Another Dead Republican (28 page)

“You always do.”

Each building was connected to each. Before we reached the connecting doors between them, Scott shut off the flashlight. We paused and gazed through the glass. The doors opened with a simple click of the push bars, the kind kids crashed through on their way outside of school at the end of the day. Using the exact opposite approach, I eased down on each one a fraction of an inch at a time. We opened the doors with equal care. We heard our own breathing and nothing more.

“This is odd,” Scott said.

I agreed. “This isn’t a headquarters of a going corporation or even a satellite headquarters.”

“Maybe it was just storage.”

We stood in the middle of the third building which was just like the other two, the size of a gymnasium with skinny iron pillars down the center holding up the roof.

It was the soft crunch of tires on gravel that alerted me that others were present. Scott turned off the flashlight. I peered carefully out one of the front windows. Three huge black SUVs slowly paraded into the parking lot and pulled up to the front of the building and parked. Their headlights spilled illumination into our gloom. They confirmed the nothing we’d seen so far.

Had we tripped a silent alarm? Had they seen the glow of our flashlight? Did they know there shouldn’t be any light from inside?

The headlights turned off. Car doors opened. Two men started walking in opposite directions around the perimeter. If they circled the building, they’d find our car.

No cop lights flashing and rotating. I doubted if they were police. Their car windows were tinted. I had no idea how many people were here.

Abandon the car? No time to dither. We didn’t want to be caught inside. We were trespassing in empty space that was not ours, a crime in any jurisdiction.

A few men we could see began walking to the front door, which was in the middle building. The first one we entered was on the far end where the car was. We’d have to hope to get out and run back to the car faster than the guys walking around.

The damn door on the third building we tried to ease out of creaked like a horror movie portal on steroids.

We heard, “Halt!” and a gun shot.

We ran away from the buildings toward the nearest stand of trees. Once we got past the gravel, the ground was mushy from the persistent rain. I hoped the lack of light and the rain impaired their vision sufficiently not to get a good look at us or to be able to take aim and shoot.

Several bullets hit near us when we were ten feet from the trees. We flew toward cover.

We couldn’t stand and fight. However few or many of them they were, we weren’t armed. We rushed through the small stand of trees keeping the foliage between us and them. We got to the farther edge and then we ran some more. I was used to running five miles most mornings but the ground was uneven and wet.

I slowed and managed a look back. One of the SUVs had circled around the stand of trees and was trying to cross the open fields. The driver was going too fast. The vehicle bucked and swayed, sluiced to one side and then another. Another SUV was going back down the road, presumably to cut us off. Three men on foot were about fifty yards behind us to the left of the trees.

I surveyed the ground ahead. Uneven, tough to run through, tougher to drive through.

We stopped behind another stand of trees. I said, “We’ve got to get back to our car. They’ll be able to trace it.”

Scott said, “We can’t fight them. We don’t have any guns.”

I said, “Let’s wave the flashlight around then leave it pointing upward and then we’ll run like hell perpendicular to that car and circle around the building.”

He glanced at the car bobbing and sliding through the field around us. He observed the three men clumping through the mud toward us.

He flashed the light directly toward the men coming toward us on foot. He bellowed, “Halt, police. Don’t move or we’ll shoot.” He set the flashlight in the crook of a tree.

We took off to the left.

Gun shots rang out. It took them only a few seconds to shoot out the light.

The mud and gunk sucked at our shoes. They couldn’t be making much better progress. They didn’t seem to have flashlights.

We’d started putting a little distance between us and them, when Scott fell. I turned and rushed back to him.

He struggled back up. “I’m fine.” He said. I thought he might be bleeding from a cut on his face, but I couldn’t be sure. We ran some more.

The darkness was our friend. The headlights from the car churning though the fields was actually a help. The lights weren’t focused on us, but they gave some illumination.

Then the SUV plowing through the fields seemed to point almost directly up and then seconds later plunged nearly straight down and stayed put. They’d run themselves into a ditch. With luck the passengers had been injured enough that they couldn’t follow.

With infinite care we circled back toward the rear of the building complex and our car. The car on the road was still heading in the direction of the Interstate. As far as I could see, the three men following us had gone toward where their buddies had crashed in the field.

When we were finally close enough, we rushed across the gravel parking lot to our car. We threw ourselves in. I started the car, didn’t turn on the lights, and drove around the other side. We stopped at their SUV. Scott got out, opened the driver’s side door, popped the hood, reached inside, and grabbed some wires.

After he threw himself back into the passenger seat, he said, “That might slow some of them down.”

I eased the car out of the parking lot and headed down the road back to the Interstate. About five minutes later, I saw headlights coming toward us. They might have been a mile or so away.

“Turn off.”

I took the first dirt road to the left and drove as fast as I could over the ruts. I slowed after we topped a rise. We looked back and saw the headlights continue back to the warehouse.

“Forward or back?” I asked.

He pulled out his phone and keyed in our position to the GPS. If we stayed on the current road, we’d come out in a few miles on a state road. Still with the lights off, I drove forward.

After a few minutes, I said, “What the hell was that?”

“An awful lot of gunfire and chasing around for protecting nothing.”

“We were trespassing. They could have just been angry security guards.”

“Three cars full?” he asked. “And how did they know we were there?”

“If they were after us. Maybe there was some kind of silent alarm system.”

He said, “Or someone gave us away.”

He pushed the button to lower his window and threw the wires he’d ripped from the SUV into the darkness. We drove on.

We had no answers to what the hell was going on.

FORTY-THREE

Friday 9:06 P.M.

We grabbed some burgers at a drive-through off the Interstate but parked in the lot to eat them. We didn’t say much. We both just let the adrenaline rush ease off. I turned on the interior light and examined Scott. He was bleeding from a small cut on his left hand, his non-pitching hand, and he had a few scrapes on his face. I had teased him once about having everything in the car but the kitchen sink. Now he pulled out moist toilettes and hand towels. He grabbed some and used the rearview mirror to clean himself up.

We got to the gates at the Pleasant Valley subdivision just after 9:30. We drove up to the guard house and showed ID. We waited at the shut gates. Waiting five minutes seemed odd and then ten seemed strange.

“What the hell?” Scott asked.

I walked back to the guard shed and asked, “What’s the problem?”

He said, “Get back in your car, now.”

I took out my cell phone and called the house. My dad answered. I asked what the delay was.

“We weren’t called about you. We’ll send help.”

He clicked off. Why didn’t he just say they’d call the guard? I got back in the car and reported to Scott.

Moments later we saw rotating mars lights approaching the subdivision. In the street lights I counted at least six sheriffs’ cars.

From the subdivision side I saw my parents’ car and three others pelting down the road toward us.

The sheriff’s cars left their lights on and turned on their spotlights. Guns were drawn. A booming voice came over a loud speaker, “Keep your hands on the steering wheel where we can see them. Don’t move.”

I didn’t shout back but said to Scott, “Are we both supposed to put our hands on the steering wheel, and how do I or we do that without moving?”

Scott said, “We better look cooperative.”

The gate began to swing open. I knew if you had a device like a garage door opener in your car, from the inside you could open the gates with it. Veronica would have that. The cars on the subdivision side began to disgorge passengers. Veronica, my mom and dad, Todd Bristol, and Enid Achtenberg rushed toward us. Three people I didn’t know followed them.

Bristol and Achtenberg strode purposefully toward the car from which the cop had been practicing his voice-of-god imitation.

With all the car headlights from the various factions still on and the spotlights and streetlights, it was almost as bright as high noon. We got out of the car and faced the cops. Mom, dad, and Veronica rushed up to us. “Are you all right?” Mom asked. She noted the scrapes on Scott’s face. “You’re hurt.”

Scott murmured, “I’m fine.”

“What the hell is going on?” I asked.

“We don’t know.” Two of the strangers stood to each side of us. One was in his late fifties, the other in his early thirties. They stood silently. The third walked halfway between us and the cops and started taking pictures of the sheriff’s posse.

The cop who was talking was Brendstin. Adlow stood a step behind him with his head down. Brendstin was saying, “These two are under arrest.”

“On what charge?” Todd asked. He was at his most formal and most arch, and that’s saying a lot for a prissy queen who specialized in both.

“We have them speeding and running from the police.”

Todd gazed at the assembled police vehicles. He looked from Brendstin to the cars and back again.

“What?” the detective snapped.

Todd said, “You sent all this for a speeding ticket?” He let the silence resume. I caught a fleeting smile on Adlow’s tired features.

The cop said, “We think they were involved in something criminal.”

“Where? When?”

A cop behind them spoke up with a time and highway designation.

Without turning Todd asked, “Tom Mason and Scott Carpenter were you on that road?”

Scott and I said, “No.”

Todd asked, “You have video of them speeding or committing a crime?”

Brendstin broke several moments of confused silence with, “We want to take them down to headquarters and ask them questions.”

Todd said, “No.”

“We’ll arrest all of you,” the cop threatened.

The younger unknown guy next to me stirred. He took out ID and strolled toward the lawyer-cop group. The older guy took out ID and followed. The third person kept taking pictures. She was making a video record of all this.

Brendstin said, “We didn’t say you could record this.” He pointed to one of the minions behind him. “Get that camera.”

Todd said, “No.”

“And arrest this guy.”

By this time mom, dad, Scott, and I had our cell phones out and were also recording the whole scene.

Brendstin said, “And get all those cameras.”

Todd said, “No.” Then turned to the older and younger men who now flanked him. “Let me introduce you.”