Never Go Home

by L. T. Ryan

  “What’s that mean?” April said.

  I recounted the story Fults had told me. Everything from the African-American guy gaining access to the house, Craig being dumped in a trunk, and what happened the night Jessie died.

  April pushed past me, headed toward Fults’s house.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “I’m going to find out why he didn’t let us know this before. Why didn’t he call in when Craig was being beaten and abducted?”

  She spun around and drew her sidearm. Skagen and I both went after her. I got there first and grabbed her with both arms. She tried to pull away. I didn’t let go. She relented and turned toward me.

  “Tell me what I could have done differently, Jack?”

  “This isn’t your fault,” I said. “It’s mine. That car, the one I saw three times today, that guy was following me. He’s the one that did this. We need to find him.” I paused a beat. “I need to find him, and figure out what the hell he’s doing here.”

  “Why would he take out Craig?”

  “Maybe Craig saw something he shouldn’t have.”

  I couldn’t say anything more than that. I knew that anyone following me would be ruthless and coldblooded. And, presumably, Craig had been in the way at the wrong time.

  Chapter 26

  Leon drove through the center of town. He didn’t speed. He didn’t glance around. There were a few people out. They didn’t seem to pay any attention to him.

  He left the old historic area. The speed limit increased to thirty-five, then forty-five miles per hour. He kept his speed steady. As long as the road ahead of him was barren, the high-beams were on.

  He came across what looked like an abandoned road. The turn off was visible, but beyond that, the asphalt was cracked and overrun with grass and weeds that had forced their way through. Nature had reclaimed what was once hers.

  He turned onto the road. The headlights washed over the area. The road led into a stretch of woods a couple hundred feet away. Unsure what laid in wait at the end, he cut his lights and crept forward.

  Tall pines rose up on either side of him. The road came to an end. He stopped, rolled down his window and waited with the engine off. The car ticked and clicked for a few minutes before going silent. A breeze blew past him. Insects sung and hummed. An owl screeched a time or two.

  Satisfied the road was nothing more than a relic, he got out and walked to the rear of the Tercel.

  The man inside the trunk banged against the lid. The little car shook and swayed.

  Leon stood at the rear for a minute. He had to get rid of the guy, and letting him live was not an option. He popped the trunk. In the darkness, he could only make out the shape of the deputy. The man squirmed. Leon pulled out his pistol, aimed toward the man’s head and pulled the trigger twice. The man’s flailing legs and wriggling torso went still.

  Leon inhaled the smell of nitroglycerin and sawdust, turned, and spit. That was the smell of death.

  He had to get the body out. He walked around the side of the car to check if he had anything between the front and back seats that he could use to bury the guy. He didn’t need a shovel, just something to move a little earth around. The less visible the man was, the better.

  He opened the door and stuck his head inside. He found nothing but a few fast food wrappers. Disappointed, he exited the car. As he turned to the back, he spotted a light a hundred feet or so away, in the woods.

  Leaves rustled. Branches popped. Someone approached.

  Leon had been around the block enough times to know that no sane person would head toward gunfire unless they were armed as well.

  And standing next to the car, he was a sitting duck.

  He crouched behind the rear wheel. The approach continued. He shuffled toward the rear of the car, and tried to get a look into the woods. The headlights were on, but the cone of light didn’t extend toward the light in the distance. Whoever approached had come from that direction.

  Leon was bathed in red light behind the car. He couldn’t stay there. He moved back to his spot behind the rear wheel. Trees surrounded him on three sides. Running back to the highway wasn’t safe. Neither was running toward the oncoming person.

  Leon took a breath, closed his eyes, and composed himself. Then he took a sprinter’s stance and darted into the woods.

  Chapter 27

  April grabbed Skagen by the elbow and pulled him to the side. She told him to keep the house locked, and not to let in anyone but her. He went inside. The front door shut. She paced the length of the porch for a minute or two. She came to a stop, wrapped her hands around the back of her head.

  “You can’t blame yourself for this,” I said.

  She’d been staring at the house across the street. It seemed to take a few seconds for my words to settle in.

  “Who should I blame then?” she said.

  “Craig, for one,” I said.

  “That guy could barely figure out a revolving door, Jack. I should have never put him in this position. Give him a radar gun and tell him to pull someone over when they did ten over the speed limit, he did fine. But something like this? It was too big. He was probably thrown off by the scene inside and relieved that someone showed up. He’d have bought any story.”

  “You think something about the guy seemed familiar or trustworthy?”

  She shrugged. “Only Craig knows that. Hopefully we’ll be able to ask him when we find him.”

  She joined me on the walkway. We headed toward her cruiser. I offered to drive her home. She protested at first, but gave in after a few minutes. When we reached her house, I cut the engine. We remained seated with the windows up and the ignition off. Our breathing was rhythmic, in time with one another, and the only sound in the car.

  “I’m not going to be much for company now,” she said.

  “Understood,” I said. “I need to be out there, anyway. You have a car I can borrow?”

  She gestured to nothing. “Take my patrol car.”

  “You sure?”

  “You’re not going far, are you?”

  “Maybe to the other side of town.”

  “Just stay away from those guys. Let us handle that, OK? I’ve already got the on-call on his way over.”

  “I’ve got other concerns, April. Someone is here because of me. Your man is missing because of me. I’ve got to get this figured out quickly.”

  She said nothing.

  Neither did I.

  Another minute passed. The windows fogged up from the bottom. The streetlight cast a faint pool of light through the back window. It lit up the right side of her face as she turned to face me.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “I really hope you’re going to come back.”

  “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  She smiled, leaned over and kissed my cheek. “That’s not what I meant.”

  I knew that, but I didn’t say so.

  She reached out and grabbed the door handle and cracked it open an inch. The crickets sang. The cicadas screamed. She hesitated.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  She walked to her front door and went inside. A minute later half her torso emerged from the dim opening. She held out her hand and stuck her thumb in the air. Then she was gone. The door closed. The lights cut off.

  I didn’t feel safe leaving her there alone, not with someone skilled enough to kidnap a cop on the loose. So I drove to the end of the street with my lights off, made a U-turn and remained there for fifteen minutes.

  The street remained quiet, empty, still. Houses looked dead and deserted. The trees had a rhythm of their own. They swayed with the breeze at random intervals. A heavy gust blew through. It sounded like the ocean. Waves breaking.

  I started the cruiser and shifted from park to drive. I slowed as I passed April’s house. The windows were still dark. The front door still closed. April, I presumed, was in bed. Alone.

  I’d only managed to get
a hundred feet away when a call came over the radio. Someone had found Craig’s body in the back of a mid-nineties Toyota Tercel. He’d been shot at point blank range, twice, in the head.

  I whipped the wheel around and raced to April’s house.

  She had the front door open before my foot hit the pavement.

  “Have you heard?” I called out.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Get in,” I said.

  “Let me drive. I know where we’re going.”

  I met her at the front of the car. She reached out and squeezed my hands. She looked steeled, determined.

  It took her twenty minutes to reach the location. She turned onto an old, abandoned road that dead-ended in the woods.

  “What was back here?” I said.

  She shrugged. “I’ve never been back there before.”

  Her headlights washed over the unkempt field. The cruiser straightened out. The beams of light settled straight ahead. I saw the Tercel parked at the end of the road. Skagen had arrived before us. He’d pulled up next to the car. I wondered if he’d locked up before leaving Jessie’s house.

  April gunned the engine and hit the brakes a second before it would have been too late. She left the engine running and hopped out. I cracked my door open to the sound of thunder. Lightning splayed across the sky over the gulf.

  Skagen met April at the back of the Tercel. He shined his light inside the trunk. April stared down into the makeshift tomb for a moment. She didn’t gasp or cry out or reach for something to steady herself. I stood behind her, squeezed her shoulder. She took a deep breath and turned and shook her head. Her eyes watered over.

  Skagen said, “An old man lives in a cabin behind us. He heard the shots. Caught a glimpse of the man that did it, but it was dark. Said by the time he got over here, the man was gone.”

  “How long ago was that?” I said.

  “Half hour, maybe more,” Skagan said.

  “He wouldn’t get far through the woods,” April said. “Maybe a mile.”

  “If he went through the woods he’d find a place to hide,” I said. “But if he took to the road and ran, he could be four miles away, if he’s in decent shape.”

  April walked past me, beyond the cone of light cast by her headlights. She stopped a few feet past the cruiser. She faced the highway.

  I walked toward her.

  She said, “There’s dozens of streets four miles in either direction. Some dead end, others will lead you back to I-75 if you follow them long enough and make the correct turns.” She turned around, shaking her head. “Christ, we don’t even know what this guy looks like.”

  “Fults saw him,” I said. “Told me the guy was African-American.”

  “Fults is delusional, Jack,” she said. “The other day he told me that aliens came down and took Jessie away. We can’t put out anything based on what he told us.”

  “Sounds like we’re…” I was going to say ‘screwed,’ but didn’t.

  She walked past me, and called for Skagen. “Finish up with the witness and head back to town. Check every street there, then start back this way. I want you to go up and down every road. Got it?” She paused long enough for him to nod. “We’re going to head south.”

  I joined her in the patrol car. She flicked on the high-beams as she spun around and drove toward the highway. I scanned the area to the right. She took the left. The grass was high, probably up to the middle of my thigh. If anyone had been through it, or hid in it, I couldn’t tell. A K-9 unit would have been helpful in this situation.

  “Can you get a dog out here?” I said.

  “Not now. Maybe in the morning. I told dispatch to notify all the adjoining towns and highway patrol. I’m sure they were all happy to get a notice to be on the lookout for an armed man, possibly African-American, definitely a cop killer.”

  The first of several fat raindrops hit her windshield. I saw a flash of lightning stretch from the heavens to the gulf. A crack of thunder followed. Then the sky opened up and pelted the area with rain.

  “Guess the dog’s out of the question now,” she said.

  I shrugged. I didn’t know enough about how they worked to agree or disagree. “Call in the morning and find out anyway.”

  We drove eight miles down the highway, going about half the speed limit. The rain let up after a mile or so. She slowed down at every intersection. It took three times as long as it should have to make the drive. We saw nothing.

  She stopped in the median and called Skagen. He hadn’t seen anything, either. She aimed the cruiser toward town. We drove down every side street we passed until we reached the murder scene. Houses rose out of the earth like skeletons. Silent dark cars waited for their owners. Trees swayed with the gusts coming in off the gulf. But there was no sign of the man. He’d vanished into the night.

  April pulled onto the dirt shoulder. Blackness surrounded us. The coroner had come and gone. At the end of the abandoned road the Tercel sat empty, wrapped in police tape. We couldn’t see it, but we knew it was there.

  “It’s almost four, Jack. The funeral is at ten.”

  I nodded, said nothing.

  “I have a spare bedroom.” She looked away. “You can stay in there.”

  “No, take me back to Sean’s.”

  She hesitated, made eye contact with me. “You sure?”

  “It’s for the better. Trust me.”

  And so she took her foot off the brake and the cruiser rolled forward. We arrived at Sean’s house after twenty silent minutes.

  I opened the door and stepped out. She said nothing. I ducked my head inside and leaned forward. She stared at me, her eyes wide. They looked black in the dark.

  “I…”

  She shook her head.

  “Yeah.” I rose and shut the door.

  Chapter 28

  It didn’t take long for Leon to find a car. He had cut through the woods for a few hundred yards after someone came out guns blazing. Cops would be on the way, but he knew he had time, so he crossed the field to the road and made his way south.

  The cloud-covered sky made it pitch black out. Optimal conditions for him. He stayed close enough to the road to keep from sinking in the wet field. One car passed. Leon ducked and lay down in the grass to his right while they passed.

  The first street he came across looked promising. The houses older. They were spaced far apart from one another. As far as he could see, all the windows were dark.

  He skipped the first two and hit the third. There he found an F-150 prime for the taking.

  Dumb luck, some might think.

  Country folk, Leon thought. Always gullible enough to leave their keys in their vehicles.

  And this was a double down as far as luck was concerned. Not only were the keys in the ignition, the truck was a five-speed.

  Silent escape into the dark night.

  Leon didn’t leave right away. He stayed back fifty feet. He took cover under a tarp strung between three trees when the rains came. For a time, he watched the house, the street, and the highway. Fifteen minutes of nothing was his plan. As long as the house stayed dark, the street motionless, and the highway deserted for that amount of time, he’d take the truck and go.

  It took a couple hours, but everything fell in place.

  Leon left his hiding spot. The ground crunched under his feet. Pine straw, dried out after a hot summer. Not even the thunderstorm could do enough to soak it.

  The truck door creaked as he opened it. Leon paused, glanced back at the house. The lights didn’t cut on. The curtains didn’t move.

  He reached in, released the emergency brake, put his right hand on the steering wheel, his left on the door frame, and started pushing. His thighs burned as his feet dug into the ground. The truck started rolling. He cut the wheel near the end of the driveway. The turn wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t end up in the ditch either.

  With the truck rolling at a couple miles per hour along the asphalt, Leon hopped inside, pulled the door to the poin
t where it was closed, but not fully latched, and turned the key in the ignition. The big V-8 engine roared to life. He turned on the highway and drove ten miles in ten minutes.

  When he reached the highway 19 and 98 junction, he veered to the left and stayed on 98, which placed him on a path to I-75.

  He pulled out his cell and called Vera. It took a couple minutes to fill her in on how things went down.

  “Where are you now?” she said.

  “About twenty minutes from 75, but this truck is hot. I imagine I got maybe two or three hours before it’s reported missing.”

  He heard her tapping on her keyboard. “OK, in that time you could easily be in Fort Lauderdale. I’ve got someone between there and Miami who can take you in. They’ll be able to hide the truck until we can dispose of it.”

  “What about Jack?”

  “Don’t worry about him. I’ve got things in place that are going to take care of Noble.”

  “OK. So where exactly am I headed?”

  “Get on 75 and go south. It cuts across the state from west to east an hour or so away from you. Call me when you get close to Fort Lauderdale.”

  He was about to hang up when she said something else.

  “Leon, what’s the license plate number.”

  He pulled over, got out and went to the back of the truck. He used his cell phone like a flashlight and called out the sequence of letters and numbers to her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll keep monitoring for that. If it is reported sooner than we expected, you’ll have to ditch it and hide until I get someone to you.”

  “All right, you make sure you…” It was pointless. She’d hung up.

  He set the phone down in the console and pulled back onto the road.

  Chapter 29

  I managed to keep my eyes shut for two hours. Whether I actually slept during that time is up for debate. I tossed, turned and punched the cushions a few times. I was still on London time, which meant it felt like eleven in the morning when I rolled off the couch.

  In reality, it was only six a.m.