Sample chapters

Prologue

 

 

 

 

Recovery from the car accident was grueling; nasal feedings as my throat healed, the anguish of regular changes in gauze and packing on my arms and fingers, a constant morphine drip to keep the worst of the pain at bay.

Doctors told me I was lucky. Were it not for the sleet and wind cooling the burns my injuries would’ve been far worse.

I couldn’t fathom worse.

Samantha’s olive-colored eyes never lost their pools of devotion. She was there when I awoke from skin-graft surgery. She worked with me in rehab, helped massage my scarred fingers as I fought to grasp a pencil, encouraged me to tie my shoelaces when I wanted to quit. Seeing her face, her fawn-colored hair bunched over her shoulders, her glowing complexion, her warm smile, made everything almost seem okay.

But nothing was.

Our finances were in shambles. Samantha’s waitress job and my former as a restaurant chef didn’t offer health benefits. And the woman I’d tried to save didn’t have car or life insurance.

By the time I’d gotten out of the hospital Samantha had sold most of our possessions to pay the mortgage. “For better or for worse, in sickness and in health,” we’d proclaimed to each other last May. She had certainly kept up her end of the deal, clinging wistfully to ghosts of happier times.

I, on the other hand, have become a passionless replica of my former self. I’ve been unemployed since the accident, but not for lack of trying, my hands can no longer handle the intense labor and heat of working in a kitchen. And I’ve been depressed, drinking more than I should, more than ever before; spending our last dollars on booze. Some weeks the Seagrams whiskey and Budweiser bottles spill over the edge of our fifty-gallon recycling bin.

Samantha sobs at night in the bathroom before she comes to bed. She doesn’t realize I can hear her. She thinks I’m drunk and passed out.

She doesn’t know I’d risk everything to change our lives.

She’s doesn’t know I’d do the unimaginable.

 

                

                    Chapter 1

Somerset, Pennsylvania

Wednesday, April 22, 1:30 a.m.

 

 

 

 

Cody Larson was a big man, barrel-chested and full of prison-yard muscle and tattoos. We’d been traveling on the turnpike for several hours and were approaching the Appalachian Mountains when he told me to turn off at the next exit and head down a side road. He withdrew a small plastic bag stuffed with marijuana from his front pocket and displayed it in the neon glow of the dashboard lights.

“I got this s**t off a college chick in Seattle,” he said. “I figured we’d spark some here and then get back on the turnpike up the way.”

He pulled out a sheet of crumpled aluminum foil, flattened it, rolled it into a tube, bent one end up, and molded it into a makeshift pipe. He dumped the marijuana into the bowl.

“Just like old times, huh?” he said.

I didn’t acknowledge him. I was still thinking about the way I’d left home. The teary, disappointed expression on Samantha’s face as I said goodbye and headed out. The lump in my gut that still remained.

Cody flicked his lighter and held the flame steadily over the bowl as he inhaled. Vegetative matter crackled and popped under the concentrated heat. He chortled and white balls of smoke rolled from his nostrils. A pungent, burning-hay odor suffused the interior.

He pushed the hot pipe into my hand.

“Take it!” he urged, his voice tight from holding in the draw.

He leaned his head back and blew out a stream of smoke that exploded against the ceiling and clouded the interior. He turned to me.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked. “Take a hit, buddy.”

Something about the way he said the word buddy caused a shiver to run down my spine. As if we really were still pals. As if all the sleazy bullshit that had caused our friendship to all but vanish years ago had, in a strange way, vanished itself over the passage of time.

Coughing a bit, he added half-jokingly, “Don’t make me force you.”

I raised the aluminum foil to my lips, glanced at him and his stony grin, and breathed through the pipe. At first, I didn’t even know if I was getting anything; the draw went down my throat smooth as ice cream. But then, fiery cinders hit the back of my tongue. I coughed through the mouthpiece causing tiny, flaming meteors to fly across the dashboard. I coughed uncontrollably, dropped the pipe, and lost my grip on the steering wheel. The car swerved, threw gravel along the embankment, and headed on a collision course for a pine grove.

“Look out!” Cody shouted.

I counter-turned, threw more gravel, fishtailed, and then got us back on the roadway. Cody snatched the pipe from between my feet and focused on igniting what still clung to the sides of the foil.

The car’s interior came alive with revolving red and blue lights.

“Oh, s**t!” Panic ricocheted through my brain. “Cops!”

A siren whirred and a police cruiser closed the distance between us. Cody lowered the pipe from his mouth; a sliver of smoke escaped his lips.

“What should I do?” I said, adrenaline-jacked.

“Pull over,” he replied simply. “What else.”

“What about Jake’s arm? How are we going to explain that?”

Cody smiled crookedly and the corner of his mouth twitched. “I’ll make certain they don’t find the arm.”

He leaned down and pushed the pipe under the floor mat, then lit a cigarette and dragged. I braked, edged to the side of the road, and parked. The cruiser quickly took up residence behind us. After a moment, an officer opened his door and stepped out. He put a hand to his sidearm and started toward my door. His partner stayed in the cruiser.

I rolled down the window as he approached.

“Evening,” I said friendly-like, my stomach sick with worry.

“Shut off the car!” the officer ordered. “License and registration!”

I turned the key and the engine cut. A flashlight flicked on and the officer threw the beam into my eyes. I blinked at the sudden wash of illumination. The beam swung to the bits of scorched marijuana on the dashboard, to a drift of smoke hanging diagonally across the interior, and then into Cody’s eyes. He squinted.

“Had quite a swerve back there,” the officer said. “Anything you gentlemen would like to say before we proceed further?” He flung the light back into my eyes. “I’m assuming you’ll give me permission to search the car? It’ll make it easier on you both.”

My heart chugged and I was almost certain the policeman could see it beating in the veins of my neck. I looked at Cody. He kept his face forward and his gaze ahead, drawing on his cigarette as if he were breathing through it; seemingly lost in his own world.

“You can’t search the car,” he said.

Another police cruiser pulled up with lights flashing. The officer beside my window signaled with a cautious wave. Two more officers opened their doors and got out. The officer beside my window stepped back, unholstered his weapon, and leveled it. My bladder suddenly felt very full.

He signaled the two other officers to take up positions behind my Sentra. They came around the back bumper. One leveled his gun while the other jotted down my license plate number.

“Both of you step out of the car!” the officer beside my window ordered. “Extinguish that cigarette and keep your hands where I can see them! Permission or no, I’ve got probable cause!”

Cody and I remained in our seats. My mouth went cotton-dry and my lips stuck together briefly as I opened them.

“What do we do?” I whispered.

The other officer stepped menacingly toward Cody’s window.

“You boys deaf?” the officer said. “Exit the vehicle!”

I shifted in my seat and forced myself not to freak out. Cody clenched and unclenched his right hand. His face, silhouetted in the headlamps from the police cruiser, was dry except for a single drop of sweat that had rolled down between his eyes and now hung from the tip of his nose like a wart.

“Okay,” Cody said, in a tone of finality; the corner of his mouth twitched. “I’m comin’.”

I watched as he unhooked the keys from the ignition, opened the passenger’s side door, and swiveled to step out.

“Get against the trunk!” the officer stated. “Hands where I can see them!”

Cody doddered around to the back and stood facing the car. Fear coursed through me as I moved to open my door.

“You,” the officer said to me. “Throw the keys and get out!”

“I’ve got the keys,” Cody said, and jingled them.

“Against the car!” an officer hollered at him. “Throw the keys and get against the car!”

“Whoops,” Cody trilled.

He dropped the set. The officer closest to him looked down. In that brief instant, Cody launched himself into the man and pummeled him to the ground. They wrestled fiercely. The other officers lunged to help.

“Get his hands!” One of them shouted. “Oh Jesus, he’s got my" ”

Bam!

I jumped in the seat as blood spattered against the back window. The injured officer staggered up momentarily. There was a hole in his forehead where his right eye had blown out. Blood streamed down his face. He took a step and then crumpled to the asphalt.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

The officers fired. A bullet pierced the car door and whizzed inches from my side into the dashboard. Another shattered the rearview mirror.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

“Die! Die! Die!” Cody shouted, over the sound of repeated gunshots. “Die!”

“Officers down! Officers down!” the policeman in the patrol cruiser screamed into his radio’s microphone.

Cody stormed toward the car and aimed his pistol. The officer fumbled for something and then raised his hands protectively and tried to duck.

Bam! Bam!

Two quarter-sized holes punctured the windshield. The officer slumped forward.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Feeling drained from my body. My cheeks went cold. I sat frozen in a complete state of shock, mesmerized with horror and disbelief, hands glued to the steering wheel, too numb to speak, too appalled to move.

An injured officer crawled toward the far cruiser. It was a sick movement, like a possum attempting to drag itself to the side of the road after being squashed by a tire. Blood poured from his side and colored his uniform with a spreading, crimson hue.

Cody advanced on the man and lowered the tip of his gun to the officer’s forehead. The officer breathed fast and wept openly.

“Please, no!” the officer cried, his voice emptied of all brevity. “I have children!” 

“And you’re never gonna see ‘em again!” Cody said. “Take a last look around at planet Earth, cop!”

I tried to scream, to holler stop! To shout. But I was so appalled I couldn’t make a sound.

Bam!

The officer collapsed, legs askew, arms quivering.

Bam!

Another shot to the head. The ozone-metallic smell of gunpowder and fresh blood overspread the air.

“I like the way people look at death,” Cody said. “Their faces are so gentle, so at peace. Every time I take someone out I feel as if I’ve done their soul a favor. Set them free in a way. And with it comes a high, know what I mean? The same high God must feel when he creates and destroys.”

I felt woozy and breathed deep, filling my lungs with air, trying to comprehend and make sense of the moment.

“Jesus…What have you done?”

Totally unfazed by the atrocities, Cody calmly shook out a Camel cigarette from a pack in his back pocket.

“See how easy it is?” he said. “A gun is like a sorcerer’s wand, complete control over life and death. Press the trigger and someone disappears. And they don’t ever come back to bother you. Not ever.”  

My lips were numb and hard to control. My stomach lurched. “You’ve murdered these men. Murdered them!”

“Never liked cops much,” He made a swiping gesture with his hand as if the men’s souls had reincarnated into the mosquitoes now swarming around us and feeding from the corpses. “Power-hungry m***********s is what they are.”

He leaned down, lifted his pant leg, and placed the pistol into an empty holster.

“Fits perfect! I’m glad they use .38’s here in the East. I was beginnin’ to feel uneasy without a piece. I lost the one that went in here somewhere around Indiana. Had a bit of a ruckus there.”

Cody flicked his lighter and set fire to his cigarette. I should have done something. Maybe attacked him with the ice scraper or knocked him unconscious with the blunt spine of the owner’s manual in the glove box. But I was scared out of my skin. Fear! Real fear! The kind that reduces even the largest horse of a man to a sobbing colt. And believe me, I was no horse. The complicated landscape of the human mind works in mysterious ways when faced with unanticipated, high-stress situations. My courage shut down completely. I sat in the driver’s seat rabid with fear and intense hate for this man; but unable to act, unable to do anything, as he ransacked those dead men of their guns, ammunition, and supplies. He wrestled the jacket off the closest body and wiped our back window clean of blood. Then he loaded the materials into the trunk, got in, and dropped the keys onto my lap.

I wiped my lips with a trembling hand, realizing my whole world had irrevocably changed in an instant.

 “Let’s go,” he said calmly.

I strained to control my outrage. “You’re mad! I’m not going anywhere!”

“Normality, my friend, is defined by a person’s level of emotional discomfort at committin’ abnormal acts. I feel fine about what I did. Those men got in the way of what we’ve set out to do. What’d ya think would happen when they found Jake’s arm? Didja think we’d talk our way out of it? Imagine what God would do if these guys harassed Him? I suspect the same thing.”

“You’re not God!”

His eyes squinted and seemed to sparkle in their sockets. “Not yet.”

I dry-heaved and swallowed repeatedly.

“I’m going home!”

“You’ll do no such thing!”

A car drove up. Its lone occupant stared out the window with wide, horrified eyes, and then quickly pulled around us and accelerated.

“Murder!” I exclaimed. My whole body shook. “F*****g murder! These are human beings spread in front of us! Police officers for Christ’s sake!”

“Speakin’ of which,” Cody interjected. “We’d better get outta here. Cops’ll be swarmin’ this place in minutes.”

Lingering effects of the harsh hit of marijuana whipped my thoughts into a paranoid frenzy. I envisioned myself hauled off to jail. I imagined Samantha staring at me through the protective glass at the maximum security visitor’s room, tears streaking down her face asking; Why? Why? Why? And me sitting in handcuffs trying to explain that I had nothing to do with these crimes, nothing at all… and no one believing me.

“I’m not going any further!” I made a feeble effort to straighten my posture. “I’ll drop you at a bus station or train station or wherever you want! You can have the money! You can have everything! I’ll keep my mouth shut about what you did, but I’m not continuing!”

“We made a pact.” Cody’s jaw muscles bunched. He grit his teeth and spoke with a low, heavy growl. “Let’s go.”

 “I… I can’t!”

“You will!”

“No!”

He pushed a gun into my hand. “You’ve only got one out! Kill me! Put a bullet through my brain! Go ahead. No one will be the wiser. You can drive this piece-of-s**t car back to your piece-of-s**t life and the money and smack will sit there, year after year after year, rottin’ in the ground, same as the regret that will rot inside you, turnin’ your guts black. You could’ve been rich. Could’ve kept that beautiful wife and home. Your morals, buddy, not my actions, will ruin your life.”

I shrunk back from him. “Murder in cold blood! I can’t accept!”

“Killin’ is an instinctive act that lies outside the realm of culture’s principles. The situation needed resolution. The cops were gonna search the car. They would’ve opened the trunk and found the arm. Didja want to spend the next twenty years rottin’ in a jail cell? Cause that’s what woulda’ happened to you as an accomplice to Jake Romano, which you and I would be labeled. This was self-preservation.” He paused. “So what’s it gonna be? You takin’ my life or do we continue with our treasure hunt?”

The gun slipped from my fingers and clattered against the center console. I glanced in the rearview mirror. Grisly red rivers flowed from the three bodies sprawled on the blacktop. Larger and more aggressive night insects had arrived for the morbid feast.

I cranked the engine and slammed my foot on the gas pedal. We took off, tires squealing. Surrounding nightscape smeared into a blur of shadow and dappled moonlight. Odors of burned rubber filtered through the vents.

“Give me a drink!” I stated. “Give me that bottle!”

Cody reached behind him into my bag and pulled out the Seagrams whiskey. I spun the cap and swallowed greedily, grimacing as the liquid drained down my throat. I tried to steady myself. Tried to rationalize what had just occurred.

“Take it easy on that s**t,” Cody warned.

“F**k you!”

I kept my eyes focused out the windshield because I couldn’t look at him; at his face, so at ease with what he’d done.

“Had no choice but to resolve the crisis this way,” he spoke. “My way. My terms. Survival of the fittest is what it’s all about. What’s four fewer people takin’ up space anyway? Consider me the ultimate human population controller.”

My hand trembled as I gave the bottle back to him.

Cody stowed the bottle under his seat. “My actions are deemed immoral by a culture only if it violates their rules of the moment. During a war, my carnage against the enemy would be acceptable, even encouraged. This is a war we’re wagin’. To the victors go the spoils. You’d better get that through your head.”

He pulled up his right pant leg and withdrew a Phillips head screwdriver tied to his calf with an orange bandanna. He used the tip to scrape off tiny red drops dried on the back of his hand.

“Didja know a screwdriver is one of the most versatile weapons in the world? Think of the injury it can do to the human body when properly executed.”

I suppressed the urge to pull over, throw open the door, and run; run like the wind. Take a chance on racing into the wilderness and escaping this madman. But Samantha flashed into my mind. And then the policeman’s blasted face. And the maroon, almost blackish color of his blood. And the officer crawling for his life. And Cody smiling as he pumped another round into the already dead officer’s forehead. And what Cody could do to Samantha if he took revenge on me for leaving.

Cody stuck his hand into his back pocket and came out with the map. He unfolded it, dabbed his index finger into a large drop of not-quite-coagulated-policeman-blood pooled in the fold of his t-shirt, and traced an unsteady line from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania all the way across the paper to Seattle, Washington.

“Don’tcha worry ‘bout nothin’,” he said, and patted my shoulder with his other hand. “I’ll take care of anymore problems.”

I clenched at a sudden sharp pain in my belly, slammed on the brakes, threw open the door, and vomited.

 

Chapter 2

Coal Town, Pennsylvania   

Wednesday, April 22, 4:25 a.m.

 

 

 

 

We traveled in silence for a long stretch. Numb with shock, so stunned I could hardly think straight, I tried to untangle the impossible knot Cody’s violence had tied in my head. Portraits of horror hung in my mind.

I couldn’t believe that I had agreed to this trip. I couldn’t believe I was caught up in this madness. I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid as to have invited Cody into my home.

 

Marks in the palm looked like cuts in raw chicken; an X, a mangled triangle, a cross sliced into the fleshy part at the base of the thumb. Fingers had curled into a grotesque claw and bluish mold grew around the fingernails. Where the splintered radius and ulna bone should have met was a blackish stump. A fetid odor of spoiled meat drifted off it.

Cody raked his hand through his mountain of dark hair. The colorful cobra tattooed along the side of his neck seemed almost alive. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in years but I knew he’d grown up in a house with a pill-popping mother and an abusive, alcoholic father. I’d always believed that upbringing caused his strange behavior and eccentricities in college. But this was a human arm! The real thing! Right in front of me!

“A map?” I questioned.

“Bingo!”

I handed Cody the arm and drank from my nearly empty can of Budweiser. The sight of the arm knotted my stomach.

“Benny Harvin is the only other person alive who knows what I’m about to tell ya,” Cody said. “And the only reason he knows is because he’s involved.”

Benny had lived four doors down the dorm hallway from us junior year. He was a moose of a man with curly blond hair and a round, dumpling face, and would do everything from steal your beer and cigarettes, to try and date-rape your drunk girlfriend. He was the biggest sleaze I’d ever met.

“I thought Benny ratted on you?” I said. “That you hated him?”

“I do.”

“Then why" ”

“Niles!” Samantha’s voice fired down from the top stair. “Is someone in the basement with you?”

Cody whisked the severed arm behind him and almost knocked over his beer. I glanced toward the steps suddenly realizing that I’d forgotten to inform my wife that while she was in the shower the man who had once led me down a dark road populated by criminals and drug dealers and nearly destroyed my life, had shown up unannounced after ten years.

“My old college roommate, Cody is here,” I replied.

I waited to see if she’d overheard our conversation or noticed the arm. If she’d come stomping down here screaming, “Why is this criminal in my house!”  

“Hello, Mrs. Goodman,” Cody called up.

“Oh, hello,” she said, and the door slammed shut.

“Remember Jake Romano?” Cody continued unfazed. “The heroin dealer from off-campus?”

The vague image of a tall, spaghetti-thin man with bad acne and a missing front tooth popped into my head. “Yeah.”

“About a week ago, he planned to buy a huge stash of Peruvian smack from this guy, who it turns out, was with the FBI. Jake discovers this, kills the guy, and steals the heroin. Panicked, Jake grabbed his cash from the last fourteen months of deals, all recently laundered into crisp, untraceable hundreds, and drove to the Seattle suburbs to hide the stuff. That f****r was so freaked out over what he’d done that he got doped up out of his skull on the way. Not wanting to forget where he buried the stash, and not having a writing implement, he carved these marks into his own skin to remind him.”

I felt queasy.

“On his way back, he gets into this wild shootout with the cops, and gets hit, but eventually makes his way to his apartment. That’s when Benny contacted me. Jake didn’t last long after I got there. Died right on the kitchen floor. So we stuffed him into Benny’s Dodge and drove off to Puget Sound to dump the body. And wouldn’t ya know it, we didn’t have nothin’ to copy the map with. All we had was a knife. So we cut off the arm.  Here we are covered in Jake’s blood, carryin’ his arm, and the police are scourin’ the city. We knew we couldn’t go back to the apartment, at least not with the arm, so Benny and I made a pact. I’d take it and leave Seattle, and he’d keep an eye on the whereabouts of the law. This way neither of us could get the money without the other’s help. He needs the map and I need to know when it’s safe to return.”

“I’ll get you a pen and paper,” I said. “Get rid of the arm.”

“Copying the map won’t do any good. Benny wants to see the real McCoy. He don’t trust a duplicate.”

Cody stood, stretched, and tucked the arm back into the green army duffle bag he’d brought with him. The stench that puffed out when he opened the drawstring nearly knocked me over.

“Benny’s given me the all-clear to return,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. I want you to come along.”

I almost laughed and would have had I not seen his expression; steely and devoid of humor.

“You’re serious?” I said. “Drive with you to Seattle?”

“There’s $800,000 and about a million worth of stolen Peruvian smack buried in the dirt. If we work together, I’ll split the cash. That’s four hundred grand tax-free.” He tied the drawstrings shut. “Big incentive to take a road trip, aye buddy? Money is the ultimate panacea.”

I realized my jaw was hanging open and closed it.

“What about Benny?” I asked.

Cody looked at me steadily. “Who deserves the money more? An old friend? Or the f****r who swindled me into prison?”

I drained the last of my Budweiser. “Let me think about it.”

“What’s to think about? Do ya wanna be rich or not?” He withdrew a pack of Camels and offered it to me. “Want one?”

I shook my head. “I quit. Been chewing Nicorette nicotine gum for months.”

He pulled a cigarette. “Mind if I do?”

I shook my head again, not really thinking about the question.

I got up and paced the length of the basement; passed books, old clothes, and boxes of Samantha’s paints and canvases. I was crazy even to consider this. Traveling with Cody? I must’ve been out of my mind.

 

Cody reached into his front pocket and withdrew a girl’s neon-green sports watch. Drops of dried blood partially obscured its clear plastic face.

“4:25 a.m.,” he said. “We’ve made pretty good" ”  He paused and cocked his head. “Hear that?”

Air screamed with the distant wail of sirens. Cody jerked around in his seat and squinted to see in the dim arc of morning.

“Cut the lights!” he ordered.

My blood went cold. 

“Cut the f****n’ lights!”

I did as he said and slowed down.

“They can’t be after us!” I stated. “We’re two hundred miles away!”

The clamor of noise grew louder as it grew closer.

“Whatever the ruckus, we’re gonna be dealin’ with it soon enough,” Cody said, and his mouth twitched. “Unless… ”

He aimed a finger at a cluster of shoulder-high foliage about a hundred yards off the road. “Pull behind those.”

“That won’t hide us!” 

“Do it! It’s still dark enough! The cops’ attention is focused forward! They ain’t lookin’ to the side!”

I wiped sweat from my forehead with a badly trembling hand.

“I can’t do this!” I stated. “I can’t run from what you’ve done!”

“You will!” Cody looked at me with dark-as-death eyes. “This’ll work! Pull the car into those bushes!”

He gripped my shoulder. “Do it!”

Every inch of my skin prickled with terror. Several squad cars appeared in the far distance as a line of flashing reds and blues. I pulled off the road, eased into the brush, and avoided the brakes. I opened the door. The interior light blinked on.

Cody’s hand flew up and shattered it. Blood spurted from a gash in his palm.

“We’ve gotta cover the reflectors so their headlights don’t catch!” he stated.

He jumped out and ran around to the trunk. I followed.

“Get the left side!” he stated.

Fighting panic, I bent over the bumper using my body as cover. We remained like this eyes glued to the oncoming patrol cars. My whole world heightened to a feverish pitch. Before we knew it they were upon us and we stood in the fringes of their headlights. I held my breath as each car passed in a roar of dust and exhaust. The noise was like a wind.

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

Within a few terrifying seconds that felt like an eternity, they were gone and off into the morning. Coos of waking birds and sporadic chirps of retiring crickets enhanced the new calm.

“Told you it’d work,” Cody said. He spat. “The cops’ll think we’re travelin’ so they’ll focus their search ahead of us. We’ll stay here until there’s more traffic on the road and then blend into it for cover. Cops’ll be three states away by the time they figure out they’re chasin’ phantoms.”

Adrenaline coursed through my veins. I ran around to the front of the car, threw open the driver’s side door, and reached frantically for the Seagrams. I spun the cap and guzzled in choked gulps. Nausea panged my gut.

“Easy on that stuff,” Cody said.

I felt the alcohol warm my blood and numb our reality. The image of Samantha’s face became a beam of light left sifting through the darkness collecting inside my head.

 

“Niles?”

 “Huh?” I grunted, and opened my eyes.

Slowly, the real world effused. I lifted my head from the table. At first, I couldn’t make sense of the bizarre shapes and blurred objects. Then I closed my left eye and squinted with the right. I was in the kitchen. Samantha stood beside me with her arms folded. She cast a bitter eye over the half-empty Seagrams bottle and the line of spent beer cans.

“You’re drunk!”

I scratched my cheek, gradually coming more awake. Alcohol-induced pain poked at my brain. I groped around for some response but my voice stuck in my throat. I leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling. The room began to tailspin.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You always apologize after the fact!” she exclaimed. She inhaled and let the breath out sharply. “Niles, I’ve told you a thousand times that I hate the drinking! I’m not going to try and change you! You have to want to change! If you’re going to drink your life away then you’re going to do it alone!”

My heartbeat pounded in my head.

“And worse,” she continued. “You’ve invited someone like Cody Larson into our home. He’s been sitting in the living room since" ”

“The living room?”

I’d completely forgotten about my former friend’s presence. I stood fast. Flocks of bright dots sparkled across my sight. My legs went rubbery and nearly let out. I reached for the back of the chair for support.

She scowled. “You need to get control of yourself! No more drinking today!”

I nodded. “No more… I promise.”

She left the kitchen and headed down the hallway. I stood a moment, recalling my previous conversation with Cody. A golden opportunity had presented itself. A chance to pay off our debts. A chance at riches. A chance to give Samantha the life she deserved. I couldn’t shake the thought of having that much money from my mind. What it could do for us.

Of course, the adventure had risks. The crime of possessing the detached arm of a cop-killing drug lord, for one. Not to mention the million bucks worth of heroin we’d be carrying by the end of the journey.

I thought long and hard. Felt alcohol dulling my reasoning process.

Risk vs. riches? The answer came the way a shooting star brightens the dark gulf of the night sky. I had to go.

I took a wobbly step, and when my legs held me steady, took another, and staggered into the living room. Cody was slouched on the canvas chair staring with a blank expression at the television as he watched a voiceless Pat Sajak flicker on the screen. Oliver, my Beagle-Spaniel mix was sprawled on the floor with his snout on his forepaws.

The tick, tick, tick, of the wall clock was the only sound.

“Seven-thirty already,” I said, squinting at the clock and trying my best to appear sober. “Guess I lost track of time.”

“I’ve been waitin’ patiently for an answer,” Cody said, and turned in my direction. “But my patience is about spent. Have ya decided? Are ya in?”

I moved beside him, lowered my voice, and nodded. “Yes, I’m in.”

He looked at me steadily; his eyes deeply sunken and laced with tiny red veins.

“Good.” He pushed up from the chair and gestured toward the front door. “Let’s go!”

“Now? I can’t just up and go at the drop of a hat. I need time to get my things together. We’ll leave in the morning. You can spend the night in" ”

“No! We gotta move! Time ain’t a luxury we can afford. Not yet.”

“Is the money going somewhere?”  

“It ain’t the money I’m worried about,” he replied. “I don’t know how well Jake wrapped the smack and I can’t, I won’t, take a chance on it spoilin’ in the Seattle rain!”

The idea of junkies sticking needles with contaminated heroin into their arms and then collapsing like dominoes in the wet reflective streets turned me cold inside. Cody smiled, drew close, and draped his arm around my shoulders. The onion stench emitting from his pits was nearly eye-watering.

“We’re talkin’ about enough cash for you to buy the wife practically anythin’ her little heart desires,” he cooed. “Enough cash to change your lives forever. But we gotta go now.”

I shifted uncomfortably and backed away from his hold.

“Okay,” I said. “But give me an hour at least.  I need an hour.”

“You got one, but that’s it. You okay to drive?”

My stomach still spun, but with each passing moment I felt slightly more like myself. “I’ll be fine.” 

Cody withdrew a cigarette and swaggered toward the front door. He took a fast look into the kitchen and halted in the entranceway. “Got any aluminum foil?”

“Second cabinet, first shelf. Why?”

He grinned. “I got a treat guaranteed to make ya feel like a college kid again.”

                    Chapter  3

New Castle, Pennsylvania

Wednesday, April 22, 6:45 a.m.

 

 

 

 

Minutes passed.

Ten.

Fifteen.

Twenty.

Cars sped down the highway like mechanical ants following a scent trail. Overhead, clouds had raftered together and blotted out the sun.

“You okay?” Cody asked.

“You’re a monster,” I replied.

He smirked. “Monster is an interesting word. Do you think a blue jay is a monster because it kills other birds that nest in its territory? How about a whale that murders millions of Krill in a single mouthful? I’m no more a monster than a housecat who snuffs out a mouse. Or a tiger that takes down a gazelle. Killin’ is a tool necessary for survival in society. No, buddy, I’m not a monster. I’m enlightened! Top of the food chain!”

“You murdered those men! They’re not a food source!”

Cody squinted. “They’re food for worms.”

He spun his head and looked out the back window. “Traffic’s clear! Let’s get outta here!”

I started the car, unsnapped the emergency brake, rolled backward out of the shrubbery, shifted into drive, and gunned it up to the road. Air had turned moist and leaden.

We drove in silence for a couple miles and eventually merged with the flow of vehicles.

Suddenly, traffic slowed and then nearly stopped altogether. Horns blared. The line of stationary gridlock reached over the hill toward the horizon. I looked around for a way out; a side road or a turnoff. There was none. A feeling of doom sunk over my shoulders.

“Must be a somethin’ up ahead,” Cody said. He fished the map from his back pocket. “If I remember correctly there’s a fire road bypass around here. It’s rugged, but should take us over the Allegheny Mountains. We can rejoin the interstate in Ohio.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

He sparked a cigarette. “Then the frostproof will have to come into play.”

“The what?”

He didn’t reply. Just kept on smoking steadily.

 

* * *

    

Traffic stirred. We maneuvered slowly through the lanes, and eventually, to my tremendous relief, turned off the highway onto a swath of cleared vegetation that looked more like an old bike trail then a road. Wheel ruts were deep and rocky, with high, dry grass growing between them. A few vehicles tried to follow our lead but quickly backed up and turned around. They must have thought we were crazy to continue on such a desolate route.

The car bottomed out and tossed our heads against the roof.

“Easy,” Cody said. “This road’ll tear your car apart. Take it slow.”

“You sure this’ll get us to the highway?” I asked. “Cause we’re down to a quarter tank of gas.”

“A quarter tank will get us there,” Cody replied. “It merges just over this next ridge.”

The tires hit another deep pit. Mud sprayed onto the side windows.

“Careful!” he shouted. “Watch the road!”

I gripped the steering wheel. The car started to shimmy and a low, steady thump emitted from the left side of the wheel well.

“S**t!” he said. “That don’t sound good.”

I stopped the car and poked my head out the window. Dread fell heavy.

“The tire’s flat,” I said, and tried to keep my voice even.

“I figured that,” Cody replied. “Let’s get the spare. And hurry. We gotta make up for this lost time.”

I looked away afraid to meet his eye. A few yards down the roadway a crow landed, pecked at some carrion, and then flew off.

“There isn’t one,” I said.

An unsettling grimace came over his face. “I didn’t just hear that.”

“Samantha ran over a nail last week and we couldn’t afford a replacement tire. So I put the spare from this car onto hers.”

He got out of the Sentra and stepped around to examine the damage.

In a sudden burst of fury, he kicked the driver’s side door and dented the metal. He kicked it again, and again, spewing his anger in bursts. He leaned inside the window, across me, and rummaged through the ashtray. He withdrew a mashed cigarette butt, lit it, huffed two drags, and then threw the remainder onto the ground. 

I opened the door and slowly got out of the car.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

The whine of a siren made us both jump. I whirled my head around and saw a cloud of dust coming our way. Ahead of the dust was a police cruiser. Cody leaned down, pretended to scratch his leg, and unhooked the .38. He stood upright, stretched, and discreetly tucked the weapon into the back waistband of his pants.

The cruiser pulled up and stopped beside us. An officer rolled down the window and hung a meaty arm on the rim. The officer’s quiescent features were bloated and his gray hair sparse. In fact, he looked remarkably like Boss Hog from the 1970’s television show The Dukes of Hazard. Had I not been so petrified I might have even chuckled at the uncanny resemblance.

“Car trouble?” the officer asked.

“You could say that,” Cody replied. “Tire’s flat.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” the officer said, with suspicion in his tone. “This road is for municipal vehicles only. What’s a coupla’ guys like you doing way out here, anyway?”

Cody flashed him a disarming smile. “We were just tryin’ to make up for lost time. Got caught in a traffic jam a ways back and we stumbled onto this. Didn’t know it was off-limits.”

“Didn’t know, huh?” The officer clamped his fingers underneath the window frame and pulled his mass from the cruiser. “You…” he said to me. “Where’re you coming from?”

Fear caused my tongue to feel oversized and I could hardly say the words I’d spoken a thousand times before. “Chalfont County. About thirty miles outside of Philadelphia.”

The officer stepped a little closer. He appeared tense. He looked down at our misshapen tire, the damaged right side, and the bullet-smashed side mirror. He eyeballed Cody’s T-shirt, streaked with threads of dried blood, and unsnapped his holster.

“You boys turn around and put your hands on the hood,” the officer said.

“We haven’t done anything wrong!” Cody protested, and stepped toward the door.

The officer’s hand drew to his gun. “Stop!”

Cody froze. His eyes narrowed into slits. “I was going to get the registration.”

“Keep your hands in view! I’ll deal with that in a moment. Get against the hood! You boys stay like that while I call this in. If you ain’t done nothing wrong then you’ll be on your way shortly.”

“Unit 453,” the cruiser’s radio squawked. “Copy.”

The officer turned his head toward his squad car. Cody jumped forward, whipped his leg up, and roundhouse kicked the officer in the face. The officer pinwheeled backward. His hands flailed and reached for the open squad car door. He missed and toppled to the ground. Cody ran up and dug the muzzle of his own .38 into the officer’s glistening forehead.

“Don’t!” I screamed.

I lunged at him, and then stopped when I caught sight of the demented look on his face.

“Let’s go!” I stated. “Cuff him to the car! Let’s get out of here!”

Cody turned his head slowly and looked at me with craziness in his eyes. “We’ve got a flat, remember?”

Cody turned back and looked into the officer’s horrified face. The cruiser’s radio crackled white noise

“Unit 453, copy,” the radio called. “This is Lieutenant Wayne McGovern of the Pennsylvania State Police. Respond, copy.”

“Answer that!” Cody ordered. “Tell ‘em everythin’s fine!”

The officer remained a sprawled statue of fright.

“Move!” Cody yelled. “I ain’t foolin’!”

Cody kept the pistol level as the officer shuffled to his knees, crawled toward the radio, and then took the microphone in his hand. His jaw opened and seemed to lock up.

“Unit 453, copy!” the radio squawked more urgently.

“Speak!” Cody ordered. “Answer them or die!”

The officer slowly depressed the mic.

“C-copy,” the officer stuttered. “Th-th- this is unit f-four-five-three.”

“Unit 453,” the radio responded. “I’m supervising the case of the Harrisburg homicides. The suspects may be entering your district at this time. All units in the surrounding counties are on high alert for suspicious vehicles, copy.”

Tense moments passed. Eyes flashed to faces. Faces flashed to the radio.

“Unit 453, respond. Copy.”

“Say somethin’!” Cody ordered, and waggled the gun. The side of his mouth twitched. “Say something now!”

The officer made a writhing grimace.

“I’m not f****n’ around!” Cody stated. “You have three seconds to answer! One… ” He paused. “Two... ”

He pushed the muzzle hard against the officer’s forehead. Sweat flowed from the officer’s face and blended with the blood leaking from his broken nose. His left eye had ballooned shut.

“Copy!” the officer uttered in a terrorized squawk. “Th-this... ” The officer’s Adam’s apple jerked up and down as he spoke. “...is unit 453. P-please advise. C-copy.”

“453, we’ve alerted all units in your vicinity to this crisis and who we believe the suspects are. We’ve compared prints from a homicide in Seattle, Washington and a double murder in Tiffin, Ohio and one in Billings, Indiana. They all point to a fugitive named Cody Larson, who escaped from the Washington State Department of Corrections Psychiatric Wing several weeks ago. Use caution should you encounter the fugitive. Larson is in an extremely violent and psychotic state of mind. We believe Larson is traveling with someone. The suspect or suspects may be armed and are certainly dangerous. Copy.”

I stood by my car, my mind reeling. The bloodshed, the brutality, the killing, the madness; it all began to make sense. Cody was insane.

 The officer’s eyes bugged out in sudden terror as Cody took a step backward and aimed the .38.

“No!” I shouted.

“Oh, Jesus!” the officer screamed, and lifted an arm to protect his face. “Help me! Oh Christ!”

An explosive crack, like a baseball player hitting a line drive, echoed through the air. A finger flew off the officer’s hand and a small, black-rimmed hole appeared in his head, followed by a syrupy stream of blood. The officer fell over; a sack of bones.

All the strength left my body. My stomach clenched. My legs gave out and I slid down along the side of the Sentra to sit in the mud. I started to cry.

Cody squatted beside the officer, felt his wrist for a pulse, then let the hand drop. He stood, stepped back, and fired another round into the officer’s chest, at the heart. The corpse jittered from the impact.

“Now he’s dead,” Cody affirmed, and raised his eyes to me. “I don’t think I’m in an extremely violent and psychotic state of mind, do you?”

“Unit 453! Unit 453, copy! Copy! 45" ”

Cody switched off the radio. Tears streamed down my face. Nausea twisted my gut. I felt myself slipping into a shocked faint.

“Oh, get over it,” Cody said. He reached into the cruiser and pulled the communications radio from its housing. “Whadaya think he was gonna do? Let two guys with a battered, bullet-riddled car drivin’ around the back roads of western PA go on their way after that report? I just saved you from a lifetime in prison. My actions will allow you to see your lovely wife and home again. So, a ‘thank you’ at this point seems mildly appropriate instead of the ‘I hate you’ scowl that’s on your face.”

The curtain of my mind drew closed.

“I said a ‘thank you’ would be appropriate, don’t you think?” His voice got louder. “I said, don’t you think? Goddammit give me some appreciation!”

I didn’t want to look at him, at his face, so at ease with this slaughter.

“Hey, thanks a lot!” I spat. “Thanks for getting me involved!”

“Don’t mention it,” he replied, in sudden, good-natured reproof. He held up a 12-gauge shotgun he’d taken from the rack bolted to the cruiser’s back window. “This is the kind of power I like, a large-scale damage inflictor. Even this guy’s sidearm is an old-style Colt .45. It’ll put a hole the size of a golf ball in ya. Wonder why this backwoods boy scout carries so much firepower?”

“Probably to use against killers like you,” I muttered.

“Ya think?” Cody came toward me in such a rush my heart fluttered. “What’re the odds that he’d actually face someone like me? A human more intelligent, more enlightened; a superior animal! Talk about not being prepared. Talk about being caught off-guard. Stupid a*s deserves everything I" ”

“Shut up!”

He glared at me.

“The guy’s dead!” I shouted. “You killed him!” I looked down at my hands and wept openly. “You f*****g killed him, Jesus Christ!”

“Okay, Florence Night’ngale, we’ll leave it alone.” Cody crouched next to the cruiser, his attention now focused on the tire. “We gotta work fast. That MacNamera character has probably sent notice to dispatch that there hasn’t been a response.”

My hands and legs trembled. I got up and reached into the Sentra’s glove compartment for a piece of Nicorette. Cody took the keys off the dead officer and opened the cruiser’s trunk.

“D****t!” I exclaimed.

“What?”

My gaze slid uneasily to the blood oozing from the officer’s head.

“It’s nothing,” I said. 

“Yeah, I chewed your gum. I’m outta smokes.”

Cody pulled the jack and the lug wrench and started work changing the tire. He rigged the cruiser’s oversized rim onto the Sentra’s brake assembly and pounded it in with his fist.

“We’ll stop at the first market we see and get you some gum and me a few packs, okay?” he said. “The tire’s ready, let’s go.”

He sounded as if we were kids on a summer outing in need of supplies. 

 

* * *

 

We stopped after a dozen back road miles. Cody hopped out, sprung the trunk, put the police radio between the front seats and ran a wire to the battery. A red light popped on and the device crackled to life.

“Now we’ll know what’s going on with the cops,” he said, and flicked the dial until we heard police chatter. “We’ll stay one step ahead.”

I didn’t reply, just stared ahead through the dull afternoon sunlight.

If you enjoyed this sample, please purchase the book using the link below or for all other ereaders at my blog. Thank you.

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0083WSXL0

ALWAYS WRITING

http://www.neilostroff.blogspot.com