“I don’t know. Cleaners, maybe. Vidor Perkins is dead. Get moving.”
He started to accelerate, but he was still looking at me. “You capped Perkins?”
“No, they did. They were shooting at me. Come on, Clete. Step on it. We’ll try to box them in.”
“You mean cleaners like government guys?”
“I didn’t say that. Will you get us out of here?”
“They’re already boxed. Let’s call the locals and pot them as they come out of the bush.”
“You don’t listen. You never listen. Your head is wrapped with iron plate,” I said.
I rolled down my window and opened up on the tree line, hoping to drive back anyone who was trying to set up on us.
“You don’t have to be so emotional about it,” Clete said. He mashed down on the accelerator, fishtailing two swampy tire tracks past the Acadian cottage.
I looked through the back window at the tree line but couldn’t see anyone emerging from it. I had the cell phone in my hand and dialed 911. There was no service. “What have you got on you?” I asked.
“Just my piece.”
“We’re going to be okay,” I said. “They’ve got the river at their back, and we’re between them and their vehicles. We can pin them down until somebody sees us and calls in a 911.”
“That van and the white car are theirs?”
“Yeah, Perkins’s body is inside the van.”
“You’re sure you killed somebody down there on the river?”
I looked at him and didn’t answer.
“You saw him close up?” he said.
“He took it through the lungs. He went down like a sack of horseshoes. You think I’m making this up?”
Something caught his attention. I looked through the windshield but didn’t see anything.
“At nine o’clock. They cut their lights,” he said.
To the left, angling off the paved road into the field, the grass flattening under their bumpers, were two black SUVs. They were neither official vehicles nor the vehicles of choice for people in this area, most of whom were poor. The SUVs divided in the field, creating a pincer movement, trying to seal us off from the road. In the dash light, the raindrops on Clete’s face looked like beads of water on a pumpkin.
“I don’t get this,” he said. “We were dealing with a bunch of local shitheads. Now we’ve got an army coming down on us. What do you want to do?”
He waited. I didn’t want to say what I had to say. “Cut your lights.”
“They’ve already seen us. That doesn’t solve the problem. Tell me what you want to do.”
“They’re behind and in front of us. Head south on the road. We’ll use the phone at the crossroads and then come back. Do it, Cletus. We’re running out of options.”
He stared hard at me, sweat and raindrops running out of his hair. “They’re gonna skate,” he said.
“I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“Forget sorry. We’re sending a real bad message to these guys, like they can spit in our mouths any time they want.”
“We’ll nail them later.”
“I’ve got a truck flare under the seat. We can set fire to the van. You said Perkins is in there?”