Low (Low #1)

by Mary Elizabeth

  With a person in custody, and when Poe and I are ready to go, most of the cop cars have left. The remaining units linger to take a statement from the manager and collect evidence.

  Other lowlifes and scoundrels inhabiting the EZ-Eight Hotel stay guarded behind deadbolts and door chains, unseen in the presence of the law. I feel their eyes on us as we walk among civilization’s enforcers, arresting one of our own.

  “We’re still blocked in,” Poe whispers. She slides her arm around my lower back, tucking her red hair behind her ear.

  “Just get in the car.” I unlock the trunk and throw our belongings inside, on top of a rifle linking me to a murder and robbery.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” a male voice says from behind me.

  Poesy and I make eye contact through the rearview mirror, and I subtly shake my head to tell her not to make any sudden movements. Turning slowly with my weapon concealed and hands visible, I reflect cool and calm while my insides storm.

  “Can I help you, officer?” I ask in an even tone.

  The radio on his hip starts to call off codes from dispatch; he lowers the volume and smiles. If I didn’t know any better, I’d assume he can hear the sound of my heart pounding against my chest.

  “My unit is blocking you in.” His badge shines in the early morning sun. I can see myself in the reflection of his sunglasses. “You’re not going anywhere until I move out of the way.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say with a small laugh, rubbing my hand around the back of my neck. “Take your time.”

  “I don’t want to hold you up. Are you from around here?” the blond officer asks. His chest is protected by a bulletproof vest under his uniform.

  “My wife and I are driving through town on our way to visit family.”

  Officer Parrish, I read from his badge, looks over my shoulder and waves at the redhead in the passenger seat of my car. Unaware he’s in the presence of outlaws, he greets Poesy with a small wave and offers me directions to our destination.

  “Where are you headed? The highways are tricky around here if you don’t know where you’re going.”

  “We have a GPS. Thanks, though.”

  “Okay, well, sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll go ahead and move so you can be on your way.” His handcuffs clink as he walks away. I don’t move until he reaches his cruiser, but stop when he turns around. “Nothing personal, but do you have some ID?”

  “Yes.” I tighten my jaw.

  “I know you’re on your way out, but this place is kind of far from the freeway. We had that drug arrest earlier, so for your safety and mine, I’d feel better if I checked. Not that you’ve done anything wrong. Protocol.” He holds his hands up to convey his sincerity, but it’s bullshit.

  “I don’t know anything about a drug arrest,” I say, reaching into my back pocket. My knuckles brush over the .44 at my waist.

  “For sure.” The good man watches my hands as one of his lingers above his weapon. “But like I said, it’s protocol. I’m sure everything will come up clean, and then we can get you back on the road.”

  Good money was paid to purchase foolproof, checkable identification. My old celly guaranteed they’re the real deal and would get us where we need to go without a problem. A theory I felt was confirmed when we bought and registered the Mazda with the DMV, but as I pass my forged driver’s license to Officer Parrish, I’m not convinced.

  “Stay tight, Bobby. I’ll be right back.” He flicks the plastic-coated surface and turns away.

  Hidden behind sunglasses and under a hat, detained for a crime I don’t have anything to do with, I feel exposed and trapped by fate’s sick idea of irony. Unable to look at Poesy, I lean against the trunk of the car as five minutes start to feel like five lifetimes, and I rack my mind for ways to get my girl out of this if the boy in blue comes for my head.

  She won’t answer for my crimes.

  I watch Officer Parrish mumble into his radio, with Bobby Bryne’s ID between his pointer finger and thumb. Nothing can stop me from jumping into my car and backing into his cruiser to get away. If I did it now, I’ll have a head start and a better chance of making it to the freeway before he follows. Our new identifications will be worthless, and we’ll have to dump the car, but there will be freedom.

  The opportunity shrinks as the law returns with my driver’s license.

  “Okay, Mr. Bryne. Everything checked out, and you’re good to go.” My stony expression stares back at me in the reflection of his sunglasses again. “Word to the wise, next time you come through Hurricane, don’t stop here. This place isn’t known for its customer service and hospitality, if you know what I mean.”

  We share a forced laugh, and I agree. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “One last thing, Bob.” He points his finger at me.

  “It’s Bobby,” I correct him with an edge to my tone.

  “What’s your birthdate, Bobby?” he uses extra emphasis when repeating my name. I’d love to knock the condescending smile from his face.

  “August 4, 1983,” I answer instead, having memorized the date on the ID.

  “Have a safe trip.” He nods.

  “IT’S BEEN FIVE days since security guard Jonathan Henning was brutally beaten during a robbery at First Division Bank in Hollywood, later resulting in his untimely death. Henning’s family laid his body to rest today at Forest Lawn Memorial Park after a service attended by more than two thousand people, including Police Lieutenant William Ro and Los Angeles Mayor Rick Edmonds.

  “More details about the alleged culprits, Lowen Seely and Poesy Ashby, known as the Four-Four Bandits, were released at a press conference early this morning.”

  The image switches from a blonde news anchor to a previous recording of the press conference. It’s a small, neutral-colored room, filled with camera crews and reporters. Two large pictures of Poesy and me—my mugshot and her college ID photograph—are displayed beside the podium.

  “Lowen Seely is approximately 6’3”, 208 pounds. He has a lengthy criminal record, including grand theft and assault. He is believed to be the mastermind behind three bank robberies that took place in the last eight months. His longtime girlfriend, Posey Ashby, is 5’5”, 135 pounds with no prior criminal record.”

  Camera flashes reflect light off our glossy images.

  “We have reason to believe Seely and Ashby have adopted new identities and left the state of California under their aliases.”

  “Any idea what these aliases are?” one reporter asks, holding up a digital recorder.

  Lieutenant Ro shakes his head. “No. All we know is that their families claim to have had no contact with either suspect since before Monday’s bank robbery.”

  “Is it true the couple was sighted in Baker?” another journalist questions. “And have any other sightings been documented?”

  Ro nods. “We have had multiple Four-Four Bandit sightings from here to Florida, but nothing concrete. We’re in the process of reviewing surveillance footage and confirming or denying all leads. Until we get a positive location, we ask the public to call with any information they have. Everything helps. We have reached out to jurisdictions across the country for assistance. Capturing these heinous criminals is our priority.”

  Returning to the news anchor, she summarizes the information given during the conference, once again flashing our images and a contact phone number on the screen.

  “Anchor Ronald Slick is on sight in downtown Hollywood, interviewing a witness who claims to have had a run-in with the Four-Four Bandits after the first robbery in Inglewood. Ronald?”

  “Thank you, Maria,” Ronald replies, pressing his finger against the microphone in his ear. He reports in front of a mom-and-pop shop, with dozens of people walking through his shot, waving and making faces. “Since the death of Jonathan Henning, catching sympathy from citizens across the nation, the faces of Lowen Seely and Poesy Ashby are quickly making it on TV screens everywhere. I’m here interviewing Sara O’Toole, a Los Angeles transient
who claims she had a run-in with the Four-Four Bandits.”

  Sara, the junkie Poesy threw a handful of change at on our way to the bus station after the California Credit Union heist, steps into view. Thinner but as dirty as the last time we saw her, she smiles, showing a mouthful of decayed teeth and sores.

  “You ran into LA’s most wanted criminals. Tell us what happened.” Ronald holds the microphone to Sara’s mouth.

  “Yeah, it was right on this exact spot.” She points to the slab of concrete she and the reporter stand on. “I was minding my own business when they ran through here, pointing their weapon at everyone, threatening to kill us if we called the cops.”

  “Is that why you waited until now?” Ronald asks the tough questions.

  “Yes, I was afraid for my life. The devil was in their eyes. I’m just happy to be alive.” Sara smiles, pale-faced and sick.

  “So are we.” Ronald turns away from the liar. His eyebrows are perfectly shaped, and the makeup line around his profile is noticeable. “Live from downtown Hollywood, I am Ronald Slick with FOX 11 News. Back to you in the studio, Maria.”

  I power off my phone, ending a replay of this morning’s news coverage from LA. After a day non-stop on the road, Poesy and I have ended up in Wyoming, finding shelter in a low-key, low-populated town west of Rock Springs. Another dive hotel allows us to pay in cash if we fork up three nights’ stay upfront, and this time it includes free Wi-Fi and HBO.

  “That lying cunt,” Poesy exclaims. “Why is she saying those things?”

  Scrubbing my hands down my tired face, I lie back on the mattress and stare at the popcorn textured ceiling. “Maybe they paid her. Who knows? She’s a crackhead.”

  “Bitch,” my girl mumbles. “I should kill her for that shit.”

  A smile spreads across my face in spite of deep-planted worry etching permanent lines between my brows and purple bruises beneath my sleepy eyes. Anxiety weighs heavy on my heart, resulting in palpitations that have me convinced I’m dying. The only meal I’ve had in twenty-four hours consists of chocolate and energy drinks, and the comedown from both has me aching.

  “I’m serious. Apparently, we’re seedy criminals. We may as well live up to the reputation and start butchering these motherfuckers.”

  “Can we relax for a few days before we start taking lives?” I ask. My smile fades as an image of Jonathan, blinded by blood, floods my mind.

  A man lost his life. We shouldn’t make light of it.

  Even crooks grieve.

  “Can we really stay for more than a night?” Poesy asks in a small voice. She chips the black polish from her toenails.

  We only drove through two stoplights after we arrived in a town with no recognizable commercial businesses or advertisements within a twenty-mile radius. The grocery store seconds as a post office, and the high school is a two-story building and a football field. Our hotel consists of ten rooms, a laundry area, and a kidney-shaped pool. Surrounded by woods, with the closest structure a mile away, I don’t think we have too much to worry about.

  “It would be nice to get more than a couple hours to sleep. And the room is decent,” I say.

  Nothing, not even the ghost of my victim raking at my conscience, keeps me from plummeting into deep sleep. He joins my dreams, projecting life-like images from the bank robbery against my blackened subconscious like a scratchy film. I’m on the outside looking in, able to see how wide my pupils dilate with other peoples’ fear staring down the barrel of my gun. Spit flies from my lips as I bark orders, effortlessly moving from one side of the bank to the other, like a well-rehearsed violent dance.

  I force my hostage to use her key to open the door, uncaring of the fright running down her legs and pooling at our feet, willing to blow her brains out to solidify my dictatorship.

  What I didn’t see while I got high on fear are the everlasting effects she and others in the branch will live with for the rest of their lives. Endless trauma burrows bone marrow deep in many of them, on-the-spot and irrevocably changing steady heartbeats and faith in humankind. I shredded innocence with heavy threats and killed hopes with gunfire.

  Poesy is shot.

  The scene repeats over and over until I’ve memorized the blunt sound of the bullet entering and existing her body. Blood splatter sprays from my girl’s shoulder like a dense red mist, discoloring glass doors she just ran through to save me. Her hazel eyes darken before her pale eyelids close over them, resting her long lashes over a bed of tears not yet soaked by her mask.

  Poe’s feet come out from under her with the force of the bullet, and instead of dropping everything to help, I fire rounds into Jonathan’s legs. His kneecaps split wide open, bone as white as snow splinters, and fiber-like muscles rip apart. The wounded guard’s blood splatter doesn’t come out like a mist; it surges like an angry ocean.

  I pull off my mask, only now able to see hostages slyly dialing 9-1-1 on their cell phones and taking pictures as I slam the butt of my gun into the dying protector’s face.

  “Stop,” I say in slumber. “Stop, you’re going to kill him.”

  My voice doesn’t work on this side of awareness. I’m paralyzed, stuck on the cloudy edge of recollection, forced to watch depravity passed down from my father explode from an eviler me without mercy.

  “She saved your life.”

  The true crime nightmare doesn’t fade to black until Poesy and I run out of the bank, abandoning the devastation we’ve left behind and leaving a good man to die on a marble floor, slippery with his blood.

  Trapped in purgatory with shame as my only escort, I search bottomless darkness for a glimmer of light, but obscurity only becomes impossibly blacker. I diminish to nothingness in a sea of oblivion, with no sense of self or simple awareness beyond the thick inkling of remorse I’m not relieved of even as I reduce to an afterthought.

  “I’m sorry.” Emptiness vacuums my voice. “I’m so fucking sorry.” Stripped of a beating heart and rebellious soul, there’s no telling where blackness ends and I begin, but I thrash against the void. “Forgive me. Forgive me. I’m sorry.” Murkiness soaks my apologies like rain falling on a starved desert, meaningless. “He shouldn’t have died. It was my fault. I killed him, and I’m sorry!” I scream loud enough to shake the silence, splitting blackness at the edges. Light streams through the fissures and reminds me this is only a dream. “Wake up. Wake up…”

  “Wake up, Lowen,” Poesy’s voice seeps through the cracks. “Open your eyes, boy.”

  Wakefulness pours over me like warm oil, coating my body from head to toe. My heart kick-starts, and air-deprived lungs lash for oxygen.

  “Come on, Low. You’re scaring me.” Her voice is louder, and now I feel her small hands on my face. “Wake up.”

  My eyes snap open, and I sit up, panting and slick with sweat. Poesy scrambles beside me, pulling her hands away from my face and forcing them around her as I release a lifetime of cutting grief and a murder’s regret in uncontrollable tears.

  “It’s okay,” my girl whispers, straddling my lap. She wipes sadness from under my eyes. “It was an accident. It was a horrible accident.”

  My body rocks with waves of despair, and I soak Poe’s shirt in pent-up tears. She’s an anchor grounding me to reality every time my eyes close and nothingness creeps closer. I clutch to her with sore fingers, leaving bruises up and down her sides, and hold her hard enough to feel her bones move under my desperate strength.

  “Shh,” she coos, slowly dismissing the burden. “We’re in this together, remember? I’m here, Low. I’m still here. It was an accident, and it’s okay.”

  Guided by infomercials glowing from the small television set on the dresser, Poesy lowers my head onto the pillow and lies beside me. She wraps her small legs between mine and rests her head on my chest.

  “I like your heartbeat,” she says.

  Exhaustion drowses deep within my consciousness as sorrow gives to relief, blurring edges of my vision and softening my tense muscles. I blink linge
ring tears from my eyelashes slow, slow, slowly until they don’t come back up, and I peacefully dream of Poesy, surrounded by light.

  “WE CAN’T HELP who we are. Half-blooded crooks, getting by the only way we know how.” My girl swims around the chlorine-heavy pool. A trail of red follows her, bleeding from her hair.

  “This wasn’t always who you were,” I say, swimming after her. She splashes water in my face and dashes to the other side of the pool before I catch her ankle. “You were corrupted.”

  Poe’s short tresses look black, soaked and stuck to the sides of her face. She spits water at me, not strong enough to send the smooth stream of water leaving her mouth like a fountain across the kidney. The pest smiles.

  “How do you know? I’ve always been good at stealing stuff.”

  “Pirating movies isn’t the same as robbing a bank at gunpoint,” I say. Guilt’s edge isn’t as sharp after last night’s breakdown.

  “Ha-ha.” Poe holds herself up on the side of the pool. Her hard pink nipples are visible under her wet bra. “I’m serious, Low. I’ve always felt different than everyone else, even before I met you. School was a nightmare, and my parents didn’t know what to do with me. I stole stuff when I was bored. I stole stuff because I could.”

  “All kids take things, Poesy. Most don’t grow up to be bank robbers.”

  “When you were locked up, I stole my mom’s diamond earrings and pawned them for the money to turn our lights on.” She smiles. “When I was fired, I stole a bag of coffee.”

  “Big deal,” I say, swimming to her side of the pool.

  “And five hundred dollars.” Sticky fingers submerges herself under water, resurfacing behind me with a huge splash. She climbs onto my back and circles her long legs around my waist. “And a half-gallon of milk. We were out.”

  “You never said anything.” I push away from the edge of the pool, shooting us toward the deep end. “What if you were caught, Poe?”

  “I wasn’t,” she says, kicking her legs with mine. My fingers prune.