The Truth Collector (11 page)

“Jenkins,” said Broyles. “Come help me, you idiot.”

The sheriff's words shook the man out of his waking slumber. He looked through the glass, then his eyes swept the corridor as it began to fill with voices. Slowly, stupidly he knelt to put the water pitcher on the ground.

He never made it.

One moment he was looking at them with those empty eyes, and the next they were bulging out of his eye sockets as his face went straight for the floor. It slapped against the surface loud enough for Malcolm to hear it in the holding cell. Jenkins panicked, rolling around on the floor but unable to find his footing.

The water pitcher floated above him.

It dipped down to strike him from time to time, sending splashes of water and blood into the corridor. He reached for it once, but when it rapped his knuckles he covered his eyes and screamed.

Broyles screamed too. He called Jenkins a baby and an embarrassment and a mistake, but the man didn't answer. He just cowered in the corner while the holding cell door was opened from the outside.

Malcolm and Paul nodded at each other and rushed through the opening. The sheriff chased after them, sliding his chair across the floor and leaving streaks. “You're done,” he said. Then, between gasps: “Your names and faces will be everywhere in a few minutes.”

Once they were in the corridor Malcolm pointed to the huge officer on the floor. “Get him.” He and Paul grabbed him and heaved with everything they had. For a moment the man opened his eyes. Then he shut them again and sighed, relieved he wouldn't have the burden of being a hero. Malcolm and Paul dragged him into the holding cell with Broyles and locked the door behind them.

“You boys almost done? We have company.” A woman's voice. They turned back to find its source and there she was. Her business suit was clean, every strand of hair in place. She clutched the water pitcher with one hand and pointed down the corridor with the other.

A mass of blue rounded the corner. It was hard to say exactly how many there were. They ran shoulder to shoulder, crowding the hallway with their wild faces, swept up in the excitement of hunting down murderers.

Those faces broke apart and began to take shape as they approached. There were three men and a woman: the sweet little woman who'd shown them in at the receptionist desk. They carried guns and tasers, sprinted past one another to cement their legacy in the Tattersall press as the brave officer who subdued the murderers.

“Come on,” said Charlotte. “Stop standing around. There's another way out.” She tossed the pitcher onto the ground when the cops got closer, flooding the corridor with water. One man in the middle of the pack nearly lost his balance and hooked his arms around the others. Then they all almost went down in a heap of curses and outstretched arms.

“Let's go,” Malcolm said, following Charlotte deeper into the corridor. Paul came right behind him. Around one corner they went, then another. A few twists later and Malcolm was completely disoriented, lost in the labyrinth of small-town justice. They passed a storage closet and made their way into a little laundry room where a load of police uniforms spun in the wash.

Charlotte waved them in. She closed the door behind them and pushed past the washer and dryer. An ironing board tumbled down on top of her from its place against the wall, but she shoved it aside and pressed on. “Come on,” she said. “Hurry.”

Footsteps and angry voices filled the corridor behind them. They grew louder and angrier by the second.

Malcolm and Paul reached the innermost part of the laundry room. They collided and went right through Charlotte into a door. She hissed at them while they untangled themselves. Her hands were on a doorknob, fiddling with a key. She jiggled it in the lock and then the door popped open.

Sunlight struck them, burning their eyes as they rushed out into it. Charlotte took their hands and pulled them behind a dumpster into a loading zone.

A car sat parked among the concrete and flies circling the dumpster, backed in and ready to go. Charlotte had a key for it too. She motioned for them to get in and hit the gas before Malcolm and Paul could even shut the doors. Out of the parking lot they flew with their tires screaming. She swerved around cars and pickup trucks arranged in some kind of makeshift employee parking lot.

Malcolm looked in the side-view mirror back at the door from where they'd came. Cops poured out of it onto the pavement with guns drawn. They aimed at the speeding car…

Bam! Bam bam!

“Get down,” he said. They slid down in their seats as glass exploded all around them. Paul yelled from the backseat, covered himself when the rear window disintegrated into shards of glass.

Charlotte drove faster, but not fast enough to outrun the bullets. They made holes in some of the cars and pickup trucks around them. They deflated tires, ripped through metal, and went through the back of their car and out the front windshield. The glass there hung together, riddled with holes and rippling like a spiderweb in the wind.

The windshield crashed down when Charlotte took the car over a curb. They screamed and covered their faces as the shards rained down on them, made a hundred little cuts. Bleeding, panting they looked at one another. Somehow the car ended up on a county road behind the jail and stayed on the pavement.

“Where are we going?” Paul said, checking over his shoulder with one eye above the backseat.

“Seven miles,” said Charlotte. “There's a gate there. That's where you'll pay my price.”

Malcolm held his stomach and groaned. Seven miles might as well have been seven hundred.

Behind them, sirens began to wail.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Three police cruisers pulled up with their lights flashing. They raced forward in a wedge across both lanes. Those sirens and engine sounds blended together to create a single, endless wail.

“Just a few more miles,” Charlotte said. She hit the accelerator to the floor and the sedan shot forward. She'd chosen a decent one – one that hid its horsepower under a modest white exterior. Fields and mangled fences whipped by Malcolm's window. They passed a man riding a horse on the side of the road. The horse neighed when they shot past it and nearly threw the man from the saddle. Malcolm closed his eyes. He was going to be sick. But he couldn't keep them closed. They shot open again and settled on the odometer.

Miles ticked by while his heart raced – pieces of miles. They were going too slow. The engine sounds behind them were louder now. Gaining. Winning. He didn't even have to look in the mirror to see the police cars anymore. They stalked beside them in their blind spots. Then a voice blasted over a loudspeaker.

“Pull over. Pull over.”

Charlotte watched the cars close in on them, licked her lips, and clutched the steering wheel. The cruiser on the passenger side drove alongside them now, testing them. It bumped them once, sent them over to the other side of the road, and the car over there bumped them back toward the middle.

The third car – the one that hadn't been flanking them – passed on the shoulder and steered right in front of them. The flanking cars pressed closer while the one in front slowed down, boxing them in. The voice on the loudspeaker fizzled and died. They'd tried negotiation. Now they'd try force.

“What are we going to do?” Paul said.

“Two more miles,” Charlotte said. “Hang on.” She grabbed the wheel and floored it, crashing into the police car in front of them. But the impact was tiny, and the getaway car got the worst of it. The rolling blockade remained firmly in place. Charlotte hit the brakes to disengage from the police car's bumper. There was hardly a mark there, but their car steamed and smoked.

Malcolm glanced over at the officer driving beside him and found Sheriff Robbie looking back at him. His face was bruised and battered, but grinning.
I have you
, that grin said.
You're mine
.

“Let me take the wheel,” Malcolm said.

“What?” said Charlotte.

He grabbed her shoulder. “I need you inside those cars. Do your disappearing act and get them off the road somehow. Try not to hurt anyone if you can help it.”

“And if I can't?”

Malcolm shrugged. “Just buy us some time. It's the only way.”

“Okay,” Charlotte said. “It's a right on route nine. Ready?”

“Do it.”

Then she was gone. The car slowed down so fast it almost sent Malcolm through the dashboard. For a terrifying second it bounced between the police cars on either side of them, rudderless. He swung his legs over the console and shattered glass, slipped into the driver's seat, and took the wheel with trembling fingers.

He lined up the car on the yellow stripe in the center of the road and waited. Engines roared all around them, but for a moment everything seemed almost quiet...

Until Charlotte slipped into the police car. She went for the one in front first. Malcolm watched the driver's head twist sideways and his partner reaching frantically for the radio. The car swerved to one side of the road and then the other, steadying just before it hurtled into a ditch. The flanking cars dropped back to give it room to maneuver.

But it didn't matter.

The car jerked to the side and spewed smoke when the driver slammed the brakes. The driver swatted at the air, tried to hold the wheel steady, and sent his car straight into the ditch.

Malcolm hit the gas to take advantage of the empty space. The flanking cars pulled up beside him, radioing each other to set up some new formation. First the one on the driver's side fell away to join his colleague in the scorched ditch. Then Sheriff Robbie's car swerved, careened through a stand of trees, and came to a stop just before smashing into an oak trunk.

Malcolm floored it and pounded his fist on the steering wheel.

“What about Charlotte?” Paul said.

She appeared in the passenger seat just as suddenly as she had vanished, nearly jolting them out of their seats. Her lipstick and makeup were perfect – like she'd just come from a photo shoot instead of tangling with the law. “That should buy us a few minutes. But don't mess around, Malcolm. Those… monstrosities they drive are fast.”

“Don't worry,” Malcolm said. “We're almost there.”

They rounded a bend, and the turnoff for route nine burst into view. Malcolm slammed on the brakes, leaving just enough traction to stay on the road. They took the turn in a skid. Over potholes and through waist-high grass they went, banging Malcolm's teeth together and sending reverberations through his arms. The car hurtled onto a small dirt road. It coughed out glass shards and food wrappers and coffee mugs, offering them up to some unseen toll collector.

He didn't dare slow down – not even when they screamed at him and their words blended together in his eardrums.

Oak branches leaned across the road, touched together in a makeshift awning. The markings in the road disappeared and so did the sunlight. Two lanes became one and a half, then one.

Sirens wailed above the sound of their voices. The police were closing in now, chasing them down this little tunnel to hell. Malcolm didn't look back. He held the wheel and his breath as the car was flogged by wayward tree branches. He wasn't driving as much as swerving, balancing, squeezing between increasingly tight spaces. The last of the sun's rays fell – just in time for Charlotte to yell:

“
There
.”

She grabbed his shoulder, pointed to the side of the road at a little break between the trees. “Turn there,” she said. Malcolm slammed on the brakes when they slid past it. Something thumped in the backseat: Paul's head? A gunshot?

He threw it into reverse, backed up, and turned into the hole in the woods. A gnarled wooden gate blocked their path. The land behind it looked empty.

“Here?” said Malcolm.

Charlotte pointed straight ahead.

Malcolm floored it, gritting his teeth. The car smashed right through the gate and broke it into a thousand splinters. Some of them flew inside to mix with the window glass, but Malcolm didn't stop to sweep them out.

He didn't stop for anything.

They rode along an abandoned driveway which had succumbed to moss and rain and years. No one had used it for so long it had reshaped itself into a living thing of its own. They drove along its spine – its tongue – its soft underbelly. They drove until the trees opened up and they crested a little hill.

A farmhouse sat at the top, made from the same ancient wood as the gate. It seemed to have anchored itself to the earth, even though cracks ran through its foundation and tree branches ran through its windows.

“In the back,” Charlotte said. “There's a well.”

Malcolm stopped the car beside the house. Well, he didn't stop the car but the ground did. It reached for the tires and pulled them into damp earth. When he hit the gas those wheels only sunk deeper, spinning mud in every direction. Sirens blared behind them. Doors open and shut. Something drove Malcolm to look back, but the flickering red and blue on the farmhouse already told him everything he needed to know.

“Step out of the car with your hands up.”

That damn loudspeaker again.

None of them moved. Malcolm looked in the rear-view mirror and found the officers standing in a little arc behind them. Cars battered. Faces angry. Guns drawn.

“Damn it,” Paul said. “What now?”

“Go for the well,” Charlotte said. “I'll keep them company for a bit. Just keep running if they start shooting.”

“What?” Malcolm said.

“Relax, boys. This is the easy part.” Her car door opened and closed.

“Hands up,” came a voice over the loudspeaker.

She stepped away from the car and put her hands in the air. Her high heels never slipped or sunk down. Mud splashed and flew as they directed her to the rear of the car, but not a single drop got on her makeshift lawyer suit.

“Stop right there,” someone said.

“Cut the engine,” said another. There was an edge in that voice. Sheriff Robbie.

Malcolm and Paul looked at each other, not moving, not breathing.

Then Charlotte ran.

She sprinted towards them through the mud. The evening erupted in screams and gunfire. Malcolm and Paul covered their heads and hid in the floorboards while the lawmen pumped bullets into the car. A layer of smoke filled the empty spaces, and all Malcolm could smell was gunpowder and burning metal.

Then the gunfire stopped and Charlotte began to sing.

It was an old tune – one Malcolm had never heard before – and it sounded sad. He peeked in the rear-view mirror and saw her standing there in front of the policemen. She traipsed through the mud straight for them.

They started firing again.

She ran straight at the bullets like a child trying to catch fireflies in an open jar. They fired and fired, and still she came.

This time Malcolm reached into the back seat. Paul was hiding somewhere in the floorboards. Malcolm felt around and grabbed a handful of hair. “Come on,” he said. “We have to go.” Paul didn't answer. But he kicked a door open and flopped into the farmyard. Malcolm held his breath, said a silent prayer, and opened the driver's door.

They ran straight ahead, circles swimming in their eyes from the police spotlights. Mud sucked them in with every step. They ran a few yards, fell face-first to the ground, and got up again. Somewhere along the way Malcolm's shoes came off. He squished along in his socks.

The cops were shouting now. The gunshots had stopped, but they still echoed in Malcolm's ears. He looked back and saw Charlotte leading them around in a circle. Their shadows danced in front of the car.

They all had shadows. Everyone except her.

Broyles pointed across the yard, and two of his officers split off from the pack and came after them. The others lay swearing in a helpless heap with their own handcuffs on their wrists. But those two men were on them – after them.

Then Paul lost his footing. Malcolm reached down to help him. When he dragged his face out of the mud Paul was spitting, blubbering. “There.
Right there
, Malcolm.” He pointed.

A well stood about fifty yards in front of them.

It was the same color as bleached bones. Just a stone cylinder sticking out of the yard that looked as old as the ground itself. They ran for it up a little incline. The ground dried as they climbed, mud giving away to packed dirt. Then the shouting started again. Bullets whipped through the air and thudded into the hill. Faster and faster they ran until Malcolm's calves burned and his prison jumpsuit was suffocating him.

The well was right in front of them now. Malcolm grabbed the little waterlogged wooden awning covering it to slow himself, but it snapped right off in his hands.

“What now?” Paul said. He reached into the well and pulled out a wet hand. “Why's the water so high? She didn't say what happens now.”

Malcolm grabbed him and pulled him behind the well. They cowered behind it, pressed together as the bullets flew. “Charlotte,” Malcolm said. “Charlotte!” He yelled until his vocal cords dried up and his voice got lost in the bursts of gunfire.

She appeared by the well just as the policemen ran up the little hill. They yelled when they saw her, but they saved their bullets for people they could kill. Charlotte ignored them while they charged up the hill behind her. She knelt in front of Malcolm and Paul and grabbed their hands. “They aren't much use without their cars, are they?”

“They'll catch us,” Paul said. “They'll kill us.”

She squeezed his hand. Then she reached into her blouse and pulled a necklace off her neck. A silver locket dangled on the chain when she held it. “You'll need this.”

Malcolm took it and flipped it open. There was a tiny picture inside, but he couldn't make it out in the darkness. Voices filled the backyard now. Men gathered and regrouped and shined bright lights.

“That's Nora. Miranda's daughter,” Charlotte said. “Keep all of your intention – your mind, heart and soul – on that little girl while you're down there. That's the only way you'll find her.”

Paul reached for her face, held his fingers in front of her lips like he was trying to rearrange Charlotte's words so they somehow made sense.

“You have to go now,” she said. “Find a boat on the shore. When you cross the water don't you dare look at anyone or talk to them. And don't you dare touch it. You aren't supposed to be there.”

“Then why are we going?” said Paul, hunching forward and diving to the ground when more gunshots sounded.

“It's the only way. I'll be with you the entire way. Now come on. Hurry.” She motioned for them to get in the well. “One at a time. Head first will be better I think.”

“You think?” said Malcolm. He opened his mouth to say something else, but when he tried to speak he was underwater. Something had lifted him upside down and shoved him into the well like a sausage in its casing. That force – hands on his feet, maybe – squeezed him past moss-covered rocks. The air in his lungs emptied and he started kicking, clawing against the sides to try and get out.