by Kara Thomas
We can’t already be too late.
Callie’s already opted for another tactic. “Sir, this is an emergency. We really have to talk to someone in the district attorney’s office—”
“Emergencies are for the police.” The guard taps the top of her car, as if to say, Get on out.
Twenty feet from us, in the fire lane in front of the courthouse, two guards lead a man in a jumpsuit out of the armored truck. He’s Hispanic, and his hands and feet are chained.
“Callie. It’s not him,” I say, relief rising in me like a tidal wave.
“Sorry,” Callie tells the guard. I can tell from her voice that she feels it too.
“S’okay. Pull over to the side and make a U-turn when it’s clear,” the guard tells us. Callie pulls over to let another van from the prison through, and she’s already on her phone when the security guard stops it.
“Who are you calling?” I ask.
“Ryan,” she says. “He’s not picking up.”
A door slams next to us. I watch a man climb out of the van from the prison. He opens the back for the security guard to inspect, whistling and looking over his shoulder.
The man notices us idling. He smiles at me, and my legs go numb.
It’s him.
I look away, quickly, and Callie hangs up and turns her head.
“Don’t do anything,” I whisper. “Don’t stare at him.”
Callie’s silent. I look up; Jimmy Wozniak is watching us, more intently now. The guard says something to him, and he nods. Gets back into his van and drives into the parking lot.
“We have to get out of here,” I tell Callie. She puts the car in neutral by mistake. Corrects it to drive, then hits the pedal too hard and drives into the curb. The security guard is walking over to us, annoyed.
“Oh my God,” Callie whimpers as she pulls herself together for long enough to make the U-turn. I wave a Sorry to the security guard as we speed out of the parking lot.
“It’s okay.” I dig my nails into the door handle. “There’s no way he could know—”
“My case,” Callie blurts. “He saw me on the phone, and my cell phone case—”
She doesn’t have to finish.
Her cell phone case is in the photo we used to lure Jimmy Wozniak to the Target parking lot last night. I swallow.
“It’s fine, we’re fine,” I say, as if repeating it would make it true. Callie’s already tugging at her bangs.
“What are we supposed to do now? I don’t want to wait until tomorrow to talk to the DA.”
“We can call and leave a message,” I say, trying to stay calm. As if by doing that I could hold everything together. “There’s still time.”
Callie exhales, but the pit in my stomach grows. I don’t know if there’s still time, but I just need her to believe that there is for now.
•••
Callie calls the DA’s office from her cell once we get home. She sits in the armchair, rolling her eyes every time she gets transferred. “There’s seriously no one I can leave a message with right now?”
The ball of anxiety in my stomach, the one that’s been growing since our trip to the courthouse this morning, finally explodes. “Let me talk to them.”
Callie leans back in the chair as I try to wrestle the phone from her hand. She covers the receiver, eyes wild. “What the hell? Get off me.”
I look down and realize I have my other hand wrapped around her free wrist. I pull back, suddenly unable to breathe. I run upstairs and shut myself into the guest bedroom.
Maybe it’s a panic attack, or worse. Maybe I’ve really, truly lost it. Who is going to believe us about Jimmy Wozniak being the Ohio River Monster? The only reason they listened to our story as kids was because they needed it.
No one was ever really listening to us at all.
I close my eyes, and I see Lori. I see Baby Macy Stevens and I see my father, shriveled and spitting blood onto his cot in prison.
The guest room door swings open, and I yelp. Callie looks at me, confused.
I put a hand to my chest. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry.” Callie walks over, sits next to me on the bed. “Are you okay? You look like you’re gonna pass out.”
“Fine.” But I can hardly get the word out. My heart is hammering in my chest, and my chest is so tight, I can’t breathe. I lie on my side on the bed, blinking the light spots away from my eyes.
“You’re freaking out.” Callie hovers over me, her face concerned. “You want a Valium?”
I nod. Callie disappears, and I pull my knees up, hug them close. The minutes tick by, and my heartbeat slows. I don’t even really need the Valium anymore. I sit up and wait for Callie to come back; my knees feel wobbly.
I watch the clock overhead. Callie’s been gone almost ten minutes. She must have gotten distracted by something. I lift myself off the bed and head downstairs.
“Callie?” I call out.
She doesn’t respond as I pad into the living room. From the hall, I see a glass of water on the kitchen island. Next to it is a bottle of Valium prescribed to Margaret Greenwood.
Also, Callie’s cell phone.
I stick my head out the back door and call her name again. Nothing except the dogs going nuts next door.
I run into the living room, push the curtains aside. The minivan is still in the driveway. I open the front door and call Callie’s name. Then Maggie’s, because I haven’t seen her since we got back from the courthouse.
Callie would never go somewhere and leave her phone behind.
He followed us back, I think, my stomach folding into itself.
I look at the kitchen island. I picture the Monster coming to the back door, telling her to drop everything and come with him. She didn’t scream; maybe he had a gun. But the dogs next door definitely heard his car.
I dial 911 from Callie’s cell and tell them I need to report an abduction, and to please send Jay Elwood.
A police cruiser with its lights on and siren off pulls up to the curb. Two uniformed officers step out and survey the house. The one who was in the passenger seat—a woman—says something into her radio.
“Where’s Detective Elwood?” I ask.
“Are you the one who put in the call?” the other officer asks. I recognize him from the night Daryl attacked Callie.
“Yeah, and I asked them to send Jay Elwood—”
He holds up a hand. “I need you to calm down and tell me what happened.”
I know how this looks. There’s no sign of a struggle in the kitchen. It looks like Callie just wandered off, and I don’t have time to explain why I know she wouldn’t do that. Not now.
“She didn’t come upstairs when I called her, so I ran to the front of the house, and I saw a man forcing her into his van,” I lie. “He had a gun.”
“Tessa?”
I turn to see Maggie at the end of the driveway, in shorts and a sweat-soaked T-shirt. She takes off her headphones; her eyes are saucers as she takes in the police officers. “What’s going on?” she calls to me. “Where’s Callie?”
“Ma’am, let’s go into the house,” the woman officer says.
“No, I want to know what the hell is going on.” Maggie steps onto the lawn, coming toward me. An officer steps in front of her, putting an arm across her chest.
“Tessa, what happened?” Maggie shouts.
I can’t make my mouth form the words. Down the street, a siren blips. Two more cop cars. A blue Ford Escape is behind them. Jay Elwood is at the wheel.
Maggie’s shouting at the female officer now. I take the opportunity and run for Jay Elwood’s SUV. He hops out and heads straight for me.
“What happened?”
“He took her,” I say. “We saw him at the courthouse this morning, and he must have followed us home—”
“Who?” Jay barks, quieting his radio.
“Jimmy Wozniak. He had a gun,” I lie again, because the truth won’t buy us enough time to find Callie before h
e kills her.
“What was he driving?” Jay barks.
I hesitate, and Jay looks like he wants to throttle me. As though he can tell I’m lying. I think fast; there’s no way Wozniak had time to go get his Subaru if he followed us here.
“A white van,” I blurt. “From the prison.”
Jay wipes a hand down his chin. The officer who was interviewing me trots over, confused.
“Put an alert out on a white prison transport van. I want units out looking for her,” Jay tells him. He rounds on me. “You, get into the car. I need to put you with a sketch artist.”
“I told you, it was Jimmy Wozniak—”
“I can’t release his picture, but I can release a sketch. Get in the car.”
I look back at Maggie. One hand holding her cell phone to her ear, the other covering her mouth. I imagine her begging Rick to come home. Another screw loosens in me.
I nod mechanically and get into Jay’s car.
Jay backs the SUV away from the curb with one hand and uses the other to radio a message to the station. We hit a pothole, and my stomach rockets into my throat.
“We’re not going to get to her in time,” I say, my voice a choked-up warble.
Jay mutes his radio. “The next couple hours are critical. So if I were you, I’d try to be helpful instead of arguing with me.”
I clench my jaw, grinding my back teeth against each other. I repeat my lie about Jimmy Wozniak forcing Callie into the prison van.
Jay’s police scanner blips midstory. “Got reports of an abandoned vehicle. Wooded area off 74.”
Two drops of rain glide across the windshield, and Jay turns his wipers on, but I can tell the scanner has his attention. “Sending highway patrol to check it out…”
I stare at Jay until he looks at me. “I-74 is where he dumped his victims.”
Jay pinches the bridge of his nose. Mutters something under his breath. He holds his radio to his face. “Wait for backup. Officer en route.”
He slaps a blue orb onto his dashboard. The light revolves around its center. Jay glances at my belt buckle and hits the gas. He passes the turn for the police station and gets onto the highway.
“You stay in the car,” Jay says to me. “No matter what we find up there, you stay in here, understood?”
He thinks she’s dead already. The scene blurs around me. Green and brown trees, blue light, gray highway—they spin into each other like paint on an art wheel.
This is not how any of this was supposed to happen.
The police dispatcher radios in the exact location of the car. I glance at Jay’s speedometer. He’s doing ninety. I dredge up an old physics formula from the place where I store information I’m not sure I’ll need again. The force of this moving car is equal to one half its mass multiplied by its volume, squared.
I don’t know how much this car weighs or how to convert it to kilograms anyway. The force is enough to kill us if we hit anything, I decide.
It would probably be fast. Painless. At least less slow than hearing the police explain to Maggie how letting me into her home could have destroyed so many lives.
Jay slows when we reach a break in the guardrail. Wooded area on each side of the highway. Miles until the next rest stop. He gets out of the car and locks the doors. Surveys the embankment.
There’s a white van at the bottom.
Jay gets back into the Escape and starts the engine. “Hold on,” he says.
The engine revs. Branches scrape against the windows as Jay drives us to the bottom of the embankment. He parks next to the van and leaps out of the car. He approaches the back window, his gun drawn.
The look on his face says it’s empty.
A scream rips through the air.
Jay raises his gun and spins on his heel; I see her first.
Callie, pressed against Jimmy Wozniak like a shield. He has one arm wrapped around her body, the other aiming a gun at her temple. Twenty feet away from the van.
“Get back into the car,” Wozniak barks at Jay, loud enough for me to hear through the window. His face is calm, like someone who is used to giving orders.
“I can’t do that,” Jay calls back. “Jimmy, is it? Let’s talk about this, Jimmy.”
Wozniak jerks Callie upright. From here, I can tell she’s crying. “I can’t go to prison,” he says. “I’d rather die than eat and shit with those animals.”
“Put the gun down, and we’ll talk about it,” Jay yells. “Come on, Jimmy. You got a wife? Kids?”
“I know what you’re doing,” Wozniak shouts back. “You have any idea what they’ll do to a guard in there?”
“You won’t have to go there.” Jay’s arms waver as he holds up his gun. “They’ll transfer you somewhere no one knows who you are—”
Wozniak smiles. “There isn’t a place in the world where they won’t know who I am.”
Wozniak’s cheek is pressed to Callie’s—even if Jay were a sniper, he wouldn’t be able to shoot Wozniak without hitting her too.
Wozniak knew it would end like this. He knew we knew who he was, and that they’d find him after all these years. The Monster came here to die, and he brought Callie with him.
“Don’t do this, Jimmy!” Jay shouts. “Think of your family.”
Callie jerks under the Monster’s grip. She says something to him that I can’t hear. He looks down at her.
Wozniak’s finger moves on the trigger. A gunshot. I scream and lunge at the dashboard.
The Monster crumples. Callie backs away, presses against a tree. Her mouth is open in a silent scream. Blood and brain matter in her hair, on her face.
Jay Elwood looks at the gun in his hands, stunned. I stop shaking for long enough to stumble out the passenger door.
“You could have killed her,” I scream.
Jay turns and looks at me, stricken. “I didn’t fire.”
Callie is still pressed against the tree. “I…I asked him if he killed Lori.”
She lowers her eyes to his body. I can’t look. And I already know the answer, because Wozniak’s lips didn’t move before he blew his brains out.
If the Monster killed Lori Cawley, the truth just died with him.
It’s dark by the time an officer drops me off at the hospital. They won’t let me see Callie until they process both of our statements separately. The receptionist tells me that Maggie and Rick are in the room with Callie. An officer hasn’t interviewed her yet, but they’ll send someone down to talk to me.
I sit in a chair outside the gift shop. I’m cold, and my cell phone is dead.
I’m not alone. A little girl prances in front of me, arms out, spinning semicircles with her torso. Her braids spin along with her, the beaded ends thwacking against each other. She watches me from beneath her hair. I wave to her, and she scampers into the gift shop.
I tell myself that if Maggie comes down to see me, everything will be okay. If she sends Rick, it means she’s angry with me for almost getting Callie killed.
The little girl with the braids leaves the gift shop, clinging to a woman on her cell phone. I watch other people file out after them, and I rank them from least serious reasons for visiting to most serious. A woman with a balloon and a teddy bear. Least. A man with two children and a ghastly look on his face. Most.
They all make their way to the elevators. There’s no sign of Maggie, or Rick.
It’s been fifteen minutes. I can’t bring myself to ask the receptionist to call up to Callie’s room again.
Twenty minutes. Two police officers enter through the sliding doors. They walk right past me as if I weren’t even here.
Half an hour. I watch a woman approach the reception desk and wrap her arms around her body, like she’s cold.
“Is Tessa Lowell here?” she asks.
I sit up straight. That voice…I’m transported back to the night of the gas station.
Tessa, baby, get into the car.
Where are we going, Mommy?
I stand up. Stare at the
woman’s back. “Mom?”
She turns to me, her eyes going wide. She hurries over to where I’m standing. Stops in her tracks, as though she were looking at a ghost.
“Tessa,” she whispers. She throws her bony arms around me. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t hug her back, she’s squeezing me so tightly.
“You’re hurting me,” I croak out.
My mother lets go of me. Smiles and runs a hand through my waves. I was in such a hurry when I discovered that Callie was gone that I didn’t even put my hair up. “You cut it,” my mother says in a single sad breath.
“How—how did you know I was here?” I can’t believe she’s here. “Did you get my message?”
My mother nods. “This morning. I’ve been calling you for hours,” she says. “I kept getting your voice mail, so I drove down here. I went to the Greenwoods, and a neighbor said everyone was at the hospital—Tessa, I was so worried.” My mother grasps my forearms. She lifts a hand to my face. I turn away.
“Look at me,” she whispers. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
I can’t form a response. I want to look at her, to press my face into her shoulder and see if she still smells like old leather and the peppermint oil she took to calm her stomach.
She’s my mother, but she’s a stranger.
“Is Joslin here?” I ask her.
Annette blinks. “Why would your sister be here?”
“She came to see Daddy,” I say. “Right before he died.”
My mother’s face falls. “Glenn is dead?”
I can’t help it. I grab her forearm and dig my nails in. “Where the hell have you been? Where’s Jos?”
“You’re making a scene,” my mother hisses. “Let’s talk in the cafeteria.”
I want to say that I’m not going anywhere with her until she tells me the truth about my father, Joslin, and Macy Stevens. But a hospital cafeteria is as public a venue as I’ll get, and if there’s one thing my mother hates, it’s a public scene.
I find us a table as she buys a coffee for herself and a hot chocolate for me. I keep my eyes on her back as she moves down the line, as if she might disappear again if I look away for even a second. As she’s paying, she glances over her shoulder. Like she’s afraid I’m not still here.