BAD TRIP SOUTH (19 page)

Frank leaned forward. “Why was he doing that?”

“
I think he was trying to pick up a little Spanish.”

Frank leaned back. “He was going to Mexico?”

Charlie shrugged again, blowing out the last of the smoke from his lungs. He took another drag. “Can I have the pack?” He asked.

Frank handed it over. Charlie put the pack into his pants pocket. “Hey, thanks.”

“
You know anything else might help me, Charlie?”

Charlie looked at the locked door behind Frank as he said, “Craig’s girlfriend?”

“
Yeah. We know about how she helped him by having a car waiting.”

“
I think she wanted him to go to St. Louis when he got out. See a guy named Rory or go where this guy worked with some people, some kinda shit like that.”

“
You have a last name, an address?”

“
I think Craig mentioned ‘Prairie’. Maybe that was a street or a suburb, hell, I don’t know. When he was talking about going there, I told him he was crazy, man. He needed to head south right off, soon as he got out. He said he needed a stash and this friend of his girl’s was gonna help them out.”

Frank took that information and left for St. Louis, Missouri the same afternoon. He was on Walker’s old trail, trying to pick up a scent. All the time in the flight to the city and the drive in the rental to police headquarters, he kept Jay’s daughter and her welfare in the forefront of his mind. He hoped he wasn’t going to be too late.

At least the blood in the Riviera belonged to Walker, not one of the Andersons. They must not have been hurt badly.

But where were they now? How could they walk away from a huge pile-up and traffic snarl and disappear?

When he got to St. Louis he heard about the dead woman found shot to death alongside the road leading away from the accident scene.

Before Emily told him about the taking of the woman’s Escort, he had known that part of the story. And that’s nearly all he knew. It was much later before a report turned up on the dead owner of the blue van and the old red Escort was found abandoned in the parking lot of a PigglyWiggly store.

#

HIGHWAY 83 turned into Highway 84 outside of Abilene. At a little place called Coleman it changed again to Highway 283. But it was a tiny farm road, 783 that took them into Fredericksburg, Texas, a German-settled town smack in the heart of the rolling hill country. This is where a series of happenstance led Heddy and Crow into the arms of their outlaw enemies who had tracked them so diligently across country from St. Louis.

It was morning, hot already, a real I’m-Dying-Here Texas scorcher. The sun filled the sky, a disk of liquid gold dripping out of a blue palette, frying the earth.

The need for sweets drove Heddy into stopping at a little convenience store just inside the city limits of Fredericksburg. She told Crow to pick up M&Ms, Almond Joys, and cartons of chocolate milk while she stayed in the van and watched the passengers.

Just as Crow brought an armload of these items to the counter, the thirteen-inch black and white television playing behind the male employee ran a newsbreak special about the escaped convicts from Leavenworth, two of whom were still on the loose. Crow stood rooted to the spot, staring at his ugly, longhaired mugshot filling the small screen. “Well, fuck.”

The employee, a short man with a dark widow’s peak and a Fu Mann Chu mustache, noticed his customer’s stare, turned, and saw the same thing. When he turned back, his right sneakered foot was already inching close to the button on the floor that triggered the silent alarm.

Crow dropped the bags of candy and cartons of milk on the counter, reached into his leather bag and drew out Jay Anderson’s police issue .38 Smith and Wesson. He said, “Put this stuff in a bag and keep your foot off that alarm or I blow a hole in your dumbass face.”

The employee stiffened, his foot still shy two inches from the alarm button. Did he chance it or not?

Not.

Not with the short black barrel of the .38 aimed between his eyes. Instead, he brought out a bag and began to stuff the items into it. His hands were shaking like an old man’s. He couldn’t stop talking. It was as if a switch had been turned on and he was wound up too tightly to shut up.

“
I didn’t see that,” he said, idiotically. “I didn’t see anything. Just take the stuff, mister, and walk out. You want the cash from the register? You can have the cash. Just don’t do nothing, okay? Don’t do nothing we’ll both regret. I’ve got a kid. My wife left me last month and I’m raising our kid. You don’t want to orphan him, do you? You don’t want to do anything that would hurt a kid. He’s only four, next month, he’ll be four...”

It struck Crow as hilarious the stranger was telling him his whole life story. He started to laugh, but a bell sounded as the front door opened and an obese woman strolled straight to the counter. Crow had lowered the gun when he heard the bell. Now the fat woman looked the clerk in the eye and said, “I hope you carry chili powder. I’m not in any mood to drive all the way into town for chili powder. My insurance is high enough, I’m not wanting to run it higher by driving into Fredericksburg and getting in an accident with those fool drivers.”

The clerk looked at Crow, then back to the customer. “Uh, I dunno, Bertha...”

“
I’ll look for myself. I don’t expect you to come running from behind the counter, I know you have important stuff to do like read the men’s magazines you got back there and call your girlfriends on the phone...”

“
What the hell?” Crow asked, glancing back at the woman making her way down one of the far aisles, still talking.

“
She’s a regular,” the clerk said. “She...she talks a lot...”

“
Someone should put a plug in it.”

“
Here, just take your stuff, mister.” The clerk, his hands still trembling, pushed the bagged goods toward Crow.

The doorbell tinkled again and both of them turned to see a city cop walking in for his daily morning ration of a foot-long hotdog and sixteen-ounce Pepsi. The clerk mumbled, “Oh God.”

Crow knew what he had to do and fast. If he hesitated long enough for the cop to realize a man stood in front of the clerk wielding a gun, he’d draw down. Crow swung the revolver at the cop and pulled the trigger three times. Even as the shots rang in Crow’s ears, the employee took the opportunity to step on the alarm button before backing away. Crow saw in the man’s face what he’d done and shot him point blank in the face, knocking him back against the cold medicine and vitamin display before he fell forward again, dead.

The woman named Bertha came running up the aisle with a spice canister in her fat fist. She was shouting, screaming, coming straight for Crow, as if she would brain him with the plastic spice container.

Death by chili powder, Crow thought crazily. This fat bitch is out of her mind. “Fuck this!”

Grabbing the bag of groceries, he leaped over the quickly pooling blood of the cop. He knocked a woman aside who was nearly to the convenience store door to pay for a self-help gas purchase. She screamed and landed on her ass, car keys flying from her hand.

Heddy was out of the van where it was parked in front of the store, motioning with her arms for Crow to hurry. She had seen the cop car drive up and park next to her. She was about to blow the van’s horn to get Crow’s attention, but she didn’t have to. She saw Crow at the counter turn the moment the cop entered.

In the distance sirens screamed, cops making for the convenience store once the silent alarm was logged in at the station.

Crow threw himself into the van and slammed the sliding door. He was white as a drift of new snow except for two high color spots on his cheeks. “Let’s get the fuck outta here!”

Bertha burst through the convenience store door, shouting for him to come back, “
Come back right this minute, you crummy little bastard killer!”

Heddy had the van started and began backing from the parking space when there was a crash that threw them all backwards against the seats. Heddy turned around to try to see out the back tinted windows. Someone opened her door at that exact moment and someone else opened the sliding door at the same time. Crow had put away his gun already so he wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

The man who opened Heddy’s door hit her in the face with a fist, knocking her over the console and into Jay’s lap. He said, “Get outta the way, you stupid bitch.”

The man who came from the side of the van pointed a gun at Crow and said, “I’m coming in.” He stepped up into the van and pulled the sliding door closed behind him with a bang.

It all happened so swiftly neither Heddy nor Crow had a chance to do anything about it. Heddy, cursing and spitting blood, climbed over the console and into the back. The man there motioned for Carrie and the girl to move back in the van to the next seat, the sofa in the rear. Now he had Heddy and Crow together on one seat. He stood yet, holding himself steady with one hand braced on the ceiling.

“
Who are you?” Jay asked, but was ignored.

The man who had hit Heddy put the van into gear and pulled it forward onto the concrete apron in front of the store narrowly missing the obese screaming woman who still swung the chili powder in her fist as if it were a live grenade. She scrambled backward on nimble feet and pressed up against the front of the store.

The driver then backed the van out and around the vehicle it had struck before--their car they’d parked in the way to keep their prey from getting away.

He whipped the van from the lot and onto the street, the rear end fishtailing into the opposite lane. He headed the van out of town, north, along the same highway they had just taken into town. At the first farm road, he turned left. At the next farm road, he turned right, and he kept turning left and right on roads until they were in the scrubby hills outside of Fredericksburg and there was no sound of the sirens any longer.

At a sign for a fish camp, the man turned down the road. Dirt blossomed behind the rear of the van, filling the summer noonday air with a dusty cloud that hung motionless.

The camp was closed and up for sale. The man parked the van, screeching to a sliding halt in front of an unpainted cabin that had once served as the office. He turned off the motor.

“
We want the money,” he said. “You don’t rip off six hundred thousand dollars and think you’re gonna keep it.”

Heddy looked at Crow and shrugged. Crow looked up at the man standing over him and said carefully, “There wasn’t no goddamn six hundred grand.”

The man winced and glanced at his partner in the driver’s seat. “I’ve got pliers,” he said. “Should I use them?”

“
I’m telling you, man,” Crow said. “There might have been a hundred thousand at most, but nothing at all like six hundred. You got your figures all wrong.”

“
Okay, Bob,” said the driver, nodding at the man in back.

The one called Bob pulled a pair of needle-nosed pliers with plastic-covered handles from his back pocket. “If you don’t have the whole six hundred, you’re going to lose your nose. You’ll never be a pretty boy again.”

“
I’m telling you...!”

Heddy grabbed for her green vinyl bag between the front bucket seats and flung it at the man. “Look for yourself!”

Bob looked at the driver, got another nod, put the pliers back into his pocket. He reached down for the green bag, his gaze still trained on the two in the seat.

“
They’ve got the rest in the extra tire compartment, in the back, outside.”

The two men turned to Jay. “Who’re you?”

“
What does it matter? I know where the money is.”

The driver reached out and punched Jay in the face with the same fist he’d used on Heddy. Jay’s head hit the closed window and rebounded. He very calmly wiped the trickle of blood running down from his nose over his upper lip. “That wasn’t very neighborly.”

“
Now answer us, smartass. Who’re you?”

“
I’m Jay Anderson and the woman and little girl in the back are my wife and child. These two took our car in Missouri and we’ve been with them ever since. Hostages.”

The driver looked at Bob. “Check in her purse first.”

With his free hand Bob rummaged in the bag and brought out a two-inch packet of bills. He held it up. “This ain’t much.”

“
There’s more in Crow’s bag,” Jay said.

“
I ought to...” Crow started to say, but the man standing over him slapped his face so hard his head swiveled on his neck.