Paddy Plays in Dead Mule Swamp (22 page)

Larry burst into the room from the
kitchen, and squared off with DuWayne. By this time, I had gotten
my feet back under me, and concentrated on shuffling awkwardly, an
inch at a time, in the direction of the knife, dragging the chair
with me. I was too busy to watch what the men were doing, but they
crashed to the floor together and the knife bounced toward me. The
twine held me so tight I couldn’t lean forward far enough to kneel,
but after two more small steps I was able to lean over and reach
the knife.

I glanced up and was glad to see that
DuWayne was on top of Larry, pounding him in the face. Using the
knife, I slit the twine, and freed myself from the awkward
bonds.

But the men were back on their feet,
circling one another. Blood ran from Larry’s nose, and DuWayne was
breathing heavily. “Cut him!” ordered DuWayne.

I’d never done anything that violent
in my life. Although it seemed like life or death, I couldn’t bring
myself to stab another person.

“Do it, woman. Don’t you know they’ll
kill you?”

Instead, I looked around for something
heavy to hit Larry with. There was nothing in sight. Larry lunged
at DuWayne, but the large black man jumped back. They continued to
circle, like two wrestlers. I heard the crunching of tires on
gravel, and my hopes soared. But the dream lasted only a moment, as
Pablo burst through the door and slammed DuWayne on the side of the
head with a piece of wood that looked like it had come from the
broken porch railing.

DuWayne staggered, but stayed upright.
However, there was no way he was going to be able to fight off the
two men, and although I had the knife, I didn’t know how to use it,
and didn’t have the courage. The only advantage was that since it
was in my hands, Pablo and Larry couldn’t use it on
DuWayne.

DuWayne changed his tactics. “Run,
Ana,” he said through clenched teeth. His eyes were moving back and
forth between the other two men. He was trying to play keepaway. I
started backing up. With all the circling we’d done, the closest
exit for me was now the front door, and I held the knife in front
of me as menacingly as I could, while trying not to trip. I moved
it back and forth, as I’d seen gangsters do on television. However,
Larry took two steps toward me and easily grabbed my right arm,
twisting it so that I dropped the knife. He wrapped me in a bear
hug and held on tight. With one foot he reached out and stepped on
the knife, pulling it near his body, well within reach.

Pablo swung the makeshift bat at
DuWayne’s head again, but DuWayne deflected the blow with his left
arm. I heard a cracking sound, but I couldn’t tell if it was wood
or bone. It certainly wasn’t going to be many more seconds before
DuWayne and I would be all done. My adrenaline was pumping, but
there was simply nothing I could do against the bulging muscles of
the ex-con who held me.

“Hold it right there!” came a sharp
command from the kitchen, and Detective Milford and Deputy Harvey
Brown stepped into the room with guns pointed. Pablo froze and
dropped the stick, but Larry sneered. I couldn’t see his face, but
I could sense the disdain.

“Forget it, old man,” Larry said.
“I’ve got this handy bitch, and I’m going out the front door,
see?”

Milford nodded. It crossed my mind
that if he supposedly liked me a lot this was an odd way to show
it.

We began to shuffle backwards toward
the front door. I wondered if Larry was going to risk picking up
the knife. We took one more little step, and I felt Larry’s core
muscles tighten.

“That’s far enough.” Tracy Jarvi’s
official voice was more than welcome. “Just let Ana go, and step
back against the wall.” Larry released me and I practically leaped
away from him. I spun around and saw Tracy holding her gun against
Larry’s ribs, and Cherry Hill’s one other officer, Kyle Appledorn,
backing her up.

Harvey was already putting handcuffs
on Pablo. DuWayne had sat down in the chair and was holding his
arm. Juanita still lay on the floor, but she was beginning to stir.
She moaned. Milford fastened her hands behind her, and dragged her
to the wall where she sat with her knees pulled up. She was trying
to look defiant, but her head kept dropping to her knees. I thought
she must be woozy. Tracy and Kyle had Larry under control, and
handcuffed as well.

“I think the pails on the back porch
are full of drugs,” I said.

“We saw that, thanks,” Milford
responded. He pulled out a cell phone, and in a couple of seconds
said, “We’re secure here, bring in a couple of cars.” His cell
reception seemed fine.

DuWayne spoke up. “Juanita’s the one
who’s handy with a knife. She’s the one who killed
Angelica.”

“You black fool,” Juanita said with a
curled lip. She was holding her head up better now. “Why would I do
that? Try that on Larry for size, why don’t you?”

“No way,” Larry said. “You aren’t
pinning that on me.”

“Shut up, both of you,” Pablo chimed
in. “DuWayne’s as guilty as we are. How come he’s not in
cuffs?”

“I will be,” DuWayne said. He sounded
a little sad. “I just don’t want to keep hanging around with people
like you. I knew you were sorting bags here.”

“You ratted us out?” Larry was
incredulous. He turned to Milford. “This goody two-shoes isn’t
innocent. Ask him where he was when Angelica died.”

“They already know, Larry.”

I must have involuntarily gasped.
DuWayne turned to me. “Ana, I owe you an apology. You’ve been very
nice to Star and Sunny, but I wasn’t happy about it.”

“I understand,” I said, but I wasn’t
sure I did.

“I didn’t kill their mother, but I
knew she was dead. I helped bury her. She wanted to stop dealing
drugs, but I didn’t know how we could get by without the money, so
I didn’t back her up.”

“What happened when she disappeared?”
I asked.

“Pablo and Juanita picked her up that
morning. Larry and I really were doing honest work all that day.
The next day, Pablo called me and told me she was dead. We all met
late that night to bury her. No one had lived in your house for
years, so it was an easy way to get into the swamp.”

“So you were poking around there the
other day?”

“That was me. I just wanted to see the
place again. I’ve been so sorry for so long.” He put his head in
his hands, but winced and laid the left arm in his lap. Blood was
oozing from a gash on his scalp from the blow Pablo had
delivered.

Detective Milford spoke up. “It was
DuWayne you spotted outside your house last night. We didn’t catch
him, but his lawyer called us, and told us DuWayne was keeping an
eye on you because he knew Larry was out of prison, and he was
afraid for you. He offered to help us catch these three, and we
said we’d try to go as easy on him as possible for being an
accessory to the murder. We’ve been looking for him all
day.”

“Here I am,” DuWayne said, holding out
his uninjured arm, as if offering it up to be
handcuffed.

“And you didn’t tell me?” I asked. I
glared at the detective.

“No ma’am. You have quite a habit of
aggressively going after solutions. We wanted DuWayne to lead us to
these badasses before they knew he’d decided he wanted out of their
deals.”

Just then we heard more crunching of
gravel and the slamming of car doors. A dog barked.

“Paddy!” I ran to the door and several
more county officers were coming toward the house. The one named
Chris was holding Paddy’s leash, but he let the dog loose when he
saw me. Paddy leaped to the porch and jumped up, planting his paws
on my shoulders and pushing me flat against the house wall. He
began joyfully licking my face. I should have told him to get down,
but I just couldn’t. I’d never been so happy to see a dog in my
life.

Chapter 33

The county officers took the three
drug dealers away in separate cars, and DuWayne went with Detective
Milford. He was being taken to the hospital in Emily City to have
his arm and head checked. Forest County has no hospital. The boxes
and pails were photographed, and then loaded into yet another
police vehicle. I assured them that the blood on my arm was minor,
just the rubbing off of a scab. Soon, there was no one in the old
house but Tracy and Kyle, the dog and me. We humans sat on the edge
of the front porch with our legs dangling, and Paddy curled up
beside me. Most of the old railing was broken away, leaving plenty
of room for us along the edge.

“Let us take you home, Ana,” Tracy
said.

“I’d like that,” I answered with a
sigh. “But my Jeep is at the other side of the railroad
bridge.”

“We know. We saw it there.”

“How did you find me?” I
asked.

“First, we got your call, but we
didn’t know who it was.”

“I didn’t know if it went
through.”

“It did. Almost immediately after that
the 9-1-1 dispatch called us. They had heard what you said, but way
too often the wireless emergency calls are dropped, out here in the
State Forest.”

“But I never got as far as telling
them where I was,” I protested.

“Sure, but they could tell which tower
your cell phone was coming from. Trouble is, it’s the same tower
you’d hit if you called from your house.”

“So you thought I was at
home?”

“We did, and we went there. When we
couldn’t find you, we drove farther down the road, and Paddy was
sitting by the Jeep. He tried to lead us across the
bridge.”

“Good dog!” I said, rubbing behind his
ears.

He gazed at me with his deep brown
eyes, then laid his head on his paws as if to say, “No problem, I
do it all the time.”

“So we figured you must be over here
somewhere, and this old house seemed the most likely. The worst
part for Kyle and me was that we needed to drive around to another
bridge to get here.

“That’s really a long way!”

“I know,” she continued. “We called
Milford and Harvey and they got here first; they were already out
of the office on another case. We all parked down the road so as
not to make noise. Then we walked the rest of the way. We saw the
truck outside, and then found your broken cell phone, and that made
us sure this was where we’d find you.”

A tow truck pulled up and began
hooking up Pablo’s black truck.

“How did DuWayne get here?” I
asked.

“His canoe is down at the old
landing.”

“So he’s been coming and going on the
river?”

“Yup.”

“I thought someone was, but I sure
didn’t picture him as an outdoor type.”

“How’s your arm?” asked Kyle. The
Cherry Hill deputy was shy, happy to let Tracy do most of the
talking.

“It’s not bad. The scabs are mostly
scraped off, but I’ll clean it up when I get home.”

“Should we take you to a doctor, to
have it looked at?” he continued.

“No, I’m fine. I’m glad you didn’t get
here any later, though, or I might not be!”

Tracy was stern. “You seem to be
making a habit of getting into dangerous situations,
Ana.”

“I certainly wasn’t trying to get into
this one. I called for help right away, but then Larry dragged me
into the house.”

“I’m glad to hear you didn’t confront
them on purpose. Let’s get you home.”

The evening was spent quietly. After a
bath I examined my arm, and was happy to see that it now only
needed a couple of band-aids. Every time it got skinned it looked
terrible, but none of the scrapes was deep. Having a refrigerator
full of groceries was wonderful, as I had choices for dinner. Paddy
had earned a treat and I split the leftover kielbasa with him and
made myself a big salad. The only other memorable event was that
Detective Milford called and asked me to be at the Sheriff’s
Department at ten the next morning to give them a statement. I
thought the man must work twenty-four hours a day.

Tuesday morning was again cool. I
expected it to be a quick trip, so I let Paddy ride along, thinking
we’d go for a walk in a county park afterward.

The County Jail and Sheriff’s
Department are located two miles west of Cherry Hill on the
highway. I had driven past them, but had never been inside before.
The buildings are low, sprawling and functional, built of concrete
block.

When I went inside, I was shown into a
plain room painted in two shades of gray with a metal table and
chair. Detective Peters was there. He asked me to sit down and
write out exactly what had happened on Monday. This took the better
part of an hour. When I finished he thanked me and led me into a
larger room, painted in two shades of tan, instead of the dismal
gray, that was slightly more comfortable. It held a large
conference table surrounded by thinly padded straight chairs.
Milford was at the head of the table, and along the left side were
Corliss Leonard, Star and Sunny. DuWayne sat opposite them. A gauze
pad was taped on his shaved head, and he had a cast on his left
arm.

There were two other men seated there
as well. One was next to DuWayne, a suave black man with short
graying hair, wearing a brown silk suit, and too many gold rings.
Somehow I just knew he was DuWayne’s lawyer. The other man was
young and thin, and wore a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. It
looked as if they were all waiting for me, but I couldn’t imagine
why.