John Sandford - The Hanged Man’s Song

He nodded. “Down south.”

I went back to Carp: “Okay. They know where it is.”

“Go down there. Stay off your cell phone. If you leave right now, you should be there in about twenty-one minutes, from your friend’s door. I will call you on your cell phone in twenty-one minutes.”

“Rachel…”

“I’ll tell you about Rachel next time I call.” And he was gone.

BEFOREI got out of there, John pointed to the town on the map. “There’s a whole line of hills off there, all tree-covered. I’ll bet he’s up in the woods, where he can look right down into the town. And look at this-just a little south of there is one of the river’s narrow spots, where it goes around Cutter’s Bend, and the highway on the other side runs close. He’s gonna do the river trick.”

“I gotta go,” I said. “You get everybody ready. Marvel, I’m gonna need your cell phone.”

She gave me the phone, but asked, “Why?”

“Because I want to be able to talk to you guys while I’m talking to him on my cell. I want you to be able to hear what I’m saying to him. I’ll call John on your phone when I’m a few miles out, and keep talking while I go in and wait for him to call on my phone.”

We were out the door as I explained, and I got in the car and waved. John was already talking on his phone, bringing the guys who’d gone north back into the action.

THEhighway south from Longstreet has been featured in blues, jazz, country, and even rock tunes, from musicians running up and down the river between Memphis and New Orleans, stopping off in Baton Rouge, Natchez, Vicksburg, Greenville, and Helena. The highway’s an old one, a cracked patchwork of tarmac and concrete, with lots of wiggles-half of them, it seems, known as “dead man’s curve” by the locals-and mostly used for short runs, since they put in I-55 to the east.

I wasn’t alone on the highway, when I headed south, but the nearest car in front of me was a half-mile away, and there was nobody in my rearview. Every minute or so, I passed cars coming the opposite direction, which meant that two-mile spacing might be typical.

The day was hot: August in the Delta. Heat waves and six-foot mirages hung over the roadway. A line of low hills ran parallel to the river, but well back from it, at Longstreet; but as I got farther south, the river and highway turned into the hills, tightening the valley. Ten miles south of Longstreet, the bottoms of the hills came right down to the road. The levee was a half-mile away, with a few narrow farm fields-cotton and beans-using up the space between the road and the levee. I called John on Marvel’s cell phone, got him, then dropped the cell phone onto the seat between my legs where I could talk down into it. “Just coming into Universal now,” I said, a few minutes later. “No call yet.”

Universal was a dusty spot in the road, three buildings and an old postwar galvanized steel Quonset hut that appeared to have been long abandoned. The Quonset hut had a small sign on its side, the name of its maker, apparently-Universal-which answered one question I had about the place. I pulled into the parking area in front of the Universal Cafe, and my cell phone rang. “Got a call,” I said to the phone between my legs.

I picked up my own phone and clicked it on. Carp: “Get the laptop and start walking down the highway.”

“Walking down the highway?” I repeated, mostly for John. “Listen, James, we gotta get something straight. I’m not going to put myself where you can kill me and get the laptop and keep Rachel. I’m not walking anywhere.”

“I’m not going to kill you, for Christ’s sakes.” He squeaked, sounding exasperated.

“I’m sorry, James, I can’t trust you. Tell me where to go and leave the laptop, and I’ll do it.”

“Your girl is already chained out in the woods. Nobody’ll ever find her-just some hunter ten years from now will find a skeleton chained to a tree.”

“And somebody will find your goddamn head in a wastebasket,” I said. “I wasn’t kidding about that.”

A moment of silence. Then: “Okay. Drive south some more. Slow. I’ll tell you when to stop, I’ll tell you where to put the laptop. I’ll be watching you.”

“What about Rachel?”

“Stay on the phone. Drive south. We’ll handle this.”

“How far south?” I asked for John’s benefit.

“Not far.”

“Okay. If it’s not far.” I drove south, thirty miles an hour. Thirty seconds, and he said, “Pull over on the right shoulder when you see the red flag tied to the bush on the left side. Just pull over.”

I saw the red flag, a kerchief. I pulled over. “What now?”

“Look back the way you came.” I looked and saw him pedaling his mountain bike along the left shoulder, talking into his cell phone. “You can see me. I’m not holding a gun. If you do anything to me, Rachel is gonna starve out there.”

“All right, I can see you. I’m giving you the goddamn laptop,” I snarled. “Just come and get it. You want me to get out now?” More for John.

“Get out.”

“I’m getting out,” I said.

THEsun was blistering, but the day, this far out in the country, was absolutely silent except for faraway car sounds; I could smell the ragweed cooking in the sun. Carp was forty yards away from me, on the bike, not moving, but balanced on it. No chance to run him down. He held up a piece of paper and spoke into the phone. “Map of where Rachel is at. If you go there, and yell around, she’ll call to you. I marked the old store where the path starts, you can’t miss it.”

I held up Bobby’s laptop. “This is the laptop. What do you want to do?”

“Leave the laptop. Leave it on the side of the road. I’ll look at it, and if it’s right, I’ll put the map down. If you do anything, I’ll run, and you’ll never hear from me again. And Rachel won’t hear from you.”

“Cut your fuckin’ head off,” I shouted into the phone.

“Yeah, yeah… leave the laptop.”

I CROSSEDthe highway and left the laptop on the side of the road, then crossed back and pulled away in the car, south for another forty or fifty yards. He slowly rode down the shoulder behind me, to the laptop. I’d turned the laptop on in the car. He picked it up, flipped open the top, looked at it, hit a few keys, then closed it and put the map on the shoulder, weighed down with a couple pieces of gravel. A car zipped past, the driver looking at us curiously; but he kept going.

Carp was on the bike again, and he rode away from me and said into the phone, “You can get the map.” He sounded gleeful. The phone went dead, and as I watched, he took the bike off the road, down the short slope of the shoulder and onto what must have been a path that ran down to the levee, across the end of one of the farm fields. I picked up Marvel’s phone.

“He’s left the map, and he’s off the road riding down to the levee. I’m about a half-mile south of Universal. He’s doing the river thing.”

“We’re closing on the other side. We’re coming in on the other side,” John said back.

I BACKEDalong the shoulder until I was opposite the map, then walked over and picked it up. As I did, Carp crossed the levee and disappeared down the other side, into a forest of cottonwoods. From where I was standing, I could see a narrow path through the weeds, leading down to the levee. Local fishermen, I thought.

The map consisted of two pieces of paper: A Xerox of a road map, pinpointing a crossroads ten miles west of Longstreet, and a little south, probably fifteen road miles from where I was. The second piece was a hand-drawn map starting at the crossroads. There was a square, with the notation, “old abandoned schoolhouse,” and another, with an arrow, that said, “power-line easement back into the woods.” It appeared that the map would take you about a mile and a half off-road. The thing looked so good I began to believe that we were gonna get Rachel back.