Diane Davidson - The Main Corpse

I hopped out of the van and approached General Bo, who had put on sunglasses despite the fog. His commando outfit, no doubt. I said, “Can you stay here with Arch? Explain to anyone who comes along that I’m just getting a few things to take to Marla?”

“Absolutely,” he replied.

“What if somebody comes along and starts giving you a hard time?” I asked dubiously.

“No one’s going to come along, Goldy.” He lowered the sunglasses and gave me his spellbinding gaze. “But if they do, I have a nine millimeter semiautomatic Glock under my jacket. Want to see it?”

Arch said, “Yes.”

I said, “No.”

There were no police ribbons barring entry to Chez Marla. At least I wasn’t breaking any laws. Yet. I grabbed the spare key and two large plastic bags I’d brought and walked purposefully up the front steps. Once inside, I retrieved the Epipen, an autoinjector containing epinephrine, from the upstairs bathroom. The label read: For emergency intramuscular use. Cardiac patients may experience dangerous side effects. Use only under care of a physician. I wrapped the injector in a hand towel, put it into the plastic bag, then stuffed a warm change of clothes for Marla on top. I looked around her still-messy bedroom and tried to remember what she’d said to the cops this morning. He has his own closet here. I strode quickly into the green-yellow-and-white guest room and pulled open the two-doored closet. The first side yielded four plastic-covered hangers from the dry cleaner, each with slacks and suits. I yanked on the second door, where a single hanger held a pair of blue pants I knew to be Tony’s. It looked as if he’d worn them once, wrinkled them slightly, then hung them neatly until Marla’s maid could send them out to the cleaners.

“Hallelujah,” I breathed. I put my hand into the remaining plastic bag and, touching the slacks only through the bag, carefully slipped them off their hanger. Then I clutched the bag upside down until the plastic fell like a shroud over the pants. I twisted the plastic hard and prayed that this would work.

Once we were out on Interstate 70, General Bo kept a two-car distance behind my van. Down through the gray mist we followed the road, until we passed the exit for the sheriffs department. Just after the highway re-entry from that exit, I signaled and pulled onto a slice of shoulder. Following my instructions, Arch and Jake bounded out of the Jeep and stationed themselves twenty yards above us, where they had a good view of the interstate. Arch signaled us with a flashlight Bo had given him. It was nearly six o’clock. I prayed that this harebrained scheme would work.

Dinner was being served at the jail. I tried to picture Marla: She would have been fingerprinted and put in an orange prisoner suit. Right now she could be eating the Jell-O. Lime Jell-O: the gelled substance that contained artificial food coloring, specifically Yellow No-5. Because Marla was allergic to that dye, it would close her throat, cause her to break out in hives, and make breathing difficult. The cops might disbelieve Marla if she feigned a heart attack, but there was no way a person could fake the physiological signs of an allergic reaction. And any nurse worth his or her salt would know that an extreme allergic reaction in a former cardiac patient was not something to fool around with.

The jail authorities would have to send her to the, hospital. I was pinning all my hopes on Sam Perdue’s report: The parents flagged down the ambulance, and the, EMT gave the kid mouth-to-mouth and CPR. They have to do that when it’s a matter of life and death. It was yet to be seen how convincing Bo and I could be in doing a life-and-death scene.

Six-fifteen came and went. With my face pressed against the van window, I watched for Arch’s signal through the fog. Both Bo and I had left our car lights blinking; I fervently hoped that would be enough to keep people from pulling over to see if we needed help. . Behind the wheel of the Jeep, General Bo looked serene. To him, this was probably routine covert operations.

At six-forty, I was about to give up. She hadn’t eaten the Jell-O, she hadn’t had a reaction, they weren’t sending her to the hospital. And then an arc of light from my son, as well as the distant sound of sirens, said otherwise. I waved to the general and he revved his engine. I hopped out of the van, ran up past the Jeep, and watched as Bo signaled to get back on the road.

No one was coming, thank God. Only the ambulance. With, I hoped, the department standard for a female prisoner: one paramedic driver, one female guard.

Bo accelerated rapidly. There was a crunch of metal and crash of breaking glass as he rammed my empty van into the road barrier. He leapt out of the Jeep and flung himself down on the pavement next to the rear of my crumpled vehicle. I trotted down to him, opened Arch’s bottle of fake blood, and poured it out-first on Bo’s face, chest, and legs, then on my face and hands.

And not a moment too soon. The ambulance slowed as it approached the scene of our ‘accident.’ I jumped up and waved my arms.

“Help!” I cried. “Help! My husband’s been hit!” I motioned wildly and shrieked, “Stop, or he’s going to die.”

The ambulance swerved and came to a stuttering halt on the shoulder. Bo murmured to me, “Just get out of the way when the paramedic arrives. Let me handle this.”

A uniformed paramedic vaulted out of the ambulance and trotted toward us. “Okay, ma’am, can you make it down to the ambulance? Just move back and let me take a look at your husband.”

I moved awkwardly to the shoulder as the ambulance driver knelt over General Bo Farquhar. I didn’t even see how Bo managed to grasp the man’s shirt and pull the Glock from the holster inside his jacket. But I did limp in front of them toward the ambulance so that the guard, still in the ambulance, wouldn’t see them, either. When I came up to the driver-side window, I did what Bo had told me and got out of the way. Above us on the road, Arch and Jake climbed into the Jeep.

Wielding the Glock, Bo barked commands into the ambulance. I stationed myself behind the rear doors as the driver and the attendant police officer lined up by the emergency vehicle. The police officer was a woman I knew, but her name eluded me. She unlocked the ambulance doors. Marla, clad in an orange prisoner suit, emerged slowly. She hopped clumsily down onto the graveled shoulder. Her face was swollen with hives and she was gasping. Seeing me, her rasping breath turned instantly into wrenching sobs.

Bo demanded the guard’s gun and got it. He threw it off the cliff that abutted the road. Down, down into the ravine the gun fell.

Holding the Glock high, Bo yanked something that I guessed to be the radio wire out of the ambulance. He ordered. the ambulance driver back into the disabled vehicle. Then he ordered the female guard to do something to the driver. She leaned into the cab to follow Bo’s orders.

“Marla! How sick are you?” I demanded anxiously. “Are you breathing okay?”

She wheezed, then said, “Well, I look a lot better than you, I can tell you that!”

“Blood’s fake. Your epinephrine is on the passenger-side front seat of that Jeep up there. Go, take care of yourself.”

“Is that you, Goldy? Goldy Schulz?” the female guard called from the ambulance. “Are you nuts? Don’t do this!”

I stared down at the policewoman. I still could not for the life of me, recall her name. To my horror, General Bo raised his gun and brought it down on her skull. Her body crumpled to the pavement.

“Come on!” Bo yelled at me. The fake blood streaked on his face made him look ghoulish. “Bring that car down!”

My muscles felt as if they’d turned to sponge. “I don’t believe he did that,” I muttered as I jogged to the Jeep. I threw the car into gear and checked the rear-view mirror for traffic. Beside me, Marla rasped a request to Arch that he avert his eyes so she could have privacy. Then she rolled down the waistband of the orange prisoner pants, took a shuddery breath, and stabbed herself in the hip with the Epipen. She rolled the pants back up and whispered an all-clear to Arch. My son stared, openmouthed, at General Bo and the unconscious policewoman. He looked confused and scared, as if what we had just done had finally penetrated his consciousness.