Traces of the Girl

by E. R. FALLON

  “I saw a generator when I went into your garage earlier. You got gasoline in your garage for that?” he asked me.

  I nodded. “In the red containers toward the back.”

  “Joyce, you hear that? Let’s grab some of those red containers. No, wait, it’s too dangerous, I’ll do it myself.”

  Joyce seemed disappointed he wouldn’t let her do something “dangerous”. She opened the garage door and he passed the gun to her. He kept glancing toward the direction of the cavern.

  “You stay with her in the car and I’ll go get the gas and then go get it after,” he said to Joyce.

  It?

  Joyce unlocked the car doors. My old car hadn’t been started in a while. It grumbled and I willed it not to start, but then of course it did. Joyce pushed the gun deep into my flesh and ordered me into the back to sit with her. Albert would be driving. Once again, I felt her hands shake. If she was such a calm killer like she claimed to be, why was she so nervous? Until that moment I’d expected them to tie me up and throw me in the car trunk with a bullet hole for air.

  They knew I wouldn’t have an incentive to flee from them to get to the police if I had killed that man and he was innocent like they insisted. If I chose to believe them that I was a killer of an innocent person, then if I managed to escape from them and go to the police and gave them Joyce and Albert’s location, I’d have to turn myself in eventually because if Joyce and Albert were captured they would tell the police I’d killed someone innocent. I decided then that the severe punishment I’d likely face from the courts, even death, was better than my sure death at their hands.

  I bolted toward the cavern.

  I hadn’t thought about running into the body in the dark. I’d find out soon enough if I’d put him down there. I began to reason with myself that Joyce might not shoot me as I ran because they needed my help. Even still, I prepared to dodge bullets. Flying a plane wasn’t a common skill, and they needed me. Without my help, they’d be forced to drive to escape and the police could catch them.

  The cold air pressed on my lungs like forceful hands. I took careful strides so as not to slip on the snow-wet grass. I reached the cavern and ducked inside. Outside it had been a bright morning but in the cavern it was completely dark and I had no light with me.

  The gun box and the money could have been hidden in any of these pockets. Forced to walk slowly because I could only use my hands pressed on the cool, jagged rock formations alongside myself to lead me, I heard Albert and Joyce catching up behind me, running, and whispering angrily to one another. It seemed Albert blamed Joyce for not shooting me and she felt he was a “damn fool” to want to kill off the only person who could help them flee.

  I didn’t see any mound-like objects that could have been the man’s body. With them getting closer and closer to me, and forced to run, I crashed straight into a protruding rock and started to fall. Everything went dark as I landed on the hard ground. I heard them reaching me and felt them standing over me. Then nothing.

  Chapter Four

  I woke up alone with Joyce in my car pointing the gun at me. She held it at an angle where it couldn’t have been seen from the outside.

  They must have carried me inside the car after I’d blacked out after my fall in the cavern. How much time had passed? My forehead hurt like hell, pounding and swollen, and when I touched the skin there I felt dried blood. I tried moving my other hand but found that Joyce had handcuffed herself to me, and she was wearing my clothes.

  The two red gas containers from my garage were on the floor by her feet. They’d broken the door lock on the side of the backseat where I was so it could only be opened from the outside, as if they thought I’d make a run for it again or might even try to jump out of the moving car.

  I stared out the window and looked around. It appeared we were at a truck stop according to the large white sign with blue lettering, one of the only places to get food and lodgings in the area. Outside it snowed lightly. Through the car window it looked like the afternoon, and I didn’t feel that a whole day had passed so I assumed I’d been out for a few hours. I felt the cold, rough car floor with my feet and realized I was barefoot, and the car wasn’t running. My feet were frozen even inside the car.

  “Where are my shoes?”

  Joyce had been silent next to me until she said, “We removed them and your socks – well, I did – so you won’t be inclined to try to run away again. It’s cold so you’d never get far without them. Don’t worry, they’re in the car. You’ll get them back when we think it’s safe for you to have them. Albert finally busted open your lockbox with a crowbar I grabbed from your garage and we got your gun. It wasn’t loaded, and we couldn’t find any bullets anywhere for ourselves to use. Pretty useless if you ask me. It was stupid of you not to have kept your gun loaded and nearby if you planned to use it for protection. What were you thinking keeping it out in the garage?”

  I didn’t want to explain my reasoning to Joyce because I didn’t want her knowing anything sensitive about me. The way she’d used the past tense to describe my gun hadn’t been lost on me. Would my life soon be in the past tense as well?

  The bullets. I had forgotten about the gun not having any bullets in it. Memory loss. Another side-effect of my condition, or maybe the medication, I couldn’t remember what Dr. Tompkins had said about that, and now I’d never get to ask him. The fact that the gun wouldn’t have been any use to me even though I’d managed to escape from them comforted me a little about being captured. I had tucked the gun away in the lockbox and tossed the bullets at my doctor’s suggestion, so I wouldn’t be tempted to harm myself during one of my bleak spells. And when that spell ended I hadn’t returned the gun to its rightful place.

  I could feel Joyce watching me.

  “What did you think you were doing by running off like that? I’m so disappointed. It was stupid, stupid, stupid! I’m surprised at you. If you’d gone to the police and they caught us, then we’d tell them what you did to that guy and you’d be in deep shit too. We wouldn’t be the only ones who were screwed.”

  I thought of something convoluted to say to throw her off. “Sometimes an urge is more powerful than an instinct,” I said after a while. I knew I’d risked annoying or even angering her, and she had the gun.

  Joyce laughed faintly. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “What’s it supposed to mean?”

  I shrugged at her frustration. “Where’s Albert?” I asked.

  “Tell me what you meant and I’ll tell you where he is.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it. Okay? I don’t know why I said it. I just said it to say something.”

  I could tell she didn’t like my answer. And it didn’t seem like she would stop asking me about what I had said and what it meant, but she did. Then she turned away and I assumed she wasn’t going to answer me about her brother’s whereabouts. I don’t know why that surprised me. After all, I knew her well enough by then to understand she wasn’t the type of person to give you something without first getting something she wanted from you. She had said she would only tell me about Albert if I explained myself. And I hadn’t. She looked out the window. Then she surprised me by talking.

  “He’s inside this dump getting food. He’s hungry. I’m not. I asked him for you to get something for you because you weren’t awake.”

  Because I wasn’t awake? As though I had just been napping at my own free will. I began to grunt then cleared my throat instead. Joyce held the power in the situation. I’d already pushed my luck and had to use more care and not seem so defiant. I could defy them on the inside and on the outside again eventually, but for now on the outside I had to make it seem like they’d won so they’d think they had while I quietly rebelled against them.

  The way Joyce had said “dump” led me to believe she’d never eaten inside a truck stop before and hadn’t planned to. Sometimes I had a difficult time reading people and that’s why I’d
joined the Air Force instead of applying to the FBI or CIA. I was most useful in the air. Joyce didn’t seem like she’d grown up in a palace but maybe she had. Maybe she and Albert were already wealthy heirs who got their kicks by stealing more money. But I figured they’d have their own escape plane if they were that. They would have looked suspicious if they tried to use the auction money to buy one.

  Imagining them as heirs cheered me up a little. Or was I getting giddy because I was becoming manic again and needed my pills?

  Oh no! My pills. I’d left them behind at the house. I began to frantically search around me. It wasn’t like I would have been able to just stop in at a pharmacy and get some.

  Joyce noticed me searching. “Check your pocket.”

  I felt for the pills on me and sighed with relief when I found them in my shirt pocket.

  “After you passed out I grabbed them from the house for you,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. I figured you wouldn’t be able to fly us without them.”

  “Right.” I’d been foolish to think that for a moment they were looking out for me, when in reality they were always looking out for themselves every damn time.

  I kicked at something soft by my feet and I looked at the car floor and saw a burlap sack stuffed with what looked like paper: the robbery money.

  I rattled the handcuffs. “Did you two plan for this or are you just into S and M?” When she didn’t laugh or smile, I said, “Come on, did you get these off of a cop or what?”

  “Albert’s my brother.” Joyce scowled. “Sarcastic women always come across as jerks.” The color must have drained from my face because she said, “But of course you don’t,” with a smile.

  I didn’t get her. She ran hot and cold, and one moment could be so very cruel and then moments later somewhat kind. Albert seemed like a classic sociopath but Joyce was more complex than that. She wasn’t entirely evil or good, she was a bit of each. I couldn’t see myself being her friend, but I could see myself being more her friend than Albert’s.

  Joyce rolled down the window and I thought she would smoke a cigarette but she tossed a gum wrapper outside instead.

  “Hey, girls!” My neighbor Smith Reed’s gray-teeth grin appeared at Joyce’s open window.

  The windows weren’t tinted so he’d probably recognized my car and had seen us from walking through the parking lot. I didn’t know he went to this truck stop but I didn’t know him well enough to know much about him, besides the fact that he creeped me out.

  Joyce snapped her gum with her tongue. “Who the heck are you?” she said in a way so unfriendly I half expected Smith to jump back and bolt. She concealed the gun.

  Smith looked past Joyce’s face at me. From where he stood he couldn’t see I wasn’t wearing shoes. “That’s a nasty gash on your pretty forehead, Miss Will.”

  Smith always used my surname preceded by “Miss” in conversation. He thought it was charming, but it just made him sound more like a creep. One good thing – the only good thing – about Smith was that he didn’t give up until he got an answer. Now that he’d appeared Joyce had her work cut out for her.

  She interjected for me. “She hurt herself rock climbing.” Joyce spat her gum out the window close to his face.

  “A real little adventurer.” Smith grinned again and I saw his gray teeth in full.

  In the past the repulsiveness of his teeth had always made me shiver every time I saw him but I was too on edge for them to affect me now. I tried to mouth “Help” but he wasn’t paying attention. I blinked my eyes at him but he didn’t ask me if I was all right. Someone as self-absorbed as he was probably just thought I was flirting with him.

  “You can go away now,” Joyce said. “She’s fine.”

  “Bitch,” Smith spoke under his breath.

  Joyce gave him the middle finger and rolled up the window. I couldn’t help admire her gumption though I wished he hadn’t left so soon. He could have been my one chance at freedom. But if I had done what Joyce and Albert said I had done, did I even want freedom?

  I continued to blink my eyes, trying to signal my distress through the window, but he just smiled at me behind Joyce and showed his gray teeth again. Then he walked away from the car to his beat-up blue pickup truck in the parking lot. Joyce had managed to cast away even someone as stubborn as Smith Reed. I had to give her credit for that. Quite a gift she had. I doubted he’d sensed even a little that I was in danger. Had I not tried hard enough? Problem was, I didn’t know if I wanted to be rescued.

  “That guy’s a creep,” Joyce said. “He knows your name. You know him?”

  I nodded. “He’s my neighbor.”

  That seemed to make her panic a little more. “He’s going to cause trouble for us, for you?”

  I shook my head. “He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.” I didn’t intend to compliment her but I let something slip out. “Nice work chasing him away. Hardly anyone can do that.”

  “Thanks, Peach.”

  Peach? Where had I heard that before?

  I knew I had heard it somewhere but I struggled to think where. Then it occurred to me. Someone I had seen at Dr. Tompkins’s office a few months ago had used that word with me; a woman I had only ever seen there once. When I saw her she was standing near the front desk. At the time I didn’t know whether she was an employee of the doctor’s I hadn’t met or a patient. I had been in a very bad state that day, had drunk too much the night before, and was still a bit out of it. Despite having my phone on me, I had asked the women for the time, and when she told me I’d thanked her. She’d replied, “You’re welcome, Peach.”

  Peach? How many people could have used that term?

  I now knew that woman at the office was Joyce. Which explained why they’d wanted to kill Dr. Tompkins, who could have identified her.

  “I know who you are, Joyce. I remember you from the doctor’s office. You called me ‘Peach’ when I asked you for the time.”

  “No.” Joyce kept shaking her head. “No. You’re crazy.”

  “Do you work there or are you a patient? How did you know so much about me? Did the doctor tell you about me?”

  “I said no. You’re crazy. Shut up.” Her green eyes turned fiery.

  “You can stop this now. You can end this whole ordeal. You have a choice. Because I think there’s some good in you. You said you didn’t want anything to happen to Albert, but Joyce, what do you think is going to happen if the police catch up to us before we reach the airport? They might shoot at you and hurt Albert. They might kill him. Just let me walk away.”

  “I don’t think so, Emily.”

  “Let me leave. I think you’re capable of making the right decision. I don’t think you were a patient of the doctor’s, since you were by that desk and not seated when I saw you there. I think you worked there. Did you handle my file? Is that how come you know all about who I am? I think the doctor asked you to leave because I only saw you there once. What happened between you and Dr. Tompkins? I think you let Albert kill him not just because he knows who you are but also because you hated him. Why? Did he let you go, fire you? Is that why I’d only seen you there once? There must be some good in you. Let me go.” I disliked begging someone as wicked as she seemed, and I did doubt whether she had any good in her, but I did it anyway. “Please?”

  Joyce’s gaze stayed on me. “You’re a murderer. What are you in such a hurry to leave for? You help us and we won’t say anything to the cops. You get away with your crime. You don’t help us, we get caught, and we tell them we saw you kill that guy while we were hiding out on your property. Sounds far-fetched, but with your mental health history I’m sure they’ll believe us.”

  I started to think aloud, and while it wasn’t wise to appear vulnerable in front of her, I couldn’t control it. “I don’t know whether I hurt anyone. I do have flashbacks about some kind of incident, but with my condition, sometimes I think I did something when I didn’t. I might have imagined everything
.”

  “No. Sure you did it. Albert and I, we saw it clear as day.”

  “Why are you on such a high horse? Dr. Tompkins said you killed people. You aren’t such decent people yourselves. You could be lying about what you said I did. You’re criminals. I can’t trust you. It makes sense you’d be lying because then I’d have a reason to have to help you. If I didn’t have a reason, I might fight back. I might refuse to help you. Then you wouldn’t have anyone to fly you.”

  “We’d kill you if you refused.”

  “True, you might. But I might be dead either way. You might kill me after I help you, and if I don’t help you, I might be sent to prison forever, which in a way is like a long drawn-out death.”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, but stop acting smart.” Joyce flashed the gun, which shook in her hand.

  “Why is your hand shaking? Your right hand. It does that a lot,” I blurted out. I’d been curious about it for a while now. “Are you nervous about me? Why? You’re the one with the weapon.”

  “Damn you. Shut up. Shut up or I’m going to smack you with this.” She waved the gun in the air close to my face, within a quarter inch of my nose.

  “Okay. Okay.” I tried to gesture with my hands to calm her but I couldn’t really move the handcuffed one.

  “I mean it. Shut up or else you’re gonna really be dead very soon.”

  We sat in silence and I contemplated why Albert and Joyce had committed their crime. Did one of them have an ill child to care and pay for? That, I could have understood. But I suspected their motive was nothing more than good old-fashioned greed.

  Joyce cooled down after a while. “You really have to learn to behave better if we’re going to get along. Otherwise, this is going to be a long trip for all of us, especially for you.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Emily?” She said when I hadn’t replied. She sounded worried and susceptible, like that kid at school who wants everyone to like them but no one does.