by Tom Barber
Richie’s squad sergeant Glick pointed up to a camera in the corner. ‘The brothers and ex-cop rolled in, overpowered the owner then raided the place.’
‘Kept the man behind here but he managed to trigger the emergency alarm,’ Richie said. ‘There’s a button near my foot.’
‘What happened to him?’ Archer asked. Deep down he already knew.
‘Dead. Throat cut open so bad with a blade his head looks like a Pez dispenser. Lot of anger in the way it was done.’
‘Probably because he managed to activate the alarm.’
Richie gestured towards the back. ‘Looks like they left that way. Arriving units found no-one else here.’
Careful not to touch anything, Archer walked across the store and saw a rear exit.
‘Armed teams have been doing door-to-door searches in the suburb,’ Richie continued. ‘Half an hour ago, the Loughlins’ car was found dumped in a parking lot a few blocks south of here. Tag comes back to a thirty two year old from West Virginia. He and his girlfriend were reported missing earlier today; no-showed at a friend’s house in Columbus where they were supposed to be staying this weekend.’
‘Two more dead bodies dumped somewhere to find now too, then,’ Archer muttered.
‘Why’d they leave all this hardware behind?’ one of the other detectives asked, looking at the shelves of guns. ‘Taking too much would slow them down?’
‘Probably, and they’ll have got used to the rifles and twelve gauge they’ve been using,’ Archer replied, remembering the accuracy of the fire aimed at him when he’d arrived at the shootout during the armored truck robbery and also in the bus on the Kanawha Falls Bridge back outside Charleston. The extradition agents Spencer and Harrington, both killed from a distance. ‘All they’d need would be more shells and bullets. Anyone know yet where they got the weapons from in the first place?’
‘Another missing person who got found without a pulse,’ Richie said. ‘Bartender who lives down in Lee County, Virginia. No-showed for work last night, wasn’t answering his phone, so one of the barbacks got sent over to see if he was OK. Found the door unlocked and his body inside on the floor, back of his skull caved in from a fire-log on the floor beside him. We liaised with the sheriff’s department down there, told us they found tufts of beard shaved off in the upstairs bathroom. Kitchen cupboards raided, gun safe in the basement emptied too. Had to have been the brothers, again. A car belonging to an old lady they’d killed earlier was abandoned outside the place.’
Archer swore. ‘I’m losing count of the bodies these guys are stacking up, and they’ve only been out of prison less than thirty six hours.’
‘Just got some info from Morningstar on the two missing deposit boxes and who they belonged to,’ Glick said, having taken a call when his lieutenant was talking to Archer. ‘One’s a divorced wife of some banker doing time in Elkton, the other a woman who runs a redevelopment company in the city. Deputy over on East Superior saying both owners just got to the scene.’
‘Be pretty useful to know what was stolen,’ Archer said.
Richie nodded then whistled to his team to indicate they were leaving. ‘Let’s find out what they had in that truck.’
Every chance you get, you refuel, you rest and you think, Prez had told Nicky while they were sharing the correctional cake in his cell two nights ago, and he was currently working on doing all three.
The Cleveland MC chapter might have helped him get out of Ohio but their leader had made it very clear that this was a temporary deal, so Nicky didn’t want to push his luck or attract unnecessary attention by going out to the campfire to try and find some food. But the meat he could smell cooking was wafting into the junkyard’s office and making his stomach growl. Searching the room, with Kat out cold on the couch having been given some oxycodone the president’s wife had scored off one of the bikers, Nicky discovered a pack of out-of-date mini-donuts in one of the drawers and ate a couple before going next door to fill a mug with water from a basin in a toilet connected to the office.
The food in his stomach and sugar hitting his bloodstream felt immediately revitalizing. Prison had taught him long ago to eat and drink fast, unexpected attacks, strict mealtimes and potential theft meaning a man needed to take any chance he got to consume calories before they were stolen or his tray of food was knocked to the floor, but Nicky made himself chew the donuts at a slower pace while he used the time to think. He’d had to do a hell of a lot of rapid planning in his cell coming up with a method of breakout and then what to do if he finally made it to Cleveland, but knew the challenges to come were going to be far more dangerous and difficult. He’d had the luxury of anonymity for a few hours but by now, his and Kat’s faces would be on every TV screen in Ohio and probably neighboring States as well. He had to adapt and needed a new plan going forward. This was all just getting started.
Wiping powdered sugar off his hands onto his jeans, he went back to the drawers and dug out an old sun-faded map of the Midwest and Eastern US that he’d seen folded up under the box of donuts. As the noise of engines gunning accompanied by shouting reached the office from the fire outside, with his finger he traced the route where they’d made it out of Ohio on Interstate 90. He and Kat were now in upper Pennsylvania; from Cleveland, I-90 kept going somewhere between a diagonal and horizontal in a northeast direction. It cut across the top western edge of PA, past the small city of Erie, and then on into New York State. That roadblock they’d snuck through earlier came back to mind; trying to cross into NY on I-90 by themselves without an MC’s camouflage would be suicidal, but that wasn’t why he was looking at that section of the map. Almost the same length of distance away from where I-90 crossed into NY State was Buffalo and Niagara Falls.
And just north of them both, the Canadian border.
There was no TV in the office, but there was a radio and Nicky turned it on. The channel was playing some rock music on 102.9, but he waited, seeing it was almost time for the hourly news. With every passing thirty minutes, the circle which the Marshals and FBI would think he and Kat could be in would be expanding. It made him feel like a surfer on a small, beaten-up board trying to keep ahead of a giant tsunami chasing him in towards the shore.
He just needed to stay on his feet, keep balanced and focus on where he was going, not where he’d been.
On their way back to the intersection on East Superior, Archer, Richie and Glick were also listening to the news report coming in over the car radio. They were learning that another fugitive from the bus transport attack on the Kanawha Falls Bridge last night had just reached the end of his time on the run.
‘Which one was he?’ Richie asked Archer, as the newsreader gave a dead convict’s name, the man shot dead after taking a hostage at a house in southern Indiana. Archer recognized the last name Briley.
‘Guy who tried to kill me,’ he replied.
‘Seems to be a growing list,’ Glick commented, drawing a smile from both Archer and Richie as they arrived at the intersection.
The three men left the car and walked over to discover a middle-aged woman with a close-cropped haircut gesturing angrily at several hapless US Marshals. ‘-into that thing?’ they heard her ranting as they drew closer, seeing the truck had been hauled upright and was currently being loaded onto a flatbed with chains and a crane. ‘How could you allow this to happen?’ she demanded; as one of the Marshals tried to answer, she noticed Richie, Archer and the other detectives approaching. ‘Who are you?’ she snapped, before seeing their badges. ‘You investigating this?’
‘We’re Robbery-Homicide,’ Richie told her flatly.
‘You know who did this?’
‘Looks like five people were in on it. Four of them are dead.’
‘The fifth?’
‘She was shot during the robbery. We’re searching for her.’
‘She’s injured that bad, you got all these people looking for her but she’s still out there somewhere with my property?’
‘She’s been re
ceiving some help.’
‘This bitch have a name?’
‘Katherine O’Mara. Is that familiar to you?’
‘What did you say?’ The group turned and saw another woman standing nearby; she was a similar age but in contrast to the other deposit box owner, was far calmer. ‘Did you just say Katherine O’Mara?’
‘Which box was yours, Miss?’ Archer asked the first woman before anyone could reply.
‘The one with my money and jewelry in it, asshole,’ she snapped, before getting on her cell phone and walking off to one side.
‘Kat O’Mara, yeah,’ Richie said, walking over to the other woman. She was around fifty years old by Archer’s guess, with sleek, long dark hair, and was dressed in a crisp white blouse and slim-fit jeans. He recalled from when he was in the gun store that she’d been described as someone with a property redevelopment company based in the city. ‘You own the other deposit box?’
‘I do. I’m Blair O’Mara. Kat’s my stepdaughter.’
‘Your stepdaughter?’ Richie asked, as surprised as Archer and Glick.
‘Afraid so. I was outside the city all day. Didn’t hear about what happened until I just got back. I heard you tell that woman four others are dead?’
Archer nodded. ‘What was in the deposit box?’
‘Something personal to me.’
‘Could you be more specific? It might help us understand why just two boxes were taken from the truck.’
‘Some valuables,’ she replied vaguely, clearly not prepared to tell them anything more just yet.
‘Yeah, we sort of assumed that,’ Glick answered dryly.
‘When’s the last time you spoke to your stepdaughter?’ Richie cut in, not wanting to set this woman off too after seeing the look she gave his sergeant.
‘About a year ago. Every time I think she’s reached rock bottom, she gets a shovel and digs a little bit deeper.’ Her eyes shifted around the intersection, the glass fragments still on the concrete, bloodstains visible from where four of the five thieves were killed. ‘I can’t believe she was involved in this.’
‘Your daughter’s the one who got shot?’ the other woman snapped, still on her phone call but clearly with one ear on the conversation.
‘Stepdaughter,’ Blair corrected, as Richie nodded at two of his detectives who walked over to the other woman to distract her so they could continue the conversation with Blair uninterrupted.
‘You haven’t caught the news all day?’ Archer asked.
‘No, I was at a spa. Turned my phone off. No TV or radio allowed.’
‘Kat didn’t escape by herself,’ Richie told her. ‘A man showed up at the shootout and picked her up before driving off. They’ve both disappeared into the city somewhere.’
‘She mixes with a lot of lowlifes these days. You have any idea who he was?’
‘Guy called Nicky Reyes.’
Archer was watching Blair carefully to gauge her reaction to this piece of information and saw total astonishment. ‘He’s meant to be in prison?’ she said.
‘He broke out,’ Archer told her. ‘So if Kat’s your stepdaughter, is he your stepson?’
‘No, absolutely not. That young man is a murderer.’
‘She gonna make it?’ a voice asked and Reyes swung round on his seat, having been listening to the radio in the Pennsylvanian scrapyard office. One of the bikers from the Cleveland chapter was standing in the doorway, a black baseball cap back-to-front on his head and a bottle of beer in his hand as he looked at Katherine on the couch.
Nicky didn’t answer, turning down the dial on the radio. ‘How’s the party?’ he asked as he saw the biker wasn’t alone, one of his friends on the steps behind him.
‘Good.’ The biker eyed up Kat. ‘Wanted to see how my oxy was doing. Knocked her right out, huh?’ Pause. ‘We were gonna smoke up. Wanna join?’
‘Nah, I’m set.’
‘This weed’s like nothin’ you ever had, man. The Yinzer VP out there grows it himself.’
Nicky gave a nod at Kat. ‘I’m looking after her.’
‘Don’t look like much you can do for her right now. Come take a break. We ain’t gonna bite. No-one’s gettin’ near your girl.’
Nicky heard shouting and laughter from the campfire outside, the group currently focused on partying rather than the two fugitives hiding in the office. The Cleveland president seemed to have a lot of respect for Nicky’s old cellmate and couldn’t imagine that he’d let him or the injured woman come to harm under his watch. Not yet, anyway. Nicky still had six or seven hours before the sun came up and their temporary deal was over.
‘Guess I could use a walk,’ he said, rising from his seat. He stopped at the door, the biker having stepped aside for him to go first, but Nicky waited and the man took the lead, the other one already walking down the steps. Instead of heading over to the campfire, the bikers led the way deeper into the trees; the second man opened a beer and offered it to Nicky who declined again.
‘So what’s your deal?’ the one who’d invited him out there asked, sparking a blunt as the other man finished his Yuengling, throwing the empty bottle into the bushes before starting on the one Nicky had rejected. ‘Where you goin’ next?’
‘Dunno. Taking this all one minute at a time.’
‘Bossman didn’t tell us much, just that we were gonna help you out. But after I had some of my oxy taken, I got real curious.’ He nodded to his friend. ‘Pickett there told me all about you.’
‘I was watching TV before we rode out the city,’ Pickett said. ‘You broke outta prison in Virginia, then helped your girl in there take down that bank truck this morning.’ He drank the beer, his eyes remaining on Nicky. ‘How much you come away with?’
‘Not sure. It’s her stash. I’m just holding onto it until she recovers.’
‘Take a hit,’ the other biker said, offering the blunt again.
‘I told you, man. I’m good.’
‘You don’t like weed?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
The biker smiled and went back to the joint, but Nicky noticed he wasn’t inhaling deep, just catching and releasing which meant the dope wouldn’t be affecting him that much. ‘They got a radio playing in the main shop,’ Pickett said. ‘Marshals just put a sixty thousand dollar bounty on you and the girl.’
‘Changed my mind, I’ll take a beer if you got another.’ The biker smiled and pulled another bottle from the inside of the jacket under his cut before passing it over. ‘Bounty doesn’t mean much,’ Nicky said, opening the screwcap. ‘It ain’t gonna be collected.’
‘So how much is in that bag you and your girl had with you?’ Pickett persisted. ‘We saw you give the boss some bills after we got here.’
‘I told you, that’s her money, not mine.’
‘We could take some of it. Like sixty grand. We do that, you might not get shipped to the Feds.’
‘Not sixty,’ the weed smoker said. ‘120. For both of ’em, remember.’
‘Your president promised my celly that me and the girl make it clear of here by morning. You think he’s gonna let you take us to the cops?’
‘If you attacked us, he’s not gonna care,’ the weed smoker said.
Sounds from the woods at night and the distant noise from the campfire swelled the silence that followed.
Condensation from the still-cold beer ran down onto Nicky’s hand.
‘You wanted to smoke some of that wet weed,’ Pickett said. ‘Hit you bad and you tried to come after us. Forced me to drop you. Prez won’t mind too much once we get 120 for you and the bitch. Shit, might just keep the whole ba-’
Nicky hit the first biker over the head with a wrench he’d slipped out of his pocket while they were talking; it was the same one he’d used to break open the deposit box when they’d arrived, having decided to hold onto it just in case. As the biker hit the dirt, Pickett threw his beer at Nicky and pulled a pistol from his belt, but the prison fugitive caught the second biker’s hands as he tried to br
ing the firearm up. The hammer came down, the metal snapping into his finger, biting into the skin as Nicky stifled a shout of pain. The gun fell to the ground, ripping part of the webbing on his hand and Pickett went for it again, but Nicky picked up the full bottle he’d just dropped and smashed the biker over the head with it, the impact shattering the glass with a spray of beer and sending Pickett to the ground near his friend, both of them now laid out.
The only one left standing, Nicky quickly looked over towards the bonfire. The noise of the party had stayed at the same pitch, meaning none of the other bikers were aware of the fight. He shook his hand out, the skin bleeding from being trapped by the gun’s hammer, and dropped down to check the pair for weapons, finding another pistol. He also discovered an orange pill bottle half full of oxycodone tablets, returned to the biker after Kat had been given a dose, which Nicky slipped into his pocket. Both men were still breathing, which was good; he didn’t want to add second degree murder to his rap-sheet. Nicky grabbed Pickett and dragged him thirty feet or so deeper into the woods, then went back for his friend before taking a knife from Pickett’s belt.
A couple of minutes later, the two bikers were bound, gagged and tied with their backs to the same tree, Nicky having ripped strips and the sleeves from their shirts and removed their jeans and bootlaces to secure them, leaving their cuts undamaged and dropped on their laps. Collecting their handguns and taking the ball cap the first one he’d hit had been wearing, Nicky rapidly made his way back through the undergrowth then stopped by an old fallen tree.
He reached inside and found the holdall where he’d hidden it earlier, the money and jewelry boxes still inside. He pulled it out, emptied the contents of the deposit box into the bag, then zipped it shut and looped the strap over his shoulder, leaving the now-empty Morningstar deposit box in the decaying tree trunk instead. He looked at the pistols in his hands, and after a moment’s thought, placed them in there as well.
When he reached the edge of the clearing again, he walked as casually as he could back towards the office. No-one at the camp paid him any attention. He went inside to find Kat was still where he’d left her and just waking up. Still partially doped up, she tried to rise but fell back against the cushions, gasping in pain. Nicky moved forward to help her but as he did, saw something pinned to a corkboard that he’d missed earlier.