Anyway, Louis Stoaffer stood on the other side of the road watching as we crossed. There must be a joke in there somewhere. Why did the criminals cross the road? To… To continue a journey that would lead to a very bad place. Not a very funny joke.
“So now where?” Joey asked of no one in particular.
Although the mini mart was closed, the blinking neon lights in the windows continued blinking their red and blue and white glow around the place.
“Well, with any luck, we’ll find a couple of repaired cars parked out back,” I muttered.
Since this was the only suggested course of action, we immediately walked around the garage. Whether it was good fortune or not, there were a few cars. Not exactly a fleet of luxury cars, but all we needed was one that could get us to San Pietro.
Unfortunately, none of the dirt-covered cars behind the garage looked like it could get us to the nearest corner let alone the five hundred miles to San Pietro. But my pessimism was unwarranted. I popped the hood on a baby-blue-and-primer-colored ’57 Chevy to find a clean engine. On the ground near the car, I found a six inch piece of green wire. This wire and my penknife allowed me to bypass the ignition switch and start the car. A surprisingly healthy rumble burst from the engine. Inside the car’s white tuck & roll upholstery reminded me of a car a friend had driven back in high school. In fact, I couldn’t remember seeing a ’57 Chevy with the fins and tuck & roll interior since leaving high school.
Stoaffer slid into the backseat of the car on the passenger side, and Joey took the shotgun position. Soon we would be back on the road headed south.
“You, my friend, are some kind of wizard with the cars.” Louis said with a surprisingly sincere tone.
“Yea, Thomas, he’s a hundred percent right there,” Joey agreed. “But now we gotta work on gettin’ somethin’ tuh eat.”
“Well, as dead as Chrystal Springs seems to be, nobody should miss this car until morning so we should be okay stopping at the first place we see.” My answer sounded amazingly cheerful and for some reason that is just how I was feeling.
The mood died a second later as a door creaked open in the dirty white metal wall at the back of the gas station. Whoever was on the other side of the door was in no big rush to come out from behind it. I heard the unmistakable clunk of a wooden baseball bat tapping against cement as the door squeaked open a little more.
“Steve…Steve!” A young voice called from behind the door. “You and Mickey better not be messin’ around out here!” The speaker tried to sound confident while struggling to keep his fear quiet.
As he moved out from behind the door, it was clear that fear had won the struggle. The boy looked to be around fourteen although the red hair and freckles covering his cheeks might have made him look younger than he was. He wore a faded pair of blue denim overalls and clutched the baseball bat to his chest. As he stepped out from the dark of the doorway into the light, his green eyes darted around quickly like some frightened mouse.
“Steve! Dammit, I’m gonna-” Red never got a chance to finish his thought.
Somehow Stoaffer had slipped out of the car and snuck around behind the kid. It seemed impossible for him to have done this in the short time since the door opened, but all of a sudden there he stood. He did not move for a moment as he looked directly at Joey and me sitting in the still running Chevy. The old man’s bright blue eyes stabbed right through me. But the weirdest part of the whole thing was that Stoaffer smiled as he watched Red standing in front of him peering out into the darkness. In the next instant, he sprang forward and around the kid.
From where we sat about twenty feet away in the car and in the dark, it was difficult to see exactly what happened. I could tell Stoaffer had something in his hand and was pushing it in and pulling it out of the kid’s face. There was no struggle. Red’s legs just collapsed until the only reason that he was still standing was that Stoaffer was holding onto the thing sticking out his face.
“Let’s just go,” I said to Joey without really thinking. “We don’t need this crazy fucker. We’ve got a car. Let’s just go.”
If Joey heard, he didn’t say anything. He simply jumped out of the car and trotted over to where Louis stood. After a moment, I followed him.
Stoaffer was standing over the body silently watching the last twitches. I saw the thing he had been holding was a screwdriver with a black and yellow handle. The tool was now sticking out of the place where Red’s left eye should have been. There was other damage left by the screwdriver. A hole in his right cheek revealed a few crooked teeth. Blood soaked the front of his shirt below a hole in the kid’s neck.
“Shit, Lou! What’re yuh some kinda ninja?” Joey exclaimed.
I could not pull my eyes away from the body. It was hard to believe so much destruction could be done so quickly and by one old man.
Stoaffer was quiet for a while as he just stared blankly at the still body. Finally, he cheerfully announced, “Well, we’re not going to get to San Pietro by standing around here!” He walked over and climbed into the backseat of the Chevy.
Joey and I stood there staring at the body and then each other.
“Well, we’re not gonna get to San Pietro by standing around here!” He grinned at me, and we headed to the car
The car was quiet as we pulled out on to the empty highway.
“That was sure fun,” Joey said finally breaking the silence. “But I’m still hungry.”
A roar of laughter came from the backseat. “Yes, I think I worked up an appetite as well!”
We found a place about fifteen minutes down the road, a family-style restaurant named Jack O’s. It looked to be one of those places with crayon-colored drawings hanging on the walls, lots of pies, and greasy chicken fried steak. Normally, I would not even consider stopping at such a restaurant. But the word normally did not exactly fit the situation. Since no one knew how far it might be to the next restaurant, we decided to stop.
For some reason, I counted the cars, and the huge parking lot had six cars in it. Nothing says fine dining like a huge parking lot with six cars in it at dinner time. But like I said before, we chose the place simply because it appeared in front to us. Location, location, location.
On the off chance of someone recognizing the old Chevy, we parked the car on the edge of the lot. As we walked across the quiet but brightly lit parking lot, the three of us tried to improve our appearances a bit by straightening clothes and brushing off some of the dirt. I am not sure how successful we were, but hopefully it was not completely obvious we had spent the day hiking through the hills.
Once inside the restaurant, we stood at a dark wooden podium which had sign saying “Welcome, Friends. We’re Sure Glad You’re Here! Please Wait to be Seated.” I wondered for a second about the sincerity of the sign.
As we waited for our new friends to come seat us, I glanced around the place to discover it was just as I had expected. I saw lots of bright colors, an orange and green counter with a couple of old guys sitting together, the wall behind the cash register covered with children’s artwork, and large windows looking out at the empty highway. Everything about the place felt sort of familiar. Even the tall, thin red-headed waitress who wandered over a minute later seemed like someone I had met before.
“Welcome to Jack O’s, friends. Let me show you to your table.” Her voice had a thick Southern accent, and the words were delivered without energy as if they had been repeated at least a million times.
The waitress led us to an orange and green booth near a window. Once we had slid around the table, she placed an orange and green menu in front of each of us.
“The special tonight is mashed potatoes and chicken fried steak.” She stated flatly, and I had a tough time stifling my laugh. My laugh was brought on not only by the mention of chicken fried steak but also by the fact that I suddenly realized why the waitress seemed so familiar. She was the spitting image of a waitress on a sitcom in the seventies who used to say kiss my grits all the time. Anyway,
she continued to recite in her weary voice,
“Our special comes with your choice of home fries or mashed potatoes. Can I get you anything while you’re deciding what you want?”
Before anyone else had a chance to respond, Louis answered, “Coffee all around, please.” He flashed a big smile at the waitress. “We’ve got a long journey ahead of us and need to stay awake.”
The waitress left without saying anything else.
“Alright, Lou, tell us exackly where we’re goin’ and what we’re gonna do there,” Joey demanded.
Louis Stoaffer pulled himself up a bit straighter at the idea of being the center of attention. “Well, I suppose I should continue my story to explain everything. So where was I?’”
“In the hospital and--” I started before being interrupted by Joey.
“The detective mentioned a gun!” Joey blurted out unable to hold back.
Stoaffer chuckled a little as he said, “Right, thanks. Detective Colombus questioned me about what I remembered of my visit to Gary and Linda’s house for dinner. His question about where I got a gun knocked me for a loop. Having no recollection of a gun was just one of the holes in my memory which kept popping up. The doctor had been right when he said, ‘The memory doesn’t react well to force’. The more I tried to force open my stronghold of memories the stronger it became.”
The waitress brought our coffee and, since none of us had taken the time to look at the menu, we all ordered the chicken fried steak with fries.
Louis continued, “Detective Columbus showed no signs of frustration at my failure to remember things. He simply asked about other things like business clients and vacations I had taken before returning to the topic of the gun. I knew what the good detective had in mind. Have you ever lost your car keys? Sometimes no matter how hard you try to remember where you left them, you get nothing. Then as soon as you stop trying to remember and think about something else, the location of the keys pops into your mind. That is the phenomenon which Detective Columbus attempted to recreate.”
Once again, I became wrapped up in the old man’s words. At some point in Stoaffer’s story, the waitress brought our food and refilled our coffee cups.
“However, no matter how he tried over the following days, the detective could not break through the barricade keeping my memories of that night out of reach. During our time together, I did manage to learn a few things. Detective Columbus had been on the force for twenty-four years. He was married with two grown children who never called unless they needed help with something. His wife’s name was Marie. And Gary had been embezzling money from the company for a few years.”
Stoaffer’s last words hung in the air for a moment.
“Wait … Oh, Lou ... talk about fucked up!” Joey nearly shouted although no one in the nearly-empty restaurant took notice. “Yer sayin’ that all the shit you went through was ‘cuz yer partner was stealin’ from the company?”
Louis Stoaffer smiled at Joey’s reaction. “That is the epiphany which would not come to me until sometime later. As I said, the daily sessions with the detective went on for some weeks without any significant breakthrough. However, Detective Columbus filled me in on the details of the circumstances which had brought me to the hospital.
“It seems a passing driver had seen lights at the bottom of the canyon that night. The police had investigated and eventually found me inside the car. Next to me in the passenger seat was a very dead Linda Blake. I was taken to the hospital with a couple of broken ribs and severe head trauma which resulted in my comatose condition. Of course, all of this was a huge shock to me since I had no recollection of how this could have happened. However, it was nothing compared to what I had been involved in prior to the crash.” Stoaffer paused for a moment as if to give full dramatic effect to his previous sentence.
“Okay, my shift is over.” The red-headed waitress had suddenly appeared at our table and announced wearily as she refilled our coffees. “If you need anything else, Ginger can help you.”
A glance at my watch showed that it was nearly eleven o’clock. The restaurant was empty of customers save the three of us. The big windows overlooked an inky black landscape.
“Maybe we oughta get going.” I said grabbing the check and starting to stand.
Joey’s response was immediate and absolute. “No! We’re gonna hear the rest of the story.”
Louis smiled happily as I sat back down. “Well, it is certainly nice having a captive audience. So as I said, I was found in the car with Linda’s corpse and taken to the hospital. Once I came out of the coma, I began learning about the events that had led me to the bottom of the canyon. The evening had started with Theresa and me visiting Gary and Linda’s house. Over the course of the evening, a great deal of alcohol was consumed. At some point in the evening, I reportedly became violent. One thing led to another. A quarrel started, and tempers flared. From there, the argument had allegedly devolved into a fist fight and then into a wrestling match on the floor of the living room. According to the testimony of my loving wife…” His voice trembled, and Stoaffer paused as he gathered his thoughts. “Well, amid this physical confrontation, a gun appeared. Gary and I wrestled around on the floor the gun went off. My business partner ended up with a bullet in his chest. I had no memory of any of this, mind you, but after being told the story so many times I came to accept it as truth.”
A question suddenly occurred to me as I was sitting there listening to Louis’ story. “So what happened to … uh … Linda and Theresa? I mean, why didn’t they stop it?”
Stoaffer turned his eyes to me. For just an instant, a flash of irritation crossed his face as though my question challenged the truthfulness of his story. He smiled and replied, “Well, from what I was told, Linda huddled in the corner sobbing. Theresa? My wonderful wife lie on the floor unconscious. According to the well-crafted tale presented as the truth, Theresa played the victim of a beating by an enraged husband. Cast in the role of abusive spouse was yours truly! The jump from this scene to me at the bottom of the canyon is a bit fuzzy since Theresa had been unconscious, I have no recollection, and Gary and Linda are dead. The theory presented offered the cause of the subsequent crash as either my intoxication or a struggle with my hostage.” Louis paused as he let out a disturbing laugh. “Oh, I almost left out a marvelous detail. The story was I kidnapped Linda as some sort of trophy!”
“Talk about fuckin’ warped!” Joey commented shaking his head. “How’d they get sucha crazy idea?”
“Theresa.” I whispered. “She must have talked Gary into the whole thing. Did they kill Linda too?”
The old man regarded at me an expression of amazement. “Thomas, you are incredibly insightful! My beloved spouse, who had pledged to love, honor, and respect me as long as we both shall live, apparently instigated the whole twisted scheme. I am not entirely certain about how Linda died. But I know that Theresa painted a rather unflattering picture of me as an overbearing, manipulative psychopath with illusions of grandeur. Now my recollection of a particular night might have been lacking, but my long-term memory remained intact. I had been no saint, but the back-ground picture of me as a guy who had used and abused others for personal gain was untrue. I tried to convince my lawyer to go after the portrait of me being created in court, but—“
“Hold on! Howdja get to court?” Joey interrupted.
“Sorry, I guess I did jump ahead.” Louis chuckled without humor. “Following nearly three months in the hospital and therapy center, I was remanded to the county jail to await trial. My experience with lawyers had been limited to those specializing in tax shelters as well as matters related to structured settlements and cash flow notes. Therefore, I was at a loss as far as retaining a crim-inal attorney. I had to rely upon the recommendation of others. I found my representation somewhat lacking to say the least. The senior member of a recommended law firm was supposed to handle my case. Unfortunately, due to other commitments, he assigned the responsibility to a junior lawyer named
Matthew. The young man was right out of college and carried himself with the arrogant bravado of the young. He had excelled in law school and was expected to handle my case with ease.” Stoaffer paused for a moment shaking his head as if recalling his time in court.
“Unfortunately, youthful enthusiasm and academic achievement don’t always translate into practical success or even common sense. It certainly did not in this instance. Young Matthew did not grasp the nuances necessary for succeeding in a jury trial. He did not think it necessary to rebut the prosecutor’s unflattering portrait of me as an abusive prick. Rather than winning them over with some combination of charisma, compassion, and logic, Matthew simply placed before the jury a logical, well-supported, depiction of the circumstances proving my innocence. Rather than giving thoughtful consideration to any question and striving to alleviate any lingering doubt in the minds of jury members, Matthew responded to skepticism with contempt and sarcasm. You can probably guess how the jury reacted to such treatment. The prosecuting attorney presented a case based on various bits of circumstantial evidence but treated the jury as if they were old friends. The defense attorney presented a well-supported case based upon hard evidence but treated the jury as if they were idiots. How do you think things turned out?” The old man looked from me to Joey and then back to me.
Finally, I answered, “It‘s human nature for the people in the jury to do everything possible to convince themselves the friendly lawyer had a much stronger case than the mean lawyer.”
Stoaffer stared at me for a moment without saying anything. Finally, a smile curled his lips. “Excellent answer, Thomas. You possess unexpected knowledge of the human animal. Perhaps things would have gone much better for me had you been my attorney.”
I have to admit to grinning and straightening up a little at the praise. I can only hope my cheeks did not blush.
“A case which should have been a breeze turned into a hurricane for me. My life had been reduced to rubble. My business partner had been killed. I had been held re-sponsible for his death as well as the death of his wife. My own wife refused to speak to me. Furthermore, I found myself headed to prison for a crime which I could not remember committing.” He stopped and shook his head. “The court ruled me guilty of involuntary manslaughter with a sentence of ninety-six months in North Kern State Prison near Bakersfield. The idea of being sent to prison shattered me. I had never known anything but wealth and privilege. Now my previous life had vanished forever. My livelihood had been taken from me along with any sense of position or self-worth.
Soul Hostage Page 6
