Linwood Barclay - Far From True

“I think she might have burned her hand a bit, but not real bad. When the fire started, she tried to smother it with some wet clothes from a washer, but it was kind of coming from the back side of the dryer. So then she went for a fire extinguisher, but by then it was really going. But you should have seen her! She was amazing! I called 911 for her, and once the fire trucks got there, she was all worked up because she couldn’t come get you.”

“Are they going to have to close the laundry?” Carl asked, his face full of worry. “Because if it closes, my mom doesn’t make any money.”

Ed, putting the truck in drive, shook his head. “Hard to say. She got insurance?”

“What’s that?” Carl asked.

“Huh? They not teach you anything these days?” Ed checked his mirrors, prepared to move out into the street. But suddenly it was like trying to get out of the airport parking lot at Christmas. All these other cars blocking his way, mothers picking up their kids.

“Jesus, would it kill these little bastards to walk home from school?” Ed said. “Nobody got picked up when I was a kid.”

He glanced over at the boy. Carl had begun to look uneasy.

“Sorry, I just get stressed-out in traffic,” he said. “I’ll get you to your mom right away.”

“It’s back that way,” Carl said.

“Yeah, I know, but I gotta get out of this traffic jam first — then I’ll double back. Your mom or dad never tell you not to be a backseat driver?”

“A what?”

Ed laughed. “You’re not much brighter than your old man — you know that?”

“You know my dad?” Carl asked.

“Come on!” Ed yelled, putting down his window. There were three minivans and an SUV ahead of him, waiting to get past a crossing guard in an orange vest who was guiding kids across the street. “Honest to Christ!”

“How do you know my dad?” Carl persisted.

Ed glanced over as he powered up his window. “We’re old buddies.”

Carl’s hand went for the door handle. Ed hit the lock button on his own door. “Don’t even think about it, little man. We’re about to get moving. You jump out of a moving truck, you’ll turn into street pizza.”

“There was no fire,” Carl said.

Ed grinned. “That’s good news, huh?”

The crossing guard stepped back onto the sidewalk and started waving the other cars through. “Here we go,” Ed said. “Hope you like Boston because — Jesus!”

There was a banging on his window. There was a man running alongside the truck, slapping the palm of his hand on the glass and shouting.

“Stop the truck!” he yelled, his voice half-muffled by the glass. “Stop the damn truck!”

The man grabbed for the door handle, tried to open it without success.

It took half a second for Ed to realize who the man was, but he sure recognized him. He looked ahead, wanting to hit the gas, but the other cars were still holding him up. “Back off!” he shouted, but when he turned his head to the window, the man was gone.

“Carl!”

The guy was on the other side of the truck now, banging on Carl’s glass. “Open the door!”

Ed reached across, grabbed the kid by his shirt collar, and yanked him toward the center of the seat. “Don’t touch that fucking door.”

The guy was holding up a phone, looking at Ed. “Hey, asshole! Next call is 911! Every cop in New York State’s gonna be looking for this pickup!”

Ed’s cheek twitched.

“Think about it!” the man yelled.

On the sidewalk, kids had stopped to watch what was happening. A few mothers, still waiting at the curb, had gotten out of their cars. At least one of them was getting out a phone, maybe to take pictures.

The cars ahead were finally moving.

Ed looked forward, hit the gas.

Felt the truck lurch for a second as it accelerated. Heard a thunk .

When Ed glanced right, the man was gone. He grinned, released his grip on the kid. “Showed him,” he said.

“Not exactly,” Carl said, and nodded rearward.

Ed looked in his mirror. The guy was in back. He was in the pickup bed. On his knees, amid a litter of dirt and decaying leaves. He was keeping low, in case Ed decided to start veering back and forth in a bid to throw him off-balance.

The engine sputtered and roared as the truck gained speed. A second crossing guard at the next cross street had to shoo kids out of the truck’s path. Ed took the corner fast enough that the man was tossed into the wall of the pickup bed. But as long as he kept his center of gravity low, there was no way Ed could ditch him unless he found a way to drive upside down.

The man glanced through the window at Carl, gave him a thumbs-up gesture. Then he rolled onto his back and started fiddling with his phone.

“What’s he doing?” Ed asked. “I can’t see him.”

“I think he’s calling the police,” Carl said.

Ed cranked the wheel hard left, hard right, and back again. See if the guy could enter any numbers while bouncing around like a pinball. He caught glimpses in his mirror of the guy being jostled back and forth. Didn’t look like he had the phone in his hand anymore. Which could mean he’d already called the cops, or maybe he’d just given up. Maybe the phone had been knocked out of his hand.

“Gotta lose this guy,” he said. But even Ed, who had failed physics in high school — and just about everything else for that matter — realized that no matter how quickly he drove, he wasn’t going to put any more distance between himself and this asshole in the back of his truck.

The only way he was going to get rid of him was to get him out of his truck.

“Hang on, kid,” Ed said, and slammed his foot on the brake with everything he had.

The truck squealed to a stop. The man in the back was thrown up against the back of the cab. Ed jammed the truck into park, threw open his door, and jumped out. He was going to reach in, grab the son of a bitch by his jacket, and throw him out onto the road.

What he hadn’t counted on was how quickly the man would get to his feet.

Or that he would kick him in the face.

“Fuck!” Ed shouted, staggering back, putting both hands over a nose that was already spurting blood.

“Carl!” the man yelled. “Get out of the truck! Run!”

Carl hesitated for half a second, then scrambled across the front seat of the vehicle and bailed out of the open driver’s door. The man placed both hands on the edge of the pickup bed and swung himself over, like he was dismounting a pommel horse.

While Ed still had his hands over his face, trying to stop the blood, the man drove a fist hard into his bloated stomach. Ed tumbled backward onto the street.

Carl, safely positioned behind a tree on a nearby front lawn, watched things play out.

In the distance, sirens could be heard. One of the many mothers at the school who’d witnessed all this must have called the police.

“You better get moving,” the man said. “Cavalry’s coming.”

Ed slowly got to his feet, blood dripping down his chin.

“You’re fucking dead,” Ed muttered, making his way back to the truck. He got behind the wheel, slammed the door, and sped off.

Carl came out from behind the tree and ran over to the man, who was now bent over, hands on his knees, throwing up.

“Jeez, Mr. Harwood, are you okay?” he asked.

David Harwood went from bending over to collapsing onto the grass. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand that was shaking.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I was really glad when your mom finally returned my call, but now, I’m not so sure.”

Barry Duckworth was getting off the phone after speaking with the department’s media relations officer about the imminent news conference he’d cleared with Chief Finderman when Angus Carlson came in and dropped into a chair at the next desk over.