Orchard Grove

by Vincent Zandri

  I glanced into the eternal darkness of Carl’s pistol barrel.

  “How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

  “I’m a cop. I’ve been tracking you all day. I finally caught up with Miller just after you ran off. Then I followed you in that dump truck. I saw you head into the woods, but you didn’t disappear entirely. I was able to keep an eye on you through the trees with a pair of binoculars.”

  That explains why no other cops or troopers picked me up… They were tracking me all along by way of Carl…

  “You could have come after me.”

  “It’s easy to run and hide in the woods, even for a cripple like you. Ain’t you ever read Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel? I didn’t want to risk losing you. I’m a patient man, so I simply waited until you came back out.”

  I recalled Miller smiling and waving at me in that motel parking lot. He knew I was riding into an ambush, never mind the state trooper roadblock I’d just busted through.

  “What if I’d never hidden myself in the woods,” I said. “What if I came all the way back to Orchard Grove in that dump truck?”

  “I’m one hell of a cop fortunately,” Carl said. “When it comes to tracking down killers like you, I’m prepared for any eventuality. It’s what separates the men from the boys.”

  “Nailing your partner’s wife behind his back separate you from the boys too?”

  He laughed, but it was a bitter, scornful laugh. And he further backed it up by removing his hand from the wheel and backhanding me with it.

  “None of your business, Forrester,” he scolded.

  “My apologies,” I said, feeling the sting in my check and nose, hearing the bells ring in my head. Then, “Where are you taking me?”

  “Home,” he said.

  “Why?” I ran my fingers under my nostrils and upper lip, checking for fresh blood.

  “Payback,” he said.

  “Payback,” I repeated.

  “Yup,” he said. “Rotten apple like you has gotta pay for his sins.”

  Then, shifting his pistol back into his right hand, he swung it against the crown of my head and...

  When I came to, I found myself still seated in the pickup. It wasn’t parked in my driveway next door, but in Lana’s driveway instead. Something strange was happening at the front door to the single-story ranch house. A queue of neighborhood kids extended from the open door out onto the concrete landing, down the two steps, and out onto the asphalt walk. From where I sat in the passenger seat, now faking my unconsciousness, I spotted Lana standing in the doorway of the pleasantly illuminated home. From what I could also make out, she was handing out cookies from off a silver platter to the children who were scarfing them down as fast as they could get their hands on them. She was wearing an apron over a pink and baby blue dress, and her hair surrounded her face beautifully. It was as if overnight she’d become a happy domestic Holly Homemaker.

  “Now there’s a brave woman for you,” Carl mumbled to himself. “Her husband isn’t even cold yet and all she can think about is giving out cookies to the children of Orchard Grove.”

  “You’re kidding me, right, Carl?” I wanted to say, but I didn’t want him to know that I was awake.

  Something wasn’t right about the situation. Something other than the obvious. As an Albany cop, Carl should have been carting me to the APD and promptly booking me for two counts of murder. At the very least, it was his duty to call the bust in to Detective Miller who would have handled it from there.

  But he was doing none of the above.

  No official arrest was made. No Miranda’s issues. No calling the bust in to his fellow officers.

  Nothing.

  Instead he gave me a pistol whipping and then drove me straight to the Cattivo house where, no doubt, the women were expecting him. Maybe they were also expecting me. My guess is that they all had something in store for me. What exactly that something was, I had no idea. But my gut was telling me to open the door and try to get away. That whatever it was Carl and company wanted from me, it wasn’t going to be the least bit pleasant. But then, I was also aware that I’d never have another chance to contract a confession from Lana. A confession that I could record with my cell phone app and forward to Miller. In order to make it happen, I’d have to stand my ground and hang in there, regardless of the potential shit storm that awaited me inside that house.

  I felt Carl’s eyes shifting their focus back toward me. In turn, I closed my eyes back up.

  Reaching out with his gun, he poked me in the ribs with it. I felt the sharp jab, but pretended to be dead to the world.

  “Still out,” he mumbled to himself. “Just as well.”

  He opened the truck door, got out, closed it behind him. Lifting the lids on my eyes, I watched him walk on past the dozen or so neighborhood kids, hop up the couple of steps to the landing, where he greeted Lana, kissing her on the mouth, like lovers do.

  When the two disappeared, I unzipped the overalls, reached into my pants pocket, pulled out my cell phone, turned it back on. The battery charge indicated only fifteen percent, which meant I had maybe thirty minutes of power left at most. One eye on the front door, the other down at the digital screen, I thumbed onto Recent Calls. When I spotted Miller’s phone number, I selected the Send Text Message option. A blank message screen appeared for me. For a brief second I considered sending him a text that detailed the precise location of my whereabouts and how I came to be here. But then something told me, not now. That I needed to confront Lana and Susan first before I involved the cops. Otherwise, my one chance for extracting the confession would be destroyed.

  What I did manage to do, however, was proceed to applications, one of which was a voice recorder. I waited for Carl to show himself at the door again, and then I pressed Record, praying that the phone battery would last long enough for Lana to say what I wanted her to say.

  Carl was making his way back out of the house when I shoved the cell phone back into my jeans pocket, the voice recorder still running, and zipped the overalls back up.

  When he opened the passenger side door, he stuck his gun in my face.

  “Well good morning, Carl,” I said. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Get out,” he said. “In the house. Now.”

  “You mean like in there? Isn’t my wife, or soon to be ex-wife, in there?”

  “So to speak,” he said. “But sadly, she won’t be seeing you or anyone else for a long time.” He grabbed me by the collar. “Let’s go, asshole.”

  He yanked me out of the truck so that I went down onto the driveway on my face. He grabbed me once more, yanking me up with his sheer brute strength. I had no choice but to balance awkwardly on my bad foot, sending a wave of searing pain throughout the swelled, bleeding flesh, and up and down my leg. I screamed, scaring the kids. But that didn’t stop Carl. He pressed the pistol barrel against my spine and pushed me forward. Through the waves of pain, I tried to make sense of what he was talking about with regard to Susan. Why wouldn’t she be seeing me or anyone else for a long time?

  As we approached the startled kids who were gathered at the door with the cookies in their hands and chocolate all over their lips, he said, “Party’s over, kids. It’s late. Get back home before your folks wonder where you are.” He was hiding the gun for obvious reasons. For a second, I thought about shouting out to the children that the man behind me had a loaded gun pointed at my back. Maybe that would have diffused the situation, but it also would have wrecked my plan.

  The kids dispersed, scattering like rabbits across the front lawn on their way back to their separate Orchard Grove homes. Opening the screen door, I limped into Lana’s house, while Carl closed both the screen and the wood door behind me, locking the deadbolt.

  Lana was standing in the middle of the living room to the right, her arms crossed over her chest, her face pale and frowning. She no longer looked like Holly Homemaker, even if the house did smell like freshly baked cookies. Instead she l
ooked like the anxious but angry as all hell mother of some little boy who’d run away from home the night before after being sent to bed without any supper.

  “You’ve been quite the bad boy, Ethan,” she said, working up a sly smile. “So how does it feel to go from writing about killing people, to actually becoming a killer?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “But maybe you can tell me.”

  I felt the pistol barrel slap me upside the head, sending visions of stars across my eyeballs and a sharp, skull-piercing pain throughout my brain. For a brief moment, I lost my balance.

  “Don’t talk until you’re asked to talk,” Carl said.

  “Yes, you should listen to the police,” Lana said. “Right now, they’re the best friends you have in the world. What’s that tell you?”

  “You tell me,” I said, my head ringing.

  “It means you’re all alone. You haven’t got a soul on earth who loves you.”

  She poured herself a glass of sparkling wine from a bottle that had been put on ice earlier inside an old silver bucket. She sipped it, and then set the glass back down onto the glass-topped coffee table.

  “I just love apple wine, Ethan,” she said. “Did you know that my stepfather had plans to introduce his own brand of apple wines prior to his sad disappearance? He was going to name them Lana’s Lovely Apple Wines. Name them after me.”

  “Has a nice ring to it,” I said. “Too bad all the trees got cut down.”

  She pursed her lips. “Yes, sad isn’t it. But then my mom and I could never have run the farm without him. He was the workhorse and the apple master.” She picked the glass back up, sipped more wine. “But that’s neither here nor there. Now where were we? I believe we were discussing your many homicides over the past couple of days.”

  The recording app on my phone… I could only hope it was picking up all our voices.

  “Maybe we should talk about yours,” I said.

  Carl jabbed me against the spine. Hard.

  “Now, now,” Lana said, brushing back her long, blonde hair, her blue eyes glowing in the lamp light. “Killing an old man in a convenience store. Tsk. Tsk. How could you do something so deplorable, Ethan Forrester? And that job you did on Susan.” She shivered, like a cold breeze just passed through the living room. “Absolutely barbaric.”

  My heart sank into my stomach. What the hell was she talking about? Then, out the corner of my eye, I caught sight of something else that was sitting on the coffee table behind the decanter. The Maxwell House Coffee I’d buried outside in the pot patch, the mud and dirt still partially caked to its sides, the plastic lid removed, and the cash all gone.

  “Where did you get that?” I said, pointing at the can. “And where’s Susan? Where’s my wife?”

  Carl poked me again, sending a shock up and down my spine. “Sorry about the can, Ethan, buddy. But you see, that pot garden you got out back is illegal as all hell, and part of your restitution is lining our pockets with a little petty travel cash.” I turned and was able to catch a glimpse of the mustached and goateed cop shooting a look at Lana. “Isn’t that right, baby?”

  “You’re the apple of my eye, Carl,” she said. But she didn’t seem in the mood to converse with her dead husband’s partner. My gut spoke to me, told me she was using him as much as she used me. Then she said, “Obviously pot plants and money aren’t the only thing Ethan feels compelled to bury in the soil.” Stealing another sip of the apple wine. “He’s an absolute animal. Aren’t you, Ethan?” She smiled when she said it, approaching me with her right hand held out, her torso still wrapped in her flowered apron, her legs exposed, her feet in brown leather sandals, that heart-shaped tattoo and the blood that dripped from it drawing my attention more than her face.

  She stopped just inches from me, ran her open hand softly across my stubbly face.

  “You were such a delicious mistake,” she said, sighing. “I’m so sorry things turned out so badly for you. For Susan. You should never have allowed jealously and pride guide your emotions. And, by the way, you should curb that drinking of yours. It’s the whiskey that turns Doctor Jekyll into that frightening Mister Hyde.”

  In my head, I ran through the events of the previous night. Getting drunk on Jack, grabbing hold of a French knife, carrying it with me to the Cattivo’s back deck. I saw myself opening her back sliding glass doors. That’s where the memories ended, however. But then I was reminded about the voice recorder on my phone. How it should have been picking up every word of this conversation, which thus far had produced nothing that could be construed as a confession on Lana’s part. Now was the time to coax her into telling the truth. For me. For Miller.

  “You wanna know something, Lana?” I said, forcing a laugh. “I really had no idea you were setting me up to take the fall for John’s murder. I had no idea you and Susan were setting me up together, making me out to be the patsy. I believed you when you told me John was going to kill you over your affair with Lurch here.” Shooting another glance at Carl. “Speaking of Lurch, my guess is you’re fucking him over, same as me.”

  He jabbed me with the pistol once more. But this time, I braced myself for it.

  “Why don’t you shut the fuck up, Forrester,” he barked. “What Lana and I have together is special. It’s real love, just like John Lennon used to sing. Isn’t that right baby?”

  “Yes, Carl,” she said. “Terrible thing what happened to Mr. Lennon. Too many guns in the world, don’t you agree, Ethan? My life is full of guns and lovers.”

  I looked into Lana’s face. “Tell me, how long have you and my wife been lovers?”

  She glared at me with eyes that could melt diamonds.

  “Long enough,” she said.

  “Lana,” Carl said. “What’s he talking about? You and Susan were good friends. What’s he mean by lovers?”

  “Shut up, Carl,” she said. Then, her eyes locked back on me. “Don’t look to me for an apology for what happened with Susan. From what she told me, you entered into a love affair with your work long before she even considered drifting. Your world is yourself, your typewriter, your pathetic movie scripts, and that bedroom window where you spent hours watching me sunbathe. You allowed your marriage to fall apart, and your home to be foreclosed upon. You had no love left for Susan or you would not have fallen hopelessly in love with me.”

  I felt my chest tighten. She wasn’t saying what I wanted her to say. What I needed her to say. “I guess Susan did a great job of hiding her hatred of me. Even when she was making love to me. I can only assume that I’m not about to leave this house alive. So why not open up to me, Lana? Did you or did you not tell my wife to help you plan the murder of your husband, while laying the blame squarely on me? Or was the idea exclusively yours? Tell me, please. What have you got to lose?”

  She drank some more apple wine, smiled. But she wouldn’t open up. She wouldn’t talk, as if she knew full well that I was recording this conversation. Even now… even after all that had happened over the past few days... she still looked as ravishing as ever. Her eyes were wet and deep and beautiful. But I knew that deep in her heart and soul, she was rotten to the core.

  “Does it matter who came up with what plan, Ethan?” she said, after a time. “What matters is that he’s dead and that you have blood on your hands because of it. They’re all dead. Go outside to your secret garden, and see for yourself. Go see what you did before you ran away under the cover of darkness so early this morning.”

  They’re all dead…

  I wanted to scream because she wasn’t admitting the truth. She wasn’t talking. And why wasn’t Susan in the room? If they were all dead, did that mean they killed my wife? I felt sick to my stomach and my head was spinning. Still, I had to get her to talk. I had no choice but to explore another angle.

  “So why cart me back here?” I said, my voice raised a decibel so I could be sure the voice recorder app picked up my every word. “Why does this distinguished member of the Albany Police Force, Carl Pressm
an, have a gun pressed up against my spine? Why isn’t he taking me downtown for booking and processing according to the letter of the law? Why did he hit me over the head with his weapon? Why did he kidnap me?”

  Bracing myself again, I waited for the jab. It came hard and swift, stealing my breath away.

  “Your word against mine, Forrester. And surprise, surprise, guess who the police are gonna believe? Me or a cop killer? A murderer of helpless old men? A sick man who mutilates his wife and tries to make it look like Lana did it? You’re a mad man. A menace. That foot must be full of gangrene and it must have poisoned your blood stream, pal.”

  My heart, what was left of it, sank even deeper.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I barked. “I haven’t laid a finger on my wife.”

  “Tell that to a judge at your hearing,” Carl said. “That is you live long enough to have a hearing.”

  My foot throbbed and I felt the weight of the cell phone in my pocket. Maybe Miller would call me now and I could quickly answer the phone. “Pressman’s gonna kill me!” I would scream. That would put a damper on whatever they had in store for me. Even though my plan to extract a confession was quickly going south, I tried to look on the bright side. My verbal sparring with Lana, and my equally verbal observations would have to count for something. So would Carl’s reaction to them. It would at the very least implicate him in Lana’s overall deception. My observations, Carl’s reaction, and the fact that Lana had demanded an up close and personal audience with me after her husband’s murder might be all I needed to prove that a conspiracy to kill John existed long before I asked him to demonstrate a classic cop suicide for me.

  “We need a little something from you, Ethan,” Lana said, setting down her glass, then raising the same hand, once again caressing my cheek.

  “Why should I give you anything?” I said bitterly.

  She removed her hand from my face, took a step back.