Unintended Witness

by D. L. Wood

  “No,” Holt disagreed, “you’re not. You still have options.”

  Trip laughed, a desperate, mirthless laugh. “Really? What options?”

  “Reasons matter, Trip. I’m an attorney. I know.”

  “You want a reason?” Trip roared, the placid confessor replaced by enraged crusader. “He was destroying my family! He blackmailed my mom! She and my dad had finally started to make it work. Before that, they were always fighting. About them. Me. Keeley’s career. Mom was career obsessed. Dad ignored everybody but Keeley. Then Keeley tanked. She started cutting. It woke them up. Everything changed. They worked it out. Suddenly we were almost a family again.

  “Until Phillip Donner started blackmailing my mom. I heard her talking to some guy one night.” His face turned down even more, revulsion creasing its edges. “She…I think she had an affair with someone…whoever she was talking to. It happened before she and my dad got better. But then she broke it off and everything improved and we all…” He paused, realizing he was drifting. “That night, she thought I was asleep, but I’d heard her yelling and it woke me up. I thought she and dad were having another fight, but it was something else. It was that guy on the phone. She was telling him that Donner had threatened to tell everyone, including Dad, about the affair, tell the news channels, tell anyone that would listen.”

  He stopped to breathe finally, something he hadn’t done much of while expelling his story. It was rushing out, a deluge he had dammed up with fear and loyalty for far too long. “She told this guy that Donner had told her that unless she threw the Sims lawsuit, unless she intentionally let him win, she would lose everything. He was right too. If Donner had spread that around, that would have been it for my mom and dad. And Keeley would have lost it again. That’s when I planned the bomb. I thought maybe I could scare him and his investors away. That maybe he would sell the project and move on and he wouldn’t need my mom anymore. It wasn’t hard. Instructions for that sort of thing are all over the internet. I found so many different kinds…” He was rambling. Disconnected.

  “But that’s not what happened,” Holt pressed, trying to get him to focus.

  Trip shook his head, wagging the gun in time with his movements. “It only made Donner more angry. He threatened my mom again. She was crying all the time…and now, I’ve made it worse. Now everyone will know the truth anyway and our family will fall apart and I’m to blame—”

  “Why Kurt Sims, Trip?” Holt interjected, steering Trip away from his increasingly frantic realization, trying to diffuse things. “Why frame him? He’s Jacob’s dad.”

  “Exactly. Because he deserved it. Because—”

  “Trip, don’t.” Jacob’s voice was steady and firm as he stepped out from the shadows at the entrance to the clearing.

  Trip paused for just a moment, eyeing his friend with a mix of sadness and determination. “He was terrible to Jacob.” Trip let this hang in the air, the truth settling on everyone before continuing, his words ugly and sharp. “Mr. Sims made Jacob feel like he wasn’t worth anything. He said…awful things. All the time. And he hit him. I’ve seen him punch Jacob twice when he didn’t do well on the field—”

  “Trip, please stop,” Jacob urged, stepping closer to the group. “Dad doesn’t…he doesn’t mean to. He’s just not right. Hasn’t been since mom died. He doesn’t want to hurt me—”

  “Stop defending him! Don’t you see? If you don’t get away from him, he might end up really hurting you. Killing you or something. You wouldn’t leave. So I was going to make him leave. He already had a history with Donner. The cops were going to suspect him anyway. The rest wasn’t hard.”

  “You planted the bomb materials and the concrete residue at Jacob’s house,” Holt surmised.

  Trip nodded.

  “And that day at Jacob’s when someone jumped out at us from the closet—that was you?”

  Trip nodded again. “I had messed up. I’d had my ball cap on when I planted those concrete bits in Mr. Sims’ treads and on the floor in there. I was so nervous and hot. I thought I was gonna pass out. I must’ve taken it off without realizing it. It was stupid. But I had to get it back before anybody realized it didn’t belong to Mr. Sims.”

  “Trip,” Holt started, his voice even more solemn, “what happened with Reese? At his house?”

  Trip looked away, over the cliff’s edge. His body started to quiver, and energy seemed to issue from the hand holding the gun, so much so that Holt took a small step back.

  “Trip?” Holt inquired gently.

  “That was an accident.” His tone begged for understanding as he swiveled abruptly to face Emma. “I didn’t mean it, Emma. I promise I didn’t.” Fresh droplets snaked down the existing tracks in his makeup.

  “Trip,” Chloe said soothingly. “We just want to understand. Just tell us what happened.”

  “Like I said, I hadn’t been able to get into your phone,” he said, looking at Emma, “but I knew the password for your computer. So I went to your house while all of you were at the carnival. I figured I could get in, delete it, and get out. But then he showed up. He must’ve heard me upstairs, looking for your laptop. I couldn’t find it. I was headed downstairs to search when I met him at the top of the stairs. I had on a ski mask, so he didn’t know it was me. He started swinging this golf club, we fought, and he fell.” The tears were pouring now. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. He wouldn’t get up. He just laid there. I was terrified. There was so much blood from his head. But he had a pulse, so I thought he would be okay. I remembered that crazy box with the writing on the porch you told me about and thought I could use that, you know, make it look like something else, part of that or whatever. I thought he would just wake up and have a broken leg or whatever…”

  Trip’s voice drifted off, and for several moments everyone stood in silence, not saying the thing they were all thinking. That it hadn’t been just a broken leg and that Trip had not called 911. He had just left Reese there on the floor. To whatever fate awaited him.

  “You all think I’m a monster.”

  “No,” Holt said. “No, we don’t. We think you were scared and in way over your head.”

  “No!” Trip shook his head and raised the gun towards his own head. “I almost killed him.”

  “But you didn’t, Trip, stop!” Holt bellowed, holding up his hands. “You’re not a killer! You’re not! You didn’t mean to hurt Reese and you didn’t plan on killing Donner either, did you? It was an accident, just like Emma’s arm and Reese’s fall. You just wanted to talk to him. To convince him to back off your mother. You wanted to scare him. And what happened? He jumped you instead?” Holt postulated, grabbing at theories. “Or maybe pulled a gun on you? Did one of his hired hands—”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Trip asserted, pained disappointment and disbelief filling his eyes.

  “I know you didn’t mean to kill him. You just meant to scare him. You took Kurt’s gun—”

  “I took the gun, I even wore Kurt’s stupid boots out there, but I didn’t kill him!” Trip shouted, as slowly, like a creeping tide at dusk, a deeper melancholy enveloped him. “But you think I did, don’t you?” He took a resolute step towards the cliff’s edge. “You all think I did.”

  “It was self-defense, Trip. We can work this out,” Chloe said, her tone begging him to listen.

  Trip shook his head. “No. You think I killed him. And everyone else will, too.” He spoke with finality, and in one sharp movement upward, drew the gun’s muzzle to his temple.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Instead of following Chloe and Holt into the clearing, Jack stepped sideways into the woods surrounding it, out of sight of the teens who were standing much too close to the outcropping’s edge. Circling around the left side of things, he judged that the cliff’s edge dropped straight down twenty feet, into masses of sloping brush and tree-covered terrain that probably dropped another thirty feet to a final floor not visible from this vantage point. The best-case scenario if Trip jumped off was that
the kid would end up with a nasty set of broken bones that might or might not change the way he walked. Worst case—that jump would be as effective as a shot from the gun the kid was barely holding onto.

  Jack could hear Holt trying to carry on a conversation with the boy, urging Emma to step away. Jack didn’t know if Holt could hear it in the kid’s voice, but he had been around enough desperate men during his military career to recognize the sound of someone imploding when he heard it. The teen wasn’t bluffing. He truly believed he was out of options. Not a mental place you wanted an armed, scared kid to be. No matter what Holt thought, no matter how long he stalled, there was little chance he was going to talk the kid out of doing what he came there to do.

  Moving as quietly as he could with a leg that fought him every inch of the way, Jack picked through the heavy underbrush on the downward slope. The moonlight was just bright enough to illuminate a series of staggered, narrow clefts across the face of the drop. It was going to be a lot like scaling a cliff without rappelling gear, but if he could make it to within a yard or so of the top, he might have a chance.

  Maybe.

  * * * * *

  Trip swept the gun up to his head just as Jack propelled himself up and over the outcropping’s edge. In a single, swift movement, Jack wrenched the gun from Trip’s shaky grip, while simultaneously dropping the boy to the ground by sweeping his legs out from under him. One of Trip’s lingering fingers, however, involuntarily depressed the trigger before he completely let loose, sending a booming crack out over the ledge.

  Screams from everyone else echoed the crack reverberating in their ears as Trip lay on the ground, panting, slumped over, heaving sobs. Emma ripped herself from Chloe and ran to Trip, falling over him and whispering, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  Chloe moved to her sister, gripping Emma’s shoulder. She looked over gratefully at Jack, bent over a few feet away, gulping in breaths, his hands bracing on his hips.

  Thank you, Chloe mouthed, her own breathing still labored.

  Holt plopped down beside Trip, rubbing his face and exhaling weakly. “Trip,” he said, putting a hand on the boy’s back, “whatever you do, do not say another word.”

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  “Where’s Tyler?” Chloe said, her gaze flicking up to Jacob from where she squatted on the ground, the meaning of his presence finally striking her.

  “He’s fine. He’s in the car. Locked up,” Jacob insisted.

  She was already moving, quick steps crackling on loose gravel. “We told you not to leave him!”

  “I left him with my cell,” Jacob said, justifying himself as he ran after her.

  “I’m calling 911,” Jack said, keeping pace with her as he pulled his cell out.

  “I already did—or at least, Tyler should have. I told him to call 911 when I heard the shot,” Jacob said. “The cops’ll be here any minute now.”

  “He’s probably scared to death,” Chloe seethed, bursting into the lot to find the back door of her car wide open.

  “Tyler!” she yelled, darting to her car and ducking inside. But her words fell wasted into the deserted back seat, empty except for Jacob’s abandoned cell phone.

  * * * * *

  “Tyler!” Chloe called again, turning in circles, looking in and around the other three cars as Jack did the same.

  “Tyler!” Jack bellowed, as Holt, Trip, and Emma appeared at the edge of the lot. Holt walked alongside Trip, gripping his arm tightly, more out of an effort to hold the boy up rather than to keep him from absconding.

  “What’s wrong?” Emma asked. “Where’s Tyler?”

  Chloe threw her hands up. “I don’t know! He’s just gone…the back seat’s empty.”

  “He was right here when I left,” Jacob pleaded, guilt sharpening his features. “Maybe he just went looking for us—”

  Chloe shot a look at him. “No, you left your cell with him, right? Well, it’s on the back seat. He wouldn’t have left it.”

  “Hold on. If he still has his phone on him, then I should be able to find him,” Emma said shakily. “Just let me check my cell.”

  “I didn’t think about him having one when I left him mine,” Jacob mumbled to himself as Emma pulled her phone out, groaning as she tapped several buttons.

  “The data out here is just 3G,” she said, frustrated. “It’ll take a minute.” She fidgeted back and forth, one foot to the other, while waiting for her app to load. “He’s got to be okay. He’s got to,” she muttered nervously to no one in particular.

  “If somebody took him, they would’ve checked him for a cell phone. He won’t still have it on him,” Jacob lamented.

  “Except that yours was left in the backseat,” Jack corrected. “If someone did take him and found your phone on him, they might not have looked any further. They wouldn’t expect him to have two.”

  “Or maybe nobody took him, and he just wandered off and left Jacob’s cell because he had his own. He could’ve seen an owl or something and gone off chasing it,” Holt suggested.

  “It’s up!” Emma shouted excitedly, as she pressed Tyler’s name on the list of friends in her Pal-Pinpoint app. A spinning compass needle appeared, indicating the app was searching, looking for Tyler’s current location. It went round and round in painful suspense.

  “I don’t understand. Why didn’t Tyler say something about this app earlier when we were looking for you?” Chloe asked Emma.

  “I haven’t given it permission to share my location. I don’t want people knowing where I am all the time,” she explained.

  Jack squeezed Chloe’s shoulders as they waited for Emma’s phone to finish locating Tyler. “Holt’s right. It’s possible he just wandered off.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” Chloe’s tone made it clear she didn’t believe that was true.

  Seconds later, when the needle stopped spinning and Tyler’s dot appeared on the map over five miles away, it was terrifyingly obvious she was right.

  * * * * *

  “He’s there,” Chloe cried, tapping the screen, “on—what does that say? ‘Trailblazer Road.’”

  “Wait a minute,” Holt said, pulling the phone from her. He studied the map and the tiny dot representing Tyler, his face falling. “I know that road,” he said ominously, his finger tapping the screen glass agitatedly. “It’s part of Trailblazer Court. It’s a trailer park southeast of here, in Harrison County.” His clouded expression tightened even more.

  “What is it?” Chloe asked.

  “I think I know who may live there—who may have taken him,” Holt said, his voice incredulous, as if he didn’t believe his own conclusions. “I think it’s my client’s ex-husband.” He looked at Chloe expectantly. “Dermot Crutchfield? You were there, at his hearing that day we went to court with Kurt, remember? It’s a custody case. I represent the mother. He’s the father—been AWOL forever. Owes thousands in child support. Hasn’t shown up to anything, but—”

  He cut himself off, pausing, as he lit up with understanding. “Oh, the box!” he exclaimed. “The box on Reese’s porch! That happened the Friday before Crutchfield’s hearing. I told you it was probably one of our domestic crazies,” he said, zeroing in on Chloe. “Remember? I said it might have been one of our other cases. Crutchfield is angry because we’re working with his wife to terminate his parental rights. He wants us to stop helping her. Reese keeps trying to take his kids away, so now he’s taken Reese’s son.”

  “Would he hurt him?” Jack asked.

  Holt’s eyes flicked soberly to Chloe and Emma, then back to Jack. “We need to get there. Now.”

  “Okay, come on. Let’s go,” Chloe urged, tugging on Jack’s sleeve and stepping towards her car. “Emma, I need your cell,” she demanded, holding her hand out. “So we can track Tyler if he moves.”

  Holt pulled his own cell out and handed it to Jacob. “Call 911 again and keep them on the line. I’ll talk to them in a second,” he instructed. As Jacob dialed, Holt turned back to Chloe. “You’re a good fifteen minute
s away from the trailer park, at least. I’ll stay here with them,” he said, gesturing at the teens with his free hand, “and deal with the police when they get here, which ought to be any minute if Tyler got a chance to call 911. We’ll send help over there as soon as we can,” he said, as Jack and Chloe slid inside her car. “And be careful,” he cautioned, leaning down beside Chloe’s open window. “Ten-to-one, Crutchfield will be armed.”

  Emma squeezed past Holt, bracing herself against the window frame. “Let me go with you! He’s my brother, too.”

  “Emma, no,” Chloe told her resolutely as Jack started to back the car up. “You stay here with Holt. And you,” she said, pointing at Holt, “better take her keys. You’ve got enough to worry about without her leaving when your back is turned.”

  Holt held his hand out to Emma, who dropped her keys into his palm as Jack tore out of the lot, the hazy red glow of the taillights piercing the cloud of dust trailing behind.

  SIXTY-NINE

  Jack made it to Trailblazer Court in less than ten minutes, racing over miles of winding, unlit back roads into the depths of Harrison County, where there were more deer than people and a significant chance of slamming into one when flying at sixty miles an hour in the dark.

  He went around the last bend so quickly that he had to slam on the brakes as they came up suddenly on a worn, depressing trailer park of only eight trailers, spread wide down the long, straight stretch of Trailblazer Road running right down the middle. At the entrance, a single utility post light illuminated two sections of mildewed, white fence that bordered either side of the road. The section on the left bore a sign that read “Trailblazer,” while the sign on the right, hanging loosely from the only nail still holding it up, finished, “Court.” Jack cut the headlights and turned in, rolling along at about ten miles an hour.