by Greg Walker
Finally she had parked across from the bar facing back down the street and went in to use the restroom, have a quick drink to calm her nerves and get some food to bring out and eat behind the wheel. She had to fight off the advances of a man with a thin mustache and slicked back hair so dark to appear that a raven had perched on his scalp in order to return to her vigil. As dusk became darkness, she made a quick trip to a convenience store for the bathroom, some junk food and caffeine pills. She came back to park in the same spot, and so welcomed the first drunk of the evening staggering out and taking a piss in the middle of the street beside her car. He noticed her in mid-stream, offered her a salute, fumbled himself back into his jeans, and finally swayed off down the road. Erin laughed uncontrollably for a few minutes, glad for the man’s antics to lighten her mood, if only for a short time.
Just after midnight, thoroughly sick of the same few songs played over and over on a popular radio station and fighting to keep her eyelids open, the armored car had turned into the gate. From her perspective it had appeared locked, but the truck simply bulled through and the two segments flung open with a sharp bang. Nobody got out to close them, and now wide awake she understood this was it. Erin sucked in a quick breath at the enormity of the crime. She listened for police sirens and watched for other vehicles but the few cars that passed expressed no interest. Though terrified, she began to feel hopeful. Maybe they could pull this off and Jon could make it home in one piece. The other two could spend the rest of their lives in prison for all she cared, but for now she wished them all well.
When Jon’s car had pulled back out onto the street, she again followed, taking special care now that a crime had been committed. The occupants would be hyper-vigilant, and she didn’t need Stape or even Jon shooting at her from out of a window. And if Jon recognized her, he might be forced to protect her, and come to harm where he otherwise wouldn’t. The sirens had begun wailing, from a distance but closing, as she pursued them. She chose to believe that Jon rode up ahead. He had to be there.
She knew she had fallen back too far when, on rounding a bend, no tail lights marked the car's progress on the stretch of road ahead. The driver must have sped up. Erin panicked and increased her own speed, but then slowed down and began looking at houses and buildings at roadside, for motion or the flash of an interior light. Tears sprung to her eyes, and she was seized by indecision, finally concluding that she could only keep going.
She nearly drove past the little motel, did not expect to see the car facing the road and waiting for her to pass, barely had enough time to signal and slow to an almost normal speed and turn in. But she saw the man driving, and it was not Jon. No one else appeared to be with him. He had stared at her when she made the turn, and it had taken all of her self-control not stare back. Brody Stape again. Erin turned off her lights and drove back to the edge of the road, saw the car turn left a short ways down the highway and disappear into the trees. She nearly decided to follow again when she spotted the white Toyota parked in front of one of the rooms. Perhaps Jon waited inside. She fought the urge to go to the door and knock, knew how foolish that would be. Suddenly the whole trip seemed utterly stupid, like the actions of some crime gang groupie, hanging out at the motel after the heist and hoping for a glimpse of the felons.
She pulled out and drove down the road, turned around and came back, slowed, and then pulled into the lot again, into a spot against some trees on the far side away from the motel. If the door would open, if she could just see Jon, she would go home and wait it out.
Erin didn’t notice Brody return on foot until she caught him staring at her as he walked past. He looked hard, his quick gait slowing, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Her heart jumped in panic. He seemed unsure whether to approach or go back to his room. A desperate idea popped into her head and she acted before she could think it through, plastered a smile on her face and got out.
“Hey, honey,” she said. “You looking for some company?”
She had driven away from that initial contact in desperate frustration. She didn't know if he told the truth about being alone, but her heart told her he had. She had pushed it, she knew, by trying to find out, but she had so desperately wanted just a crumb of good news to provide her with hope. If she had given it more thought, it wouldn’t have made sense for Brody to leave and dump the car if he had lesser accomplices to handle it, to take all of the risks when her husband and Will were easily more expendable. She had pulled into the lot of the boarded up Tastee-Freeze and considered her options. However troubling his absence, without Jon to worry about her options opened up, and she nearly pulled out her phone and called the police. But what if Jon did get away, or had taken a different route to meet up with Brody and Will at the motel? How ironic if he arrived just ahead of the cops and ended up in prison for a decade because of her tip. She only knew for sure that Brody was there, suspected him to be alone, and had the means tucked away in her purse to take care of that single biggest problem.
Erin put her car in drive and left the Tastee-Freeze and Brody’s corpse behind, planning to go home to endure an agonized wait for word of Jon, when her phone rang. She fumbled for it, spilling the purse and its contents on the passenger seat. She only paused to replace the gun, prevented from throwing it out the window only by its link as evidence to the crime scene a mile behind her.
She looked at the number. Jon. Breathlessly, she answered.
"Jon? Jon, is that you? Are you okay?"
"Yes, but I don't know for how long. There are police all over. Stape is dead. He was already dead. Will set this up. I just want to tell you that I love you. No matter what happens."
Erin was torn between concern for Jon – she detected sharp exhalations after each brief statement signaling some degree of pain or distress - and the realization of what he had told her. She hadn't killed Brody, but Will. She would need to know more before drawing any firm conclusions, but maybe in the end it amounted to the same thing. She pushed it away. Right now Jon needed her.
"Where are you, Jon? Are you still near the warehouse?"
A pause on the line populated by his hard, ragged breathing, and she remembered that he didn't know she had come.
"I'm here in Erie, Jon. I followed you. Where are you?"
"Erin, why..."
"Later. Where are you?"
"In an alley back behind the warehouse. Near some train tracks. I think I have some busted ribs."
"I know where that is. Stay put, I'm coming. Look for my car."
She hung up the phone, started the engine, and drove as fast as she dared. She didn't pass the warehouse, but circled around and arrived from the opposite direction, a course she had taken several times earlier while on her private tour of the city. The flashing of the cruiser lights that bounced off of the houses and the people standing on steps and porches reminded her of the summer carnivals she used to attend as a kid.
She drove slowly, and Jon staggered out from behind a garage situated beneath a burnt out streetlight, and nearly fell into the passenger seat. She glanced around, but nobody paid any attention to them at all beyond quick dismissive glances, all eyes fixed on the show over the hill.
After a fierce, unthinking hug that brought a cry of agony, followed with apologies and kisses, Erin found her way back to route five. She had an idea where to find Jon's car, and if they could claim this link in the chain that led back to them, she dared to hope that maybe, after all they had endured, they could finally go on with their lives.
Chapter 24
A week had passed since their journey home. They spent the time in the evenings together, waiting for their world to unravel. Jon didn't dare hope he could maintain such a run of luck in getting away with everything.
Again.
Several times he had picked up the phone with intent to call the police and turn himself in, do his best to explain. But with Will and Brody both dead, and the lack of anything to tie him to the crime besides Will's partner, he had gently set the phone back d
own into the cradle, never wholly convinced of the right course. But then, he hadn’t known that since the collision with Brody in the park.
That his wife had followed him, and had shot Will dead believing him to be Brody, Jon still worked to come to grips with. The thought of her putting herself in harm's way without his knowledge had angered him at first, but he couldn't deny his pride in her strength and marvel at her devotion to him. Would you have let me go alone? she had asked him, her arms crossed in a pose of defiance. He didn't answer, but they both knew the answer anyway.
He had stared at the picture of Will, the photo taken by the armored car company at the start of his employment donated for display in every imaginable media outlet, and tried to understand what had happened to his friend, as though he could sit on his couch and visually dissect his likeness to extract the parts gone bad. He hadn't gotten past the anger and betrayal, but he found a small store of pity inside that grew each time they brought up the case again. He felt especially bad for Will's son, Justin, who would grow up with his own questions of decidedly more weight, forced to bear that burden on small shoulders not built for the load.
Will had not only been blamed for the armored car robbery- he and an unknown accomplice - but new evidence tied him to a daylight burglary of a hardware store in the town of Loudenville, and the subsequent murder of a local man that had chased after him. The store owner, after realizing Will’s physical description matched the man that had robbed him, contacted police. Will's Toyota fit the eyewitness account of the carthat had fled the scene, and an analysis of his tires matched some tracks they had casted while processing the crime scene.
Jon thought back to the warehouse: certain they had him, praying fervently with his face pushed into the cold, grimy floor by Will’s partner. And then his boot had suddenly lifted. At the sound of the sirens, Terrence had wandered towards the door, stood swaying as though entranced by the music they made, and then collapsed. Jon had the presence of mind to pick up his flashlight and find the shotgun and then had run as quickly as his injuries allowed, finding a hole in the fence and shambling away, each deep breath an agony but so pumped with adrenaline that he managed a safe but tenuous distance between himself and the authorities.
The police didn’t even have a description of him, Terrence’s memory fuzzy about anything after being struck with the pistol with only a vague recollection of assaulting Jon.
Jon had explained his injuries to his boss at work as the result of a fall from his bike over the weekend, and was assigned light duty while he healed. He didn't bother with the emergency room (Erin wrote him a not on paper pilfered from her boss’ stationary, their last intentional crime), knowing they couldn't do anything for bruised or broken ribs, and reluctant to reveal a bruise in the shape of a man's size 13 boot to arouse suspicions of any kind.
Another week passed, and Jon’s fear and conscience eased as they moved further away from it all. He’d wanted to think that they escaped unscathed, but they both knew better than that. But they would go on. They had learned that about themselves. They could go on.
Jon sat on the couch on Saturday afternoon, flipping idly through the channels on television. His ribs were still sore, but not nearly as much, and he looked forward to things being normal soon. Or whatever passed for that, these days.
The phone rang, and he picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Jon Albridge? This is Detective Manning of the State Police. We spoke several months ago, if you recall?”
A stone dropped into Jon’s stomach and for a moment he lost the ability to speak.
“Jon? You okay?”
“Yes. Yes, Detective. What can I do for you? I told you everything I knew the last…”
“I’m actually in town, right down the street at the BP station, and wondered if I could stop by for a visit. I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”
Jon froze again. Seemed like any answer was the wrong one. If he had nothing to hide, then why refuse a visit? If he seemed too eager, it might imply he had something to hide.
“Listen, Jon. I’m off duty, and this isn’t an official visit. I just want to talk.”
“Okay, sure,” he said, not sure at all.
He hung up the phone and called Erin, and they sat together on the couch, shoulder to shoulder and holding hands, waiting for a knock on the door.
After the offer of a drink that Manning declined, Jon and Erin sat back down on the couch, and Manning settled into the recliner facing them. He was in his mid or late fifties, with salt and pepper hair and looked to have skipped a shave this morning, unless he cultivated an image to heighten his gruff and weathered persona. He reached to the cigarette shaped bulge in the breast pocket of his dress shirt but paused and let his hand drop. Jon noticed how thick and stubby his fingers were. His pants, a pair of khakis, were clean but rumpled. Manning looked at them both in turn, holding their eyes, and both Jon and his wife returned the gaze without flinching, tension like an electrical charge building in the space between them.
“So, big happenings up in Erie, huh? Your friend Will turned out to be quite the character.”
Jon nodded slowly, buying time to steady his voice. “A shock to me too, Detective. I don’t know what happened, never thought he’d be capable of doing anything like that. I guess you can never really know someone.” Jon shut his mouth before he started rambling.
“I guess not. But what really interests me is the accomplice they haven’t found. And the fact that Will was shot dead, but all of the money remained in his trunk. Every penny accounted for.”
“Should Jon have a lawyer here, Detective? You say you’re not here officially, but I don’t like the way this is going.”
Manning waved away her concerns.
“No, Mrs. Albridge. Just let me think out loud, here. And when I’m done, we’ll pretend this conversation never happened. But I'm not going to pretend I'm stupid. You don’t have to answer any questions, or offer any statements. Just listen. Of course, if you want a lawyer, we could do that. But then it would need to become official business.”
"What do you want, Detective?"
"Jim. Call me Jim, please. Since I'm not here as a cop, I don't need any titles. I just used it over the phone to get your attention."
Jon tried to relax but his body refused, couldn’t understand what game Manning played, and therefore the rules, and especially the potential fouls and penalties.
“Okay, Jim,” he said.
“So let me tell you what I know. An inventory of Brody Stape’s belongings turned up a motorcycle registered to Chris Rothfield. And you know, of course, that Chris Rothfield disappeared several months ago at Ravensburg State Park. Because you helped to search for him.”
Erin squeezed his hand and opened her mouth, but Manning again waved his hand dismissively.
“I don’t want any statements of affirmation or denial. I’m just laying things out here. Please, you can trust me.”
Erin slumped back in her seat, and Jon had to wrench his hand away from her grip before she added new broken bones to his now-healing injuries.
“I did some digging, and found that Mr. Stape, and both you and Mr. Roup, spent time together in the same high school. Here in Tanville. So the meeting could have been a coincidence, or not. Now, with this much to go on, if it were official business, I wouldn’t be here just to chat. If I came, it would be with warrants, and I would advise you to have a lawyer present, as I’m not a big fan of coincidences.
“But a news story caught my eye. A convenience store was robbed that same weekend, and not too far away. And about a week or so later, the clerk receives a written apology from one of the thieves in the mail, and the company receives cash in an envelope, the exact sum stolen. I went and talked to that clerk myself, and his description of a tall, thin man holding the gun is close enough to Mr. Roup to be more than coincidental, I think. I can’t prove it and I’m not even going to try. It’s not my case. None of this, except for the di
sappearance of Chris Rothfield.”
He paused to clear his throat. “Mrs. Aldbridge, I’ve changed my mind about the drink if it’s not too late.”
Erin stood up, and Jon said, “Please wait until my wife returns Detec…Jim... before you continue. I want her to hear everything.”
Manning smiled.