A burly man crashed out of the brush, staring belligerently at Vivi and Ben. “Hey!” He gripped something in a massive hand.
Vivi startled and backpedaled. Ben reversed, mud making sucking sounds under his boots. He kept his body in front of hers, arms wide to shield her.
Through the brush came a woman’s voice. “Do you know where Sarah’s binkie is?”
“I’ve got it!” the man shouted over his shoulder. He turned back to them. “You continue down this path, and you’ll be up to your ankles in water.”
“Thanks, man.”
The man plunged back into his hidey-hole, the army-green canvas of an ancient tent about twenty feet up from the muck in a sunny spot.
“All the years I’ve lived in this area, I never knew there was a swamp down here,” she said. “Did you?”
“Nope. Never knew homeless were living here either.”
“Unsheltered,” Vivi said.
“Homeless. Unsheltered. What does it matter? The guy has a home; he has a shelter. It’s just that it’s a fucking tent. Saying unsheltered is like repainting the stripes on a chewed-up highway.”
They stepped back onto the solid ground of the fire road, the sadness of the situation deflating them.
“The paper did refer to a ‘creek bed,’” Ben said. “The gun’s probably out there. In the water.”
“Maybe. If Dwayne’s number-one goal was to get rid of evidence.”
“What else would he be trying to do?”
They continued along the road, but their pace was slow. “Well,” she jabbed at the dirt with her branch, “he wanted to get the jacket off because he was hot from running, and he wanted to look different.”
“He was a black guy in our neighborhood. Pretty hard not to stand out.”
“He was encumbered by that pack,” she insisted. “That’s why he started throwing stuff out. Or, maybe he did that to stop you. Anyway, what I’m saying is he valued that gun, and rather than throwing it into the water, maybe he stashed it to pick up later.”
“Yeah, that’s possible, but he’s in jail now.”
“He didn’t know he’d get caught.”
“Oh, he knew,” Ben said. “There must have been seven cop cars just on the street where they arrested him.”
“Hope springs eternal. He was trying to evade them until the last minute. You said yourself—the gun is a big deal.”
“Exactly why he might have tossed it.” He fell silent. His shoulders drooped.
Hope might spring eternal, but Ben was losing his. He sounded defeated, so unlike him.
Her stubbornness kicked in, the strong yellow blaze of her manipura chakra. “At first this seems like a great place to get away from the police,” she said, “but it’s pretty stupid. The freeway curves around the area, blocking off escape unless a person wades into the muck and goes through a culvert. That would have been the smart thing for Dwayne to do.”
“We’re not dealing with a mastermind. He’s not pulling off a final heist and retiring to Hawaii to sip mai tais.”
She took his hand to snap him out of his funk. “Still, it’s possible that he kept the gun and the wedding ring until he knew he was going to get caught and then stashed them for someone to pick up.”
“Let’s go home. We have a turkey to cook.”
His enthusiasm had drained into that swamp.
“Look,” she said, shaking his hand to command his attention. “You searched the place where he dumped our stuff. Your wedding ring wasn’t there. Why didn’t it dump with the rest of the stuff?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he stuffed it in a pocket. Maybe it snagged in his pack. Or maybe we just didn’t see it.” His voice was clipped.
“Or maybe he kept it because it was small and the most valuable thing he took. If he threw it and the gun away, he would have nothing to show for his trouble.”
“He has nothing to show for it anyway.” Ben took off down the road, his hiking boots spitting up wads of mud.