“A coincidence,” I insisted on the way back. “How many zillions of sheep did Scaler have in his flock? They’d all have tithe envelopes, right?”
“What are the chances of two outrageous cases connecting like that?” Harry countered.
Harry was driving. After finding the envelope I wanted to shut my mind off as my eyes watched treetops and power lines make fast shapes against the sky. We were in farm country: melon farms, cotton farms, timber farms, now and then the stretching green baize of a sod farm.
“Why would Kingdom Church buy a run-down house in the middle of nowhere, Harry? They’ve got a college, dorms, chapel, TV operation, three church camps, about a thousand acres scattered between Alabama and Mississippi. Why a quarter acre in the middle of bleak nowhere land?”
“To hide something.”
“A baby?”
He shot a glance over his shoulder. “Here’s the problem, Carson. I can’t work the Noelle case, just Scaler’s. But if they’ve turned into the same case…”
I pulled out my phone and dialed. “Mr…uh, Sinapir, Sentasipp…this is Detective Ryder. Stop the no-English riff. We spoke fifteen minutes ago. Did the cabin you owned have a harpoon or shark lance anywhere around?”
I listened, hung up. “There was a bunch of old crap in the shack, to use Mr S.’s words. Fishing rods, a lead anchor, a life vest, and what he called a rusty spear on hooks over the front door.”
Harry drove and thought for several seconds. “Maybe it’s the only weapon the cabin’s occupants have when someone shows up with bad intentions. Grab and stab.”
“Yeah, but if the person or persons with bad intent have a more developed arsenal, like guns, the spear-thrower’s just taken his one shot.”
“Forensics found footprints from the cabin to the pier, small, like a woman’s shoes.”
Three had been found along a stretch of sand, washed over, as if obscured by someone dragging a tarp or blanket down the trail. If the obfuscation had occurred at night – like all else did – it would have been easy to miss a couple prints.
I said, “Let’s say the woman is running from the inside action, bad things. Someone in the house throws the harpoon in defense. Meanwhile the lady is out the back door with Noelle in hand.”
“She puts the kid in the boat. But something bad happens. Noelle washes out on the tide, floats to Dauphin Island.”
I said, “Is the person in the shack the person who bought the place with cash in a tithe envelope from Scaler’s Circus of Worship, first name Kurt, second name indecipherable?”
“The landlord said the buyer was an older guy in a suit. Smallish in stature. Shades. Hat.”
“The landlord said it was a good suit, right?”
“He said, ‘Man wear good suit, first-class.’”
“Mr Landlord would know,” I said. “Clothes are important to him, part of looking like a business-man and not an itinerant slumlord.”
Harry gave it some thought. “So the man who paid for the cabin using a tithe envelope from Scaler’s church might not be the man found dead inside?”
“Clair said the body inside was a male in his mid twenties to early thirties. The landlord’s description fits an older man, but not Scaler.”
Harry looked grim. “It’s all smoke and mirr—whoops. Train ahead. Looks like we stop a bit.”
Freight-cars were pouring from the pine forest like they were being assembled in the trees and set on the track. The train sounded like it was going somewhere it wanted to go and I got out to watch, Harry following. We left the engine on to keep the AC pouring into the Crown Vic and stepped into the bright sun. I rolled up my sleeves, and sat on the hood to watch the four-engine freighter highball past, boxcars, tankers, hoppers, container flats – swaying and squealing and rumbling, the sound added to the staccato clanging of the crossing signal, a raucous cacophony of journey and commerce.
On the other side of the crossing, in jittery motion, I saw two motorcycles roll up, with men riding tandem. Outsized silver-studded saddlebags were slung over the tails of the hogs, big-ass Harleys, and I could hear the unmuffled four-strokes over the howling clatter and metallic squeals of the train, the riders gunning the accelerators as if challenging one another to something. They wore full-face racing helmets, which seemed a bit odd. They appeared to be talking to one another, passing time as the train passed.
“The end’s near,” Harry said.
For a split-second my mind heard it as an eschato-logical statement, until I saw the rear of the train a few hundred yards up the tracks. I craned my head farther and saw a black pickup truck moving in on us from behind. Three men inside. Chrome light bar.
Why was it so familiar?
The motorcycles roared louder. The train squealed and shivered the earth. The trestle bells tore holes in the air. I took a final look across the way.
What?
The barrel of a short shotgun swung past the knees of one of the riders. He was off the bike and getting back on, probably grabbed the gun from the saddlebag. He held it close, hidden.
The rear of the train clattered past. I spun to Harry.
“Ambush!” I yelled. “Get in the car!”
The first explosion took out the passenger-side window as I was diving inside. The air filled with cubed glass. I hugged the floor, hearing rounds chunking into the Crown Vic’s chassis, the truckers firing from behind. The rear window crumpled. My legs were still outside and I drew them as close as I could while pulling myself inside with whatever I could grab. Harry had done the same on his side, simultaneously pulling out his weapon. His face was taut and I expected mine was the same. We’d fallen into serious shit.
I stuck my head up, pulled it back. The bikers were crossing the tracks slowly, dodging the trestle gates. They could pull to the side and thump heavy rounds through the Crown Vic’s doors until Harry and I were more metal than meat. But I’d also seen a small gray structure on the far side of the tracks, a deserted gas station or something.
“We’re trapped,” Harry said.
“There’s a building over there,” I yelled. “I’ve got the wheel. Push on the gas.”
Harry’s arm was trapped beneath him, but he jammed an elbow into the accelerator. The car lurched ahead, Harry’s arm slipping from the gas pedal. The car stopped dead.
“Lay on it, Harry!”
He flopped sideways and pressed his body against the pedal. The car made a grinding sound and roared forward. I felt the vehicle crunch through the crossing gates, felt the downgrade as we slammed over to the far side of the crossing. I jammed the wheel hard to the right, forgetting to tell Harry to roll off the gas. We were still accelerating when we hit the structure. I heard a thunderous crash. The engine roared, died.
“Harry?” I yelled. “You all right?”
I heard a grunt. “I can’t move, Carson.”
If the bikers made a concerted run, Harry and I would be easy targets on the floor, deer in the headlights. Rounds started slapping the upper compartment, not the lower doors. I kicked open the door, slipped out, dropped. Another slug whanged off the roof of the Crown Vic.
We’d landed in a defunct local station, slamming the wooden wall at enough speed to crash three-quarters through to the inside, dropping half the roof at the rear of the Crown Vic, a pile of four-by-four timbers that were keeping the first couple feet of airspace free of slugs. I heard Harry struggling in the car, smelled gasoline, burned rubber.
A concentrated burst of fire tore into the broken wood around me. I fired from beside the lumber pile, no idea where the rounds went. I saw one of the bikes readying a run at us, the gunner thumbing red shells into the tubular magazine. The driver cranked the accelerator.
I flattened on the concrete as the duo roared closer, the bike weaving to screw up my aim. A blast from the shotgun tore through shingles two feet from my head, filling the air with asphalt dust and wood chips. The gunner on the other bike was fast-firing a pistol.
It was an insult, like the bastards had singled me out for all this bullshit. Every damn day was a fresh challenge from a new enemy. The guy on the bike fired until his magazine emptied, and I saw the driver skid-spin away as the shooter reloaded.
I heard drums thunder in my head and felt an anger so hot it made my skin glow and my heart was roaring so loud it drowned out everything else in my world. I stood from behind the cover, the crap impeding my aim. I flicked the clip from the butt of the Glock, pulled another from my belt, heard a bullet tumble past my ear as the rider and shooter turned for another charge. The shot gunner pulled a blast high and to the side.
“Carson!”
I turned and saw Harry. He’d gotten out the car. I waved, turned back to the action.
The Harley bore in, the shooter grinning as they approached, waving the muzzle side to side. I heard a puff at my right ear, then my left. I raised my Glock. I saw the shooter grin, he figured he had me.
I pulled the trigger three times. As if in slow motion, I saw the guy in back touch at his side. He panicked and grabbed the driver’s arm, jerking the handlebars and sending the machine down. I saw sparks as pedals ground into concrete.
I heard firing from behind me. Harry.
A guy in the truck unloaded with everything he had, cover fire. Two others lifted the gunshot guy into the bed, one of them yelling, “It’s all right. I got you. You’ll be all right. Hang in there, brother.”
The driver of the fallen bike was muscling it up, the passenger on the other bike racking the shotgun. I heard Harry laying out shots, glass breaking, a ricochet. Someone out front yelled, “Go!”
The firing stopped. I heard tires squeal and engines roaring in retreat.
I turned to see Harry, gun by his side, his jacket ripped half off, the lining hanging to his knees.
“You all right?” I said. “You hit? You said you couldn’t move.”
“My jacket got caught on the goddamn pedal, couldn’t tear loose.”
He wavered, looked around at the shattered station, black smoke, totaled Crown Vic, crossing gates like shattered candy canes, the ground littered with shotgun shells and bright brass casings aglint in the sunlight.
Then he looked at me for an uncomfortably long time.
“You walked straight into them.”
“Seemed the thing to do,” I said.