Night Sun

by Tom Barber

  ‘Don’t know, but he’s on his way here.’

  ‘He’s still alive?’

  ‘Barely. He had his neck padded up and bandaged when EMTs reached him. Cell phone lying in the dirt beside him.’

  Archer frowned. ‘Who applied the field dressing? Same person who called it in?’

  ‘No-one was at the scene when law-enforcement got there. Maybe someone saw the Loughlins running back to the main road or something. Got curious then found the truck. Patched him up best they could, used the driver’s own phone to dial 911.’

  ‘And didn’t want to stick around after making the call?’

  ‘Might’ve been scared that whoever did that to the driver could come back.’

  As they talked, the pair saw an ambulance pull up and medical staff run out to the vehicle. ‘Time to get out of here and let local law-enforcement handle this,’ Archer said, as they both headed back into the hospital to fetch their prisoner. ‘The brothers aren’t our problem. Let’s focus on the one who is.’

  But as the two detectives walked down the corridors and arrived at Lupinetti’s room again, they found the bed empty. One of the two guards was standing outside the bathroom door which was shut. There was no sign of the other.

  ‘Time’s up, Frank,’ the guard said, knocking on the door when he saw Archer and Marquez reappear. ‘Pull up your pants and get out here, man.’

  ‘You uncuffed him?’ Marquez asked quickly.

  ‘Said he wanted to use the john before the bus ride. There’s no window in there. It’s cool.’

  The guard realized immediately from their reaction that he’d made a big mistake. Archer brushed past him and tried the handle but it didn’t open; Marquez dropped down and looked at the gap under the door but couldn’t see any feet.

  ‘Break it!’ she said, making room for Archer to step back and ram the door. He smashed it back on the second attempt.

  Frank Lupinetti was gone.

  Up in the crawlspace five rooms down, Lupinetti was working his way along as fast as he could when he stopped and as quietly as possible, removed another slat to check below.

  Peering down cautiously, he saw the bathroom was unoccupied, so he quickly lowered himself onto the toilet before slowly opening the door. The room it belonged to was also empty so he headed swiftly for the door then eased it open.

  He couldn’t see anyone in the corridor so he slipped out and started to swiftly make his way towards where he remembered the ambulance had brought him in earlier. But as he passed another room he stopped, seeing the elderly male occupant was asleep, his head and one leg heavily bandaged.

  As he looked in at the patient, Lupinetti heard a commotion coming from the room he’d just escaped from, so cut inside before closing the door quietly. He went quickly to the closet where he found the guy’s clothes, and slid a pair of jeans off a hanger, but as he pulled them on, saw something even more useful resting on the table beside the man’s bed.

  Marquez had drawn her pistol and started to quickly check all the rooms in the ward, unknowingly heading away from the room Lupinetti was in, while Archer climbed onto the basin in the bathroom and pulled himself up so he could see into the crawlspace, having immediately realized how their prisoner had fooled the guard and gotten away.

  There was light coming from a space a few doors down. He dropped back, drew his Sig Sauer and started to check each room. In the fourth, he found a man with a bandaged head and injured leg fast asleep.

  But the locker in the room was open and so was the window.

  To make sure, Archer checked under the bed and had just cleared the bathroom when the guard who’d allowed Lupinetti to escape appeared in the doorway. ‘Search the other rooms just in case and warn the front desk!’ Archer told him, as Marquez joined them. ‘I think he already got out,’ he told her, looking at the open window.

  Marquez reached it first and climbed out, jumping to the ground below as Archer followed a second later.

  In his prison jumpsuit top and stolen jeans, Lupinetti was now just ten feet from the front gate when he heard running footsteps behind him.

  ‘STOP!’ a familiar voice yelled.

  He looked back and saw Archer bearing down on him, Marquez a few paces behind. In desperation Frank turned, intending to keep running, but caught his foot on an uneven concrete slab and fell.

  Archer stopped and raised his pistol double-handed, lowering his aim. ‘You move, I’ll put one through your knee, Frank,’ he warned, and Lupinetti sagged, knowing his brief bid for freedom was over. Marquez ran up and pushed the attempted runaway down to the ground before cuffing him again. As Archer holstered his weapon and moved forward to help haul him back to his feet, a black and white bus turned off the main road and swept past them before stopping at the entrance for the hospital.

  Lupinetti’s transport to Pennsylvania had just arrived.

  NINE

  The bus was a Ford E350 with US Extradition Prisoner Transport Unit printed on the side, the company’s circular insignia beside the lettering. Five minutes after arriving at the hospital, the driver was standing outside the vehicle with Archer and Marquez while another agent inside kept an eye on the passengers.

  ‘You got this approved pretty late in the day,’ the driver told the two detectives. ‘Don’t normally add pick-ups this short notice. Your guy must be a real piece of work.’

  ‘Oh, he is,’ Archer said, as he and Marquez looked through the glass at Lupinetti; even from outside, they could hear him arguing with the agent on-board as the man double-checked his cuffs and the chain they’d been secured to, which was fixing the ex-cop to a metal bar positioned under his seat. The jeans he’d stolen from the hospital patient asleep in the bed during his brief escape attempt had been returned, now replaced by his orange prison pants again. ‘We’re here to help keep an eye on him.’

  ‘The warden passed that on, right?’ Marquez asked.

  ‘Yeah, but afraid I’ve only got one spare seat. We’re picking up a full house tonight.’

  ‘We’ve got our Department wheels here,’ Marquez said to Archer. ‘Why don’t we just follow in that? No reason to stick around town anymore.’

  ‘It wasn’t running right when I brought it over from Gatlin earlier,’ he replied. ‘I think something’s up with the engine from the journey yesterday.’

  ‘For real?’ She paused. ‘I did push it kinda hard once I was out of New York. I was pissed. Frank has that effect on people.’

  ‘We can’t risk it breaking down on the way.’

  ‘If it does, we ain’t stopping to wait for you,’ the bus driver said. ‘Can’t hang around in the backass of nowhere until AAA show up.’

  ‘So should we split up again?’ Marquez said to Archer. ‘One of us stays and gets it looked at. Other takes the bus?’

  ‘I’ll go, if you’re cool with it,’ he replied. ‘You got pepper sprayed earlier. Take a few hours to rest up.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Looking forward to it,’ he said dryly as they both heard more profanity and complaining coming from the bus.

  ‘Sure you wanna come?’ the driver asked. ‘We’re not picking up choirboys on the way. They might hear what happened at Gatlin and start getting ideas. These rides can wear you down.’

  ‘Then it could help having an extra pair of hands.’

  The extradition agent shrugged. ‘Up to you. I got the room but I need to get rolling. Roadblocks are gonna hold us up some and these boys have to be delivered before the sun comes up. We’re on a schedule.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow in PA,’ Marquez said to Archer. ‘Or the day after if the car needs overnight attention. I’ll clear it with Shep and tell him what we’re doing.’ He nodded and they bumped fists. ‘Keep a close eye,’ she said quietly, looking behind him at Lupinetti in the bus, who’d finally quietened down and was watching them instead. ‘You know how he is.’

  Archer nodded. He jogged over to the Ford and collected the bag containing his belonging
s before tossing her the keys, and then stepped up onto the bus, the driver having restarted the engine and now waiting for him.

  ‘Yo, you forgot something,’ Marquez suddenly called out. She ran back to the NYPD car and collected an item from inside. When she returned, Archer saw it was a blue can of Pringles she’d bought at the gas station earlier that morning. She threw it up to him. ‘Dinner. Don’t want you getting hungry.’

  He smiled and held the can up to thank her as the door closed, and moments later the transport started the slow turn out of the hospital parking lot.

  Along a rural road towards the western edge of the State’s border with Kentucky, a local fishing enthusiast had just arrived home from a day out at the Powell River, making the most of the dying days of summer. Relaxed after the hours he’d spent casting a line, and looking forward to a shower before he headed into work at a local bar, he was just unlocking his back door when another, moving shadow appeared on the wood in front of him.

  Craig Loughlin hit the man over the head with a piece of firewood so hard that it killed him with one blow. The fisherman smashed into the door and collapsed, dropping his tackle box and line as the youngest Loughlin watched him go down, knowing he was dead; he’d wanted more of the adrenaline rush he’d felt when killing those two dumbass prisoners earlier when they broke free from the labor camp, and understood more now why his brothers had done what they did to that college bitch four years ago. It had sent Craig higher than any drug he’d tried in his life, and that was more than a few.

  Brooks and Billy emerged from the shadows behind him, all three men still in their bloodied and dirt-stained white t-shirts and BOP orange jumpsuits; they kept watch as Craig finished unlocking the door then the older two carried the dead fisherman into his home, the car they’d followed him in abandoned on the other side of the road.

  They paused, waiting for an alarm, but everything was quiet. Brooks kicked the door shut before he and Billy dumped the body on the floor, then they hit the lights and started to look around. Craig went straight to the kitchen, snatched a box of Ritz crackers off the side counter and started shoveling the contents into his mouth. Billy joined him, opening the fridge door and taking out a two liter bottle of Pepsi before drinking from it and belching loudly.

  As the pair began to stuff their faces with whatever else they could find, in the main room Brooks turned on the TV and clicked until he reached the local news on Channel 11. ‘We famous?’ Craig asked through a mouthful of crackers.

  ‘Local celebrities,’ he said, seeing their mugshots. ‘Bag up anything we can take in the car, especially food and water. Look for money too.’

  His brothers found some plastic bags and started filling them with supplies, continuing to chow down as they worked. Meanwhile, Brooks looked at his prison jumpsuit, stained from the old lady’s blood when he’d sat in the car, and headed upstairs. After he double-checked each room to make sure they really were alone, he went into the main bedroom and used the landline to call a number, the first three digits 315, the area code for north central NY State.

  ‘It’s Brooks,’ he told his cousin, Cusick. ‘We made it out.’

  ‘I heard. Bet you boys are celebrating.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘The plan was Monday. What happened? Why’d you pull it forward?’

  ‘Things changed.’

  ‘Didn’t go quite the way you intended though, huh?’

  ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘I got some information for you,’ his cousin replied, as Brooks listened.

  As Marquez walked back into the Jonesville hospital and looked up local mechanics and auto-shops on her cell, knowing it was going to be hard to get the Ford looked at this late on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, an update came onto Channel 11 concerning the prison escape.

  Local woman found dead off Route 58, Gatlin prison escapees lead suspects. Marquez glanced around for a remote but not seeing one, moved closer to the TV before manually bumping up the volume. ‘-discovered in one of the cornfields off the highway,’ the lead deputy Marshal who’d been at the prison earlier told the media. Looked like they were going from being bystanders in this situation to taking the lead now murder outside the walls had occurred. ‘She has no identification on her so we still have no clue of her identity, but if anyone in the local area hasn’t heard from a loved one matching her description, please call local police immediately. She is gray-haired, looks to be in her 80s, five foot two-’

  ‘C’mon, man,’ Marquez muttered. She already knew about the woman’s murder so it was no surprise, but still sickening. ‘Killing an eighty year old woman?’

  ‘No shame,’ a voice said, and she saw one of the hospital guards had walked up, watching the report too. Marquez didn’t answer. ‘Sorry we screwed up with your prisoner,’ the man apologized. ‘I went to take a leak while AJ stayed with him in the room. Your guy didn’t seem like he was gonna run.’

  ‘We got him back and he’s gone. Don’t worry about it.’

  He nodded but then looked back at the TV. ‘Lady must’ve called the cops when she found the truck and they killed her for it. What you get for being a Good Samaritan. World ain’t fair.’

  The bartender Craig had killed was a good foot shorter than all three Loughlin brothers and much slighter; upstairs, Brooks swore as he tried to button one of the man’s shirts in vain, tossing it aside before raiding the rest of the closet. Inside the bathroom, Billy was now shaving off his beard on his brother’s orders, using an electric razor he’d found charging in a socket. Tufts of hair fell to the basin and floor.

  ‘Don’t buzz the dome yet,’ Brooks called through to him.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Need to save it, case we gotta change appearance again later.’ Brooks tried to pull on a pair of Levi’s, but there was no way they were going to fit either. He gave up and yanked the jeans off before throwing them on the floor just as Craig appeared in the doorway, looking very pleased with himself.

  ‘Dead man had thirty two bucks in his wallet,’ he told them.

  ‘Cards?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Leave ’em,’ Brooks said. ‘Same as the cell phone. Too easy to track.’

  ‘TV says there are roadblocks all over the county.’

  ‘They’ll have them up on the interstate soon. We needed to get out of Virginia twenty minutes ago.’ Brooks grabbed a John Deere cap that had been hanging on a hook in the closet and threw it to Craig, taking a cold weather beanie for himself and pulling it over his head.

  ‘Before we go, you gotta see something,’ Craig said, still grinning. His obvious excitement got his brothers curious so they followed him back down the stairs and then to the basement.

  A gun safe was positioned against the wall, the keys hanging from the lock, the door open. The interior was packed with shotguns, rifles, all sorts of handguns and boxes of corresponding ammunition.

  ‘Oh baby,’ Billy whispered.

  ‘We struck oil, boys,’ Craig said, taking a rifle from the rack and lifting it to look down the sights. Without delay, Billy dragged a backpack from one of the shelves, tipped out its contents and then started to load it with ammunition and the guns.

  ‘We’re back on the road in the guy’s truck in five minutes,’ Brooks ordered, as his brothers stripped the shelves of weapons. In the meantime, an old coiled hose had drawn Brooks’ attention in the corner of the room. He hooked it under his arm, then took a handheld power drill and box of nails, before heading back up the stairs.

  True to his word, five minutes later the three fugitives were driving away in the dead bartender’s car, the vehicle loaded with food, water and enough guns and ammunition for them to be considered a roaming militia. The three sibling escapees were already ahead of Lee County’s various police authorities.

  But any law-enforcement at the State border who tried to stop the car were now going to pay a very heavy price for getting in the brothers’ way.

  TEN

  The prisoner tran
sport had been on the road for almost two and a half hours since its pitstop in Jonesville to collect Lupinetti and dusk was beginning to steal over the highways, the shadows starting to lengthen. Archer, the driver and the other extradition agent had been engaging in some sporadic conversation; he’d learned their last names were Spencer and Harrington, and they’d been doing the job for three and four years respectively. The men had shared some of their history but took care not to reveal any personal details that could be overheard by the small group of prisoners sitting in the back.

  ‘Can never know what the boys we pick up might be planning,’ the agent tasked with watching the passengers, Harrington, advised Archer quietly, taking a few Pringles from the can the NYPD detective offered. ‘Three of our agents got killed on a transport two years ago.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Lifer being taken to Forrest City from Petersburg picked his cuffs, then stabbed an agent in the neck with one of the metal arms on the bracelets. Stole the man’s gun, shot the other two on board. Took four days for police to corner him. He went down firing.’ The story made Archer think of Craig Loughlin and his escape from Gatlin’s satellite camp earlier that morning, using the cuffs in the same way to rip open a man’s throat. He had more questions, curious about the extradition agents’ line of work, but as they drove deeper into Kentucky, he noticed both men started to quieten as they approached their next pick-up, so he did the same.

  Leaning back in his seat, he glanced at a TV monitor fixed to the dash which showed a four-way split shot from a camera positioned in each corner of the bus’s interior, focused on the prisoners. He could see and vaguely hear two of the three inmates back there chatting; to be more accurate, one was doing all the talking, the other forced to sit there and listen. From what Archer could catch, the conversation was revolving around a visit the prisoner had made to a brothel down here in Harlan County when he was nineteen, the man giving the experience a five star review. He’d also tried unsuccessfully to engage with Lupinetti earlier which Archer had noticed, but after a response containing a four and three letter word, both prisoners had taken the hint to leave him alone.