Run, Girl, Run: A Thriller

by Alex C. Franklin

  Young followed Quinn inside and the door closed quietly behind them.

  The young man with long hair behind the desk kept his head bent and focused on the portable PlayStation which he feverishly jabbed with his thumbs.

  Young rapped on the door frame. “Hey, buddy!”

  The young man looked up. He paused the game and rested it on the desk. Picking up a pen, he tried to sound interested. “How can I help you?”

  Young opened his mouth to speak, but Quinn slapped him in the chest with the back of his hand and stepped forward.

  Quinn studied the young man’s faded blue shirt, the cigarette packet in his left pocket, the unfinished tattoo sleeves that extended only half-way up his arms. Most of all, he studied the young man’s face, and his shifting, green eyes. This was someone he could deal with, he thought.

  “We lost touch with a friend of ours, but we know he came here.” Quinn fixed a steady gaze on the young man. “A Canadian, about nineteen years old with short, black hair. We need to find him, quick.”

  Quinn disengaged his stare and let his eyes fall on the registration log.

  “Sorry, but we have a strict policy here. We don’t give out any information about our guests.”

  Quinn locked eyes with the young man again, pulled his wallet from his back pants pocket and slid out a fifty-dollar bill. He folded it, leaned forward, and slid it under the PlayStation.

  Quinn observed the young man as he eyed the PlayStation and ran his hand through his long hair; he thought he could almost hear the young man’s brain working.

  “We had one Canadian, recently,” the attendant said. “He pushed out about a week ago. My girlfriend knows him. Seems he went to Fairview.”

  The young man saw the blank expressions on the faces of the two strangers.

  “It’s another campground, straight down on this highway. You can’t miss it. It’s bigger than this one.”

  Behind Quinn’s back, Young rolled his eyes. Great, we’re back to square one, he thought.

  “What’s he driving?” Quinn said.

  The young man glanced at the register; his eyes roved to the PlayStation, then fixed themselves on the wallet still in Quinn’s right hand. He looked up at Quinn.

  Quinn pulled out another fifty and slid it under the PlayStation.

  The young man smiled.

  “A ’98 Ford F-150. Dark green,” he said. He flipped back through the log book. “But I don’t know the plate number offhand. Let’s see what it says. Okay, here it is.”

  He gave them the information, then clasped his hands in front of him on the desk, staring at them. “Is that all?”

  Young slipped his hand below his denim jacket. His fingers reached for the gun in his holster. This was not his beloved Colt. It was a SIG Sauer P220, fitted with a silencer.

  Stupid punk, he thought. This bum was liable to give up information about them if the cops were to ever come around asking, just like he gave up info on that Canadian.

  Well, Young just wasn’t going to let that happen.

  Suddenly, the door swung open and two small boys burst into the office, giggling as one chased after the other. Adult voices and laughter from outside grew louder as footsteps approached.

  Young looked across at Quinn, who jerked his head in the direction of the door. Reluctantly, he let his hand drop to his side and he followed Quinn out.

  Chapter 95

  By late morning, the sun had fully shaken off its slumber and its rays began to sting. We drove past towering trees and swampland, with no houses in sight.

  Our pace was slower now, partly because there was more traffic on the road, but mostly because Parker steered with one hand, while sipping the coffee he held in the other.

  A mile or two back, he had pulled into a fast-food drive-thru, but I had refused his offer of breakfast. He got himself an egg muffin and also ordered a half dozen donuts and two cups of coffee “just in case” I changed my mind.

  He had wolfed down the egg muffin and three of the donuts. The rest sat in an open box. Somewhere along the way, I relented and picked up the coffee, which I barely drank, preferring to use it as a hand warmer.

  The lingering smell of eggs and stale grease that filled the car made me feel both hungry and sick at the same time.

  It had been an eternity since I’d had a decent meal. But my stomach was a wreck. The term “butterflies” could hardly come close to describing the queasiness that gripped me.

  Here I was with this cop, whose striking good looks and physical presence I’d been forced to acknowledge since circumstances had thrown him right in my face, but whom I hardly knew, and about whom I had some lingering doubts, although at his every move, those doubts were fading fast. Here we were, so far away from home, lying about who we were, speeding down a Florida highway in a mad rush to find a young man with a video of his dead uncle confessing to a crime, and we were trying to reach him before the people who killed Dromel got to him.

  The people who killed Ben.

  Just the thought of him sent my heart into spasms. But I couldn’t let myself become sentimental. Not now, as we were so close to finding Jacques Tremblay and the evidence that the Syron Lake spill was no act of God.

  “How do you do this every day?” I said, trying to distract myself.

  “What?” Parker said. “You mean have coffee and donuts for breakfast?”

  “No. I mean your job.”

  “Being a cop?”

  “Yes. How can you stand it? Evil. Death. The blood. The dead bodies.”

  “Haven’t had much of it these past four years in Syron Lake. Nothing happens there, right?”

  He looked at me and smiled. I suppose he was trying to lighten my mood, but I couldn’t return the smile.

  “Saw some pretty raw stuff during the two decades I was with the military,” he continued. “Like any thing, see it enough, you get used to it.”

  It was just as well that my eye caught something just then, as my brain was too dull to come up with a reply. I lightly touched the hand in which he held his coffee. “What did the girl say the park was called?”

  “Bayview or Fairview.”

  “The sign up ahead says Fairview.”

  The long trailer that served as the registration office was strewn with rolled-up sleeping bags, tents, and enormous backpacks. Campers crowded around the counter. A young, harried-looking attendant tucked springy, red curls behind her ears and sighed loudly.

  Suddenly she shouted out, “Let’s get some order here. Checking in, stand on this side; checking out, over there. Okay?”

  Like Moses’ staff, her words caused the sea of bodies and camping gear to part in two. The check-in line was five deep; the check-out was longer.

  Parker motioned me to stand in the check-in. He sauntered over to the other line and sidled up to a couple who were peering over a map.

  “The camping’s good here?” he said.

  “There’s a nice beach,” the man said. “But otherwise it’s no different from any of the other places we’ve been to. We’re doing as many as we can, hoping to get down to Key West, eventually.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Been here long?”

  “Three days,” the woman said. “We’re on our honeymoon. Got a week left.”

  “Hey, congrats. My girlfriend and I are doing the same thing, hoping to catch up with my brother along the way. Last we heard, he was coming here. He’s got this crazy trailer decked out in camouflage. You seen it?”

  “That sounds cool, man. I’d love to see it.”

  “So you haven’t come across it?”

>   “No. We were on the beach; we didn’t do too much exploring around the place.” The man cast a knowing glance at his wife.

  Parker looked across at me and scrunched up his mouth. He was going to have to go through the whole routine again, most likely with the woman behind the counter. I figured he’d have to wait until the office completely emptied out if he was to have any chance with her.

  “I seen it,” a voice said, over the chatter in the room.

  The triumphal cry came from a near-skeletal man in rumpled clothes who had an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. He stood in line in front of newly-weds, and held up his hand like a first grader in class.

  “Really?” Parker said. “Whereabouts?”

  “Up yonder, on the hill in the far corner. Not too many folks goes up there. But I seen it when I went walking my dog. Of course, I had to look really hard to make it out from the bushes, ’cause it’s camouflage an’ all.”

  Impressed with his own comic genius, the man leaned forward and cackled, making a thin, wheezing sound that came from deep inside his smoke-ravaged lungs.

  “Hey thanks, buddy,” Parker said.

  With a day pass sticker on the windshield, we parked in our lot. After a long trek to the northern edge of the campground, we climbed a little hill and saw the small, round camper. Covered as much in rust blisters as it was a camouflage design, it looked barely capable of accommodating a grown man. It was on the only occupied lot, and it looked deserted. There was no tow vehicle in sight.

  “I’m going to get this,” Parker said. “Hide over there in the bushes, just in case there’s trouble.”

  I ducked behind the brush and looked on as Parker walked up to the camper and knocked. No sound came from inside. He tried the door handle. It didn’t budge.

  He pulled out the key chain for the rented car, on which he’d clipped his own car keys. On it was a small pick, which he applied to the lock.

  He then took a step back and reached behind, just under the light jacket that he wore. He pulled out the black and sliver handgun that I’d seen in the glove compartment.

  Holding it with both hands close to his ribs, he stood with his back to the camper, on the side of the door where the handle was. With one hand, he turned the handle and flung the door open.

  He pivoted and took tiny steps across the path of the entrance, all the while pointing the gun inside.

  Nothing happened.

  He poked his head in and scanned the camper, then came over and joined me in the bushes.

  “Up for a treasure hunt?” he said.

  Chapter 96

  The tiny tin-can of a trailer had a dank smell of sweaty clothes, stale food and rusted metal. We folded out the bed, unhinged seats, poked around all drawers and cabinets. But there was no video camera, no computer disks or flash drives, no computer, nothing that could possibly hold the evidence we were after.

  After straightening the place, we returned to the bushes and sat side by side on a log — waiting.

  “What you were saying, earlier, about getting used to blood and gore and killing,” I said, breaking the long silence, “I really can’t relate to that.”

  Parker shrugged. “Some people are made for it, I guess.”

  “I was a crime reporter straight out of journalism school. Covered one murder. But, thank goodness, the body was removed long before I got on the scene. I hated that job.”

  “A dead body can’t harm you.”

  “Oh yes it can.”

  Parker arched an eyebrow and stared at me. “How do you figure that?”

  “The sight of mangled flesh is enough to do it.”

  “Come again?”

  “It can wound a person’s psyche.”

  “Okay,” Parker said, stretching the word out beyond its normal length.

  “You see a cadaver and that lifeless mound makes you realize that that could very well be you. And some day it will be you. It’s chilling to be reminded of that. Depressing, even.”

  “That’s a very self-centered way of looking at things.”

  I shrugged.

  “The way you think, I’d say you made a good career move by not getting into medicine or law enforcement.” The sides of his mouth quivered as if he was forcing himself not to laugh.

  It was disarming.

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I guess I’d make a lousy cop or doctor.”

  “They’d have to order a stretcher and smelling salts for Dr Jacob every time she went down to emergency to admit a new patient.”

  Parker and I both burst out in laughter and he batted his hand in the air to remind me to keep my voice down.

  “Look, Paul,” I said after awhile, “I’m sorry if I was a bit hard on you earlier.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I blew up about speaking ill of the dead.”

  “No apologies needed.”

  “It’s just that everything you said about Ben…well, I guess it was all true; and it was all ugly. So it was hard to take.”

  “Having your illusions shattered is devastating, no two ways about it.”

  “I mean, it’s painful that he’s gone. But what’s more disturbing is that I was so blind. I had no clue about his true character. How could I have been such a fool?” My voice cracked and I bit my lower lip as I fought back sudden, unwelcome tears.

  “Don’t blame yourself.” Parker patted me on the knee. “Look, I was with a woman for three years. It was three long years of spending almost every off-duty hour with her, sharing our lives, sharing the deepest intimacies. She even went to my father’s funeral with me and held my hand before and after I gave the eulogy. Well, I proposed. She said yes and acted as if she was over the moon at the thought of being my wife and the mother of my kids.”

  Parker paused.

  “And?” I said.

  “The last day before the wedding, she took off for Mexico with her best friend….”

  I raised my brow in sympathy.

  “Her girlfriend,” he said, “who was a girlfriend in every sense of the word.”

  “Oh!”

  “Oh yeah.” Parker nodded. “I never saw it coming. Hit me like a two-by-four in the nose.”

  “Ouch!” I scrunched my own nose and rubbed it.

  We laughed.

  “I can laugh about it now, but it wasn’t like that for a long time. Couldn’t even bear to think about it. In fact, outside of therapy, this is the first I’ve actually spoken about it.”

  “Thanks for sharing.”

  “Just making the point that we all get taken for a ride some time or the other. It may hurt like hell, but eventually, we get over it.”

  “Hurts like hell sure sums it up.”

  I stood up as tears welled in my eyes. It felt like I was on an emotional roller coaster and it was about to take me down for a deep plunge.

  “I don’t understand it,” I said. “I can’t seem to get this stupid thing called love right. With Peter, my first serious boyfriend, I thought I was doing the right thing. Go slow. Friendship first. Waited ten months before anything happened. That didn’t work out. With Ben, I thought, ‘Don’t hold back. Jump right in and take a chance.’ Turns out that was wrong too.”

  Parker had gone very quiet. He stared straight ahead with glazed eyes as if he had tuned out entirely all of a sudden.

  I had thought he would have lent me a sympathetic ear at this moment of obvious emotional crisis. I guess I’d misjudged him. It was yet another thing that I’d gotten wrong.

  I exhaled slowly, my spirit
deflating along with my lungs. “I can’t seem to get life right either.”

  “Who ever does?” Parker said.

  “I feel like…like just a weak, foolish woman.”

  “From what I’ve seen of you and read about how you stood up for the community at the hearing, I’d say you’re one of the smartest, strongest women I know.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, well I don’t know how smart that was.”

  Parker tilted his head.

  “Look where it’s got me.” I shook my hands at the bushes around us. “Other people who mind their own business are comfortable in their beds this early morning, curling up next to a spouse. They’ll probably wake up to a houseful of kids and a shaggy dog. And look at me! Out here, waiting for some stranger. Scared out of my wits after seeing the man I loved gunned down less than twenty-four hours ago, and after being chased down, myself, by two men in Trinidad, and two more, here, in Florida….”

  “Look, I’m not sure who, exactly, we’re up against. But I do know they haven’t won yet.”

  I sighed.

  Parker continued. “Let’s just get this final piece of evidence and take things from there, okay? All your efforts may just bear fruit yet.”

  “But–”

  Parker shot up from the log and held me by the shoulder.

  “Shhh.” He put his finger to his lips. “I think I hear a vehicle.”

  Chapter 97

  The green pickup rolled up the incline and parked in front of the trailer. The driver’s door swung open and a male wearing a baseball cap jumped out. He immediately turned his body back to face the truck as he tugged at white plastic bags on the passenger seat.

  The man’s stature and the glimpse of his face was enough for Parker.

  He motioned me to exit the bushes and approach from the right, while he hung back.

  “Jacques,” I called out as I neared the young man.

  He stood with two bags of groceries slung through his left arm, which also clutched several cans against his chest, while his right hand turned the key to the camper door.