Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

I pictured Schillinger’s chubby white face. Then I saw the real thing following the uniformed state troopers out of the Stevens House. I took another step back, pressing against the wood-slat exterior wall of the bed-and-breakfast so that I was no longer in Schillinger’s line of sight.

“There is also speculation that Keeper Marconi was spotted by more than one witness walking side by side with Cassandra Wolf, Eduard Vasquez’s longtime girlfriend. Although nothing is official, such allegations make Marconi and Wolf prime suspects in the shooting death of the deceased cop-killer. The thirty-two-year-old Wolf, who had been sharing a room with Vasquez here in the Stevens House bed-and-breakfast under the assumed name of Hewlet, also fled the scene at approximately the same time that Marconi was purportedly seen.”

I looked away from Collins, beyond the crowd, out toward the tugboat and the barge it pushed. In my mind I sprinted through the crowd, dove head first into the river water, swam to the barge, stowed away to New York, and made my way south to Mexico. I’d change my name, grow a beard, grow my hair, blend in, drop out.

I felt sick to my stomach and deprived of oxygen.

“This is Chris Collins reporting live from Athens.”

She relaxed her arm, let the mike drop against her thigh, and took a deep breath. The cameraman had already moved away from her and shifted his focus to the EMTs who had loaded Vasquez’s body into the back of a black Chevrolet Suburban with tinted windows. The same kind of truck that took Fran away one year ago. The crowd grew so quiet that you could hear the small waves breaking on the western shore of the Hudson, the tugboat and barge having cut a heavy wake when they pushed through.

The townspeople of Athens fixed their eyes on the final scene-with the red, white, and blue lights from the cop cruisers flashing off the rear windows of the Chevy Suburban after the heavy double doors had been closed and secured. Call it shock, call it another panic attack, but I must have fallen into a semiconscious state. Because when Henry Snow, the gas station attendant, stepped out of the crowd in his light blue uniform, raised his oil-slicked right hand, and shouted out my name, it didn’t quite register, didn’t quite sink in. Until I heard the distinct sound of shoe leather slapping against concrete.

It happened fast.

I heard the order shouted by Marty Schillinger to apprehend the man in the dark blazer. But just before that, I made an all-out dash for the Impala, gaining maybe ten or twelve steps on the cops. With cowboy boots slapping hard on the pavement and air shooting out of my chest and mouth, it was like the Impala was in one of those dreams where you reach out for something that isn’t there. The closer I came to the car, the farther away it appeared. Cops shouted, threatened to shoot. A distinct, all-at-once high-pitch cry from the crowd told me that weapons had been drawn.

At the Impala, I searched through the pockets of my blazer for the small key ring with the yellow plastic attachment shaped like a little number “1” and the word Hertz printed on it in bold black letters.

The cops worked their way closer, service revolvers drawn.

My brothers, my fraternal order.

I looked over my shoulder, once. The crowd was on the ground, men and women on their stomachs, some of them lying on top of their children.

I could see them all now-Chris Collins alongside Schillinger, microphone in hand, cameraman behind her, filming the scene for history, posterity. “Warden Gunned Down after Jumping Bail.” What a story it would make. Uniformed cops on their knees behind their black-and-whites, using the cars to shield their bodies. Shield them from what? All side-arms drawn, aimed at me.

The sharp crack of the revolver echoed off the walls of the buildings along North Water Street. So did the shots that followed.

Who had given the order to shoot?

Someone had to have given the order.

Maybe someone thought I’d gone for my gun. But I hadn’t gone for my gun. I was going for the keys to the rented Impala. I searched until I found them, finally, in the right-hand pocket of my blue jeans. But not before a slug blew a hole in the windshield. “Shoot the tires!” one cop screamed. “Go for the tires!”

He was right. That’s what I would have done. Shot out the rear tires. But no one shot out the tires. No one shot at me as I managed to get back into the car. I turned over the engine, threw it in reverse, fishtailed and hit a Volkswagen Beetle on its driver’s-side panel, then sideswiped the tail end of a red pickup on the right. The rear windshield exploded the second I threw the floor-mounted automatic transmission into drive.

Don’t look back, Keeper. Never look back.

Bastards had no idea what they were doing.

My fraternal order. Just what the hell did they know about the truth?

I could have gone for my gun, returned their fire, called it self-defense. But what good would it have done? In the end, going for my gun would have been the foolish thing to do. Not a smart move at all, not with my right foot putting the pedal to the metal, not with the rented Impala veering dangerously to the right side of the road, not with the unmistakable feel of a cold pistol barrel pressed up against the back of my head.

PLANTED ON HER NECK, a heart-shaped tattoo.

A small red heart about the size of a man’s thumb print, plainly visible just above her left shoulder when she turned to see if the cops were still on our tail. The associations came to me, fast. Vasquez’s cell in G-Block…the manila envelope stored underneath his mattress containing the pornographic stills…an unidentified woman with a heart-shaped tattoo on her neck…an unidentified man with a scar under his chin…

Associations.

Connections.

“Did you kill him?” My right foot pressed down on the gas, I was trying to prevent the Impala from veering off onto the soft shoulder.

“If you only knew,” said the young woman, with the piece pressed to the back of my head.

“But did you kill him?” I had to hold the wheel tight to keep it from going ditch-bound.

“If only you really knew me,” the woman said in a flat, expressionless voice.

The barrel was pressed hard against the back of my skull. Maybe.32 caliber. Maybe smaller. What difference did caliber make at pointblank range?

“Somebody had to kill him,” I said, gazing into the rearview mirror at the heart-shaped tattoo on her neck where her long hair fell to her shoulders. Definitely the woman from the porn stills. Definitely Cassandra Wolf, Vasquez’s girlfriend.

“If it wasn’t you, sister, then who was it?”

I felt her warm breath on the back of my neck.

“If you only knew what I was like,” she said, “you wouldn’t even ask the question.”

I took that as a definite denial.

In my estimation, I had about a mile-and-a-half jump on the cops. By the time I turned off Route 9 for the less-traveled Route 27, I’d increased the distance to maybe two or three miles. Still, it was only an estimate. But it could also have been wishful thinking. I knew that no matter how many miles I put between me and the cops, there would be another pack waiting up ahead. The trick would be to get as far away from the area as fast as the rented Impala could take me, before the roadblocks went up. Meanwhile I had to deal with a woman who had what I guessed to be a Saturday Night Special pressed up against my head.

I took another good look at Cassandra in the rearview.

“How’d you find me?”

“That’s funny,” she said, jamming the pistol barrel hard against skin and bone, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“I mean it,” I said, taking a deep breath, trying to shrug away the pistol but only making it hurt that much more. “Tell me how you found me?”