Disappearance at Hangman's Bluff (5 page)

As we came around the curve, my heart went straight into my mouth, and I jerked Timmy to a halt. Up ahead, so deeply buried in the undergrowth that it was almost invisible, I saw the rear end of what looked like a white pickup truck. My heart went even further into my mouth when my gaze dropped and I saw the set of double rear tires.

 

I turned in the saddle and looked back at Bee, who hadn't seen the truck because I was blocking her view. What she didn't miss was that my eyes were as big as saucers. “What?” she demanded.

“It's the truck!” I mouthed.

Bee's jaw dropped. She wheeled Buck around, and for a half second I was afraid she was going to start galloping in the other direction.

“Wait!” I hissed.

We fast walked the ponies back around the curve until we were out of sight of the truck, and the whole time my brain was racing. I had no idea where the driver and passenger might be. Maybe they'd been close enough to overhear us. I held my breath, listening for voices or the truck engine starting up, but the buzzing of mosquitoes was all that disturbed the heavy silence. After a few seconds my stomach began to unclench.

“I don't think they're here,” I whispered. “The truck is just, like, jammed really far into the bushes. It looks like they drove it as far as they could and left it.”

Bee let Buck take a couple steps back toward the road. “Fine. We need to call the police! Let them figure it out!”

I had to admit what she was saying made sense. That was what Daddy and Grandma Em would want us to do. But I started to wonder about Yemassee. “What if Yemassee is here right now? What if she's right around the corner tied to a tree? What if they just left her there and she's thirsty and doesn't have any water? You want to leave when we could maybe get her and take her home right now?”

“Abbey, sometimes you're impossible. Those men could be sitting there with guns, just waiting for someone to come looking for them.”

I shook my head. “If they were here, we would've heard them because they would have heard us.”

I climbed down off Timmy, tied his reins to a bush, and tiptoed back toward the curve. “Abbey!” Bee whispered, but I ignored her. I told myself to relax and think about what was obvious: the truck engine wasn't running, and it was way too hot for people to be sitting in a truck cab getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.

I came back around the curve feeling like I had a whole covey of quail fluttering around in my stomach, and I peeked at the truck from behind some bushes. Something about where it was, the way it had been left, something I couldn't put my finger on, wasn't right. I could see lots of bugs buzzing around the open window. They were either bees or flies, and I wondered what had gotten them all stirred up.

When I glanced back, I was surprised to see that Bee had climbed down off Buck and followed me. She gave me an angry glance but then crept forward and peeked at the truck with a frightened expression. “What's it doing there?” she whispered.

I said nothing as I started toward the rear of the pickup, not wanting to go but dragged forward by a growing sense of dread. The mud was deeper here, and my feet made loud sucking noises as I lifted them, but the closer I got, the surer I was that nobody was there.

I could see the bugs more clearly. They were flies—black and heavy and moving with a blowsy slowness as if they had eaten big meals and were too stuffed to fly fast.

I took another couple of steps, and a terrible smell hit me. It hit Bee, too, because she made a choking sound. We probably would have smelled the stink earlier but for the total absence of a breeze in the heavy undergrowth. I took another step, and the smell grew worse.

“Breathe through your mouth,” I whispered to Bee.

“What is it?” she whispered.

It was a stomach-twisting stench that reminded me of a dead deer I had found in the woods one time, and it was definitely coming from the truck. “I don't know,” I whispered, but I had a terrible, heart-wrenching certainty that Yemassee had died, that the men had panicked for some weird reason and abandoned their truck here with her body inside.

I felt tears bunching at the corners of my eyes, but I sucked a huge breath through my mouth and moved toward the back of the truck, intending to take a quick look and confirm my fears. When I put my head over the side, to my great relief I saw that the truck bed was empty. There was nothing in it but a couple of two-by-fours and some empty burlap sacks.

My relief caused me to forget the stink, and I took a fresh breath through my nose that nearly made me gag. I had to bend over and take a few quick gulps of air through my mouth to keep from barfing.

“You okay?” Bee whispered.

I nodded, but then I noticed that the driver's side window was open. For a second fresh panic welled up inside. Maybe the driver was sitting there waiting for us after all? No way, I thought. There was
absolutely
no way anybody could sit quietly and breathe in this stink.

I took another couple steps forward, and that was when I saw the hand. I choked back the scream that tried to break from my throat.

“What?” Bee whispered.

I shook my head for silence, because somebody was in the truck after all. They must have seen us sneaking up the whole time, but if they had, what were they waiting for? I told myself to turn and run, but my feet were half stuck in the mud, and I was nearly paralyzed with fear.

My eyes stayed riveted on the hand. A fly landed on it, then another. Strangely the man didn't twitch his fingers to get them off. His skin color was also strange. It was too white, so pale it reminded me of a lemon ice pop.

This close the smell was even worse. Even though I breathed through my mouth, the stink was so powerful, I could actually taste it. When my fear finally eased enough for me to move, I took another step closer.

I never took my eyes off the hand, not for a single second. I was only a couple feet away now. There were raw places where the flies had been eating the skin. I knew it had to hurt like crazy, but the hand still didn't move.

I glanced around, saw a small dead branch, and picked it up. Trembling, I gave the hand a little poke and immediately jumped back, nearly falling as the mud sucked at my feet. The hand still didn't move.

“What are you doing?” Bee whispered.

I had no voice. My words had seized in my throat. I stepped back toward the door and poked the hand again, harder. Nothing. I turned around, no longer caring if I made noise, because I knew it didn't matter.

“What?” Bee demanded.

I tried to explain, but before I could I bent over and threw up.

Six

A
n hour later Daddy, Grandma
Em, and Judge Gator were all gathered around Bee and me. We were back out on the county road, where our ponies had been tied up in some afternoon shade and where someone had brought a big bucket of water for them to drink. Police cars were parked all up and down the road with their flashers going. Our local deputy, Cyrus Middleton, was there along with state police officers and some men from an organization called SLED, which stands for State Law Enforcement Division.

An ambulance had arrived a few minutes earlier, and it was backed up to the dirt path with its rear doors standing open. The two attendants had carried a stretcher back through the mud to fetch the body, but they hadn't returned yet. All we knew so far was that the man in the pickup truck was dead, but we didn't know who he was. I'd never gotten close enough to get a look at his face, so I didn't know whether he was one of the two men who had stolen Yemassee and robbed the gas company.

Daddy and Grandma Em were fit to be tied by everything that had happened. Grandma Em hovered near us with her arms crossed, glaring at every policeman who came within twenty feet, as if she held each one of them personally responsible for leaving a dead body in the woods where we could find it. But she saved all of her worst glares for Bee and me. Daddy was probably as upset as Grandma Em, but he kept it inside better. Even so, I knew I was in serious trouble.

Judge Gator was nearly as upset as Grandma Em. He had been pacing up and down ever since he had arrived, stopping every couple of minutes to shoot a look at Bee and me, give his head a shake, then start pacing again. “If I'd had the slightest inkling that you two girls were going to go out searching for a couple dognappers who also committed grand larceny,” he said, “I would have locked you in your bedrooms myself.”

Before either of us could say for the fortieth or fiftieth time that we were sorry, one of the SLED officers came over to where we were standing and motioned for Daddy, Grandma Em, and Judge Gator to speak with him privately.

Grandma Em shot us one more look. “You two girls stay
right
here,” she snapped, then marched over to hear what the policeman had to say. The policeman talked for a moment, and then they went back and forth with a lot of whispering. At one point Grandma Em started to hiss at the policeman in a way that reminded me of an angry cottonmouth.

Finally Daddy turned and gave me a worried look. I had already guessed what they were all talking about. I could feel a whole bunch of butterflies swarming in my stomach, but I walked over to where they were all talking. As I got close they all stopped whispering and turned.

“They want one of us to look at his face, don't they?” I said to Daddy.

“You are
not
doing it!” Grandma Em snapped.

“That's right, honey,” Daddy said. “You don't have to do it.”

I looked at the policeman and nodded. “I'll do it,” I said, my voice coming out choked. Part of me was terrified and totally grossed out at the idea of looking at a dead man's face. The other part of me needed to know if this was one of the men who had shot Yemassee.

Daddy held my hand and walked with me, and we went to stand at the back of the ambulance. About twenty yards away, I could see the two ambulance attendants struggling as they carried the stretcher, since they couldn't roll it on the muddy ground. Their feet were caked with brown goo, but the sheet covering the body remained perfectly white.

They came up to us and put down the stretcher very gently. The policeman put his hand on the corner of the sheet and paused. “Are you ready?”

I nodded and swallowed hard as my stomach bucked and churned. I had seen plenty of dead animals on the side of the road and deer hanging after hunters had shot them and plenty of dead doves and quail, but I had never seen a real dead person before.

When the policeman peeled back the sheet, I gasped. The man's face was whitish yellow. Thankfully his eyes were closed. I could see a small hole in the side of his forehead just in front of his ear. There was blood on his shirt, but not much. He had blond hair and a narrow face.

“Do you recognize him?” the policeman asked in a gentle voice.

I sucked down more air, once again tasting rather than smelling the man's terrible stink. I didn't open my mouth until I trusted myself to speak without barfing. “Did he have sunglasses on?” I asked.

The policeman re-covered the face with the sheet, then he turned and walked over to another policeman. They spoke for a second, and the policeman returned holding a plastic bag in one hand.

“He was wearing these,” he said, holding out the bag and showing me a pair of wraparound sunglasses.

“Can you show me the face again, please?”

He pulled back the sheet a second time and held the bag with the sunglasses in front of the face.

I nodded. “That's the man who shot the judge's dog.”

“Are you sure?” the policeman asked.

“Yessir, absolutely.”

 

When we finally finished and were able to start home, we loaded the ponies into the horse trailer Daddy had brought over. It was the first time he had driven since he'd woken up, but I didn't say anything, because I was already in enough trouble as it was. Daddy and I drove back in the Suburban while Bee and Grandma Em followed in Grandma Em's car.

“You okay?” Daddy asked as soon as we got under way.

I nodded.

“It must have scared your pants off to find that body.”

I nodded again. “Pretty much.”

“You know, speaking of being scared, I know you're worried about me going back to work.”

I glanced over at him but didn't say anything.

“Being scared cuts both ways. To think that you and Bee have been riding around this island trying to find a dog that was stolen by some dangerous criminals—” He slapped the steering wheel and shook his head. “I've got to be able to trust that you have more sense than that.”

“Sorry,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper. I hated the way he could say things that made me look at situations from a different angle and see what I'd missed.

“As you know, Willie Smalls has been accused of helping those men, but I believe he's innocent,” Daddy went on. “I'm trying to keep Willie from going to jail. Willie isn't any risk to me, but those other men are a
big
risk to anybody who finds them.”

“Yessir.”

“So no more looking for Yemassee.” He glanced over at me, and his eyes were hard. “Understood?”

“Yessir.”

 

When we got back to Reward, Daddy stopped at the barn so I could unload the ponies. Bee showed up a couple minutes later, and we washed Timmy and Buck, then fed and watered them and finally oiled our tack.

“Did Grandma Em give you a really hard time?” I asked as we worked.

Bee nodded. “She didn't yell as much as make me feel terrible for scaring her so bad.”

I nodded. “Me too. Are you grounded?”

“No, but I can't go look for Yemassee anymore. What about you?”

“Same.”

When I walked into the house a few minutes later, Daddy was just ladling some steaming okra gumbo that Grandma Em had given us into two bowls, and we sat together at the kitchen table. Grandma Em's cooking helped make me feel better, just the way it always did. In addition to the gumbo, Daddy had tossed a quick green salad and pulled a baguette out of the freezer and stuck it in the oven to warm up.

I hadn't really noticed, but he was doing more and more every day. He had his trial tomorrow, and I knew without even asking that he would be going to the office day in and day out from now on. I didn't like it, but I realized there was nothing I could do to keep it from happening.

As we started to eat, Daddy cleared his throat in a way that told me he had something more to say. “I know you've got school starting,” he began. “But when you're not doing homework or sports, I want you to stick close to Reward. It looks like we have a killer running around on this island, and until the police catch him, I don't want you roaming.”

Now that I had sat down and started to eat, I realized how exhausted I was. Finding that dead body had taken every bit of fight out of me. Rather than arguing, I just nodded. “Yessir.”

I finished my dinner and was about to excuse myself and head up to bed when I realized Daddy had grown very still and intense.

“Something the matter?” I asked.

He looked up, blinking his eyes like he'd been someplace far away. “I was thinking about the gas-company robbery and stealing the truck, and Willie Smalls, and then those men taking Yemassee. I'm trying to see some connection between all those things.” He shook his head. “None of it makes sense, but I'm thinking maybe they're connected.”

“How do you mean?” I asked. In spite of how tired my brain was, I had been wondering the exact same thing.

“I can understand somebody getting Willie drunk so they could steal his keys and then breaking into the gas company. They probably hoped to find a bunch of cash lying around, and when they didn't find any, they stole one of the trucks.”

“But why would they steal Yemassee?”

“Exactly.” He took a spoonful of gumbo but then stopped with the spoon just an inch or two from his mouth. “I didn't pay much attention at the time, but didn't you say Yemassee was carrying something in her mouth?”

I nodded. “Something long and white.”

Daddy finally put the spoon in his mouth. When he swallowed, he asked. “Maybe something that came off a gas truck?”

He looked at me, and I looked back at him. My eyes were growing so heavy, I could barely see. Neither one of us had any answers.

When I climbed under the covers that night, I let Rufus get on my bed. I almost never did that, because Rufus had a tendency to cut farts that would choke a horse. Still, in spite of the risk of getting gassed, I needed his warm, furry body to cuddle.

I closed my eyes and had to concentrate hard to keep the image of that dead man's face from rising up. Rufus's clean dog smell and the steady sound of his breathing helped drive it away.

The other thing that helped was planning what I would do later on that week. Daddy had forbidden any more searching for Yemassee. He was only trying to protect me, and he was going to be really mad and really disappointed if he found out I had disobeyed. But I also knew he was taking a lot of risks himself by getting involved with Willie's case, and when an adult is too stubborn to admit they need help, sometimes kids have no other choice but to disobey. Thursday was going to be the first day I wouldn't have after-school stuff, and I decided that afternoon, with or without Bee, I would take a riding tour. I tried to ease my conscience by telling myself I wouldn't be
totally
disobeying. After all, Daddy hadn't told me not to ride, just to stay close to Reward.

Leadenwah Island was a small place, and so anywhere I went on the island would be “close” to Reward in most people's minds. Bee and I had checked out Bishop's Point, but we hadn't looked on Sinner's Point, and I knew that was one of the places Judge Gator liked to walk Yemassee. It made sense that if she had gone hunting that day, she might have gone back to some place she'd been before, where she liked to sniff around. It had been a long time since I had ridden over to Sinner's Point and explored all the back roads. It was time to do it again.

Of course I would only be enjoying the beautiful scenery. If I just
happened
to spot a stolen Boykin spaniel, well
that
would be a complete coincidence. If I just
happened
to rescue the stolen Boykin spaniel, it would only be because, under the circumstances, it was the absolute right thing to do. Ditto if I just
happened
to spot the shorter man who had been in the truck that took Yemassee and told the police where to find him. After all, Daddy needed help, even if he wouldn't admit it, and Judge Gator needed his dog back. In my mind both of those things were important enough to risk disobeying a direct order from Daddy.