Escape Route (Murder Off-Screen Book 1)

by GA VanDruff

  Then, maybe to justify a reason for his existence when he wasn’t slaughtering ponytails and helpless animals, he said, “I do one good deed per day. It’s just who I am.”

  What! Adding sociopath to the description I’d give the police with my dying, fish-tainted breath.

  Keep him talking. I was a friendly person. Maybe we’d become friends. “What was today’s good deed?” I couldn’t wait.

  “I didn’t break that kid’s arm. I broke his dad’s. Pops didn’t want to tell me who had the dog, so I gave him the choice.”

  Francine had to have solicited this goon to finish what Avery and Costello couldn’t. That’s why they hadn’t followed Joe or me at the intersection. She’d tracked Joe down through the license plate number Avery had texted her, and kept Joe busy on the phone until Carl arrived from Baltimore, only two hours from Oakley Beach.

  He’d made Joe choose—tell him who had the dog, or pick one of his sons to have his arm broken. He’d keep breaking arms until he found out. If Joe spilled the beans right off, only his arm would be broken.

  Francine Cuthbart had lied to me. Balderdash.

  “According to the clock,” I said, “it’s past midnight. Time for another good deed.”

  ~~^~~

  His wide shoulders slumped. Carl ran his hand down his face, which made his bushy eyebrows go haywire. “Okay. You can ride in the boat, but I’ll have to tie you up. Give me your cell phone.”

  I pointed to the pillows. “It’s in there somewhere.”

  “Go on, then.”

  Doofus pranced the length of the salon. He knew we were going on an adventure and was anxious to get started.

  “So here’s a question,” I said as I made a show of moving the pillows while I finessed the knife and the phone off the bookshelf. “Why are you doing this? What did the dog ever do to you? What did I ever do?”

  “I’m doing it for the money. Phone.” He held his hand out, palm up.

  “Here.” I stretched my arm far out to the right, while I slipped the knife in my waistband with my left. “Phone.”

  He yanked the cell out of my hand and dropped it in his other jacket pocket. “Let’s go.”

  “Doofus isn’t familiar with the concept of these steps, yet. You go first, so you can lift. I’ll push from the bottom.”

  He studied the steps. Studied Doofus’s puzzled expression. “You try to pull one stunt, the dog’s dead now.”

  “No stunts. Not a one.”

  One of Uncle Frank’s hidey-holes was what looked like an ordinary back-stop on the middle step of the companion way stairs. It was a spring-loaded affair that opened with a push. This compartment usually held the flare gun. It was early in the season, and he may not have rigged it yet, but it was my best hope.

  He climbed the steps, set the cutters on the hatch roof and crouched. “Come on. We’re wasting time.”

  “What’s your name?” I called up the stairwell.

  “Why?”

  “So I don’t have to keep calling you, Hey.”

  “Carl.”

  “Carl, when his elbows clear the deck, grab Doofus under the front legs and lift him. I’ll push from the bottom. He weighs about ninety.”

  I called Doofus to me and bent down. “I absolutely forgive you. But we need to put on our thinking caps in the future. Okay?” He licked my face.

  I got his front feet on the ladder, and said, “Up.” I pressed my back against his and he pulled himself to the hatch. As Carl struggled to lift him out, I punched the fourth step and the backboard popped open.

  The flare gun was right where it was supposed to be—loaded. There were four extra flares. I mashed the gun into my waistband, but only managed to jam one flare in my front pocket.

  Doofus and I had two chances to make it out of this. As Gertie would say, ‘You only need one.’

  CHAPTER 36

  Carl lifted Doofus into the cockpit, then drew his gun out of its holster. “Now you.”

  I kept both hands on the railings, in plain view, as I climbed. The blade of my knife jigsawed my backside with each step.

  The cockpit area was eight-by-ten feet, an oval with benches formed from the same fiberglass that comprised the deck. The captain’s wheel was set off-center with a chair bolted to the floor. When I stepped through to the cockpit, Carl automatically backed up, glancing behind him for obstacles.

  I snatched the flare gun from under my shirt and pointed it at his chest. Flares are not terribly accurate for target shooting, but from ten feet, I could hit him.

  “Doofus, run. Go. Go find José.”

  Carl had not dropped his gun, which I thought was implied because I had mine aimed right at him. Doofus hopped to the dock, but that was it. He did not run off, as instructed. Neither had he gone in search of the yodeling gecko. He’d chosen to sit and watch events unfold.

  “Who’s José?”

  “The marina’s security guard. Big guy. Huge.”

  “I’ll have to be on the lookout.”

  “And we’re not going anywhere. You’ll have to kill me to get to that dog.”

  He nodded. “I can live with that.”

  The element of surprise was on a bus out of town. Having an incendiary device zeroed in on his left ribcage didn’t appear to bother him. Actually, it seemed to amuse Carl, if his facial tick was an indicator.

  “You realize this flare gun can penetrate a hollow-core door at twenty feet.”

  “Glad I’m not a door.”

  “I put my ex-husband in the hospital today. I broke his nose.”

  “Glad I’m not your ex-husband.”

  He stood still but his eyes scoped Dell’s parking lot and the waterway leading to the bay. Doofus and I were running out of time.

  I lunged across the port bench, fired my flare gun straight in the air and clamped my teeth onto Carl’s substantial back thigh muscle. It was an impressive hamstring. Normally I prefer a leaner cut of beef, but I hadn’t had a decent meal in twenty-four hours.

  While he danced around, howling, with me attached to his leg like a rattlesnake, I popped the extra flare out of my pocket and reloaded. The flare I’d used as a warning shot, fell back to earth. More accurately, fell back to cabin cruiser and smoldered on the canvas cushions of Carl’s open cockpit.

  He was a short-tempered individual. His sturdy build prevented him from finding an angle that allowed him to grab me by the throat. Earlier in the evening, Carl might have snatched me by the hair, but that hair was in his pocket not doing either one of us any good.

  He flopped his gun over his shoulder and tried a backward Annie Oakley shot, but she’d used a mirror, so that bullet piffed into the water between Brother and the dock. Doofus didn’t like any of this. He started at Carl, and then backed away, confused. He could see I was engrossed with a chew toy, but he didn’t understand the howling and the gunfire.

  I let loose of Carl’s leg and aimed my re-loaded flare gun at him and pretended he was a hollow-core door, when I caught a sparkle of flame out of the corner of my eye.

  As did he.

  For a big guy, Carl was fast. He whirled on his tenderized leg, and kicked the plastic gun out of my hand. It clattered to a stop under the captain’s chair. He grabbed me by the front of my T-shirt and hauled me upright.

  Doofus wasn’t confused by that at all. My cuddle-bunny, slobbering, dishwasher launched his ninety-pound primal self off the dock and caught Carl squarely in the chest, who then pitched backward, landing hard on Brother’s uncushioned bench. My dog latched onto Carl’s gun hand and shook it like a rag.

  I scrambled across the deck and retrieved the flare gun.

  “Call him off! Get him off me!”

  “Drop your gun.”

  “It’s going in the water! Call him off!”

  I stood up and leaned over Carl and watched him release the gun. It fell into the muck around the pilings and slid out of sight. I patted him down from knee to ankle and didn’t find any other weapons.

  “Good
boy. Okay, now. Good, good dog.” I pulled Doofus back by his collar. He wasn’t quite sure if he was in trouble or not. He gave me his paw and smiled, just in case. He was panting and still wild-eyed.

  Carl pushed himself up, rubbing his wrist. “I could sue. That dog hurt me. You hurt my leg.”

  “Glad I’m not your leg.” I waved the gun to make sure he saw it. “FYI. Your boat’s on fire.”

  The rest really is a blur, like they say—in slow motion. Carl got to his feet—I don’t know how—now with a knife in the hand that used to have a gun in it.

  I aimed the flare gun at him, and wrapped my finger around the trigger. Carl batted my arm sideways. My trigger-finger twitched and the flare whooshed down the dock and careened through the window of the cruiser. Red fireworks and smoke spurted from the cabin.

  Carl tackled Doofus and wrestled him to the deck, then used his legs to get him in a head lock. He pinched Doofus’s marked ear and pulled it taut with his left hand. He raised the knife with his right.

  CHAPTER 37

  With this business of the flare gun, I’d forgotten I had a knife of my own.

  I yanked it out of the waist of my shorts—taking bits of me in its serrated notches—and slashed the top of his right hand.

  Carl yowled and his knife flew out of his hand.

  I belly-flopped on top of him. The three of us rolled around the cockpit, Carl’s legs still tight around Doofus’s neck. I had to free my dog before his neck snapped.

  I climbed over Carl’s chest, spun around and squeezed between him and the back of the bench, and wrapped my legs around his barrel of a chest. I was pounding the top of his head like a bongo, when I spotted the bolt cutters still on the cabin roof where he’d left them, inches from the farthest reach of my hand. I’d taken yoga lessons for eleven minutes my first year in LA, but none of the poses helped. My arm wouldn’t stretch that far.

  Doofus yelped.

  You’ve read the stories about grandmas lifting locomotives off their grandbabies. This was that.

  I used my body like a forklift and heaved Carl and Doofus the three inches I needed, and got a grip on the cutter handle nearest my fingertips. I swung the thing overhead, brought it down with the handles open wide in a V, and yanked the V’s notch tight against Carl’s Adam’s apple. His neck was the walnut in my cracker.

  “Let go of my dog!” I squeezed the handles together.

  He let go of my dog.

  CHAPTER 38

  Doofus was free and had the good sense to get to the dock.

  I, on the other hand, had a whole new set of issues. There was a really angry man trapped between the pincers of a bolt cutter being forced together by a tired, underfed Irish chick.

  Carl’s boat began to snap and sizzle at the end of the dock, too close to Brother and Ovation not to send them up in flames, along with the weathered, wood dock. Maybe even Dell’s main building—and José.

  I had a tiger by the tail and I couldn’t keep this up for another five hours until Dell showed up at the marina. A blazing inferno should catch someone’s eye, but that would be cutting it pretty close.

  As my adrenaline tank hit the E mark, Dell’s truck tore across the parking lot, skidding sideways in the gravel to a stop. He jumped out and raced inside the steel building, while Gertie rounded from the passenger side, sprinting toward me like an Olympian.

  “Are you hurt?” she shouted as she came.

  I could barely shake my head because I had no wind left for talking. Carl gave one more gigantic shove and broke free just as Gertie reached the dock.

  Like so many men before him in H Block, Carl underestimated Gertie and her goiter. He used the captain’s chair to pull himself upright, which made Gertie smile. She charged across the dock, made two gigantic leaps to the deck and grabbed his arm, then wove it into some kind of Kung Fu macramé knot. With one arm, she paraded him off the boat.

  “Goose neck,” she called out over her shoulder. “One of my all-time faves.”

  I nodded dumbly. Goose. Smoked goose would taste wonderful.

  Dell ran past me pushing a cart with a fire extinguisher the size of Apollo 13. “Come on, Little Bit.”

  “What about Gertie?”

  “Let her have some fun. Now, grab that hose.”

  While I cranked the faucet full open, three state police cars roared into the marina and slid to a synchronized stop behind Dell’s truck. Deputy Beatty wheeled his El Camino beside the state cars, lumbered out, shaking his inhaler to life, wearing his jammies.

  “Jaqie, c’mon with that hose. Do not aim that water here. Use it to soak down Brother and the dock.”

  “Why can’t I help you?”

  “You used a flare on the cruiser, right? That’s what Gertie and I saw from her house.”

  “It was accidental. I didn’t—”

  “No matter. Water will only make it worse.” He circled the wheeled cart sideways and unleashed the extinguisher on the flaming interior. “Get busy on Brother.”

  I turned the nozzle to a streaming dribble and cooled off Brother’s deck and hull as the fireboat arrived, bobbing in its own wake.

  “Whatcha got there, Dell?”

  “Category D, Cap.”

  “Stand down. We got it from here.”

  Dell saluted a high-five to the firefighters and steered the extinguisher away to the parking lot, taking me with him. I stopped at the end of the dock and drank from the hose. Doofus showed up, so I gave him a drink and a once over. Carl had not been able to cut on him.

  Just the possibility made me dizzy. I stuck my head under the nozzle before I shut the faucet off. I combed what was left of my hair with my fingers.

  Greasy, black smoke billowed over the marina’s metal roof. The fireboat’s front nozzle bore down on the cabin cruiser. They trained the two side-mounts on Brother and the back wall of the marina, in case the fire tried to jump.

  In minutes, the fire was out and then the cabin cruiser sank. Its roof stood out of the water three feet, underneath Brother’s bowsprit. We were officially parked in.

  That’s when Uncle Frank and Aunt B pulled in next to the El Camino.

  “All we need is Russell’s coleslaw and it’s the Fourth of July,” I told Doofus.

  “Jaqie Shanahan?” One of the state troopers crossed the lot in my direction.

  “Yes, sir. Mind if I sit?” Not so much a question as an announcement. My knees buckled and I benched myself on Dell’s bumper.

  “Detective Driver sends his regards.”

  “Stumpy?”

  “I’m Sergeant Kilroy, Baltimore PD. Esteban and I go way back.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Your guy, Carl, has been in our system for decades. Got wind he was headed over to the Eastern Shore, and that was a parole violation. I put that together with Driver’s info. Few coincidences in police work.

  “Here’s your cell phone. Sorry, but your ponytail is in an evidence bag.”

  Aunt B marched into the fray. “Jaqie, are you all right?” She hugged me to her chenille robe—soft and safe and warm. I nodded.

  Uncle Frank turned my head left and right, and squeezed my shoulders like melons, testing for broken bones. “We should take her to the ER.”

  “The ER. I’ve got to call Ed.”

  “Tomorrow. Right now, you’re going home.” Aunt B plucked the phone out of my hand and slid it in the pocket of her robe.

  Gertie had turned Carl over to another trooper, who’d stuffed him in the patrol car. She and the trooper compared “goose neck” techniques while Deputy Beatty jumped around in his worn-out slippers trying to wedge himself into the take-down.

  “I’m the deputy hee-ee-re.” He had to stop and take a draw from his inhaler. “I’m in charge while the sheriff—”

  “Oh, be quiet, Franklin. You’re overexcited and you know what that does to your asthma.”

  “Yes, Aunt Bee-hee-ee.”

  “Jaqie, you and King ride with us. Trooper, if you need to talk t
o my niece, follow us to the house. I’ll make coffee.”

  “Yes, Aunt B.” Kilroy winked at me. “Coffee sounds good.”

  “Frank, have Dell drive you home.”

  He waved from Brother’s deck. Uncle Frank and Dell would be there until dawn checking for signs of damage to the boats or the marina, then there would be the chin-wag with the firefighters who’d saved the day.

  I ran into the marina and got José, who was wide awake, tucked his jar under my arm and headed for my ride.

  CHAPTER 39

  Kilroy sent a team on to the Cuthbart mansion. Deputy Beatty got his wish and led the way. He didn’t have one of those stick-on roof lights, but he had a flashlight that flashed S O S if you hit the switch the right way. Off they went to pick up the woman who would be First Lady, with the interior of the El Camino signaling wildly for help like the Titanic.

  Another team was at Gertie’s releasing Abbott and Costello. Gertie had rousted them out of bed and locked them in her bomb shelter for safekeeping when she saw the flare.

  My cell phone rang in Aunt B’s pocket. “Don’t talk too long.” She scowled, but kissed my cheek, all the same.

  “Hey, Ed,” I said. “I’ve only got three-percent power, so talk fast.”

  “Twins. I’m a dad, Jaqs. Twins!”

  “Ed, we knew that, already. What kind of twins?”

  “Two boys! Can you believe it?”

  “That’s wonderful. I am so happy for you. How’s Dianne?”

  “She hates me.”

  “She’ll get over it.” Everyone always did. “I’ll come by tomorrow.”

  “Great. Great. Hey, you and the dog okay? I saw a flare from the waiting room. Looked like it came from the marina.”

  “We’re good. Waiting room? You didn’t go into delivery with her?”

  “You kidding me? No way, José. Hey, how is my little guy?”

  “He’s fine. Thinks he’s Pavarotti. Goodnight. Dad.”

  ~~^~~

  I slept fourteen hours.