Chapter 14 #2
For a moment, Pendergast looked like a poker player whose bluff had just been called. Then he assumed his normal air again and continued.
“I should clarify. Why do you think Drakos was running around at that precise spot when the young women were driving by?”
“Because he was trying to get the hell away.”
“No, no, Agent Chambers. Why there, exactly?”
“Because that’s the point where he managed to escape out the back of the van. There’s that curve in the road right before, after the bridge over the Pearl River, and it was slow enough for him to bust out without breaking half the bones in his body.”
Something sparked in Pendergast’s pale eyes, and he raised one slender figure. Evidently, this was the response he’d been looking for.
“Good. That’s been the implication all along. But if you were Mr. Drakos, frightened and improperly dressed—and you’d managed to free yourself from any restraints holding you, then timed your leap out the back of the van to a moment when the vehicle had slowed—what would be your next move?”
“Run, run, as fast as I can,” Chambers replied, in singsong repetition of the nursery tale. He wished Pendergast would get to the point.
“But where would you run? Back down along the road?”
“Hell, no.”
“Where, then?”
Now Chambers realized: Pendergast was not stringing him along—he was working something out… or he had already worked it out and wanted to see if it made sense to his partner.
“I’d go into the swamp, as far as I could go, and then hide in the darkness—probably up some tree so a snake wouldn’t get me.”
Pendergast nodded. “I’d do the same. Drakos undoubtedly had the same survival instincts we have—it seems likely he ran off into the swamp.”
“Yes.”
“Why did he go north?”
Chambers was momentarily confused. “I’m sorry?”
“Say he’d escaped the van, done what you or I would do—run deep into the swamp and hid.
He wouldn’t even have had to go that far before locating a place where his pursuer—and killer—would never find him.
So why did he then rise out of his place of concealment and run back the way he’d come—to the van, from which he’d escaped—crossing the road in the process? ”
Chambers considered this. “From what the eyewitnesses said, the other guy was hot on his heels.”
“Which could mean one of three things. First, he was out of his head with fear, not thinking straight, and just running back and forth like the proverbial chicken, rather than finding a place to hide. Second, he’d found a place to hide, but it wasn’t good enough—maybe he’d been crouching in a lagoon, say, and felt something just a little too big nudge him from underwater, causing him to betray his position to the searcher. ”
At this point, Pendergast sat back and arched one eyebrow.
“And the third?” Chambers asked.
“That the man was running in more or less a beeline, trying to get away from something or somewhere in the swamp, and was intercepted near the road.”
“But that’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because—well, because the eyewitnesses saw he’d escaped from the van.”
“Did they? All they saw was that the van’s rear doors were ajar. They assumed he’d escaped from the van. And everyone else—from Deputy Willis on, including us—have been working from that same assumption.”
“What other assumption is there?”
“That Drakos had escaped, not from the van, but from some place of confinement to the south. A building, a trailer, a cave, whatever. Remember: he was seen crossing the road. He’d run north, toward the highway, doing his best to escape.
He’d be heading in the direction of freedom, as best he could calculate it.
But his captor, learning of his escape, got into his van, drove quickly to the highway, and parked there—perhaps waiting in the bracken near the shoulder—where he could nab his quarry. ”
Chambers digested this, along with his meal, for a moment. “That’s not possible.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s nothing down there. The hurricane of 1921 buried that little jerkwater community I told you about under a dozen feet of water—and that’s where it stayed.
There’s precious little ‘land’ down there now, it’s more water than solid earth, and the most you’d find is a few more of those endless shacks we passed, crumbling along the highway.
And there certainly isn’t any road that van could take from down there to outflank Drakos. ”
There was a silence.
“Maybe he’d run off and was doubling back,” Chambers suggested. “To throw the guy off the scent.”
“If you’d found a good place to hide, or a blind where nobody could find you in the dark—would you abandon it?”
“No.” Chambers ran over this third scenario of Pendergast’s again. “No, I wouldn’t. But I’m telling you—there’s no good land down that way anymore, it’s all bayou, poisonous snakes, gators, and katynippers.”
“Katynippers?”
“Mosquitoes.”
“Ah.” And with this, Pendergast rose from the table. Chambers did the same, almost eager at this point to stop hypothesizing and get back to work.
But Pendergast paused. “I wonder: would it be out of line for the junior special agent to suggest to the senior special agent that we attempt to get our hands on some plats, or maps, of that area? Aerial photographs, if they’re available.
And ideally covering various periods of time—pre-hurricane, post-hurricane, modern day. ”
Christ. Pendergast was like a dog who’d just dug up a nasty old bone and now refused to part with it.
“No,” Chambers replied, trying not to sound like he was humoring his mentee. “It’s not out of line—necessarily. We can’t go back to the office, of course, but I’ll make a few calls.”
“Thank you for your patience, Agent Chambers.” And with that he led the way back into the saloon.