The sour cherry surprise

Once they were safely behind the barn Mitch pointed Des in the direction of those two state troopers in the driveway and gave her a quick shove. Then he and Molly dove back into the thorny thicket beyond the chicken wire fence and started their slow, hard journey back to Big Sister.

He could hear Des call out her name to the troopers. Hear them bark in response. Then came the urgent voices into walkie-talkies. Soon somebody with a bullhorn was ordering Clay Mundy and Hector Villanueva to come out with their hands up. Mitch and Molly had made it as far as the woods when all hell broke loose. A lot of shooting. An insane amount of shooting. So much that it sounded to Mitch’s ears like the bloody finale of Bonnie and Clyde.

The shooting was still going on back there when he and Molly cleared the woods and, hand-in-hand, dashed their way across the meadow for home.

CHAPTER 17

The gloves game off once they found out she’d managed to free herself from the root cellar. With Des safely out of harm’s way they gave Clay and Hector one last chance to come out with their hands up. Repeated it three times through a bullhorn, loud and clear. Clay and Hector refused to comply.

And then the shooting started.

No one was certain which of the two suspects was responsible for firing those first shots. Although Des thought she had a pretty fair idea. Didn’t really matter though. The important thing was that the opening salvo absolutely, positively came from the house. The SWAT teams returned fire. Had no choice. Then they stormed the Procter cottage with overwhelming force. Clay Mundy and Hector Villanueva were given every opportunity to surrender. They would not.

When it was over, both men were pronounced dead at the scene from multiple gunshot wounds. There were no casualties suffered by any sworn personnel at the scene.

An internal State Police investigation into the raid on Sour Cherry Lane was launched the following morning. But there was very little heat behind the after-action inquiry. No bereaved loved ones coming forward to express outrage over Clay and Hector’s violent deaths. No friends or business associates demanding answers. No one asking why they’d chosen to shoot it out like they had.

If anyone has asked her, Des would have told them: Clay had simply made good on his promise. He’d vowed to her that he would never, ever spend a single night in jail for as long as he lived. That night on Sour Cherry Lane, he made sure of it.

Grisky’s team found the stash of ice down in the root cellar. Some 187 pounds of crystal meth buried in one-gallon plastic freezer bags under fresh dirt not four feet from where Des had lain bound and gagged. Also another twenty pounds of heroin. This information was not made public. The joint task force wasn’t giving up on its quest to crush the Vargas drug cartel just because Clay and Hector were gone. Operation Burrito King lived on. So there was no mention in the media about the raid having anything to do with illegal drugs. Instead, the coverage focused entirely on the so-called “Triangle of Death”-Richard Procter, his estranged wife, Carolyn, and her lover, Clay Mundy. The official story line coming from the Major Crime Squad’s homicide investigators was that Clay had knifed the professor in a fight over Carolyn. Hector had helped Clay dispose of the body. And when the state police closed in on them the desperate pair had set off a crisis by taking Dorset’s resident trooper hostage.

For now, an FBI agent would remain stationed in the woods just in case someone associated with Clay and Hector moseyed along and tried to dig up their stash.

Brandon had been standing out in the middle of the lane looking utterly distraught when Des came staggering through the rain toward him, a big, strong trooper helping her along. Brandon ran to her and hugged her tight, kissing her, kissing her. And then here came Soave and Yolie, beaming with delight. All of them wanted to know how she got out. Des’s ears were ringing. And her memory of the previous few minutes was a feverish stew of fantasy and reality. But somehow, she gave them what Mitch had fed her to say. That she’d managed to work the ropes loose. Found wire cutters and a pry bar down there. Jimmied open an air vent. Grabbed the nearest trooper. End of story.

It didn’t fly for long, because when they searched the root cellar in the morning they found that her ropes had been cut with a knife, not loosened. And the vent cover pried open from the outside, not within. But for now no one showed any interest in pressing Des over this apparent discrepancy.

“It’s all over.”

That’s what a relieved Brandon kept saying to her as the Jewett sisters were getting her settled in the back of the ambulance. The media people were shouting questions her way. She wasn’t answering them. Wasn’t up for any questions.

“It’s all over.”