Andrew Gross - 15 Seconds

My blood began to race in anticipation, vindication only seconds away, as I watched the wall of Bud’s conviction begin to crack, and he cleared his throat, the lump in it almost visible.

“Guess it coulda been that guy…” he said, flicking his index finger toward Hofer’s photo. “Like I said, it was crowded, and it’s always a good show for me.”

A sense of elation surged through me.

“Sorry”-Bud scratched behind his ear-“if I gave anyone the wrong impression.”

“No worries.” Carrie turned and shot a happy glance my way. “I have the feeling you’ve made at least one person very happy today.”

For Vance Hofer, there was only one place to go. One place where he felt at home and knew that no one would find him.

He had driven for hours, with Steadman’s daughter asleep in the backseat, her wrist bound to the door in his old cuffs from his days on the force, her ankles tied.

When he finally turned on the old familiar road, pulled up to the remote, ramshackle house, the last place he had been before it all fell apart, everything suddenly felt right to him.

It looked a little the worse for wear, the grass overgrown, the porch sagging and stripped of paint, no one doing the chores for a couple of years.

But he’d been happy here.

“Wake up now, darlin’,” he said to the girl in back. Vance was proud of how he’d set everything up. Lifting him, he felt, from the speck-like unimportance of his life’s past mediocrity.

He was proud, after his visit to Steadman, about the way he had found her up at college as she was coming from the stables, about how he had posed as an admiring spectator who was watching her ride. A picture of perfection if he’d ever seen one. Unlike his own daughter, who’s only after-school activities, he suspected, had taken place in the boys’ bathroom of the local high school.

And he was proud about how he’d followed Steadman as he got off his plane that day, giving Martinez the heads-up about what he was driving-that fancy white Caddie-and when Martinez might expect him by. How he’d stayed a short distance behind all the way from the airport until he saw the flashing lights and sirens.

Watching it all beautifully unfold.

Surely there were bad things that were a part of it too. Martinez. Vance thought of the cop’s look of befuddlement when he turned and saw Vance pull up beside him.

The gun in his face. No clue in the world what was happening. And then pow…

And Steadman’s friend. In that fancy house. How Vance had found him at his desk, the garage door left open, after polishing up his clubs…

They would require some lengthy conversations with the Man Upstairs.

But Vance felt he’d done his share of good as well, bringing ol’ Wayne and Dexter to mind, plus that Schmeltzer maggot. Ridding the world of vermin like that surely cleaned it up a lick, and might earn him, he hoped, upon his ultimate judgment, the smallest measure of thanks for making the world a better place.

But he always knew… Always knew sooner or later that they’d come for him. Fellows’s call showed him that.

Yes, he’d done it well. Still, that didn’t quite make them even.

Not quite yet.

He opened the door to the back and uncuffed the girl’s wrist. “ What? Where are we?” the frightened girl called out, pulling back from him. “What are we doing here? Get your hands off me!”

He didn’t care-she could kick and scream all she wanted. She could scream until she was blue in the face; there was no one around to hear. He cuffed both her wrists, then picked her up and carried her into the woods, kicking overgrown branches and brush out of his way, a place he hadn’t been to in a couple of years but that used to be home to him. He found the shed. There was a lock on the door. His own lock. He set her down and opened it.

“No, no,” the girl said. “I don’t want to go in there. I don’t-”

“Better get used to it,” Vance said to her. “It all gets interesting from here.”

He picked her up again and kicked the door open, flicking on the one light. Many of his old tools were still on the walls. It was dark and damp, with cobwebs all over.

He opened the storage hut.

“No, no, please,” she begged, shaking her head. “What are you doing? Don’t. Not in there…”

“What’d you think, you were here on vacation?” Vance grabbed her wrists and undid the cuffs.

Pretty as a picture, he recalled. The horse and rider coming around. The beating of its hooves. The rider leaning. Toward the jump. The graceful bunching of the muscles in the animal’s hind legs, then leaping, clearing, horse and rider frozen momentarily in midair. Then the landing on its forelegs, without missing a stride.

“What are you doing? What are you staring at?” she asked, trembling.

Pretty as a picture, right?

Vance was all set to throw her into the dark compartment, when that gave him an idea.

Carrie and I drove from the gun shop into the center of town, where we got a coffee and sat in the small green off the main street, under a stone pillar commemorating the town’s World War II dead. It was a warm afternoon. A couple of kids were riding their bikes, BMX-style, up and down the stone steps. A woman on a nearby bench was feeding a few birds. All around the square and main street was the languorous still-life of the South.

The sudden proof Carrie had just gotten made me both elated and a little scared. Now I had to turn myself in. That was our agreement. I had to hand myself over to the very people who’d been trying to kill me just the other day. Back in handcuffs probably and in a jail cell. Interrogated in a room, hoping I could convince them, probably the FBI, that they had to hide that I was innocent. Fending off all the media frenzy I knew would follow.

Not even the Jacksonville police could doubt it now.

“So what do you say,” Carrie asked, holding her phone. “You ready to do this now?”

“Yes.” I nodded, tossing her a halfhearted smile. Then: “ No . Listen, Carrie, I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you enough for what you’ve done. Without you, I would have driven away from Fellows’s house, not even knowing it was where the plate was from. And I wouldn’t have known a thing about Hofer. I’d still be driving around, confused and panic-stricken.”

“You found Fellows yourself. And you would have found Hofer. Let’s just say it was a team effort.” But I could see the sense of satisfaction on her face too. “So I’m going to call Jack. We’re going to explain it to him. From the start. I’m going to ask him to send a team, maybe out of the Charlotte office. We can arrange to meet somewhere neutral. Maybe in the lobby of that motel over there…” She pointed toward a Comfort Inn. “Or maybe outside of town, so it doesn’t create a stir.”

“We can’t create a stir, Carrie.”

“Or get the local police all involved. That’s just what we need, right?”

“Then you can go back to your life…” I said. “Community outreach.”

She looked at me. “I made a decision. I think I’m gonna put in for something else. Maybe a detective’s shield. It’s what I wanted to do all along, I just put it aside while Rick finished up school and then got called up in the reserves… What do you think? You think I’ve got the goods?”

“I think you’ve got all the goods,” I said, unable to stop myself from smiling.

“If the JSO doesn’t toss me in jail, just on principle… You might well get out first.”