CAN'T WIN FOR LOSING
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Picture Courtesy of Dinkun Chen |
The Judge lay across the middle bench, knees to his chest. He wriggled against the tape at his ankles, knees and wrists.
"Rule one," Alex smiled to the rearview, "elbows and knees together when you're getting taped. It's your only hope of wriggling free."
Highley's precious typewriter sat buckled in to the passenger seat, the chewed gloves wedged into its strikes. The rifle sat on the center console, barrel aimed at the Judge's rotten heart. Alex took a breath to calm her sputtering pulse. It felt like she'd just pounded a liter of espresso. All she had to do was drive into town. Five more minutes and the police would take this creep off her hands. God if she could only call Hardcastle.
"How's everyone doing back there?" Alex chirped. "Do we need any potty stops?"
"Eat shit, Dalkowski."
The van drove like a grumpy elephant. It lumbered, indignant to commands, bumping and swerving through Bakersville's back roads on a two second delay. Alex leaned through every ass-clenching, two-wheeled turn as if on the set of a bad sci-fi movie. Behind, Sebastian tumbled across the bench. Plastic forks, greasy napkins and fast-food flotsam rained throughout the cabin. Good, Alex thought, watching him slosh through the garbage, the miserable old badger deserves it.
A bright slur of color slid over horizon ahead, lime green over white snow like an upside-down meringue pie. Thick, grey smoke rose from the car's trunk. A second column of smoke, thicker, whiter, rose from the ditch beyond. Shapes squirmed, dark silhouettes against the neon car.
"Wait, is that...?" Alex squinted, tapped the breaks. The van politely declined. Alex pressed the breaks harder. Again, no thank you, I think I'll keep lumbering on at 65.
"Shoot on a shingle, it's them!" Alex bounced on the driver's seat, pointing out the windshield. She slammed the brakes, palm to horn. Finally, the force of both feet pressing the pedal, the impostor van assented. Wheels skidding, the van angled to a stop some twenty feet from the wreck. It was Sheila's car, alright. Lime green and sleek. At least, it used to be, before the rear panels shredded to tin foil and the front crumpled like a can.
Two people—unmistakably Kavi and Arthur—ducked in the back seat, struggling and pulling, desperate to get something free.
Alex shot out of the van. "Where's Harris?" The words tumbled out of her mouth. "Where's Harris?"
"I told them Arthur should sit back here!" Harris' voice warbled through the cold air. "I'm fucking wedged in place!"
Kavi pulled one leg, Arthur the other, trying to unstick Harris from the Karman Ghia's infinitesimal back seat.
"Here!" Alex circled around to the other door. "I'll push! Go!"
Harris wiggled his ass. Alex pressed her hands to the small of his back. Kavi pulling one ankle and Arthur the other knee, Harris finally slid free. He plopped ass-first onto snowy grass, looking like a birth from a nature film.
"Alex!" Harris scrabbled to his feet. "Oh my god, are you okay? You're okay. You're okay." They met at the rear, the Ghia's trunk torn free, rear engine chugging. He wrapped his arms around Alex, repeating the words, "you're okay, god you're okay." The warmth of her body played a glad song.
Alex pushed away slightly but couldn't resist her smile. "It takes more than a two layers of duct tape to stop a Dalkowski. I have four older brothers; I've freed myself from worse."
"Whoa whoa." Arthur's usually placid voice bounced with surprise. "So, this really is a thing? I thought Highley was just…"
Alex, face as red as if she painted it, shrugged and pried herself free. "It's... ah," she circled around to the van's passenger door and threw it open. "Let's just deliver a dirty judge to the cops first."
But Judge Highley was not sprawled across the second-row bench. Nor was the typewriter buckled into the passenger seat. Highly peered out from the relative dark, a hungry coyote waiting in its den. Back to the van's window, the rifle bounced between his taped hands, its barrel propped on the tape binding his ankles. The typewriter sat on the ground between him and the open door.
"You dipshits can't win for losing, can you?" he cackled. "Do everything as I say and we all live to see tomorrow."
"It's four to one." Harris stepped forward. "The numbers aren't—"
The gunshot cut Harris short. The four feinted back, hands over heads. The typewriter turned into a bouquet of metal and burnt plastic. What once boasted smooth, midcentury modern curves now looked like postmodernist sculpture. The boom of Highley's shot echoed over flatness, its cone of noise softer with each repetition: cha-POW! cha-pow. cha-pow... Typewriter strikes scattered over the van floor—here an 'O,' there an 'm.'
Tears wobbled from the Judge's eyes. "Look what you made me do. My life. My love." He breathed deep, set his mouth. "But she died knowing the only remaining bit of evidence to tie me to all this has gone up in smoke. I'd have done the same for her."
"The van." Kavi said.
"Will you stop already?" Highley screamed. "Have we not established ten times over how awful a detective you make? The seller of this vehicle will swear a Kavia Adnan-Byrne purchased it online and paid cash. He'd say it's a little strange, just leave it in a parking garage with the keys inside, but money talks."
"What about him?" Arthur nodded toward the ditch, the crumpled Honda pouring out smoke. "Your brother could be bleeding out. We have to help him."
"In." Highley motioned with the gun, began scooting toward the van's rear bench. "All of you. Drive me to the library. Lemuel and his goons should be there by now, no? Oh, thank God you're here Chief Hardcastle! These crazy writers kidnapped me! They lured the detective and my idiot half-brother into their plot! I tried to stop them, officer, but they proved too much for an old, frail man like me." Highley broke into a grin. "And yes, Harris, it is four to one, but any false moves and it will quickly become three. Do you really want the Detective's brains splattered all over your nice prison shirt?"
"There's no way you get away with this." Kavi opened the driver door, slowly slid in.
"There's no way I don't." Highley smiled. "I have cash. I have a best seller of a book locked and loaded. You'll make sure the last chapters come true and then I get rich. I have an alias ready for me to step into. By the time Hardcastle whiffs the truth, I'll be long gone."
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