Don't Leave Me

by James Scott Bell

  Chapter 55

  A set of headlights flashed behind Chuck.

  He was ready, had planned the maneuver. He put his left hand on the top of the guardrail and hopped over, turning so he faced the now oncoming lights, prone. The rail was the perfect height to conceal him. He had only a foot or so of ground before it dropped off sharply. He held the underside of the rail with his right hand.

  The lights went past without stopping.

  Chuck went back up and over, on the road again.

  His helplessness almost amused him. How dependent are we on cell phones? How does anyone learn resilience anymore?

  And where is a cop when you need one? It would be nice if that detective showed up just about now.

  The sound of another approaching car. Same direction.

  Same move, this time Chuck’s legs slipped and threatened to pull him down the canyon again. His right hand grab saved him.

  The car sped on.

  Chuck pulled himself up. This was like one of those dreams where you run in the mud and can’t get anywhere, but you have to, because someone’s chasing you.

  The pain in his feet and legs told him it was no dream.

  He made up some good distance this time. The air was cold and moist. A slight fog blanketed the source of the lights up ahead, but he would be there in maybe ten minutes.

  Ten long minutes that stretched out like a couple of hours.

  Stay mad.

  As he walked, he remembered staying mad at God. It started when Dylan Bly died and he had his own throat cut. It deepened when he got home and found Julia cold and his own mind fragmented. It softened when he got the job at Hunt and was working toward some sort of truce.

  Hardened again when Julia was killed.

  Now what? When was there going to be some kind of resolution? Or were questions the only things certain in this life?

  Another car. This time coming out of the fog toward him.

  How many of these were there going to be? At this rate he’d reach the township by next spring. Part of him wanted to take a chance and flag the thing down. But what were the odds of anyone stopping, even in this last bastion of the hippy movement?

  A staggering, bleeding, barefoot specter wandering the canyon road?

  Don’t think so.

  Chuck stepped over the guard rail again and took his now familiar position.

  Face down, he muttered, “For what it’s worth God, I’m willing to start over. Bygones and all that.”

  He even laughed. He was remembering a video he saw in high school, an old Burt Reynolds movie. It was about a guy who wanted to commit suicide. At one point he swims out in the ocean, far from shore. Then suddenly wants to live.

  So as he’s struggling back toward the beach. He bargains with God. If you’ll let me make it, God, he says, I’ll obey the Ten Commandments. Then he starts to list them.

  I shalt not kill.

  I shalt not commit adultery.

  Then realizing he doesn’t know any more, Burt says, “I’ll learn the ten commandments!”

  It really was funny because people tend to wait until dire straits, or any kind of straits, to cry out to God.

  But that’s what Chuck was doing right now. Only he didn’t know what to bargain with.

  He heard the approach of the car, and the stream of light spilling through the guard rail slat.

  It seemed to him then that the car was slowing. Chuck looked through the bottom of the rail. The lights brightened and the crunch of tires on the gravel told him something not good—the car was on the wrong side of the road.

  His side.

  He kept his face down, sniffing dirt.

  The crunch of the tires stopped.

  Had they seen him hop the rail? What now, dive back down the canyon?

  Chuck heard a door open, close. The engine kept idling. The sound of feet on gravel told him it was only one person. If it had been the Serbs, it would have been two, and they would be talking. And rushing.

  A beam of light blasted through the rail. Moving. A flashlight.

  The pool of illumination jumped the rail and poured over Chuck’s head to the ground around him.

  A man’s voice said, “What in the hell are you doing down there?”

  Chuck didn’t move.

  “Come on now, get up.”

  It wasn’t all that easy to. Chuck’s body, coming off the flood of adrenaline, was wanting to dial it in for the night. He felt every joint protest as he got to his feet.

  The guy was shining the light directly into his eyes. Chuck put his hand up. “You mind shutting that thing off?”

  The light stayed. “What happened to you?”

  “You a cop?”

  “Ranger. You fall?”

  “I need a phone,” Chuck said.

  “You need a lot of things it looks like,” the ranger said. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Take me in, will you?”

  “In where?”

  “Your office, wherever. People are looking for me.”

  “I don’t want to get blood all over my car.”

  “These people have guns. They are serious. And not only that, there’s a dead body right down there.”

  “What?”

  “Will you just take me in before––”

  Chuck stopped, headlights coming around the curve. He ducked behind the ranger’s car. He heard the car speed on by.

  “You are spooked,” the ranger said.

  “I need to get off the street. Now. I’ll pay to have your cruiser cleaned. Just take me in.”

  Chuck went to the idling car. Opened the driver’s door.

  “Hey,” the ranger said.

  Chuck got in and slid over to the passenger side.

  The ranger cursed. But he got in behind the wheel.

  “You need to tell me what happened.” The ranger was in his mid-twenties, with long blond surfer-hair and an official ranger shirt, with arm patch. But he wore blue jeans and sandals below.

  “I will. Get me to your station. I need to make a call.”

  “I don’t know who you are,” he said. “I ought to hold you.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Believe me. You got nothing. I’m going to call an LAPD cop. She’ll tell you. Just get me there.”

  “Guys with guns?”

  “Real guns.”

  “What do you mean, dead body?”

  “Yes, dead,” Chuck said. “Don’t worry, I didn’t do it.”

  “You don’t look crazy.”

  “Just drive, okay?”

  “I’m the one—”

  “Please.”

  The surfer-ranger said nothing more. He drove into town. To the left was what the canyon people would have called a mall—less than a strip in the more populated areas of the county. A grocery store, a funky restaurant decorated in early '70s hippy chic, a bead store. The ranger station occupied the corner after that, at the intersection of three roads, including the main one.

  The ranger pulled to a stop in front of the station house.

  “Can I at least know your name?” he said, almost apologetically.

  “Call me Chuck. You?”

  “Chip.”

  Chip and Chuck. Sounded like Disney characters. A couple of chipmunks, one on the run from killers. A laugh riot.

  The station house smelled of old coffee and incense. The olive drab color was semi-military in tone, but the surfer poster on the wall confirmed the personality of Ranger Chip.

  “You want some coffee?” Chip said, lifting the partition at the front counter.

  “Just a phone.”

  “Right here.” He motioned to a desk with a computer monitor, stack of Post-It notes, and a pink phone.

  “Does it work?” Chuck said.

  “My partner picked it out. She’s sort of retro-Barbie.”

  Chuck fished Sandy Epperson’s card out of his back pocket and punched the number. According to the Frisbee shaped clock
on the wall, it was almost eleven.

  After three rings she answered. “Epperson.”

  “Samson.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Ranger station in Topanga. I got taken tonight. So did my brother. Stan is still missing.”

  “What happened?”

  “Can you get out here? It’s real. Guns, kidnapping, it has it all.”

  “Um, yes, sure. What’s the address?”

  “Let me give you to Chip.”

  He could only imagine Epperson’s face as he handed the phone to Ranger Chip. Chip made some preliminary remarks, listened, then gave her the exact address and hung up.

  “She’s on her way,” Chip said. “This is real, huh?”

  “Where’s the bathroom?”

  Chip pointed to the back. “I’ll get a first aid kit.”

  Walking back to the bathroom was itself an ordeal. Chuck imagined he looked like something out of a George Romero zombie film. It’s what he felt like, anyway.

  And when he got to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, he confirmed it. Dirt and spots of blood gave his face a walking dead glint. His shirt was torn. Around his neck scar were fresh scratches, from brush and small rocks.

  Chuck turned on the water and splashed his face. The cold felt good. A nice breeze flowed through the crack in the frosted glass window, carrying smells of the canyon. There was a roll of paper towels on a counter. Chuck tore off a handful and soaked them, dapped at his face and neck.

  Okay, you’re on the upswing now. God, thanks are due, but if you can hold back the animals and mobsters and watch over Stan, I’d appreciate that a great deal.

  His feet were next. Open cuts, scratches, dried blood and bruises. Chuck sat on the toilet and started cleaning. He thought about Bruce Willis in Die Hard. The scene where he runs across broken glass. And didn’t that whole thing start because Willis was in a bathroom when Alan Rickman and his crew took over the building?

  That was part of it here, with thugs taking over civil society. You try to do your work and get along, but they intrude in some form or fashion. They—

  Chuck heard the front door open. He peeked through the open door and saw Chip at the counter, back toward him.

  He heard Chip say, “What can I do for you?”

  And then Chip’s head exploded.

  Chapter 56

  As she got in her car Sandy reflected that the strain in Samson’s voice was as real as a fingerprint. What you think of a suspect is often an accumulation of little details. Sometimes your initial impression is confirmed, other times realigned after multiple observations.

  Samson struck her from the start as truthful, but hiding something. Something big. Mooney thought it was all a ruse, pointing to Samson’s ultimate guilt.

  She thought the opposite, and the sound of his voice was another piece on the scales of her intuition.

  Mooney, of course, was one of the new breed who thought “gut instinct” was something you used for ordering food, not solving cases.

  She’d just see about that.

  .

  Chuck had taught him. Back when Stan was six and he wanted to fight like Chuck. He wanted to be able to beat up the mean kids and there were a lot of them, oh yes. But Chuck said, Don’t use your fists, use your mind. But my mind isn’t like anybody’s, Stan had said. That’s the good part, Chuck said. Things stick to your mind.

  Chuck was doing his magic then, and he was learning things, like memory tricks. Chuck taught him that trick about using pictures to make numbers. Like a duck is the number two, because if you look at a duck on the water it’s sort of shaped like a two. It made Stan laugh the first time. And then you can think of a number three like some handcuffs. Opened up, they look like a three. Chuck had some toy handcuffs and showed Stan. That’s what they looked like. Four, that was a sailboat. Five, that was a hook.

  And then Stan started memorizing numbers and it was easy. He could do it almost without trying.

  He could even tell Chuck to hold up cards, a lot of them, one at a time, and then he’d tell Chuck what cards he’d held up and even the order of them.

  So he could use his mind like that and sometimes that made Stan feel good when he was feeling bad.

  Like now, he was feeling bad, but he was also using his mind just like Chuck said.

  Nobody was coming when he pounded on the door.

  He’d make them come all right.

  The sink worked. He could run water. There wasn’t anything in any of the cupboards. It was like it was supposed to be a bar once, but it wasn’t anymore. What kind of a crazy place was this? Maybe it was for torture. Maybe they tortured you here by running water over your face.

  Now Stan was running the water.

  He cupped his hands and got some. He went to the door and threw the water at the bottom of the door. He was going to make it wet on the other side.

  They’d see that. They’d think things.

  Stan left the water running, and took two more handfuls and threw them at the bottom of the door.

  “That feels good!” he shouted.

  And waited.

  .

  Pure survival instinct turned Chuck toward the bathroom window. He’d barely fit through.

  The sound of the counter partition slamming mixed with the voices of two men. And the sound of feet heading toward the back.

  Chuck palm-pushed the window sill.

  It moved half an inch.

  He looked back through the half open door and saw no one.

  Then heard slamming and rooting around. He remembered seeing a back office, opposite the hallways leading to the bathroom. They were checking there, but it wouldn’t take long for them to realize their prey must be elsewhere.

  And there’d be only the bathroom left.

  Chuck used the heels of both palms.

  Another half inch.

  The sounds in the other room stopped.

  Push!

  The window loosened, and shoved open with a loud bang.

  The scuffling of feet in the next room.

  Head first, Chuck thrust himself through the portal to his only chance of survival.

  It was eerily familiar to the SUV jump he’d made earlier in the evening. He hit the pavement behind the ranger station and had a quick choice.

  Two roads, one narrow and leading upward. That was to his left.

  The other one curved slightly down, to his right. It had the sharpest turn and would give him more immediate cover.

  That’s where he ran.

  Chapter 57

  As Sandy Epperson cruised by the sign for the Theatricum Bottanicum, Topanga Canyon’s outdoor theater, she thought about how terrible most criminals were when it came to acting innocent.

  You didn’t need all that hokum about kinesiology and lying indicators, as if they were magic. You could just tell because most people were lousy actors. Maybe a DeNiro could fool you, but not these scenery chewers. Not like your Scott Petersons, who were so full of themselves they thought they could charm anyone into believing them.

  Samson was not an actor and not trying to be one.

  Neither was she. No, she was more adept at keeping under the radar.

  .

  Chuck plunged forward into darkness. Against the starry sky, the trees were grim shadows. He had to lean forward at the waist to keep on the road, looking at the ground just a few feet ahead.

  There were homes on the right. He saw lights in the windows of two.

  Then heard the engine of an oncoming car. In a flash he remembered an incident from his childhood. He was fourteen and walking home in his neighborhood one night. As neighborhoods went, his was fairly safe, but when a car passed him in the street and slowed, he sensed bad news. So he backed up a few steps, turned and ran down the first side street he came to, and ducked behind some trash cans lining a driveway. Crouching there, he peeked out and saw the car drive by. He was sure it was looking for him. He waited a few minutes, then ran all the way home.


  Now he followed his memory and ran up a driveway on his right. There was indeed a side yard and large, municipally-approved trash containers. One of them was green, to be used for leaves and grass. He opened it up and felt around and came up with a handful of mown grass. He threw his leg over the rim and got in, closing the top over him but leaving a slight crack to look out of.

  The car cruised by. Slowly. It had a bright side light pointed in the direction of the houses.

  It continued on past this house. Chuck listened for the sound of it getting further away. As soon as he could hear only the crickets he thought he’d wait another minute, then get out.

  Light splashed around the trash container. Almost as if an alien space ship were hovering above him and about to beam him up.

  Chuck didn’t move, still holding the lid open a crack.

  He heard something slam behind him. In the receptacle he couldn’t turn around and look. He held his breath.

  The top of the trash can flipped open. Chuck was staring into the double barrels of a shotgun. The shotgun was in the hands of an old woman. She was all lit up. She looked like some avenging witch from a Tolkien movie.

  She said, “What in the name of the good God are you doing in my trash?”

  Chuck closed his eyes. “Do you have a phone?”

  “You think I’m stupid? You think I’m just gonna let you into my house or something?”

  “Some people are trying to kill me.”

  “I might be one of 'em, you don’t get on out of here.”

  Chuck shook his head, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. He was about to drop from exhaustion, a phone was in this house, but an old lady was holding a gun on him and talking hillbilly smack.

  And he wasn’t in any mood to explain himself anymore. He stepped out of the trash container, dusted himself off and put his chest on the barrels of the shotgun.

  “Go ahead and shoot, or let me use your phone,” he said.

  She thought a moment, then made a gesture with the gun. “Inside,” she said.

  The house seemed to have no available space for moving around, save for a narrow corridor. Like an ant farm. Newspapers were bound and stacked and up against the walls. Cardboard boxes of various sizes, some open some closed, spilled out who knew what—clothing, dishware.