Repo Madness (43 page)

34

I'm Supposed to Be Here

Deputy Dumbbell was pulling into the ER parking circle just as I was getting ready to drive away. His light bar was flashing, and he was so eager to arrest and probably shoot fugitive Ruddy McCann that he nearly slid into a pole. He flung his door open and charged up the sidewalk, his hands on his belt, either to be close to his gun or to hold his pants up. He never looked in my direction to see his suspect watching him.

“We're going to be caught,”
Alan worried.

“No, we're not,” I replied. At some point, it seemed, I had given up lecturing Alan on the use of the term
we
.

“He's going to talk to the doctor, who is going to tell him you're in the restroom. When he sees you're not in there, he's going to come out here to radio someone, and he'll see us.”

“No, he's not,” I said. I started my tow truck and drove quickly across the parking lot, easing up next to the deputy's patrol car, which was still flashing. I yanked the lever, and the T bar slid out, repo quiet, and within seconds I had the car's front wheels off the ground. Whistling, I dove out of the cab, set the safety chains, and jumped back in. I eased away, moving silently on the snowy street. The storm had let up, though it looked like we'd gotten another inch since I'd been out at Shantytown.

“You are stealing a police vehicle,”
Alan marveled.
“This is insane.”

“You think this is insane? I know this guy with a dead Realtor in his head.” I went straight down the street, still within sight of the hospital, and lowered Timms's car back down next to a fire hydrant. Maybe he'd get a ticket.

“What do you think you're doing?”
Alan demanded.

“Buying us a little time.”

“You're going back to jail over this.”

“Really? What do you want to bet that when Deputy Dumbbell comes out and sees his car parked a hundred yards down the road, he's going to be too embarrassed to tell Grant Porterfield what happened?” I drove quickly but cautiously, heading away from downtown Charlevoix.

I spent the night at Katie's house—when you live in East Jordan, you don't think to lock your doors, so I opened the front door and walked right in. I thought I would lie sleeplessly for hours, but as soon as the faint but familiar smell of her perfume on the pillow hit me, I blinked out.

*   *   *

It was nearly noon when I jerked awake. Alan was still snoozing. Cursing over the lateness of the hour, I showered and made myself as presentable as I could, then drove up M-66 to the Charlevoix Area Hospital.

I breezed past reception with an it's-okay-I'm-supposed-to-be-here wave, which didn't fool the woman who called, “Sir?” after me. I paused, though, when I saw Barry Strickland leafing through a magazine in the waiting room. I decided to duck in to talk to him first.

“Ruddy.” He stood and shook my hand in his iron grip. “Quite a night.”

“For both of us,” I agreed. I searched my mind for Alan—still asleep.

“They found the victim out on the ice. The Humvee was there, too, tires melted, burned all to hell.”

“And?”

He shook his head. “No sign of Rogan.”

“Damn.”

“Cutty wants to investigate your theory before jumping to conclusions, but Hughes wants to call it a serial killer immediately and hold a press conference. The Feds will probably take over, so the only way for the D.A. to get any glory is to talk to the media right away. The two of them are in with Miss Lottner now.”

“And you're out here?”

He shrugged. “Official business. I'm not an official.”

“Well, you should be. Sheriff.”

He regarded me steadily. “We'll see.”

I liked that. “I'm going to go visit my fiancée.”

He shook his head. “Not a good idea, Ruddy. The D.A. is pretty sure you've committed a crime or two. He also told me he received a call from your psychiatrist.”

“Schaumburg,” I supplied with a sinking feeling.

“Right. Hughes feels you didn't give him the whole story when you had him write the court on your behalf.”

“I am so, so worried about the D.A.'s feelings.”

He smiled at that one. “If it helps, Cutty thinks you're a hero.”

“She said that?”

“Not in those words, no.”

“Ah. Well, I'm going to go see Katie, and I really don't care what the D.A. or Cutty has to say about it.”

He looked troubled. “Cutty's all right. She's a good officer.”

“I'll go easy on her,” I promised, which made us both smile. Cutty did not need anyone going easy on her for any reason. I paused before leaving. “Hey, is there something between you two? You and Cutty, I mean.”

He gave a start, looking, what, embarrassed? Guilty? “No, of course not,” he denied a bit strongly. “Why would you ask that?”

“I thought I sensed something. Like, a connection,” I responded smoothly. Ruddy McCann, the meddler.

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “From both of us? Or just me?” he asked.

I'd gotten to
bingo
. “Well, I've seen the way she looks at you sometimes.”

He looked floored at this, so I left the room, grinning.

I knocked once on Katie's door and pushed it open. The D.A. and Cutty jerked around, startled, but my focus was on my fiancée, who looked wan but clear-eyed.

“Ruddy,” she greeted softly. I went to her bedside and gave her a we're-in-public kiss, and as I drew back, I felt her father waking up.

“You shouldn't be here,” D.A. Darrell said angrily.

“Where have you been, Ruddy? My men have been looking for you,” Cutty asked with controlled frustration.

“I spent the night at Katie's house. I was too tired to drive to Kalkaska,” I replied honestly. “Then”—I turned to Katie to apologize—“I overslept. I'm sorry. I woke up and came straight here. Barry Strickland filled me in on what happened on the ice, and told me Rogan is still at large.” There, now Alan was up to speed.

“Rogan got away?”
he gasped.

“So, how are you feeling, honey?” I asked gently.

“I have maybe the worst headache of my life, but otherwise I'm really fine. I'd like to go home, but the doctors want to keep me a little longer.”

“Plus, we have more questions. For both of you,” D.A. Darrell added aggressively.

“You need to leave,” I said to him—a sentence I'd spoken, with exactly the same inflection, to angry drunks countless times.

The D.A. scowled. “Maybe you didn't hear me.”

“Maybe you're the one who needs the headache,” I countered.

“Ruddy,”
Alan warned.

“I love it when men fight over me,” Katie observed lightly.

“We do need to speak to you,” Cutty told me.

“And I'm happy to do that after I've had a few minutes alone with her,” I responded, pointing to Katie.

“I got a call from Dr. Schaumburg. Your psychiatrist. He says you're delusional, that you're a danger to yourself and others.” D.A. Darrell sneered.

“Yeah, well, that still doesn't mean I need medication,” I replied.

D.A. The cut his eyes to Katie. “I'm not sure you're safe with him alone,” he stated pointedly.

I clenched my fists, unable to believe this guy would stoop so low. Cutty was regarding him with a shocked expression.

“Well, that's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard,” Katie spat, her eyes sparking angrily. I stared, surprised: I had never heard her use the
f
word before in her life.

“Wow,”
Alan said.

“Ruddy saved my life. I'm not saying another word to you, you moron,” Katie continued. “Get out of my room.”

Hughes opened his mouth to retort. “Sir!” Cutty barked, stepping in front of him. He blinked, startled. “We need to go. Now,” she declared sternly. Cutty would have made an excellent bar bouncer.

He regarded her blankly, and then disgust curled his lip. “All right. We'll leave. But this isn't over.” He glared at me.

“I'll call you when we're finished here,” I promised Cutty, completely ignoring D.A. Darrell.

As they left, I closed the door and leaned against it. “So,” I said.

“So. God, Ruddy. Come here.” She held her arms out, and when I crossed the room, she buried her face in my neck. “I was so stupid. It was such a great house, I was thinking of how I would advertise it, how well it would show when the snow melted, and he seemed so nice. He offered me a drink, and even though it was really strong, I sipped it because I thought, you know, sales, get the customer comfortable.”

“You are not stupid. That guy, he's had practice at this.”

“I hardly drank any of it at all. Then the room started spinning, and I felt so drunk. He was laughing at me.”

“It's okay.”

She pulled back and looked at me, her eyes moist. “But then I remember you picking me up. I felt so safe in your arms. I knew everything was going to be all right. And then it was cold and then you were hugging me and then I was in the car with Kermit. Because you saved me. You, Ruddy.”

“Well, Jake helped.”

She laughed, shaking her head.

“You did save her, Ruddy. You saved my little girl,”
Alan praised.

“What did the cops tell you?”

She shrugged. “Not much. They said they were just starting their investigation, but that that guy probably has done things like this before. Kidnapped women, I mean. They said I was lucky to get away. No,” she corrected herself. “The D.A. said I was lucky to get away. The nice policewoman said you saved my life, and if it weren't for you, they wouldn't even know what was going on.”

“I'll bet you the D.A. was happy with that.”

“Oh, very,” Katie agreed sarcastically.

“So, is there anything you need? Your Nelson DeMille novel? Chocolate? More apologies?”

“No, but there is something you could get from my house. Would you mind?”

“Not at all. What?”

“My engagement ring?”

“Really?”

Katie looked around, and her expression turned sly. “Come here,” she said to me. She lifted the thin blanket covering her legs.

Now it was my turn to look around. “Are you serious? I thought you had a not-tonight-I-have-a-headache headache.”

She laughed. “The bed's adjustable. How can we resist?”

“I'm just not sure that's part of the prescribed treatment.” I could sense Alan's distress with the whole subject.

“Well, maybe this isn't the place for that,” Katie concurred. “We could make out a little, though.”

“Or a lot, even,” I agreed.

We smiled into each other's eyes. My heart was responding with an accelerated pulse rate. She held out her arms, and I decided the time had come to push Alan away, but when I looked for him, he was already gone. Apparently, my unconscious had taken care of suppressing my subconscious.

I was a repo man with a voice in his head. I had a dog, a fiancée, a pregnant sister, friends, and legal problems. A life, in other words. I had a life, and this woman was at the center of it. I awkwardly climbed into the hospital bed with my Katie, and she laughed as she encircled me with her arms.

 

Epilogue

Mick's first thought was that the guy standing on his front porch was a cop, because he had that look, that air of grim authority. He was big, too: a big unhappy cop, there to do some big unhappy cop thing to Mick. Mick swallowed.

“Mr. Clayton?” the big guy queried.

Mick nodded nervously—there was just something about the guy's presence that came off as menacing. Mick found himself feeling guilty, though he wasn't exactly sure what it was he might have done.

“I'm here about your Escalade.”

This made no sense to Mick. “Now what?”

“You have a new Cadillac Escalade? In your garage, maybe?”

“Yeah, but…”

“You haven't been making your payments. You haven't made
any
payments. I need twelve hundred dollars from you, or I'm going to have to take it in.”

“Take it in?” Mick blinked rapidly. “Wait, that's what this is? You're, like, a repo man?”

“Yes, I'm exactly, like, a repo man.”

“Okay.” Mick shook his head. “Something's not right. The payments are supposed to come out of my checking account automatically. I … Oh.”

“Oh?” the big guy repeated.

“Crap! Like, right after I bought the car, my identity was stolen. Some guy took some of my outgoing bills from the mailbox and made checks on his printer for my checking account and cashed them. He got, like, five grand before the fraud people figured it out. So I had to get a new checking account.” Mick slapped his forehead. “So of course the payments haven't been coming out automatically.”

“Of course.”

“And now I'm behind?”

“More than sixty days,” the big guy affirmed. “So I need to either relieve you of the burden of ownership of the Escalade, or I need to relieve you of the burden of twelve hundred dollars.”

“This is … Look, I'm getting married.”

“Congratulations. Twelve hundred dollars.”

“No, I mean, that's why everything's so disorganized in my life right now. Yes, yeah, I have the money. Is a check okay?”

The repo man looked around the entryway, clearly sizing up Mick's life style. Mick anxiously made the same assessment. His fiancée had recently repainted the entryway, and there was a picture of the two of them in Maui, Mick and Marissa, grinning because he had just proposed to her—if a guy could afford to take a woman to Maui, didn't that imply he made a nice living and was good for a couple of car payments? Marissa certainly seemed to believe so.