They regrouped at a natural clearing near the edge of the wooded area, still breathing heavily. Leaning forward, Sam struggled to fill his lungs fast enough to keep up with his metabolic demand.
He looked up at Tom, who was grinning widely.
Surprised by his friend’s incongruous grin, Sam laughed out loud. “You okay? What is it?”
“We’re out in the middle of nowhere now, right?” Tom asked, as he bent down and unzipped his ankle pocket.
“We sure are,” Sam said, waiting to see what could possibly make Tom so happy despite their current predicament.
“A hundred miles from civilization, you’d say?” Tom asked.
“Yeah. Why? What is it?” Sam asked, intrigued by his friend’s levity.
“David’s going to climb onto his plane, use it to return to his father’s house, and claim his fortune in stolen Confederate gold, right?” Tom held his gut with both hands, just about curled over laughing.
Maybe it was elevated hormones as a result of a near death experience, but just watching Tom laugh so uninhibitedly, made Virginia join in. Sam, helpless to the situation, couldn’t stop laughing either. It was like a stupid joke that wasn’t really funny, yet in the mass hysteria of a sublimely ridiculous set of circumstances, became the funniest thing one could ever imagine.
Like trying to put out a fire, but the odd flame keeps jumping up unexpectedly, their irrepressible snickers and chuckles eventually died.
“Right. So, what’s so funny?” Sam said, still waiting for the punch line. “We’re about to be left here in the middle of nowhere, while that bastard gets to fly back to civilization, where he’ll return to dear old dad’s place, and retrieve his fortune in Confederate gold. What is so damned funny?”
Sam wasn’t laughing now.
Tom met Sam’s hardened stare. With one last chuckle, he replied. “I wouldn’t worry, he won’t get far.”
“Why not?”
“Do you think he’ll need these?” Tom answered, holding the keys to the airplane aloft.
“Nice!” Sam said. “You never trusted him?”
“Not for a moment.” Tom answered, still smiling.
Chapter Sixty-Two
They walked through a more densely wooded forest, until the woodlands thinned out and became grassland. There, crickets chirped loudly in the afternoon sun. The three hiked across the prairie, spotted with kettles where water used to stand. Many were now filled with full grown trees.
The air was filled with the trilling sound of the blue-winged teal, the quack of a wood duck, an occasional Canadian Goose honking, as well as other waterfowl. Oddly the canopy of the tree line in these holes sat level with the surface of the prairie, creating a strange and ancient landscape, unlike anything they had ever seen before.
Sam pictured huge gangs of bison nosing in the grass in times gone by. Here and there deeper kettles stood ringed with fewer trees and mostly filled with water. The trio stopped for a rest on the edge of one of these waterholes.
Ten minutes later, Sam climbed a small hill and spotted a small gray snake in the distance, winding its way across the valley. Cars and trucks, no bigger than ants, wound across the horizon, too, much like a snake.
Sam took a deep, fortifying breath, and made a “this way, come along” gesture to his friends.
It took them only an hour to reach the four-lane highway of Interstate 94.
Walking gratefully into a large roadhouse, Sam smiled. The place held the common, familiar noise of civilization — couples laughing, others talking, the sound of the TV. To speed things up, Sam moved to the counter to order a hot meal for each, while Tom and Virginia took a booth seat round the back. Sam sat down next to Tom. A waitress, smiling, chatting and cheerful, placed three glasses of cold water in front of them.
Virginia looked down. No one said a thing.
Still smiling, the waitress left.
Sam’s eyes darted between Tom and Virginia. Both had turned a little gray. Small beads of sweat were forming on their foreheads.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
Virginia said, “We might have a problem.”
“Really?”
Tom smiled. “They think Virginia killed Senator Perry.”
Sam swallowed hard.
Virginia sighed. “And that I killed Malcom Bennet’s son in New York and stole nearly a million dollars of his cash.”
“How did anyone come up with that idea?” Sam asked, concentrating on working the problem.
“My face was on the news,” Virginia said, looking at the TV that now was discussing celebrities playing golf in the snow with orange golf balls. “The coroner ruled that Senator Arthur Perry didn’t die of a heart attack. It appears someone inserted an intravenous cannula into the large vein in his neck and injected a massive bolus dose of calcium gluconate.”
Sam waited for her to explain what any of that meant. When she remained silent, he asked, “What would that do?”
“It would stop the heart, mimicking the signs and symptoms of a heart attack.”
“So someone’s suggesting Senator Perry was assassinated using a drug that paramedics carry?” Sam asked. “It seems possible, but obviously circumstantial. Surely your tracking log would show that you were at work all day. I can’t think of a better alibi.”
“Except Senator Perry was a very first case for the day. I’d only been at work for half an hour. Leaving a massive window of opportunity to murder him.”
“All right. But even so, I don’t think it will be hard to disprove.”
“There’s more,” Virginia said, through a thinned-lip smile.
“Go on.”
“The New York Police Department has revealed footage from inside an apartment in New York. It depicts a paramedic who resembles me awfully well, removing large bundles of hundred dollar notes next to a dead kid — Malcom Bennet’s son, who’d never used drugs previously — and loading the cash into my medical kits.”
Sam said, “Okay, so the New York Police Department thinks you’re responsible for both their deaths.”
Virginia says, “You know what this means?”
Tom said, “You’re a hunted woman… If they think you killed a senator, they’ll go after you with everything they’ve got. Biggest man — ah, woman hunt in a long time.”
“It’s worse than that,” Sam said.
“What?”
“It means David Perry’s out of the woods and he’s painted a target on our backs.”
Tom sighed. “If only we knew where Senator Perry lived in Minnestra, Minnesota, we might just beat David Perry to it.”
Virginia smiled.
“What?”
She pulled out her smartphone and brought up a picture of the late Senator Perry’s driver’s license. Along the front was his Minnestra address. “Look what I just found.”
Sam laughed. “Now all we have to do is reach that address before David does.”
On the TV opposite them, a news article flashed. It was a special announcement by the FBI. It showed Sam, Tom, and Virginia’s faces getting into a seaplane at Minot. It described each of them and warned the general public to immediately contact the police if anyone of the party were spotted, anywhere.
Sam smiled.
“What are you smiling about?” Virginia asked.
Sam shook his head. “It’s nothing. Just an intrinsic truth, that’s all.”
“Go on. What?”
“There is no problem sufficiently bad that it can’t get worse.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
Sam watched the big man filling up his eighteen-wheeler semitrailer with diesel. The guy had tattoos down both arms, his beard was long enough to reach his chest, and he wore a gregarious smile.