by E. R. FALLON
“I hear you.”
“Good. That’s good.” She sounded relieved.
Albert returned with a bag of what looked like fast food and a tray of two sodas. He pulled open the driver door and grunted. There was a newspaper tucked in his armpit. He could barely fit into the small driver’s seat. He turned around to look at me. “I see you’ve finally woken up.”
I smirked.
“Hope you’re hungry.” He set the bag in Joyce’s lap.
“I said I didn’t want anything …” She jumped in her seat. “Albert, it’s hot.” She picked up the bag and dropped it on the floor in front of her.
“Sorry.” He shrugged sheepishly, something I wouldn’t have expected him to do for anyone except for Joyce. “I got you a soda in case you’re thirsty later.”
“Gee, thanks. I said I didn’t want anything.” She grabbed the newspaper from him and spread it open on her lap. “Good. They don’t know our names yet.” She glanced at me. “You’re not in it.”
I hoped to be, and on the other hand I didn’t. Sooner or later, someone, such as the mail person, would come to my house and smell the body inside. Then they might call the police. But would the cops think I had killed my doctor and then went on the run? Would they even connect Joyce and her brother to me?
“Let’s get the heck outta here,” Joyce said to her brother. “You’re not going to believe what happened to us while you were gone.”
“What? What happened?”
“This man, a real scummy-looking guy, comes up to the window and starts talking to us girls. I think he was trying to make a pass at us. He claimed to know Emily or something.” Joyce roared with laughter.
Albert stayed quiet. Then he whipped around in his seat and looked at me with his eyes burning with fury. “He knows you?”
I nodded and avoided looking at him, he was so angry. “He’s my neighbor,” I spoke quietly.
“You know him well? Will he say something?”
“No, he isn’t like that.”
“What’s his name? What’s his name?” Albert seemed frantic.
“Smith Reed,” I said quietly.
“He’s a nobody,” Joyce said.
“Did he suspect anything?” Albert turned around and whispered heatedly to her.
“No. The guy was a dummy.”
“Yeah, but she could have given him some sort of signal.”
“She didn’t,” Joyce said.
“She could have. If you were looking at him and she was looking at him, how do you know what she was doing?”
“She didn’t, Albert. She didn’t say nothing. She didn’t do nothing. The guy left when I gave him the finger. Called me a ‘bitch’ if you can believe it.”
Joyce seemed to defend me, and as bizarre as she was, I feared what might happen if she wasn’t around. She might have had very little of a soul, but Albert had none.
Albert seethed with rage and he gnashed his teeth. “He called you what?” He made a fist and slammed it on the steering wheel.
His fury alarmed me.
Joyce grabbed his arm and tried to shake him out of his angry state. “Ah, don’t mind him. Let it go.” She cautiously rubbed his shoulder. “Don’t blow it for us, Albert, Peach. We’ll never see that guy again. We’ll be where it’s warm and sunny, enjoying our money, and he’ll be poor and rotting in this cold place with those nasty teeth he has.”
Albert chuckled. It seemed like Joyce was the only person who could calm him.
So they planned to fly to someplace warm and sunny. It couldn’t have been somewhere in the US like California. So where, then? Mexico? South America?
“Okay, comrade,” he said with a grin.
Comrade? Communism.
Cuba?
Cuba. That had to have been where they wanted me to fly them, a place they’d never be extradited from. It was far from where we were, farther than Mexico, but not as far as South America.
“I overheard this fellow inside saying that there’s a roadblock up ahead on the highway,” Albert said to Joyce. “So, looks like we’re going to have to take a detour.”
He finally started the car and my feet began to thaw with the blast of heat. I kicked some of the junk, food wrappers and old bottles I’d left on the floor, out of my way. Albert unzipped the bag by my feet and tried to dig through it, and I could see green money bills.
“I used all the money I had on me inside that place,” he explained to Joyce.
His arm wouldn’t reach all the way into the bag.
He nodded at me. “Get some for me.”
I stared at him for a moment, then when he nodded at me again I grabbed a handful of cash out of the bag and shoved it into his pocket. He watched me shivering in the back.
“You got a coat in the bag you packed?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Should’ve brought one,” he said.
I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I escaped again. If I went to the police and told them about Albert and Joyce and the police then caught them, they’d tell the police what they said I’d done to that guy in my house.
A detour would probably take us into the middle of nowhere and lessen my chances of escaping considerably. They must have lived around here for a while, if not their whole lives, if they felt comfortable enough to go out of the way onto smaller roads. I wondered if anyone had identified them during the robbery. Had they worn masks or some other kind of disguise? Albert, a muscled giant, would be pretty easy to pick out in a lineup but not Joyce, who seemed ordinary until you got to know her.
Chapter Five
Albert got gas before we left the truck stop. “Don’t want to use up what we got in those red containers if we don’t have to,” he said.
Joyce reached into the fast food bag on the floor and handed me a container of limp French fries. “Here, eat some.”
Although the smell of the greasy burgers and fries made me nauseous and I had a withdrawal headache from not drinking booze in so many hours, I knew I needed my strength so I forced myself to eat a few of the warm fries.
“Can I have a sip of soda?” I asked.
Joyce nodded and put the straw to my lips. I drank some of the sweet, cold liquid and then she took some from the same cup.
“You don’t mind sharing with me?” I asked.
“Albert only bought two.”
They undid my handcuffs eventually. “You better behave, Peach,” Joyce said. “I can put them back on just as fast as I took them off.” I noticed that neither of them used seatbelts.
“You know your way around these roads,” I remarked to Albert.
They could have been locals but I lived in a small town and I hadn’t recognized them from around there.
“Are you from around here?” I asked. “If you are, I’m wondering why I haven’t seen you before.”
Joyce answered for him. “We used to live here as children, before they separated us. I came back a while ago and then when I reunited with Albert he moved here to be with me—”
Albert shushed her. Then he said to me, “You shut your mouth and stop asking so many questions.” He accelerated and the car went faster with his burst of rage.
Joyce leaned forward and lightly touched the back of his neck. “Albert, honey, slow down. The cops …”
He returned the car to a speed that seemed within the limit. I felt Albert watching me in the rearview mirror.
“We brought duct tape with us in case we needed it,” he said. “We haven’t yet but we can use it anytime.”
I wanted to give him the middle finger but resisted.
Joyce rolled down the window and threw my cell phone, my last tangible connection to the world that existed outside of them, out onto the road. The outside wind whipped her hair around her face and she pushed it out of her eyes.
Would we sleep in the car? In a motel? The airport they mentioned wasn’t close by. But I didn’t expect a hotel, I expected them to drive through the night and stop only for fuel and maybe
for food.
If they didn’t kill me first, how would I get back to the US from Cuba? Did I even want to return? If I really was a killer like them, I couldn’t see all three of us living as fugitives and helping each other out in Cuba. Joyce and Albert surely planned to get rid of me once they no longer had a use for me. Otherwise I would just be a third wheel. They planned to kill me, I knew it.
Albert put on the radio and left on a station playing jazz. I listened to them talking above the music. I sensed that Joyce had wanted to ride up front with him but he hadn’t wanted me alone in the backseat.
“I didn’t know you like that kind of music,” Joyce said.
“It was what this guy used to play on the radio at the boys’ home. He was the only one nice to us kids. Taught us about music.”
“What was his name?”
“Joe. But we all called him Joey Jazz.” Albert seemed to smile. “He was an orderly there.”
“I know nothing about jazz. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.”
“Sure you must’ve.”
Joyce turned a little toward me. “You know anything about jazz music, Top Gun?”
Again, that friendliness about her. I got the reference but barely managed a smile.
I must have been so crazy that I’d killed someone who’d only wanted my help. My life was over. So what did it matter if Joyce and Albert were going to kill me eventually? But their stories about the man’s car breaking down and that they’d put it in a ditch? There wasn’t a ditch near my house.
Still, maybe I could live a little before I died, maybe I could have some fun and let loose. I could have really used a drink right then …
“Not really,” I said to Joyce. “Just from hearing it on the radio. My ex-fiancé liked listening to it at night sometimes, when it was very late.”
“I didn’t know you were married, Peach.”
I guess she had overlooked that part in my file. “I wasn’t. My ex-fiancé. Almost was.”
“Sounds intense. What happened? What was his name?”
How like Joyce to just ask about something very personal and expect an answer. I didn’t want them to have anything over me more than they already had and ignored her question about his name. I would be very careful about what I told them and would only give sparse details.
“He moved away,” I said.
“And you didn’t want to leave that dump and that nothing town and go with him? Was he rich? Good-looking? Did your mental problems get in the way?”
My house was small but not a ‘dump’ by any means. I’d probably never see it again. But I knew what she meant about the town.
“Not rich,” I said. “Pretty good-looking. My illness never bothered him. His sister was ill …” I knew I was giving too much away and cut myself short. “I didn’t love him and so he left. It’s best it ended that way.”
“Before he could break your heart, you broke his. Good work. I get where you’re coming from. Got an ex-husband. I left him. The jerk used to slap me around. We tried to have kids but no luck. Guess he blamed me for that.”
“Quiet, Joyce.” Albert turned off the radio.
“You be quiet, Albert. Who’s she gonna tell?” Joyce laughed to herself.
What if I’d been wrong about Joyce, and her friendliness wasn’t just because we were both women but because she took pity on me because they planned to kill me? What if she felt she could tell me anything she wanted to because she knew I’d never make it out of this alive?
I watched the scenery outside the window, the familiar snowy mountains giving way to the now frozen-over, flat farming fields which a few months later would teem with brown wheat that blew this way and that with the wind. The longer Albert drove the less I recognized the backdrop around me. How would I know where to go if I escaped? I knew the area pretty well but I wasn’t raised there and had moved there after retiring from the military for the instructor job. At the time I’d liked the idea of working at the job because it was hundreds of miles from what had been my foster homes. A friend in the Air Force had recommended me for the job. His uncle owned the flight school. This same friend was also the person who’d introduced me to Peter, his childhood friend, when I first started working there. That felt like a lifetime ago. And because of everything that happened after I wished I’d never gotten the job in the first place. Peter was a paramedic who taught flight lessons on the side. He’d grown up in a family of pilots.
Joyce quieted and I never responded to what she had told me. I wasn’t surprised to hear about her ex-husband. That explained why she’d been so protective of me when Albert seemed like he might strike me.
At night-time, they didn’t pull over into the occasional motel we’d pass or a secluded wooded spot to rest. Joyce and Albert would periodically stop at the side of whatever little road we were on to switch places. Once in a while one of them would disappear into the woods for a minute or two, I assumed to go to the bathroom, while the other held the gun at me. Despite the fact that I felt they were both capable of cruelty, sometimes I felt more comfortable with Albert riding in the back with me, pointing the gun on me, than I did with Joyce. Other times, I felt better with Joyce there. I couldn’t tell which one I trusted more, but maybe neither. Most of the time I sort of felt they were the same.
Then I had to pee. I hadn’t been drinking anything except for a couple of sips of the soda Joyce had offered me. But I eventually had to go and I couldn’t hold it any longer. I ignored Albert next to me and waited until it was Joyce’s turn to drive before asking her. I felt she would be more likely to comply with my request.
“Joyce?”
“Yes, Peach?”
Ever since I discovered her identity, she’d used the nickname for me on and off.
“I have to use the bathroom.”
“You can hold it.”
“I have been. And I don’t think I can anymore.”
“You’ll just have to.”
“Please? I know I can’t hold it.” I hated begging but knew I’d wet myself if I didn’t go soon.
I figured that when one of them would go off when they stopped it had to have been to go to the bathroom. It took a certain kind of grit in a women to relieve themselves outside. In the military we had to do it often so I was used to it, but most ordinary women weren’t, unless they went camping a lot or spent time outdoors. I could see Joyce going camping.
Joyce spoke to Albert in the rearview. “She can go in the woods like we’ve been doing. I have tissues with me.”
Albert jabbed the gun at my shoulder to get my attention. “You’ll do that?”
I nodded.
“These military girls are as tough as the men,” Joyce remarked. “But I don’t have a problem going outside myself as long as nobody else is around looking at me.”
“All right,” Albert grunted. “Pull over when you think it’s good, and you can take the gun and go out with her.”
The way they shared the gun seemed odd. It seemed like genuine criminals would each have one. Had they started off with two and then lost one while fleeing the robbery?
“I’m afraid you’re gonna have to wait a little while more, Peach.” Joyce tapped the steering wheel. Her pink-painted nails were oddly short. “There’s not enough privacy around here. I know it seems like no one’s around. But you never know. Wouldn’t want a cop seeing us stopped and checking up on us or someone spying on you. Gonna have to wait until we stop seeing these farm fields and come upon some woods again. There’s no one around here, but you never know who we could run into, like that weird neighbor fellow of yours we saw back there.”
I didn’t know what to say so I murmured in agreement. Other cars had appeared less and less the further we drove.
I could make a run for it when Joyce pulled over and went with me to use the bathroom. I didn’t think she would shoot me even if I fled because they needed me for their plan. Who else would fly them? But I wouldn’t get far in the frosty woods or frozen-solid fields without sho
es. Taking my shoes had been a smart move. Joyce and Albert might have been novices at this kidnapping thing, but they weren’t unskilled.
When the late afternoon darkened and became night, Joyce pulled over into what looked like a farmer’s field with crops deadened by the winter, protected by a line of trees thick with pine needles which created a kind of heavy curtain between the field and the road.
“This is perfect.” She parked the car and kept it running. Albert passed her the gun from the backseat.
“I’ll drive when you get back,” he said. Then he glanced at me. “Don’t try to get out until she’s standing in front of your door.”
When Joyce stepped around the car and appeared at my window, holding the gun at me, Albert nodded at her and she unlocked the door and gestured for me to exit. Albert climbed over the seat I’d vacated and stepped outside.
I shivered while standing on the ground hard and rough from frost. “Can I put on my shoes? It’s freezing.”
“No,” Albert said.
I looked at Joyce and she shrugged and then shook her head.
Albert went around to the driver’s side and got in the seat and Joyce ordered me to walk in front of her through the trees. She made sure to let me know she pointed the gun at the back of my head by touching the tip to the base of my skull a few times, trying to hurry me.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see her behind me, pointing to something wide and bulky-looking up ahead. “You can go in those bushes next to the field,” she said. “It’s dark, no one will see you.”
“Does your phone have a flashlight?” My feet stung with each step and I worried about getting frostbite out there.
“Albert and I don’t have phones. Don’t like them because the police can trace them.”
I struggled to walk in the dark without any light except for the moon’s shine. Why did I have to lead when Joyce had shoes? Because then I’d be the one to trip over or bump into anything first so Joyce wouldn’t.
The frozen ground hurt like pinpricks on the bottoms of my bare feet and I winced a little. The military had prepared me for such a scenario, barefoot and marching in the cold, but up until then I had never experienced it. In the distance was what looked like a small lighted box but had to have been the farmer’s house.
