The boy had the wild eyes of a sometimes user. “It’s my daddy’s property you’re on. Private.”
Merritt laughed. “Your daddy doesn’t own shit.” He was glancing back at three shallow holes he’d dug and the cheap shovel he’d dug them with. “You’re collecting product fast as a squirrel at first frost.”
He wondered: Did it have anything to do with some distant shots he’d heard earlier?
“Now, need to know: Some people came this way. In the last half hour. Three of ’em.”
“I don’t know.”
Merritt lifted the gun.
“Come on, man, okay, okay, yeah. Man, woman, a girl. Went over the Rapahan.”
“That river?”
“Yessir.”
“They have a run-in with you? I heard shots.”
“I don’t know.”
Merritt sighed long.
The boy whined, “They started it. This guy did. He was shooting at us! Just started for no reason.”
“With what?”
“Huh?”
“What kind of gun did he have?”
“I don’t know. A big one.”
“Funny since all the guns they had are burnt up, smoldering in a fire pit. And if there’s a Dick’s Sporting Goods ’round here, I missed it.”
The kid was looking at the ground.
No need to hassle him further. And the clock was running. “You traded shots. You and who else with you?”
“My sister, my aunt, my dad.”
“You hit any of them?”
“Believe so, yessir. The woman.”
“How bad?”
“Her leg, I think.”
Merritt turned and looked north. You could just see the flicker of lowering sun on the river. Wounded, she couldn’t move fast. Dusk would be coming soon, and they’d have to shelter.
“What’s between here and Millton?”
“Not much, sir. No towns.”
“Anything?”
“Few hunting cabins.”
“People in ’em?”
“I don’t know.”
Probably not. Deer season didn’t open till next month.
Merritt picked up the garbage bag. Inside were a half-dozen others, clear plastic. They contained packets of meth and opioids.
“This’s mine now.” Merritt stepped back, to put more distance between him and the tweaker, and slipped the bag into his backpack.
“Oh, man...”
“The minute I leave, you going to go running to daddy?”
The kid’s eyes were disks. “No, sir. No, sir! I promise. I’ll just stay here. An hour. Two, you tell me. I don’t want to do this shit. My aunt makes us. You can’t cross her. I want to be a mechanic. It’s a righteous skill and one I’m good at. I’m leaving this behind soon as I get a real job.”
Ramble, ramble, ramble...
The kid eyed Merritt’s gun, which was waving back and forth like wheat in a soft summer breeze.
“Oh, Lord, man, I got a girlfriend. She’s gonna have a baby. I think it’s mine.”
What Merritt was wondering: Would a gunshot give away his position or would the sound bounce around confusingly on the nearby rocks?
The second one, he decided, and pulled the trigger.
The young man cried out briefly as the slug tore through flesh and bone. His limp body dropped hard to the ground, on a pile of leaves that represented all the colors of autumn.
74
A gunshot.
Shaw waited.
No others.
How far away? A mile or two.
Had the Twins had a run-in with the tweaker family? Or had the shooter been Jon Merritt?
The shot was something to be aware of. But another priority loomed.
Allison Parker’s wound.
She lay on a bed of pine needles as Shaw examined it and Hannah held her hand.
The slug had missed the femoral vessels. Hitting one would have been fatal by now. He improvised a tourniquet with a strip of lining torn from his jacket. But they were always a stopgap; constant pressure, then surgery, were preferred to field tourniquets. Not options now.
He used a branch to tighten the strip and helped her to her feet. He found a larger length of wood to use as a crutch and handed it to her.
She winced but said, “Okay. I’ve got it.”
“Look,” Hannah said. She’d found what seemed to be a logging trail, running north. If the mills that gave the town its name were for sawing and not grain, maybe it ran all the way there. They couldn’t make it by nightfall but he wanted to narrow the distance to the town as much as they could.
Shaw glanced behind them. No pursuit that he could see.
They started along the wide path, Parker relying on the oak staff and her daughter. She asked, “Did it go through? The bullet?”
“No, it’s still in there.” This was good and bad. Bullets leave the muzzle of a pistol at over 400 degrees Fahrenheit. By the time they strike flesh, they’re cooler but they still cauterize many blood vessels. The large hunk of lead and copper also puts pressure on the arteries and veins. The bad part was that the tweakers’ guns and ammunition probably were not very clean, which upped the risk of infection.
“So.” Hannah was looking down, partly to check their route for roots and rocks, partly to avoid looking her mother’s way, it seemed. “I kinda was wrong. About Dad. I was a shit. Sorry.”
Parker glanced toward her daughter, and it seemed to Shaw that her face tightened in pain, not because of the wound but from seeing the girl’s expression.
“It’s nothing, Han.” The woman’s face seemed as troubled as Hannah’s.
“Yeah. But...”
They fell silent as the three kept pushing forward.
Surrounding the dirt route were more of the tall pines — here some green, some dead and bleached to bone. Deciduous too, oak and walnut and maple. There was deer sign and bear, a small one, but it wouldn’t be a cub; they’re born in January. So there would be no protective mothers around.
Hannah was vigilant, Shaw noted. She looked around as often as he did.
Shaw heard a clicking and a rustle of leaves. He was almost amused when Hannah, not shifting her gaze from the woods, reassured him and her mother. “It’s okay. Only the wind.”
They made it another mile — farther than Shaw had thought — before Parker pulled up, breathing hard.
“It’s hurting more.”
“The shock’s wearing off.”
Some people who were shot feel merely a tug or tap, nearly painless. That goes away soon and the ache begins to grow.
The woman sagged.
“Mom!” Hannah got her mother around the waist.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really can’t... It’s too much.”
Looking around, Shaw spotted a hollow. “Get down in there.” He and the girl helped Parker into the shallow dip and eased her onto a bed of leaves.
Shaw climbed out and studied the surroundings. He noticed the disturbed ground of a path left by the regular transit of animals — beavers, he decided. These would lead to a stream or lake and, now that it was clear the three would have to be in the woods longer than planned, he wanted a source of water. Choosing at random, he turned left and followed the trail. Only thirty or forty yards away he came to a ridge. He looked down and saw a large, dark lake. On the shore, not far away, was a cabin. In front of it was a grass-filled parking area, which was overgrown — no cars had been here for months. The exterior of the structure was faded and the porch leaf-covered but otherwise in good shape. Maybe they’d find medical gear inside.
And weapons.
He spotted no telephone line, though it could be underground.
Another meth lab?
Probably not, given the unoccupied appearance of the place.
Part of him, though, hoped it was.
As for any tweakers inside — Shaw’s surprise appearance would be their problem. He noticed a number of good-size rocks on the ground.