Travis Lee: Letter To Belinda Part 47

"Well, no. He'll be walking the east bank. Hey, I see a light way up there. That might be him."

"Oh. I thought he might have been in a boat."

"No."

"We did see somebody go through the pipes earlier. Thought that might have been him."

"Somebody went through the pipes in a boat? And at night?"

"Yeah, I know it sounds crazy! I wouldn't have tried a stunt like that in daylight!"

His wife added, "And it was a peculiar looking boat too! Probably home made!"

This news excited Calvin. "Could it have been a casket he was in?"

The two looked at one another and laughed. "Yeah, that was exactly what he was in! We both thought it looked like a casket, but you don't go around telling people you saw a man going down the river in as casket, and that he 'shot the pipes' in it at night, or they'll think you had a few beers too many!"

"I'm glad you brought that up, and not us!" the woman said. "And the fellow waved at us as he went on down the river!"

Calvin was excited to hear that Chris was alive and waving to people.

"Do you know that fellow?"

"Yeah, it is my other brother! He kind'a got away from us! So I need to go down river to catch up with him!"

"Better hurry! He was moving on!"

"I think that might be my other brother coming there. I need to wait on him."

"Gonna' be tough on him coming down that side of the river. Nothing but briars and vines on that side. He needs to leave the river and cut across to the road. That'll save him a lot of time and trouble."

"I'll go try to meet him. Thanks a lot."

Calvin ran down to the truck, and drove back up the road, to where he estimated that he'd seen the light, then parked again, and dashed into the woods with his flashlight. He went down to the steep bank, and yelled for Joey. On the third yell, he got a reply. He saw a flashlight beam directed at him, and he flashed his back at him. "Joey! Come to me! I found Chris!"

He heard a faint, "Okay, I'm coming!"

He breathed a ragged sigh of relief. At least he knew both his brothers were alive. At that moment, that was the main thing. He stood on top the embankment and beaconed Joey in, until he got to the bottom of the embankment. "Too steep!" Joey yelled. "I'll have to go around. Did you say you found Chris?"

"Yes."

"Is he okay?"

"Yeah, but he's still going down the river. We got to get down there ahead of him somewhere."

"Okay, I'll be there in a minute."

When he finally found a way up the embankment he asked, "Is Cory in the truck?"

"No, Cory is gone to jail. I've got Dad's truck, and you can drive!" Too tired to ask the obvious questions, Joey just followed him to the truck.

Miranda crept down the side of the highway, occasionally ducking into the woods, to avoid being seen when a vehicle pa.s.sed. One of those vehicles was an ambulance going to pick up Lennie's body. By the time she reached his house, the ambulance went back by, carrying Lennie to the funeral home. She was about to come out of the woods, when a car approached, slowed, and turned in at Lennie's house. They stopped and checked the name and address on the mail box, then pulled up to the carport. An officer got out and knocked on the door. He got no answer, so he opened the door, and went in for a few seconds. Just long enough to determine that there was no one home. He came out and began rolling off a long piece of yellow police tape, and tied it across the front porch, all the way across to cover the carport too. This was to warn anyone not to enter the house, before they had time to investigate. And tonight there was apparently no rush to investigate. They would probably send out a couple of investigators tomorrow, but for tonight, the tape would keep anyone out. Or so they thought.

As soon as the police car left, Miranda crept across the highway to the house, ducking under the yellow 'DO NOT CROSS' police line. Yes, she knew it was illegal to go past that line, but so was cutting up and hiding a Federal Judge. She just hoped that this would be the last time she had to cross that line. She slipped on her latex gloves and entered the house through the carport door.

What she saw appalled her. The house was a total disaster. Clutter and junk was everywhere. Even with the limited light from her small flashlight, she could tell this was going to be a difficult search. What she needed to do was find those areas that Lennie frequented the most. That would be where she would find his diary, if one existed. It was easy to tell the places he frequented, because those were the places connected by the narrow 'pig trails' in the junk. There were areas of this house that Lennie had not been into in years, which was made obvious by the degree of clutter.

In the kitchen, his range of movement was from the sink, to the refrigerator, to the microwave, and the corner of the table, where he ate. Every other conceivable s.p.a.ce was filled by junk. This was a house where nothing was ever disposed of in a proper manner. It was allowed to acc.u.mulate, pile up, and spill over, then pile up again.

She followed a trail to the living room, where she saw Lennie's tripod mounted binoculars, aimed out the large plate gla.s.s window. This was where he spied on everyone who drove down Kellerman Road. She saw a notebook beside the tripod, where he wrote down the tag numbers of vehicles that pa.s.sed. She couldn't imagine the loneliness that must have pervaded his life, for this to be his favorite pastime.

She moved to the bedroom, and saw the soiled bed he slept in. He had not changed the bed linens in years, if ever. A cluttered computer sat beside the bed, but it had obviously not been used in years. Magazines and newspapers were piled up in tall pillars, and each was a potential avalanche, if not carefully negotiated around. She saw nothing that resembled a diary, or a daily record of his pitiful life. She felt more sorry for him than ever, to see the way he lived in his own home. He was like a hermit, living a painful existence, inside a brick home that was nice looking on the outside, but inwardly, was more like the abode of a pack rat. There appeared to be nothing here to incriminate her.

She was making her way out of the maze of clutter when she saw a cheap digital camera on the floor. She picked it up, expecting to see that the batteries were dead, but to her surprise, she saw it come on. Lennie had taken pictures of flowers and spiders, and zoomed in on birds, but there were also pictures of people. They were photos obviously taken without the knowledge of the subjects. There was a photo of Mr. and Mrs. Rosewood, as they were leaving their home. Lennie had to have been hiding in the woods to get such a shot. There were photos of people she didn't know, but were apparently people who lived along Kellerman Road. But then there were photos that were more disturbing. Photos of her leaving her home, and one of she and the judge getting into a his car together, and even she and Travis standing beside her house talking. It had to have been that day he was advising her to build the pool. The pictures were not obscene, or incriminating by themselves, but in light of the fact that the judge might very soon come up missing, these seemingly innocent photos could be very telling. They could throw the investigators toward herself and Travis. She didn't even take the time to view all the photos on the card. She just stuck the camera in her pocket, and looked around for more camera cards. In a desk drawer, she found two more, and shoved them in her pocket. She found nothing else incriminating, so she exited the house, crossed the highway, and melted back into the woods, headed for home.

Chris continued to drift down the river, but the seepage was getting worse, in spite of the fact that he was bailing out water non-stop. It was just a matter of time before he took on enough water that he would sink. He hoped he could stay afloat long enough to make it around the next bend in the river, because then he would be in sight of the Presbyterian Retreat, and the river would get shallow as well. He stepped up his dipping, as the glow of fires could be seen around the bend. The glow of bon-fires, and lots of people.

Joey drove his dad's truck from the New Slab, down to the next possible place to access the river, which was the Presbyterian Retreat. They saw several church buses as they entered the Retreat property. He turned off his headlights as he found a parking place, so his lights wouldn't distract the story telling.

There were several different bon-fires scattered across the river bank, each with thirty to forty kids gathered around them. Earlier they had cooked hot dogs and marshmallows, but now they were in the story-telling phase. Different story tellers would go around to each group, and tell their specific tale, and then rotate, until each group had heard all the tales. After all the scary ghost stories, the evangelists would tell one final tale, which was their pitch of Jesus to the youths, which was the reason for this whole Retreat.

An usher for the event approached them. "You guys are a little late. You missed the food. They are telling the ghost stories now."

"We're not here for that." Joey said. "We're here to pick up our brother. He's floating down the river, and we need to meet him here."

"Is he fis.h.i.+ng?"

"No, not exactly. We need to get a boat out here too. Can we do that?"

"As long as it doesn't disrupt the program."

They heard screams from one of the bon-fires down near the river, which soon became a chorus of screams.

"Wow. Must be a really scary story those kids are hearing!" the usher said. "Wait a minute, everyone is running this way! Something is after them! Something is coming out of the river! Oh my G.o.d! What is that?"

Joey and Calvin knew what it was. It was 'Lazarus' with mummy wrap dangling from his arms, as he rose up out of the river, like the creature from the black lagoon. Before him, a tsunami of fleeing and terrified kids simply bowled over everyone and everything in their path, as they stampeded back to their buses. Some adults tried to calm them, and reign them in, but other adults were out-running the kids to get out of there. Joey and Calvin dodged the fleeing ma.s.ses, and went toward the river to meet their brother.

Chris was laughing so hard that his sides were hurting. "Did you see how scared those kids were? That was great!" He stopped to cough, and laugh some more.

"We're just glad to see that you're okay." Joey said.

"Yeah!" Calvin said. "We thought you were dead!"

Chris stopped laughing. "By the way, what was the big idea, dumping me in the river like that? It wasn't part of the plan, and it messed up dad's casket!"

"We didn't dump you in the river! The casket slid out of the truck up on Turkey Ridge, and slid down the hillside to the river! We've been chasing you ever since!"

"Man! What are the chances of that happening? And how did I slide out of the truck, with the tailgate up?"

Calvin became defensive. "Hey! I know I put the tail-gate up! It wasn't my fault!"

"It doesn't matter whose fault it was," Joey said. "We're going to have to hustle to get home before curfew. Mom will ground us if we're late."

"What about the casket?" Calvin asked?

"Ain't much left of it." Chris said. "It sank in the shallow water over there."

"We need to get it home and repair it, if we can."

"There's no repairing that! But we don't need to junk up the river either. Come on, and we'll get it. Where is Cory?"

"In jail." Calvin reported.

"You're kidding?"

"Nope! Gone to jail in Arlington for speeding."

"Sounds like I missed all the fun!" Chris said. "Here's the casket. It floated well, until I shot the pipes at the New Slab, then it started taking in water. I couldn't bail it out fast enough."

They picked up one end of the casket, allowing the water to run out, then turned it up-side down to carry it. "Okay men! To the truck!" It was a strange sight, the three of them carrying the beat-up casket up out of the river, and toward the parking area. Three hundred kids watched them, as the Presbyterian youth director confronted them, demanding to know what was going on, as they toted the casket in toward the truck.

"This is totally unacceptable! You disrupted our entire event! I have already called the police, so you boys just stop and wait right here!"

"Hey, I'm sorry, but we didn't mean to break up your event. It was an accident, and we had to get our brother out of the river."

"Put that box down right here!"

"No, we're going to put this heavy casket in the back of that truck, then we will stop to rest."

"Okay, put it on the back of your truck, but don't go anywhere, because the police are on the way!" He left them to try to salvage the rest of the event, as the boys went to the truck, and slid the casket in.

"Now we're in for it! We'll be in jail right beside Cory!"

"Get in." Joey said. "That guy is no policeman. He can't hold us here."

"But . . ."

"Get in, Calvin, we're leaving!"

No one tried to stop them, as they started the truck and headed for the exit. They bounced down the access road, then burned rubber as they hit the black-top highway.

"Slow it down!" Calvin said. "That's what got Cory arrested!"

Joey slowed down just as they pa.s.sed a car in the curve.

"That was the police! They're going to the Retreat to arrest us! Good thing we left when we did!"

"Are they turning around?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Just to make sure, I'm taking a short-cut!" Joey said. He whipped off the road onto a gravel road.

"Where does this go?" Chris asked.

"It goes to the Blue Hole, but out the other side, it hits County road 54, near Eddingstown. It really is a short-cut, and it will throw off the police, if they come back looking for us."

"But is the road pa.s.sable?"

"Not for most cars, but this truck has 4 wheel drive. We'll make it. And good news, guys, we'll also make the curfew, if we don't stop along the way."

Janice and Rebecca were in the living room talking over the TV. Janice was explaining what the police told her.

"So after they finished questioning me, they said I was free to go, because my story was consistent, and Penelope's was full of holes. They said they asked her the same questions over and over, and got different answers every time. And besides that, a witness came forward, an old woman who lived across from Deason, and confirmed my story, that I just dropped her off and waited for her."

"So now they don't consider you to be a co-conspirator in the crime?"

"No, they think it was all Penelope. And now I hear from my lawyer, that there might not even be a case against Penelope, because he thinks it was a case of self-defense. Of course, I will probably have to testify at her trial, and when I do, your dad will find out all about this. But that's okay, because by then, it will be water under the bridge. I just don't want him, or the boys to find out about it before then."

They heard a truck drive up.

"Is that the boys?"

"Yes, I think so. They stopped in front of the garage."

Janice looked at her watch and shook her head. "They got here with less than two minutes to spare. Can you believe that?"

"They are unloading the casket into the garage."

"I guess your brothers are pretty well behaved. They get into trouble sometimes, but usually they are good about doing what I tell them. I feel bad about being so strict with them sometimes, but they are just like their dad. Give them an inch, and they will take a mile."

Out in the garage, the boys were hoping their mom did not come out to greet them, because they didn't want her to see the condition of the casket, or that they had used their dad's truck without permission. They quickly carried the casket to its previous location, and covered it with an old blanket.

"That'll never work!" Chris said. "Anyone can tell that the lid is missing!"

"Well, what happened to the lid? If we can find it, we can lay it on top, at least."

"It sank in the river when the hinges broke off." Chris said. Calvin laid a few boards across the top. "We need something rounded to put on the boards, to give the illusion that the lid is there." They conducted a quick search of the garage and found a piece of corrugated tin that could be flexed around to look like the casket was intact.