The Ten-Mile Trials (27 page)

They were so ready to deal.

It was especially bitter to them that the deal had gone sour on the very last day. They had been helping to load up the truck. ‘That's what I figured,' Julie said. ‘Two working boys, just like their daddies, always looking to make another buck.' She shook her glossy head. ‘You could almost feel sorry for them, you know. They thought those thugs were just going to load up and wave goodbye.'

But when the heaviest items were stacked in the truck, they had turned toward the ramp to go in for the next load and found themselves facing five cold-eyed men with ropes and knives. Trussed up and gagged, they quickly noticed how their captors stashed them among the boxes as matter-of-factly as they might have put sheep there, to be slaughtered or kept alive depending on whether they had more need for meat or wool. Neither of the boys had ever encountered total indifference before – and it was, Arnie Aarsvold said, ‘kind of a game-changer'. Of the two boys, he had come away from the experience with the most bounce left. He had plenty of regrets, but there was a corner of his personality that was already turning a small profit – having survived it, he was one step closer to manhood.

They had been wrapped up in burlap and tied like rolls of carpet, but somehow when the police boarded the van they had managed to move enough to attract attention. ‘The guys who made the traffic stop told me,' Arnie said, already embroidering the tale a little, ‘they almost shit purple when the carpet started to move.'

The horror still clung to Tony Knowles. He grew pale and ghostlike as he told his story – part of him was still a hostage. The screaming chase across town in the van had hardly registered with him. ‘From the minute they grabbed us,' he said, just above a whisper, ‘I could see that at some point we were going to die.' It was absolutely clear to him that the Rutherford Police Department had handed him back his life. The danger still ahead for him, I thought, was that he wasn't sure he wanted it back.

It was that realization that broke David Knowles. He had been all bluster and bluff when we started, full of statements that began ‘I won't be treated like a criminal' or ‘I don't think you realize who you're talking to'. But when he saw how damaged his son was, he put his big veined hands over his face and sat with his shoulders heaving, tears running out between his fingers.

‘I got them into it,' he said, when he could talk. ‘God forgive me, I told them what we wanted done and what they would earn for doing it. The times you were asking me about, when the records showed they were working both places? They were always working for me those times.

‘I already had most of the information about when people would be out. I just needed them to go in with their little cleaning carts and figure the best ways in and out. I showed them how to jimmy some locks, open some windows, make a diagram with two or three alternatives. And I got them to find out how much of a bribe Arnie's little brother would take to shut up about them skipping out on their hours at the nursery. I turned them all into perfect little crooks.'

Kevin had been unusually gentle in that interview, giving Knowles all the time he needed. But now as I watched the monitor I saw him glance at his watch, then pull himself up and look down his handsome nose at David Knowles, who is a large, plain man with no memorable features.

‘Why'd you do it?' he asked sharply. ‘Are you going broke?'

‘No!' Improbably, David Knowles went back to acting insulted. ‘We have a fine clientele, we've always made a good living.'

Kevin stared at him silently, blinking, and Knowles seemed to deflate slowly, like a balloon with a pinhole. ‘It was just . . . a chance for some extras, for once,' he said. ‘I've always been a drudge. Other people win prizes, have a run of luck, inherit money, get by on their looks. I just go slogging along. These men came to me and . . . I thought, let's have some extras for once, about damn time.' Then he was weeping unashamedly, with great racking sobs that shook the table. ‘And now I've wrecked my son's life!'

So the chief was wrong, it was not all black and white, any more than it ever is. It was all shades of tiresome and wearying gray that took weeks to sort out and left everybody poorer and sadder. If there was any upside, I think it was that two high-school seniors got disabused of the notion that they could have it both ways – but they paid a very high price for that lesson.

‘Was that the hardest part?' Trudy asked me, one of the several times I described some more aspects of the case to her. ‘When Dave Knowles cried?'

‘Just about,' I said. ‘Although – this is crazy, but do you want to know the very worst moment in the whole mess?'

‘I guess,' she said. ‘This won't make me throw up, will it?'

‘No, it's not like that. But that Friday when the whole thing blew up – the day of the chase – and we went through all that craziness and had to wait for the ambulance for Rosie and Ruskie—'

‘Ruskie needed an ambulance, too?'

‘He got shot in the arm, too, while he was in the water. It wasn't bad – through and through on his upper arm, but it bled like crazy, so they hooked him up to an IV. And they bandaged me up, my foot and my arm, right out there at the river, and Bo got treated for his glass cuts . . . It seemed like we were there for hours, and then we had to figure out how to get all the cars back. And when we got back to the station, you know what? It was only two in the afternoon! We still had three hours to work.'

‘And that really bothered you more than the chase or the shooting, or the crazy scene with the kayakers? The three quiet hours in Government Center that came after?'

‘We all had a case of the jerks, you know? I couldn't work, and I couldn't sit still. Too much had happened. A couple of times I thought my watch had stopped. And I kept thinking, Christ, even when that filthy clock finally gets around to showing five o'clock I have to go over there and get Ben. And if that kid screams all the way home, I really don't think I can stand it.'

‘Ah,' she said. ‘So that was the day . . .'

‘Yup. I said to Maxine, “Trudy told me once that she left a little device here for some day when I felt like I needed some silence.” And she said, “I thought I heard a lot of sirens around town today.” And she went and got the pacifier out of the drawer.'

‘It worked, too, didn't it?'

‘It works every time. He loves it devotedly.' I looked at him, asleep in his downstairs crib. His color is about halfway between my toasted almond and Trudy's Minnesota blond, and when he is sleeping he gets a little paler and looks more angelic. I touched his cheek, just barely, and he wrinkled his nose. ‘Good intentions are so easy to lose, and so hard to get back.'

‘Good intentions? He's a baby, for God's sake!'

‘I meant mine. He has a new little light in his eye, now, when I strap him into the seat for the ride home. I can see him thinking, “I'll give you about thirty seconds to come up with that sucker thing, before I start to yell.”'

She laughed. ‘Don't be too hard on him. We're all pretty good at this wanting stuff.' She hung her dishtowel around my neck and drew me closer. ‘It's not all bad. After all, wanting got us where we are today.'

‘You're right,' I said. ‘Let's not worry about it, let's want some more.'