Justice

Copyright 2000 by Fred588@Go.COM

The bank examiners had arrived that morning. It was a routine audit, but Terry knew it would not remain so for long. For more than six months she had been caught up in a continuing cycle of transactions involving rich, elderly clients. Funds had been moved around, false withdrawals concocted, and interest payments diverted. Once she started down the path of embezzlement , there was no turning back. Terry knew from the start she would be caught sooner or later. Now her day of reckoning was at hand.

But Terry had a plan. Now the day had come to put her meticulously prepared plan into action. If it succeeded, in forty-eight hours Terry would be free of the need to work for a living and her goody two-shoes boss would be taught a lesson he would never forget.

Sherry drove carefully and slowly; this was no time for an accident. She was under control – Terry was always under control – but she had a clear sensation or anxiety not at all unlike that of her first date, fourteen years before. Tonight, however, would be the beginning of the end of an adventure far more dangerous than a first date.

Crossing the river on the main highway, Terry immediately turned off to the right on a secondary road that paralleled the river. About two miles down she turned right again onto an overgrown dirt road that led out onto a small peninsula in the river. The road was almost entirely hidden under grass that was nearly four feet high, but it was unobstructed by anything heavier. The local fire department arranged for the grass to be cut once a year so the peninsula would be accessible in an emergency. About a hour before dark she came to a stop where the road ended, about two hundred yards from the water’s edge.

Terry opened the trunk and took out a briefcase and a small athletic bag and placed them on the ground.. The athletic bag contained a complete change of clothing, including shoes, a set of keys to an Avis rental care parked at a motel about four miles away, a key to a safety deposit box in a Boston bank, and a large wad of cash. Both the car and the deposit box were rented under the name of Sherry Boyle, an identity she had carefully established over a six month period. The briefcase contained a sheaf of papers about an inch thick, an envelope containing a couple of dozen torn sheets of paper, a small bottle of lighter fluid, and a small box of matches. She removed everything from the case, threw the empty case back into the trunk and closed it. Finally she put her car keys back into the ignition, gathered up the briefcase contents and the athletic bag and walked out to within fifty yards of the water line.

Terry had planned this from the beginning. The money was now mostly in Sherry Boyle’s safe deposit box in Boston. Over the same period, Terry had written several dozen letters to her boss at the bank, Mr. Carlson. Each was carefully contrived so as to make subtle but unmistakable references to their efforts to embezzle funds from customer’s accounts. She had also forged a nearly equal number of letters on bank stationary, addressed to herself, and signed by Mr. Carlson. Then she had carefully cut out key portions of those letters that contained text relating to their conspiracy. The envelope contained these cut out portions. If these letters were even found and recognized as genuine, they would be more than enough to convict both herself and Mr. Carlson of embezzlement. By the time it was discovered, however, Terry would no longer be around to take any part of the blame.

Terry stood at the top of a steep embankment about eight feet above the water, at the base of which was a tongue of dark green, very wet, very flat mud. Surrounding the tongue of mud the light-green of the sluggish river.

"Ah, there they are," she said to herself, noticing several nearly circular areas of very subtle brownish discoloration in the surface of the mud flat. Though she had never been this close, Terry knew from a newspaper report about a year before that these marked pockets of deadly quicksand. The constantly varying currents and water level caused these pockets to shift in location from time to time, but they were always present somewhere, traps for anyone foolish enough to venture out onto the mud flat

Terry made a small clearing on the ground and crumpled up about a dozen sheets of paper.

"Now, Terry," she said to herself, "It’s time to destroy the evidence that incriminates you and Carlson. Too bad for Mr. Carlson you’re so careless."

She dribbled a small quantity of lighter fluid on these and set them on fire. For half an hour she burned sheet after sheet of paper until everything was burned except the envelope and its contents. Next she opened the envelope and proceeded to burn the edges of those incriminating letter fragments, but not so much as to completely obliterate their contents. There would be just enough evidence left behind to make it appear she had tried to destroy the evidence incriminating herself and Mr. Carlson.

Next came the tricky part. Terry was going to commit suicide by sacrificing herself to the quicksand. Or rather, she was going to make it appear as though that was what she had done. She knew she would be missed very soon and her trail would be followed out onto the peninsula and down the embankment. Her shoes would be found stuck in the shallow mud at the base of the embankment and her shirt would be found in the quicksand itself, as though she had tried to use it to escape the mire after changing her mind. The authorities would then discover the burned papers and from them link the embezzled money, to her and Mr. Carlson.

Terry carefully climbed down the embankment. She could feel her pulse in her throat. By now it was nearly dark and the quicksand was a real threat. From the lower angle and in the rapidly fading light, the warning discoloration in the surface was no longer visible. A single misstep could very easily be her last..

"Come on Terry, keep your head," she repeatedly counseled herself.

She took a careful step into the soft, but so far shallow, mud. Her foot sank in only an inch or so but the mud was so slippery she felt she might easily fall in any direction at any moment. The ground around her trembled for several feet in every direction.. She took another step. Her shoes sank in. As she lifted her foot again there was a sucking sound and her shoes were left behind and almost buried in the soft ooze. Step by step she worked her way barefoot out onto the mudflat, keeping her weight on the back foot and carefully probing ahead with the lead foot until solid footing was encountered. Eventually she reached a spot where she could find no solid support after probing halfway up her calf. When she withdrew her leg, a smooth, flat surface reformed almost instantly.

"This is it Terry," she said to herself. "You’re a single step from death by quicksand."

By chance, she looked back along her path and was shaken to the core to see that most of her footprints had vanished. "Oh my God," she said. "Its all quicksand." Apparently, the discolored circles were just the really dangerous, deep spots.

Terry was right at the edge of one of those deadly deep spots. Quickly she partly unbuttoned her blouse, then ripped it open, popping a couple of buttons and slightly tearing the fabric in the process. She threw the shirt into the quicksand, then threw handfuls of mud at it until it was mostly submerged.

"Good-bye Terry," she said with mock sorrow. "What a horrible death!"

Even more carefully than before, she then made her way back to the embankment and up to the top. There she stripped completely naked, put on the clean clothes from the athletic bag, and stuffed the wet, muddy clothes into the bag. As she put on the clean clothes, she became Sherry Boyle. Taking the bag with her, she hiked the four miles back to the motel where the rental car was parked, arriving there at about eleven o’clock.

As the rental car engine started up, Sherry laughed to herself. She had pulled off the perfect crime. She had embezzled nearly three million dollars in six months, converted it all into untraceable jewels and laundered cash, and stashed it safely in another city. She had also destroyed Mr. Carlson in the process. Along with the auditors, Carlson would most likely be the one who would first catch on to her embezzlement scheme, so it seemed deliciously devious to her to frame him. When he caught her he would catch himself.

Sherry drove most of the night, arriving at the Miami airport just after six in the morning.

"Well, Sherry," she said out loud as she turned in to the airport. "You’re going to like being rich. You would have liked Terry too. She was a clever girl. Looked exactly like you."

Sherry returned the rental car and took the airport shuttle to the civil aviation terminal. Six months of expensive flying lessons, all as of Sherry, were now going to pay off. The rental desk was just opening for the day as she arrived.

"Hi, I’m Sherry Boyle," she said to the clerk. "I order a Cessna for a trip to Boston. "I’ll have it for ten days."

"Yes, Ms. Boyle," said the clerk. "It’s gassed and ready. The yellow one at the far end of the line."

She filled out all the necessary papers and filed her flight plan. At seven thirty-two she started the engine and radioed for clearance to taxi. Fifteen minutes later she rolled out onto the runway and took off.

The first leg of the trip took her to a small airport in northern Florida. There she stopped for fuel and, as she had been up all night, a few hours of badly needed sleep. Then she took off again on her way to a life of luxury in Boston.

As Sherry leveled off at 5000 feet she allowed herself to daydream a bit about what she would do. She had already decided to stay strictly away from any involvement in banking or the financial services industry. There was no reason to take any chances of being recognized. She decided she would probably open some kind of small retail business, perhaps an antique shop or maybe a second-hand book shop; just something to provide a convenient explanation for having money without having to put in a great deal of time.

Without any warning the pitch of the engine changed. It sounded slightly uneven, as if miss firing on one cylinder. Sherry looked at her air speed indicator – it was down slightly. She pushed the throttle forward just a bit. Nothing happened for several seconds, then the engine seemed to lose quite a bit or power. She pulled the throttle back and the engine recovered, but it still sounded rough.

Sherry reached behind her seat for her book of maps to look for a nearby airstrip. She knew she should get the plane on the ground immediately and get the engine checked out. She just located the book of maps and had not yet even opened it when the engine dramatically lost power again. The plane began to lose speed and to vibrate badly. She was in trouble. She put the nose down a few degrees, sacrificing altitude in order to preserve air speed. She tried desperately to adjust the engine and get it to run smoothly. If it could not be brought back to useful life quickly, she would have to land or crash. She looked ahead and downward for a landing strip, a road, or even a farmer’s field, but she was over wilderness. There was very little below but forest and north Florida wetland.

The oil pressure warning light came on. A few seconds later the engine seized up completely. She was going down. Several miles ahead and to her left there was a peninsula of dark green that seemed to project out into an area of lighter green punctuated by several more or less circular areas of brown. The dark green area appeared to be free of trees and easily large enough for a controlled crash. There did not appear to be any power lines or other man-made hazards that would turn a crash landing into just a crash. The only made-made feature was a road running parallel to her current flight path on the far side of the light green area. She would like to have tried landing on the road but it was lined with telephone poles and it was probably too far away anyway. She put the plane into a steeper descent to maintain air speed and headed for a point about three quarters of a mile on the side of the clearing opposite from the road. She wanted to get to that point with about 500 feet of altitude and enough air speed to make a ninety-degree turn without stalling. Then she would glide until landing on what now appeared to be was mostly water, as close to the road as she could get.

She was able to reach her targeted turning point at slightly higher than 500 feet. She did a gentle, ninety-degree turn, losing about fifty feet in the process, and headed toward the road. Then she brought the nose up as much as she dared. She kept the place in a slow descent, adjusting the speed by pitching the nose up or down. She reached the clear area. Gradually she flew lower and lower. As she got within less than fifty feet of the water she pulled the nose up in order to slow down. She wanted to contact the ground as slowly as possible without going so slowly she would stall and just nose in at the last minute.

Sherry managed a pretty good crash landing for a pilot with only a few months of experience but it was still pretty rough. The first contact was with a thick clump of tall grasses. This deflected her downward and she smacked the water hard, then bounced into the air again. As the plane came back down the right wing dipped and touched first, digging in to the water and weeds and spinning the plane almost ninety degrees. Then the plane seemed to bounce and spin the other way. The nose dug in and the plane pitched forward, then fell back to a stop. The impact threw Sherry against the cockpit frame. Everything went dark and there was a hard impact on the right side of her head.

It was fully dark outside when Sherry regained groggy consciousness. She raised her hand instinctively to the side of her head. It was wet and sticky. She reached up slowly to the cockpit dome light and flipped the switch. Surprisingly, it came on. She faded back into unconsciousness as she saw the blood.

A small but sudden lurch of the plane brought her back to consciousness about a minute later. She began to try to assess the situation. The plane itself seemed intact as far as she could see, though that was limited to the inside of the cockpit. The plane was pitched severely into a nose down position and banked about thirty degrees to the left. To her great relief, there was no smell or other sign of spilled gasoline. Outside she could see nothing but the moon, now several hours higher in the sky that it had been when she took off. Other than the cut on her head, which was bloody but not deep, she had only a few bruises.

Suddenly the plane lurched. The right wing and the tail fell to a nearly level position and there was a loud splash outside. Sherry was thrown against the right side of the cockpit and narrowly missed banging her head again. Then, as she pushed herself back into an upright position she felt a different motion. The plane was rolling slightly in response to her movement. Sherry was confused for a moment, thinking, perhaps, she was becoming dizzy from her head wound. Then she realized the plane had dropped into water and was floating.

A few moments later water seeping in through vent holes in the floor told her the plane was not floating in water – it was sinking. It was time to get out.

Calmly and deliberately, Sherry operated the door latch on the left side of the plane and pushed. It resisted some, suggesting that the plane’s frame may have been distorted somewhat by the crash, but it moved. She pushed it fully open. She was surprised to see that the bottom of the door was only an inch or so above the ground.

"The wheel supports must have collapsed in the crash", she thought to herself.

Sherry suddenly froze, just as she was about to jump clear of the plane. Something was very wrong – the ground in front of the door was moving.

"What the hell?" she said to herself.

She sat back down, thinking for a moment she was going to pass out again.

Sherry looked again. The ground still seemed to be moving. It was moving very slightly but it was moving. There was a delay of several seconds while her brain tried to make sense of the situation. Then, almost instantaneously, Sherry felt the hair on her arms stand on end and her heart began to pound heavily as the truth dawned on her. The wheel supports hadn’t collapsed. That wasn’t the ground just below the door. It was mud.

"Oh my god, the plane is floating in mud!" Sherry said out loud to herself. "No it’s sinking in mud. It’s sinking in quicksand!"

Visions of her actions the night before flooded Sherry’s mind and confused her. Was this some kind of supernatural retribution for her attempts to use the quicksand back at the river for personal gain at the expense of her boss? Was this a nightmare? She had been up all night. Perhaps she was still sleeping at the little airport north of Orlando. Was this real? Was the plane really sinking in quicksand or was it merely in shallow mud made deeper by her own fears?

The mud was now a little higher and beginning to flow in on the cockpit floor. Whether this was really quicksand or not, the plane was still sinking. How far would it go before it struck bottom? She retreated from the oozing mire, lifting her feet onto the seat.

"This can’t be happening," Sherry screamed. "It has to be a dream; a nightmare. Why can’t I wake up? The dark green peninsula I flew over just before crashing is just a nightmare image of the peninsula in the river. I’ll wake up soon….Why can’t I wake up?"

Sherry’s eyes were fixed on the thick, slowly flowing mud in front of her. The sight made her slightly nauseated, but she could not look away for more than a second or so. The slowly rising mud was like a huge, hungry snake; slowly but inexorably moving, surrounding, and engulfing everything it touched. And it was coming toward her.

The mud rose, relative to the plane, almost imperceptibly; an inch in two or three minutes. Sherry stared with ever-mounting horror as the floor of the plane was covered, as the engine cowling began to be engulfed, as the very seat that held her above the mire grew shorter and shorter.

The plane creaked and groaned as it settled ever deeper. The dome light flickered once, then went out as the mud shorted out its battery connection. The mud rose to within an inch of the top of Sherry’s seat. Still it rose. Sherry shivered with fear.

as the rising mud touched her heel.

"Shit!" she exclaimed.

Now she was galvanized to action. She could not stay where she was or she would very soon be sitting in the mud, inside a sinking cockpit. She had to get out.

Standing on the seat with her back to the outside, Sherry began to climb onto the top of the wing above the cockpit. She tried to use the top edge of the previously opened door for support to lift herself up and over the wing. Her foot slipped on the first attempt and she fell. She caught herself on the cockpit frame, but not before one foot plunged to the knee into the muck.

Sherry pulled to free her leg. The mud let it go slowly and grudgingly, pulling off her shoe in the process and coating her leg in a quarter-inch thick layer of slippery unpleasantness. Instantly she could smell the strong odor of hydrogen sulfide in the mud pulled up from below. Her leg felt heavy and sluggish now. She was able to laboriously climb onto the top of the wing, but she seemed to keep slipping. And it was so dark there were times she wasn’t sure if her eyes were open or closed.

Sherry realized the full hopelessness and helplessness of her situation as soon as she was able to look around from the top of the wing. She was in a prison without walls. The entire plane was completely surrounded by an absolutely flat moat of mud that extended at least twenty feet from the plane in every direction. She had come down smack in the middle of what had to be the biggest quicksand pit in the world. If it was deep enough she was doomed. And it gave every indication of being more than deep enough. Sherry was like a cat driven up a tree by a pack of hunting dogs; wild-eyed with fear and with no idea what to do except wait for her fate. One thing she did understand very well was she did not have long to wait.

Last night she had boldly walked across what she knew to be a bed of quicksand, right to the edge of a pit that would have swallowed her as readily as this one was swallowing her plane. She had been frightened then but had kept it under control. The adventure had even been a bit on the erotic side. But tonight was different. Tonight she was not in control. Tonight carried a sense of deep-seated fate about it that made her tremble with fear.

"Oh please, not this. Not quicksand. I don’t want to die in quicksand," she cried.

Sherry held her position on top of the plane for about an hour. There was not much else she could do. The plane slowly sank deeper. She thought about going out on the right wing and then trying to swim or crawl her way across the quagmire. The distance seemed shortest that way, but it looked impossibly too far. The quicksand would certainly take her under before she got even half way across. In brief periods of mental clarity between episodes of hysteria she reasoned that her best bet was to stay with the plane and hope it struck bottom, And soon.

The mud was now less than a foot from the top of the wing and what was left of the plane seemed to be sinking faster. The plane was clearly going under. Sherry decided to move down the right wing. She had no choice now.

Sherry crept out on the wing in a crouched position. Remembering how the mud had tugged at her leg until it claimed her shoe, she stopped and removed the remaining shoe. The wing began to tilt downward slightly as she moved out, more slowly after its tip touched the mud. She dropped to all fours to avoid slipping off.

As Sherry reached the end of the wing she hesitated. She realized now that no one would ever have believed she could have committed suicide by quicksand. It was much too terrible a way to go. With her weight added, the wing now began to slip downward. She started to retreat back up the wing but it was too late. She lost her balance and slipped off the front edge.

Sherry stepped forward as she slipped. Otherwise she would have landed face down in the mire. Her foot plunged past the knee into mud that was incredibly soft and thick. She tried to lean forward, as if to swim or crawl across the surface, realizing too late she should have allowed herself to land in that position. She was partially successful but one leg was stuck dangerously deep in the mud.

"Oh! Ugh! What miserable stuff." she muttered. "How could anybody willingly go near this stuff."

Sherry was able to crawl forward a few yards but she seemed to bog down deeper with every move. It wasn’t long before she was up to her waist and pretty much stuck in place. She could move her arms and legs or turn her torso around but any movement of her body as a whole was next to impossible. Every time she moved she seemed to sink deeper. The quicksand was up to her ribs, its weight just beginning to make breathing difficult.

"Help! Help me!" she screamed as loudly as possible. "Screaming seemed to help for some reason, probably the same way vomiting relieves nausea, but she knew it would not bring help. It was quite obvious there was no one within miles.

Somewhere Sherry had heard something about not being supposed to move if you were stuck in quicksand. She tried holding as still as she could. It was no use. Every time she breathed, her chest moved. Every time she breathed, she sank just a little deeper. For just a moment, Sherry was able to laugh at her predicament, albeit more from hysteria than a sense of humor.

"You committed the perfect crime," she told herself. "And you condemned yourself to the perfect punishment. You wanted to disappear. Now you’re going to disappear. You wanted everyone to never really know for sure what happened to Terry. Now no one will ever know what happened to Sherry. You killed Terry in quicksand. Now you’re going to die in quicksand."

The mud began to rise around her breasts. The sensation might have been quite erotic in a less lethal setting, warm, wet, and caressing, but she didn’t like it much here. Suddenly, however, Sherry noticed they were starting to float. That gave her just a glimmer of hope.

"Buoyancy," she shouted to herself. "I’m not sinking as fast. Maybe there’s a chance."

Sherry calmed down just a little. She was sinking more slowly now. But she was still sinking.

Gradually the mud rose to Sherry’s armpits and began to slowly claim her shoulders. She realized she was now mired so deeply that she could never escape even if the quicksand didn’t suck her under.

"What I choice. Drown and choke to death now or starve to death later," she said to herself. She was beginning to think the quicksand might be the better option.

A fraction of a millimeter at a time, the mud covered her shoulders and reached her neck. She tried to use her hands and arms to keep her head from sinking deeper. She was not conscious of further downward movement but she clearly was still sinking. Breathing was becoming more difficult too. For a few minutes Sherry’s mind drifted, perhaps as a result of the head wound. She noticed the moon had now climbed to almost directly overhead. It must be past midnight. She did not expect to see the sun rise again. She became aware of the stifling humidity of the place. That didn’t make breathing any easier. Finally, she noticed how extremely quiet it was. The chorus of frogs and crickets of the earlier evening had stopped. It was as though the creatures of the swamp were waiting for something. Were they just sleeping or were they in a silent death-watch.

Sherry recoiled from the touch of the mire on her chin, bending back her neck, straining to stretch her neck, anything to keep the sticky, black goo off her chin and away from her mouth. There was now a small glop of it clinging to her lower jaw just below her chin. She tried to shake it off but it would not fall. She could not wipe it off as her hands and arms were too busy struggling to keep her from sinking under completely. That, of course, was exactly what was going to happen to her as soon as she tired and could no longer struggle effectively. She knew it would not be very long before that happened unless something unexpected happened.

"What a terrible, horrible way to die," she said to herself over and over. "Anything would be better….why not get struck by lightning, run-over by a truck, shot in a hunting accident; anything but quicksand."

The black mud was now just two inches below her nose. It would be almost to her lips if her neck wasn’t tipped backward. She could smell the mud now. It had an odor like powdered rock, earthy and slightly metallic. The odor was mixed with the saturated humidity of the swamp floor and a slight hint of hydrogen sulfide, which bubbled to the surface occasionally from rotting vegetation deep in the muck. She continued to struggle with as much strength as she could muster, but that strength was beginning to ebb. Inexorably she sank deeper.

Sherry was now using her arms and legs together to try to lunge upward. With each lunge she raised herself to a point somewhere between her lips and her chin. She breathed three or four times during each upward lunge, then sank down until the mud was at the corners of her mouth. With her head tipped back as far as it was the mud was also nearly to her eyes as she sank back. She could hear almost nothing as the mud had already filled her ears.

Gradually Sherry was losing her battle with the quicksand and she knew it. She knew what was going to happen but there was nothing she could do to prevent it.

Soon Sherry was able to get only two breaths on each lunge and the time between lunges was becoming longer. The mud was now covering her lips as she sank back between lunges and she was gasping more than breathing when she could get her mouth above the surface. As she raised herself up and gasped, some of the mud on her lips slid into her mouth. It had a texture like thick, slightly lumpy pudding, with just a hint of sandy grit. Unlike pudding, however, it did not dissolve in her mouth. It had no taste but the hydrogen sulfide smell became much stronger with the mud in her mouth. Some of the mud slid down her throat. She sputtered and spat as she came up for another gasp of air. More mud slid from her lips into her mouth. She was able to breathe only once.

"Why doesn’t this end?" Sherry thought to herself. "Why don’t I just stop fighting and get it over with? Why do I struggle so hard for another few seconds of agony?"

But she couldn’t stop struggling. The hunger for air was just too great.

Sherry lunged again. She sputtered and spat out mud and gasped in another breath. Then she sank down again, filling her eyes.

She lunged again. She sputtered and spat and gasped. This time she got only a partial breath before her mouth filled with thick goo. She sank back.

One more time Sherry lunged, but this time she could not clear her mouth of the mud. She coughed, gagged on a glop of mud sliding down her throat, coughed again, and then inhaled reflexively. Her mouth and throat filled with mud.

Sherry knew this was then end. There was nothing she could do to get another breath. She would now choke to death in the quicksand. Still she struggled and thrashed. She felt the mud surrounding and engulfing what was left of her head above the surface. Her lungs began to burn. She reflexively inhaled again, drawing mud deeper into her lungs..

Sherry’s struggle went on for more than a minute under the mud. Gradually she began to fade into semi-consciousness. For a few seconds, what was left of her brain felt a brief sensation of bright light and warmth that gradually just faded away.