The Step Between

by Penny Mickelbury

  “Slight change of plan,” she said to Jocelyn, as quietly as possible. She knew that Ruthie Eva would be aware that she’d spoken, but she thought that if she spoke obviously and only to Jocelyn, that their passenger would be uninterested. At least for a while. Carole Ann passed on the directions she’d just received from Jake, wishing she could share the information but not daring to. Jocelyn followed the directions perfectly, not needing to have them repeated or refined. “Good thing you’re a lousy actor,” Carole Ann muttered, and Jocelyn threw her a sideways grin.

  “Where are you going?” Ruthie Eva asked suddenly and almost shrilly. “This is the way to Bill’s. Why are you going this way? What are you doing? Why are we here?”

  “Your daughter is here,” Carole Ann responded, as they turned off Interstate 68 and onto an access road, heading north. In an oddly familiar way, the area reminded her of the Four Corners of the far West, the point at which Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico all touched one another. The topography and terrain were vastly different here, but they’d crossed easily from Virginia into West Virginia, then into Maryland, and were now skirting the Pennsylvania border. The area was heavily forested and considered mountainous, though it was, in her mind, considerably tamer than the Chuska or the San Juan Mountains, where the lowlands were seven thousand feet. But it was beautiful here, and wild and dangerous enough for the uninitiated or the unaware.

  She thought of the night she’d shimmied back and forth on the icy roads up here, alone, terrified, and responsible for the safe passage of her partner’s wife. The thought, the memory of that night produced the sensation of cold and she shivered. “Here we are,” she said, as they crested a gentle incline, and two GGI trucks and half a dozen Maryland State Patrol vehicles came into view, all of them hugging the almost nonexistent shoulder of an impossibly narrow stretch of road. All day Carole Ann had marveled at the fact that they were, at most, four hours from Washington, D.C., and yet their surroundings were rural. And, as she now knew, these rural woods and forests harbored the secret fantasies of many of Washington’s wealthy.

  Jocelyn made a U-turn and pulled up behind one of the GGI Explorers, Ruthie Eva’s Sportage sitting all the way off the paved road, given its diminutive size. Carole Ann turned to face her. She’d wrapped her arms around herself and, huddled as she was in the blanket, she was the frightened child she was frightened for.

  “It appears, Ruthie, that Bill Williams has some involvement in—”

  “I don’t believe that,” she said flatly. “I won’t. I can’t.”

  “I know.” She had trouble believing it herself.

  Ruth was shaking her head back and forth. “That just doesn’t make sense. If he wanted to hurt me or my daughter, why not just steal the money? He could have hurt either one of us years ago.”

  “This isn’t about you and Annabelle. You just happened to get in the way. This is about Bill and Jimmy Sanderson, who just happened to be John MacDonald’s brother, who just happened to be involved with your daughter, who just happened to be the daughter of Sanderson’s brother’s employer. This is about bad luck and bad timing.” And greed, she thought disgustedly. It’s always about greed.

  Ever since they’d pulled onto the shoulder and parked, the activity at the area had increased to the point that it now appeared as if something were under seige. An ambulance, a crime scene van, and three more state trooper vehicles had joined those already on the scene and, as Carole Ann watched, a West Virginia State Police cruiser eased up and joined the queue. She had a momentary sinking feeling, which she quickly banished. Aside from the illegal discharge of an unregistered weapon, she had committed no crime; and since she wasn’t claiming to be the victim of one, she had nothing to fear from West Virginia authorities. She hoped.

  All of the activity seemed directed up a paved and graded driveway, flanked on either side by columned lampposts; this was not the kind of trail that had led to Grace, that had led to Ruthie’s shack, that had provided a convenient albeit temporary escape for Carole Ann earlier that day. She assumed that somewhere up that road, Bill Williams had a house or a cabin, and that he was there or that Annabelle Islington was there. And, she realized, this is where he had to have been when she talked to him earlier. He was up here and to prevent the police from being sent to look for Ruthie Eva and raising an alarm, he told her about the fishing shack. And Jake somehow had smelled the rat.

  She turned around to look at Ruthie Eva, still hunched into her blanket and all but cowering in a corner of the already small vehicle. “He sent you up here because he wanted you out of the way. Whatever he and Sanderson are up to has come unglued. I don’t believe he really intended for harm to come to you or Annabelle, but he may not have been able to prevent it. You and your daughter, and your . . . Richard . . . represent money, Ruthie. Both of you would pay dearly for her safe return.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut tightly. “Has something happened to Annabelle? Has someone hurt her?”

  “Tell me about John MacDonald, Ruthie,” Carole Ann asked, wanting to avoid answering a question that she didn’t know the answer to, and needing answers to other questions, like MacDonald’s presence near Ruthie’s shack.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked in a voice devoid of emotion, in a tone so flat that the question in it almost didn’t exist.

  “Whatever you can tell me.”

  “I love him,” she said simply. “I have for years. He stayed with Richard because of Annabelle. He was my eyes and my ears and my heart all those years. He gave my daughter what I couldn’t, wasn’t allowed to give her. We’re going to be married as soon as my divorce from Richard is finalized. And I’m almost ten years older than he is, in case you were wondering. What else do you want to know?”

  What else, indeed? Carole Ann thought to herself, as questions that were answered led to the formulation of additional questions; for if John MacDonald’s actions were the result of his love for Ruthie Eva Simmons and her daughter, along with his need to extricate himself from his brother’s duplicitous behavior, then all of the weight and responsibility for the ugliness and the madness of the past couple of months rested on another man’s shoulders.

  “What is Bill Williams’s full name?” Carole Ann asked, and she could tell that her seemingly unrelated questions were irritating Ruthie Eva and confusing Jocelyn.

  “William Archibald Williams the third,” she replied a bit testily. “Why?”

  “Because,” Carole Ann responded slowly, “that’s the missing link. It’s Archibald Williams who is the attorney for Seaboard Packaging and Manufacturing, not Wilson. He’s where all of this begins. He’s the one common thread holding all these different pieces together. That’s why he lied to me on the phone this morning. He didn’t know I knew that Annabelle couldn’t have spoken to her mother.”

  Jocelyn made a startled sound and a quick move and Carole Ann looked first at her, then where she was looking. There was movement all around them—all the cops were on the run, most of them with weapons drawn.

  Jocelyn and Carole Ann threw open their doors and jumped out of the little truck simultaneously. Ruthie Ann followed suit, a look of horror on her face. Jocelyn was running down the shoulder, skirting in and out between police vehicles, her head whipping from side to side, looking, Carole Ann knew, for Jake or somebody else from GGI; and if she didn’t connect soon, she’d be ordered back out of the way.

  “Ruthie, please stay here,” Carole Ann said, turning to take the other woman gently by the arm. “You could be hurt.”

  “If my daughter really is up there, this is the first time in her life that I can be there for her. Don’t try to stop me. Please don’t try to stop me.”

  Carole Ann released her arm and watched her run forward as the forgotten blanket first trailed from her shoulders, then dropped unnoticed to the ground. She stood where she was, trying to get a sense of what might be happening. She didn’t know how far up the road Williams’s place was; and since she had no idea
what had prompted all the hurried activity—she hadn’t heard a gunshot—she was content to wait. She needed the time to think, to sort out all the various details and twists and turns that had led her and Jake—all of them—down so many blind alleys and toward so many false conclusions. She picked up Ruthie’s blanket, shook it, and wrapped it around herself. She leaned against the little green truck, thankful for the warmth.

  Part of her consciousness remained tuned into the activity immediately surrounding her. She was conscious of listening for gunshots, of sounds of pain or struggle. Neither Jocelyn nor Ruthie had returned, so she imagined that Jake’s presence was, so far, at least tolerated if not welcomed. Otherwise, they’d all have been sent packing by now.

  She shivered and realized that she was chilly and, at the same moment, her stomach rumbled and she realized that she also was hungry. She looked at her watch. No wonder! It was after one o’clock and she’d had exactly a cup and a half of coffee all day. She shivered again and wrapped the blanket tighter and was deciding whether to go in search of Jake when movement off to her right captured her attention. She turned to look but saw nothing but the dense woods, and nothing moving within, yet she was certain that she had seen something and that it had not been a bird or the wind rustling the vegetation.

  “C.A.!” She turned to see who was calling, and then quickly returned her focus to the woods. She heard and saw the movement at the same time: someone was running through the woods. She started to run, dropping the blanket and turning to look back at Jocelyn, who had called her and who already had begun to run toward her. Carole Ann ran on the graveled shoulder, not wanting to enter the forest for fear of losing her footing. Whoever she was pursuing was wearing red, and she was outrunning him—or her—at the moment; they were running almost parallel to each other, the red streak bobbing and weaving as the runner tried to dodge the slapping and scratching branches and brambles. Carole Ann knew her face would bear the marks of the similar assault she had suffered barely more than an hour earlier.

  Suddenly, the red blur stilled. There was no movement and no sound. She stopped, grateful for the opportunity to catch her breath, and was wondering whether she should plunge into the woods when she heard pounding feet approaching. She turned to see Jocelyn upon her, but before she could speak, she was pushed forward, into the woods, and knocked to the ground. And at that moment, she heard the branches rustle above her and then a muffled popping sound.

  “That son of a bitch!” Jocelyn exclaimed.

  “What.” Carole Ann was too dazed to ask a real question.

  “He shot at you, the son of a bitch!”

  Before Carole Ann could respond, they heard the loud crashing through the brush and both women propelled themselves up and forward, diving into the forest as if into a pool. “Look for red,” she said in a low voice, and Jocelyn nodded. They ran side by side for a dozen yards, then, by unspoken agreement, they widened the distance between themselves, remaining parallel to each other but creating a vise. Carole Ann kept near the edge of the forest, with easy access to the road if that became necessary, while Jocelyn angled deeper into the woods. The prey could only continue forward, with one pursuer above and slightly behind, the other below and slightly ahead.

  As had happened earlier, the underbrush thickened, slowing their movement and obliterating the periodic flashes of red. Unless, C.A. thought, the runner had removed whatever was flashing red through the forest. “Damn,” she muttered to herself as she considered that possibility. She looked to her left, hoping to be able to see Jocelyn. Failing at that, she halted and listened for sounds of movement. There were none. There was no sound. A sinking, helpless feeling overtook her as she wondered what to do. Then, remembering what happened the last time she stopped to think, she dropped to her knees and rolled behind a bush, and as her breathing slowed, she wondered how long she’d been running alone. When she stopped, she hadn’t heard a sound. No one else was running; hadn’t been running for a while, she thought.

  She slid a hand into her jacket pocket and withdrew her gun. Whoever they were chasing already had shot at her once—shot at her using a gun with a silencer. She recalled the whoosh of the bullet through the trees where a split second earlier she’d been standing, and the delayed pop of the gun’s firing. Then she had a sickening thought: Had Jocelyn been shot? Is that why she no longer was running, why Carole Ann couldn’t hear her, couldn’t see her? She rolled over toward the road. This was the way out—the only way out. He had been trying to reach and cross the road when she’d spied him initially, she was certain of that. And she didn’t think it was possible that he already could have crossed without her seeing him . . .

  And there he was, in a solid black, turtleneck sweater, twenty yards ahead of her, on the shoulder, looking back at her. She stood and began running toward him, running as fast as she could. She had more experience as a distance runner than as a sprinter, but she observed by the stride of the man running ahead of her that he hadn’t much experience as any kind of runner. He lumbered more than ran and he’d been at it for a while now, too long, and Carole Ann guessed that fatigue would catch up with him and overcome him pretty quickly. Even though she hadn’t done it for a couple of weeks, she was accustomed to running five miles a day. She was not yet winded. And she could sustain a sprint for another few yards if necessary.

  Fortunately, it was not. The man’s legs obviously were tired, which made them sluggish, which caused his feet to drag. And he fell, flat out, on his face, spread-eagle in the roadway. And his gun flew out of his hand when he fell. Carole Ann summoned an added spurt of energy and reached him before he could regain his feet or reclaim his weapon. It was the man who had blockaded the street and shot at her as she was leaving Beth Childress’s house.

  She leveled her gun at him, holding it with both hands, hoping that he thought she looked proficient enough to shoot him. She recalled how impressed she’d been with John MacDonald’s display earlier and how, if Ruthie Eva was to be believed, he’d no more have shot her than she would shoot the man on the ground in front of her. She didn’t need to tell him not to move. He mumbled something and dropped his face into the hard surface of the road. She could hear his labored breathing.

  Then, as she was wondering what to do next, she heard Jocelyn’s approach. Not because she could hear rustling in the woods from across the road, but because she could hear Jocelyn calling the man a son of a bitch. Over and over. “You shot me, you son of a bitch,” she said. Then, “You son of a bitch. I ought to turn you into roadkill.” Followed by, “You so much as move, you son of a bitch, and I’ll blow your ass to Kingdom Come.”

  When she was near enough, Carole Ann risked turning her eyes from the man on the ground to Jocelyn, who had indeed been shot. Blood poured from a hole in the left sleeve of her jacket just below the shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she snapped. “This was a new jacket, too, you son of a bitch.”

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Carole Ann said. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  “Damn straight he’s not! Spread your legs as wide as you can and lock your hands behind your head, you ugly son of a bitch,” she snarled, and she winced in pain as he obeyed. Then, with Carole Ann’s assistance, she obeyed the directive to sit down.

  “Do you have your phone, Jocelyn?”

  She nodded slowly and pointed toward her left shoulder. They both winced as Carole Ann unzipped the jacket and reached for the phone in the inside pocket. She was scrupulously careful not to touch any part of the other woman’s body. She’d been shot and she knew how excruciating the pain could be. She quickly punched in the numbers to Jake’s cellular phone. He answered immediately. She told him what had happened and where they were and, knowing that it would be a matter of only a few seconds before they were surrounded by police, she strode over to the man on the ground, who still was breathing heavily, and squatted down before him, gaining as much eye contact as was possible and advisable under the circumstances. />
  “Life without the possibility of parole. That’s your future, unless at some point you inadvertently crossed the line into Virginia, which has the death penalty. And they use it. Do you understand what I’m telling you?” She watched his eyes as the words took effect. “What did Harry Childress find out?”

  “That Sandy was packaging coke and smack in the plant and shipping it out in the trucks.”

  “That’s why Seaboard wanted OnShore? They got caught for laundering money, but their real operation was packaging and shipping?”

  He nodded as best he could, with his face plastered to the asphalt roadway.

  “Did you do the murders?”

  “Nooo!” It was a whining, pleading denial that was fully believable. “Sandy did those. I set the fire late that night, like he said, but that’s all I did. I swear . . .”

  “Who’s the other guy? And who’s the girl?”

  “Sandy’s newest babe. Followed him around. And the guy was Archie’s partner, Ed something, who was threatening to pull out and leave Sandy holding the bag. That was ’cause of you guys, GGI, you were messing up everything. But Sandy was the only one you could connect to anything. Look, you gotta believe me that I didn’t kill anybody! That was Sandy all by his lonesome. He’s still got the gun!”

  “Where’s Sandy now?” She sliced into his protestations and hoped that he didn’t notice the underlying anxiety in her voice, and the surprise that carried it. She made him repeat his answer as the screaming of sirens and the roaring of powerful engines obliterated his words.

  “C.A.,” Jocelyn called out to her in a low, urgent voice, and Carole Ann rushed over and knelt beside her. “Didn’t you say that was an illegal weapon?”

  She blanched and nodded.