But I wasn’t listening. The path was clear between me and the key rack. I jumped up and grabbed the key to his truck and took off out the back door, gritting my teeth against the pain in my ankle.
Behind me, I heard him drop the ice tray into the sink. “All right!” he shouted. “I’ll go with you. You’re gonna get yourself killed out there. Let me drive.”
I let him get in behind the wheel. “Go to Reed’s,” I said from the passenger seat. “But slow. We have to look along the street for…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, choking on the words. I imagined seeing Win, bloody and near dead, along the side of the road.
Buddy started driving, turning onto Round Hill Road, dark and empty this time of night. I sat on the edge of the seat, my gaze darting left and right, searching for Win in the cone of yellow light from the truck’s headlights.
“Why’d you do it, Ellie?” Buddy pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “Why’d you let yourself get mixed up with him? You knew it’d come to no good.”
It was too dark to see his face, but I heard the emotion in his voice: he was choked up. No matter how wrong he thought I was, no matter how stupid, he loved me. He didn’t want me hurt.
Reed’s house was dark. His parents’ car was in the driveway but his truck was missing. That sent a fresh wave of terror through me. Where had he taken Win? Where were they now and what were they doing to him?
“He ain’t here,” Buddy said.
“Pull into the driveway,” I commanded.
Buddy pulled into the driveway and I staggered out of the truck even before he came to a stop, nearly falling when I put weight on my ankle. He caught up to me and I leaned on him as I hobbled to the front door, where I pressed the bell over and over again.
Buddy grabbed my hand. “He ain’t here, Ellie! You can see that. You’re just gonna wake his parents.”
A light came on in the living room and a moment later the front door opened. I was ready to bombard Reed’s mother or father with questions, but it was Reed himself standing in front of us. He had on jeans with no belt and his plaid shirt was unbuttoned over his white undershirt. He wore a look of confusion. I wasn’t buying it. I started screaming at him. Pounding on him.
“Where did you take him?” I shouted. “Where is he, you son of a bitch?”
“Hush, honey!” Buddy grabbed my arms. Held them at my sides.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Reed asked.
“Where’s your truck?” Buddy asked him.
“What did you do with Win?” I shouted.
“My truck’s at your car shop,” he said to Buddy. “I dropped it off after work to get that bumper fixed and got a ride home.” Then he looked at me. “And I didn’t do anything with anybody,” he said.
I looked at Buddy, feeling a slim bit of hope that it hadn’t been Reed’s truck after all. That Reed had no part in this mess. “Is that true? His truck’s at your shop?”
Reed answered before Buddy could. “The shop was closed.” He looked at Buddy again. “I left it there for you to take a look at in the morning. Dropped the keys through the slot in your door and put a note on the windshield. My left rear bumper’s bashed in.”
“What time did you leave it?” Buddy asked, loosening his hold on my arms.
“Right after I got out of work. Around six. Six thirty.”
“Nobody else has a truck like yours around here, Reed,” I said.
Reed looked from me to my brother and back again. “What the hell’s going on?” he asked.
I started crying, suddenly exhausted. I leaned against Buddy; he was practically holding me up. “You couldn’t handle it,” I said to Reed. “You couldn’t handle me being with someone else. I hope you suffer the way he suffered. What did you do with—”
“Is this about that guy you were—”
“We gotta go,” Buddy interrupted him. He pulled me away from the door so hard I nearly fell off the step.
“Wait!” I said to him. “I need to know what happened to Win!” I called over my shoulder as Buddy dragged me away. “Where did you leave him?” I shouted. “Where is he?”
But Reed just wore a stupefied look, and Buddy told me to shut up. He opened the truck door for me and nearly had to lift me inside. “We have to go to the sheriff’s office,” I said. “Not Uncle Byron, though. I think he’s part of the whole—”
He shut the door before I finished my sentence and walked around the front of the truck to get in. Reed still stood at his front door, trying to look innocent.
“Something ain’t right,” Buddy said, putting the truck in gear and backing out of the driveway.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I went back to the shop on my way to Jenny Ann’s,” he said, looking in his rearview mirror. “Had to be at least seven thirty. Eight, maybe. Reed’s truck wasn’t there.”
I pounded the dashboard. “I hate him!” I said. “Hate him! Buddy, we have to find Win. Please help me. He’s in a ditch somewhere. He’s still alive. I can feel it!” I couldn’t bear the thought of him lying alone somewhere, bleeding and helpless.
Buddy was heading into town but he missed the turn for the sheriff’s office. “Where are you going?” I reached for the steering wheel, but he batted my hand away.
“My shop,” he said. “I need to see where Reed put the truck. Maybe it was in the back lot and I didn’t see it when I stopped in earlier.” He wanted Reed to be innocent, I could tell. He wanted the truck to be there in the back lot and we could then imagine there was someone, some Klansman from the next county over, with a blue and white Ford pickup and a reason to hate Winston Madison.
We were a block away from the shop and we could already see it: Reed’s truck, parked just about as close to the shop’s front door as it could be. There was no way Buddy could have missed it earlier. Buddy pulled up to the curb and we both stared at the rear of the truck. My heart pounded in my throat.
There was no dented bumper.
Reed’s truck had no bumper at all.
Chapter 46
Buddy and I drove all over Round Hill. I got the flashlight from behind his seat and shined it in the roads and the woods and the fields. I kept saying, “He’s still alive; I’m sure of it.” Buddy said nothing at all except to tell me it couldn’t have been Reed and the truth would come out eventually. We drove up and down every street in town. I made him take me back to his car shop to check the bed of Reed’s truck, just in case the maggots had left Win in there. It took me so long to come up with that possibility that once I had it, I felt certain I’d hit on the answer, and I was angry at myself for not checking sooner. Maybe he’d been alive when we first saw the truck, but now it was too late. That was the way I was thinking, every horrid possibility running through my mind. But the bed of the truck was empty except for a nondescript cigarette lighter and an empty beer bottle.
I hobbled back into the truck. Buddy looked over at me. Touched my shoulder. “Honey,” he said, “wherever they left him, we ain’t gonna find him tonight.”