Eden Bound

by Darrell Maloney

  Actually, he was trying to reassure himself as well as her.

  This was going to be a big transition for all concerned. And whether it went smoothly or terribly would depend in large part on everyone’s willingness to accept change.

  Eddie woke himself up with an unusually loud snore and looked around through half-closed eyes.

  He tried his best to check out Tina, sitting in the back seat with him, without making it obvious.

  He considered her pretty, which she was, with flowing blonde hair and blue eyes and an extra helping of freckles.

  He also considered her sweet, which indeed she could be, despite her having committed a cold blooded murder just hours before.

  Eddie was tired of being alone, when pretty much everyone else he knew had someone to love.

  He wanted someone of his very own too and couldn’t help wondering… would it be acceptable to just come right out and ask Tina if she’d be his girlfriend?

  Or was that perhaps too forward?

  First chance he got he’d do what he usually did when he wasn’t sure of the affairs of the heart and how they worked.

  He’d ask Josie.

  She knew darned near everything.

  -48-

  Tina, for her part, didn’t even realize she was being watched.

  For all she knew, Eddie could have been standing on another planet.

  She’d been staring out of the window for the better part of three hours, yet not seeing much on the other side.

  At first she made an effort to wipe the fog from it occasionally. Then it occurred to her that most of what she was seeing was in her own mind and stopped bothering.

  She, like the others, was deep in thought, though her thoughts had a decidedly more sinister flavor to them.

  She went over her escape plan. Looking for flaws, and hoping she didn’t back herself into a corner by hitching her wagon to total strangers.

  She decided that maybe that was the smartest thing for her to do, for when the law came looking for her they wouldn’t expect it.

  So far her plan went off flawlessly.

  If Johnny remembered his role, that is.

  She instructed him to tell the cops that he moved to Big Spring some time before, and she took the pickup back to Lubbock to tie up some loose ends before joining him.

  The plan was for her to join him later. And that was why she was by herself when she was pulled over on the highway by Deputy Sonmore.

  “There’s no reason for them to know you were even there,” she told Johnny. “You and Tony make sure you get your stories straight. You were both here in Big Spring when he pulled me over.

  “They’ll think he walked up to the pickup window expecting to find you. And instead he just found me. And that he was walking back to his own vehicle when I shot him in the back.”

  “They’ll never believe that,” Johnny protested.

  “It don’t matter if they believe it or not,” she told him. “If y’all both have the same story and stick to it, they won’t be able to prove it didn’t happen just that way.”

  She could have abandoned the pickup on any street in Big Spring.

  She chose to leave it at the 7-Eleven instead, and made a point to talk to the clerk. She even flirted with him a bit, to leave a more lasting impression.

  The clerk would tell the cops later on that there was no man accompanying her. That she was the sole occupant of the pickup. That would bolster her story that Johnny wasn’t with her and had nothing to do with it.

  There were a few holes in her story, sure.

  The investigating officers might ask why the deputy’s handcuffs were lying on the road beside his body.

  She took the time to replace the key on his duty belt, so maybe they’d assume the cuffs fell free when he went down.

  The clerk wouldn’t be able to tell the cops where the mysterious woman went when she abandoned the truck. She was careful to wait until he went to the back of the store before hurrying out to the Hummer to talk to Frank.

  From that point on she stayed out of the clerk’s view.

  She certainly didn’t want him to tell the cops she crawled into a Humvee with a snow plow attached to the front.

  It never occurred to her the store might have video surveillance cameras which would tell the police that very thing.

  Luckily for her the camera system was out of order and didn’t record a single thing that morning.

  The police would question Mamie to see if she’d seen the mysterious blonde murderer.

  But Tina never went to Mamie’s, and the diner had only one surveillance camera. It was fixed on the cash register to catch armed robbers. There was no surveillance in the outside areas at all.

  In Tina’s eyes her plan wasn’t perfect, but was certainly adequate.

  For all practical purposes she vanished without a trace.

  With any luck she’d be safely tucked away in this “mine” Frank and Josie kept talking about. And whether the thaw didn’t come for several months or several years, her trail would be ice cold when she emerged again.

  She was going back and forth between feeling remorse and wanting to go back and face the music; and hoping she got away with her crime.

  She’d been under considerable stress for quite some time.

  Living with Johnny Connolly wasn’t exactly a piece of cake in the best of times. And lately he was not only a wanted fugitive, but the same time the cartel was out to murder him. She’d heard that the cartel put a fifty thousand dollar price upon his head.

  It might have just been rumors, for fake news runs rampant in the drug dealer crowd.

  If true, though, then he wasn’t safe even in his cousin’s house.

  Every scumbag in Big Spring would be a potential hit man. Perhaps even Cousin Tony, for the lure of easy money is oftentimes more powerful than blood or family.

  If Tina hadn’t been so frazzled lately, constantly watching over her shoulder for hit men or lawmen and getting very little sleep, things might have turned out very differently.

  She probably wouldn’t have freaked out when she saw Johnny being placed in handcuffs.

  She likely would have left the scene and started her new life without Johnny.

  She knew in her heart she wasn’t a murderer.

  She took that desperate act and crossed that line out of sheer panic. She knew that.

  Less clear was why she gave a damn in the first place.

  Johnny had never been good to her, not even in the beginning. He’d cheated on her more times than she could count, and beat her even more often.

  It’s one of the great mysteries of humanity: why women care so much and give so much for men who abuse them.

  She didn’t know herself why she sacrificed her own life and freedom for a man who cared only for himself.

  She wondered where she’d be a year from now. Perhaps dead herself, or maybe in prison.

  What wasn’t in question, though, was where Johnny would be. Assuming he beat the accessory to murder rap and avoided the hit men, he’d be raking in the bucks selling cartel dope and living the high life.

  With a brand new girl on his arm.

  It just didn’t seem right.

  -49-

  Tina had no way of knowing, but things were breaking her way.

  She had no right to expect it, and certainly didn’t deserve it, but sometimes things just happen that way.

  When Deputy Daniel Sonmore finally got bored enough to call in Johnny’s license plate, he was surprised to learn that Johnny was a wanted fugitive.

  His adrenaline immediately started pumping, and any policeman in a crisis situation knows adrenaline sometimes plays havoc with logical thinking.

  Same for established procedure.

  The big deputy had absolutely no reason to hurry.

  He was told by his dispatcher that backup was on the way. Now granted, Sonmore was almost a hundred miles away on icy roads, and backup would take some time to arrive.

  Bu
t then again, Johnny was following Frank at six miles an hour and wasn’t likely to get away.

  But Sonmore was like a lot of cops in that he thought himself tougher than he really was. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s the trait that makes firemen run into burning buildings to save people, and makes cops take sometimes unnecessary risks.

  Usually things turn out okay. The cops win, the bad guys lose, and everybody goes home at the end of the day.

  But not always.

  Sonmore had talked to Johnny on three different occasions, when they stopped to grab a smoke and stretch their legs.

  And he sized Johnny up for exactly what he was.

  A smallish thug, a skittish little guy, not tough by any stretch of the imagination and very likely afraid of his own shadow.

  Not only that, but he seemed antsy and jittery all the time. And definitely nervous in the company of cops.

  He nailed Johnny, and saw no need to wait for backup. He’d taken down criminals much bigger and badder than Johnny before. Without backup.

  This, as he saw it, would be a piece of cake.

  The problem wasn’t Johnny. It was that he read Tina completely wrong.

  It was obvious to Sonmore that Johnny was the stronger member in the relationship. He’d seen the two argue on a couple of occasions, and Tina always backed down.

  He saw her as a wallflower, possibly abused by Johnny and therefore afraid of him.

  The deputy made a mental note to talk to her about that, once Johnny was in the back seat of his unit and he went back to her to explain what was going on and how the bail system in Lubbock worked.

  That was his one mistake: assuming that Tina was docile and of no threat to him. And he paid for it with his life.

  And to his credit, it was quite easy to make such a mistake.

  Tina looked dainty and fragile. And she was indeed afraid of Johnny and his temper, for he’d loosened her teeth and made her see stars several times.

  But looks can be deceiving.

  A wolverine looks docile when she ambles through the brush, unaware a threat lurks nearby. Then she goes into survival mode and turns into one of the most ferocious animals on the face of the earth.

  The truth was, Tina was usually sweet and friendly and easy to get along with.

  But she, like Johnny, was exhausted and tense and wondering why it was that the deputy hadn’t brought up Johnny’s warrants. In their eyes, he surely must have known about them.

  She was wondering if they were setting a trap for him in Big Spring. That maybe they’d enter the city limits of the town to find themselves surrounded by twenty police cars, and forced to exit their vehicle at gunpoint.

  For two days and nights they’d talked about that possibility and how they might escape from it.

  And the sad fact was they couldn’t.

  Not only could they not fight their way out of a felony arrest with twenty officers, they couldn’t get rid of the drugs and illegal weapons in the truck. Not with Sonmore following them down the highway and watching their every move.

  That meant that not only Johnny was going down hard, but Tina probably would as well.

  That was the thing weighing most heavily on Tina’s mind when she saw Sonmore patting Johnny down and slapping the cuffs on him.

  She was exhausted beyond exhaustion. Stressed beyond stress. Her thinking skills weren’t firing on all cylinders. Her sense of judgment was out of whack.

  She panicked.

  And she freaked out.

  And for what? For nothing.

  Nothing happened when they got to Big Spring. They weren’t surrounded by police cars and didn’t have a dozen pistols aimed at them.

  She killed the man for nothing.

  She had no wants or warrants. She was free as a bird. She’d have followed Sonmore back to Lubbock and waited for Johnny to be arraigned, and then bailed him out using the cartel drug money.

  They’d have faced his charges together, like they’d always done in the past.

  Now it was all over. Her life was over. She’d soon be called on to pay.

  But then again, maybe not.

  They’d thrown Sonmore’s vehicle keys into the snow far off the highway. They wouldn’t be discovered for a very long time.

  And Sonmore’s vehicle was blocking the highway to Big Spring.

  His backup would have to work the crime scene. That would take hours. And once it was done they’d have to coordinate with Big Spring PD to send a wrecker to the murder site to pull the big SUV into town.

  They’d immediately start looking for the pickup, and it wouldn’t take them long to find it.

  But the clerk didn’t see her crawl into the Hummer with Frank. She was sure of that. And she was reasonably sure no one else saw her either.

  They’d assume she was in Big Spring, since she was Johnny’s girlfriend. They’d tear the town apart looking for her.

  And by the time they finally admitted defeat; finally accepted that she wasn’t in Big Spring, she’d be safely tucked into an old salt mine a hundred fifty miles away.

  Maybe.

  -50-

  In mid-afternoon Frank rolled the big Hummer into the city of San Angelo. They were now more than halfway between Lubbock and the mine, and they were making very good progress.

  And that was a problem.

  Frank was determined to take Josie aside, to tell her one-on-one that getting a home in the mine for their entire group wasn’t as easy as just showing up and knocking on the door.

  There was an established procedure which had to take place. And every adult resident got to vote on whether to let additional people in. If the food supply was indeed a problem, there would almost certainly be residents who didn’t want to share thin rations even further.

  He should have told her before they left Lubbock.

  He didn’t because when he talked to Mark and Karen they pretty much assured him that he was always welcome back. He was as much one of them now as anyone else, they said.

  And, as his new wife, Josie would be welcomed with open arms as well.

  The problem was Eddie and Tina.

  Frank felt a bit like the traveler who asked a casual friend if he could stay the night and then moved in with a stack of suitcases. Enough to stay for weeks or months.

  Of course, nobody created that situation on purpose. When they left Plainview they didn’t know that Eddie was stowed away in the back.

  And they certainly didn’t know their new friend Tina would break up with her boyfriend and suddenly find herself homeless.

  Frank had been wanting to find the time to speak to Josie alone, out of earshot of Eddie and Tina.

  But they’d been making such good progress they simply hadn’t had a reason to stop.

  Frank decided to make one in San Angelo.

  He was amazed to find a Taco Bell restaurant open for business just off the main highway through town.

  “How in heck do they get supplies?” he pondered aloud to Josie.

  “Hey,” she shot back. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Just stop. I haven’t had a burrito in years.”

  As Eddie climbed out of the back, Frank handed Tina two twenty dollar blue bills.

  “Go ahead and order for yourselves. I need to talk to Josie about something, and we’ll be in shortly.”

  “I knew there was something on your mind,” Josie told him when they were finally alone. “I could sense that you’ve been very tense. Spill the beans, Bubba. What is it?”

  “I never mentioned the way things work in the mine. I should have, but didn’t see it as a problem until we added Eddie into the mix. And now Tina as well…”

  “You think they won’t be able to take on four people instead of the two they planned on?”

  “I honestly don’t know. But I don’t want to make any assumptions. The way they set up their government and wrote their constitution might create a hiccup. I just wanted you to be aware of it in case it happens.”

&nbs
p; “Wait a minute. They have a government? And a constitution? I thought it was just a bunch of people who took shelter in the mine. Like my family did in Plainview.”

  “Well, yes. But at the mine it’s a little more complicated. You see, there’s more than just one family. Yes, a lot of them are related. But it’s a blended group of several families.

  “When they first went in to the mine they wanted to make sure everyone felt they had an equal say-so, especially with important decisions. They didn’t want one family to try to take over or exert undue influence.

  “To keep that from happening, they decided to have a tribal government. It seemed to be the most fair in their particular situation.”

  “A tribal government… as in Native Americans? Are they Native Americans?”

  “No. Not as far as I know. But some of the American Indian tribes had systems and procedures that they thought would fit perfectly in the type of society they were setting up.”

  He lost her. He could see it in her eyes.

  So he backtracked a bit and talked about the basic rules of the mine’s system of government.

  “They meet on a regular basis. To discuss problems and possible solutions, and to vote on key decisions.

  “Every man or woman over 18 years of age has an equal chance to speak and to state his or her opinion. Children are encouraged to attend and may watch and learn, but may not speak.

  “A group of three elders leads the meetings and open the discussions. They close the discussions only after everyone who wants to speak has been given a chance to do so.

  “Then they vote. Every adult gets a vote, and the vote is final.

  “In event of a tie, the three member group of elders will cast the deciding votes. They cannot abstain, and since there are three of them there cannot be a tie. Therefore at the end of the tribal council every issue is resolved.”

  “So…” Josie said. “You think that some of the people won’t want outsiders coming in and will vote not to allow us in?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. I don’t think there’s anybody who’d turn us away out of spite or dislike for outsiders.

  “I think it’s going to come down to the food situation. Hannah and Sarah, they were the two NASA scientists who blew the whistle on Saris 7 when the government was trying to hide it… they’re pretty good at estimating the length of the freeze.