The Smack by Richard Lange

Author:Richard Lange
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2017-07-18T04:00:00+00:00

The trail at the park was actually a paved path, ten feet wide. It followed the west bank of the Cape Fear River, crossing a few creeks and a marsh. During the day it was crowded with joggers and bicyclists and dog walkers. When the gates closed at dusk, the deer came out, and raccoons raided the trash cans.

Diaz arrived an hour before he was supposed to meet Lindstrom and parked a couple blocks from the trailhead. He pulled on a pair of gloves, hopped a waist-high fence, and set out to scramble cross-country to the bridge. It was his mistrust of Lindstrom that kept him off the main trail. For all he knew the fucker was lying in wait there, ambush on his mind.

Bushwhacking turned out to be more difficult than Diaz had expected. In the dark, in the cold, through the mist rising from the black swirl of the river. The duffel bag stuffed with newspaper he was carrying didn’t make the going any easier. He started in a stand of tall bare trees but soon found himself sliding down a steep slope that ended in a bog. He paused there to slap wet leaves from the seat of his jeans and get his bearings before continuing across the quagmire. Despite his best efforts to place each step carefully, he slipped a couple times and ended up ankle-deep in ooze that sucked at his feet like something hungry.

When he got close to the bridge, he scrambled up to the pavement, surprising a skunk. The skunk raised and fanned its tail, and Diaz almost tripped as he backed away. He moved as quickly as he could down the path. His shoes were caked with stinking mud, and his socks squished when he walked. Every twenty yards or so a dim light, low to the ground, illuminated the trail, but Diaz stuck to the shadows at the edge. The ghostly whinny of a screech owl made him reach for his knife; the bony scrape of branches stopped him in his tracks. He’d decided to go back to the hotel for his parka after all and was now sweating under it.

By the time he reached the bridge, the mist had thickened into a low, dense fog. He squatted, trying to peer through the murk. No sign of Lindstrom or anybody else. Still, he opened his knife and held it in front of him as he stepped onto the span. The twenty-foot wooden bridge hung above a deep, fast creek that tumbled down to the river. Diaz could hear the water but not see it. He’d wait on the far side. When Lindstrom approached from the nature center, he’d step out of the dark and show himself, walk out to meet him. How you doing? This goddamn fog. Sorry about the rigmarole. And then he’d kill him and have one more share of the money to himself.

The owl bleated again. Diaz squelched across the bridge and sat on a boulder to wait. He could barely make out where he’d come from.

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