Orchard Grove Read online

  The trucker turned to face the road.

  “Lord have mercy on my soul,” he said.

  “Action!” I said.

  He shoved the floor-mounted stick into gear, then gave it the gas.

  The big truck took on speed.

  It jerked, bucked, and bounced. When the passenger side windshield exploded, I dropped down onto my left shoulder.

  “Holy Christ they’re shooting at us,” he said.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Walt.”

  “Walt, just keep on trucking.”

  I brushed the pebble-like shards of shattered safety glass off of me.

  Sitting up fast, I swung the shotgun around, aimed it not for the troopers but the closest cruiser and triggered off a shell. The shot blew out a tire on the vehicle directly ahead of me as we closed in on it.

  The troopers leapt off the side of the road like they were abandoning ship.

  “We’re gonna ram them!” the trucker screamed, his voice an octave higher than God intended.

  “That would be the point. Don’t stop!”

  Grabbing the metal underside of the seat, I held on while we barreled through both cruisers.

  I don’t know why I started to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself. Maybe it had something to do with acting out a scene I might have written for an Arnold Schwarzenegger action/thriller and actually succeeding without getting ourselves killed or totaling the truck. Sometimes you gotta go with your gut.

  “See, Walt,” I said, raising myself up. “Just like a movie.”

  Even he had to laugh.

  “Gotta admit,” he said, as he bounced in his seat, “that wasn’t entirely no fun.”

  He hadn’t slowed down since we blew through the cruisers. His cowboy booted foot was still firmly planted on the gas, his right hand gripping the ball-head on the stick shift, left hand on the big wheel. As we came upon the motel, I turned to view the parking lot. I saw something very strange. I saw Detective Miller standing all alone in the middle of the lot. He had one hand shoved in his trouser pockets, almost casually. And with the other one, he was holding something up for me to see. It was the security tape cassette from the convenience store. The tape I’d tossed into the dumpster out back. He was wearing this big grin like, “Gotcha asshole!”

  As we passed, he pulled his free hand out of his pocket, tossed me a quick wave, then made like a pistol with thumb and index finger, and pointed it at the security tape. The scene was at once odd and somehow frightening. He wasn’t giving chase or taking aim at the truck with his sidearm. He just stood there waving at me like he no longer needed to go after me at all. Like my immediate future was already doomed with or without his efforts. And he had the whole thing on tape to prove it.

  I turned toward the open road, and what up until now had been a wide smile on my face disintegrated like a bullet through an apple. Instead, my brain filled with cold realization. Maybe I’d just escaped the state troopers. But as far as Miller was concerned, I was already caught, already sentenced before a jury of my peers.

  Like the ghost of John Cattivo said, I was already dead.

  She holds Miller’s hand all the way from the interview room to the front vestibule and the guard sergeant’s desk. She insists her mother is coming for her. And when the weary middle-aged woman arrives to claim her daughter, she bursts out in tears.

  “Why don’t you listen to me, Lana?” the woman cries, her long dark hair streaked with strands of stark gray that seem more like battle-scars than the result of the organic aging process. “Look what happens when you sneak out at night? You can get yourself killed.”

  Lana lowers her head, stares at the scuffed linoleum flooring, but in her young brain she runs through the faces of the men and boys she’s killed over the years, beginning with her stepfather. She sees that funny look their faces assumed the moment they knew their throats were about to be cut not by a big bad man, but a beautiful, young, blonde teenager. How could they have been so stupid, so naïve, so trusting?

  “You should listen to your mom,” Miller says, releasing her hand. “She knows best. She loves you.”

  “I will,” Lana smiles, shifting her now empty hand to her mother’s trembling hand. “From this moment on, I will listen to my mom.”

  Miller locks eyes on Lana’s crying heart tattoo as she exists the APD building. It’s a mark he will never forget for as long as he lives.

  Bad idea: riding a heavy-duty dump truck all the way into Albany.

  I might as well ride a helium balloon back into town, a brass band playing in the whicker basket as I floated over the downtown sky rises and the asphalt roofs of the outlying suburban homes. I didn’t want take the same route back that I’d taken out here, either. Nassau alone would be crawling with cops and troopers. Truth is, I didn’t care about getting caught, necessarily. That wasn’t the real issue here. The cops were going to catch up to me sooner or later. Probably sooner.

  What I really wanted was to buy enough time to get back to Albany and to Lana and Susan. Once I managed that, I’d find a way to extract a confession from one or both of them. A confession wouldn’t keep me out of prison, but it might keep me off Death Row. Hell, a full confession might allow me the leverage to strike up a deal with Miller, potentially reducing any charges he was dying to lob at me.

  Of course, he’d have to believe me when I told him I acted out of self-defense when I hit the old clerk over the head with the shotgun stock. That might take some doing, and the talents of a savvy lawyer. Miller might be an Albany cop, but he wasn’t stupid. If forensic and circumstantial evidence existed of my having acted in self-defense, he would not be blind to it. I had to believe that.

  My only other choice would be to lie down and die now.

  As Walt and I approached Route 90, the east/west highway that would lead me directly back into the city, I instructed him to take the entrance marked West Albany. But as soon as he got on the three-lane interstate, I made him pull over onto the shoulder to let me out. Funny thing is, he didn’t seem all that excited and relieved over getting rid of me. Instead he pulled off onto the wide shoulder and turned to me with an expression best described as concerned. As though during the short time we spent together, we’d become solid friends.

  “Listen Walt,” I said, “I need something else from you.”

  He nodded.

  “I need your clothes. The cops have a make on what I’m wearing.”

  He sort of looked himself up and down.

  “I’m wearing jeans same as you,” he said. Then, “I got an idea though.” He reached behind the seat, pulled out a pair of overalls. “I wear these sometimes when I’m dumping fine sand. Stuff gets in your hair, your ears, your nose, your pores.”

  I locked eyes on the dark blue acrylic overalls.

  “They’ll have to do,” I said, as I proceeded to slip them on, zipping up the front.

  “I can take you where you’re going,” Walt said, after I was dressed.

  “You definitely do not want to do that,” I said. “The place will be crawling with cops. They’ll shoot us on sight. You need to get rid of me and then head to the nearest police station. Tell them everything.” I opened the door, grabbed the shotgun, gingerly stepped out onto the running board, all the time wincing in pain. “Remember, tell them everything. Don’t lie or withhold. Tell them the absolute truth about how this little ride went down. They’ll believe you and let you go.”

  He nodded, the brim on his straw cowboy hat waving up and down like a Japanese fan.

  “It’s been quite the adventure,” he said, trying to work up a grin.

  “Glad I could break up your day,” I said.

  “Take care of that foot,” he said.

  Stepping off the running board onto my good foot and onto the shotgun stock, which I once more used as a crutch, I closed the truck door. I stepped out of the way as he pulled away from the curb and proceeded back onto the highway. Turning, I moved away from the roadbed and hid
myself in a patch of woods where I would wait until nightfall. I also turned off my cell phone to save the battery. Under the cover of darkness, I’d get myself back to the city for a final showdown with my two lost loves.

  The afternoon was filled with cop and trooper cruisers speeding up and down the highway, rooftop flashers lit up, engines revving. I wondered if I’d left my cell phone on for too long, and they’d been able to make out my general position as opposed to a precise one. It was like one of my movies. Here I was fighting for my life, and the world never seemed so alive, even if I did feel like I was about to die or, at the very least, lose my foot.

  Resisting the urge to power the phone back up to call Lana and Susan, tell them I was coming for them, I instead began to wonder if I’d made a mistake by not allowing Walt to take me all the way into the city. Then I could have hidden somewhere in the mostly abandoned north side industrial section. From there it would have been a short walk back to Orchard Grove. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight when I had him drop me off in the woods. Maybe gangrene had set in after all, and the fever that went with it was cooking my brain.

  When darkness finally fell, I stepped out of the woods, made my way to the soft shoulder, set the shotgun out flat in the grass behind me so that it was hidden from view. Then I did something I’d never done before in my life. I started thumbing for a ride. I knew I was taking one hell of a chance by attracting a cop, but at this point, it was a chance I was willing to take. If a cop or a trooper did pull up, I’d have no choice but to retrieve my shotgun and point the business end at him, tell him to scram or else.

  My physical troubles were worse than I first thought.

  My foot was bleeding, bad. The throbbing was almost unbearable, my fever growing worse. All I wanted to do was get to the Cattivo house, extract Lana’s and Susan’s confession for their complicity in this whole mess, and it would all be over. I’d turn myself in to Miller who would get me to a hospital.

  It took some time while the cars and trucks sped past, the drivers not giving me a second look, most of them not noticing me at all in the dark and what with me wearing dark blue overalls. Until finally, a passing truck slowed down, pulled over. Over my shoulder I saw the red taillights illuminate as the pickup came to a stop along the shoulder. Limping the few feet to it, I recognized it as an old Ford F150, color dark blue, just like my overalls. Something from out of the late 1970s maybe.

  The guy driving it leaned over the seat, rolled down the window. He was young. Maybe thirty or so. He had a head full of thick blond hair that was partially covered by a skull cap that was more like a stocking cap since a good portion of it hung down against his back. Like the kind of hat a Rastafarian would wear during all seasons, hot and cold. Or a committed stoner. He also sported a blond mustache and an equally blond beard. He wore a thin leather jacket over a denim button-down shirt, the tails hanging out of the blue jeans.

  “Hop in, dude,” he said, smiling. Like picking up a total stranger trying to thumb a ride on a hot summer’s night was the most fun you could have with your pants on. “Ain’t you heard? There’s some crazy killer out there. You shouldn’t be walking all alone like that.”

  I climbed in, as carefully as I could. When I set the heel on my bad foot on the floor, I flinched from the pain.

  “Ouch, dude,” he said, his gaze focused on the foot, which was illuminated by a dull floorboard lamp. “I hope the other guy is worse.”

  “Cut it on some glass a while back,” I said. “Stitches haven’t completely healed.”

  I don’t know why I felt compelled to lie. But I did it anyway.

  “Feet can be like really tough ass healers,” he said in his pseudo-West LA stoner twang. “Hey man, don’t forget the seatbelt. Safety first and it’s the law.”

  I went to grab the shoulder harness part of the belt. But since this was an old truck, there was only the waist belt. I put the belt on, tightened it around my mid-section.

  The driver looked out the window onto on-coming traffic. Then, reaching out the open window with his left arm, proceeded to make an official left-turn hand signal. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he threw the automatic, column-mounted tranny into drive, and pulled out. After we’d been driving for a minute or two, he asked me where I was headed.

  “Albany,” I told him. It dawned on me then that for a stoner, the truck cab didn’t smell at all like he’d been burning pot inside it. I grew pot in my backyard, sold it to several stoners, all of whom loved nothing more than getting baked in their cars and trucks.

  “I can take you all the way,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.” He held out his right hand. “By the way, I’m CP.”

  I took the hand in mine. His grip was tight.

  “CP,” I said. “What’s that?”

  “Short for the real thing,” he said. “Letters are just easier.”

  “Hi CP,” I said, “I’m Jim Summers.”

  I thanked him for the ride then, and as I sat back against the old bench-style seat, I felt the tight bounce of the suspension, and wondered if my luck was changing, or if it even had a right to change. Maybe I was going to find a way out of this train wreck after all.

  “You mind if I pop in a CD?” CP said as the lights of the city became visible on the western horizon.

  “People still listen to CDs?” I said. “I thought millennials all listened to Sirius radio.”

  “I’m all about the retro, dude,” he said.

  When he suddenly reached under the seat with his free hand, he gave my heart a start. I thought he might come back out with a gun. Or a knife maybe. You had to be crazy to hitchhike these days. Even crazier to pick a hitchhiker up. CP said it himself. There was a killer out there on the loose.

  But he didn’t produce a weapon. Instead he held a plastic CD case in his right hand while still gripping the wheel of the truck with his left. He set the case onto the empty seat between us, opened it one handed, pulled a CD out that had the words, “The Best of the Clash” printed on it. He slid the CD into a player that had been mounted under the dash as an afterthought. Before the first song came on, he forwarded the CD to a song he wished to hear more than any other.

  As I listened to the ascending tom-tom buildup, I began to recognize the song. The drum roll finished in a crash of cymbals and an explosion of guitar and bass. “Breaking rocks in the hot sun,” sang the gravelly voice of the late great Joe Strummer. “I fought the law and the law won… I fought the law and the law won.”

  CP sang along, slapping his fist to the catchy beat.

  “Interesting choice of music,” I said. My gut started speaking to me. Whispering, poking, prodding. My whole body tightened up, like something more was going on here than just an innocent stoner going out of his way to give me much needed ride into the city. Part of me wanted to slam him on the side of the head with my fist, then jump out of the truck. But my gut screamed at me to keep my eyes open, my mouth shut, and my hands and one good foot ready for anything. The important thing was that he was taking me into the city. Once I was within a reasonable distance from Orchard Grove, I could jump out at a stoplight and simply disappear into some non-descript cookie-cutter housing development. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only plan I had seeing as I was no longer in possession of the shotgun.

  I no longer had the means to blow him away should push come to violent shove.

  Minutes later we entered onto the north/south Hudson Riverside arterial that would take us into the North Albany suburbs. The Clash sang “I Fought the Law” non-stop. As soon as the song finished, CP would hit the repeat button, taking the tune from the top, like he was trying to pound it into my head.

  “You must really like this song, CP,” I said after a while.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Me and my coworkers listen to it all the time. It’s kind of like our adopted anthem.”

  Coworkers…

  He shot me a look over his shoulder, along with a wink of his eye.

  “What’s your line of wo
rk?” I said. “You don’t mind my asking.”

  He cocked his head while turning onto an exit ramp that hooked up with the road that would connect us directly with Orchard Grove after about a mile. That’s when he reached into his jean jacket, pulled out a small leather wallet-like object. He flipped it open, revealing a badge.

  “I serve and protect,” he said, as he pulled off the white wig and skull cap, along with the white mustache and beard, revealing a trim black mustache and goatee. “Surprise! Surprise!” he said in his best imitation Gomer Pyle.

  “CP,” I swallowed. “Carl… Pressman.”

  My heart went still inside my sternum.

  “And you, motherfucker,” he added, “you killed my partner, John Cattivo.”

  Sure I was fucked. Totally, absolutely fucked. But I also had a choice. I could either sit there and allow him to take me into custody. Or I could go after him claw and fist. Disable him, then jump out of the truck, make a run for it. Or maybe run wasn’t the right word for it. Hobble, limp, crawl, was more like it.

  I was just about to choose the latter when he returned the badge to his pocket and drew his service weapon, shifting it into his left hand so he could more easily point the barrel at me while he steered with his right.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Make my fucking day, Forrester. Try and jump me with that rotten stinky foot of yours. I’d love the excuse to blow a hole in you so wide I could drive my pickup through it. And trust me, ain’t no one in the APD gonna care if you bleed to death. Doesn’t matter if Cattivo was an ugly prick. Now it’s personal.”

  Joe Strummer sang, “…Killed my baby and I feel so sad, I guess my race is run…”

  Maybe that’s what I should have done from the get-go. As soon as I realized that Lana and Susan had double-crossed me, I should have grabbed one of Cattivo’s guns and shot them both on the spot. But then, where would that have gotten me but a free ticket to the state death chamber? At least, as things stood right now, I had a shot at redemption and revenge, no matter how slight.