Caught in the Middle

by Gayle Roper

  “I don’t know. I was running for my life. But the police sent emergency vehicles to help him.”

  Suddenly we heard Sergeant Poole’s walkie-talkie squawk. I couldn’t make out the words across the parking lot between us, but whatever was said energized him. He signaled one of his men, issued orders and began to climb into the car he’d been hiding behind.

  I climbed over Curt and limped across the lot as fast as I could. “Where are you going?” I demanded.

  “To Brandywine Steel. Andy’s holed up there and keeps threatening to kill himself.”

  I grabbed the rear door handle. “I’m coming with you. He’ll talk to me.”

  Sergeant Poole groaned, then nodded reluctantly. “You may be right.”

  I climbed in, only to be pushed forcefully from behind as Curt climbed in after me.

  “Do you think I’m letting her go alone?” he said to the frowning sergeant.

  The sergeant rolled his eyes. “I don’t think she’s alone, unless I count for nothing.”

  “I’m coming.” Curt slammed the door behind him.

  I studied Curt, torn as usual between irritation and delight that he felt I needed care. Noticing little droplets of mist on his dark ringlets, I stifled the renegade desire to brush them away before he caught cold.

  It’s hard to keep your seat in the back of a police car with a driver who is practicing all the fast-driving skills they ever taught him at the police academy and with no door handles or anything to grab on to. When we swirled into the lot at Brandywine Steel and screeched to a halt, Curt and I picked ourselves up off the floor and waited to be let out.

  It took a knock on the window to remind Sergeant Poole to free us. As we climbed out, a cop ran up to the sergeant.

  “It’s not as bad as we thought,” he said. “We think the kid’s bluffing.”

  “Where is he?” Sergeant Poole asked.

  “In a cupboard in the cubbyhole where he works.”

  “Why do you think he’s bluffing?”

  “We don’t think he has a weapon.”

  “Do you know this?”

  “No, we think this,” the cop said. “We asked him to tell us about his gun, and he mumbled some things that you would only expect from a kid who’s not really familiar with firearms. He messed up brand names and caliber and bullets and where he got the gun—everything. It sounds like more than just stress-induced confusion to us.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “When he killed Pat, he just used what was at hand, a wrench. And he didn’t have a gun when I was here earlier.”

  Sergeant Poole grunted and looked thoughtful.

  “Isn’t he wounded?” I asked. “I thought he had been shot.”

  The officer nodded. “He’s hurt, all right. We found him by following the trail of blood to this cupboard.”

  “Let me talk to him,” I pleaded. “I’ve talked to him before, and I think I can get him to come out. Please?”

  Sergeant Poole grunted again and thought some more. I watched him with a thudding heart.

  In a matter of minutes, I was back in Andy’s work area, though this time the B-movie atmosphere of impending doom was missing. All the lights were on, revealing the dirt and grime of an everyday workplace.

  I swallowed the great surge of bile that rose when I saw the huge red stain on the concrete. Andy’s blood.

  “He’s in there.” One of the officers pointed to the bank of cupboards Andy had glanced toward when he told me he had been hiding here since the killing.

  “Go ahead,” Sergeant Poole told me, and I was conscious that everyone became silent and totally focused on me.

  “Andy?” I said as I knelt in front of the dirty, once tan, now grimy-gray cupboard. I tried to keep my voice from shaking, to sound assured and comforting. “It’s me.”

  “Merry?” A sob came on the end of my name.

  “Andy, are you all right?”

  “Help me,” he whispered. “Don’t let them get me.”

  “Oh, Andy.” I glanced around at the officers, their guns either drawn or hanging on their hips, and at all the emergency medical personnel hanging back by the welding shields but watching intently. Don’t let them get me. There was a piece of true Andy realism.

  Andy groaned. “He shot me!” The shock and disbelief were audible even in his raspy whisper. “It’s my shoulder. I never knew something could hurt this bad.” And he sobbed again.

  “Andy,” I said, wishing I could see his face instead of just the cupboard door. “You need medical help.”

  “No,” Andy begged. “Don’t let them get me! Don’t turn me in! I’ll shoot myself!” He began to cry, and my heart twisted.

  “Andy,” I said with as much authority as I could muster, hoping I was right, “we both know you don’t have a gun.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked. His voice was a whine, and I felt a surge of triumph. He sounded just like a young Sam used to when he made empty threats to his big sister, and I called his bluff.

  “You’ve never had a gun. That’s why you used the wrench.”

  He didn’t argue the point, and I saw Sergeant Poole nod in relief, a few of his craggy worry wrinkles smoothing.

  “Merry,” Andy whispered conspiratorially, “I just need till Monday. My mom will get the money then, and I’ll get the money from her and go away. No one will ever know I was here.”

  “I’m opening the door, Andy,” I said. I reached for the knob. “Don’t be afraid. I just need to see you to be sure you’re okay.”

  I slid the door to the side just a fraction and looked at his pale, terrified face, as colorless as the fog swirling outside. He was twisted into a small space in a corkscrew position that must have been uncomfortable even when his body was whole. Feeling overwhelmed by the foolishness and futility of all his choices, I reached out and touched his face. I started. “Andy, you have a fever! You need to go to the hospital!”

  “No,” he said pathetically. “I can’t! They’ll put me in jail.”

  “But you’re sick. And you can’t run your whole life.”

  “Yes, I can,” he said pathetically as a great chill racked him. “I won’t go to jail!”

  I slid the door open farther and took his limp hand. “Come on, Andy. Give yourself up. You really have no choice.”

  Suddenly Sergeant Poole was beside me. “Thanks, Merry. We’ll take over now.”

  When Andy heard the new voice, his hand, still in mine, convulsed.

  “It’ll be okay,” I whispered to him, knowing it never would but not knowing what else to say.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, totally defeated.

  I stepped back, and Sergeant Poole moved in. He bent down, assessed the situation in a glance and signaled for the paramedics.

  I stood with Curt, watching as they carefully levered Andy free. He screamed a couple of times as his injured arm was jostled in the process, and the sound pierced me. Curt slid his arm around me in comfort, and I leaned gratefully against him.

  As the ambulance crew and the police carried Andy away, I thought I heard him say, “Oh, God, help me.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “You need to go to the hospital, too.” Sergeant Poole, his hand on his car door handle, looked sternly at me.

  I shook my head. “Not yet. We’re going back to the paper with you.”

  “Merry,” he said in a combination of exasperation and resignation.

  Curt and I piled into the backseat before he could argue further, and the sergeant drove sedately back to The News.

  Our success with Andy had made Sergeant Poole talkative. “I’m glad you talked him out, Merry. And I’m glad he didn’t have a gun to follow through on his threat to kill himself. There’s nothing I hate more than suicides. People taking the quick way out, never thinking about the people they leave behind, the problems they cause for the moms and dads or spouses and kids. To me it’s the epitome of selfishness. I hate dealing with it.”

  “A very final solution to
temporary problems,” I said. “Anyone who does it must be desperate.”

  “No excuse,” the sergeant said as we pulled up behind the paper.

  But suddenly I wasn’t listening. Instead, my eyes were on the officers stationed on either side of the back stoop. I could see through the wispy fog that they were pressed flat against the building, their guns at the ready.

  The sergeant saw them, too, and threw himself out of the car. As he hurried past, he grabbed our door handle and yanked it open. Then, crouching, he raced forward until he was behind the car closest to the building.

  I looked at Curt and he at me. We hustled out of the car and ducked behind it. I had no desire to be closer. I just wanted to see what happened, not be involved in it.

  Suddenly the back door of The News flew open and a man stepped out. Both officers jumped out from their positions against the building, yelling, “Freeze!” in a roar that would have frozen me.

  It paralyzed the man emerging, stopping him with one foot on the stoop and the other poised over the top step. The officers rushed him, flinging him around to face the door.

  “Assume the position!” they yelled as Sergeant Poole ran forward, followed by Curt and me.

  Sergeant Poole was having trouble not laughing as he sputtered, “Wrong man, wrong man.”

  “Wrong man?” said a female officer whose name tag read Schumann. “Are you sure?”

  “Wrong man,” I said, enjoying the situation almost as much as the sergeant.

  The erstwhile arresting officers stepped back sheepishly as Mac Carnuccio turned slowly around. He looked malevolently at Sergeant Poole. “I’ll get you for this, William,” he said.

  “I don’t doubt it,” Sergeant Poole said with a happy smile, completely unintimidated by Mac’s wrath. “But it’ll be worth it, whatever you do. You were scared spitless.”

  “I was not!” Mac contested hotly.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Sergeant Poole was unconvinced. “Now tell me. Is Eldredge still in there?”

  “Yeah,” Mac said as he tried to understand what was going on. “He’s writing away at his PC.”

  The sergeant nodded, pleased. “I just hope he didn’t hear the yelling out here.”

  “Don is many things,” said Mac, “but deaf isn’t one of them.”

  “Are we going in after him?” asked Schumann. “He’s in there alone now, isn’t he?” She looked at Mac for confirmation.

  “In after him?” Mac repeated.

  Sergeant Poole shook his head. “Still too dangerous. We’ll just wait out here. Positions, everyone.”

  “William!” Mac said, preparing to make a stand right there on the stoop until he had his answers.

  “Long story, Mac. Just get out of the way! And fast!”

  We all turned to go back to hiding when Mac noticed me for the first time. “Merry!” He started to follow me.

  “This is my story, big guy,” I said, just so there’d be no misunderstanding.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as he ducked behind our car with Curt and me. “Don said he was worried about you. He seemed to think you’d been hurt.”

  “That part was right,” Curt said with steel in his voice.

  “Hey, William,” Mac called across the open area between the rows of parked cars. “I hear you got the Gershowitz kid.”

  “Shut up, Mac!” I grabbed his arm while Sergeant Poole frantically signaled for silence.

  “Cute hair,” Mac said as he eyed my fog-wilted head. “And you’ve got grease on your face, beautiful.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re incorrigible.” Then what he’d said struck me. “What did you say?”

  “Cute hair. You’ve got grease—”

  “Not that. Before.”

  “Don’s worried about you.”

  I shook my head wildly.

  “They got Andy?”

  I grabbed his arm again, this time in a vise. “How do you know that?”

  “I heard it on the police band radio we have in the office. They said something like—” and he took on the tinny, squawky sound of the radio “—all units, stand down. Suspect under arrest and on way to hospital. Repeat, murder suspect caught and under restraint.”

  “You heard that? In the office? And Don heard it, too?”

  Mac nodded, not understanding my agitation.

  “What did Don say when he heard it?”

  “‘That’s it. That’s all there is, folks.”’

  “He didn’t say anything at all?”

  “He said, ‘That’s it. That’s all there is, folks.’ Oh, and he also gave me his car keys and asked me to get something out of his trunk. ‘Just put the keys under the floor mat when you’re done,’ he said. ‘Be sure Merry’s all right.’ See? That’s why I thought you were hurt.”

  I felt my blood congeal. “Sergeant Poole,” I yelled, rushing from my hiding place. “He knows. Don knows you’ve got Andy. And he sent Mac to let me out of the trunk. And he said that it was all over!”

  Sergeant Poole understood what I was saying. I could see the terrible possibility flood his face.

  “I hate it!” he yelled as he pulled himself to his feet. We raced for the back stoop and pulled the door open.

  “Don’t do it!” the sergeant yelled just as the single, fatal shot tore the night.

  I flinched as if I were the one who was shot and flattened myself against the wall to let the police charge past. I had no need to hurry, no desire to see what was awaiting us. Curt stood with me, but Mac rushed into the newsroom behind the police.

  I heard Sergeant Poole bellow, “Don’t anyone touch anything! Call for the crime-scene unit.”

  Squaring my shoulders, I took several deep breaths to keep from vomiting and stumbled to my desk. Curt pulled over Larry Schimmer’s chair and sat with me, not looking much better than I.

  I reached out for his hand. “I’m sorry,” I said shakily. “I know this must be awful for you. Even though you were never close, he was your brother-in-law.”

  “It’s probably no worse for me than for anyone else,” he said, but the dark bruise of shock under his eyes showed differently. It’s impossible to spend family occasions like Christmas and birthdays and funerals together without some ties, no matter how tenuous.

  We sat in numbed silence as the crime-scene team arrived and went about its business quietly and efficiently. Eventually, I took a deep breath and looked across the newsroom to Don’s desk.

  Don was slumped in his chair in front of the big picture window overlooking Main Street. His neat gray hair was missing from the back of his head, and tissue and blood spattered the wall, the floor, a large split-leaf philodendron and the reference volumes on the bookshelf behind his desk. For some foolish reason, the plant and reference books being stained really bothered me. I guess if you can’t cope with large issues, you focus on small, insignificant ones.

  The gun had fallen from Don’s hand and lay on his desk next to his keyboard. The air smelled of explosives and death.

  “At least it’s indoors tonight,” I said, and Curt nodded, understanding my reference.

  After some time Officer Schumann walked toward us. “Merry, Sergeant Poole wants to talk with you.”

  I followed her across the room to where Sergeant Poole was ensconced at Mac’s desk. I was glad to notice that Curt had followed me.

  Sergeant Poole looked tired and edgy, his craggy face gray and more deeply furrowed than ever. “Why can’t people be brave enough to gut it out and take responsibility for the messes they create?”

  I glanced at Don and the body bag they were preparing for him, then looked away quickly. “I don’t know.”

  The sergeant took a drink from the cup on the desk and made a face. “Cold.”

  “I’ll get you a hot coffee, William,” Curt said gently, taking the cup and going to the coffee machine.

  “He wrote you a note,” Sergeant Poole said to me.

  For a split second I thought he meant Curt wrote me a note. Then I knew he meant D
on. “Me?” My voice was a squeak.

  “He left it on the computer. We printed several copies.” He held out a sheet to me. “I hope it doesn’t cause you more pain.”

  I took the single sheet like it would burn me. “I’ll just take it back to my desk,” I managed to force out.

  He nodded.

  It was several minutes before I could bring myself to look at Don’s last words. Finally, with a huge sigh and a deep prayer, I read:

  Merry:

  I never meant for all this to happen. I hope you believe me.

  When you came to work here, you were such a pleasure, my ray of sunshine to counter Mac’s grouchiness. Trudy thought you were a cutie, too.

  Then you told me you saw me the night Trudy died. And I got those threats. I couldn’t believe you had turned on me. You! I told myself I was completely justified in attacking you. You deserved everything you got.

  And it wasn’t even you.

  It’s my temper. I’ve always struggled with it. When I came to Amhearst, I thought Faith Community Church would take care of it for me. That’s probably also why I married Joan. She was so nice and kind and gentle.

  She drove me crazy.

  I know Curt thinks I abused her, but I only hurt her two times, at least physically. Unfortunately the consequences of the second time were tragic. But I didn’t kill her. I just pushed her hard. I rushed out without even looking to see where she’d fallen. I didn’t know she’d hit her head. I swear I didn’t.

  Talk about a guilty conscience. That’s really why I can’t stand Curt, you know. Just looking at him reminds me of what I did to Joan.

  It kills me to think Trudy died from a head injury, too. If only I hadn’t lost my temper and left her. If only I’d admitted how sick she was and how much she needed my help. If only, if only.

  I never raised a hand to Trudy in anger though. She was more than willing to go toe-to-toe over an issue, but she would never have let me threaten her or hit her, and I knew it. She was too strong a woman.

  I’m sorry about Andy Gershowitz. I hope he survives, though between you and me, he’s a loser. And I’m glad you’re okay. I just couldn’t kill you, Merry Sunshine. I’m glad I failed before. Tonight, I just couldn’t do it, especially when I’d lost the reason for my anger and self-justification. Of course, by that time I’d already dug my own grave.