Cutting Loose, page 26
That first day, she had looked around her bedroom and the small bathroom and shower. Those things, those objects―the tongue-and-groove boards, the light fittings, the sink with its particular curves, every small item―would become her life.
“Mrs. Pruett, this is just fine.”
“Etta, please. There’s work locally, honey. That’s not a problem.”
“Oh, great.”
“If you want, I’ll talk to a friend of mine, see if Walmart has a vacancy. I’m pretty sure they do.”
“Thank you, Etta. That would be kind.”
The work was bone-crushingly boring. It was a shell, though; it was cover. Then the years started to pile up; a few gray hairs appeared; and the cover started to eat like acid into her being. She was a crazy terrorist; she was a nobody behind a cash register; and the nobody was starting to win. Her choices were few. It was not a question of money: she had enough from the past that she kept in another bank, though that was her disaster fund. It was the need to fall off the radar. There in Fairfield, or anywhere, she could only be nobody. She could only be Marie.
For all that, she had peace of a sort and she had a place to lay her head. The Pruetts in time became her family. Loomis and Etta were parents who never judged. They were as steady as rock. Their company was an embrace. Had she been taken in by the world she had rejected? One morning she woke and realized she loved them. Her cheeks were wet.
Sometimes she would lie in bed and wonder where Carey was. Perhaps she no longer existed, and the person behind the eyes had truly become Marie Pruett.
Then, one evening, Etta called up the stairs. “Hon, it’s Emmett. Emmett who came calling.”
She looked over the banisters.
“What?”
“On TV. Come see.”
A body lay there in a backyard like a bundle of rags; a car was on its side beyond; and a second body lay to one side.
“You missed Emmett. They’ll show it again, for sure.”
“Glad there’s no close-ups,” said Loomis. “That’s a grim scene.”
“Did Emmett shoot them?”
“No,” said Etta. “He came along after. The one nearest, right there, you won’t believe it.”
“What’s his name?”
“Sol Monckton.”
Carey sank into a chair.
“They kidnapped Monckton,” said Loomis. “He did for them both, but he stopped a bullet.”
She was stunned into silence.
“Studio anchor said he had cancer. He was dying.”
“All those years,” said Etta. “Like that guy who parachuted from the plane. And now it’s over.”
The story was repeatedly endlessly on KCTV. Emmett’s face would be there; the images would be there; the studio talking heads with their off-the-peg opinions would be there, and always the knowledge was there in her heart, that Sol, unbelievably, was dead―Sol with the slight smile and that ducking motion of the chin, Sol with the inner reserve that lit him up, Sol always so sure of the way forward, Sol who had crossed the Rio Grande with her, Sol who was indestructible, Sol lying there in the dirt.
Finally, she needed fresh air. The walls were closing in.
She drove west into country that stretched to eternity. A tractor driver, swinging out from a dirt path, blared his horn at her, and she hugged the verge of the blacktop. Where the dry ditches on each side ended, she left the road and parked. She caught sight of herself in the rear-view mirror and saw haunted eyes looking back at her.
What had happened? Those two, Touchette and Wetherspoon―lowlifes, trash―had somehow cut Sol’s trail. There had to be a reason for their actions; and the reason was money. What else could it be? They thought Sol would lead them to a bonanza.
She heard herself saying, no, no. Please.
There was only one possibility: she, Carey Astaire, was the bonanza. She was the crock at the end of their rainbow. She stumbled out of the car, and knelt on the side of the road.
What had they done to him? They must have tortured him to surrender what he knew. He was dying of cancer, but he had not relented; more than that, he had killed them, sent them straight to hell, and he had done it for her.
He had died that way for her.
She buried her face in her hands and wept.
Her plans for a quick escape were already in place. Time was running out. The past was on her doorstep. She could not let Etta and Loomis be swallowed by her personal disaster. They had endured enough with Mack. It had been crazy to come back to the U.S. In South America she would still be just another expat lotus-eater.
She transferred money from her disaster fund to Rio de Janeiro, keeping enough for transport, motels, and incidental expenses, and reorganized her emergency bag. It contained a passport in a third name. In that name, she booked an open ticket from San Antonio to Rio. Four days after seeing that newscast, she was ready to go. The next day, Wednesday, she would drive to San Antonio and catch her plane. All that remained was that final conversation with Etta and Loomis. Over everything hung the fact of Sol’s death. She owed it to his memory to make a clean getaway.
Tuesday afternoon passed second by second. She worked on inventory in back and at checkout. It seemed scarcely believable that, after so long, everything was about to change. Dorothy, on the next till, brought her up to speed on how Edna and Joe’s extension was going. The ding of the tills was like a dentist’s drill. The guy demonstrating the floor polisher began his patter once again. At length, at five o’clock, she locked her cash drawer and took off her blue jerkin in back. This was goodbye. She rested her head for a moment on the locker door, then walked out.
The heat had started to leave the sun. It would be a pleasant evening. She sighed and crossed the lot to her Toyota. A large white van was next to it, just blocking her door. The other side of the Toyota was close to a wall. She saw a boy a few yards away.
“Hey, tell me, d’you know whose this is?”
The boy shook his head and walked away.
Someone was coming round the back of the van. She turned. He was about six feet two, dressed in a cheap, dark suit with no necktie, and old sneakers. His face was gaunt and he was completely bald.
“In your way?”
“Yeah. Be a nice guy and give me some room.”
The voice was familiar. Surely she knew it. He smiled.
“Sure, Carey,” he said, and raised a stun gun and fired.
SEVENTEEn
Emmett, pounding the wheel, his foot hard down on the accelerator, put his siren on to move a truck out of his way. The trucker obliged and raised a hand. There were ten more miles to Sefton. There was no use calling for backup. He would be there before anyone else could get there. He turned the siren off. Why tell bad guys you were in the vicinity?
Carey Astaire, after all these years, was there in a damn Walmart store. He had talked to her, there in the Pruetts’ home―that quiet, reserved woman with the dowdy clothes and no makeup, the most celebrated female fugitive of them all, right there, three feet away from him. Sweet Jesus, it was incredible. She was, without question, the M. Pruett who had signed the register in the motel in Waco, who had robbed those banks in California, bust out of Delaney, and then simply disappeared, with not a whisper of her whereabouts for thirteen years.
What had she said? “Why, I’m driving Emmett away?”
He was dumb beyond comprehension. He had been looking for a woman, for Christ’s sake, and there she was in front of him.
Who was she―the wild, bank-robbing chick with the drop-dead looks, or the blank-faced woman rooming in Fairfield?
A pickup truck put its nose forward from a side road, then braked abruptly as Emmett passed. A sign said there were four miles to Sefton. A white van passed him, traveling at a steady speed. He passed outlying houses, a carpentry shop, and the Fire Department with a truck on the forecourt, then he was into Sefton, and Walmart was there, on his right.
He drove in. That time he had visited the Pruetts, he had seen her tan Toyota as he left: there it was, on the far side of the lot.
He parked at the store entrance and ran in. A store employee with teased hair looked at him, and he said, “Where’s Bill Hurley?”
“Right there.”
“That would be me, sir.”
He was a guy in his thirties with a relaxed manner, helping to stack toilet paper.
“Bill, I called, asking where Marie Pruett was.”
“That was you?”
“That was me. Where is she?”
“Clocked off, sir. May I help?”
“How long ago?”
Hurley looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes.”
He ran out into the lot. It had happened: Carey and Max Lindemann had met. Why else would her Toyota still be there? He grabbed the composite of Norm Sanders from a file in his car. Looking round, he saw a black woman with two kids putting groceries in the trunk of a Mazda.
“Ma’am, does this face look familiar?”
“Nope. Can’t say it does.”
There was only one other person in the lot, a boy aged about thirteen. He had hair combed forward and large eyes. Emmett showed him the picture.
“Have you seen this person?”
“Could be.”
“Here?”
“Could be. Lee dee and the rest. It was his.”
“What?”
“Lee dee. And the rest.”
“Listen, son, this is important.”
“I guess.”
Emmett looked around. A woman was approaching the vehicle where the boy stood. She had a harassed air and was pushing a trolley.
“Can I help, officer?”
“I have reason to think someone may have been kidnapped here.”
“Oh, no!”
“I have a picture. Does this look familiar?”
“No, I’m afraid it doesn’t. Paulie, do you know this person?”
“Could be.”
“Officer, my son is autistic. I hope you’ll understand.”
“Okay, that’s like . . . “
She sighed. “He has certain difficulties.”
“Paulie,” said Emmett. “Please take a second look. This is important.”
“I was telling.”
“Sir, he has his own way of saying things.”
“Uh huh. What I need is information on this person right here.”
“Paulie, did you see anything?” she said.
“I was saying.”
“Okay. Say it again,” said his mother.
“Lee―”
“Jesus, please, Paulie,” said his mother. “Say it straight.”
The boy looked at him and said, “LDR 2783.”
“That’s the van?”
“Van. Him.”
“The guy here in the picture?”
“A woman there, she talked to me.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked me.”
“Asked what?”
“Who owned the van.”
“Why ?”
“She couldn’t get out.”
“Then what?”
“I said, no.”
“No, meaning you . . .”
“Didn’t know who owned the van.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I walked away. That’s when I saw him on the other side of the van, getting out. So then I knew it was his. The van.”
“What happened after that?”
“I went over to my mom’s car and worked on algebra in my head.”
“Did you see them together?”
“No.”
“Anything else about the van?”
“Ford Econoline 150. Double side-doors.”
“What color was it?”
“White.”
“Thanks.”
He had seen a white van as he drove in. He ran to his car and grabbed the intercom.
“I need information on a white Ford Econoline 150, plate number LDR 2783.”
“That may take a while, Officer.”
“Listen, this is an emergency. Forget everything else. Get on this.”
“Understood. Will do.”
Emmett took a crowbar over to the Toyota. There was nothing inside. He levered the trunk and saw a bag. It contained clothes, an airline ticket, a passport, and money. He took it and ran.
He turned left fast out of the lot. The van had been four miles from Sefton, traveling at about thirty mph, so it would be perhaps eight to ten miles ahead―if it was the right van. He racked his memory. An Econoline was a sizable vehicle with no side or back windows behind the driver. The one he had seen had had that slab-sided look, but whether it was the right van or not did not matter: it was his only lead. The composite did not resemble photographs of Lindemann, but that was not the effect of plastic surgery: it was just time that had given him that raw, flayed appearance. The knowledge that both of them, Astaire and Lindemann, were in that Ford Econoline seemed beyond the scope of reality.
The only place Lindemann could possibly be going was somewhere he would feel safe to act in whatever way he wished. Wherever that place was, it would not be listed under the name Norm Sanders. There had to be another name. The license plate of the Econoline was not under the name Sanders, or Lou Bosco would have found it.
How far away could that place be? Would Lindemann be driving long distances across state borders? If he lost contact, and if both of them fell off the map, Emmett knew he would have no way to explain it away, but, if he lifted the intercom and gave their data, he would lose control of the case. Others would likely get there first. They would be shot. It would be over. That was impossible: the case could not end that way. He knew his ego was involved and that it clashed with his duty; but he also knew in his bones he had to be there at the end.
Later, perhaps, he would make that call. For the present, he would wait for a response to the license plate. Soon enough, he was passing the Pruetts’ place again. He had not caught up with them: Lindemann must have taken another route. He thumped the wheel in frustration. As he reached for the intercom, it squawked.
“Officer, I have information relating to that tag.”
“Okay.”
“The name it’s registered to is Leonard Mahon, address, 18 Congreve Street, Lewiston. Do you wish me to dispatch vehicles to that address?”
He took a deep breath. The moment had come to define his moves. “No. I need to get there first. Other vehicles could compromise the situation. But have them apprised they’ll be needed when I give the word. This is a kidnapping and the perpetrator is armed and dangerous.”
“Understood.”
He grabbed a map and found Lewiston. It was thirty miles south of his location. Incredibly, Lindemann’s place was no more than sixty miles from Sefton. He reversed, drove back a few miles, and took the turn right toward Lewiston.
He drove as fast as those back roads would permit, hitting the horn to move the occasional vehicle out of the way. Lindemann would be perhaps ten miles miles ahead in spite of his legal speed.
It was bare country, scoured by the elements. He passed the occasional ranch, a deserted mine, and a ghost town cut adrift by a newer road off to the west.
Lewiston proved to be little more than a few houses, a general store, and a gas station. Congreve Street lay beyond. He took the second right at an intersection beyond the town limits, and drove on into that bleak land. The sun by then was just above the horizon. After twenty minutes he came to it.
A mail box bore the number 18. A dirt track went south across flat, dry country toward a clapboard house about a hundred yards away. Emmett turned onto it, knowing he was immediately an easy target for anyone with a rifle, but his choice was simple: do nothing or do something. He needed one of them alive before a jury.
He paused fifty yards from the house. If the Ford Econoline was there, it was in a garage set to one side. The building had three stories. A porch ran along the front. At some time it had belonged to a person of means before its decline began. All was silence and dead, baked air. Sash windows were shut. Curtains were pulled back. The front door was closed. A cat sidled round a corner.
He slowly drive forward until he was no more than ten yards from the porch, then he braked and quietly opened the car door. He drew his Smith and Wesson .357, and slipped out.
He went up the four steps to the porch and gently turned the door knob. It was unlocked.
She was swimming upward. Seaweed clung to her limbs. Whispers flickered around her. She tried to kick free. Water seemed to have filled her lungs in a dim half-world where the dead and the living mixed. Which was she? Shapes curled and receded. The whispers were the traces of a language she did not know.
Then words began to take shape. Images began to form. A face was above her.
“Ga . . . ga . . .”
Then that flayed face she remembered from earlier was wavering above her.
“Care . . . come on up.”
Nausea engulfed her as she hit the surface. No, it was not him. It could not be.
“Carey, welcome.”
Vomit rose in her throat. She tried to move but she was fixed by her arms and feet. The face above her was distorted as in a wide-angle photograph. It was all eyes and nose and the texture of the skin. As it moved it flared at the edges. This was the stranger who came round the back of the van. What had happened? He had lifted his arm and spoken. Her stomach churned as the face dipped and swayed―the skin that seemed to be all nerve ends; the bald head; the blue-gray eyes; and no, no―he was not a stranger. Dear God, those eyes were the same.
“That’s right, Carey. Thirteen years? Oh my oh my.”
She swallowed to get the vomit from her mouth. It was Max who was not Max; it was Max who had melted and reformed and become this otherness in the strange clothes. He was smiling.
“What happens to people, Carey? Do we become more ourselves or less? Time eats us alive. Nothing is forever. There you were behind the till. Who’d’ve thought? Slickest chick I ever met. Great ass and tits, legs that go all the way up. And that look in the eyes―what was that look? What did it say? You don’t get to fuck me. I’m too cool, I’m too hot. I’m special. Oh yes, I’m Carey Astaire, my dad is a millionaire, I’ve got attitude to spare, the world can come to me on my terms.”
