by Jeremy Bates
Forty-year-old woman, convicted felon, jobless, and more than a little damaged seeks man to settle down with and raise children.
Yeah, right.
She was going to grow old and die alone—
“You okay?” Jack asked, noticing her eyes on him.
She glanced away, ashamed to be thinking such thoughts. They were not caught. Not yet. They were still very much free. And together. “I’m okay,” she said.
“I hope you’re not still thinking we’re going to get caught. We’re not. We’re almost there and there hasn’t been a single—”
Up ahead, Katrina made out a set of headlights. She felt as though she’d been punched in the gut with a steel gauntlet. “Someone’s there,” she said unnecessarily.
Jack slowed to eighty, then sixty-five, the speed limit. A blue Buick sedan was parked off to the side of the road, beside the crashed pickup truck. A man ran out onto the road, waving his hands. His face was stark white in the headlights. Jack slowed a little more but continued past without stopping. Katrina saw the man’s expression morph from distress to disgust.
“He’s alone,” Jack said. Before Katrina knew what was happening, he’d looped the Porsche around in a tight turn and was heading back.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “We can’t get involved now! We’ll have to give a statement. We’ll have to explain what we’re doing way out here!”
“We’re not going to stick around. I’m just going to talk to him.”
Katrina didn’t like what she heard in his voice. She didn’t know what it was, only that it frightened her. “Keep driving past,” she said.
The man saw them coming back and was waving them over. Jack pulled up behind the Buick. Katrina was furious he’d blatantly ignored her, but there was nothing she could do. He was in the driver’s seat.
“Stay in the car,” Jack told her, then climbed out.
Katrina watched him for a moment, then flung the door open and got out as well.
Jack shot her a glance but didn’t say anything. He turned his attention to the man, who was short and potato-thick with a weather-seasoned face framed by a red beard and a wild mane of matching hair. “What happened here?” Jack asked, with just the right amount of curiosity and concern.
“Damned if I know,” the man said, stroking his beard nervously. “I went down there to see the damage, give some help, you know. But, sweet Jesus, I’m positive the poor sucker’s dead. I didn’t find a pulse.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Don’t got my phone with me. You got one?”
“No.”
Katrina knew Jack had his phone in his pocket. Her ominous feeling deepened. “Jack,” she said, “come back to the car. We’ll go to Skykomish. Get help.”
Jack ignored her once more. “Let’s you and me go take another peek,” he said to the man. “Maybe he isn’t as dead as you say.”
“I ain’t never seen a dead person before. Once or twice in a coffin. No real dead person, you know what I mean? But I’m sure this guy’s gone. I told you. I never found a pulse.”
“Let’s just make sure.” Jack put a hand firmly on the shorter man’s shoulder and guided him toward the crashed truck.
“Jack!” Katrina shouted.
Both men turned to look at her.
“What are you going to do?” she asked cryptically.
“Go back to the car.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Go back to the car, Katrina.” There was an iron timbre to his voice. But she would not be cowed.
“Let’s go to Skykomish,” she said. “Get help there. Don’t do this.” Do what? she wondered. Kill him? Was that was she was thinking? That Jack was going to kill the man? She had no idea. She had no idea about anything anymore. Only that she wanted to get the hell away from there—far, far away.
The man with the red hair stiffened. He glanced from Katrina, to Jack, then back to Katrina. He looked like a man who had heard something he wanted no part of. “Maybe I better go for help myself.” He turned toward his car, but Jack tugged him back. He lost his balance and fell to the ground. “Hey!” he protested.
“Shut up!” Jack said.
“Jack!” Katrina cried, taking a few steps forward. Yes, he was going to do it. She believed that now. He was going to kill that man.
“I’m not going to say this again,” he told her. “Get back to the car.”
“Don’t touch me!” the man gasped, and began scrambling away on all fours. “Stay away!”
Jack started after him, huge and looming, like a polar bear about to pounce on an injured seal. Aware she had only a few seconds to act, Katrina did something she had never done before in her life: she leapt onto a grown man’s back, wrapping her arms around Jack’s throat. His knees buckled from the added one hundred and twenty pounds, but he didn’t go down. Then the next moment she was airborne. He’d shaken her free as if she’d been nothing more than a pesky child. The impact with the ground came fast. She landed in the tall grass and made an “oomph!” sound. She raised her head and was immensely relieved to see she’d provided the man vital seconds to escape. He was back on his feet, charging recklessly into the dark pine forest.
She turned her attention to Jack. He was looking at her with not so much anger but pity, as if he’d been betrayed. Crazily she waited for him to say, “Et tu, Brute?” But he didn’t say anything. Then he was off, disappearing into the trees.
Katrina knew the man with the wild red hair didn’t stand a chance.
Chapter 19
Bruce Heinrich ran deeper into the forest. His arms were crossed in front of him in the form of a crucifix, as if to ward off the branches from raking him across the face. He heard the crazy son of a bitch right behind him, coming fast. Bruce’s mind was pumping on all cylinders as he tried to figure out what he’d stumbled into the middle of and what he could do to escape. He was no coward, that was for sure. He considered himself strong and in shape, largely due to the last thirty years he’d spent as a contractor up here in these parts, and ten years in northern Oregon before that, building houses and cottages and such, doing most of the hard manual labor himself. But he was no idiot. The man on his ass cleared six feet and two hundred pounds and looked about as strong as an ox. So no stopping and fighting his way out of this. No sir, no way. He’d have to hide. Get a lead, lose the bastard in the dark.
A pagan branch found a gap through his crucifix and clawed his face, drawing a painful line beneath his right eye—an inch higher and he would have been halfway to blind. He stumbled, shouldered a tree trunk, then staggered on. He didn’t slow. It was pitch-black, but he didn’t slow. He could hear the man behind him, closer than ever.
Who the hell were these people he’d waved over? he wondered manically. Fugitives on the run? If so, why would they stop? Why would they want to kill him? The dots didn’t add up. The only thing that connected him to them was the dead man in the pickup. But they couldn’t have been responsible for that. They’d been driving past—
Unless they’d killed the man, maybe ran him off the road, then had to come back for something. Maybe there was a suitcase with a million bucks in the pickup—
Bruce slammed into another tree. Something sharp went right through his hand, below the padded, fleshy lump of the thumb. Red pain screamed, hot and sizzling. It reminded him of the time he’d slipped while shingling a roof, impaling his hand on an upended, rusty nail.
What had it been? A branch? The tip of a branch?
The crazy son of a bitch finally caught up and grabbed Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce let out a startled cry. He flailed an arm wildly to break free and connected with what he thought must be the bastard’s face. The man let go. Bruce lumbered forward, cupping his injured hand with his good one. He made it about ten paces before an intense heat exploded in his right ear. He dropped to his knees and brought his good hand up to his ear. Blood was gushing from it, streaming down his cheek, slippery and smooth. I’ve ripped
it in half. I’ve ripped my fucking ear in half. He teetered on the brink of unconsciousness.
Something slammed his back. The pain was like a cannonball. He fell to his side, instantly aware he couldn’t move. His arms, legs, neck wouldn’t respond.
Lord, was he dead? But if he was, then why was he still conscious?
Bruce realized he was probably paralyzed.
Before he could consider whether being a quadriplegic was any better than being dead, there was a sharp tap to his temple and he didn’t have to wonder any more.
Chapter 20
Jack stared down at the dark, lifeless shape of the man he’d killed. He’d driven his foot into his back and heard the spine snap. Then he’d kicked him in the right temple, where a major artery and nerve were located, to make sure the job was done. The smartest thing to do now, he decided, was to leave the body where it was. He knew if he brought it back to the car, and Katrina saw it, she’d never help him dispose of it properly. In fact, he was pretty sure she would go straight to the police. Besides, nobody was going to find it out here anyway, not in the forest alongside an unremarkable strip of highway. No hiking trails nearby. No Ski-Doo trails. The only thing that would find the man with the red hair was something with a good nose—a nose for blood. Likely a black bear or a coyote. And that was ideal. No medical examiner could comb over a body that was in the belly of a bear. There would be bones left, but that would be all. By next spring they would be buried beneath a new carpet of leaf litter and fresh ground vegetation.
Jack searched the corpse for a wallet and keys, which he found. He made his way back to the highway, quickly but not nearly as recklessly as the mad charge in. He pushed past some sagebrush, then was clear of the haunting trees. Katrina was by the Porsche, arms folded across her chest, pacing back and forth. Thankfully, no more cars had shown up. Katrina spotted him, froze momentarily, then ran over, looking like someone who had just escaped from a loony bin. Her eyes were wide and stormy, her face drawn and pale. “What have you done, Jack?” she sobbed, pounding her small fists against his chest. “What in God’s name have you done?”
“Get a grip, Katrina!” he said. “What’s gotten into you? You scared the shit out of that guy with all of your cryptic talk. You made it sound as if I’d been planning on killing him!”
She continued to pound. “Did you?” she demanded. “Did you kill him? I know you did. Don’t lie to me. I know you did.”
“Are you serious?” He grabbed her wrists. “You’re not making any sense. You’re hysterical.”
“You killed him!”
“I just had a talk with him.”
“Liar!”
“It’s true.”
“Where is he then? Where is he right now?” He felt her wrists tremble in his grip, as if she wanted to yank them free or start hitting him once again. He held on firm.
“He’s thinking about the talk I had with him. The talk I had planned from the beginning before you jumped on my back and almost let him get away.” He finally let her go and glanced down the highway both ways. “I’ll explain everything to you very soon. But not now, not here. We have to get the hell out of here before someone comes along.”
Katrina swayed, as if suddenly dizzy. A hand went to her mouth.
“Don’t throw up!” Jack said, fearing she was going to contaminate the crime scene. “Hold it back!” He tore off his T-shirt and held it like a horizontal sail in front of her. She vomited into it, retching over and over again. Jack’s eyes went back to the highway. No headlights. Not yet. But soon. Their luck was going to run out very soon. He felt like they were playing Russian roulette, not with bullets but with each second that slipped by. When Katrina had finally finished, he knotted the shirt so it became a small pouch, carried it to the Buick, and tossed it in the backseat.
Katrina was right behind him, a shadow. “What did you say to him?” Her voice was raspy from the gastric acids that had visited her throat. She still looked as furious and scared as she had before, but now there was something else in her eyes: doubt. She was doubting her previous conviction he’d killed the man with the red hair, and right then Jack knew he had her. He could coach her through this.
“I’ll explain everything later,” he said softly, gently. “I promise. But right now we have to finish this. Someone’s going to come by any minute.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I’m done with this.”
“Goddammit, Katrina. You’ll be throwing away your future. Your life. Do you understand that?”
Leaving her to dwell on that, Jack ran to the pickup truck. He shoved aside the bush of prickly phlox and yanked up the hood, which had already come unhinged by the collision with the tree trunk. The engine was still running, like he’d left it. He unscrewed the oil filter. It was hot and singed his hand. He shook the excess oil onto the scorching manifold and exhaust, then rescrewed the filter, leaving it a little loose so if the fire was investigated it would appear to have been loose before the crash, or to have been a product of the crash—either way explaining the leaking oil and, consequently, the fire.
The oil bubbled, creating a smell of rotten eggs that almost gagged him. Blue smoke billowed into the air in thick, greasy clouds. There was a whoosh as the entire engine burst into flames. Seconds later the blaze leapt higher as other fluids ignited.
Jack felt a flush of pride before telling himself this was not the time for back patting.
He returned to where Katrina waited. “You’re going to have to drive the Buick,” he told her, holding forth the keys while anxiously checking the highway yet once more.
“You said you only talked to him,” she said, confused.
“I did. I talked to him. I threatened him, yes, but I only talked to him. I took his driver’s license and told him if he ever said a word about any of this I was going to come for him and his family.” When he saw the look of horror on her face, he added quickly, “It was just a threat. An empty threat. But a threat that had to be made to keep him quiet.” Eyes to the highway again. “Look, we can discuss the ethics of this later. After you’ve thought it through rationally, from every angle. After you’ve done that, if you still want to give up, or turn us in, or whatever, then okay.” That was a lie. He would never allow her to do that. “But right now we need to move. Don’t ruin your life because in the heat of the moment you let yourself be swayed by your emotions. You’ll regret it every long night you spend in prison.”
“Where is he?” she persisted. “Why do we have to take his car?”
“I wanted him to walk home. Have a good long while to think about what I told him. Know I was serious. And his car can’t be here when the next person drives by.”
What seemed like an eternity passed before Katrina held out her hand. Relieved, Jack gave her the Buick’s keys.
“Follow me,” he said. “I know a place—”
In the distance, coming from the east, a set of headlights appeared.
Chapter 21
Katrina watched in horror as the car approached. Time seemed to slow down; her thoughts sped up and took on a fresh clarity.
When Jack had emerged from the forest, and she’d been convinced he’d killed the man with the red hair, she’d been numbed, once again unable to think straight or fully accept what was happening. It was as if she was a member of an audience, watching a drama that was her life unfold. She could see herself pounding Jack’s chest, could hear herself accusing him, but didn’t seem to be in control. All she could do was watch from that spectator’s seat as she refused to go along with what Jack was saying, because by denying him she’d thought she could somehow deny any of this was really happening. But, of course, it was happening. Cold reality had sunk in when Jack told her she was risking her future on an emotional decision rather than an intellectual one. Yes, she felt appalled at what she’d become a party to. And yes, she and Jack deserved whatever punishment a judge and jury could throw at them.
However, there was another part of her as well, the par
t Jack was appealing to, which did not want to lie down and give up. And if she was to listen to that preservation instinct, there could be no more hesitating or debating or doubting, no more blurring the distinction between wrong and really wrong. The fuzzy line outlining moral culpability had been quickly etched in stone. She was either with Jack one hundred percent, or she was against him. That was the reason she’d accepted the Buick’s keys, and in doing so sealing her complicity in the fate of the man with the red hair— regardless of whether she truly believed he was alive or not.
And now that she’d made that decision to do whatever it took to see this thing through, she was as terrified as ever at getting caught.
Jack was already running to the Porsche. “Go! Go!” he shouted at her. “But don’t turn on the headlights.”
Katrina jumped into the front seat of the Buick. She fumbled with the keychain. There were about ten keys on the damn thing! She jammed the biggest into the ignition. Fit, but didn’t turn. Probably for the trunk. She tried another big one. No go. Come on. Come on! She tried a third, convinced it wasn’t going to work either. The engine caught. Jack pulled up beside her and was saying something. She buzzed down the window.
“Don’t use your brakes either,” he said, then peeled off into the night.
She followed, spending about as much time looking in the rearview mirror as she did straight ahead. The jumping flames of the blazing fire had now consumed the entire pickup truck. The headlights of the fast-approaching vehicle merged into one bright streak of light. She prayed she was far enough ahead to have escaped their reach. Then the inferno disappeared behind trees as the road began to bend slightly. The headlights vanished as well. Apparently whoever was behind her had indeed stopped to investigate the blazing wreck.