by Alex Jameson
“You idiot!” Sam hissed. “Why would you come back for me? You should have gone straight to Kingston!”
“Shut up,” Jake muttered. “Where are your clothes?”
“In that closet. I can’t wear those out; there’s blood all over my shirt and jacket.”
“Got you covered.” He retrieved Sam’s pants and tossed them onto the bed. Then he unlocked the cuffs. “I need you to get dressed faster than you’ve ever dressed in your life.”
Sam jumped up. The pain in his arm was substantial, but adrenaline was kicking in. Jake unzipped the black and yellow tool bag and pulled out a button-down shirt and a jacket. “Here, so you don’t have to put your arm through the sleeve.”
“Thanks.”
Sam dressed as hastily as he could with one arm while Jake pulled out a roll of duct tape from his bag. He first taped the officer’s mouth, and then bound his hands and feet. He dragged the cop to the corner of the room just as he was coming to. He groaned. His eyes widened, and then he struggled against the duct tape, his shouts muffled.
“Shh, shh, Officer—” He checked the guy’s nameplate. “Stevens. We’re not the bad guys here; we’re going to catch the bad guy. You just, uh, hang tight. And sorry about all this.”
“Jake! Let’s go!”
“Yup, coming.”
They kept their heads down and walked briskly until they were out in the parking lot. Jake unzipped the jumpsuit and shook out of it, wearing his regular clothes underneath. He balled it up and threw it aside.
“Now what?”
Jake held up the cop’s keys and jingled them.
“No… no, no way, Jake. We’re not taking a cop car!”
“Right. We’re borrowing a cop car. See, that’s the mindset I should have had all along. Let’s go.” Jake hurried along, Sam keeping pace behind him.
Once they were in the car, Jake tore out of the parking lot, cutting people off and twice blowing red lights. He hit the sirens and flashed the lights.
“Jake, knock it off!”
“Alright, alright. Look, I’m not happy about it either. We just committed like, six crimes in no time flat. And we’re not gonna keep the cop car. I figure we’ve got about ten minutes; we’ll ditch it up the highway a bit.” Jake took a deep breath. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
“Yeah. Me neither. How did you…?”
“Jumpsuit and clothes were from a thrift shop. Tool bag and duct tape were from a hardware store. I just walked into the hospital and told the cop I had to fix the A/C. He gave me a little grief, but I pushed it, told him I was super busy and that he could watch me do it.”
“That was exceptionally stupid of you. Probably the most idiotic thing you’ve ever done in your life.” Sam shook his head. “Thanks.”
“Sure. I wasn’t going to leave you hanging. Oh, here.” Jake pulled the remaining Vicodin out of his pocket and handed them off. “I imagine you’ll need one or two of these. Man, I can’t believe you got shot.”
“Yeah. Me neither.” The morphine hadn’t quite worn off yet; Sam stowed the pills in his pocket. “I thought I saw him. I really did. The guy looked just like him.”
“Are you sure he did? Or did you just really want him to?”
“I don’t even know anymore.”
“Hey.” Jake snapped his fingers twice in front of Sam’s face. “I need you straight here. If we’re going to finish this thing, we have to do it just right.”
“Yeah. And we have to do it with no car, barely any cash, no weapons, and as fugitives from the law.”
“But we have duct tape,” Jake pointed out.
“At least we have duct tape.” Sam couldn’t help but grin. “We’ll be unstoppable.”
***
Reidigger glanced curiously at the police cruiser as it sped out of the hospital parking lot, its tires screeching in protest and sirens blaring. He wondered briefly what was going on elsewhere, but he put it out of his mind. Columbus was a big city. There was a lot more than just the clown thing going on.
He put two and two together as soon as he entered Asher’s room. The bed was empty. So were the cuffs. A police officer, bound and gagged, was inchworming his way across the tiled floor, his voice muffled and desperate.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Reidigger sighed.
Cole winced. She waited for him to fly off the handle, lose his mind, scream and shout. But instead he just shook his head and tore the tape from the officer’s mouth.
“A maintenance worker… in a blue jumpsuit… he put me in a chokehold…”
Cole freed the man’s arms and legs and had him report his stolen car. Reidigger had another idea.
He stopped a nurse in the hall. “Does this hospital have Medivac?”
The nurse stared at him blankly. “Uh, yes.”
“Where?”
***
“Alright Jake, I know you’re having fun, but it’s been fifteen minutes,” Sam said. “Someone has found the cop by now. I’m sure they’ve reported the car stolen, and—”
The radio suddenly crackled to life. “Asher. Asher, are you there?”
“Oh, crap,” Jake muttered.
“Wait, I know that voice.” Sam plucked the radio from its clip. “Carl, is that you?” he said, doing his best to sound cheerful.
“Yes,” said Reidigger. “We should talk.”
“Sure, sure. Let’s talk, Carl. What do you want to talk about? Oh, I know… how about we talk about the deepest, darkest hole you can find?”
“Asher—”
“Fuck you, Carl.” Sam reached to replace the radio.
“Look, we both know you’ve got nothing. I have your bag, and in a few minutes, you won’t have a car if you don’t ditch it.”
Sam scoffed. “You know the cops can hear everything you’re saying, right?”
“I know.”
“Screw him,” Jake said. “We’ll be fine.”
Sam paused. Something in Reidigger’s tone sounded different than it had earlier. He sounded… defeated.
“Alright, Carl, let’s talk. You said you have my bag? Keep it on.” He replaced the radio and clicked it off. “Time to ditch the car, Jake.”
“Sure thing.”
He pulled off at the next exit and parked in a Target parking lot. They left the car there and hurried across the street to an Applebee’s restaurant. Inside, Sam approached the hostess. “Is there a pay phone nearby?”
“Uh… not that I know of,” she said. “But if it’s an emergency, you can use the phone in the kitchen.”
“Great, thanks.”
She led them back to a wall-mounted phone just past the swinging double-doors that led from the dining room to the kitchen. Sam dialed the number to his cheap flip-phone, thankful he’d taken the time to memorize it. Jake leaned his head close to Sam’s as the line rang so he could listen in.
Reidigger answered on the fourth ring. “Asher?”
“Alright, listen. If you want information, I want information too.” Behind him, someone shouted an order. Pots and pans clanged. “And talk loud.”
“Fine. I’m…” Reidigger sighed. “I’ll be honest with you. I’m off the case. So is Cole.”
“Aw, real shame,” Sam said. “Now I’ll have to remember someone else’s name.”
“Asher, I still want to catch this guy. Some part of you must want to bring him to justice, one way or another, and two is better than one.”
“We’re already two.”
“Fine, then four is better than two. Don’t split hairs.”
“I’m still going to kill him if I find him.”
“And I’m still going to try to catch him first,” Reidigger said candidly.
“Okay.” Beside him, Jake waved a hand in front of his throat. Don’t give him anything. But now Sam had leverage. “All those things you said, about assault and attempted murder and inciting a riot… what’s going to happen to all that, Carl?”
“Gone.”
“You c
an do that?”
“For me, it would be a few clicks of a mouse.”
“I have your word?”
“You have my word. But Asher, if you kill him in front of people, especially cops, not even I can help you.”
“Fair enough. We’re heading to Kingston.”
“Your hometown?”
“Yes. That’s where he’s headed next.”
“How do you—? Never mind. I don’t want to know. You’re sure?”
“I swear it. Mischief Night. He’ll be there.”
“So will we.”
“Carl… you understand this in no way means we’re working together.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Asher.”
“Great. And I’ll be wanting my bag back. Bye.”
“Wait—before you go. You said you wanted information too.”
“Oh, yeah. Was I right?”
“About what?”
“About Alison.”
Reidigger sighed again. Sam could almost hear him rolling his eyes through the phone. “Yes.” He hung up.
CHAPTER 36
* * *
Reidigger and Cole drove south in silence. They’d been on the road for about an hour, neither speaking, with the radio on but low enough that they could barely hear it. It wasn’t an awkward silence, but a heavy silence; both had things on their mind that they wanted to say, but knew that doing so would be acknowledging them as reality. So they stayed quiet.
It was still morning on Saturday, October twenty-ninth. “We should be in Kingston by nightfall,” Reidigger said finally. His nostrils flared as he took a long breath in and out through his nose. “The director won’t be expecting us back until Monday. And if Asher is right, this will all be over by then.”
Cole bit her lip. She knew what he meant; that the Clown Killer, Harlan Kidd, would be either dead or in cuffs by then. He wasn’t talking about the clown crisis as a whole. He was done with all that. She was too. Once the killer was finished, the case would revert back to being about the clowns; it would be up to Jenkins and his team to deal with, not them.
But now that Reidigger had spoken, he’d opened the can of worms. They both had to face facts; they were going against direct orders. They could lose their badges—or worse.
“If Asher is right,” she said, “and if we manage to get to Kidd before he does… what reason will we give the director for being in Kingston? He’ll know that we continued the investigation. He’ll know we went against orders.”
“I don’t know yet. I suppose we could say we were tying up loose ends…”
“We can’t suggest we had information that we didn’t hand over—”
“I know that.”
He rubbed his eyes. How much sleep had he gotten since he started this case? Not enough.
“Look, Cole, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what we’re going to say. All I know is, I’m not ready to give up on this or just hand it over to someone else.” He took his eyes off the road to give her a brief, solemn glance. “Why did you come? You could have stayed on the case.”
“I told you. I’m not taking orders from someone like Jenkins—”
“I think it’s more than that. I think you want this as much as I do.”
She shrugged with one shoulder and looked out the window. They drove in silence for a few more minutes before she spoke up again. “Why did you lie to Asher on the phone?”
“Sorry?”
“You told him you could drop all the charges against him. You can’t do that, even if you were still on the investigation.”
“We needed the information,” Reidigger said simply.
“He was honest with you.”
He glanced at her again, this time with his eyebrows knit tightly together.
“Cole, Sam Asher is a criminal. He’s broken, who knows how many laws. There are only a handful of people in this whole country that could get him out of the mess he’s in, and no, I’m not one of them. But if he was dumb enough to believe me, and we could get information out of it, then good for us. Right now, he thinks we’re on the same side. We find him, we give him his bag back, and once we have his trust we find out what his plan is. With any luck, not only will we be able to stop him, but he’ll lead us to Harlan Kidd.”
Cole shook her head. Reidigger was right; Asher had broken the law several times over. He was, by definition, a criminal. But still, there were precedents—not many, but there were some—of times that law enforcement and government failed, and ordinary citizens rose to the challenge. She didn’t dare say it, but she couldn’t help but think that maybe this was one of those times.
***
Taking the bus was risky, but they didn’t have much choice. Stealing another car would have been much more so, and the nearest train station outside of Columbus was two hours south, just below the border into Kentucky. After they got off the phone with Reidigger, the brothers called a taxi to come pick them up in the parking lot of the restaurant. Jake asked the driver to take them as far south as he could without charging a return fare and drop them at the nearest bus depot.
Less than an hour later, they used the last of their cash to purchase two one-way bus tickets to Lynchburg, Virginia. The bus was heading more east than they needed to be; Kingston was due south, practically right beneath Columbus as the crow flies, but they didn’t have enough money to get to Asheville or Charlotte, and they needed a ride that was leaving soon; the bus to Lynchburg was departing in about fifteen minutes. Before they got on, they made a call to arrange a pickup.
Sam was concerned that he would be too conspicuous—a guy with a busted-up face and his arm in a sling—so Jake helped him move his hurt arm into the button-down shirt and jacket he’d brought him. The pain was profound, nearly unbearable. Sam clenched his teeth and breathed hissing breaths as Jake slowly worked the arm into the sleeve in a stall of the dirty bathroom of the bus station.
“Hey,” Jake said, “Just imagine what anyone listening in thinks we’re doing in here.”
He grinned, trying to alleviate the tension a bit, but Sam couldn’t smile or laugh. His shoulder felt like it was on fire every time it moved. Once they were done, Jake gave him the last of the Vicodin to take the edge off.
Thanks to the medication, Sam slept almost entirely through the five and a half hour ride to Virginia. He took the window seat, slouched low and napped with his chin tucked against his clavicle. No one seemed to notice or care about his injuries, but Jake stayed alert, watching for wandering eyes or suspicious persons. Now that Reidigger wasn’t on the case anymore, they didn’t know who they might be dealing with—or if the new investigating agent even cared about pursuing the Ashers. He was more likely concerned with the Clown Killer. Jake couldn’t help but wonder if Reidigger would give them the information about Kingston. He didn’t trust the guy, and wasn’t even sure whether or not to believe that he would drop everything that was against them currently. They’d have to play this very carefully.
He gently shook Sam awake when they arrived in Virginia. “Hey, come on. We’re here.”
Sam blinked through the fog of sleep; there was that lightheadedness again, that detached feeling that came with the pain pills. Then he moved his arm a bit, and fresh pain shot up and down his side, jarring him into reality. They waited until everyone else had filed out before they got off the bus. The driver pulled bags from a compartment below the cabin as Jake scanned the small crowd for their ride.
“Oh my god, Sam!”
Then he felt her warm hands around his neck, her weight against him. Her hair pressed to his cheek and the scent of her filled his nostrils. This was what coming home should feel like every time, he thought.
She inspected his face, her eyes wide in alarm. “What happened to you?” She took it all in—the raccoon bruises under both eyes; his red, swollen nose; the crooked stitched cut on his forehead.
“Long story. I’ll tell you in the car.” He hugged her again with his good arm. “Thanks fo
r coming, Lynn.” As they’d been riding on the bus to Virginia, Lynn had made the four and a half hour drive from Kingston to meet them.
“And you!” She whirled on Jake. “How could you let this happen to him?!”
“What, no hug? No, ‘Hey Jake, looking good. Nice to see you’?”
She scowled as Jake unfolded the sling from his pocket and handed it over to Sam.
“What happened to your arm?” she demanded.
“Like I said, long story. Come on; we shouldn’t linger.”
Once they were in Lynn’s Corolla and back on the highway, and Sam’s arm was again in the sling, they recounted the story of what had happened. Lynn was silent for most of the time, occasionally muttering “Oh, God” or “Are you serious?” at particularly riveting junctures. She shook her head slowly when Sam told her about getting jumped by the five clowns in Tennessee, and actually turned in her seat to show Jake her shocked expression when Sam explained how they’d gotten away from the hospital earlier that morning.
When he finished, she was quiet for a few minutes. “I… I just don’t know what to say. I mean… you guys are technically on the run right now.”
“Yeah.”
“Pretty much.”
She pointed at Sam sternly. “If I would’ve known what sort of trouble you were going to get into, I never would have let you go.”
“I know. Sorry.”
Jake snickered quietly in the back seat.
“Look,” Sam said, “the agent that was working the case told me he can get all the charges dropped.”
“Do you believe him?” Lynn asked.
“I have to. He wants this as badly as I do, and it’s the only thing I have to go on. If—no, when Harlan shows up in Kingston, we’re going to get him… one way or another.”
“I hope he does,” Lynn said quietly. “I’m not as sure as you are.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There were two more, early this morning.”
“Two?” Sam asked, incredulous. “Where?”
“One was in Pennsylvania,” Lynn explained. “A clown was run down by a car. The other was in Indiana—a clown was bludgeoned to death, just like in Columbus.” Lynn had clearly been following the case as closely as she could.
