A Fountain Filled With Blood

The passenger door unlocked with a sharp click and she fell into the seat, clutching at the oven-hot leather as Russ spun the vehicle around and slammed on the accelerator. She couldn’t believe he had actually fallen for it and let her get in.

“What is it?”

“The nephew pulled right into the driveway. He saw our black-and-whites and backed out of there, but not before Kevin spotted him. Hang on.”

They took the turn onto the road on two wheels. His hand twitched where the radio would be in his squad car. She could hear the sirens wailing, the sound shifting, growing higher and fainter as the lightweight cars drew farther and farther ahead of Russ’s heavy truck.

“Will they be able to catch him?” she asked.

“Eventually.” His focus was all on the road as he leaned into his accelerator.

“What if he drives through town like that? That fast?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. It was a stupid question. She could picture the tourists jaywalking across the streets, the kids biking. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed the best she knew how, scarcely coherent, all her fear and belief laid out in the open. Please, God. Please.

The sirens cut off. Russ swore. The truck flew over the road, heading toward the intersection, lofting over bumps and jarring high and wide over asphalt patches filling last winter’s potholes.

“Hang on!” The two black-and-whites were catercorner across the intersection, blocking a Volvo sedan that had, from the skid marks, spun around in the turn and nosed into a ditch thick with daylilies and Queen Anne’s lace. Russ jammed down on the brake, throwing both of them forward until her shoulder belt caught and bit into her neck. The back end of the truck danced across the road but stopped safely in the breakdown lane. Great, she thought. Now I’ll have matching bruises on both shoulders.

The uniformed officers spilled from their cars, taking protective stances behind their open doors. Russ opened his own door, drawing his weapon at the same time. “Stay here,” he said.

She nodded.

Officer Entwhistle was yelling at Malcolm Wintour to get out of the car with his hands showing. She couldn’t see any movement inside the sedan. Lord, what if he was dead, too? The awful toll of human life and pain was already too high. And for what? To get a lousy piece of land developed. To make more money for a woman who already had more than anyone really needed.

Russ closed in on his men, staying low, his gun out in front of him. She saw him signal Noble Entwhistle, who ducked behind his own car and edged around toward the back of the Volvo, which was angled up so that the tires were barely touching the asphalt.

“Wintour,” Russ bellowed. “We’ve got your aunt. We’ve got Waxman. We know everything. Get out of the car.”

The door on the driver’s side shuddered, opened a few inches, and then stuck fast in the side of the ditch. Clare rolled her window down. She had to hear what was going to happen. A hand emerged from the opening. “It wasn’t my idea!” The thin, frightened voice she heard was not at all like the one she had heard from the bathroom. “She made me do it!”

“Get out of the goddamned car!”

“I can’t!”

Russ looked at Noble Entwhistle and nodded. The uniformed officer crept closer to the Volvo’s trunk as Russ sidled closer toward the driver’s door. Clare wanted to scream, Stay away from there, you idiot! He’s got a gun! But he knew Malcolm had a gun. He knew what he was doing. She forced her fingernails out of the palms of her hands.

She still couldn’t see the interior of the car, but from where he stood, Russ must have had a bead directly on Malcolm. He stood there, gun pointed at the car, while Noble slid into the ditch and opened the back door. It wasn’t until he had hauled Malcolm out, literally by the collar, that Clare realized she had been holding her breath.

They got him down on the ground and then Duane and Kevin came running. Clare could hear a rumble of male voices, but she couldn’t make out anything. Russ squatted down and spoke directly to Malcolm. She wasn’t sure, but it looked as if the younger man was crying. She looked away, not wanting to see any more, and so it wasn’t until she heard the crunch of his hiking boots on the road grit that she realized Russ was coming back to the truck.

She glanced up. Noble was ushering Malcolm into the backseat of his cruiser, and as she watched, the red lights whirled atop the other police car and Kevin and Duane were off, headed toward town. She looked at Russ as he opened his door.

“He says his aunt didn’t drive away, because he had her car.” He got in, pinching the bridge of his nose. “He doesn’t know where she’s gone. The only people he knows she might get in touch with are his mother or her other sister. Both of whom live more than halfway across the state. She must have called a friend to come pick her up.”