by Glenn Trust
“I'll do that,” the trooper said firmly. Barry noted for the first time the nameplate on his chest read “Prewitt'.
“Fair enough, Officer Prewitt.”
Barry held the bag and tray out to Felicia. She took it with a whispered thank you and bent over to the children, clamoring around her legs for a hamburger and soda. As she opened the bag, the young mother caught sight of the two twenties.
She started to say something but stopped when Barry gave a small shake of his head and nodded to the children. The trooper might take the gift of money in the wrong way. Immediately understanding his meaning, she returned the nod and smiled.
“You guys want a hamburger?” Barry said to the two toddlers.
They jumped up and down around their mother, emphatically indicating they would. There was a look of sincere gratitude on her face as she reached in the bag pulling out two burgers for the toddlers.
Barry reached for his wallet and pulled out his driver's license. Handing it to Prewitt, he said, “I'll put the gas in the car now. Okay?”
Five minutes later, two gallons of fuel sloshed in the car's tank. It started after much accelerator pumping. The squirming toddlers and baby were strapped in. Trooper Prewitt stood with Barry behind the old car. He handed the driver's license back to Barry.
“Everything looks fine Mr. Broomfield. I'll follow them to the next exit and make sure they get going okay.”
“Fine,” Barry said. “Appreciate the help.”
“Sorry for any...uh...misunderstanding,” Prewitt said, trying to sound official and apologetic at the same time.
“No problem. Thanks for looking out for her.” He added truthfully, “I've got daughters and grandkids about the same ages.”
Barry climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. Felicia looked back and gave him a wave and nod of appreciation. He followed the beat up old car and the patrol cruiser as they merged with traffic.
He might not be the devil, but he certainly was no saint, he thought as he accelerated. Maybe he was both. Maybe everyone was both.
He relaxed in the seat, stretching. For the moment, the devil felt a little better about himself, a little less like a jackass.
15. Too Late Buddy
Paul Sorensen's onboard computer lit up, giving its electronic beep. He glanced down from the road and noted that there was further information on the Kansas killings. Hands on the wheel and eyes on the road, he listened for anything that might be useful in identifying the suspect wanted in the two murders. A second later, the radio squawked.
“All units, standby for further information on the previous BOLO.”
The transmission was followed by the usual pause as the dispatcher allowed the units on the net to prepare to receive. It always reminded Paul of a schoolteacher telling the class to take out paper and pencil to take notes, waiting for everyone to comply.
“All units, additional on the previous BOLO regarding the suspect wanted for the murder of two persons at a Kansas convenience store. The same perpetrator may be responsible for the murder of the owner of another business in Nebraska...”
Paul turned his head to the radio and listened.
“Investigators advise there were no security cameras. There is no physical description of the suspect in the murder, but the details of all three murders are similar.”
What the hell does that mean?
“All three murders were committed with a large knife with a thick blade. Investigators believe the murder weapon is a hunting or military style combat knife, and the wounds inflicted were of the same type and from the same direction.”
Oh. Yeah, that would be similar. His eyes scanned the traffic passing by looking for an old Toyota Corolla, not expecting one to pass by.
“The suspect appears to be proficient in the use of knives.”
Great news.
“Officers approaching the suspect are advised to use extreme caution and to consider the suspect armed and dangerous.”
No shit. If I see him I will definitely approach him with caution, like with my gun buried in his ear, maybe. I'm all for caution, a firm believer. Caution is my religion.
There were no additions to the previous physical description of the suspect or car. It was unknown whether the abducted female remained with him or not.
If the same person committed all the murders, he was moving north, through Nebraska. That was generally in the direction of Iowa. Still, there were a shit pot load of other states north of Nebraska, and an interstate connecting them all.
Encountering the man in the Toyota would be a long shot. There were a lot of places the old Toyota could go and the odds it would head up to this part of Iowa were remote.
A large, silver SUV whooshed past Paul in the left lane doing better than eighty. Vehicle operator with his head up his ass, or on a cell phone...same thing.
The sun was setting. With the sun in his eyes, the driver never noticed that the car he passed was marked with the words Iowa State Patrol.
Paul pulled into the left lane. The SUV's brake lights popped on and held, trying to slow down to the legal limit of seventy before Paul could turn on the emergency lights. Too late buddy.
16. Dot on the Map
“Shit.” Gasoline spilled over the top of his hand. “Damn it,” he added jerking the gas nozzle out of the fuel filler on the rental truck.
Slamming it back into the cradle on the pump, Barry looked around for a paper towel. There was a dispenser, but no paper towels. He found a piece of newspaper in the cab of the truck and wiped his hands as best he could then tossed it into the overflowing trashcan beside the pump.
Driving the rental truck you didn’t pass a gas station without filling up, he had learned. Wiping his hands some more on his jeans he opened the door and pulled an old road atlas out from under the seat. He knew where he was. The question was where he was going.
The route was pretty simple, I-70 all the way to Kansas City and then north on I-29 to Sioux Falls. Night was setting in and it had been a long pull from Atlanta. Still a couple of hours out of Kansas City, he was tired.
Scanning the map for towns, he spotted a dot on the interstate. Concordia. Looked to be about an hour out of Kansas City. Spend the night there, maybe. In the morning, he would be only another day’s drive to Sioux Falls.
The dot on the map looked big enough for Concordia to have some kind of motel, maybe a place to get something to eat. He hoped so. He’d left Atlanta with no breakfast and only had snacks in the truck all day. The only food he’d bought had been for the woman and her children stranded on the interstate in Kentucky.
Okay. Concordia it is. Slamming the atlas closed with both hands as if to add emphasis to his decision, he climbed back into the truck, cranked it up.
17. Balance Sheet
“Forty-two Alpha to dispatch, I’ll be out at the accident scene. Dahlquist Road, two miles south of I-229”
“10-4 Forty-two Alpha”
Night had come on bringing with it a cold, steady rain. Paul Sorensen’s shift had been almost at an end when the accident call came out.
“Forty-two Alpha, be advised paramedics are enroute. ETA ten.”
“10-4 Dispatch. Tell them to expedite if possible. I see bodies on the road. Appears to be a vehicle rollover, persons inside, possibly trapped. Start a rescue unit also.”
“10-4, Forty-two Alpha. Rescue unit enroute.”
He dropped the mike and jumped from the car. The blue and red emergency lights intermittently lit up the falling raindrops, adding to the scene a sense of the surreal. The world narrowed to this tiny point on the spinning globe. The strobe effect of the emergency lights, caused the falling raindrops to appear to hang, suspended in the air. The smell of spilled gasoline and engine coolant on the pavement mingled with the aroma of freshly turned earth, dug up by the car as it spun off the road digging a trench in the damp ground. Hot engine parts creaked and popped as they cooled. All of it created a sense of isolation from the rest of the world
.
But mostly it was the bodies. Things that not long ago were living human beings were now lumps on the ground, completely and forever separated from those other human beings who continued to live. Driving slowly by, the others gazed into this different world from the safety and normalcy of their cars. They stared at the lumps on the ground as if through some magic window that allowed them to see this surreal bubble in the fabric of the universe before they moved on into the night of the real world.
First on the scene, he was momentarily overwhelmed. He shook it off quickly. This was a bad accident. Looking around it appeared that a pickup had crossed the centerline of the two-lane highway and hit an old station wagon nearly head on. The station wagon had tried to avoid the truck, too late, and had skidded into the dirt on the side of road after the impact. Apparently, the wet earth had held the tires enough for the momentum to cause the car to roll over as it left the pavement and then right itself.
Stopping briefly to check two forms lying in the roadway, he realized there was no reason to waste time with them. Apparently, the two young men were riding in the back of the pickup. Thrown out on impact with the station wagon, both had landed head first on the pavement, turning their skulls into a crushed red, mess. The sickly scent of alcohol mixed with blood rose from their bodies.
Paul saw all of this in the few seconds it took to run to the station wagon. Looking into the crumpled vehicle, he could see blond hair in the floor under the steering wheel. He shined his flashlight in and was able to make out a woman whose whole body had been forced by the impact with the truck into the small space under the steering column, between the driver’s seat and the firewall. Squeezing as far through the door window of the wrecked car as he was able, he reached down to check for some sign of life. He searched for the woman’s neck in the dark and felt for the carotid artery and a pulse. There was no pulse, only the still warm, wet blood that covered her.
Shining the light around the interior of the car, he saw another form under the dashboard on the passenger side. There was a round spider web shatter on the windshield above the dash. He realized that the passenger must have struck the glass during the initial impact.
Moving to the side of the car that leaned into the roadside drainage ditch, he extended his body through the window until he was able to reach the passenger. It was a child, a girl of about ten. He could hear a small gurgling. She was breathing. He wanted to stabilize her before trying to move her, but her crumpled position under the dash made that impossible. Gently, he lifted her. Moving slowly, he checked her for any injuries that might be worsened by taking her from the vehicle. Finally, he could lift her through the shattered door window. He laid her on the grass, removed his jacket and then wrapped her in it. He could see that her head was covered in abrasions and cuts, and the skull above the forehead was flattened and oozing blood.
A sheriff’s deputy pulled up got out of his car and ran towards him.
“The pickup,” Paul shouted. “Check the pickup.”
The deputy nodded and ran towards the truck. Paul looked back down at the girl. Where the hell were the paramedics, he thought. He had only been at the scene a few minutes, but it seemed an eternity. He heard the siren in the distance moving through that other world towards this isolated bubble of existence.
Paul stayed with the girl for the five minutes it took the paramedics to arrive at the scene.
“Anyone else?” one of them asked as she ran to his side.
“Woman under the steering wheel,” Paul motioned with his head. “I couldn’t find a pulse.”
The paramedic glanced over as she worked on the girl. “Yeah, okay. Looks like we’ll need Rescue to cut her out. You call for them?”
Paul looked up. “They’re enroute.”
“Good.” The young paramedic gave him a short smile and then looked back down at the girl she was working on. “You might look around for any others too. If the car rolled…”
“It did,” Paul spoke up.
“Then someone might have been thrown out.” She continued working an IV into the girl’s arm as she spoke.
“Right,” Paul said, “Working on it.” He was embarrassed that the young paramedic had had to remind him of his job.
As the rescue unit rolled up, Paul started a search of the roadside and ditch with his flashlight in hand. Another trooper had arrived and was handling traffic around the scene. The deputy had the driver of the truck sitting on the road leaning against the pickup. He was bleeding from the head, but didn’t seem to be too seriously injured.
Swinging his light, Paul peered into the dark, wet grass in the ditch. He walked back along the path the car had taken after impact with the pickup. It had gone into the ditch, miring down in the mud and then rolled completely over, ending up on its wheels. He could see the furrow where the wet mud had grabbed the skidding tires and held them just enough for the momentum to carry the car over on its roof, rolling until it righted itself, a twisted mass of metal. There was nothing else, at first. On his third pass following the vehicle’s path, he saw something in the wet grass at the bottom of the ditch. It was just a small hump of dirt dug up by the car, he thought at first. Looking closer, his heart began to race.
Paul leaped into the ditch, the light from his flashlight swinging wildly over the scene as he ran to the small hump.
“Oh God,” he said and knelt down.
The small form of the boy was covered in dirt, grass and blood. He was hardly distinguishable from the mud he lay in. Paul reached down with his hand and gently wiped mud from the child’s face. The little boy’s eyes were open wide. They stared but saw nothing. He hardly seemed to be injured, but looking around, Paul knew that he had been thrown from the car, not belted in, and that as the car rolled the boy had been crushed beneath. No doubt, he had massive internal injuries and numerous broken bones, but looking at his small face, he seemed completely unharmed, except for the eyes, open and staring too widely.
The young paramedic knelt down beside him in the ditch.
“Nothing you could have done, you know that,” she said looking down at the small form almost lost in the mud and grass.
Paul nodded and then murmured, “Yeah, nothing.”
“Come on,” the paramedic said putting a hand on his arm. “We’ll take care of him”
He walked up the bank to the road. Another ambulance had arrived and paramedics were treating the driver of the pickup.
“The deputy says that bastard was operating intoxicated. No surprise there,” the paramedic said staring across the road.
Paul looked over. The man had a small bandage over his right eye. They were checking his pulse. Before the night was done, he would be booked for OWI and vehicular homicide. Even with a class B felony conviction and the mandatory twenty-five year sentence, the driver would likely be out on parole within a few years, maybe less.
Looking back down into the ditch at the small hump, Paul could almost see the boy’s open eyes in the dark. They seemed to be staring in disbelief. The eyes said that this wasn’t fair. It didn’t balance. Little boy, dead. His mother, dead. Sister injured, maybe dead. Bodies of two young men lying in the road their skills shattered. All those lives ended, forever. No todays, no tomorrows, no futures. Everything finished, here and now, in the middle of the road. Drunk in a pickup gets a few lumps, few years in prison and parole. How does that balance in the eternal equation, if there was such a thing? The balance sheet did not balance.
Pulling into his driveway, Paul sat in his car for a long while. The night was cool but beads of sweat shone on his face. His shirt was damp, not just from the rain, but from the cold perspiration that covered his body. He put his forearms on the top of the steering wheel and leaned his head forward resting it on his arms.
“Paul!”
He looked up. Donna stood on the front porch, her robe pulled tightly around her.
“Are you okay?” she asked, knowing he was not.
Without responding, Paul got out o
f the car and walked to the front door. He looked at Donna, saying nothing. For several minutes, they stood together like that, in the cool night air, not moving until she reached down and took his hand.
“Come inside Paul,” she said. “You tell me about it.”
She led her husband into the house, closing the door and shutting the world firmly outside. Lying in bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling he told his wife about the accident. A long time after, while she lay listening, keeping watch over her husband, he drifted in to a fitful sleep and dreamed of the little boy in the ditch. The balance sheet didn’t balance.
18. Ripples
The exit ramp off I-70 in Concordia, Missouri was the limit. Fifteen hours in the truck had left Barry bone weary and sore. He wasn’t used to it. It was time to stop. Still, he figured that Atlanta to Concordia in one very long day, was pretty good time. Probably another seven or eight hours to Sioux Falls, one more day.
He turned left across the bridge over the interstate and then right into the parking lot of the Seven-Up Inne. He’d seen signs for the motel for the last twenty miles and it seemed as good a place as any to rest for the night. He wasn’t sure what the “e” on the Inn was for, but he was careful to slow and scan the parking lot first to make sure he could pull through with the truck and car carrier. He would not make that mistake again.
The Seven-Up had plenty of clearance he was glad to see. In fact, except for one car outside the tiny office, there were no other cars in the lot. Lots of space, perfect, he thought.
Pulling into the center of the lot, he got out and stretched. A neon “Vacancy” sign buzzed in the office window as he walked into the small room. The clerk was nowhere to be seen so he hit the bell on the desk with his palm once and immediately a small Indian man stepped out of a side office. The nameplate on the counter said “Manager On Duty – Aamir Chopra”.