The Devil's Punchbowl

CHAPTER 59

Caitlin stands alert on the tin roof of the kennel, her ears attuned to the slightest sound. For a few moments she thought she’d heard the distant drumbeat of a helicopter, but it faded so quickly that she decided it had been some resonant vibration of her feet on the tin. Even if a chopper was searching for her, it would be unable to spot her beneath the shed that shields the kennel from the sky.

It had taken half an hour, but she’d finally got two sacks of puppy chow onto the roof. The Bully Kuttas made no noise other than a sort of strangled cough, and she’d realized that this was what it sounded like when they tried to bark. But they’d followed her as remorselessly as sharks, and she wondered if Linda was right-that they were too smart to be distracted by a pile of puppy chow. Caitlin had searched the storeroom for other possible distractions but had found none. Nor drugs that might sedate the dogs. Quinn had removed everything that might help them to escape.

Very carefully, she carries a heavy sack of puppy chow to the hole above her prison room. She’s studied the Cyclone fence from the roof and decided that barefoot is the way to go at it. The Bully Kuttas are tall, and instinct tells her that a full-out sprint followed by a leap for the highest point she can reach-a leap with all four limbs grasping for holds-will offer the best chance of escape. Bare toes will surely fit into the openings in the fence better than the toes of her shoes. It will probably hurt like hell, but compared to the jaws that will be pursuing her, such pain is meaningless.

Of course, this reasoning goes to hell when she considers Linda. The reality is, she will be dragging Linda across the open space at a snail’s pace, probably gagged to keep her from crying out in pain. As soon as she tries to boost Linda up, the fence wire will ring against the poles, and at least one dog will come to investigate the noise-if they’ve been distracted at all.

Caitlin wonders if she’ll have the courage to stay on the ground if the dogs come running and Linda is slow to climb. Will she risk being eaten alive to help someone who has little chance of making it over the top without her? Can she live with the memory of standing safe on the far side of the fence while four dogs tear a helpless woman to pieces?

Stop, she tells herself, humping the second bag across the roof on her shoulder. Cross that bridge when you come to it.

More than once she’s wondered whether, if she went over alone and ran nonstop from the time she cleared the fence, she might be able to bring back help before Quinn returned to do whatever Sands has ordered him to do. Linda could probably get onto the roof and hide there, and Caitlin could pull the tin back down into place before she made her break. Surely such a ruse would have some chance of working-not on Sands, of course, but maybe on Seamus Quinn.

Pausing beside the hole over her room, Caitlin considers bringing this up to Linda. Linda would agree, of course. She doesn’t want to risk the dogs anyway. Offering her the choice is the same as copping out on trying to save her.

“You don’t even know if you can get the chain off her,” Caitlin mutters. “Quit borrowing trouble.”

Being careful of the tin’s sharp edges, Caitlin drops the first sack down the hole in the roof. It hits with a solid thud. She looks at it a moment, then lifts the second bag and drops it onto the first. From the ground below, the four white dogs watch with ardent curiosity.

“Bye-bye, suckers,” she says with a wave.

Then she flattens her palms on both sides of the hole, lets herself down, and drops to the floor.

“Linda?” she says, tearing open one of the bags. “You got those bars off yet?”

No answer.

“Linda? Talk to me.”

Caitlin leans close against the plywood wall. She hears nothing. This time she shouts Linda’s name, but there’s no reply, and suddenly she realizes she didn’t really expect one. Screaming irrationally, Caitlin climbs to the windowsill and lifts herself onto the roof again. The dogs are making barking motions, and she hears their hacking coughs, but she ignores them and runs to the hole over the storeroom.

Dropping through it, she cries out when her bruised feet hit the cement, but she doesn’t slow down. She runs to the door and tests it by pulling on the handle. She’s done this already and thought it too strong, but now adrenaline has electrified her muscles. Taking two steps back, she throws her shoulder against the door. It moves in the frame, but the impact tells her it will take many more such blows to make headway.

Looking around desperately, her eyes fall on the medicine cabinet. She hadn’t noticed before, but the cabinet is resting on casters. Without even thinking, she heaves the heavy cabinet away from the wall and places it perpendicular to the door, about eight feet away. Then she braces her shoulder against the cabinet and drives it against the door with all the power in her legs.

This time the door rattles hard, and she hears wood splinter. Moving around the cabinet, she braces her back against the door and reorients the cabinet for another rush. This time she drives it even faster into the wood, and when the impact comes, she feels the frame give way. Dragging the cabinet back just far enough to squeeze by, she darts into the hall and stops in front of Linda’s stall.

What she sees steals her breath entirely. Linda appears to be standing by the left side of her stall, but in truth she’s hanging by her dog collar, its shortened chain bound to the Cyclone fence with what looks like one of the bars from the window, twisted into a hook. She’s wearing a waitress’s uniform, with an emblem of a steamboat embroidered on the blouse. Her wrists are bound tightly with a pair of cotton panties, and her face is blue.

Caitlin stands frozen for a moment, then looks down and jerks open the latch that keeps Linda’s stall closed. With the collar and chain holding her, Quinn never felt the need to lock her in, saving himself the trouble of finding another key whenever he had the urge to rape her.

Caitlin bends her knees and tries to lift Linda high enough to ease the pressure on her neck, but it’s no use. Cursing in panic, she searches for a pulse. She waits, counting slowly, but feels nothing.

“Damn it!” she screams. “Goddamn it, Linda! You gave up!”

But inside she knows this isn’t true. Linda was afraid that Caitlin would risk death by forcing her to try to escape, or by remaining with her if Linda refused to try. Linda had hanged herself to release Caitlin from this burden.

Caitlin stares at the woman whose face she has never seen in life before this moment and thinks of the nude pictures she was shown, those supposedly taken from the house of Tim Jessup. She’d condemned the girl in those photos out of hand, and now…now she owes that woman her life. Caitlin has met so many women like Linda during her years in Mississippi, girls with plenty of native sense, but who married right out of high school, and, if they were lucky, did two years of junior college before the first baby came. What could Linda Church have accomplished had she been born with Caitlin’s advantages? So many women from Caitlin’s world pretended to ask these questions, but down deep they felt a sense of entitlement that assured them that their rarefied places in the nation’s elite schools and corporations were based on merit alone. Caitlin reaches out and lays a hand on Linda’s arm-then freezes.

She’s heard the sound of a motor. Not a helicopter, but a car or truck. Maybe even a jeep.

Her body jerks as though she’s grabbed hold of a 220-volt cable. A fraction of a second later she’s racing to the storeroom, certain of what she must do. High on both side walls of the storeroom are windows without bars. Caitlin slides open the one on the side opposite Linda’s stall. Then she runs back to Linda’s stall and listens.

The engine is louder now, intermittent but getting closer.

Wedging both hands behind Linda’s distended neck, she pulls on the twisted bar that Linda somehow managed to bend into a hook. It takes more strength than Caitlin expected to open the loop. Almost…

Linda pitches forward onto her face, the chain rattling behind her.

Caitlin feels once more for a pulse. Nothing. Now the engine is a smooth rumble. How far is that sound traveling over the flat ground? A half mile? A mile?

With a silent prayer, she looks down at Linda’s body, then gets to her knees and hauls Linda onto her shoulder. It takes most of her strength to bear the dead weight, but this is not enough. She has to get to a standing position. Breathing hard, she redoubles her effort and drives herself to her feet.

Holding the body in a fireman’s carry, she turns until Linda’s feet are pointing toward the unbarred window and drives one of Linda’s heels through the brittle plastic pane. A chorus of coughs enters the stall. Then something heavy slams against the wall. The Bully Kuttas are leaping for the window.

Filled with shame and horror, Caitlin presses Linda’s lower legs together and shoves them through the window. Any worry about how she would push more of the body through the small space vanishes, for the moment the legs clear the frame, Linda’s weight is yanked from Caitlin’s arms and shoulders as though by a threshing machine.

The sounds that follow send a bolt of primal terror through her. After one paralyzed second, she breaks for the storeroom. The whole building is rattling from the force of the dogs trying to drag Linda’s corpse through the window. Caitlin feels her stomach trying to come up, but she forces down the bile and runs to the storeroom window.

No sound, she thinks, like a child playing hide-and-seek. I can’t make a single sound…

Standing on tiptoe, she pokes her head far enough through the window to make sure no dog waits below. The engine is much louder than before. The far wall of the building sounds as if a construction crew is demolishing it.

First, she tries to put her feet through the window frame, but she can’t manage it. She’ll have to go through headfirst, then roll and sprint for the fence. She checks the dark yard again, then wriggles through the window and falls facefirst onto the ground.

Bounding to her feet, she runs for the fence without looking to either side. If I look back, I’m dead, she thinks. Halfway to the fence, she hears a cough, then a sound like galloping hooves. Even as her brain calculates how far the dog must run, she’s leaping for the top of the eight-foot fence.

Her fingers lock into the heavy wire, and she whips her thighs and ankles up beneath her, spread-eagling them like an Olympic gymnast as a Bully Kutta slams into the fence below her rump. She’s already climbing as the dog falls, and by the time he leaps again, her hands are on the top bar and she’s flinging her legs over.

Another dog has joined the first. They leap for her again and again, their frenzied hacking like the rage of mute wolves. Panting hard, Caitlin feels a dizzy moment of triumph, then drops to the far side of the fence and sprints into the trees. She hears no engine, no dogs-nothing but the dull thump of her feet on the sandy soil. If the engine was Quinn’s, she knows, those dogs will be set loose on her trail in moments. And if they are…