“And we want answers,” Marshall snapped back, unaffected by her tears. He sat her down in Sara’s old chair. “Have a seat and save your tears for some soap opera.”
She looked up at both of them, her mascara running down her cheeks. “Don’t you understand? Don’t you have any heart? I came here for help! I’ve just had a terrible experience!” She built up the strength to say it, and then burst out in a fit of tears, “I’ve been raped!”
She collapsed to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.
Marshall looked at Bernice, and Bernice looked at Marshall.
“Yeah,” said Marshall unsympathetically, “there seems to be a lot of that going around these days, especially among the people your bosses want out of the way. So who was it this time?”
All she did was lie there on the floor and cry.
Bernice had something boiling inside her. “How do you like my looks tonight, Carmen? I think it’s interesting that you were the only one who knew I’d be going out to visit Kevin Weed. Did you tip off the thug who beat me up?”
She still lay there on the floor crying, not saying a word.
Marshall went into Brummel’s office and returned with some of the files, including the notes Carmen had written that very night.
“It’s all in your handwriting, Carmen, my dear. You’ve been nothing but a spy from the very beginning. Am I right or am I right?”
She kept crying. Marshall took hold of her, lifting her from the floor. “C’mon, get up!”
It was just as he saw her hand come off the silent alarm button in the floor that the front door burst open and he heard a voice holler, “Freeze! Police!”
Carmen was no longer crying. As a matter of fact, she was smirking. Marshall put his hands up, and so did Bernice. Carmen ran behind the two uniformed police who had just come in. Their guns were trained right on the two burglars.
“Friends of yours?” Marshall asked Carmen.
She only smiled an evil smile.
Just then Alf Brummel himself came into the building, fresh out of bed and in his bathrobe.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, and then he saw Marshall. “What …? Well, well, who do we have here?” Then he actually chuckled a bit. He walked up to Marshall, shaking his head and showing those big teeth. “I don’t believe this! I just can’t believe it!” He looked at Bernice. “Bernice Krueger! Is that you?”
Bernice had nothing to say, and Brummel was too far away to spit on.
Oh no. Now they had a full house. Juleen Langstrat, also in a bathrobe, walked in the door! She sidled up to Brummel, and the two of them stood there looking proudly at Marshall and Bernice, as if they were trophies.
“Sorry for disturbing all of you like this,” said Marshall.
Langstrat smiled lusciously and said, “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”
Brummel kept on grinning with those big teeth and told the policemen, “Read them their rights and take them into custody.”
The opportunity was too good to pass up. There stood the two cops trying to do their job, and there were Brummel and Langstrat, standing just a little in front of them. The situation was perfect, and it had been building up inside Marshall for a long time. Instantly, with all his weight, he dove into Brummel’s stomach and toppled Brummel and Langstrat backward into the two cops.
“Run, Bernie, run!” he shouted.
She ran. She didn’t stop to consider if she had the courage or the will or even the speed. She just ran for all she was worth, down the long hallway, past all the office doors, straight for the exit at the end. The door had a crash bar. She crashed into it, it opened, and she stumbled out into the cool night air.
Marshall was in the middle of a tangle of arms, hands, bodies, and shouts, hanging on to as many of them as he could. He was almost enjoying it, and he didn’t try that hard to get away. He wanted to keep them all busy.
One cop recovered and ran after Bernice, bursting out through that back door. He was close enough on her trail to pick up the sound of footsteps heading up the back alley, and away he went in hot pursuit.
Here was Bernice’s chance to find out what kind of shape she was in, cracked rib and all. She chugged down the alley, taking long strides, making her way through the blurry dark; she longed for her glasses, or at least a little more light. She heard the cop hollering at her to stop. Any moment he would fire that warning shot. She made a sharp left through a yard and a dog started barking. There was a space of light between two low-hanging fruit trees. She headed for that and encountered a fence. Two garbage cans helped her over with a clatter that told the cop where she was.
Bernice stomped through a freshly tilled garden, flattening several unseen bean poles. She ran onto a lawn, turned back toward the alley, knocked over some more cans, clambered over a fence, and kept running. The cop seemed to be fading back a little.
She was getting desperately tired and could only hope that he was, too. She couldn’t keep this up much longer. Every panting breath brought a sharp pain from that cracked rib. She couldn’t breathe.
She whipped around one house and doubled back through a few more yards, raising a tumult of barking from tattletale dogs, then crossed a street, and dove into some woods. The branches lashed at her and entangled her, but she plowed through them until she reached another fence bordering a service station. She ran along the fence, found an old dumpster just on the other side, went just a little further—and then her eyes were attracted by a fragment of street light filtering through the leaves and illuminating a pile of rubbish some litterbug had dumped. She grabbed the first thing her hand found, an old bottle, then dropped to the ground, trying not to breathe too loudly, trying not to cry from the pain.
The cop was moving rather slowly through the woods, groping his way along in the dark, snapping twigs under his feet, huffing and puffing. She lay there silently, waiting for him to pause to listen. Finally he did stop and fall silent. He was listening. She pitched the bottle over the fence. It bounced off the top of the dumpster and shattered on the pavement behind the service station. The cop came crashing through the woods and up to the fence. He climbed over and stood still behind the station.
Bernice could not see him from where she was, but she listened very intently. So did he. Then she heard him walk slowly along the back of the station and stop. A moment passed, and then he walked away at a normal pace. He had lost her.
Bernice remained where she was, trying to calm the pounding of her heart and the rushing of blood in her ears, trying to calm her nerves and her panic, and wishing the pain would go away. All she wanted to do was gasp deep breaths of air; she couldn’t seem to get enough.
Oh, Marshall, Marshall, what are they doing to you?
CHAPTER 32
MARSHALL WAS FACEDOWN on the floor, his pockets emptied, his hands cuffed behind him. He was being very cooperative with the cop who stood over him with his gun drawn. Carmen, Brummel, and Langstrat were in Brummel’s office going over the tape that Marshall and Bernice had listened to.
“Yes,” said Carmen, “here’s my notation of the tape counter. I thought the tape hadn’t run very far for such a long period of surveillance. The recordings continue after this stopping point. They wound the tape back.”
Brummel stepped out of his office and stood over Marshall. “So what did you and Bernice listen to?”
“Big band jazz, I think,” Marshall answered. That response brought Brummel’s heel down on Marshall’s neck. “Aaauu!”
Brummel had another question. “So who gave you the keys to this place? Did Sara?”
“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”
Brummel muttered, “I’ll have to put out an APB on her too!”
“Don’t bother,” Langstrat said from the office. “She’s gone now and she’s nothing. Don’t bring trouble back once you’re rid of it. Just concentrate on Krueger.”
Brummel told the cop who was guarding Marshall, “Ed, go out and see if you can help
John. Krueger’s the one we really need to round up.”
But just then John came back in through the door at the end of the hall, and he did not have Bernice in tow.
“Well?” Brummel demanded.
John only gave a timid shrug. “She ran like a scared rabbit, and it’s dark out there!”
“Aw, terrific!” Brummel moaned.
Marshall thought it really was terrific.
Langstrat’s voice came from the office. “Alf, come listen to this.”
Brummel went into his office, and Marshall could hear the conversation between Weed and Susan being replayed.
Langstrat said, “So they’ve heard this conversation. We picked it up from Susan’s end today.” The dialogue between Susan and Weed came to an end. “Unless I miss my guess, Krueger could very well be headed for The Evergreen Tavern in Baker to meet Susan—” She broke into laughter.
“I’ll have it staked out, then,” said Brummel.
“Get a stakeout on her apartment also. She’ll want to get to her car.”
“Good idea.”
Brummel and Langstrat came out of the office and stood over Marshall like vultures over a carcass.
“Marshall,” Brummel gloated, “you’re in for quite a downhill slide, I’m afraid. I’ve enough against you to put you away for good. You should have gotten out of this thing while you had the chance.”
Marshall looked up at that silly grinning face and said, “To use a cliché, you’ll never get away with this, Brummel. You don’t own the whole court system. Sooner or later this thing’s going to go beyond your reach; it’s going to get bigger than you are.”
Brummel only smiled a smile that Marshall longed to kick into oblivion and said, “Marshall, a lower court decision is all we need, and I’m sure we can manage that. Let’s face it. You’re nothing but a liar and a third-rate burglar, not to mention a child molester and a possible murderer. We have witnesses, Marshall: fine, upstanding citizens of this community. We’ll see to it that you have the fairest of trials, so you would have no grounds for appeal. It could go very hard for you. The judge might give you a break, but … I don’t know.”
“You mean Baker, the wheeler-dealer?”
“I understand he can be a very compassionate person … under the right circumstances.”
“So don’t tell me. You’re going to book Bernice on charges of prostitution? Maybe you can dig up those hookers again, that bogus cop again, set the whole thing up.”
Brummel chuckled mockingly. “That all depends on the evidence at hand, I guess. We can book her for burglary, you know, and the two of you set that one up yourselves.”
“So what about the laws against illegal wiretaps?”
Langstrat answered that one. “We know of no wiretaps. We don’t do that sort of thing.” She paused for effect, then added, “And they wouldn’t find anything even if they did believe you.” Then something occurred to her. “Oh, and I can sense what you’re thinking. Don’t put your hopes in Susan Jacobson. We’ve received the sad news today that she was killed in a terrible motor vehicle accident. The only people Ms. Krueger can expect to meet at The Evergreen Tavern will be the police.”
BERNICE FELT FAINT. Her rib cage felt like it was shattered; her bruises throbbed without mercy. For the better part of an hour she didn’t have the strength or the nerves to get up from where she lay in the brambles. She tried to think what to do next. Every wisp of wind through the trees was an approaching policeman to her; every sound brought new horror. She looked at her watch. It was going on 3 in the morning. Soon it would be day, and there would be no more sneaking around. She had to get moving, and she knew it.
She slowly struggled to her feet, then stood there, slightly crouched, under the low hanging branches of a vine-tangled madrona, waiting for enough blood to circulate through her brain for her to stay standing.
She took a step, then another. She gained confidence and started moving ahead, feeling her way through the trees and underbrush, trying to fend off the scratching branches.
Back out on the street, it was quiet and dark. The dogs were no longer barking. She began to plot her course for her apartment, about a mile across town, making the trip in quick dashes from tree to hedge to tree. Only once did a vehicle drive by, but it was not a squad car; Bernice hid behind a large maple tree until it had passed.
She could not distinguish her physical pain and sickness from her emotional exhaustion and despair. A few times she got confused and lost her bearings and couldn’t make out any of the street signs, and it was then that she almost cried, slumping against a fence or a wall.
But she remembered Marshall throwing himself into the jaws of those lions for her sake, and she couldn’t let him down. She had to make it. She had to get out of town, get free, meet Susan, get help, do something.
For nearly an hour, block by block, step by step, she worked her way along and finally approached her apartment building. She cautiously followed a circuitous route around it, wanting to check it from all sides. Finally, from behind a neighbor’s station wagon, she thought she could make out the telltale rack of lights atop one car parked at the end of the block. From that position, the occupants of that car would have a perfect view of anyone trying to get into any apartment. So that was out.
The back of the building was much easier to sneak into; there were small parking stalls along a dark, narrow alley, the lighting was poor, the parking stalls could not be seen from ground level up above. It was a terrible place to park a car in terms of security, but perfect for Bernice tonight.
She darted across the street a block away and out of view of that squad car, then doubled back and slipped into the alley, staying close to the dank, concrete retaining wall as the alley dipped down below the grade. She reached her Toyota, removed the little magnetic key box from under the bumper, and used those emergency keys to open the door.
Oh, so near and yet so far! There was no way she could start her car and get away without being heard on this very still night. But there were some things she could make very good use of. She clambered in as quickly as she could and closed the door after her enough to extinguish the dome light. Then she opened the ashtray in the front console and emptied the quarters, dimes, and nickels into her pocket. Just a couple of bucks, but it would have to do. In the glovebox she found her prescription sunglasses; now she could see better and use them to conceal her black eyes.
There was nothing else to do but get out of town, maybe get some sleep somewhere, somehow, and then, one way or another, get out to Baker and The Evergreen Tavern by 8 that coming night. That was all, but it was enough. She strained to think of anyone she knew that they would not know, any friend who could still aid and abet a fugitive from the law, without questions.
Her mental list of names was too short and too doubtful. She started walking, making her way toward Highway 27 while searching her mind for any other ideas.
DOWN BELOW THE courthouse, alone in a cell at the end of the dismal cellblock, Hank lay on his cot, asleep at last.
It had not been the most enjoyable of evenings: they had stripped him, searched him, fingerprinted him, photographed him, and then stuck him in this cell with no blanket to keep warm. He had asked for a Bible, but they wouldn’t allow him to have one. The drunk in the next cell had thrown up during the night, the writer of phony checks in the cell after that had a very dirty mouth, and the mugger in the next cell turned out to be a very vociferous, opinionated Marxist.
Oh well, he thought, Jesus died for them and they need His love. He tried to be kind and share some of God’s love with them, but someone had told them that he was an accused rapist, which put somewhat of a damper on his testimony.
So he had lain down, identifying with Paul and Silas and Peter and James and every other Christian who had ever spent time in a forlorn prison even though innocent. He wondered how long his ministry would survive, now that his reputation had been so blasted. Would he still be able to hang on in his already shaky pastora
te? Brummel and his buddies were sure going to make full use of this. For all he knew, they had been the ones who set it up. Ah well, it was in the Lord’s hands; God knew what was best.
He prayed for Mary and for all his new, motley sheep, and mentally recited memorized Scripture to himself until he dropped off to sleep.
In the very early hours of the morning Hank was awakened by footsteps coming down the cellblock and the jingle of the guard’s jail keys. Oh no. The guard was opening his cell door. Now Hank would have to share the cell with … a drunk, a mugger, a real rapist? He pretended he was still asleep, but he opened one eye just a little to have a look. Oh brother! This hoodlum was big and grim looking, and from the bandage and bruise on his head it looked like he had just been in a brawl. He was muttering something about having to be stuck in a cell with a rapist. Hank started praying for the Lord’s protection. This big character had to weigh twice as much as he did, and he looked violent.
The new guy flopped down on the other cot and breathed that heavy kind of breath one associates with bears, dragons, and monsters.
Lord, please deliver me!
RAFAR STRUTTED BACK and forth on his hilltop overlooking the town, allowing his wings to trail and wave like a regal cape behind him. Demon messengers had been bringing him regular reports of how his final preparations of the town were going. So far it had been nothing but good news.
“Lucius,” Rafar called with the tone one would use in calling a child, “Lucius, come here, won’t you?”
Lucius stepped forward with all the dignity he could muster, trying to get his wings to wave and undulate like Rafar’s.
“Yes, Ba-al Rafar?”
Rafar looked down at him gloatingly, a wry smile on his face, and said, “I trust you have learned from this experience. As you have so clearly seen, what you could not do in years, I have accomplished in days.”
“Perhaps.” That was all Lucius would give him.
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