BAD TRIP SOUTH (14 page)

He needed to get cranked. He’d felt pretty secure when they had the brand new Riviera and three hostages for cover if they got caught. But now, riding in this rustbucket, squeezed next to the little girl who had been silent the entire time, he felt like he was two steps away from a prison cell again. If he could crank up, maybe he’d stop worrying about it.

Hell, let Heddy do the worrying. If she happened to stay sober enough.

#

I think Heddy knew, even after she had stopped and found out the car following us wasn’t after her, that they were back there--the people from St. Louis. Daddy told Mama and me that Crow and Heddy must have knocked over a lab house, probably crack, a crack house, or meth, he said, a meth house. That’s what he said, knocked over, but I knew he meant they robbed it. I had seen crack houses on TV on cop shows. People involved in them were all members of the gangs and stuff, real gangsters.

Daddy had whispered to us about this while Heddy was out getting food for us and Crow went to the bathroom. Crow came out and Daddy didn’t say anymore.

Now we had been in a wreck where I got thrown onto the floorboard behind the front seat, bumping my head and scraping my knees on the carpet. And because of Heddy, we’d just walked away. There were a lot of people, but they were all over the wrecked cars and didn’t even notice when we left.

Heddy took us up through the woods and came out on the road a long way in front of where the wreck happened. She made us stay in the woods until she went to the road and waved down a car. When she brought the driver to us, a really scared-looking woman in a flowered red dress who smelled like she’d been eating licorice whips, Heddy made us cross the ditch and get in the car.

It wasn’t anything like my Daddy’s car. It was little and we were all shoulder to shoulder in the back seat. I was practically sitting on Crow’s lap. And the car made lots of noises and stunk pretty bad with the smoke coming out the rear end. You know how I’ve told you places and people sometimes have smells? Well, the old car they stole from that woman smelled of old things, really old, and poor things, like secondhand clothes they sell at garage sales.

Heddy cussed and carried on about it. She got mad when Crow asked her why she took a car that bad.

The woman the car belonged to never came out of the woods. I hope she’s all right. Did anyone find her? Did she get a ride? Well, it was better she stayed in the woods and wasn’t made to go with us because it just got worse and worse with Crow and Heddy. At that time I didn’t think it
could
get worse, but it did.

After we were on the road a while, not going very fast, Crow took another square from the tinfoil packet in his purse. He was right about me knowing what it was. I’ve never seen it up close or anything, but even in little towns kids do drugs, you know.

Not me. My Daddy would kill me if I ever did something like that. About once a week he told me how bad drugs were and if I ever saw kids doing them I was supposed to tell him. I couldn’t do that, of course. They were just kids and if I told, they’d go to jail. Most of them knew my Daddy was a policeman so they didn’t let me see much anyway.

After Crow put the drug up his nose, he went bonkers. He jiggled next to me like a little monkey. He started talking about crazy stuff, things that didn’t make sense. Something about a guy called “Mod Squad” and about shivs made out of plastic tableware and fires in the bunks and closets where guys did the sex thing--although he used another word for it, one I’m not allowed to say.

He’d start talking about one thing and suddenly be talking about something else. I didn’t want to hear what he was saying or what he was thinking. I stayed away from him, pushing up close to my Mama. I whispered to her, “Mama, can we ever go home?”

She hugged me and kissed me. I saw she was crying so I didn’t ask her anything else. She didn’t know anymore than I did, really, even if she was grown up and smart and a teacher. Maybe I even knew more because I could tell what people thought sometimes. It made me feel so alone. As much as my parents wanted to take care of me and protect me, they couldn’t do a thing about the situation we were in.

Heddy got to the next town and found a motel that was dark and shabby. We never stayed in good places, like Best Westerns and Holiday Inns. We’d look funny going to our rooms the way Heddy and Crow were dressed, like street bums.

When we pulled up in front of the motel door, she had to shake Crow to wake him up. He’d talked himself straight into sleep. When he woke, he was real hateful and sassy, telling Heddy she had no right pushing him around, why didn’t she just let him sleep in the car?

She didn’t even offer to let us take a shower. I told her I was dirty and she just stared at me like I was crazy. I didn’t tell her again. I knew that Crow did stuff without using his brain. He didn’t even think about stuff. But Heddy thought it out and if she ever wanted to shoot me, if she got to thinking I was too much trouble, she’d do it in a pretty nasty, scary way. She’d let me see the gun and maybe feel it against my skin before she shot me.

Once that thought got in my head, I couldn’t get it out. I couldn’t go to sleep the rest of that night because of it. My stomach hurt, thinking about it. And I was hungry; I hadn’t eaten much chicken.

But the worst thing was thinking about Heddy and what she’d do if she ever decided it was time to get rid of me. I must have shivered all night and finally shut my eyes when it was very late and maybe slept a little bit.

The next thing I knew, Heddy was coming through the motel room door and slamming it behind her.

“
That goddamn stinking torn-up rattletrap piece of shit won’t start!”

“
Hell.” Crow came from the bathroom with a towel around his waist, his gun hanging from his hand. He’d just showered and he had untied Daddy to let him take a bath now. Mama was next and then me. I really needed a shower and I needed some clothes. We’d left our things in the Riviera. I guess we were going to have to put on our dirty clothes again. I’d never done that before, ever.

Heddy stomped around the bed and threw herself down on it so that she bounced and her feet left the floor.

“
Now what do we do?”

“
Well, we don’t call the Ford service center, that’s for sure,” she said.

Crow laughed until he saw her face. He cleared his throat. “Shit, we’ll just take another car. No big deal.”

“
Great. Which one?”

“
Huh?”

“
Look out the window, Goof. We’re the only people here. There
ain’t
no cars out there.”

Crow left the bed and pulled up the dusty Venetian blinds. He turned back. “Now what?”

“
I guess we’re stuck here. Until someone else comes.”

“
That might not be until tonight.”

“
So we wait till tonight.”

“
What are we going to eat?”

Heddy gave him a withering look. “I think it’s time
you
go out for the food. I’ve been doing every goddamn thing. I drive the cars, I take the cars, I get the food, I get us out of tight spots like that wreck...”

“
All right, all right, I get the message!” Crow turned his back, dropped the towel so his butt showed while he dragged on jeans and a shirt. He found his satchel and stormed out the door, slamming it behind him.

I sure hoped he wouldn’t come back with hotdogs. Did I tell you I hate hotdogs now?

#

HAWKINS remembered the day he decided to call up Jay’s superior to find out where he was. It was one day after Jay’s scheduled session. He knew the family had left for vacation, but they were to return two days before and Jay had arranged to be in Charlotte for therapy the following day. One thing Frank could always depend on with Jay Anderson was his punctuality. He never missed an appointment. He was never even late to one.

“
Hey, this is Frank Hawkins down in Charlotte. Could you let me speak to Jay?”

“
Jay’s not back yet, sir.” The sheriff’s secretary knew everyone who worked from her office. “You want to talk to the sheriff?”

Frank, surprised to hear Jay hadn’t returned, said yes. When he hung up from talking to the sheriff he sat worrying a pencil stub between his teeth. Jay was two days late from vacation? Without calling?

The next day he got a call from the sheriff. The police in Tarrant County had impounded Jay’s new car down in Oklahoma.

“
It’s been in a wreck?”

“
That’s what they tell me. A God-almighty bad wreck too. They think it’s totaled out.”

“
Did Jay mention he was going to Oklahoma?”

“
No, see that’s it. He said they were going over to Missouri and back. That doesn’t include Oklahoma if my geography’s any good.”

“
And he hasn’t called?”

“
Not only hasn’t he called, but the impound place said the only way they knew who the car belonged to was the owner’s papers in the pocket compartment. No one’s showed up to claim the car since it was hauled away by wreckers.”

Frank’s anxiety deepened. “You checked the hospitals, I guess.”

“
Certainly. There’s been no one admitted under the Anderson name.”

“
And...you checked the...morgue?”

“
No dead Andersons either.”

“
How about if I go out there to check it out?” Frank asked.

The sheriff sounded relieved. “I’d sure ‘ppreciate that, Frank. I can’t leave and I don’t have nobody else here I can do without either, not with Jay off work. But somebody’s got to clear up the mystery of a wrecked vehicle and the missing family. If they’re not dead from the wreck, why hasn’t Jay called in? It’s got me worried to death.”

“
Consider it done.”

Frank got permission to make the flight and spend the days necessary to find the missing Anderson family. He rented a car and drove directly to the police impound lot.

“
Mind if I snoop around the car?” He asked.

They gave him freedom to do whatever he wanted. Inside the wrecked car he found suitcases in the trunk with changes of clothes and toiletries for Jay, his wife, and daughter. Inside the car, he searched around and could find nothing that might give him a clue to their whereabouts.

He did find blood on the rear left passenger door. He called in forensics and the fingerprint team. Just the suggestion of foul play combined with the mystery of the missing family warranted further investigation.

Frank took a room in the town where the car was being held in impound. The morning after he’d called for an investigation, he received a phone call from a state lab.

“
Frank Hawkins?”

“
That’s me. What did you find?”

“
Something I know you--and the Feds--will be interested in.”

“
Yes?” Get on with it, he thought.

“
The blood type matches the fingerprints lifted in the car for an escaped convict from Leavenworth, one Craig Walker. He busted out less than a week ago. The bulletins on him suggest he’s traveling with a girlfriend with a sheet for felonies an arm long. She lived in St. Louis, Missouri until Craig broke out. They think she might have helped him escape the area, provided the car. They can tell you more, but that car of hers?”

“
Yeah?”

“
It was found abandoned in woods not far from some tourist caverns in Missouri. This Craig character’s been in other wheels since then.”

Frank sat on the side of the motel bed and wondered what he could do besides alert the FBI an escaped convict had definitely crossed state lines and doubtless had a cop’s family as hostage.

After making the necessary phone calls, he took the next flight for Kansas. He was heading for Leavenworth.

#

CROW found a music channel on the television and turned the volume full blast. He felt so antsy that he couldn’t be still. When Heddy told him to turn it down, he ignored her. Fuck her. Fuck this shit. Hadn’t he been the one to go for food? Hadn’t
she
been the one to complain about how much she hated Mexican? Hadn’t he done everything she’d told him for hours? Hadn’t
she
not bothered, once, to say
thank you
? You’d think she’d show a little gratitude. Didn’t she know how hard it was to walk down the streets out there while wondering if people were behind their shades and curtains, dialing the cops on him?