by Tom Barber
His trigger finger ready, their sergeant who was third in the line nodded to the lead officer.
He swung the ram back and smashed it into the door before standing back, making way for the other officers behind him to breach the room.
THIRTY SIX
Almost a full month earlier, Kat O’Mara walked through the door of her apartment in the Clark-Fulton area of Cleveland, then locked it behind her. Her roommate was home and was just stirring a sauce into some pasta. Erica Till was thirty three years old and Kat’s former cellmate from the women’s State prison at ORW but unlike her, had found herself on the wrong side of the law since she was a kid. Erica’s brother Vaughn was also a habitual criminal, same as their aunt and uncle who’d brought them up. For some, it was a calling. But despite this, the two women were good friends.
‘Hey girl,’ she said, before stopping what she was doing when she saw Kat’s face. ‘What happened?’
‘I got fired.’
Erica stopped stirring the sauce. ‘Again?’
‘Manager said it wasn’t working out.’
‘How can’t it, serving tables? You’ve been busting your ass.’ Instead of answering, Kat threw her bag onto the floor and covered her face with her hands. Erica put the pasta and sauce on the backburner then went over to give her friend a hug.
‘You gotta be able to complain or something,’ Erica told her a few minutes later, both of them now in the tiny living room. ‘They can’t have a good reason not to keep you.’
‘What can I do, go to Human Resources? It was a waitressing job.’
‘Screw ’em,’ Erica said, collecting a bottle of cheap wine from the fridge and pouring herself a glass. With her history Kat no longer drank, except on very rare occasions, so Erica fetched her a soda. ‘You’ll find something better.’
Kat didn’t answer, taking the can and looking at it without really seeing it. She placed the Coke down and went into the kitchen to get a glass before picking up the bottle and pouring herself a slug of wine too. Erica watched in surprise and with slight concern but didn’t say anything. It spoke to her just how wound up her roommate was. ‘You really think something better is out there? The way things have been going?’
Erica didn’t answer for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Nicky gets out the week after Labor Day,’ Kat said, before taking a mouthful of wine. ‘I’ve got nothing for him, after all this time. Not even a few bucks to pay him back for what he did, or help him move on into a new life. He needs a roof over his head and I’m not even gonna be able to pay the rent on this place soon.’
‘You’ve done everything you could.’
‘And I keep on failing.’
‘What about your inheritance?’
‘I still can’t get access to it. I checked.’ Erica had known Kat for five years; they came from vastly different backgrounds, Kat’s one of privilege and her roommate’s just the opposite, but sharing a cell, they’d had to look out for one another and had become sympathetic to the other’s struggles, the basis for their unlikely friendship. After being arrested and given eighteen months for her benzo addiction, Kat had finally got clean and left prison with a simple desire to earn a living and stay out of trouble, the ultimate goal being to climb her way back to where her life had once seemed to have been heading, a successful young woman with her life ahead of her. And with the comfort of knowing she had the financial support of her father’s legacy if she ever needed it.
But Erica knew Kat’s inheritance had been withheld from her ever since she’d been convicted and sent to prison, the details of that situation murky. And since ORW, every time Kat had managed to find a job the place had canned her within a few weeks, or if she was lucky, after three or four months. She’d been forced to lower her sights to eventually end up where she was now, getting fired from minimum wage employment. It just never seemed to work out.
‘He’ll be looking at shitty jobs for the rest of his life too and getting treated like something someone stepped in,’ Kat said, draining more of her wine. ‘My luck’ll rub off onto him. He doesn’t deserve that. I don’t know how he’ll deal with it.’
‘He’s made it almost twelve years in Gatlin. Says a lot about what he can handle. And he’s always sounded smart when you talk about him. He’ll find something.’
‘He lost over a decade of his life for me,’ Kat said. ‘It’s my fault he’s in there. I wanted to repay him and let us both live a good life, but I got nothing.’ She put the glass of wine down, her hands shaking, and Erica watched her with concern. It was becoming very clear her friend had almost reached breaking point and Erica knew the temptation to fall back into addiction was growing. Things were bad. And they weren’t getting any better.
But Erica couldn’t provide an answer Kat wanted to hear. The reality of the world that the two women had rejoined from prison, like many other inmates before them had discovered, was that it was a bleak one. Minimum wage jobs, just enough to cover rent in bad rooms in shitty apartments in shitty parts of town. For the girl whose father had gone from serving time in the joint himself to becoming a multi-millionaire building and growing a successful business, and knowing she’d been near the top of the roll her senior year before things had fallen apart, Kat felt like she was living someone else’s life, not hers.
‘Blair won’t help you out at all? Don’t you have a claim to the estate or something?’
‘No, she’s long done with me. And I can’t afford a good enough lawyer to fight my case and regain control of my inheritance. I’d probably lose anyway, living like this, and she’s got all that money behind her.’
‘What about your stepsister?’
‘Alaina? We’re friendlier. She’s snuck me a few hundred bucks here and there when I’ve been desperate, but she’s not gonna do anything to piss off her mom. Blair’ll freeze her out too. She can be a real bitch.’
Erica didn’t answer; despite the way she was feeling and her own concerns, Kat immediately picked up there was something on her friend’s mind. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘Something up?’
‘I haven’t told you yet,’ Erica said. ‘I don’t know how you’re gonna take this.’
Kat put down her glass. ‘Try me. I’m listening.’
‘I remember you telling me a while back you’ve got something that could solve all your problems, right? A deposit box at the Morningstar in Public Square. Left to you by your father.’
Kat didn’t answer at first. Whatever she’d been expecting Erica to say, it wasn’t this. ‘Doesn’t matter. I can’t get to it.’
‘Why?’
‘When I went into rehab before ORW, Blair was worried I’d spend everything I had on drugs, like we just said. Back when she still cared. She presented a case to the judge and everything of substantial value that I owned was signed over to her in trust until I was considered fit and not a danger to my own health and wellbeing. I don’t get access restored to any of it until they rule I’m OK.’
‘But you keep getting fired?’
‘That’s not Blair’s fault. That’s on me.’
‘But she has access to everything, then?’
‘Except that deposit box. She can hold it but not get into it.’
‘How are you so sure?’
‘She doesn’t have a key. I do.’
‘They let you keep it?’
‘Why not? It’s worthless until the box is returned. They won’t let me inside the vault; I tried. If she wanted to get to what’s inside, they’d have to break the box open. Wish her luck explaining that and convincing a judge it was for my own good.’
‘But it’s at the Morningstar downtown, right?’
Kat nodded, looking at her friend curiously.
‘My brother got out of Elkton a few months ago. He shared a cell block with an investment banker while he was in there. Said the guy used to bitch and moan about a load of money he’d had to give his ex in a divorce. Over four million dollars’ worth of stuff in total. Cash, family
heirlooms, jewelry. Just after their divorce was finalized she told him it was staying in the deposit box at the Morningstar they’d used when they were still married. They both knew she’d move it before he got out. Salt in the wound and all.’
‘The boxes are held in the vault,’ Kat said, seeing where this was going. ‘I’ve got a better chance of becoming mayor than you all would of getting access.’
‘The bank’s been under renovation. All the boxes were moved to another location, and they’re being returned to the branch on Labor Day Saturday.’ She made eye contact with Kat. ‘I was gonna ask you what number your deposit box was and get it back for you.’
‘What? Why?’
‘We’re hitting the truck. Four of us. The banker’s ex has got four million plus in that box, waiting to be taken. I can get yours at the same time.’
‘You’d do that for me?’
She nodded. ‘I want you to get out of here like me. Score one over this bitch who abandoned you, take back what’s yours and leave Ohio forever. Dump everything in the past, start off somewhere fresh. Take Nicky with you.’ She smiled. ‘And maybe think about giving me a cut on your way out.’
Kat rose and started to pace. ‘This is a bad idea,’ she said, echoing the same concerns Nicky would share once she ended up being convinced of this plan herself. ‘Judge and juries go all-in on armed robbery. This could be twenty five years inside. What happens if someone dies? You could get the needle.’
‘You don’t get a shot like this often. We’re gonna take it.’
‘For a million each, split four ways?’
‘Hell of a lot more than I got right now, girl.’
‘You’re surviving.’
‘Yeah, right, look at where we are.’ Erica tipped back her glass and swallowed the remainder of her wine. ‘The contents of that box belong to you, not your stepmom. Risk twenty years to get it back, or spend them living in shit-boxes like this getting fired from bussing tables the rest of your days.’
Kat noticed her friend was staring at her intently, then realized. ‘That’s not the only reason. You want my help to pull it off, don’t you?’
Erica nodded. ‘We need one more person. Someone we can trust. With the chance to get your stuff back, I thought you’d be interested. Vaughn doesn’t need to know how much you got in that deposit box and neither do I. But you help us out, it’s all yours.’ She rose and caught her friend by the shoulders, stopping her pacing so she could look her in the eye. ‘We need you, girl. And you can’t keep going like this. I can’t either.’
Kat had slept on it badly for a few days, but after getting her final wages from the diner which, once bills were covered, didn’t leave enough to eat for the month, decided she’d had enough.
She was in.
The lingering doubt and fear in her mind was outweighed by her desperation; she’d reached the end of her tether. Every turn she seemed to take in her life led to a dead end. Visiting Nicky to tell him where to meet her over the Canadian border once he got out had gone exactly the way she’d expected, but she’d made up her mind by that point. Nothing he said was going to deter her. She could finally see some light at the end of the long dark tunnel that had been the last thirteen years. It was either do something right now, or fall back into addiction, numbing herself to life and giving up on any kind of hope.
The day of the heist, the last she ever planned to be in Cleveland for the rest of her life, she’d left their apartment through the back door and rear alleyway early to get picked up, unknowingly ditching her federal surveillance positioned out front, and the thieves hit blackjack on East Superior Avenue but at a price. Erica, Vaughn and the others had all been killed right in front of her, but then she’d been chased down and shot by one of the giant men in CHPD uniform.
After she’d managed to find the strength to reach the protection of a mail bin and slumped against it, she looked down to see a small hole in her top with red seeping out around it, starting to soak her sweater, specks of blood on the concrete beside her. As she started going into shock, but still keeping hold of the strap of the bag which had just cost so dear, she suddenly felt herself being helped up. She’d opened her eyes and stared in numbed confusion at Nicky’s familiar face as he’d carried her away.
She’d thought she’d been hallucinating, but she hadn’t. Nicky being here was real, and then so was the pain. Between that moment and when the doctor in Erie had performed the two procedures on her, the agony between doses of oxycodone had been intensifying until she could think of nothing else, her ability to breathe becoming harder and harder. All she’d wanted to do was pass out, to make the torture stop and for this to end.
She vaguely remembered Nicky ditching a car before carrying her from one place to another. She’d had nothing for the pain until a group of bikers had shown up and one of them gave her that first dose of oxy which had helped. Their arrival had felt unreal, once again making her think she was dreaming.
Or dying.
She’d been in a daze when they’d ridden with the group, not even aware they’d stopped for a roadblock, then had lost consciousness again until she’d woken up on a couch somewhere. But post the removal of the bullet, the reinflation of her lung, more painkillers and after Nicky had told her there was a cop car parked across the highway from the Motel 6, she sure as hell was awake now.
*
‘Doctor located,’ the Erie SWAT team sergeant said, as one of his men pulled a knife from his vest and cut the tape binding the man’s wrists, knees and ankles to the bedframe at the Motel 6. They’d carried out a quick clearance of the room and bathroom and discovered he was alone.
‘Are you OK?’ the officer who freed him asked as he peeled the tape off his mouth.
‘It was two of the fugitives from the news,’ Tejwani answered quickly, his mouth dry and ignoring the question as other officers started using keys from the front desk to clear adjacent rooms. They’d already seen the bed near the far wall had bloodstained sheets, a water bottle with two tubes connected positioned on the bedside table beside a twisted small pennant of metal. ‘Reyes and the girl. She’s been shot. He kidnapped me to operate on her and get the bullet out.’
‘Bathroom window’s open,’ a voice called from next door. ‘Broken glass in the lot outside. Car might have been taken.’
‘He was about to leave through the front door, but I think he saw you outside,’ Tejwani explained quickly. ‘He hauled the woman out through the back window.’
‘Sweep the area and close off I-90 and 86,’ the SWAT sergeant ordered over his radio as he followed another of his men escorting the shaken doctor outside to safety. ‘Tejwani’s safe, Lieutenant. Looks like Reyes left a car in the Wegmans’ lot, before he kidnapped the surgeon and drove here to the motel in the man’s vehicle. He might be going back for-’
‘I heard an alarm go off, around back,’ Tejwani interrupted. ‘I think he already took another one.’
He was right. Now a few miles away in a hotwired Grand Jeep Cherokee, driving fast but just within the legal limit, Nicky kept driving down what he saw was called Buffalo Road, giving him a clear run east out of the small city.
When he’d seen an Erie PD squad car parked across the highway from the motel as he’d checked through the blinds, it had suddenly dawned on him that the doctor’s phone hadn’t rung in the last thirty minutes. Then he’d remembered that missed call in the car and seeing how many other unanswered calls there’d been.
Those cameras outside Wegmans, recording everything.
Despite seeing only one police car out there, Nicky knew they were onto him.
‘Cops ahead,’ Kat warned from the back seat; she was lying across it but had her head propped against the door high enough to see out of the window. Nicky picked up a cruiser parked at the entrance to a golf course and slowed slightly to ensure he maintained the same speed as the traffic around him, praying the plates on the Jeep hadn’t gone out over the radio yet. He knew from talking with guys in Gatlin who�
��d had a lot of practice at stealing cars how modern vehicles were much harder to hotwire, but the 90s Jeep parked in the rear lot of the motel had been his saving grace. He’d already lowered what was left of the window to hide the fact it had been smashed out when he’d first broken inside with the Leatherman before using the tools to rip off the protective casing, kill the alarm and cut into the wires before sparking the ignition. More lessons from inside. At least the last twelve years hadn’t been a complete waste of time.
Without moving his head he glanced at the occupants of the Erie PD cruiser as they drew nearer but the driver was talking to his partner, neither cop currently paying the passing vehicles any attention.
‘We need to get into New York,’ Kat said, slurring slightly, once they were safely past, her breathing much easier now, that wheezing sound gone with both of her lungs fully operational again. The Jim Beam and painkillers were clearly still keeping her woozy, but she looked much more comfortable since the rudimentary operation in the motel room.
‘Yeah, but we can’t take the interstate in this,’ he said, as they passed more golf courses on their left, Lake Erie beyond reflecting the midday Sunday sunlight but acting as a huge liquid barrier between them and the freedom that Canada offered. It was already past the hour and he turned on the radio as another black and white police cruiser ripped past them going in the opposite direction. Unlike the one parked outside the golf club it was going fast, its lights flashing, answering a call somewhere.
The radio was playing a traffic report as Nicky switched it on. ‘-on Station Road where local officers and two civilians have been shot and killed. Police are warning people to stay in your cars, do not stop for anyone looking to be picked up and stay vigilant for any sign of the fugitives described just now. Roadblocks are in place on I-90, I-86 and NY-17, and police are asking drivers to be patient-’