by Saul, Jonas
Finders keepers and shit …
I quickly take out one of the bags the court provided me to collect garbage and pile the bundles of cash inside. Then I take off my sweater and toss it in the bag on top of the money. No way is my supervisor going to let me take a garbage bag home. If I show him the sweater and tell him it was too hot out, that I had to pack a few things in this bag, I might get away with it. I get up and start back for the highway, my nerves jingling against the beat of my rapid pulse.
It’s around seven in the evening. I’ve got all the lights in my house turned off except the one in the kitchen. The money is spread out before me on the table. I keep trying to count it but there’s just too much. There’s got to be over a hundred bundles here.
My gut keeps twirling. What if it’s drug money? What if someone very powerful comes looking for it?
I think it’s time to call my brother. I grab the hands-free on the wall and dial.
“Hello?”
“Heh, bro,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “How’s it going? You sound like you’re driving.”
“I am. What’s up?”
“I was doing my community service thing this morning and was surprised to see the constant flow of traffic racing by me.”
“You called to talk about highway traffic?”
I heard the laughter in his voice. I wonder what he’s hearing in mine. “I just thought, since you’re a cop and all, I could ask you about accidents around here. I mean, some of those drivers were acting crazy, passing each other without much room, and so on. I don’t read a lot of newspapers, but everyone hears about the highway carnage. Do you have to attend to accident scenes?”
“Sometimes. Why the interest?”
“No interest, really. Just curiosity. What about people or cars that go missing? Does that come up often?” I was going too far. Why would I be asking these questions? My brother would think it out of character. I suddenly felt the urge to terminate the call.
“Why? Do you know something about a missing car? We are looking for a Chrysler.”
“You are?” My voice cracked. I couldn’t believe it. If my brother was a psychologist he would know I was hiding something. Stupid, very stupid. This money suddenly became scary.
“You remember what happened three days ago. The Brink’s truck robbery downtown. Some guy rammed the money truck so hard the guards all got knocked out when the truck flipped over a curb. By the time we responded to the call they had garbage bags of money filling the bed of a pickup.”
“So why aren’t you looking for a pickup?”
“Because we got that already. One of the guys jumped out during the pursuit and carjacked a woman in her Chrysler. The woman and her car are still missing. Did you see a black Chrysler 300C somewhere?”
“No, not me.” Again, he’d know I was lying if he was a psyche major.
“It’s okay. All the money has been accounted for except one bag. Hey listen, we can talk about it in a minute. I’m pulling into your driveway.”
“You’re here?” He must have heard my surprise as I almost shouted those two words.
“Yeah, remember, we talked last night about how the chief said I should take a night off because I’ve been working so hard lately. You and I are supposed to have pizza and beer tonight.”
I heard his car pulling up out front. The money was still all over the kitchen table. I realize now that I’m done. I mumble something into the phone and hang up. I grab a new garbage bag from under the sink and start shoving all the money into it. I'm halfway through when the doorbell rings.
“Coming!” I yell. “Gimme a sec.”
The last batch of bundles won’t fit. I stuff the bag under the kitchen sink and go to get a little shopping bag for the rest.
My front door opens. “Hey, I let myself in. How come it’s so dark?”
A light flicks on from down the hall. My heart almost stops. I don’t have time to pack the last fifteen bundles or so. Scrambling on my feet, I head down the hallway to stop my brother from going into the kitchen.
“Have a seat in the living room. I’ll bring you a beer.” I’m trying so hard to keep my voice in check, really focusing on it.
“That’s okay. I’ll go in the kitchen and get one myself while you order the pizza.”
I step in front of him. “Not this time.” I say it like a command.
My brother stops and looks me in the eye.
“No,” I said. “You order the pizza. I’ll get the beer. Every time we do this you complain about the toppings. I want you to order whatever you want. No complaints.”
I turned away from him and headed to the kitchen without waiting for a reply. In thirty seconds I have the rest of the money hidden in my kitchen cupboards except for the one bundle I had opened. That one I shove in my pocket for safe keeping. With beers in my hand I head out to the living room to try to have a calm evening without really knowing how much trouble I could be in.
A half hour later the doorbell makes me jump almost out of my skin. My brother looked over at me. I know that face. Ever since we were kids that was his, you’re weird expression. Wanting to extract myself from the living room I tell him the pizza’s on me.
I open the door, grab the pizza box and reach for my wallet. It’s not in my pocket. Then I remember leaving it on my dresser when I got home from my community service highway cleaning. Since no one will notice a one-hundred-dollar bill missing amongst all the others I found, I reach in my pocket and use one from the open bundle I’d stashed there.
The evening with my brother went over rather well, all things considered. I had one scare when he helped himself to another beer. He stood right beside the cabinet that held the money, but there wasn’t any reason to start opening drawers, so everything worked out.
The phone rang. It’s 8:15 a.m. My second day at the highway doesn’t start until noon and I barely slept all night. Whoever’s calling can get the machine.
“Hey, man, pick up.” My brother. “Something weird happened. Remember that robbery we talked about last night. All the money that was taken was serial numbered and the local retailers were informed which series to watch out for. Apparently the pizza joint we ordered from last night had a hundred-dollar bill turn up. They’re trying to locate the delivery guy to find out if he remembers which house he got it from. It was a slow night. He’d only done six deliveries, so there’s a good chance he’ll remember. I’ll call you later.”
I was up now. Even if I wanted to sleep, I couldn’t. This just went from bad to worse. I grabbed the phone and called my highway supervisor to tell him I was sick and wouldn’t be joining them today. I really was sick. I’m not a criminal or a thief. The money just happened to fall into my hands. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. I’m sure no one else will see it that way.
In ten minutes I’m dressed, car keys in one hand and garbage bag of money in the other. I decide to look outside first. No one in sight. When I open the front door, the phone rang.
I hesitated to hear if the caller would leave a message. I heard my brother’s voice again and the sound of an engine revving in the background.
“Hey, pick up. I need to know what’s going on. Pick up the phone. We just talked to the delivery guy. He said he remembered the house because the guy had a wad of hundreds in his pocket. I was told to visit the address. It’s your house, man. What’s going on? Pick up the phone!”
I bolted. I jumped in my car, threw the bag in the backseat and peeled out of my driveway. It took me less than fifteen minutes to get to where I was cleaning garbage yesterday.
Out of the car, down the little embankment and through the line of trees. Everything looked just like it did yesterday. I set the bag half in and half out of the back window like I’d found it. I turned away and started for the road. When I stepped out of the line of small trees there was a cop car parked behind my vehicle. I stopped in my tracks and watched my brother scan the area. He called my name.
I reached in my po
cket and pulled my wallet out. Over handed, I tossed it as far as I could up the tree line. I saw where it landed and marked it mentally by a large rock sitting about ten feet to the right of the highway.
Then I stepped out and waved. My brother was watching me now. I wonder if he saw me throw my wallet.
“You won’t believe what I just found,” I yelled.
My brother cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “What are you doing down there? I called the community service guys. They said you called in sick. Then I spotted you racing out of town so I followed you. When you parked here, I saw you get out, but I was too far back to see which direction you ran.”
“I lost my wallet when we were working yesterday. I’m feeling sick, but I still needed to get my wallet.”
The branches rustled behind me and then I heard the distinctive sound a bag makes.
When I turned around and peeked through the line of small trees, I saw a man holding the garbage bag in one hand and a tall blond woman in the other. He looked injured, leaning to the side. I stepped through the trees toward them. I could hear my brother yelling for me to stop.
After pushing branches aside, I entered the clearing. The man and the woman were gone. Not ducked down behind the car, or hiding by a tree, gone as in completely gone.
I decided the only way to save myself was to find them. My story would be completely clean if I was a hero. I could even explain using the hundred-dollar bill for the pizza guy. I could say that I’d found a small bundle out here by the highway yesterday. Not thinking anything of it and subsequently losing my wallet, I used some of the money. It may still look bad, but who doesn’t spend the money they find?
I bolted down the line of trees away from where my brother would come after me. I knew running from a cop probably wasn’t a good idea, but he was my brother. He wouldn’t shoot me. And the guy with the woman was close by. I had to be the one to find them first.
Roughly ten yards down, I turned into the line of small trees and jumped through. Cars whizzed by on the highway. My car still sat on the shoulder, the cruiser behind it. My brother was nowhere in sight.
I bent over to look for my wallet. It had to be around here somewhere. I was within two yards of the rock I’d used as a marker. A loud rig raced by, blocking out sound momentarily.
In a flash, my left arm was wrenched behind me and I was thrust forward. I hit the ground hard. A knee jammed into my back while my right arm was wrenched farther back. Handcuffs hurt when they’re slapped on. After he secured me, he flipped me over and I lay on the hard ground, looking up at him.
“You really did it this time,” my brother said.
“I didn’t do anything,” I protested. A piece of grass had been sitting on the edge of my mouth from being pushed into the ground and I hadn’t felt it until I talked. “I just saw the guy who robbed the Brink’s truck and the girl he kidnapped. They took off with a garbage bag full of money.”
I have to admit there was a sense of loss thinking about how close all that money came to being mine.
My brother said police stuff into a lapel microphone. Then he turned back to face me. “There was no woman kidnapped. I only told you that to gauge your reaction. We had witnesses to the Brink’s holdup. They described a man of your hair color and weight. When I came over to your house last night, it was to see how you were doing. I told the chief that your case of severe split personality had been handled years ago with therapy and medication. I told him that there’s no way you were mixed up in this and he let me do an unofficial investigation. But we matched the blood on the windshield of the vehicle that rammed the Brink’s truck. Its type O negative, the same as yours and it’s on the windshield in exactly the same spot where your bandage is.”
I shook my head back and forth slowly. “How could I have done it and not known about it? No way, it wasn’t me.” I said this, but didn’t completely believe it.
“Remember when you were going for therapy years ago in Toronto. We learned that in one personality an individual can be allergic to cigarette smoke, but in another personality, the same individual is a smoker with no allergic reactions. Each personality is isolated from the other. I think they call it Dissociative Identity Disorder now, or DID. I specifically remember yours was accompanied by memory loss, or what your doctor called, losing time. I never forgot the actual term was Dissociative Amnesia.”
“But that couldn’t be …” I stopped talking because my brother stepped away from me. He mumbled into his lapel microphone again. A moment later, my stomach in knots, he turned back toward me, a grave look on his face.
“I’m gonna have to read you your rights.”
“Are you serious? You can’t arrest me. Where’s the proof?”
“When I followed you to the highway earlier, a judge signed a search warrant for your address based on the passing of that hundred-dollar bill last night. I was just notified of what they found there.”
“They couldn’t have found anything.” I said this with a clean conscience. I know for a fact that I didn’t ram a Brink’s truck and steal money. My only possible involvement is if this DID stuff was real.
“They found half the money in your basement along with a journal. The first few pages they’ve examined so far detail all your plans for the robbery. Now come on, tell me where the rest of the money is?”
“I thought you said you guys got all the money on the phone last night?”
“I planted that in your head to watch your response.”
“But I saw a woman and a man back by the car with the garbage bag,” I said.
“Has to be your imagination, your DID. You saw them because I told you they were real.”
I recalled the therapy years ago. I thought I was cured. This couldn’t be. I banged my head two days ago on the cement when I tripped, that’s why I have a bandage.
My brother was talking. “You have the right to remain silent …”
We made our way to his cruiser. We stopped at the back door. Another cop car was pulling up behind my brother’s. I felt lost. Could I really have this other personality?
“I just hope they don’t try too hard to match the hand writing in that journal,” my brother whispered.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Handwriting?”
“I would hate for them to realize that the evidence was planted. No one is going to believe you over me, especially with your history of psychological disorders. This was the best thing for the both of us. I get a lot of money quick and I get to keep it because everyone thinks someone else took it. Don’t you think I deserve it after all I’ve done for this little shit town? No one would believe in a million years that I, a recognized police officer, would frame my own brother. This helps you, too. My plan was genius. You can continue to get help for your problems and have a place to stay and eat for free.”
He shoved me by my head into the backseat of the cruiser and slammed the door on my life, my fate.
Don't Shoot
The knocking in the wall came again.
Jim Bower sat in his basement apartment and listened to the knocking in the walls. It was impossible for anyone to be behind the wall. The knocking, the noises, and the talking at all hours of the night, permeated the wall of his apartment. The noises drove Jim to obsess over who tormented him. He wanted to learn their methods. Maybe whatever was alive in the walls was evil. Or maybe they were nice and only wanted a companion. He just needed to figure out how to get to where they were.
Jim removed the oversized headphones from his ears. No sound emitted from them. He wore the headphones to keep sounds out. But the knocking always got in.
“Go away,” he shouted at the wall. “Go away or I’ll come in after you.”
The wall knocked again. He replaced the headphones on his ears to remove the noise, but they weren’t soundproof. The knocking always got in.
“Stop it. Don’t come back. Don’t stay here. Don’t shoot.”
A sense of peace and comfort al
ways pervaded him when he said, don’t shoot. It’d been his axiom since he was a child. Those words had kept him alive.
Someone whispered something.
“No, no whispering.” He grabbed the headphones. “La, la, la, la, la, la …” he chanted, in a quest to silence the voices.
He closed his mouth and listened. When he heard nothing, he picked up the hammer that sat on the floor by his foot. The table beside him had magazines and books scattered on its surface. With a sweep of his arm, they all fell to the floor but he barely heard them land as his headphones were doing their job.