The buddy system just gives bad luck a bigger target, Tomlinson had joked—but it was far more profound than a joke because this time he was right.
The man often was.
Three minutes into my decompression, just for the hell of it, I tapped my flashlight on my tank, eight slow bell notes, before clipping the light to my shoulder harness. It was the Morse abbreviation for F-B. Fine business. Everything’s okay. It wasn’t intended as a signal. It was offered as my farewell salute.
A moment later, though, I was shocked to hear—at least, I believed I heard—TAP . . .TAP . . .TAP in response. I was so startled that I dropped Tomlinson’s fin. As I lunged to grab the thing, I heard yet another clanging series of sounds. Much louder, it seemed.
Impossible.
No, the sound was easily explained because the source of the noise was me. I had clipped the flashlight too close to my tank so that metal clanked against metal whenever I moved.
By the time I figured it out, I had been decompressing for nearly five minutes and I was too low on air to waste more time. There would be no more futile signaling, no more imagined replies.
It was time to surface. King and Perry were waiting.
THIRTEEN
KING KEPT HIS DISTANCE AS I SLOGGED TO SHORE, but he couldn’t resist looking at the fin I carried beneath my arm and saying, “Looks like you found your girlfriend. Rescuing her one piece at a time, are you?”
The man’s attempts at humor always had a vile edge.
I shrugged, my expression blank. I said, “Where’s Captain Futch?,” as I stopped to place the fin at the base of a cypress tree, then removed my BC and empty bottle.
From the truck, I heard Arlis call, “Is that you, Doc? Did you find ’em?”
I answered, “How are you feeling, Arlis?”
He hollered back, “The Yankee scum’s got me tied up again. Damn cowards didn’t want to risk two against one!” Once again, he asked, “Where’s Tomlinson and the kid? Are they with you?”
I looked from the truck to King, then toward the edge of the clearing where Perry was preoccupied pissing in the bushes. The rifle, I noted, was leaning against a nearby palmetto. It meant that King was carrying the pistol. He had dried off and dressed, leaving his sodden underwear to dry on a wax myrtle tree. The pistol was probably hidden in the back of his pants.
No . . . the fool had put it in his pocket. I watched him wrestle it from his pants as I walked toward the truck. I was hoping the thing would go off accidentally and maybe sever his femoral artery, but no such luck.
“So what’s the word, Jock-a-mo? Are we rich yet? You’d better by God have those truck keys!”
I ignored him as I went to the driver’s-side window and looked in, seeing Arlis lying on his back, hands tie-wrapped behind him, his face now so swollen that I wouldn’t have recognized him under other circumstances. The skin between his left ear and jaw was stretched bright in demarcations of purple, green and jaundiced yellow. On the towel next to him, blood was starting to cake.
King was calling to me, “Stay the hell away from that old man! You still don’t seem to understand who’s in charge here.”
I said to Arlis, my voice low, “They’re both dead. It’s just you and me now.”
I watched the man wince, his eyes closed tight. “Are you sure? Did you find them?”
I said, “They’ve been down there for more than an hour and fifteen minutes. There’s no way they could still be alive. And there was another landslide—a whole wing of the lake fell. King caused it.”
Arlis raised his head to look at me through his one good eye. “Fix it so I’ve got ten minutes alone with those bastards, Doc. I don’t care if they kill me, I’ll find a way to get a few shots in of my own first.”
I said, “We will. We both will, trust me. But now it’s time to move on to other things.” I gave it a second, waiting until I was sure Arlis was still looking at me, before I mouthed a question, Where are the keys?
The man took a deep breath, shaking his head, as if trying to erase this nightmare from memory. Then with his chin he motioned toward what might have been the ashtray or the center console as he said something that sounded like “Cut me loose and let’s get going.”
“You’ve got them?”
He replied, “Yeah.”
“Where?”
Arlis was trying to sit up. “Cut me loose and you’ll see. I’m going to kill those two for doing this to us. Run them over with the truck. You just watch me.”
I shook my head as I whispered, “No. You’re getting out of here the first chance you get—and without me. Understand?”
I leaned in to get a closer look at the man’s eyes, saying, “Do you know what they did with our cell phones and the VHF?”
“In their pockets, I guess,” Arlis whispered as he lay back. His pupils appeared okay, his breathing was steady and the bleeding had stopped.
I told him, “You’re going to be okay. If I talk them into cutting you loose, take off. Don’t wait. You’ve got to go for help.”
“Not without you,” he replied.
“It’s not your decision to make. When you get the chance, start the damn truck and go. Hear me?”
I turned away from the window because Perry was jogging toward us, yelling to King, “You dumb shit, don’t let him near that truck. If the dude’s got the keys, he’ll drive off and leave us!”
Behind me, King was pointing the pistol at me, his voice oddly calm as he said, “Problem with you, Jock-o, is it’s so damn hard to get your attention.”
There was a pause before I heard Whap-WHAP! and realized that the man had pulled the trigger. I ducked reflexively, trying to shield my head with my arms. It sounded like two rapid-fire pistol shots, but, in fact, I’d heard only one shot, plus the simultaneous impact of a slug puckering the truck’s front door close to my knee.
As I ducked, I spun toward King, who was still pointing the pistol. He stood between me and the lake, ten long yards away, a bizarre grin fixed on his face like some kid who had just made a great discovery.
The power of pulling a trigger, that’s what he had discovered. A tiny little chunk of metal could make a big man jump.
“There!” he yelled. “Now I have your attention.” King took a step toward me but decided no, he was close enough. “If you have the keys, you better toss ’em my way. How about it?”
He leveled the weapon, enjoying himself as he thought about pulling the trigger again, letting the idea move through his brain. This time, put a slug closer . . . Maybe even wound me. He was sighting down the barrel, thinking about it.
I said, “In my BC, there’s something I want to show you.”
“The keys?”
“You’ll see.”
Perry was next to King now, rifle held at waist level. He said, “What are you talking about? BC—what’s that mean?”
Still grinning, King said, “Partner, haven’t you been paying attention? It’s the life-vest sort of thing divers wear. Pull a cord, the thing inflates and floats them to the top. But I guess Jock-o’s girlfriends sorta missed that lesson.” His attention returned to me. “Are they both dead?”
I said, “That’s right.”
“You don’t look too broken up about it.”
That’s what I wanted him to think.
He said, “If you found the bodies, you’ve got the keys. Hand them over.”
I made a gesture of impatience, and told him, “Put down that goddamn gun if you want answers. I can’t talk with a gun in my face.”