Randy White - Deceived

I reread her earlier text:

On way home, no luck. Will call when reception better. Sorry!!!

Same thing-a smiley face that didn’t fit. I fanned through a dozen previous texts to confirm the oddity and I was right.

I tried calling Birdy again but got voice mail on the first ring. I became more suspicious. Reception was good in the Fort Myers area. She should have answered if she was nearly home. Unless… unless she was still in Sematee County and someone else was using her phone-someone who had read our previous texts and was trying to convince me to turn around.

You’re hyperventilating, I realized. Calm down. No one but Birdy calls you Smithie. It has to be her.

There was an easy way to confirm that my fears were groundless-a seemingly safe way, too. The cemetery where Birdy would have parked was only three miles down the road.

Keep your doors locked, pull in, take a quick look, then drive home.

I did it. Put my SUV in gear and continued down the road but took the precaution of leaving a long voice mail for Tomlinson.

I wanted someone to know.

At the caution light, where the Hess station was still a beacon for migrant teenagers, I turned right. No traffic either direction, but, suddenly, car lights appeared behind me. I was doing a comfortable sixty and the lights were gaining on me fast-a car, not a truck. No reason to be alarmed, but I did pay attention. I slowed a bit, expecting the car to pass. Instead, it rocketed to within a few car lengths, blinding me with its high beams, then dropped back to a safer distance.

There was oncoming traffic now: an eighteen-wheeler behind a vehicle with only one headlight-a motorcycle, I thought at first. No… it was a commercial van, the kind used to haul migrant workers, with a bad light on the passenger’s side. Maybe the driver behind me was fooled, too, because he chose that moment to pass. Bad decision, because the semi and the van were both flying. There was a foghorn blare; the van swerved, but the car was fast enough to make it with fifty yards to spare. I noticed that the van was towing farm machinery but didn’t get a good look at the car until it was in front of me, rocketing away. It appeared to be a Mercedes sports model, not an Audi A6, which put me at ease again.

For the next two miles, I had the road to myself, but soon slowed to forty because I didn’t want to miss the turn into what had once been a church. In the far, far distance, I could see the illuminated sign of the rehab clinic, so I knew it was close. Even so, I missed the turn. Too much foliage and moss-heavy trees to notice that small opening. Normally, I would have said Shit but didn’t because the clearing within appeared to be empty. My headlights would have surely sparked off the BMW’s red reflectors, so Birdy’s car wasn’t there.

Good!

To make certain, I pulled to the side of the road and checked my mirrors, ready to turn around. Half a mile down the road, from the direction of the Hess station, the van with the bad headlight was already returning. That puzzled me until it slowed and disappeared north up an unseen lane, so maybe the driver had missed his turn, too-a migrant worker, possibly, towing machinery for a local farmer. There were tomato fields and citrus north of the cypress strand, as I had seen on Google Earth.

Even so, when I swung my SUV around, I kept my eyes on where the van had vanished while also watching for the overgrown entrance to the church. I was going to pull in only long enough to confirm that Birdy’s car was gone but didn’t want anyone to see what I was doing.

That’s not the way things worked out.

I TURNEDinto the church, my headlights panning along the wooden wreckage… illuminating trees and then gravestones that protruded like vertebrae from a tangled hide of vines-all the dark elements I expected to see, plus something unexpected: Birdy Tupplemeyer’s car.

The BMW was parked in the same hidden spot, facing the cemetery, the foliage so thick, I hadn’t seen its reflectors from the road. The reflectors were glittering now as I tapped at my high beams-which were already on-and pulled closer, seeing the convertible from behind, the car’s top up, engine off. I continued to creep closer until I was only a car length away, and that was close enough.

My god, I thought. What have they done to you?

I should have called 911 before doing anything else, but I couldn’t. It was because Birdy was still in the car. Through the rear window, I could see the silhouette of her head. She appeared to be slumped forward, face against the steering wheel. I knew she wasn’t sleeping, but, absurdly, I rapped my horn a couple of times.

When my friend didn’t move, I jumped out yelling her name-“Birdy!”-and ran to her, my cell phone in hand… didn’t stop, in the glare of my SUV’s headlights, until I had reached the little car. I yanked at the door handle, expecting it to be locked, but the door flew open, banging hard on its hinges. When it did, I knelt inside and put my hands on her shoulder, saying “Birdy… Birdy, are you okay?”

The interior lighting of a BMW is muted, but the overhead console is a triad of bright LEDs. The LEDs flared when I opened the door, but it wasn’t until the woman lifted her face and leered that I realized my hands were not comforting my friend Liberty Tupplemeyer.

It was Dr. Alice Candor slumped low behind the wheel.

“I told you I’d have your head one day,” she said, a purring reminder that pierced like a blade.

Candor was a big woman, big enough to grab my wrist and stop me momentarily when I tried to jump back. Just long enough for a hypodermic needle to appear in her other hand, the syringe lucent with golden liquid when she jabbed the needle into my neck.

I was in shock but too strong to give Candor time to empty the syringe-at least, I hoped that was true. I wrestled her arm away, which sent my cell phone flying. Then took a few steps backward while my fingers explored the burning sensation near my jugular and I felt blood.

Was this really happening?

Yes. Candor had just stabbed me with a needle… No!- not just stabbed, she had injected a drug.

I tried to yell What was in that? but coughed the words.

Now the woman was out of the car, walking toward me, the hypodermic in her hand and saying, “Calm down, I’m trying to help you,” her manner blending sarcasm with a lie she had probably spoken a thousand times.

My fingers were assessing my wound while I backed toward the cemetery. The needle had entered closer to my throat than my jugular vein. Blood was trickling down my neck, and I felt as if I couldn’t speak without coughing. I did cough while demanding, “Where’s Liberty Tupplemeyer? She’s a deputy sheriff-you’re in a lot of trouble, lady!”

In the lights of my SUV, Candor’s face was white as a mushroom, but it wasn’t because I had frightened her. She was enjoying herself, holding the syringe like a cigarette as she continued to stalk me. “You’re starting to feel dizzy, aren’t you, Hannah? Probably a little nauseated, too. But I can make that go away if you’d just let me help.”

The doctor was right. I did feel a queasy dizziness. Another effect, though, was a weird blooming sense of invulnerability, and what I saw in the syringe gave me hope. It was still half full of the drug she had tried to inject, the liquid now silver, not gold, in the harsh lighting.