Night of Fear (6 page)

“Help!” T.J. said. “I need help.”

The driver reached toward the dash and turned a knob. The music stopped. He rolled his window down an inch.

“Give me a ride,” T.J. pleaded. “I need to get to a phone, to call the cops.”

“Where’d you come from, kid? What you doin’ out here all alone at night?”

“Can’t I tell you after you let me in? I can talk while you drive.”

“I’m not lettin’ some stranger in my car without a good reason. What do you think I am, crazy?”

“You saw that blue pickup that was next to you?”

The driver nodded.

“That guy robbed a bank today and killed the teller. He was hiding in my neighbor’s barn and I found him and he made me go with him. I jumped out just now, while he was stopped at the red light. He’ll probably be back for me any minute. Please! Let me come with you.”

The driver stared at T.J. for a moment. His eyes were narrow, as if he were thinking about what T.J. had said.

“What bank?” he asked.

“Pine Ridge Bank. He still has the gun in his pocket.”

The man shook his head. “You’re pretty young to be involved in some kind of scam,” he said.

“This
isn’t
a scam. I need help!”

“Sorry, kid,” the driver said. “I just listened to the news and you weren’t kidnapped by any bank robber.”

“It wouldn’t be on the radio yet about me being kidnapped,” T.J. said. “It just happened a little while ago.”

The man pointed a finger at T.J. “I don’t know what you’re tryin’ to pull, kid, but you aren’t pullin’ it on me.”

He cranked the window back up. He reached for the radio knob and the rock music came back, full volume. The minivan took off. It turned left, accelerating quickly.

“Wait!” T.J. shouted. He ran after the van, into the middle of the intersection, but it was clear that the driver wasn’t going to stop.

Why didn’t the man believe him?

He couldn’t stand there and wonder why. He had to get away, in case Brody came back, looking for him.

T.J. ran to his right and started down the sidewalk. At least, he thought, I got away from the murderer in the pickup. I may not know where I am but wherever it is, it’s better than being in that truck. Another car is certain to come along soon. They don’t have traffic lights in areas where there isn’t any traffic. Or I’ll come to another phone booth, one that works.

He jogged along, past a used bookstore, a yarn shop, and a child-care center, all of which were closed. He’d gone less than a block when he heard a vehicle approaching from behind him. He looked over his shoulder as he ran but he was looking directly into the headlights and couldn’t tell what kind of vehicle it was.

Should he dart alongside one of the buildings and hide, in case it was Brody? Or should he take a chance that it was someone else, someone who could help him?

Maybe the minivan driver had thought it over and had a change of heart. Maybe he realized that T.J. didn’t look like the sort of person who would be involved in a scam so he
went around the block and came back. Maybe it was a different car altogether, with a driver who would help him.

There was a big chestnut tree on the boulevard just ahead. T.J. ducked behind it. If the headlights belonged to the old blue truck, he was hidden. If it was some other vehicle, he could jump out and yell for help as it went past.

When the headlights were almost even with the tree, T.J. peeked around the front of the tree and prepared to leap out. As the lights passed, T.J. saw that they belonged to a white sedan. He jumped from behind the tree, waving his arms and shouting.

“Stop!” T.J. yelled. “I need help!”

The car never even slowed down. He could tell there were three passengers, in addition to the driver, but not a single one of them turned to look back at him. They didn’t see him running along the sidewalk after them. They were so busy talking to each other that they didn’t hear him yelling.

He couldn’t possibly run fast enough to catch the car. Panting, he slowed to a walk.

Minutes later, he saw headlights approaching again. This time, he decided not to wait until the vehicle was past before he yelled for help.

When the headlights were half a block away, T.J. ran to the curb and tried to get the driver’s attention. The headlights came faster.

T.J. stepped off the curb, waving his arms over his head like signal flags. “Stop!” he yelled. “Stop!”

The old blue pickup stopped.

Brody got out.

T.J. turned and ran.

“Hold it right there.” Brody’s voice was steady. Menacing.

T.J. stopped. No matter how much he wanted to escape, he couldn’t risk his life. There was no truck and no minivan to hide behind now. Earlier, when he ran to the phone booth, Brody didn’t shoot but that time, he was caught off guard. That time, T.J. had been zigzagging across the dark parking lot before Brody could get out of the truck and aim the gun.

This time, Brody was only a few feet away, just as the bank clerk was only a few feet away when she was killed. If Brody shot the bank clerk for no reason except that she could identify him, he might do the same with T.J.

“Get back in the truck.”

T.J. still didn’t see the gun but Brody had his right hand in his pocket again. T.J. wondered if the bank clerk saw the gun before it went off. He tried to remember exactly what the TV newsman had said. Did the witnesses describe a weapon or only the sequence of events? He couldn’t remember and right then, it really didn’t matter. T.J. did as he was told.

“Head down.”

T.J. put his forehead on his knees but he kept his head turned so he could watch Brody.

Brody didn’t drive off right away. He sat there and looked at T.J., as if wondering what to do with him. Finally, he spoke. “What did the guy in the van say?”

“He didn’t believe me when I said I needed help. He thought it was some kind of scam.”

Brody nodded his head. “It figures.”

“Why did you drive off?”

“I couldn’t be sure what that driver would do. I left, in case he helped you, and I came back, in case he didn’t.”

“Well, he didn’t.”

“Nobody ever helps.”

“I want to go home. My parents will be worried about me.”

“You can’t go home. If you went home, you would tell them about me.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I swear I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t say anything about you. I’d say I was at my friend Dane’s house and didn’t realize how late it was. They would believe me.”

Brody shook his head. “You would tell,” he said sadly, as if T.J. had already betrayed him. “You would tell all about me and then they’d know who to look for and I would never finish my revenge.”

“But I have to go home eventually. If I don’t, the police will be looking for me. You’ll get caught sooner because I’m with you than you would on your own.”

Brody nodded. “We’ll hurry,” he said. “I’ll do as many as I can tonight.” He started the truck.

As many as he can? Brody talked as if he planned to break into more banks tonight.

“You’d move faster if you didn’t have to keep chasing after me,” T.J. said.

“I’m not going to chase you anymore.”

What does that mean? T.J. wondered. The next time I run, you’ll let me go? Or the next time I run will be the last time my legs carry me anywhere?

“If you leave again, I’ll go back to the barn and get the nutty saint. She won’t run from me.”

When Grandma Ruth reached the junction where the Crowleys’ private dirt road joined the street, she stopped. This wasn’t the way she had come. She and David never walked on paved streets. They always followed the deer trails through the woods or they cut through Papa’s cornfields, with the high stalks brushing their shoulders. The only time they saw paved streets was when Papa and Mama took them into town.

A car whizzed toward her. The driver, glimpsing Grandma Ruth on the side of the road, honked the horn. Grandma Ruth stepped away from the sudden noise and shut her eyes to close out the bright lights.

When the car passed, she turned and went back toward the barn.

Before she got there, she saw a metal gate shining in the moonlight. It looked familiar. Had David brought her through that gate? No, that wasn’t David; that was T.J.

She stopped walking. T.J. Her only grandchild. She had not thought it was possible for her ever again to love anyone as much as she loved Edward, her late husband, or her daughters, Amelia and Marion. But, oh, she did love T.J. She hadn’t seen him for a long time; she wondered where he was. Was he still a small boy or had he grown up when she wasn’t looking and become a man? Children had a way of doing that. One day her Amelia was sitting on her lap, listening to stories, and the next day, or so it seemed, Amelia had a baby of her own.

Grandma Ruth walked until she reached the gate. Two large dogs saw her coming and jumped against the fence as she approached. They acted friendly and she thought she recognized them. Were they T.J.’s dogs? She seemed to remember T.J. feeding them. When she reached the gate, she stopped and looked across it at the empty field.

The field. Of course. She remembered now. Her house was on the other side of that field. Papa and Mama and David were all there, waiting for her to get home so they could eat dinner.

Grandma Ruth reached for the metal bar and tried to slide it, to open the gate, but it didn’t move. She pushed and pushed, until the metal made a deep red mark in the palms of her hands but she couldn’t budge it. She could not get into the field that she needed to cross to get home.

She would have to walk around, through the woods. Maybe she would find David there. Maybe he was waiting for her, with his berry-picking bucket. Or was it T.J. who used to pick those sweet little blackberries with her and then help her make jam?

She wondered why the preacher didn’t come.

She put one hand on her head. Where was her hat? Had she left her hat at home, or forgotten it in the church? Nervously, she opened her purse and felt inside, to be sure she still had her money.

She walked away from the gate, passed the barn, and left the Crowleys’ property. She crossed the lane and started into the woods. Surely she would find David soon. He was probably waiting for her just ahead, with his berry bucket.

As she walked, she hummed softly, “Nearer, my God, to thee. Nearer to thee.”

The old blue truck picked up speed; T.J. could tell by the way the engine whined and the tires hummed.

T.J.’s nerves jangled. He wondered if his parents had found Grandma Ruth yet. He hoped so. She might get scared if she waited in the barn very long and nobody came.

Too bad Grandma Ruth wasn’t the way she used to be. Five years ago, she would have been out of that barn and across the field to call the cops before T.J. and Brody had gone three blocks. Even three years ago, when she was first diagnosed but before she went to live with Aunt Marion, she would at least have been able to find her way home, and could have told his parents what had happened.

Not now. Now, Grandma Ruth lived in a world all her own. Once in awhile, the fog in her brain seemed to lift and she acted as if she understood but most of the time she didn’t seem to know or care what went on around her.

As he had hundreds of times before, T.J. thought Alzheimer’s disease was the most terrible disease there was. It
would be better, he thought, to lose your sight or the use of your legs than to lose your mind. At least if Grandma Ruth was blind or paralyzed, she would still know who he was. She would still be able to carry on an intelligent conversation.

As he rode along, memories of Grandma Ruth as she used to be swept through his mind. Grandma Ruth taught him to ride his bicycle by running along, holding onto the seat and yelling, “Keep pedaling!” Grandma Ruth cheered at his grade school basketball games. Grandma Ruth helped him make gifts for his parents for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day: macaroni necklaces and wooden picture frames and herb gardens.

He remembered when she let him stay up past midnight to finish a good book, admitting that she sometimes did the same thing herself. He saw her shaking her fist at the politicians on TV, declaring she could do a better job of running the country than any of them did.

She used to make sandwiches and invite T.J. to have lunch in what she called “The World’s Greatest Outdoor Restaurant.” It was their own special hiding place on the back side of the woods, reached by walking on logs from fallen trees which were laid end to end to form a path across a broad swampy area. The swamp was L-shaped and when they were almost to the far side, the log path turned sharply, revealing a huge weeping willow tree on the other side of the swamp. Its long branches bent downward until the tips touched the ground.

Grandma Ruth and T.J. would part the branches with their hands, as if they were pushing aside strands of hanging beads, and enter The World’s Greatest Outdoor Restaurant.

They always sat on the ground, with their backs against the
tree trunk, completely encircled by the hanging willow branches. Sunlight filtered through the leaves as they feasted on peanut butter sandwiches and oranges.

Grandma Ruth told him, “Restaurants try to create atmosphere by hanging a lot of plastic plants from the ceiling. If they really want atmosphere, they should plant a weeping willow tree in the middle of the dining area.”