“He didn’t even ask what we were doing out here.”
“Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“Look.”
“What the hell’s he doing?” David said, starting to turn around.
“Don’t turn around, you idiot. He’ll know something’s wrong for sure.”
“What the hell’s he doing?”
“Probably looking at our bumper,” Helen said, “trying to figure out the best place to put the chain on.”
“God, if that trunk ever came open...”
They both sat staring straight ahead, trying very hard to look as if they were just two regular people who’d run into a little bad luck.
The only thing was, David’s whole left side was trembling. He vaguely recalled that that might be the sign of a stroke.
Sam got down on his haunches and examined the bumper. The underside looked as if it would support the chain and the pulling force needed to extricate the car from the hole.
Then he stood up and went over to the stuck wheel and examined it some more.
Sand would help. Pour a quarter of a bag or so in the hole, that would help him get traction.
A lot of people in this area kept a bag of sand with them all year round. Usually, in the trunk.
Sam went up to the Senator’s window and knocked again.
“Hi,” the Senator said.
It was strange but he had this kind of sickly smile on his face. Like he was real nervous about something.
“I was wondering if you had any sand in your trunk?”
“In our trunk.”
“Right, your trunk.”
The Senator looked at his sister and said, “He wants to know if we have any sand in our trunk.”
Sam leaned down so he could see Helen. “That’d really help, Helen.”
“In the trunk,” the Senator said. “He said the trunk.”
“I heard what he said, David. I’m not deaf.”
“You think you’ve got any?” Sam said.
Rain hissed. Inside his heavy rain gear, Sam was sweaty. He felt greasy. A shower would be nice.
Helen made a peeved face. “You’re not going to believe this, Sam, but the last time we were home, I had our yard man take the sandbag from the trunk. We had to haul around a bunch of posters and things so I figured we could use the room.”
“Isn’t that always the way?” the Senator said.
“Well, just thought I’d give it a try.”
“Sorry, Sam,” Helen said.
“Yes, very sorry, Sam,” said the Senator.
“My God,” David said. “That was so damned close.”
“Close? What the hell’re you talking about? He just asked if we had any sand in the trunk.”
“The trunk — that’s exactly my point. You know what we have in the trunk.”
“You overreacted. As usual.”
“You didn’t look so calm.”
“A hell of a lot calmer than you did.”
There was about ten feet of chain in the trunk. There was also just the right hook Sam needed to attach to the Lincoln’s rear bumper.
He carried the chain and the hook up to the Lincoln and got it set up and then he went back and drove his car up the hill so that it was directly behind the Lincoln.
He was really sweating.
On the way back to his car, he slipped and fell to one knee in the mudhole.
The rain blinded him.
This was a hell of a night.
He stood erect and then started the process of attaching the free end of the chain to his patrol car.
After he finished that, he walked back up to the Lincoln. The Senator rolled the window down.
“It’d probably be a good idea if you two could be out of the car when I’m trying to pull it.” He nodded to their fashionable trench coats. “I think you’d survive all right.”
“You mean get — outside, Sam?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s what I mean.”
She sounded as if he’d asked her to crawl on her hands and knees through a couple of miles of sheep dung. She almost looked nervous about something.
“C’mon, we’ll be fine,” David said.
His sister didn’t look too sure about that.
Sam spent the next few minutes making sure that the cars were lined up properly.
Then he climbed behind the wheel of his patrol car and began the slow process of pulling the car out of the mud.
The Senator and his sister stood off to the side and watched. They looked a little bit lost, and more than a little bit helpless.
Factotums made sure that U.S. senators never had to bother themselves with the details of an ordinary life.
It was a nice life, Sam thought. Having people do for you instead of you having to do for yourself.
He was a still a little bit pissed the Senator had helped the young man with his bail this morning.
He felt the big Lincoln begin to stir in the mud, roll a few inches up the tracks the tire had left.
Sam’s engine strained; the Lincoln rolled a little more forward.
Progress. A few more pulls and the Lincoln would come free.
Sam gave his car more gas.
That was when the Lincoln’s trunk lid popped open.
David stared at the trunk lid in disbelief.
Since the hood of Sam’s car faced the back of the Lincoln, Sam had a clear look at the trunk.
Apparently, David hadn’t slammed the trunk hard enough when he’d set Darcy in there.
Now the trunk was open.
The Senator let out an animal yelp and began wading through thick mud to reach the trunk before Sam could see the body inside.
Sam wondered what the Senator was so excited about. A little rain in a trunk wasn’t going to hurt anything.
But both the Senator and his sister looked startled, then alarmed, when the trunk popped open.
Now the Senator was trotting ass over appetite to get to the trunk lid and close it.
He was a few inches from the rear taillight of the Lincoln when he fell facedown into the mud.
Sam started to get out of the car to see if he could help the Senator, but Helen was next to her brother in moments.
Sam noted a curious fact: before she bent down to help her brother, Helen clomped through the mud and slammed the trunk lid down.
Then she turned back to her brother, who was struggling to his feet. His face and hands were covered in mud. He held them up to the rain, which started the process of cleaning him up.
Sam went back to pulling the Lincoln out of its hole, noting one more curious fact before he finally freed the rear wheeclass="underline" Helen was just standing there watching Sam’s police car tug the Lincoln free, when she suddenly stomped through the mud again and checked on the trunk, pushing down on it to make sure that it was fixed good and tight.
If it hadn’t been raining so hard, if Sam wasn’t already late making his in-town rounds, he might have thought a little harder about the strange behavior he was seeing.
But there wasn’t time.
“We sure appreciate this, Sam,” Helen said, still standing in the rain.
“We sure do,” the Senator agreed.
Sam waved at them from inside his dry, warm car and then headed back to town.
Nine
1
Twenty minutes later, the Lincoln pulled off the county road and drove up on a wide swath of grass that led up to a densely wooded area.
The rain continued, a frenzy.
The Senator and his sister moved without speaking. They knew what they had to do and they had to do it quickly.
The Senator opened the lid of the Lincoln and reached down inside. Then Helen reached down inside.
For such a slight girl, Darcy sure seemed to weigh a lot.
They grappled awkwardly at removing her from the trunk. There was still no evidence of blood anywhere.