F is for Fugitive (10 page)

The bailiff went through his “all rise” recital, and we dutifully rose as the judge appeared and took his seat. Judge McMahon was in his forties and bristled with efficiency. Trim and fair-haired, he looked like the kind of man who played handball and squash, and risked dropping dead of a heart attack despite his prior history of perfect health. Bailey's case was being called
next to last, so we were treated to a number of minor procedural dramas. A translator had to be summoned from somewhere in the building to aid in the arraignments of two of the accused who spoke no English. Papers had been misfiled. Two cases were kicked over to another date. Another set of papers had been sent but never received, and the judge was irked about that because the attorney had no proof of service and the other side wasn't ready. Two additional defendants, out on OR, were seated in the audience and each stepped forward in turn as his case was called.

At one point, one of the deputies pulled out a set of keys and unlocked an accused's handcuffs so that he could talk to his attorney at the back of the room. While that conference was going on, another prisoner engaged the judge in a lengthy discussion, insistent on representing himself. Judge McMahon was very opposed to the idea and spent ten minutes warning and admonishing, advising and scolding. The defendant refused to budge. The judge was finally forced to concede to the fellow's wishes since it was his right, but he was clearly cross about the matter. Through all of this, an undercurrent of restlessness was agitating the spectators into side-conversations and titters of laughter. They were primed for the lead act, and here they were, having to suffer through this second-rate series of burglaries and sexual assault cases. I half expected them to start clapping in unison, like a movie audience when the film is delayed.

Jack Clemson had been leaning against the wall in
murmured conversation with the attorney next to him. As the time approached for Bailey's case to be called, he broke away and crossed the room. He spoke to the deputy and she unlocked Bailey's handcuffs. The two of them had just stepped to one side when there was a shout from the back. The judge's head snapped up and everybody turned simultaneously. A man in a red ski mask stood in the doorway, brandishing a sawed-off shotgun. The effect was electric, a ripple running through the room.

“FREEZE!” he yelled. “Everybody just hold it right there.”

He fired once, apparently to make his point. The boom from the gun was deafening and the blast took one of the overhead lights right off its chain and sent it crashing to the floor. Shattered glass rained down like a cloudburst, and people screamed and scrambled for cover. A baby started shrieking. Everybody hit the floor, including me. Bailey's father was still sitting upright, immobilized by surprise. I reached up and grabbed him by the shirt front. I pulled him down to the floor with me, sheltering him with my body weight. He struggled, trying to get up, but in his condition it didn't take much to subdue him. I glanced over in time to see one of the deputies belly-crawl up the aisle to my right, shielded from the gunman's view by the wooden benches.

I'd caught a glimpse of the gunman and I could have sworn it was Tap, his hands shaking badly. He seemed too small to be a threat, his entire body tensed by fear.
The true menace was the shotgun, with its broad, lethal spray, the indiscriminate destruction if his finger slipped. Any unexpected movement might startle him into firing. Two women on the other side of Royce were burbling hysterically, clinging to one another like lovers.

“BAILEY, COME ON! GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!!” the gunman screamed. His voice broke from fright and I felt a chill as I peered over the seat. It had to be Tap.

Bailey was transfixed. He stared in disbelief and then he was in motion. He leaped the wooden railing and ran, pounding down the aisle toward the rear door while Tap blasted again. A large framed photograph of the governor jumped off the wall, disintegrating as the pellets ripped through glass, wood frame, and matting in a spray of white. A second round of wails and screams erupted from the crowd. Bailey had disappeared by then. Tap cracked the shotgun and jammed in two more shells as he backed out of the courtroom. I heard running. An outside door slammed and then there were shouts and the sound of shots.

In the courtroom, there was chaos. The clerk and the court reporter were nowhere to be seen and I could only guess that the judge had made his way out of the room at floor level, crawling on his hands and knees. Once the immediate threat was gone, people surged forward in a panic, shoving toward the bench, pushing through to the safety of the judge's chambers beyond. Pearl was hustling his son and daughter-in-law out the
fire exit, setting off an alarm bell that clanged at a piercing pitch.

More screams sounded from the corridor, where someone was shouting incomprehensibly. I headed in that direction, bent double until I could get a sense of what was happening. If more gunfire broke out, I didn't want to get caught by flying bullets. I passed a woman bleeding badly from the glass shards that had cut into her face. Someone was already applying pressure to the worst of her wounds, while beside her, two little children huddled together and wept. I reached the rear door and pushed out. Shana Timberlake was leaning against the wall to my left, her face blanched, the shadows under her eyes as emphatic as stage makeup.

Outside, police sirens were already spiraling against the morning air.

Through the big plate-glass walls that formed one side of the corridor, I could see uniformed police officers spilling down the steps into the courtyard outside. Several women screamed in continuous shrill tones, as if the shooting had unleashed years of suppressed anguish. The jam of hysterical people in the hallway surged forward and then parted abruptly.

Tap Granger lay on his back, his arms flung out like he was taking a sunbath. The red ski mask had been pulled back off his face and it rested on the back of his head, as flabby as a rooster's crest. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and I could see where his wife had ironed the creases in. His arms looked skinny. His whole body looked dead. Bailey was nowhere in sight.

I went back into the courtroom, aware for the first time that I was crunching my way through broken glass and grit. Royce Fowler was on his feet, swaying uncertainly among the rows of empty benches. His mouth trembled.

“Tell me you had nothing to do with this,” I said to him.

“Where's Bailey? Where's my boy? They'll shoot him down like a dog.”

“No, they won't. He's unarmed. They'll find him. I take it you didn't know this was going to happen.”

“Who was that in the mask?”

“Tap Granger. He's dead.”

Royce sank onto the bench and lowered his head into his hands. The debris underfoot made a crackling sound. Looking down, I realized the floor was littered with white specks.

I stared in confusion, then bent down and picked up a handful. “What is this?” I said. Comprehension came in the same moment, but it still made no sense. Tap's shotgun shells had been loaded with rock salt.

 

 

 

 

 

By the time we got back to the motel, Royce was close to collapse and I had to help him into bed. Ann and Ori had heard the news in the doctor's office and they came straight home, pulling in soon after I did. Bailey Fowler was being billed as “a killer on the loose, believed armed and dangerous.” The streets of Floral Beach already looked deserted, as if in the wake of some natural disaster. I could practically hear the doors slamming all up and down the block, little children jerked to safety, old ladies peering out from behind their curtains. Why anyone thought Bailey would be foolish enough to come back to his parents' house, I don't know. The sheriff's department must have considered it a good possibility because a deputy, in a tan uniform, stopped by the motel and had a long, officious chat with Ann, one hand on his gun butt, his gaze shifting from point to point, searching (I assumed) for some indication that the escapee was being harbored on the premises.

As soon as the patrol car pulled away, friends began to arrive with solemn expressions, dropping off casseroles. Some of these people I'd seen at the courthouse and I couldn't tell if their appearance was motivated by sympathy or a craven desire to be part of the continuing drama. Two neighbor ladies came, introduced to me as Mrs. Emma and Mrs. Maude, aging sisters who'd known Bailey since he was a boy. Robert Haws, the minister from the Baptist church, appeared along with his wife, June, and yet another woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Burke, the owner of the Laundromat two blocks away. She just popped over for a minute, she said, to see if there was anything she could do. I was hoping she'd offer cut rates on the Fluff 'n' Fold, but apparently this didn't occur to her. Judging from Mrs. Maude's expression, she disapproved of the store-bought frozen cheesecake the Laundromat lady handed over so blithely. Mrs. Maude and Mrs. Emma exchanged a look that suggested this was not the first time Mrs. Burke had flaunted her lack of culinary zealousness. The phone rang incessantly. Mrs. Emma appointed herself the telephone receptionist, fielding calls, keeping a log of names and return numbers in case Ori felt up to it later.

Royce refused to see anyone, but Ori entertained from her bed, repeating endlessly the circumstances under which she'd heard the news, what she'd first thought, when the facts had finally penetrated, and how she'd commenced to howl with misery until the
doctor sedated her. Whatever Tap Granger's fate or her son's fugitive status, she experienced events as peripheral to “The Ori Fowler Show,” in which she starred. Before I had a chance to slip out of the room, the minister asked us to join him in a word of prayer. I have to confess, I've never been taught proper prayer etiquette. As far as I can tell, it consists of folded hands, solemnly bowed heads, and no peeking at the other supplicants. I don't object to religious practices, per se. I'm just not crazy about having someone else inflict their beliefs on me. Whenever Jehovah's Witnesses appear at my door, I always ask for their addresses first thing, assuring them that I'll be around later in the week to plague them with my views.

While the minister interceded with the Lord in Bailey Fowler's behalf, I absented myself mentally, using the time to study his wife. June Haws was in her fifties, no more than five feet tall and, like many women in her weight class, destined for a sedentary life. Naked, she was probably dead white and dimpled with fat. She wore white cotton gloves with some sort of amber-staining ointment visible at the wrist. With her face blocked out, hers were the kind of limbs one might see in a medical journal, illustrative of particularly scabrous outbreaks of impetigo and eczema.

When Reverend Haws's interminable prayer had come to a close, Ann excused herself and went into the kitchen. It was clear that the appearance of servitude on her part was actually a means of escaping whenever
she could. I followed her and, in the guise of being helpful, began to set out cups and saucers, arranging Pepperidge Farm cookies on plates lined with paper doilies while she hauled out the big stainless-steel coffee urn that usually sat in the office. On the kitchen counter, I could see a tuna casserole with crushed potato chips on top, a ground beef and noodle bake, and two Jell-O molds (one cherry with fruit cocktail, one lime with grated carrots), which Ann asked me to refrigerate. It had only been an hour and a half since Bailey fled the courthouse in a blaze of gun-fire. I didn't think gelatin set up that fast, but these Christian ladies probably knew tricks with ice cubes that would render salads and desserts in record time for just such occasions. I pictured a section in the ladies' auxiliary church cookbook for Sudden Death Quick Snacks . . . using ingredients one could keep on the pantry shelf in the event of tragedy.

“What can I do to help?” June Haws asked from the kitchen door. With her cotton gloves, she looked like a pallbearer, possibly for someone who had died recently from the same skin disease. I moved a plate of cookies just out of range and pulled a chair out so she could have a seat.

“Oh, not for me, hon,” she said. “I never sit. Why don't you let me take over, Ann, and you can get off your feet.”

“We're doing fine,” Ann said. “If you can keep Mother's mind off Bailey, that's all the help we need.”

“Haws is reading Scriptures with her even as we speak. I can't believe what that woman's been through. It's enough to break your heart. How's your daddy doing? Is he all right?”

“Well, it's been a shock, of course.”

“Of course it has. That poor man.” She looked over at me. “I'm June Haws. I don't believe we've been introduced.”

Ann broke in. “I'm sorry, June. This is Kinsey Millhone. She's a private detective Pop hired to help us out.”

“Private
detective
?” she said, with disbelief. “I didn't think there was such a thing, except on television shows.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I'm afraid the work we do isn't quite that thrilling.”

“Well, I hope not. All those gun battles and car chases? It's enough to make my blood run cold! It doesn't seem like a fit occupation for a nice girl like you.”

“I'm not that nice,” I said modestly.

She laughed, mistaking this for a joke. I avoided any further interaction by picking up a cookie plate. “Let me just take these on in,” I murmured, moving toward the other room.

Once in the hallway, I slowed my pace, caught between Bible readings in the one room and relentless platitudes in the other. I hesitated in the doorway. The high school principal, Dwight Shales, had appeared
while I was gone, but he was deep in conversation with Mrs. Emma and didn't seem to notice me. I eased into the living room where I handed the cookie plate to Mrs. Maude, then excused myself again and headed toward the office. Reverend Haws was intoning an alarming passage from the Old Testament full of besiegedness, pestilence, consuming locusts, and distress. Ori's lot must have seemed pretty tame by comparison, which was probably the point.