showers of water in all directions. As soon as the body
landed, Georgina was making her way toward him, reaching in her
back pocket for the nylon ties, which she preferred using to the
cumbersome regulation handcuffs. He was lying still in the water;
the tip of the blade had pushed all the way through his shoulder
with the tip of the blade exposed through the back of his jumper.
His hands were floating above his head, Georgina wasn't even sure
if was still alive but was in no mood to take the risk. She knelt
on the body submerging it in the knee-deep water, as she did so she
noticed the tip of the blade protrude even further through the back
of his shoulder. Quickly, she grabbed his right arm and pulled it
to the centre of his back. As she repeated the action with the left
arm, Prentice Fortune pulled the nylon tie from her hands. He
rolled over and dragged her down into the water. Georgina spat out
water and fought for air. Fortune was still felt powerful despite
the knife embedded in his shoulder. Georgina grabbed hold of the
handle of the knife and pulled down with all her might. The knife
moved downwards, cutting flesh, breaking bone. Prentice Fortune
yelled with pain. A spurt of blood shot out of the wound streaking
across Georgina’s jacket. She yanked upwards and the knife came
free in her hands. Georgina didn’t wait; she couldn’t afford to
wait. She plunged the knife deep into Prentice Fortune’s throat and
heard a sickening crack as the serrated blade severed his windpipe.
Fortune staggered backwards with his arms outstretched and toppled
backwards for a final time into the water. Even though he was dead,
Georgina set about securing his feet and arms with the ties, before
slumping exhausted and dizzy into the water. She sat for a while
submerged to her waist staring at the body of the dead man, not
even curious as to who he was, just relieved to be
alive.

‘Hey?’ Georgina shouted up through the gap. She waited but
heard no reply, so she shouted a second time but louder, much
louder.

‘HEY!!! ANYBODY UP THERE?’

A face appeared through the sluice door opening. A face
Georgina recognised followed by a second much younger face. Jo-Lynn
smiled, the burden of her nightmare already beginning to recede as
she hugged her son, their faces touching.