Start Screaming Murder

Chapter Nineteen

Kincaid waited. It seemed to me an incredible amount of time passed. I heard the slow, hard coursing of blood through my head. I felt as if a fog of steam were smothering me. The steam did nothing for the dried-out stiffness of my mouth and throat.

The gun stayed inches from the back of my head.

“All right,” Kincaid said, satisfied at last with the utter silence of the night. “Get out.”

I got out. A brief trembling passed through my knees.

“There’s a marshy place beyond the yard, Rivers. It will do. They’ll be a long time finding you.”

He motioned with the gun for me to turn around. “Keep your hands shoulder high. Now move.”

I walked down the long beam of light from the car with the eerie feeling that my feet weren’t touching the ground.

We reached the brush, a stand of tough, young pines. The light came through in patches. Plenty for him to cut me down if I tried to run.

A pine bough, heavy with needles, raked across my face. I barely felt it.

The second bough made an impression on me.

I let my right hand lock about the next limb. It was tough as a willow whip. I threw myself forward and down, releasing the pine bough.

Kincaid was right behind me. My motion held his attention. I heard him start to speak my name like a curse. Then the pine bough slashed him across the eyes.

I pinwheeled and went in under the bough. He was off-balance, clawing at his eyes. My shoulder hit him in the gut. My hand locked on his gun wrist.

With a shrill gasp of pain, he went over backward, his leg crumpled under him. I swarmed him, giving him no chance to recover.

I hit him three times in the face so fast that my fist made almost a continuous sound.

He tried to wriggle free, kicking, striking at me blindly. The gun slipped out of his hand. We threshed, clawing at the gun. I was unable to get a clean punch. I butted him under the chin. His head snapped back, and I felt the starch go out of him.

I rolled free, grabbed him by the collar as he tried to flounder to his feet. I hit him twice dead on the chin. His knees knocked together. When I released his collar, he fell face forward in the sand.

Finding the gun quickly, I thrust it under my belt. With his collar again in my grip, the back of the collar this time, I dragged Kincaid out of the brush and across the yard.

Inside the cottage, I let him slump in the middle of the living room. I turned on lights as I searched the place. In the kitchen I found what I was looking for, a coil of strong clothesline.

Kincaid’s loose, unconscious form offered no resistance as I trussed him up, hands behind him, legs drawn backward and connected to his bound wrists by a doubled length of line.

I dragged him to a bedroom closet and shoved him inside. I wasn’t careful about bruising him. But it was comparatively cordial treatment. As a prison, the closet was nothing like a car trunk.

Although not listed in Scanlon’s name, there was a phone in the cottage. I left it off the hook, preferring Mrs. Carton to get a busy signal rather than the endless ringing of an unanswered phone.

No clean towels were in the kitchen or bath. I used my handkerchief to clean the worst of the grit from Kincaid’s gun. Then I turned off the lights and left the cottage.

In Kincaid’s sedan, I rolled into the parking area of the bait camp. Cutting the lights, I got out of the car and walked to the edge of the water.

Fiddler crabs scurried across the sand, seeking their holes. No tide was running, the bay lapping softly against the pilings of the pier and the rental boats in their slips.

The twin masts of the Sprite stood straight and steady against the night sky. In addition to the red points of her navigation lights, the schooner showed a haze of white light on the foredeck.

I waded into the water beside the bait camp pier, moving gingerly to keep from splashing. When the water was waist deep, I took the gun in my hand and held it above the water level.

I checked each flat-bottom as I passed it. In the fifth or sixth, I found a pair of kapok life preserver cushions.

Pushing the bouyant cushions ahead of me, I waded on until the water was neck deep. Then I stacked the cushions, rested my upper chest on them, and continued moving toward the schooner with a silent scissor kick.

As the long minutes passed, I began tiring more from the effort and strain of remaining silent and unobserved than from the physical exertion. I moved with my gun hand resting on the upper edge of the kapok, out of the water, my legs driving without breaking the surface.

Finally, I heard the mumble of their voices, crescendoing now and then in angry peaks of sound. Scanlon was telling Lessard that he was up-to-here with the deal. He was pulling out. Lessard was none too happy.

“I depended on you, Jack,” he said bitterly.

“But everything has changed,” Maria put in, “and it’s not the same bargain that Jack entered.”

“That’s right,” Scanlon said.

“Let’s all have a little drinkee,” D. D. piped in.

Alex Lessard paced the foredeck. “Damn it,” he cried in acute frustration, “why does it always have to turn out so rough for me? Everything I touch...”

“You’re a hard luck guy,” Scanlon said. “Some people are that way.”

“The old lady is going to be sore,” D. D. said.

“I can’t help that,” Scanlon said. “I’m going to tell her.”

“We’ll tell her together, Jack,” Maria said.

“Oh, shut up!” he told her, his voice heavy with contempt and disgust.

I moved under the shadow of the Sprite’s hull, inching my way toward the ladder. I grasped it, held on. The kapok cushions drifted away.

In the water, I was buoyant. I knew my weight would cause a slight list of the hull when I started up the ladder. I drew in a breath, got set, and went up, fast.

As my head and shoulders cleared the edge of the deck, I snapped the gun toward them.

“Hold it, Scanlon! The rest of you — stand nice and easy.”

Scanlon’s hand stopped before it dipped in his rear pocket. They stood unmoving, staring at me as I climbed on deck and stood with water puddling at my feet.

Then D. D. broke the paralysis with a drunken, senseless giggle. Alex Lessard shot her a dark look.

“Too bad he didn’t fall for our hopeful little lies and away with me to Jacksonville, ay, Papa?” she said to Lessard.

Drawn so tight inwardly he was shaking from it, Lessard said to Scanlon. “You told us Kincaid had taken care of Rivers.”

“That’s what Kincaid said,” Scanlon stood white-lipped.

“Ed,” D. D. said, “do you mind if I have a little drinkee?”

“D. D...!” Lessard said through the swollen veins in his neck.

“Oh, you fool,” she said quietly. “You miserable, doomed-to-failure fool. Can’t you see it’s all over?”

“Not yet,” Lessard said. “Not yet!”

“You never know when to stop banging your head against the wall, do you, father dear? Well, I do. I’m thirsty. I’d like to stay blotto the rest of my life. But since Rivers is too big and real to wish out of existence, I’m going to do the next best thing, for myself. Ed, I’m not guilty of a thing beyond conspiracy and coming along for the ride. You need a state’s witness?”

“That’s right,” Scanlon said.

“Bitch!” Maria screamed. “Disloyal bitch!”

“Go die, cow. You’d be better off. Your brain’s as putrid as the rest of you. You stink. I know it. Your husband knows it. You know it yourself.”

“Knock it off,” I said. “I do mind about that drink, D. D. You just ease up behind Scanlon and lift the gun from his back pocket.”

She sighed, then did as she was told, holding the gun carefully away from her where I could see it.

“That’s the ticket,” I said. “Now drop the gun over the side.”

D. D. was the usual supple vision in skimpy shorts and halter. Lessard was wearing his faded khaki swimming trunks and nothing else. Neither had much chance of concealing a deadly weapon in what they were wearing.

As D. D. carried it to the rail and opened her fingers, the gun ker-chugged in the water.

“Now,” I told her, “frisk Maria.”

D. D. moved behind Maria. Her hands patted Maria’s sweaty, rumpled cotton dress.

White-lipped, Maria said, “When we left you with Kincaid, I pitied you, Rivers. I wished for a way to make it easier for you. Now I wish Kincaid had killed you.”

I let it pass.

“No cannon or atom bombs,” D. D. hiccupped. “About that drink... I’ve earned it, pal.”

She weaved to a small deck table and picked up a glass and bottle.

Lessard edged forward a couple of steps. “Rivers, you’re not a totally unreasonable man.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ve never met a man yet who didn’t have his price.”

“Maybe you’ve always been in the wrong company.”

“Surely there must be a way we can come to terms.”

“There is,” I said. “You do have a price, then?”

“In this instance — yes.”

“Good. Name it.”

“A murderer,” I said.