Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [58]
He returned to the yard. There was too much water to make out individual tire treads. He walked the periphery without finding any other tracks except to the road, and he had come that way. It struck him that since the truck and tractor tires weren’t smeared with lime, the overflow was recent. There was no flooding anywhere else.
In the reflection of the fire the overflow was molten gold, though Arkady knew that in daylight it would look like watered milk. He guessed the pit was about five meters square. He sank the hoe; it was at least two meters deep. An object bobbed to the surface that resembled a cross-section of sausage; it rolled to show the circular jowls, cone ears and snout of a pig, a face made smooth and hairless by corrosive lime, then rolled and sank again. Feathers and hair lay pasted on the scum. A stench deeper and more profound than simple rot pervaded the mist.
Arkady reached into the middle of the pit with the hoe and hit metal. He hit metal and glass. As he walked back and forth along the pit he traced the outline of a car beneath the surface. By now he was breathing in shallow gasps not only because of the smell. He thought he heard Jaak inside the car; he was beating on the roof of Julya’s Volvo and screaming. Not that the sound escaped the pit, but Arkady could feel it.
He pulled off his jacket and shoes and dove in. He kept his eyes closed against the lime and felt his way down the side window to the door, found a latch and pulled without success because of the pressure of the water. He broke the surface, breathed and dove again. The motion of his dive disturbed the pit and unseen things rose, poking, prodding, as if trying to nudge him from the door. The second time he came up for air, the surface was crowded with the sweetmeats of the bottom, overwhelming with the smell of death.
On the third dive, he got both legs against the car and opened the door a crack. That was enough. As water leaked in, pressure equalized, faster by the second. He held on because he wasn’t going up and down again. As the door opened, water flowed in with a rush, Arkady with it. He swam blindly onto the front seat, then climbed into the back, where Jaak was starting to float.
The door shut with the suction of the water. Eyes still closed, Arkady located the inside latch, but the door wouldn’t budge and he couldn’t get decent purchase for his feet with Jaak bobbing every which way around him. What a tight, well-made car, Arkady thought. He rolled down the window, and as the car filled up, the door eased open and he kicked himself out, towing Jaak behind him.
He crawled over the lip of the pit and pulled the detective by the arms up onto the yard. Jaak didn’t look too bad—wet, eyes wide, curly hair matted like a lamb’s—but he was too cold and uncooperative, without a pulse at the wrist or neck, and his irises could have been glass. Arkady tried the breath of life, lifting Jaak’s arms and then beating life into his chest until a raindrop exploded in the center of Jaak’s eye and he didn’t blink. Without trying, Arkady’s hand found a small entry wound at the back of Jaak’s skull. No exit wound. Small caliber; the slug probably just bounced around the brain.
The pig bobbed to the crowded surface of the pit. No, this head was smaller, ears shorter, followed by the surfacing X-form of outstretched limbs. Arkady realized that his problem getting out of the car had been because there were two bodies, not one, in the backseat. What a regular fishing hole, this pit! With the hoe he pulled the body close and dragged it up beside Jaak. It was an older man, not Korean or Chechen, the features slack and