Nick of Time

by John Gilstrap

  “How do we do that?”

  Brad stopped the Honda and pointed past Nicki at a house on their right. “Like this,” he said. “Look at this place. The people aren’t home.” And sure enough, there was an old Toyota parked alongside the curb.

  Nicki followed his finger, but couldn’t follow the logic. “Brad, there’s a light on in the house.”

  “Exactly,” he said, pulling into the driveway. He killed the lights on the Honda. “What’s the last thing your father does before he goes to bed at night?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Think about it. Before he goes upstairs for the last time, what’s the last thing he does?”

  Nicki pondered the question, but the answer wasn’t there. An ember of anger started to burn.

  “He turns out the lights, right?”

  She thought about it. Yes, that was the last thing he did.

  “It’s the last thing everybody does,” Brad explained. “But what does he do before he goes on vacation to make people think there’s someone at home?”

  Now she really did see it. She smiled. “He turns on a light.”

  He slapped his thigh triumphantly. “Exactly. Not just any light, mind you, but a light downstairs. I’ve broken into my share of houses, and I’ve got to tell you, at three in the morning, the ones with lights on are the ones that are empty.”

  “How do you know somebody’s not sick?”

  “If they were, then an upstairs light would be on, or maybe the foyer light. But look there. That’s like a living room light. You can tell because of the bay window.”

  Nicki released a chuckle. “You know, there aren’t any rules for that stuff. You could be wrong.”

  He flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture and made a face. “I’m never wrong.” He opened the car door and got out, leaving the Honda running in the driveway.

  Nicki followed. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m making a trade,” he said. As he approached the driver’s side of the Toyota, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a ring of what might have been keys, but from what Nicki could see, they all had an odd shape about them.

  “What are those?” Nicki asked.

  Brad scowled and brought a finger to his lips. “One of the first lessons in thief school is not to shout, okay? We call it stealth.” He stooped to the side of the door and stuck one of the thin black objects into the lock, while his other hand stuck a tiny Y-shaped strip of metal into the top and bottom of the key slot. “These are lock picks,” Brad explained. His tone was that of a master explaining to an apprentice. “I stick the pick in the lock while holding tension on the cylinder with the tension bar.” He raked the pick in and out of the slot, then withdrew the pick and reinserted it. “These older Toyotas aren’t as hard as some of the other cars. This is a 1992, I’d guess. Beginning in ’95, the lock technology got pretty tough.”

  “What are you scraping?” Nicki asked.

  “The pin tumblers. There’s a diamond-shaped point on the end of the pick, and as I push the tumblers out of the way, the cylinder turns a bit, and the tension keeps them from popping back in. When I get them all”—Nicki heard a distinctive click, and the lock turned all the way, raising the lock button just inside the window—“the lock opens.” He stood and pulled the door open, triggering the dome light inside, which he extinguished by turning a knob on the dash.

  Nicki’s jaw dropped. “I don’t believe you know how to do this stuff.”

  Brad beamed, clearly proud of his accomplishment. “But wait,” he said in a strange announcer’s voice, “there’s more.” He produced the Leatherman and again folded out the needle-nose pliers.

  “First we have to unlock the steering wheel,” Brad said. Slipping into the driver’s seat, he grasped the steering wheel with both hands and wrenched it violently to the right.

  A loud crack! made Nicki jump.

  “It’s just a pin,” Brad explained. “A piece of plastic. Break that sucker off and you’ve got an unlocked steering wheel. Now, watch this.” Manipulating the pliers with only one hand, he grasped the ignition cylinder with the tool’s jaws, and again broke something with a mighty twist. Grinning widely, he pulled out the whole assembly and brandished it for Nicki to see.

  “Did you break it?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by breaking.”

  Brad brought the pliers around to the ignition switch again, but with the steering column in the way, she couldn’t see exactly what he did. Whatever it was, the engine turned and coughed to life.

  “All you have to do is close the circuit,” he explained. “All of this other crap is supposed to make you feel more secure.”

  Amazing, Nicki thought. Simply and utterly amazing. “So, what do we do with the Honda?”

  “I need you to follow me in it,” he said. “We’ll dump it a couple of blocks from here and then take off.”

  Ten minutes later, they were done. It would have been even sooner, but Brad spotted a similar Toyota—later model but same color—parked down the street a ways, and he took an extra few minutes to swap the license plates.

  “It’s the little things that make the difference,” Brad explained when they were on the road again. “To be on the run and stay alive means thinking three steps ahead all the time. When you steal, steal from someone who won’t notice, but then plan that they might. This car here? We’re gonna have to dump it and get another one before too long, probably tomorrow. Meanwhile, if someone does notice that we boosted the car and they report it, cops on the highway are going to be looking for those old plates. If they see us on the road, they’ll call in the plates we’ve got and find out that they belong to a silver-gray Toyota, and we’ll be in the clear. Pretty cool, huh?”

  When Nicki didn’t answer, he craned his neck to get a look at her.

  She was sound asleep.

  * * *

  Carter sat on the sofa of the Governor’s Suite, perusing the accumulated evidence. Somebody named Vincent Campanella had one hell of a surprise waiting for him when he got back from his vacation in France. His car had been stolen and over six thousand dollars had been racked up against his credit card without his knowledge. Carter wondered if the gendarme would break the news in person, or if it would merely be handled through a phone call.

  The Braddock County cops had found the Mustang in the Ritz-Carlton garage, safe and sound, and even with a full tank of gas. There on the bed, Carter could see the assortment of clothes that his daughter had bought with money she didn’t have.

  “Under the circumstances, I think we can make a pretty good case for dropping any charges against your Nicki,” Warren said. “They didn’t keep anything they stole. That’s a little bit of good news, anyway.”

  Carter forced a smile. “Somewhere under all that horseshit there has to be a pony, right?” he quipped, recalling the punch line from an old joke.

  “We’ve got a BOLO out for their vehicle,” Warren went on, “and we’ve got word going out to all the hotels and flophouses. We’ve narrowed their lead to virtually nothing, so I think there’s a lot of reason to be hopeful.”

  Carter nodded because it was the thing to do, but he sensed that Warren knew, just as he did, that things were not nearly as rosy as he was painting them to be. In the first place, Brad Ward was proving himself to be resourceful. Carter placed the likelihood that they were still in the same vehicle at just about zero.

  “You’ve got to have some faith,” Warren said. “Things have broken your way pretty well so far.”

  “You know what?” Carter said with a suddenness that turned heads. “I think I need to be reunited with my car and take off on my own.”

  “Where are you going?” Warren asked.

  “South and east. Chris Tu, a detective on the force back home who’s been working that end for me, told me that they talked in their e-mails about going to the beach.”

  Warren’s eyebrows scaled his forehead. “Specifically? I mean, if you th
ink they’re headed for a particular beach—”

  Carter shook his head. “No, it’s nothing that overt. Apparently, they just talked about the beauty of the beach in their e-mails. That was one of the things she wanted to do before she . . . Well, it’s one of the things she wants to do.”

  Carter eyed the brown pill bottles on the bed, the ones with his daughter’s name on them. “I don’t suppose you’d let me have those, would you?” he asked. “I know they’re evidence, but if I happen to run into her—”

  Warren scowled and shot Carter a look that said he was crazy. “Those aren’t evidence at all, as far as I’m concerned.” He scooped the bottles up with one hand and gave them to the worried father. “No, like I said, as far as I’m concerned, this isn’t even a crime scene anymore. We’ve got everything we need.”

  Warren Michaels was doing Carter Janssen a huge favor here, turning away from Nicki’s part in what clearly was grand larceny, if not worse. “Listen, Warren, I—”

  “This doesn’t begin to repay my debt to you, Carter. Nathan’s debt to you. You just go and find Nicki, and be sure to give me a call if you need any help.”

  “I’ll do that,” Carter said. “Now how about a ride back to your house where I can get my car?”

  May 3

  Last night they got me. It was the Posse. There were five of them and it went on all night. It was after lights-out and they just appeared in my cell. I was asleep until they punched me in the face, and from there it was just one long nightmare. They threatened to cut my balls off if I yelled.

  I didn’t yell. I did what they told me to do. I couldn’t stop them anyway. I don’t know how long it went on. Maybe for hours. It even stopped hurting after a while. I think I stopped feeling anything. Until the next morning. This morning. I could barely walk. They promised me more. They said I was theirs for the taking whenever they want.

  Georgen was there watching. He wasn’t one of the rapists—at least I don’t think he was—but he stood there and watched a long time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Once they were past Stafford, the traffic on I-95 South was a breeze. The Toyota turned out to be a piece of crap, so Brad changed out cars one more time, this time taking a Chrysler Sebring—an old guy’s convertible, but a convertible nonetheless. That was the one promise that Brad had made to himself. The less time he could spend cooped up with a roof over his head, the better. He missed the Mustang, though.

  Nicki had fallen back to sleep, curled up on the passenger side with the seat tilted all the way back. As much as he craved her company to keep himself awake, he let her sleep on, envying her.

  So, how did the cops catch up so quickly? He thought he’d been careful. It had to have something to do with the credit card, but for the life of him he couldn’t put it all together.

  Now that he’d put some miles on his escape, he needed to get off the interstate, and onto some thoroughfares where Virginia State Troopers didn’t grow like bushes along the side of the road. In Fredericksburg, he slapped his turn signal and veered off onto Route 17. It would still take him south, and from there to his final destination, but it would take a lot longer, especially as he got into the nightmarish tangle of highways around Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Still, it was safer than the interstate. He just had to take extra care to watch the speed limit signs.

  He hated this new paranoia. Until last night, he’d allowed himself to build up a sense of invulnerability, but the events at the Ritz had unnerved him. In one night, he’d undone months of evasion. Instead of having a whole world to scour in search for him, they were down to a hundred-mile radius. The pressure had increased a thousandfold.

  The cops would flood news outlets with his picture, and they’d make it sound as if he was the worst criminal ever to walk the planet. They’d lace every report with warnings to consider him armed and dangerous.

  Oh, that it were true. If he had the means to defend himself, maybe he could relax a little.

  Nicki asked, “Do you know where we’re going?”

  He hadn’t realized that she was awake. When he turned to look at her, he saw that her eyelids were still closed.

  “South,” he said. “All the way south. I’ve been thinking about it. My original plan was to hit the Outer Banks and just jump from place to place, but things are a little hotter than I’d hoped.”

  “I’m tired of being a prom queen anyway,” she said, her eyes still closed. “Now I’m ready to be Bonnie Parker.”

  Brad smiled. “Turning tough, are you? How are you feeling? You don’t look so good.”

  Nicki sat up straighter. “I think I’m gonna look worse before I look better, too. I left my meds back in the hotel room.”

  Brad’s head shot around to look at her. “All of them?”

  She nodded.

  “We’ll get you more, then.”

  Nicki smiled. “We’ve got time.”

  “How much?”

  A shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. Everything is a matter of degree. I’ll be okay, just a little slow until I get them.”

  Brad’s head swam at the notion of finding a replacement prescription. Maybe he really was going to need that gun.

  “Don’t sound so panicky,” Nicki said. “Honestly, it’s not a huge deal for a couple of days. Maybe even a week. We really do have time.”

  “Then why do you look so bad?”

  She laughed and opened her eyes. “Well, let’s just say the last few hours have been more stressful than my average day. If I rest, things will right themselves eventually. The meds just speed things along.”

  She kept a careful eye on Brad’s face. This was the part of being with her that he couldn’t have thought about. She was a cripple, not the fun-loving travel companion he’d been looking forward to. She was holding him back—she had to be—and part of her wondered when he was going to just pull over and let her out of the car.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” Nicki said. “I need to know.”

  Brad cleared his throat. “Well, if you really have a couple of days to work with, I was thinking that we could wait till we get down to the Florida Keys. There’s a lady down there, the mother of a guy I knew from the joint. She moved there after her son was killed, but she promised me once that I’d always have a home. From there, I’ll be able to find somebody who can help us. It’s just not practical to go walking into a pharmacy and hold the place up for a prescription, you know? Especially not now, when we’re trying so hard to disappear again. I go to a place like that, and ask for drugs like yours, and then all of a sudden they can track us on the map like we had a homing beacon on the car. I just don’t think—”

  “Brad, relax,” she repeated. She hesitated before tossing out the Big Question. “Do you want to drop me off?”

  This time, when he looked at her, there was pain in his eyes. Maybe even a little panic. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “I don’t want to slow you down. It’s got to be easier for one person to hide than it is for two.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “I want to know what you want. It would be easier, wouldn’t it?”

  She was shocked to see that his feelings were hurt by her question. She thought she was doing the noble thing.

  “Well, yeah, it’s easier, but so what? I’ve done this by myself for a long time. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I don’t want to be without you anymore.”

  “But I’m sick.”

  “I know that. You gonna be less sick if you’re by yourself?”

  Nicki scowled. “You know what I mean. I’m worried that I’m going to keep you from getting away.”

  Brad shook his head in wonderment. “You really don’t get it, do you? This is where I was going to, Nicki. You are where I was going to. I never in a million years thought you’d go along with this, but you did. I’m here now, and we’re together, and I’m not going to let a little pressure from the cops change any of that. That’s what I keep telling y
ou. Why won’t you believe me?”

  Nicki heard the words but the message didn’t make sense to her. He could have anyone.

  “Unless you’re anxious to get away,” he said, mistaking her silence for uncertainty. “Unless you’re scared.”

  Nicki scoffed, “I’m dying. I got past scared months ago. When you’ve got no future, I’m not sure what there is to be afraid of.”

  Brad smiled. “I couldn’t have put it better myself,” he said.

  * * *

  Deputy Darla Sweet stepped through the doorway to the Dairy Queen and adjusted her Sam Browne belt, trying to look confident even as she felt awkward as hell. Gisela Hines—the sheriff’s wife—had called her at eight-thirty this morning to request this meeting, and now that she was here, Darla felt that she’d made a terrible mistake. Whatever was going on in the Hines house was strictly a family affair, and the less she knew about it, the happier she’d be.

  All the way over here, Darla had recited the words she wanted to use to extricate herself from this mess, but as valiant and strong as they sounded in the car, she knew that she’d never be able to say them aloud. If she had a brain in her head, she would tell Gisela to talk to a counselor, not a cop.

  Darla and Gisela had only met once before, at a courthouse Christmas party, but there’d be no problem recognizing her. Born and raised in Panama, Gisela Hines had an exotic beauty about her that set her apart from the heavily cosmeticized locals of her age. Closing in on fifty, her olive skin had the smoothness of a teenager’s, her eyes the dark intensity of a thoroughly lived life.

  As Darla scanned the room, she saw Gisela waving from the back right-hand corner. She had a cardboard tray of food in front of her, but seemed not the least bit interested in eating.

  “So, how is Jeremy?” Darla asked as she took the bench opposite Gisela. “Last time I saw him, he was expecting a pretty rough time at home.”

  Gisela toyed with her meal. “Frank was very angry. They had a terrible argument.” The decades she had spent in this country had worn away all but the slightest trace of an accent.