The Coast-to-Coast Murders

by J. D. Barker

  “Gimble!” Sammy called. “What do you want me to do about her? I think it’s Megan!”

  Gimble looked back out her own window. “What is she doing?”

  “Just standing out there,” Sammy replied. “She came out of the woods. Her left arm is covered in blood. Looks like she bandaged it with some kind of material.”

  “Does she have a weapon?”

  “I don’t see anything. She’s crying. Something’s wrong.”

  Another rifle shot.

  “Oh, shit!” Sammy exclaimed.

  “What is it?”

  “Whoever is shooting pegged the ground a few inches from her feet. She’s moving again. The shooter is driving her forward.”

  Gimble tapped her earbud. “Longtin’s dead, Kepler. Heart attack, just now. Don’t hurt Megan. There’s no need to hurt anyone.”

  No reply.

  She scrambled to her feet. “Vela, watch this window.”

  Before he could reply, she ran through the small cabin and found Sammy hunched down near a window in the bedroom; it was covered with a sheet. He lifted the corner and nodded at the glass.

  Gimble looked out.

  Definitely Megan Fitzgerald. Her dark hair was plastered to her head by the rain. She made no attempt to move it from her eyes. Her left arm hung limply at her side; streaks of blood ran from a makeshift bandage above her elbow to her outstretched fingertips. She wore a black dress, no shoes, and one of the most frightened expressions Gimble had ever seen on a person’s face.

  Another shot cracked through the air. The mud at the girl’s feet splashed. She took several more steps.

  “Who the fuck is shooting at her?”

  Sammy shook his head.

  Near the front of the cabin, another shot rang out. The bullet pinged off the metal propane tank.

  “Jesus, we need to get out of here,” Sammy muttered.

  “That’s what he wants,” Gimble replied. “To make the tank explode, he’d need to hit it dead on, and he’d need a spark. It won’t work. It’s just a scare tactic.”

  “Well, it’s working damn well. And this isn’t a he,” Sammy said. “We’re dealing with a they. Unless Kepler is really fast and shooting both of those guns on opposite sides of the cabin, there are two people out there, maybe more. You said all the marshals are down? He didn’t do that on his own. He’s not John Rambo, he’s a truck driver from LA.”

  Outside, Megan stopped moving. She was saying something, but Gimble couldn’t make it out.

  Gimble hit her earbud again. “Kepler, who is shooting at your sister?” The words came out louder and faster than she’d meant them to; her emotions were getting the better of her.

  When Kepler replied, his voice was the opposite of hers—slow, calm, nearly reserved. “Tell her to get in the car.”

  Gimble’s eyes darted over to the red Honda sitting in the driveway about half a dozen steps from where Megan Fitzgerald stood.

  Two more shots. The first came from the opposite side of the house; it ricocheted off the propane tank again. The second smacked into the earth less than a foot behind the girl.

  Two shots.

  Two different weapons.

  Two shooters.

  Megan yelped and took another step forward.

  A third shot came a moment later and shattered the window. Both Gimble and Sammy fell back and went down, crouching low behind the wall. Shards of glass spilled around them. The wind yanked at the exposed sheet, snapping it outward and blowing it back in again, and the rain followed, nearly loud enough to drown out Megan’s sobs.

  “Tell her to get in the car,” Kepler repeated.

  Gimble’s grip tightened on the MP5 still in her hands.

  Sammy craned his neck toward the window. “Megan! He wants you to get in the car!”

  Gimble shot him a look.

  “Make him stop!”

  “Get her in the car,” Kepler said, his voice low.

  “He said he’ll shoot me!” Megan screamed. “Michael!”

  Not “Michael said he’ll shoot me,” but “He said he’ll shoot me.”

  “He won’t!” Sammy shouted over the storm. “He wants you in the car. He won’t hurt you, not if you get in the car!”

  “Somebody is using Megan as bait, trying to draw Michael out,” Gimble said under her breath.

  “What? Why?” Sammy said, his eyes fixed on Megan.

  “Gimble! I smell gas!”

  This came from Vela in the other room. One of the shots must have punctured the tank.

  This can’t be happening, Gimble thought. “Kepler’s got the MP5. Whoever has the rifle is trying to use Megan to get to Kepler,” Gimble said. “Kepler’s trying to get her out of the line of fire.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “I’m not letting her get away,” Gimble replied. “I have no problem using her as bait.”

  Sammy shook his head. “No way.” He peered back out into the storm. “Megan, do as he says! Get in the car!”

  Megan sucked air in through slightly parted lips, then nodded quickly and wiped the snot from her nose with the back of her good hand. She took a step toward the Honda, froze, and looked at the woods.

  “Keep going, Megan!” Sammy shouted.

  Megan did. She took another step and another after that.

  With each, Gimble waited for the crack of a rifle, but it didn’t come.

  Megan reached the car, put her trembling hand on the door handle.

  “Tell her to get in and leave,” Kepler said over the comm. “She shouldn’t be here. She’s not supposed to be here.”

  “Damn it, Gimble! We’ve got gas in the house!” Vela shouted from the other room.

  Gimble ignored him, her fingers beginning to twitch on the side of her gun.

  Sammy called, “Get in the car, Megan! Get the hell out of here! Now!”

  Her eyes were wide, red, and puffy with tears. With one last look back at the woods, Megan yanked the car door open, scrambled inside, and pulled the door shut behind her. She became a dark silhouette behind the wheel, her shoulders shaking with sobs. Longtin must have left the keys in the ignition, because the motor sputtered and came to life with a puff of smoke from the exhaust.

  Gimble exchanged a look with Sammy, then she stood, raised her weapon, and fired two quick shots at the Honda. The first missed; the second struck the right rear tire, and the car slumped to the side.

  Gimble dropped back to her position under the window. “I’m not letting her go.”

  “Christ, Gimble!” Sammy was glaring at her.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Kepler said over the comm.

  Another shot pinged off the propane tank with the rattle of a rusty bell.

  “Step out of the woods and turn yourself in, or my next bullet goes right through her,” Gimble replied without any hesitation.

  Another ping off the propane tank.

  “You’re a federal agent.”

  “People die in friendly fire all the time.” Gimble pointed at her eyes, then at Sammy, then at the window. “With a mess like this, whatever I put in my report will end up being the final word. My people will cover for me.”

  Vela had been right. Gimble could smell gas now too.

  A third shot rang out from an MP5 in the woods to the right. The bullet slammed into the passenger door of Longtin’s car.

  “Maybe I’ll do it,” Kepler said.

  The Honda dropped into gear, lurched forward, started limping down Longtin’s driveway, Megan clearly struggling with the wheel.

  “You won’t kill her,” Kepler stated.

  “I see him,” Sammy said.

  “Where?”

  “Five o’clock. He’s down low at the base of an oak just past the edge of the driveway, sighting on the propane.”

  They both rose up at the window, weapons high.

  Neither fired a shot; the explosion came too fast.

  Chapter Ninety

  Written Statement,

  Meg
an Fitzgerald

  When I pulled the car door handle, I didn’t actually expect it to be unlocked, but it was.

  When I fell into the seat, I didn’t expect the keys to be in the ignition, but there they were.

  I definitely didn’t expect the rust bucket of a Honda to start, but it did.

  And all of these things happened while I waited for a bullet to rip through my chest and splatter my blood all over this cracked plastic faux-leather interior while an old eighties tune from Joan Jett blared from tired, rattling speakers.

  The bullet didn’t come when I started the car—although someone shot at the right rear tire—it didn’t even come when I managed to get the Honda in gear and head down the driveway. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t.

  When I tried to wiggle my left fingers, they barely twitched. My arm felt cold, like something just removed from the refrigerator, something detached and not my own.

  My vision kept clouding, going white, then black, filling with floating specks that did not belong. My equilibrium was off. I felt like I was tipping to the left, then back again. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to vomit or faint or both.

  I had no business operating heavy machinery.

  The Honda was an automatic, which was good. It didn’t have power steering, which was bad. Between the slippery mud, the flat tire, and ruts in the path, the wheel kept yanking under my good hand and pulling in one direction or the other. I wanted to floor the gas and couldn’t. Conditions forced me to move at a crawl.

  I kept waiting for the next bullet.

  I was maybe a third of the way back to the main road when I spotted someone in the rearview mirror—Michael, about a hundred feet back, darting across the path behind me, his light blue shirt a blur. He glanced at me and at the car and was gone a second later, back into the woods.

  My foot hovered over the brake; I let the car coast.

  Just that slight movement of my head as I looked in the rearview brought another flurry of white and then black over my vision.

  Loss of blood. My rational mind weighed in from high up in the cheap seats. You’re gonna pass out.

  I turned the wipers on, and for some reason, this made me think of Mrs. Lutwig, my tenth-grade driver’s ed teacher. I could see her sitting next to me with her lips pursed, slapping a solid check mark across the paper on her clipboard. She wasn’t done with me, though. She nodded at the windshield. What else, Ms. Fitzgerald?

  Oh, Christ, the headlights!

  I saw the switch. My right hand reached up and over the steering column to the left side while my muddy knee held the wheel straight. I fumbled with the control, which felt thick and unwieldy under my fingers.

  The headlights blazed on, cutting through the rain.

  Michael was standing about twenty feet in front of the Honda, his narrow eyes peering at me, a rifle dangling from his right hand and a bag slung over his back.

  The worn rubber of the wiper blades smeared the rain on the glass. Left to right, and back again.

  Michael started running toward the car.

  Then the world exploded in a blinding flash of white light.

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Written Statement,

  Megan Fitzgerald

  Michael had been sprinting toward me, the rifle swinging.

  Then the explosion.

  My right foot came down hard on the pedal. At first, I wasn’t sure which pedal my foot had selected because my mind was stuck somewhere between autopilot and holy-hell-do-something.

  The wheels locked up.

  The Honda slid several feet in the mud and came to a stop.

  Michael bounced off the hood of the car.

  I screamed his name.

  Thought I screamed his name.

  It might have just been in my mind.

  I didn’t see him get up, but he must have, because he was at my door; he had it open, and his arms were sliding under me, lifting me up and out of the Honda and into the rain.

  Where did you get the gun? I tried to say, but what came out was more like “Word da du git de hun?”

  He seemed to notice the blood for the first time. His mouth fell open. He reached for my Girl Scout Superfly in the Field Bandage and touched it tentatively with the tip of his finger. “He shot you?”

  I nodded and immediately regretted the movement. He most certainly did, my mind agreed. Wait, who shot me?

  I blinked, and when I did, Michael was in the driver’s seat of another car—no cracks in these seats. Somehow, we had changed cars. I was in the passenger seat, buckled in, and we were moving down a dark road. He was talking.

  “I don’t know what I saw back there,” he said as the wiper blades swished back and forth.

  Half-conscious, I watched him. I tried not to look away, couldn’t let myself look away, because I knew exactly what I’d seen back there. Right before that explosion, I’d seen two Michaels. And I wasn’t sure which one was sitting next to me.

  That was the last thought to flutter through my head before the car and everything else went dark.

  Part 5

  Ashtabula, Ohio

  There is no hiding from the past. It’s the driving force behind all we do.

  —Barton Fitzgerald, MD

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Dobbs

  Eight hundred and eighty-two miles away from the events in Missouri, Dobbs stared up at the Fitzgeralds’ large home. He’d practically worn a path in the cobblestone driveway with his pacing back and forth. Begley was on the phone. He had wandered halfway down the drive and was working his way back now, weaving through the various federal agents standing around, waiting.

  The house was eerily quiet, although lights were on in nearly every room. Along with everyone else, Dobbs had watched them flick on one at a time. First upstairs, then downstairs. It started shortly after the housekeeper left. The older woman had rushed out from a side door around dusk, made her way to her car, and drove off with her head down the entire time, unwilling to make eye contact with any of them. Maybe she was an illegal…people always assumed the worst. He was fairly certain they would talk to her, but not yet.

  Another light came on, this one from a room on the far west end of the house. A shadow moved past the window. The blinds moved again. Dr. Rose Fitzgerald peered out for several seconds before disappearing. She’d done the same in nearly every room, at every one of those windows. A wraith haunting the halls of a castle.

  Begley finally disconnected the call and made his way back to Dobbs. “We got our search warrant.”

  He turned to the crowd behind them, placed two fingers in his mouth, and blew. A shrill whistle cut through the various conversations. He raised his other hand above his head and made two quick circles in the air, then pointed back at the house. “Let’s go!”

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  Written Statement,

  Megan Fitzgerald

  When I was eight, I broke my left arm. We had a tree house in the backyard with a climbing rope that ran up to a trapdoor that opened into the center of the little structure about ten feet off the ground. There were knots in the rope about every foot or so, these big thick knots Michael had tied for me when I couldn’t shimmy up the rope on my own. Michael had no such trouble; he’d gone up and down that rope a hundred times prior to tying the knots in an attempt to show me how easy it was.

  “Come on, Meg. It’s cake. Like this—”

  It wasn’t easy. It certainly wasn’t cake.

  Hence the knots.

  He convinced me this wasn’t cheating. He said it was no different than the training wheels that had come off my bike earlier that summer. I was late to that party too. Michael had been riding without training wheels since he was five.

  He was always the voice of reason.

  “You’ll never learn if you leave the training wheels on,” he’d told me two months earlier.

  It took an hour of convincing after that. Three minutes with a wrench. And another twenty minutes of practice, and th
en Michael was a hundred feet behind me, standing in the driveway, his hand no longer holding on to my seat, a giant grin on his face. I was riding on my own.

  Dr. Rose watched from the foyer, and I could have sworn I saw her smile, although Michael told me it was probably just gas or maybe the sun had caught her at a weird angle. Couldn’t have been a smile, because miserable old bags don’t smile.

  Michael had been right about the training wheels. When he tied the knots in the rope, I figured he had to be right about that too. I wasn’t completely convinced, though.

  “Why can’t I just climb stairs?” I asked him. I always took the stairs to get up to the tree house. That’s why they were there, after all. Civilized people used the stairs. They didn’t climb trees, ladders, or ropes to get into their house. They took the stairs and went in through the front door.

  “Pirates climb ropes,” Michael replied, tying the last knot.

  I’d forgotten we were pirates today.

  “I’ll stand under you. You’ll be okay.”

  He showed me how easy it was after he tied that last knot. He shot up the rope and back down again as if it were nothing. Cake.

  My turn.

  I stood there for at least a minute, my head craned up, looking at the open trapdoor. Then I kicked off my shoes and reached for the rope.

  “Put one hand here above this knot, then step on the one at the bottom, get both feet on it. Use your feet to hold on. When you’ve got a good grip, reach for the next one with your other hand and pull up. Like a caterpillar or an inchworm, only vertical.”

  Vertical and horizontal were Michael’s words of the week on the calendar in his room, and he appeared committed to wearing them out.

  I gripped the rope above my head as tight as I could, then I stepped on the bottom knot with one foot, then the other. Cake. Yellow with chocolate frosting.

  I started up the rope, going hand over hand, my feet searching for the next knot and the next one after that. The muscles in my thighs burned, but I kept going because Michael had done it, and Michael said I could do it too. When I was about four feet off the ground, he crouched down below me and held the rope steady. When I got higher, he stood and looked up at me. “You’re almost there, Meg!”