by Dave Daren
My words seemed to placate him, however, and the kid shifted at his desk and moved to face his computer. He clicked the mouse a few times before he started to tap at the keyboard with surprising speed given how slow he’d been about everything else.
A small furrow knit between his eyebrows, and I felt a sort of pit open up in my stomach.
That didn’t look like a reassuring sort of face.
I chewed at the inside of my cheek and drummed my fingers against the leg of my trousers as the kid tapped a few more keys.
He cut his eyes over from the computer screen to me to back to the computer screen before he ducked his head down closer to the monitor and typed something else. He glanced over at me again and cleared his throat.
“Yeah, I’m not finding a Race Chase in twenty-one-hundred B,” he admitted with a small shrug. “Are you sure you’re like, not being pranked or something? That sounds like a fake name.”
I nearly laughed and cried at the same time. Instead, I settled on a deep sigh.
“No, it’s a real name, I just think his parents hated him,” I muttered as I reached up to pinch the bridge of my nose. “Can you try just searching his name? Or his roommate? He allegedly had a roommate named John. Or James.”
I had no idea how the Oakwood Apartment system actually worked or what search options he had. I just hoped that something clicked because I wasn’t sure what other options I had here.
The kid nodded and started to chew at his lower lip as he rapidly started tapping at his keyboard again while I stared at a small stain on the wall behind his head. The seconds continued to tick on and dragged into minutes as I waited for something, anything, from the kid at the desk.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the kid straightened up at the desk.
“Hell, yeah!” he exclaimed.
I perked up at his cheer and blinked a few times to look alive again.
“Did you find him?” I asked with a hint of incredulity in my tone that I couldn’t quite shake. I was impressed that the kid had actually found something.
“Yeah, I think so, uh--” he paused as he tried and failed to turn his monitor to face me before he shrugged. “Apparently his actual name is Racelin which still sounds like a fake name, or at least, he rented the apartment under that name.”
The kid shrugged as if he hadn’t just made my life about a thousand times easier.
I felt a sigh of relief seep from my body like the air from a balloon, and I reached up to rub my temples as if to push the headache that had threatened to form away.
“Can you print out those forms for me?” I asked with as pleasant of a smile as I could muster.
I just needed to get those forms and get to the damn courthouse before Judge Calhoun decided he should go make up with his wife earlier than he told me.
The kid immediately looked a little sheepish again and shifted to avoid meeting my eyes.
“Our printer is broken,” he mumbled and stared down at his keyboard.
I wanted to scream. I was going to scream.
Instead, however, I took a deep breath and forced a smile on my face as I tried to keep myself together.
“Could you email it to me?” I asked with a sort of sickly sweetness to my tone I wasn’t proud of.
I knew that I was being a little short with this college student who probably didn’t deserve it, and I really was working to be nicer. But I could feel my nerves starting to fray from the desperation the longer I sat here.
The kid perked up again and literally brought his hand to his forehead to smack it.
“Oh, duh, yeah, totally man,” he said with a snort. “What’s your email?”
His hands hovered over the keyboard as if he was waiting on me to give him the address.
I swore my eye nearly twitched, but I rattled off my professional email address nonetheless. Seconds after I saw him click the mouse to presumably send the email, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
I shifted to pull it free, and lo and behold, I saw an email from Oakwood Apartments with an empty subject line. For the first time all day, I felt the tension actually seep from my shoulders.
“I got it,” I informed the kid as I pushed myself up to my feet.
While the Oakwood Apartment leasing office was overall less offensive to my senses than the Green Earth coffee shop, I still wanted to be free of the damn place.
“Thanks,” I said to the kid, and I meant it, but I didn’t wait for him to offer another response before I turned on my heels and quickly headed to the front door.
“No problem, man!” the kid called after me as I shouldered out onto the sidewalk as the little bell over the door jangled to announce my exit.
As I walked back to Evelyn’s car in the apartment complex’s parking lot, I swiped at my phone to open up the email just to make sure that everything was there before I drove out to the courthouse.
I skimmed my eyes over the email and was immensely relieved to see that it did in fact have all of the information I needed to show Judge Calhoun to get our injunction granted. The forms in the email clearly showed that Racelin ‘Race’ Chase had signed a lease with the Oakwood Apartments complex and had a roommate named James, not John, Verde.
Clearly, whatever piece of mail that the sheriff’s department had used to incriminate Natalie’s residence had been a fluke or more likely, a careless mistake on Race’s part, and her apartment had been unlawfully raided.
It felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders as I tucked my phone back into my pocket and ducked back into Evelyn’s timeless clown car.
The clock on her dashboard seemed to work, unlike the clock in my own car, and the time was nearly one in the afternoon already. I hissed out a sharp breath through my teeth as I realized that I’d been in the leasing office for a half an hour, which was about twenty-five minutes longer than I’d anticipated.
I quickly backed out of my parking space and gently wheeled the car out of the parking lot toward the mouth of the apartment complex. So long as traffic wasn’t too bad, I’d still arrive at the courthouse with a good forty minutes to spare.
I just hoped that Calhoun would be understanding of the goose chase I’d been on that morning, or, more likely, that he’d be happy to avoid his sister-in-law longer.
Despite the fact I felt like I was made up of exposed nerves, I was almost happy. Things finally seemed to be turning around for us.
I knew that we still had battles to fight, but now it seemed like we had an actual fighting chance.
As I rolled Evelyn’s car up to a notoriously lengthy red light, I finally dared to fiddle with the settings on her radio. I flipped through the stations and listened for a sign of anything cutting through the static.
I caught snippets of songs I recognized intermingled with songs I didn’t, as well as plenty of chipper-sounding advertisements, but I finally let my station jumping come to an end when I landed on a local news station.
“--and shocking everyone, former spec-ops officer David Vaneck announced he’s running against long-term incumbent Sheriff Jethro Thompson in the upcoming election,” the radio host said. It seemed like I’d tuned in during the middle of a segment, but I was more than happy to listen to the rest of the conversation between the two men who apparently ran the radio show as I continued on my way to the courthouse.
They didn’t give any information that I hadn’t heard before about David or Thompson, but it was still refreshing to hear everything from an outside perspective. It also convinced me that David would have plenty of support.
Sometimes, I forgot that not everyone in Crowley was so embroiled in the same messes I found myself in, and was shocked to hear they had different thoughts on the circumstances that had become my world. So it was with relief to hear that both of the radio hosts seemed to think that our man would make a good sheriff.
The radio show ended after a few minutes and was replaced with what I assumed to be yet another Top 40 hit. I turned the station down, just a little
, so that I could savor the small victory that was David’s acceptance onto the ballot in peace.
But, my peace was short-lived.
In front of me, on the main road back into the center of Crowley, cars were lined up at least ten deep. A few were angrily honking on their horns while others looked like they’d shifted gears into park completely.
I frowned and turned the volume on the radio even lower, as if that would help me see. I leaned forward in the driver’s seat to peer out the windshield, and I expected to see some sort of massive pile up. But the line of cars was longer than I had first imagined, and it took me a few seconds of squinting before I even saw what had everyone so riled up.
At the very front of the line, a police barricade was set up that looked to be the size of a miniature elephant from how far back in line I sat.
I glanced around as if I’d be able to glean more information as to what was going on and was thrilled to see an unhappy-looking woman as she stomped back toward her car from what I assumed had been the front of the line. I shifted into park and quickly untangled myself from the seatbelt before I rolled down the window of my borrowed vehicle and craned my body out as far as I could get it without getting stuck in the opening.
“Hey!” I called out to the woman before she could disappear into her sedan three cars ahead of me. “Did you find out what was going on?”
Perhaps it wasn’t the most polite way of broaching the question, but I could feel the alarm bells in my head as they began to ring.
The woman whipped around toward the sound of my voice with her face knit in confusion before her eyes seemed to land on me.
“Yeah,” she hollered back without taking her hand off her car’s door handle. “Sheriff’s department locked down the whole damn entrance into downtown. Something about checking a bunch of cars for drugs or something. I don’t know, they weren’t very goddamn forthcoming about any of it!”
Her brow furrowed even deeper, and she cocked her head to the side as she seemed to study my borrowed vehicle.
“Said they were looking for a car the same type and color as yours,” she shouted and my veins chilled. “Ain’t that a funny coincidence!”
Her voice made it sound like she really did believe it was a funny coincidence.
I watched as she pulled open the door to her sedan and vanished into the car without a goodbye. Then I rocked back into my seat and took a deep breath that didn’t do anything to calm my nerves.
I didn’t need to walk all the way up to the police barricade to ask what was happening, because I already knew.
Whoever had driven by the courthouse that morning when I was on the phone with Natalie had been with the sheriff’s department, and somehow they’d found out what I was doing.
And now, they were clearly going to put a stop to it.
Chapter 19
I felt sick to my stomach, and if it weren’t already empty, I had the distinct fear I would have thrown up in Evelyn’s car and given her a real reason to take me out with that gun she carried in her purse.
The line of vehicles in front of me crept forward at a snail’s pace, and the newly-formed line of cars behind me seemed to stretch just as far in the opposite direction.
I wondered if I could inch my way out of the line somehow and turn around, but I doubted Thompson would be so sloppy as to leave the other two easily accessible entrances into the downtown sector of Crowley unblocked.
The part of my brain that had kept me alive the last year, despite that big, glaring target-based personality flaw of mine, screamed at me to not be caught alone in a vehicle by any of the deputies.
My mind flashed back to the pseudo-arrest earlier in the week, and to Evelyn’s face as she recounted the story about the armed deputy who’d approached her vehicle. My mind also replayed the muzzle flash of the gun that had nearly taken my life the night before.
I swallowed the lump in my throat as I shifted into drive and slowly inched forward with the rest of the cars. I didn’t know what would happen when I made it up to the first barricade, but I had enough common sense to know that whatever it was wouldn’t be good.
My eyes dropped back down to the clock on Evelyn’s dash, and I felt a small wave of panic swell up inside of me as I realized that I only had thirty minutes to get to the courthouse.
If it had been a normal day with a normal set of circumstances, I wouldn’t have worried about calling Calhoun and rescheduling for the next morning. But I didn’t trust that Sheriff Thompson wouldn’t find some way to skirt the law to sell Natalie’s belongings overnight just to spite me.
I knew what I had to do, even if I wasn’t exactly a fan of the idea. I checked the rearview mirror and was grateful to see that the car behind me hadn’t accelerated to rest bumper to bumper with me quite yet.
As obnoxious as this sort of rubber banding style of driving was, I appreciated that they hadn’t fallen prey to the same pattern as the cars in front of me.
I shifted Evelyn’s car into reverse and prayed that the car behind me wouldn’t take that moment to rev up into me. I angled the back end of the car toward the shoulder of the road as I held my breath.
I didn’t dare breathe as I used the newfound clearance in front of me to tilt the car out of the line of waiting vehicles and shift completely up onto the shoulder.
While I wouldn’t normally dare to park a car on the shoulder of a perpetually busy road, I didn’t have many other options. If I’d been able to drive the rest of the way to the courthouse on a normal day, it would have only been a ten minute drive.
But, I wasn’t able to drive the rest of the way.
I exhaled a slow, tired sigh as I accepted the fact that I was going to have to run the rest of the way to the courthouse if I wanted to make it on time. Suddenly, I missed the emergency kit I kept stashed in the back of my own car. After the first time I’d had to run for my life, I’d started to keep a pair of running shoes tossed into the backseat in case another situation ever arose when I needed to run.
I pulled the keys from the ignition and snagged my phone from the passenger seat and tucked both of them into the front pocket of my trousers before I pushed open the driver’s side door and stepped out onto the low shoulder of the long stretch of road that wove through the outskirts of Crowley toward the city.
I just prayed I’d parked far enough over from the road that no one would zoom by and swipe off a mirror. If that did happen, I prayed I was able to change my name and move a thousand miles away before Evelyn noticed.
I slammed the driver’s side door shut and reached into my pockets to click the key fob to lock everything up as I debated what exactly I was about to do. It wasn’t the craziest thing I’d done, but it still felt a little bit insane to run all the way from the police barricade to the courthouse. What other choice did I have, though?
I exhaled a slow breath as I took a moment to stretch out my calves. The last thing I needed was to be running to the courthouse only to have my legs lock up from bad form.
Before I could talk myself out of my plan or form any other crazy ideas, I started to run.
I veered off from the line of cars and ignored the confused looks on the drivers’ faces as I passed them by. I knew that I couldn’t make my way up to the police barricade itself, because that would just lead to the deputies catching sight of me, and I didn’t want to imagine what would come from that.
Instead, after I’d raced past about ten vehicles, I gingerly squeezed my way between two of them with an apologetic wave of my hand that was met with the blaring of a horn.
After I made sure there wasn’t any chance I’d get hit by a careeneing vehicle headed in the opposite direction, I ran across the street toward the small side road that led off to a residential area that sat just outside of town.
I knew that the small neighborhood had an outlet on the other side that would put me closer to the courthouse, and because I wasn’t burdened by a vehicle, I could take as many detours as possible.
My l
egs and arms pumped in time as I ignored the blisters already beginning to form on my heels while I ran in shoes that were never meant for this type of physical activity.
The sun beat down overhead, and sweat beaded under the collar of my shirt before it trickled down my shoulders to pool in the dip of my lower back. I once again regretted dressing formally to meet up with Judge Calhoun, and I made a mental note that the Judge liked to keep his weekends casual.
The neighborhood passed me by in a blur of cookie cutter houses and magnolia petals that drifted down onto the unevenly-paved road. I’m sure it was lovely, though I barely registered much of anything beyond the occasional barking dog.
Without my headphones to keep me company on my unplanned run, I was forced to listen to the sounds of my own breathing and my feet as they hit the asphalt. It wasn’t the kind of sound that made you want to keep running, and I found myself struggling to find a rhythm.
My body ached for rest and still carried the memories of my run the night before. As soon as this damn injunction was secured, I was going to nap for a week straight. I’d certainly earned that.
I burst free of the neighborhood and nearly stumbled over a pothole the size of a small lake as I turned onto the street that should have led me to the courthouse.
A long line of cars clogged up the road just like the one I’d just come from.
I didn’t slow my pace, however, and instead continued down the line of cars toward where the police barricade sat.
A few deputies milled about outside the car directly in front of the barricade and chatted about something I couldn’t quite make out over the sounds of idling engines and my own breathing.
I shifted up off of the road and onto the uneven sidewalk as I refused to break my stride. I’d done all the mental calculations, and I knew that this was my best chance of breaking into town past the blockade. I just prayed that the deputies wouldn’t notice me, or at the very least, they wouldn’t recognize me as they did.
I ducked my head down and all but pressed my chin to my chest as I gained on the blocked section of the street.
