Kevin and the driver marched us down to the car and put us in the back. Kevin sat in the front passenger seat, but he was turned so he could look at us. He held a gun in his hand all the while, dangled it over the seat, but not so close I might get hold of it. I watched Kevin while he watched us, him smiling all the while like a shark about to devour us.
They drove us home. The driver got out and opened the door for us like a limousine operator, and left us there on the curb in front of our house.
As soon as they drove away, Kelly burst out crying and I had to support her into the house.
Ten
We waited about thirty minutes, gathering our nerves, going about, trying to figure how they got in the house, and it was pretty easy to determine. They just picked the locks and came inside, easy as picking their nose. There were a few scratches on the carport door lock, but that was it. They had slipped inside, locked the doors back, and waited. I told myself I was going to put locks on all the windows, bars, and that I was going to redo the doors, get some really thick ones, and some out-of-this-world locks that a goddamn safe cracker couldn’t pick. I was going to buy a serious alarm system, and a back up to that one. I might get a vicious dog as big as a horse. I thought about all these things, as if it mattered right then. It was like thinking about putting a new barn door on the barn after the mule had run off.
We put on fresh clothes, grabbed a few things, got in our car, and I drove, heading out for Manny, Louisiana, not knowing what else to do, not knowing what to think, but of one thing Kelly was certain.
“You can’t testify,” she said, as I drove. “You can’t. I know you want to do the right thing, but the right thing is taking care of your family. They mean business, baby. Really bad business.”
“I know that,” I said.
“He may have someone waiting at your mother’s house,” she said. “He probably will.”
“I know that, too.”
“We have to get Sue.”
“I know. And we will.”
“If there’s someone there—“
“Goddamn it, will you give me a break?”
Kelly shrieked. Just shrieked. Like a banshee. “Don’t talk to me like that!”
“I’m sorry. Just … just give me some room. I’m thinking.”
“You couldn’t do anything tonight, and there’s nothing you can do now, no matter how much you think about it. Do you hear me? Nothing.”
I had caught a bit of shrapnel over in the sand pit once, being near a friend of mine who caught the bulk of it, killing him, some of it going through his body and striking me, but as horrible as that was, it was nothing compared to what Kelly had said; that wound cut through my soul.
We didn’t say much after that, just rode along through the night. We hadn’t called ahead, not knowing if we ought to, not knowing why we should. Not knowing much of anything, if you want the truth. All we knew was we were off to get our child and my mother.
After about an hour, Kelly, perhaps in self-defense, fell asleep. What she had said had pained me, made me angry, but that didn’t make it any less true. In fact, that’s why it had made me so mad. It was true. What the hell could I do? If I didn’t testify, Maddy’s killer would get away with it. She didn’t deserve for that to happen. If I did testify, then my family was in jeopardy. I couldn’t let that happen either. I was between a board and nail, and the hammer was cocked and ready to strike.
I thought about all manner of things, and watched the rear-view mirror to try and figure if I was being followed, but nothing struck me as suspicious except for an old pickup truck that was going the same way we were, lagging behind us, but after about twenty minutes it turned off down a side road and I never saw it again.
Then I came back to the thing I was thinking all along, the thing I was trying to avoid. The cell phones Cason had given me and I had put in the glove box of my car.
Eleven
When we were near my mother’s house, I parked in a church lot about four blocks down from it. I said to Kelly, “If the cops come, tell them you got lost. You know your mother-in-law lives around here somewhere, and you’re supposed to pick up your daughter, but you’re confused on the house.”
“We have a GPS,” she said.
“Tell them you’re programming it in, then. Tell them you didn’t think you needed it, but got this far, realized you did, not having been here in a while.” I opened the door and got out, said, “Here, slide over to the driver’s side.”
“And what if there is someone waiting?”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. There’s a whole lot of difference in sneaking up on me while I’m asleep, and me sneaking up on them.”
“If you can sneak up on them.”
Her lack of confidence wasn’t exactly inspiring.
I got out of the car, Kelly slid behind the wheel, and I started walking along the sidewalk on the opposite side of where my mother’s house would be. I knew the area as well as I knew my wife’s body. I had grown up there. This was a kind of upper scale, suburban area, at least that’s what you had to call it compared to most of the town, which was not a metropolis, but a quiet place with people going about their everyday lives, not knowing about people like Pye Anthony and his son, or not wanting to.
I got to thinking as I walked, that if I were one of Pye’s guys, I’d be on this side of the street. There were more trees, and the photos I had seen on Kevin’s phone had come from the side opposite the house. The guy, or guys that were here to watch the house, could be anywhere, but I got to pondering about how it probably was. I figured for this detail one guy was enough, and for all I knew he had taken the pictures on his phone, sent them, and gone home, thinking that would be enough to have me change my mind. I sure was thinking about changing my mind, so maybe it was enough; almost. I edged past a black Suburban, across a lawn, heard a dog bark, kept going, and fell in under the shadows of some large trees, and then into a brushy trail I had played along as a kid. It had changed some; a few of the trees were gone, and the bushes weren’t as wild this time of year, but it was still the same place where I had pretended to be on another planet, waiting any minute for a giant alien insect to strike so I could shoot them down with my trusty ray gun.
I had been certain I was the hero then, and that I would always triumph. After the army, seeing war, I never felt like a hero again. I damn sure didn’t feel like one right then.
As I went along, I stooped to pick up a limb that had broken off a tree. It was pretty sturdy and about three feet long. I carried it with me as I walked. When I was close to my mother’s house I slowed down and began to watch more carefully. I widened my path, easing through the brush, as the houses disappeared along there, and there was a creek that ran at the end of the street. The creek and a thick clutch of trees made a dead end. Beyond that was another line of trees, then a break and more houses.
Figuring I was overdoing it, but afraid to go straight to the house, I slipped down the slope of the creek and walked along the creek bed, making my way to the side of my mother’s home. Before I got there, I decided to climb up the bank and take a peek. I did just that, staying behind a growth of tall grass. I parted it and looked, didn’t see anyone. And then that’s when it hit me. The black Suburban. It was parked on the street. No other cars were parked on the street. Anyone could do that, park like that, but no one else had. It might mean nothing, and it might mean something. It might mean everything. Like maybe the driver parked a couple blocks up from my mother’s house and had walked and found himself a spot where the woods were thick. He could come out of them and take pictures, and he could sit there and wait in case I showed up to get my mother and child and make a break for it. It could be like that. The woods were dense directly across from Mom’s house, and certainly to the side of it where the creek ran, which was where I crouched. If someone was there, I figured I had come around behind them past them, and down into the creek.
I remained still for a long moment, watching.
I didn’t see anyone, but I did see something curious. A little trail of smoke curled out of the woods on my left. It was white and it was snake-like in the moonlight, coiling and uncoiling, and then fading to nothing, followed by yet another snake of smoke, and then another and another.
Me and my large stick eased back down in the creek bed, walked alongside the water, sometimes having to step in it, and I made my way back the way I had come. I climbed out of the creek about where I had gone in, and started back until I found where the trees and bushes were broken apart by a trail. That would be how he had gotten there to the spot where he waited.
I tiptoed down the trail and finally came to where I could see him through a split in the trees where the moonlight fell in. He was sitting in a lawn chair and had a cooler beside the chair. He had a beer on top of the cooler, and lying beside the beer was an automatic pistol.
His position was such that in front of him was a growth of trees and brush. He had a spot to look through, and I could see he had a good view of my mother’s house, and even if you were looking for him you couldn’t see him. Unless, of course, he was smoking a cigarette, the dumb shit.
I thought about what I would set in motion if I did what I was thinking about doing, but I didn’t consider it for very long. As I said, I thought about many things, but at the bottom of it all I knew what I was going to do. I was going to testify, and I wasn’t going to let anything or anyone get in my path and stop me.
Slipping along quietly, I raised the limb over my shoulder, and just as I was on him I guess he heard me, because his hand reached out slowly for his gun, like maybe he was being foolish, thinking perhaps it was just a possum in the brush. But this possum was armed with a limb. As his head turned slightly, I swung it. I swung for the fences. Baby Ruth never made a swing so good. I caught him up side the head so hard I knocked him out of the lawn chair, sending his cigarette spinning, spilling him out on the ground, and then I went to work. He tried to get up, but I hit him under the ear with the limb, and when he ducked his head, I cut down on him right where the back of the head sloped. It was a good lick. He went down and lay still. I hit him again for good measure. He still didn’t move.
I bent down and touched his neck. He was alive. I thought about killing him, I won’t kid you, but that wasn’t something I could do. Not even under these circumstances. At least not yet. Not if I could avoid it.
Dropping the limb, I got his gun and checked the action, slipped it in my pants pocket. It didn’t quite fit, but the pants were loose, so it served as a kind of holster. I flipped the lid open on the cooler, causing his beer to fly. Inside was a bit of crushed ice floating in water, and there were three beers. I took one out and opened it and drank it almost in one giant slurp. I crushed the can and tossed it in the watery cooler and closed the lid, pushed my way through the brush and started across the street to my mother’s house, pausing by the creek long enough to toss the gun through the brush there and into the water, listening to its satisfying splash.
Twelve
It was late and I knocked gently on the door, but didn’t rouse Mom. I had to go around to the bedroom window and knock, finally got her up. She pulled back the curtains and stared out at me. Her graying hair was a little wild, and she had the look she had when I was a kid and she caught me doing something stupid.
When she raised the window, she said, “What are you doing here, son?”
“Mom, this is going to sound crazy, but we have to get Sue, and we have to go.”
“Go? Now? Tonight?”
“I said it would sound crazy, didn’t I? And it is, a little, but trust me, we have to go.”
She stared at me a moment, blinking sleep out of her eyes, holding her nightgown at her throat as if it might escape.
“I can explain on the way. Get a few things for yourself, grab Sue’s stuff, and we’ll go.”
“Go where?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I’ll meet you at the front door in fifteen minutes.”
“Son, I don’t understand.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Of course.”
“Then get the stuff and meet me at the door in fifteen minutes. No more questions right now.”
I walked back to where the man lay and looked down at him. He was still out. I bent and got his shoestrings out of his shoes and pulled his hands behind his back and tied them together with one lace, tied his ankles together with the other. In time he’d work himself loose, or maybe if he was strong enough, break the shoestrings. But it might give us a little leverage to have him tied for awhile.
Finished with him, I walked back to the church lot.
“What took so long?” Kelly said, as I was sliding in on the passenger’s side.
“There was someone watching.”
“Oh my god.”
“He’s taken care of.”
“You killed him?”
“No. But I gave him a headache. Come on, hurry. Drive to the house.”
I was hoping for a bit of respect with that comment, but was uncertain if I got any.
Kelly drove us to Mom’s house and I got out and knocked gently on the door. Mom had dressed in jeans and a loose shirt, and she came out carrying Sue who was still in her nightgown and mostly asleep; she looked like a little black-haired doll slung over my mother’s shoulder. I felt a rush of emotion rise up in me so fast and hot, for a moment I thought I might throw up.
I got myself together, took the single bag by the door, and put it in the trunk of the car, and Kelly drove us away.
Thirteen
We drove out of Manny, started back in the direction of home, though I didn’t have plans to go back there tonight. Sue came awake long enough to speak to us, but then she was out like a light, lying in the backseat with her head in Mom’s lap. I told Mom all that happened.
“Oh my god,” she said.
“We’re going to have to stash you with Sue somewhere until we can get this straightened out.”
“He can straighten it out by not testifying,” Kelly said.
“No, he can’t,” Mom said. “He’s got to do what’s right.”
“Taking care of the family, that’s what’s right,” Kelly said.
“And what kind of family is it that lets a killer go free?” Mom said.
“So he puts him in jail and we all die?” Kelly said. “How’s that work out in anybody’s favor? That sound right to you?”
“Of course not,” Mom said. “But you don’t quit on something like this just because it’s hard. And I’ll tell you whose favor it works out in, this Anthony character. It isn’t easy, but you don’t quit.”
“We could quit,” Kelly said.
“Yes,” Mom said. “You could. But should you?”
I tried to ease the tension. “I’ve got an idea. Something that I kind of set up earlier.”
“Oh, good,” Kelly said.
“That didn’t sound too sincere,” I said.
“You think?”
I had gone from the most wonderful person in her life to a toad overnight, and just because I had witnessed a crime. Knocking that thug in the head hadn’t earned me any points.
I opened the glove box and took out one of the burner phones. I called Cason.
After he got himself awake, he said, “I figure you’re calling me on this phone you’ve made a decision to do something other than leave your protection to the law.”
“It may be worse than just having protection,” I said, and I told him all that had happened.
“Shit,” he said. “That has gone south. All right, I’m going to call you back, and it’s okay to keep this phone for a bit, but after I call you back, get rid of it. How’s everyone doing?”
“Scared. Like me.”
“Good. You should be. You’ll last longer that way. Booger is the only person in the world who can be foolishly brave and survive. The devil doesn’t want him, and I don’t blame the old son-of-a-bitch.”
I cut the connect
ion and we cruised for another fifteen minutes, sitting in silence, and then Kelly said to my Mom, “I’m sorry, Evelyn.”
“No problem. Good families know how to quarrel. I used to have it out with Tom’s dad. He’d get so mad he’d speak Chinese to me. When we got to that point, I knew I had to let him cool off, so I’d at least know what he was saying.”
“No. I mean you’re right,” Kelly said. “You both are. Tom, who were you talking to?”
I explained about Cason, told them a little about Booger.
“Can they help us?”
“The real answer is I don’t know. But I think so. It’s not like we’ve got a lot of options. I been thinking. How did Pye know where my Mom was, that Sue was with her?”
“Guess it’s not that hard to find out,” Kelly said.
“But who did we tell? Or rather, who did I tell that I had seen Will Anthony?”
“The police,” Kelly said. “No one else.”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, hell,” Kelly said. “You mean …”
“I think so. Remember how they were telling us that I didn’t have to put myself on the spot, almost like they were trying to convince me to stay silent.”
“It could have been that, I guess,” Kelly said. “They could have just been being honest.”
“Maybe,” I said.
The cell phone rang.
I put it to my ear, said, “Yes.”
“I got a place you can go. It’s in Arkansas. A buddy of Booger’s. No one’s there, but you can use it. You got to drive out in the country a bit. It’ll be a long night.”
“Not like we have a lot of choices.”
“You have a GPS?”
“Yes.”
He gave me the directions and I typed them in. It was one of those GPS devices that didn’t work when the car was moving, so we had to pull over to the side of the road while I did the work. Cason said that would get me close, then he’d have to give me the rest of the directions from there; it wouldn’t be on the GPS, too out in the boonies.
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