The Girl in the Glass Box: A Jack Swyteck Novel

by James Grippando

  Either one.

  Jorge racked the slide to load the first round into the chamber, drew a breath of cold air, and started toward the mini-station, Glock in hand.

  Julia didn’t recognize the incoming number on her cell phone but she was glad she answered.

  “Mom, it’s me!”

  Julia’s heart leaped into her throat. “Beatriz! Where are you?”

  Beatriz told her, and Julia told Theo, who immediately pulled a U-turn that sent them heading back toward the fork in the road. Nobody pointed any fingers about the previous debate over straight versus left.

  “She’s with the cashier inside the booth,” said Julia.

  “Tell her to stay in there,” said Jack. “The glass on those booths is bulletproof.”

  “To a point,” said Theo.

  “What do you mean by that?” Julia asked with concern.

  “Depends on what you’re shooting and how many rounds.”

  It wasn’t what Julia wanted to hear, but at that moment all she really needed was the sound of her daughter’s voice.

  “Tell the cashier to call the police.”

  “He’s doing that now.”

  “Good. Then just stay there and wait. I love you, sweetie.”

  “He’s coming, Mom! He’s coming!”

  Julia had never doubted it was Jorge, though the panic in Beatriz’s voice made a positive identification all the more distressing. “Stay on the line with me, Beatriz. We’re on our way.”

  Chapter 72

  Beatriz backed as far away from the glass as she could, which wasn’t very far at all. Right behind her was a floor-to-ceiling display rack for cigarettes, chewing gum, mints, candy bars, and all the other junk that customers couldn’t seem to get enough of when filling their gas tanks. The electric space heater on the counter was no match for the blast of winter they’d dragged in from the cold. Beatriz was still shivering, too frightened to sit and too tired to stand, so she leaned against the door, watching and waiting for the police to get there.

  “Tell them to hurry up!” said Beatriz.

  “It’s going to be okay,” her mother said over the cell phone, but Beatriz was talking to the cashier, who was still on the landline with the 911 dispatcher.

  He covered the speaker and said, “Police are on their way.”

  “He’s right there!” Beatriz said, pointing.

  “Get down on the floor!” her mother told her.

  Beatriz cowered into the corner near the side door, but the cashier leaned closer to the glass, trying to get a better look at the man who was still a blur in the falling snow. He was coming toward them but still beyond any protection from the weather afforded by the canopy that extended out over the pumps.

  “Are you sure he has a gun?” the cashier asked.

  “Yes! Don’t you see it?”

  “See what?” her mother asked, but Beatriz wasn’t listening anymore.

  The cashier narrowed his eyes, trying hard to see. But it wasn’t until the blur emerged from the snowstorm and stepped into the relative calm beneath the canopy that the cashier’s inquisitiveness turned to fear.

  “The man’s definitely got a gun!” he said into the landline.

  Beatriz screamed as her father rushed toward the glass.

  “Beatriz, what just happened?” her mother asked, but Beatriz dropped the phone.

  His head covered with snow and ice, his face red from the cold, her father looked scarier than ever. He stopped just three feet away from the glass and aimed his pistol straight at the clerk.

  “We’ll be okay,” the clerk said, swallowing the lump in his throat. “It’s bulletproof.”

  Beatriz didn’t care what the cashier said. She knew glass could break. She’d seen it happen with her mind’s eye, trapped inside her glass box.

  “Beatriz, answer me!” her mother said, but the cell was on the floor, and the faint voice was just noise in the background. As Beatriz cowered in the corner, her father opened his mouth to speak.

  “Open the door,” he said, his voice carrying through the mouthpiece in the glass, his gun still aimed at the cashier.

  “The police are on their way!” the clerk shouted back. “Put the gun down!”

  Beatriz heard sirens in the distance. Way in the distance. What’s taking them so long?

  “Sir, just calm down, okay?” the clerk said. “Please, put the gun down!”

  The crack of a single gunshot was Jorge’s reply. The bulletproof glass absorbed it with the pop of a catcher’s mitt, sending spiderlike cracks in all directions from the point of impact. The clerk ducked behind the counter and huddled beside Beatriz.

  “Your dad’s nuts!”

  Jorge’s face was suddenly right on the other side of the glass, so close that his breath steamed the cracks. “Open the door!”

  The police sirens drew closer, but to Beatriz they still sounded too far away.

  “Go away!” the clerk shouted.

  Jorge raised the gun muzzle to the exact point of impact and squeezed off five, six, seven quick shots—Beatriz lost count—and then two or three more. The loud burst of semiautomatic gunfire smothered her screams. The cashier made a strange noise and then dropped to the floor.

  “Open the door!”

  Beatriz froze, stunned by the dead weight of the clerk at her feet and the crimson pool of blood on the floor. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream, couldn’t even move her lips to attempt an answer.

  “Open it, Beatriz!”

  She couldn’t lift her gaze up toward the glass. She didn’t want to see the cracks in her protected space, and she couldn’t even begin to deal with the danger that might pour into her box and smother her in an instant. But the blood at her feet was even more terrifying, so she looked straight ahead at the space below the cash drawer, and her gaze fixed on the middle shelf. And then she saw it.

  “Beatriz, I’m giving you five seconds to open that door!”

  She heard him, but she didn’t move. Beatriz’s entire focus was on the handgun right before her eyes.

  Chapter 73

  Theo’s windshield wipers weren’t moving fast enough. One after another, in kamikaze fashion, huge, wet flakes splattered on the glass like cold slush from a fire hose.

  “I can’t see shit,” said Theo.

  Jack didn’t want to tell him to slow down, not with Julia’s daughter in danger, but he didn’t want to die in a blinding snowstorm, either. Then, out of the gray-and-white vista emerged a glowing yellow dot of signage.

  “That’s it!” said Jack. “That’s the gas station.”

  “Oh, my God, I just heard gunshots!” said Julia, and then she shouted into the phone. “Beatriz! Beatriz, answer me!”

  They were already barreling down the highway at a reckless speed for these conditions, but Theo took it up another notch.

  “Say a prayer and hold on to your ass, Jack.”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that from Theo. But this time he sounded like he really meant it.

  “I will,” said Jack, as the mini-station came clearer.

  Beatriz was sure he was dead. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the clerk’s face, so she didn’t know if there were any shots to the head, but she’d counted at least six to the chest. No one survived that many gunshots. He showed no sign of breathing, made not a sound, and hadn’t moved a muscle since slumping to the floor. Most telling of all, the pool of blood had ceased to grow. Beatriz knew that the dead didn’t bleed; the heart stopped pumping. She’d seen gunshot victims before. One had lain outside her house in San Salvador for almost eleven hours before it was safe for the police and the medical examiner to come into the neighborhood and get him.

  Just to make sure, she grabbed the cashier’s wrist and checked his pulse. Nothing. She dropped his hand, and it slapped lifelessly onto the floor. It could have easily sent her into a tailspin of panic, but Beatriz fought it off. She forced herself to think of his body as nothing more than an object that lay between her
and the gun—something that she had to get around. She didn’t dare stand, where her father could see her. She’d have to stay low and crawl right over the clerk’s body.

  “Beatriz!”

  Beatriz was no stranger to guns. They’d always been around the house, at least when her father was there. Pistols, revolvers, and more—you name it, and at one point or another, her father had owned it or stolen it. He rarely left the house without a gun. The nights he stayed home, a gun was never farther away than the nightstand. Sometimes he slept with a gun under his pillow. His firearm of choice changed from time to time. Beatriz knew where he kept the ones that fell into disuse. Her father stored them in a footlocker inside the closet in the master bedroom. She’d first found the footlocker when she was barely eight years old, a frightened-to-death child who was hiding in the closet. Not until she was twelve years old did Beatriz go back to that place. She took a boy named Antonio with her to help select the right weapon. Her body was changing. The gangs were taking notice. She didn’t feel safe. She wanted to learn how to use a gun, just in case. Antonio taught her. Her mother caught the two of them shooting bottles in the backyard. Beatriz didn’t know it, but Antonio was himself a gangbanger. It was one more reason they’d left El Salvador.

  Outside the booth, the wind whistled. A shot of winter funneled in through the bullet hole in the glass. It made Beatriz shiver, not from the cold, but from the way it reminded her of that dreamlike image and her subconscious fear of frigid water pouring through the cracks in her glass box.

  Beatriz drew a breath and made her move, taking care to avoid the blood as she maneuvered past the clerk and inched toward the shelf.

  Jorge glanced down the highway in each direction, and he could see that time was running out. To the east was a pair of headlights, and they were approaching way too quickly in this weather to be anything other than help on the way. To the west was the blue swirl of what had to be one of the drivable squad cars from the Clinton County Sheriff’s Department.

  Jorge had two backup magazines in his pocket, leaving him more than enough .40-caliber rounds to shoot through the glass. But the glass would be his protection in a standoff with police, and a hostage was his ticket out of this mess. Shooting the lock off the door was the better plan. He hurried around to the side of the booth and jiggled the handle to see if in a stroke of luck it would open. Locked.

  “Beatriz, get away from the door!”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Beatriz, I’m going to shoot the lock off. Get back!”

  He put his ear to the door to listen for her answer, or at least for the sound of her movement away from the door. But the only sound was from the highway. Police sirens were closing in.

  Jorge aimed his pistol at the lock and squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 74

  Beatriz screamed at the crack of a gunshot.

  It should have been a call to action, but she froze, expecting the door to fly open. It didn’t. The door, like the glass, must have been reinforced—to a point.

  “Get back!” her father shouted.

  Beatriz scurried across the floor, deeper into the corner, as far away from the door as she could possibly get. With her back to the wall, she drew her knees up to her chin and braced herself for a barrage of gunfire. It came, one crack after another, as loud and as terrifying as the hell that had rained down from the hole in the glass and killed the clerk.

  “Stop!” she shouted, but she couldn’t even hear her own voice.

  The heel of a boot slammed against the door, and it burst open. A blast of snow and winter wind carried the scream of approaching sirens into the booth. Beatriz’s father stood in the doorway, glaring down at her.

  Beatriz snatched the gun from under the counter. It took more courage than she thought she had, but with a two-handed grip she somehow managed to steady the gun and fix the front sight right on him, her whole body trembling as the tears streamed down her face.

  But she didn’t pull the trigger.

  “I’ll shoot you!” she said, her voice quaking.

  Her father stayed where he was, straddling the threshold, one foot in and one foot out of the booth. His eyes narrowed, and with a glint of amusement he slowly raised his pistol and took aim at Beatriz’s forehead. “No, you won’t,” he said.

  The sirens grew louder, but Beatriz knew they were too late, if only by a minute. “I will!” she shouted. “I’ll shoot you!”

  Beatriz wished she could—wished it with the aching heart of an eight-year-old girl trapped in a bedroom closet, listening to her mother’s screams but powerless to do anything about them.

  “I’m afraid this is not going to end well for you, Beatriz,” her father said in a voice that chilled her. “Not well at all.”

  Chapter 75

  Through the windshield Jack saw the oncoming squad car with beacons flashing. As the two vehicles sped toward each other from opposite directions, the wet highway glistened in a joustlike battle of headlights on a collision course. By a split second Theo won the race. His car jumped the culvert like a snowmobile as they turned into the station and skidded to a stop near the first set of pumps, a reasonably safe distance from the booth.

  “Stay low!” Theo told his passengers.

  The squad car pulled up on the other side of the booth as Julia pushed open the rear door and jumped out of the back seat.

  “I said stay low!” Theo shouted.

  Before Julia could take a step, they were met by the sound none of them wanted to hear: a gunshot echoed from inside the booth, and another immediately followed.

  “Beatriz!” she shouted.

  “Stop right there!” the officer shouted at Julia. He was in the isosceles stance with weapon drawn, his feet planted at shoulders’ width, and his elbows locked. His gunsight was trained on Julia.

  “That’s my daughter in there!”

  Julia took one step toward the booth, and another shot rang out—this one from the cop. Jack flung open the car door, launched himself from the passenger seat, and pulled Julia to the pavement. Theo’s car and a set of gas pumps stood between them and a confused cop who was shooting at the wrong people. Theo had the good sense to get down on the floor. Jack hoped the cop had the good sense not to send another stray bullet whizzing past gasoline pumps.

  “Don’t shoot!” Jack shouted from behind the cover of Theo’s car. “We’re unarmed!”

  Another squad car pulled into the station and stopped on the passenger’s side of Theo’s car. On Jack’s lead, he, Julia, and Theo dropped to their knees and raised their hands into the air.

  “Smart money says the black guy gets it,” Theo said under his breath.

  “Freeze—all of you!” the cop shouted. He approached cautiously with weapon drawn. The other officer came around the back of Theo’s car to assist.

  “My daughter’s in that booth!” Julia shouted. “We’re here to help!”

  The cops exchanged glances. “Check it out, Caldwell,” the second officer said.

  “You sure you got this, Willie?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Check it out!”

  Officer Caldwell led with his weapon as he walked around the front of Theo’s car and started toward the booth. He stepped carefully, slowly, and as Jack heard each footfall, one in front of the other, he was struck by what he didn’t hear: Not a sound was coming from inside the cashier’s booth.

  Chapter 76

  “Bring the mother over here!”

  Julia was still on her knees, alongside Jack and Theo, and all three heads turned at the sound of Officer Caldwell calling out from inside the cashier’s booth.

  “You two, on your bellies,” the cop told Jack and Theo. It was like cuddling up with a block of ice, but they complied. Then the officer told Julia to stand up slowly. She did.

  “Keep your hands in the air!” he shouted, and she jerked them back up.

  The cop did a quick pat-down of Jack and Theo to make sure they weren’t going to pull a weapon and shoot
him in the back. “Do not move,” he told them.

  He grabbed a fistful of the back of Julia’s jacket and led her toward the booth. She kept her hands in the air, which only seemed to tighten the knot in her stomach.

  Bring the mother over here—what did that mean? Good news? Bad news? The cop was moving way too slowly to satisfy Julia’s need to know.

  “Beatriz?” she said with trepidation, as they drew closer to the booth. But there was no reply. They were close enough to see the cracks in the bulletproof glass, which drew an involuntary “Oh, my God” from Julia’s lips.

  The officer led her past the glass, which had fogged from the weather, making it impossible for Julia to see inside. The door was open on the other side of the booth. The officer glanced back toward Jack and Theo, who were still facedown on the frozen pavement.

  “Beatriz?” Julia said again, her voice shaking. They rounded the corner and stopped in the open doorway. And Julia gasped.

  Jorge lay on his side in a pool of blood, a crimson dot on his forehead and a second wound to his chest. The cashier’s body lay beside his. Officer Caldwell was on one knee at Beatriz’s side, holding the weapon of self-defense.