Crooked River(86)

Loud voices, suddenly near, forced her to duck down and remain motionless. They moved a little farther away, blending with the approaching sirens. Headlights stabbed through the scorched windows. Keeping low, Constance leaned forward and popped the glove compartment. Nothing. The cup holders and console compartment were empty. She lifted the front floor mats but found nothing underneath.

The problem was, with the car on fire, all these things could have burned up. So what place inside the car was most likely to survive a fire?

Constance glanced around the backseat, but it was thoroughly burned, the seats charred down to the springs.

Her gaze settled on Lam. She took in his burned clothes; the seared remains of hair; his teeth, still strangely white, clenched against the heat…

There was the faintest of hesitations. And then, in a single swift movement, Constance slipped the stiletto from her pocket, forced it between Lam’s teeth, and twisted.

For a moment, nothing happened. And then, with an unpleasant cracking noise, Lam’s teeth—brittle from the heat—gave way and the jaw came loose. She reached in and there it was: something hard and small, pushed deep into the throat. She withdrew it: a tiny test tube, stoppered with a rubber plug.

Now more flashing lights came into view behind her, and she could hear slamming doors. Vaguely, through the blurry windows, she made out a forensic team. Constance shoved the tube into the pocket of her leggings. Then she reached out, put her cool hand on the corpse’s withered fingers. “Thank you, Dr. Lam,” she murmured. The phrase Lipsbury pinfold came unbidden into her mind, and she was distantly surprised by the fact she could entertain such an obscure allusion at a time like this. The young scientist, in death, had provided the safest, if unlikeliest, place to protect a small article from fire, where it was certain to be found—eventually.

Constance glanced left and right, took a deep breath, and slid sideways and low out the open rear door. She dropped to her knees and crawled back under the police tape and into the thick vegetation.



Mark Macready, watching the distant proceedings with increasing alarm, almost had a heart attack when—with no notice whatsoever—the woman, soaking wet, muddy, and stinking of soot and smoke, slipped back into his rear seat.

“You may now leave, Mr. Macready,” she said, her breathing fast. “The quicker, the better.”

He stared at her in the rearview mirror.

“Now, if you please,” she said.



Not until they had reached Highway 41 and were speeding northward did Constance dip into her pocket and pull out the miniature test tube. Examining it in the courtesy light, she saw it contained a rolled-up fragment of paper. She upended the test tube and let the paper fall into her palm. Opening it carefully, she found it was part of a computer printout, apparently a list of place-names. One of them had been hastily circled:





50



MOMENTS AFTER SHE restoppered the note, her phone rang.

“It’s Coldmoon,” came the voice when she answered. “I’ve been waiting for your call. What the hell’s going on—?”

Constance interrupted. “Aloysius was abducted. They ambushed his car in the swamplands south of Fort Myers, along with that oceanographer Gladstone and her assistant, Dr. Lam; shot the car full of holes; killed and burned Lam—and took Aloysius and Gladstone.”

A brief silence. “Any idea where they’re taking him?”

“He left a clue. Two words: Crooked River.”

“Crooked River. Let me check that.” A moment later he said, “It’s a river up in the Panhandle, near the town of Carrabelle.”

She could hear the grinding of an engine in the background. “Where are you?”

“I’m getting onto a shuttle. Crooked River—what the hell’s there?”

“There’s something else. That reporter Smithback—recall him?—heard talk among his captors of a convoy of trucks.”

“Yeah. The M813s.”

“He overheard a tip that a convoy matching this description had been seen near a place called Tate’s Hole, or perhaps Tate’s Hall.”

“Tate’s Hole…Wait, I’m looking at a Google map of the Crooked River now…Son of a bitch, it’s Tate’s Hell! Tate’s Hell State Forest—up the Crooked River. It’s right here. What else did that reporter say?”

Sitting in the backseat of the Uber, Constance tried to recall the exact words. “He said…Johnson’s Fork. The trucks were seen turning into Tate’s Hell, west, past Johnson’s Fork.”

More background noises, Coldmoon murmuring to someone. Then he got back on. “I don’t see any ‘Johnson’s Fork’ on the map. The crazy river twists all over the place, but there’s no Johnson’s Fork.”

Constance called up Tate’s Hell on her own cell phone. It appeared to be endless swampy forest, through which the Crooked River flowed.

“Got it!” Coldmoon said triumphantly. “Johnson’s Fork.”

“Where?”

“Ten miles past Carrabelle to the north, just beyond Bucketmouth Crossing.”

Constance peered at her screen again. She found Bucketmouth Crossing—literally a mere crossing of two small roads—but beyond that she saw no named places, just another twisty fork in the river, this one shaped like a dangling sausage.