Another quarter of a mile and I made my second impulsive move.
The light had just gone from green to yellow, leaving me with plenty of time to make it through the intersection, yet I slammed on my brakes and brought the truck to a shrieking stop. The compact discs on the seat next to me clattered onto the floorboard. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a couple of people pumping gas at the corner gas station beside me. I assumed all their eyes were on me, but I didn’t bother to check.
I might have been able to lose the van if I’d gone through the light, but after the events at the coffee shop, I needed to know who was driving: to either ID Barnes once and for all or discover the identity of the new psycho who'd set his sights on me. My eyes darted to the rearview mirror. My adrenaline spiked, and my foot was poised to jump on the gas pedal if I felt I needed to. I waited for the van to pull up and give me a good look at the driver, if that was possible.
Turned out, it wasn’t.
Like it was the plan all along, the van slowed prematurely, to the point of allowing a red Coca-Cola delivery truck to get in between us. In a rare release of frustration, I pounded the steering wheel with both open palms. I looked out my side mirror and could just see a sliver of the white van behind the delivery truck. Smart move, I thought, and cursed myself for giving the driver a compliment. Especially if that driver was Barnes.
Drawing on Hollywood again, I checked both of my side mirrors to make sure no one was approaching from either side. No one was, and for the first time, I started to feel overly paranoid, though not enough to apologize for it. With the adrenaline still coursing through me, I slapped the wheel again and watched a couple of cars cross through the intersection.
An idea that could salvage my initial plan and make stopping at the light not such a failed move after all entered my mind. I took a right while the light was still red and hoped for one of two things to happen. Because of the big red truck positioned between us, there was a chance my turn would go undetected. And if not, the truck would at least block the van from being able to turn long enough for me to slip away.
Pressing hard on the accelerator, I picked up the speed I felt I needed to get a head start. I was finally in control of the situation. Instead of simply driving around and allowing myself to be followed, I was doing something to make sure it couldn’t happen. Taking real measures.
I looked in the rearview again, and all that blossoming reverence wilted like a dead flower. The white van pulled out of the gas station and onto the road behind me. Not only had the driver seen me turn, but he'd cut through the gas station to make sure I didn’t put too much of a gap between us.
My pulse quickened and I pressed the gas pedal further to the floor, my mind racing. There was no doubt now that the van was following me, and it wasn’t about to let me lose it with an amateur move.
“Damn it!” My hand smacked the steering wheel again, causing a slight swerve, but nothing dangerous. At least nothing as dangerous as being followed by a psychopath.
I tried to get my bearings, which proved difficult since I’d worked my way out of the part of the city I was familiar with. I strongly considered reaching for the GPS on my cell, but with the speed at which buildings were racing by, I thought better of it.
I made a quick left at another yellow light, a spontaneous decision that didn’t allow me to slow down to a reasonable speed. The truck up didn’t go up on two wheels, but the tires elicited a drawn out screech. The van made the left as well, though I doubted the light was still yellow at the time. It was closer now than it had ever been, and I no longer wanted that gap to close. All bets were off.
I pushed the truck to forty-five down Salem Ave., a good ten miles per hour faster than the law suggested. The Chevy’s engine roared like a steel beast as I pressed the pedal to the floor. The wind through the truck’s open windows was drowning out the music I’d forgotten was even playing. When I hit fifty-five, I felt I was pressing my luck for the area and let up just a bit. Not surprisingly, the van was keeping pace, though not close enough to be able to see inside the darkened interior. This was about the point I started wondering what would happen if, or when, the van caught up to me.
With my heart creeping up into my throat, I swerved to pass a yellow taxi and glanced over long enough to see the cabbie throw me a glare. In this city, when a taxi driver gives you a dirty look for driving too aggressively, that’s saying something. Once I’d swerved back into my lane, I watched as the van changed lanes, accelerated past the yellow cab and fell back in behind me. Streetlights flashed by one after the other, creating a strobe effect between the light and dark. Buildings sped by, some lit up, some not.
All the while, the van remained.
When I slammed on the brakes and abruptly turned into a McDonald’s parking lot, the tires let out a long anguished cry. I bounced into the air as the truck took a speed bump designed to do exactly what it hadn’t. I didn’t have to look back this time. Fearing only getting boxed in, I just assumed the van had also pulled into the parking lot. I couldn’t see it when I took the curve that wound around the drive-through lane, but that didn’t mean anything. Finally putting some distance between us didn’t mean I was home free.
Another thing I didn’t see until it was almost too late were the three teenagers walking across the parking lot. As they jumped back out of the way, their white bags full of food flew into the air before ending up on the ground, spilling golden fries all over the pavement. I swerved enough to miss the kids, but was hindered by the parked cars that lined the lot. In fact, I just missed clipping the bumper of a grey sedan that had its backing lights on.
I let off the gas, anticipating the approaching exit back onto Jacobi, where the plan was to double back in the opposite direction. Only the exit wasn’t there. The white van was stopped on the street, blocking the lane. It hadn’t followed me into the restaurant’s parking lot after all. Instead, it was trying to box me in.
I jerked the truck to the left, leaving the paved parking lot and careening onto the grassy area in front of the building. The engine raced as the wheels momentarily left the ground. The Chevy bounced a couple of times, threatening to rip the wheel from my hands as it careened toward the restaurant's sign. Somehow I held on, cutting the steering wheel back to the right as the truck bounced again, still headed for the golden arches. At the last second, the tires regained their grip, jerking the truck to the side, narrowly avoiding the towering pole perched beside the road. With only the briefest of glances in both directions, I squeezed between the van and the sign and pulled onto the street. With another quick jerk of the steering wheel, I was finally heading back in the direction I’d originally come.
“Shit!”
I’d come within a very short ten feet of the white van, but it was facing away from the direction I was heading. I’d been too busy making sure the road was clear to get a good look inside. Checking my rearview mirror again, I could see the van trying to make a U-turn, but it had to wait for a couple of cars to pass. I took the opportunity and made an immediate left at the approaching intersection, then another left down a darkened alley that brought me directly behind the McDonald’s.
I hoped the few moments the van was out of sight would give me the coverage needed to shake it. My heart was pounding as I hurled down the alley, and I could feel sweat running down my face. Fast approaching on my right was a tall privacy fence that enclosed the dumpsters behind the restaurant. Just after passing it, I slammed on my brakes, threw the truck in reverse and backed into the shadowy area beside it. Cutting the lights, I sat there looking through a gap toward the street I’d just turned off of. If this didn’t do the trick, I had no idea what my next move would be. Especially considering the way I was positioned. If the van was to come down the alley and stop right in front of me, I would be trapped.
I watched for the van with my foot on the brake and my hand on the gear shifter, just waiting to take off again if necessary. But that never happened. At least I don’t thin
k it did. I honestly don’t know.
Chapter 24
One minute I was sitting behind the dumpster, hoping to see the white van speed by, and the next thing I knew, I was slouched behind the wheel underneath an unlit freeway overpass. The engine was still running, but the transmission was in park and my foot was off the brake pedal. The headlights were dark.
I heard myself gasp audibly and panic gripped my body in a stranglehold. I sat up straight and started checking my surroundings. I was alone. The bed of the truck was empty, just as it should be. So were the mirrors.
A semi-trailer roared past, and the driver laid on its horn. The single, shrill note echoed off the concrete above, sending my hands immediately to my ears. I covered them the best I could. The turbulence left in the semi’s wake shook both the truck and me violently, rocking us back and forth long after it was gone. It was better than any alarm clock. I couldn’t be any more alert.
I reached down for the knob that would turn on the headlights. I was at a loss as to where the time went, or how I’d gotten where I was, but strangely enough, none of that mattered. It was another blackout, pure and simple, and right now, getting the hell off the side of the freeway was priority one. Pulling out the knob, the lights came to life, and that’s when shock turned my blood cold.
The end is near.
The words stared back at me from one of the cement columns of the overpass. The bright yellow spray paint still looked wet, the liquid running down the column in thin lines, blurring the words to an extent, but not enough to mistake their intent. The phrase took on a more ominous tone for me than it probably would for most people. It had been so overused by every Chicken Little in American society that nobody paid attention anymore. But I knew these words were intended specifically for my eyes, so I paid attention.
But that wasn’t even what frightened me the most.
When the dashboard lights came on, something on the seat beside me glimmered in the soft blue light from the dash. It wasn’t my collection of compact discs. The ones that had previously fallen to the floor, but were now back on the seat. That in itself was perplexing, but would have to wait its turn.
Four long, curved prongs sat on top of the CDs, nearly sending piss running down my leg. Like something Freddy Krueger would envy, the shiny prongs curled out from a makeshift handle like a claw. It was roughly the size of a baseball glove. A sharpened steel, murderous glove.
I immediately opened the door and jumped out of the truck. A car whizzed by, nearly clipping me, and I had to grab onto the door and pull myself back against the truck. All the while, my eyes never left the menacing object. A shiver of fear settled all the way down into my lower back. My stomach turned. I took a look around, but saw no one.
What was it?
Where did it come from?
How did it get there?
And just where the hell did the time go?
The questions kept coming, and my heart was pounding so fast I thought I might come unglued. I paced up and down the side of the road, barely noticing the occasional passing car except for the vague honks of their horns. I grew angrier with each one until finally, when I was near the end of the truck’s bed for the third time, I suddenly couldn’t take it anymore. I’d had enough.
“Barnes!” I shouted, my arms extended into the air. Then, without reason or audience, I tilted my head back and let it all out. “Come on, you fuck! You sick piece of shit!”
The ranting went on for several seconds. I must have looked like a lunatic pacing on the side of the freeway, yelling at the top of my lungs with my arms spread wide. But I didn’t care. I was inviting an end to the terror.
“Come on!”
I finally dropped my arms and stopped pacing. My throat was sore. I was breathing entirely too hard. But if I thought anything would come from provoking that son of a bitch, I would have been greatly disappointed. Thankfully, I hadn’t.
With the exception of a car passing on the other side of the freeway, there was nothing in the air but silence. The hill beside the freeway was barren of anything taller than un-mowed grass and a few basketball-sized rocks. No answers were coming from up there. If anyone were up on the hill, I would have seen them. Looking up and down the freeway, there were no other cars parked alongside the road in either direction.
Good or bad, I was alone.
As my heart rate started to slow, I was torn between two courses of action. Get in the truck, ignore whatever the hell that thing on the seat was and get the hell out of there. Or, call Detective Morgenstern and report what happened. Get him to meet me out here and let him handle things. My gut urged the latter, but it was the former that eventually won out. In the end, I didn’t want to stay out here in the dark beside a lonely freeway any longer than I had to.
With one last look around, I got back up into the truck. I refused to drive all the way to the hotel with that thing sitting next to me, and sent it tumbling onto the passenger side floorboard. I could hear my father’s voice in my head telling me to be careful not to smudge any fingerprints, but that was just one more thing I didn’t care about at that point.
With the address to the hotel punched into my GPS, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the road was clear. With a stomp on the gas, the truck shot forward. The large tires gripped the asphalt, taking no time at all to get up to seventy miles an hour. I didn’t know if I would go ahead and tell the officer about the claw-like instrument if I got pulled over or not. I would cross that bridge if, and when, I got to it.
Right then, I just needed to get to the hotel and out of this damn truck. Admittedly, the possibilities of what might have happened during that stolen time scared the hell out of me. But not knowing what had happened paled in comparison to knowing that Barnes had been so close. That was hard to believe. It instilled in me a very real, very organic fear. Still, through it all, one thought both comforted and troubled me to no end.
I was still alive.
Chapter 25
“It’s called a Spanish Tickler,” Detective Morgenstern said. “Sometimes referred to as a Cat’s Paw, but unlike the four on this one, those traditionally only have three prongs.”
We stood beside my truck under one of the lights in the hotel’s brightly lit parking lot. The first thing my father did when I got to the hotel was call Morgenstern and ask him to meet us. Not wanting to freak out my mother any more than I needed to, I’d left my new present in the truck. Now, it rested on the hood of the Chevy as the detective gave my dad and me a quick lesson in brutality.
“It’s an instrument of torture developed during the Spanish Inquisition,” he continued, turning the thing over with his pen. “Basically, they would string someone up by their wrists and use one of these on the guy’s back, tearing right through the flesh. Sometimes even the bone. Really nasty stuff. Almost always lethal.”
“And how do you know all this?” my father asked.
“When I was studying Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati, I took a course in the history of crime and justice. Interesting class, but it made me shake my head in disbelief more than a few times. The levels of brutality humans inflicted on others back then was hard to comprehend.”
“Not just back then,” I said, and received two nods of solemn agreement.
The conversation stopped as we all watched a maroon Toyota roll slowly through the parking lot before eventually pulling into a nearby spot. With three pairs of scrutinizing eyes on them, an elderly couple climbed out of the sedan.
I let out a breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding. Seriously, Luke? I was wound entirely too tight. I shook off the sudden anxiety, with the voice of Star Wars' Darth Vader in my head, “The paranoia is strong with this one.”
“So, a white cargo van,” Morgenstern said, bringing us all back from our scrutiny of someone’s grandparents or even great-grandparents.
I nodded.
“But you can’t say for sure that it was definitely trailing you.”
“Not for su
re,” I said, my head down looking at my shoes. I hadn’t told either the detective or my father about the blackout. I’d actually lied and said I’d stopped at a drug store for gum and a bottle of water after losing the van, and the pronged instrument was simply sitting there on the seat when I came out. That led to Morgenstern wondering out loud if the drug store might have a security camera trained on its parking lot. He assured me that if it did, then he would be able to pull the video footage. Which then led me to lying about where I parked. I told them that it felt safer parking in shadows on the side of the building than out in the open. The lie was as thin as the edge of a finely sharpened bolo knife, and I don’t think the detective bought it. I know my father didn’t, and I flinched at the look of disappointment and concern in his eyes. But that was the lesser of two evils at the moment.
My bigger worry was that either Morgenstern or my father would start pondering whether there was no Corwin Barnes angle, that it was the PTSD effects coming back. It was an ever-present risk, and telling them I couldn’t explain my whereabouts for part of the evening would push them toward that edge. Especially when one of them was a veteran detective trained to be objective and to look at all angles of a case.
“Okay, well, I’ll make note of it. At the very least, it will be a good piece of information to have in our back pocket at some point. If it turns out afterward that there’s no factoring in a white van, then no harm, no foul.”
I nodded and glanced over at my father to find him not paying any attention to Morgenstern. Instead, his questioning eyes were planted directly on me. I didn’t know if the Spanish Tickler had heightened his concern for my safety, or the bold faced lie had him questioning my mental well-being. Regardless, I didn’t like the look in his eyes, and I turned away.
“So,” Morgenstern said, picking the Spanish Tickler up with his pen and carefully sliding a large evidence bag over it, “I’ll get this looked at, see if we can lift any prints off it.”
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