Authors: Thomas Perry
“Surprise,” she said.
“Can I unwrap it?”
“That’s what surprises are for.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. She held her body back a little so he could reach the buttons and clasps easily. He slipped off her clothes, then tossed them onto the chair by the door.
She pulled the belt of his bathrobe so it opened, then stepped inside it, put her arms around him, and held him close. “I’ve been waiting all day to get naked.”
“So have I.” He kissed her. “I assume Gabe is sleeping?”
“Yep. He felt guilty for being sleepy and said we should go back to the fair without him.”
“That was nice.”
“It sure made me happy.” She tugged Moreland’s bathrobe off and pushed him onto the bed. She kissed him everywhere, then stepped to the chair where her purse was, and returned with a small box of condoms. She tore one off the strip, put it on Moreland, and straddled him. After about a minute, she turned her head upward so her hair hung down her back, and then closed her eyes. “Still the best ride there ever was.”
Moreland had spent a lot of time with young women. He had studied them carefully and soberly at times like these, and the knowledge and skill he’d obtained gave him an advantage. As the time went on he observed Sharon and assessed her changing mood by her skin coloring, movement, voice, breathing, and pulse, and the dilation of her eyes. He used the information to become her fantasy. At first she wanted him to be gentle and sweet, but as she got wilder, she wanted him to share her mood—be rougher, faster, more demanding, and so he was. She adored him for it, and soon all her inhibitions were gone.
Later, when they were lying on the bed side by side and feeling the sweat drying on their skin, she said, “Oh, I do love the fair.” There was a long minute of silence, and then she said, “I’ve got to go back to Gabe’s room now.”
“I understand.”
“No you don’t. If there were any way not to, I wouldn’t. But he’s always going to be around. You’re not.” She got up, went to her clothes, picked them up, and took them with her into the bathroom. In a moment he heard the shower, then the hair dryer. Very soon she was out, and her hair wasn’t wet. She crawled onto the bed and kissed him. “See you in a few hours.”
“Call me at eight.”
She got up and went out the door.
Moreland stood, went to the door, put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outer knob, turned the latch to engage the bolt, and put in the chain. He moved the chair in front of the door, and then went to his suitcase and took out his M-92F Beretta pistol. He checked to be sure he had left it loaded, then slipped it under the pillow beside his, turned off the light, and went to sleep.
By eleven Moreland, Sharon, and Gabe were in the car again. The others were wearing jeans and T-shirts, but Moreland wore a charcoal gray suit. As Moreland drove, he listened to Sharon chattering to Gabe. “I still like the Mega Drop better than anything,” Sharon said. “You go all the way down thinking you’re going to die. It seems to take so long to stop.”
“I like it okay,” Gabe said. “I like that thing where you go around so fast that you stick to the ring’s walls, and then the bottom drops out under your feet.” He paused. “How about you, Michael?”
“The one I like I don’t know the name for.” He saw Sharon stiffen, and he turned to her. “It’s the one you and I were on, Sharon.”
“Sky Ride,” she said. “It’s called Sky Ride.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Sky Ride.”
He stopped on 9th Street outside the Sangamon County courthouse complex. “Here. You two drive around the block and see if there’s a place to park. I’ll call you when I’m ready.” He got out and Gabe took the wheel.
Joey Moreland went into the main building through the metal detectors and then walked up and down the halls until he found a snack bar. He bought a cup of coffee and drank it on a bench in the hallway. Then he found a men’s room. A few minutes later he called Sharon on his prepaid phone. “Okay, pull around to the front in five minutes and pick me up.”
It occurred to him that it was possible they would just have driven his car off. But when he came out, there they were. Gabe was just pulling up in front of the courthouse.
When Joey got in, the others seemed impressed. “How did it go?” Gabe asked.
“The way it always goes,” he said. “If you do your homework and file your motions, things go your way. Now drive to the Midwest Farmers and Merchants Bank on Sixth Street. We’re on Ninth now, so it shouldn’t be far away.”
Gabe drove three blocks to 6th and then a few more to the bank and slowed to let him off. “Better find a parking space,” Moreland said.
Gabe pulled into a space a few hundred feet past the bank, and then said, “Is this okay?”
“Thanks,” said Moreland. He was busy pulling various things out of the manila envelope he’d brought—a bank withdrawal slip, a few printed sheets he had picked up in the hallway from a table.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” asked Gabe.
“Actually, there is,” he said. “While I’m filling out these papers you can go in the bank and pick up the proceeds of this account.” He handed the withdrawal slip and an ATM card to Gabe. On the back it had a magnetic strip, with a signature of someone named John C. McDougall above it. “Just hand them the slip, swipe the card on the reader, and then sign the signature of John C. McDougall on the withdrawal slip. Make it look at least a little like the one on the card.” He handed him a driver’s license from California with the picture of a young man.
“The slip says nine thousand dollars.”
“I know. I just wrote that.”
“That’s a lot of money. And it’s cash.”
“They’ll give you an envelope. Don’t worry.” He didn’t look up from his scribbling on the form.
Gabe looked at Sharon uncomfortably. “Okay. I’ll be right back.” He got out of the car with the slip, the card, and the license.
As Gabe walked off toward the bank, Sharon leaned forward on the back of the seat. “He finally got something to do. He’ll be happy.”
“That’s good.”
“He thinks he owes you a lot for taking us and paying and all.” She giggled. “If he knew everything, he might think he’d already kind of paid you back.”
Moreland shrugged. “You plan to tell him?”
“Never,” she said. “I’m glad we’re alone for a few minutes, though. That’s why you sent him in, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I want to thank you for last night, and for the fair and everything. If you ever find yourself in the neighborhood again, call me. Here’s my number.” She plucked the pen from his hand and wrote her phone number on the inside of the folder on his lap, then covered it with his papers. “I’ll drop everything and meet you anywhere you like.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I might do that.”
“You can. Just hang up if Gabe answers.”
“All right.” He saw something in the rearview mirror. He sat up straighter, got out of the car, and walked around it to sit in the driver’s seat. He started the engine, and then Sharon looked behind them.
The bank’s front door had swung open, and Gabe was running hard toward the car. Two men in suits were right behind him, but Gabe was fast. As he ran he gained a few inches with each stride. There were five men out the door now, but in a moment they were all falling behind, their legs not able to pump as many times a minute as Gabe’s were. They seemed to realize it, and the last three became a rear guard, falling behind their swifter colleagues, knowing they would not be the first ones in at the arrest.
Then the front-runners began to fall behind too. Gabe was still gaining speed, his head up and his arms punching like pistons, his strides still rapid and lengthening. The two men brought out their weapons and ran with them in their hands.
Moreland heard one shout, “Police! Stop or I’ll shoot.” Two seconds passed while Gabe seemed to be spurred on by fear. The men both repeated, “Stop, or I’ll shoot.” The threat seemed to terrify Gabe. He ran harder.
Some communication passed between the two men. Both stopped, aimed their weapons with the same two-handed stance, and fired. Their first shots hit Gabe in the back, but he kept on. They fired again, each squeezing off a burst of three shots. Some of them hit his legs and his lower back. His arms extended outward from his sides, and he began to tilt forward. It was not clear to Moreland who fired the next shot, but he saw an exit wound appear on Gabe’s forehead. The shot turned his body limp, and he hit the pavement already dead. Sharon screamed.
Joey Moreland signaled, pulled out of his parking space, and drove up the street into the traffic at about twenty miles an hour.
Sharon was frantic. “What are you doing, Michael? They shot him.”
“He’s dead. If we don’t get out of here, we will be too.”
“Why? What would make them want to hurt any of us?”
“A horrible mistake. They must have thought he was trying to rob the bank.” He kept looking in the rearview mirror, glancing at the street ahead, then back at the mirror. Two of the men who had shot at Gabe were kneeling over him, searching him for weapons. He noticed Sharon looking through the rear window. “Keep an eye on them. Let me know if they seem to be heading for a car, or if another car pulls up the street with flashing lights.”
“All right.” She seemed without will, unable to think of an alternative. “Are you sure Gabe is dead?”
“He was shot in the head, Sharon.”
“What did you have him doing?”
“Just picking up some money for a client. He wasn’t even closing the account. It was a big withdrawal, but much more would have stayed here. There shouldn’t have been any problem.”
“Oh, Gabe!” she wailed. “I’m so sorry!” She watched until she couldn’t see Gabe anymore, then kept watching until they were on the interstate.
“Anybody following us?” he asked.
“No. Shouldn’t we go to the police—the ones at the station—and tell them what really happened?”
“Not now,” he said. “We’ve got to get far enough away to stop and figure out what happened. The first thing is to stay alive. After that we can correct the record. We can’t help Gabe now. I’m so sorry, Sharon. I never would have let him do it if I’d known there would be any trouble. I never would have let either of you come with me. This is crazy.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’ve got to make sure that a little time passes before we run into any police, so they don’t think we’re all bank robbers and shoot us too. Maybe let the Carbondale police talk to the Springfield police.”
He drove in silence while Sharon cried. After a while she was leaning on him while she wept. He had checked the odometer when they had driven to Springfield. It was 168 miles. He knew when they were getting close to Carbondale.
As they crossed the city limit she knew it too. “I can’t go back without him.”
“Sure you can,” he said. “You haven’t done anything wrong. All you have to do is say Gabe told you he wanted to stop at the bank. He walked away and then came running out.”
“I can’t say that. Nobody will believe me.”
“It’s the truth.”
“It’s part of the truth. The rest isn’t so simple.” She paused. “Take me with you.”
“You’re practically home. You didn’t do anything. This is the safest place in the world for you.”
“I can’t come back here.”
He thought about killing her. If he did it here in her hometown, it would make the police form a really inaccurate theory, and that might be useful. Maybe if he could keep her body from being found for a couple of days, they would think Gabe had killed her. The nearest gun Joey had was in the trunk of the car, and if he stopped to get it, she might run or scream and attract attention. He could stop for a minute, break her neck, and then dump the body before he drove on.
He glanced at her, and the big wet blue eyes were staring at him, pleading. He asked himself why he wanted to kill her. She knew he had gotten Gabe killed trying to get his money out of the bank. If she was sharp, she might realize that the cops wouldn’t shoot a suspect just because he was running away. They had to think he was armed and capable of killing somebody.
She wanted to go with him, so she must not have realized he was dangerous. She was upset and half crazy right now, but she was pretty and good-natured. He thought back to the night he had spent with her in the hotel room. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s how it is. I’d advise you to get out of the car, go to the Carbondale police, and tell them what happened. All of it. The truth. Nothing will happen to you. They’ll know you didn’t shoot Gabe, because the cops did. You didn’t send him into the bank with someone else’s identification, because I did.”
“What if they ask me if I was with you last night?”
“They might, but so what? You weren’t married or anything, were you?
“They’ll know I was cheating on him. Things like that always get out,” she said. “It’ll be in the papers. My parents will see it, and Gabe’s family. And then everybody will think I made him do it, or that he was trying to get himself killed, or something.”
They were wasting time. “All right. Suit yourself. I’ll take you. If you change your mind, I’ll bring you back. But I can’t stay here with the motor idling.”
“Thank you,” she said, and draped herself on him, leaning her head on his shoulder and wrapping her arms around his so he couldn’t drive off. “Oh, thank you, Michael. I’ll make you glad you took me, I promise.”
“Okay. Now let me drive.”
“I’m sorry.” She released him. She was still crying, but she leaned against the door, pushed herself into the far corner of her seat, and closed her eyes. Now and then he would look and see that her lips were moving. She was praying.
He drove for the rest of the day, heading west on Interstate 40. Sharon was silent and subdued. When it was dark he took her into a diner to eat. They sat in a quiet corner booth facing away from the entrance, and ate in silence. They used the restrooms, got back into the car, and went on.
As they drove toward the setting sun, he said, “I think somebody is trying to kill me. I’ll never be able to forget that they got Gabe instead of me. I just wanted to give him a chance to help me. I feel terrible.”
“Why would anybody want to hurt you?”