The Sweet Golden Parachute

by David Handler

  He heard Eric whip open his Leatherman knife.

  Before Mitch could react, the gangly farmer had a strong left forearm wrapped around his throat and the three-inch razor sharp blade held to his jugular vein, its tip pricking his skin.

  “Don’t move a muscle,” Eric warned Mitch, hugging him tightly against his own body. “Lock it, Danielle. And go make sure the front doors are locked, too. Hurry!”

  She flew into action. Locked the hallway door behind her, then dashed up the aisle and pushed open one of the foyer doors. Mitch could hear her throwing the bolts on the church’s three big double doors out front.

  “Don’t do this, Eric,” he said hoarsely, feeling the man’s hot breath on the back of his neck. “It will end badly, believe me.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Mitch,” he growled in response. “But I will. So just shut the hell up.”

  “Eric, what are you doing?” Danielle protested as she scurried back down the aisle toward them.

  “Tie his hands with my belt,” he ordered her. “Now, Danielle.”

  She obeyed, yanking Eric’s worn leather belt from the loops of his pants, her eyes goggly with fear as she bound Mitch’s hands tightly behind him. As soon as she’d finished, Eric shoved Mitch roughly to the floor. The microcassette recorder tumbled from his jacket pocket. Eric promptly stomped on it hard with his work shoe, then removed the tape and stuffed it in his pocket.

  Mitch lay there with his hands bound awkwardly behind him, his shoulders screaming in pain. “You’ll be so much better off if you just turn yourselves in,” he said, squinting up at them in the sunlight that streamed through the church’s windows. “You can’t get away.”

  “Yeah, we can,” Eric assured him. “We have a bargaining chip. We have you.” He rummaged in Mitch’s pockets for his cell phone. “What’s Des’s number?”

  “Just hit redial.”

  Eric did, then held the phone to Mitch’s ear.

  Mitch heard her say, “Still kind of busy here.”

  To which he said: “I know, I know, and I’m sorry to bother you again. But something slightly urgent has come up.…”

  CHAPTER 24

  HERE’S WHAT DES DID after she got the call that would change her life forever:

  She thanked Andre Forniaux, mobile vet, for his time and she ran like hell for her cruiser, cursing the day she ever met a pigment-challenged New York widower by the name of Mitchell I Am a Big, Fat Fool Berger. From the front seat of her ride she called Soave to scream at him that Eric and Danielle Vickers were holding Mitch hostage inside the Congregational Church and would slit his throat unless they got exactly what they wanted.

  Eric had snatched the cell phone from Mitch to tell her what that was: A private jet with enough range to fly them nonstop to “somewhere like the Cayman Islands.” A car to deliver them to that jet, and a briefcase filled with $1 million in cash. Once they arrived at their destination, safe and sound, Mitch would be freed.

  “Otherwise, your boyfriend dies,” Eric had promised her, his voice sounding alarmingly high-pitched. “Understand?”

  Des had responded, “I’ll have to get back to you, Eric. Just be cool, okay?”

  Quickly, she alerted her troop commander of a life-threatening hostage situation. He’d send cruisers to secure the area. Also notify the district commander, who’d bring the state’s high command into the loop. Soave, meanwhile, reached out to Emergency Services for a hostage unit. There would be a negotiator to try to talk them into giving up. There would be a SWAT team. If Eric and Danielle refused to back down then snipers would take them out—assuming they had a clean shot. If they didn’t, the team would have to storm the church with overwhelming force. Although that would be a last resort. This was a house of worship, after all, and these were not hardened gangbangers. Just an organic farmer and his pigtailed wife who happened to have gone nutso.

  This was Mitch.

  Des floored it down the center of Dorset Street with her siren blaring and her lights flashing, pounding the wheel as she drove. Mitch had promised her he wouldn’t do anything crazy. She should have known better. Should have stopped him while she had him.

  The fool. The big, fat fool.

  She was the first to arrive on the scene. Immediately ordered the Food Pantry patrons from the area. Answered no questions, told them no lies. Simply said that there was a public safety situation and they would have to leave. She combed the parish offices, which were mostly staffed by volunteers. None were present. The offices were deserted. The hallway door to the church was shut. And no doubt locked from the inside by Eric and Danielle.

  She heard the sirens as half a dozen troopers from the West-brook Barracks pulled up. Their job was to close off every intersection within two blocks of the church. While they did that Des undertook her own personal recon by pacing all the way around the outside of the church, stepping quietly on the gravel. She checked out the service driveway around back, where Mitch’s truck was parked next to Eric’s. The back door to the Fellowship Center kitchen. The handicapped ramp, which provided wheelchair access to the old church by way of the Center. There was no other back way into the church. No rear windows. Just a pair of Bilco cellar doors, presently shut.

  She circled back around to the front of the church, crossed Dorset Street and stood there on the opposite sidewalk, trying to take it all in as her heart pounded and her knees trembled. She was absolutely frantic. But absolutely no one could know this. Des had to keep it together. Stay focused on what she was looking at:

  The stately church faced east from behind a hundred feet of pale winter lawn. Two huge old oaks framed its entrance. Six steps led up to the three double doors. The church’s north and south sides were made up mostly of windows, upstairs and down. The downstairs windows were at least twelve feet up off the ground, so there was no chance of her catching sight of them in there. Maybe from a second-floor window in one of the neighboring houses. The church’s upstairs windows were roughly even with the rooftops of those three-story colonials. Above the sanctuary there appeared to be an attic space—the roof beneath the clock tower was slightly peaked, and there was a fanlight there beneath the two-story-high clock. Atop the clock sat the bell tower, and above that the gracefully tapered steeple that soared some ten stories up into the blue sky, where she could make out a chopper approaching from off in the distance.

  A slicktop pulled up out front with a screech and out jumped Soave and Yolie. They immediately marched across the street toward her.

  “What did that bozo get himself into now?” Soave demanded angrily.

  “The worst kind of trouble, Rico.”

  “He means well,” Yolie spoke up in Mitch’s defense.

  “He’s a total pain in the ass,” Soave shot back. “And when I see him I’m going to punch him right in the nose.”

  “You’ll have to wait your turn,” Des said. “I’ve got dibs.”

  Reverend Cyrus Sweet, a calm, red-bearded man in his fifties, showed up next, accompanied by Lem Procter, the gnarled old church custodian. Lem was trembling with fear.

  “I’ve known Eric since he was a boy,” Reverend Sweet informed them in his resonant voice. “I could try to talk to him if you’d like.”

  “It might come to that,” Soave said. “Right now, we’re still trying to figure out what’s what.”

  “They’ve secured the front doors,” Des said. “Also the connecting door to the parish offices. Are there any other ways in?”

  “No, ma’am,” Lem replied, his voice quavering.

  “Talk to us about that fanlight window. Is there an attic up there?”

  “Yeah, that’s how we get at the clock works. The attic stairs are up in the balcony, next to the organ.”

  “Is there any other way to reach the attic?” Yolie was thinking the same thing Des was: If they could get up there then that would put them in the balcony. “Back stairs? Fire stairs?”

  Reverend Sweet shook his head. “The balcony is our only access.
”

  “I noticed a set of Bilco cellar doors,” Des said.

  “That’s the old coal cellar.” Lem scratched his ear with a wavering finger.

  “Does it run all the way under the church?”

  “It does, but it’s mostly wiring and pipes. Some storage.”

  “Can you access it from inside the church, Lem?”

  “Sure can. Cellar door’s in the cloakroom out in the foyer.”

  Des shot a glance at Soave and Yolie, her pulse quickening. “Lem, I didn’t see a padlock on those Bilcos. How do you lock them?”

  “From the inside. All your Bilcos are that way. I have to go through the cellar from the cloakroom to unlock ’em.”

  “We have ourselves a situation here, Lem. Is there any nice, quiet way we can pry those Bilcos open from the outside?”

  “No need to. Today’s a Food Pantry day—I unlocked ’em first thing this morning. Only reason they’re down is to keep the danged squirrels out of there.”

  Des tried to picture the layout of the church’s foyer. Just inside the front doors there were two staircases up to the balcony—one on the left, the other on the right. The cloakroom was adjacent to the stairs on the right. “That cellar door in the cloakroom,” she said. “Do you keep it locked?”

  “You bet. Need a key to get down there. Otherwise the kids sneak down, get into mischief.”

  “Okay, now here comes the million-dollar question, Lem…” Des breathed in and out. “Can that cloakroom door be unlocked from inside the cellar?”

  “Not a problem. Just have to turn the thumb latch.”

  Des grabbed the old custodian by the shoulders and kissed him on the forehead. Then she charged off in the direction of the church.

  “Slow down, Des,” cautioned Soave, trotting to catch up with her. “The hostage unit will be here in ten minutes.”

  “I’m not waiting for this situation to harden, Rico.” She paused at her cruiser for her flashlight.

  “Look, I know you’re worried about Berger but we got proper procedure to follow here. We need risk assessment, authorization. You can’t just go cowboy.”

  “Rico, I’m not waiting around for some jarhead with a bullhorn to hammer out a deal for Mitch’s life. That fat fool in there is the man I’m going to marry.”

  “Since when?” Yolie erupted.

  “Since I heard his voice on the phone just now. He’s my soul mate, Yolie. I’ll die if I lose him. We belong together. And we’re getting married. And, damn it, it would be nice if he lived to find that out. Which is why I’m going in.” She started her way around back of the church, both of them striding along with her. “And why you two are staying out here. You had no prior knowledge of my play. We never even had this conversation, understand?”

  “Des, I really, really don’t like this,” Soave said.

  “Deal with it, Rico.”

  “I’m going in with you, girl,” Yolie insisted. “You’ll need backup.”

  “Big thanks, but I won’t let you risk it. It’s my man and my career.”

  They’d reached the rear of the church. Quietly, Des raised the Bilco doors, throwing sunlight on the steep cement steps down to the coal cellar. She removed her big Smokey hat. Unlaced her boots, slipped them off and started down the narrow steps in her stocking feet, pausing to glance back up at Soave and Yolie as they stood out in the driveway.

  They both looked worried sick.

  Des flashed a reassuring smile at them. Took a great big deep breath. Then plunged her way into the deep, dark recesses of the basement below the old church.

  CHAPTER 25

  INSIDE THE CHURCH, THEY could hear the first siren approach, coming very fast.

  Des, most likely, Mitch reflected as he lay there on the floor, his arms lashed together beneath him. Not a very comfortable position—especially with Eric holding that sharp, cold blade against his throat. Eric was behind him on the floor with his back resting against the edge of the dais and his left arm wrapped around Mitch’s chest, hugging Mitch against him. Mitch felt powerless, utterly terrified. And, yet, strangely comforted. Being held this way reminded him of when he was a little boy and his dad would read him Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Although Nathan Berger had smelled much better than Eric Vickers. And he’d never held a knife to his only son’s tender young throat.

  Danielle sat before them in the front row of pews, wringing her hands. Her eyes darted wildly with fear behind those wire-framed glasses.

  Mitch heard the cruiser pull up outside with a screech. A car door open and shut. Footsteps. Her footsteps. A voice. Her voice.

  “She’ll clear all of the Food Pantry people out of here,” he said hoarsely as he lay there, quaking with fear. “In a few more minutes the others will get here from Westbrook. They’ll close off this intersection and reroute the traffic. It’ll take another twenty minutes for the big boys from Meriden to show. We have some time, is what I’m trying to say. We could use it productively.”

  “Or you could shut the hell up,” Eric growled.

  “Don’t think I can, Eric. I chatter when I’m nervous. I know this about myself. I also know it’s not too late to make the best out of this situation. Why don’t you tell me how it happened? Maybe I can help you turn things around.”

  “You can’t even save yourself. What makes you think you can save us?”

  “Oh, what does it matter now, Eric?” Danielle demanded hotly. She wasn’t merely scared. She was pissed at him. Why, because it was his plan? “Tell Mitch how it happened. What can it hurt?”

  In the distance, Mitch could hear the wail of the other sirens.

  “Fine, then I’ll tell him,” Danielle snapped, heaving her chest. “It was just supposed to be about the Gullwing, I swear. We needed the money, Mitch. The farm is… we’re so strapped for cash. But the more we talked about it, the more it all grew into something…”

  “Bolder,” Eric spoke up.

  “That’s what you call it?” asked Mitch.

  “Absolutely,” Eric replied, his voice brimming with pride. Which Mitch found incredibly bizarre—not that any of this wasn’t bizarre. “Let me tell him, hon. It’s my story.” Eager to share it now, Eric shifted himself around so that he was kneeling directly over Mitch, looking right down into his eyes as he held that knife to his throat. “See, I got to talking with this teamster-type guy at the Union Square green market last summer,” he began, blue eyes burning bright with intensity. “He drove a truck in from Long Island every Wednesday and Saturday for one of the old farmers out there. And he started telling me his brother had just gone to jail for stealing exotic cars for some shady dealer who’d sell them overseas. I immediately thought of Mom’s Gullwing, right? He put me in touch with them. At first, they only offered me a few grand for it. I dickered with them all winter. Held out for twenty thou. They finally caved since the Gullwing’s such a collector’s item. Gave me my choice of delivery dates. I picked one that coincided with the Kershaw brothers’ release from prison. That way absolutely everyone would figure Stevie and Donnie were behind it—especially if they had a reason to be at Four Chimneys Farm that same morning.”

  “They were ideal fall guys,” Mitch suggested as more cruisers pulled up outside, car doors opened and closed. “Congenital bad boys who have a real grudge against your family.”

  “They were perfect. And it was even recycling day.”

  “Which gave you the perfect opening to take out Pete. Anyone investigating his death would assume that Stevie and Donnie bashed the guy’s head in so he couldn’t identify them to the police. But it was you and Danielle who stole the Gullwing, wasn’t it? You and Danielle who went looking for Pete. You didn’t have to go far either—you encountered him as soon as you pulled out of your driveway. If he noticed the Gullwing, he probably figured it was Poochie. Had no reason to think otherwise. Not until you two beat him to death with that length of pipe. One of you took a tumble in the process.”

  “I tripped in the dark,” Danielle said
miserably, seated there with her shoulders slumped. “I wasn’t hurt. It was nothing.”

  “Once Pete was dead you delivered the Gullwing to the truck that was waiting in the commuter parking lot.”

  Eric nodded. “I did that while Danielle ran back up to our house, quick as a bunny, for my truck. She grabbed up Pete’s re-turnables, then picked me up at the commuter lot. It was still dark out. No one saw us.”

  “On your way home, you dropped Pete’s bottles and cans off at the Kershaw place, the better to incriminate them. Then you returned home to your morning chores and no one was the wiser. Everyone figured Stevie and Donnie were the culprits. Everyone except for Des. She never fell for it. Not that she had the slightest idea it was you. No one did.”

  “How did you figure it out?” Eric demanded, crouching over him with that damned knife.

  “You told me,” Mitch replied, swallowing carefully. “The other day in the coal cellar, when you were being all jealous and paranoid about Danielle and Mark.”

  “What did I?…”

  “You said that madness runs in your family. A very odd admission for you to make, considering how you won’t side with Claudia’s attempt to have your mother declared legally incompetent. You won’t even acknowledge that your mother has a problem. So what was I to make of that remark? I didn’t know. Not until this morning when Des and I were doing damage to some doughnuts. I always think best when I’m having a sugar rush. And here’s what I came up with: You knew that crazy old Pete was your uncle. That he was worth millions. You weren’t supposed to know. Claudia didn’t, but you did. How, did Glynis tell you?”

  “John J. did,” Eric replied. “Grandfather wanted me to know the truth, one man to another, so he wrote a letter to me before he died. Gave it to his lawyer, Glynis’s dad, and instructed him to hand it to me on my twenty-first birthday. It was our secret. Strictly a guy thing. Grandfather never wanted Claudia to know. She was a girl, therefore he regarded her as a delicate flower.” Eric let out a harsh laugh. “Not a keen judge of character, old John J.”