A Brilliant Death (32 page)

Travis opened the lid on the case of longnecks he had placed on the passenger seat. “Care for a brew? They’re Big Frank’s, too.”

“Please, Travis. Just get your ass out of the car,” Snookie said.

Travis revved the engine; the roar was deafening and hot exhaust billowed up around the car. “I’m takin’ her for a spin. It’s a little graduation present to myself.”

“Oh, shit,” Urb said. “Mayday. We’ve got a Barney Fife sighting.”

The Brilliant Police cruiser was heading down Grant and stopped next to the Chevy. Officer Cloyd Owens was in the cruiser. By the look on his face, it was obvious that he expected to see Frank Baron behind the wheel, not his drunken son. Travis grinned at Cloyd. “Hey, Barney, wanna beer?” he asked, holding a bottle out the window toward the officer.

Cloyd appeared to be in a momentary state of disbelief, not only because he had been offered a beer by a drunken teenager, but because the drunken teenager was behind the wheel of Big Frank Baron’s prize Chevy. “Turn that engine off and get out!” Cloyd ordered, opening the door to the cruiser.

Travis dropped the beer on the pavement between the two vehicles, and an explosion of foam and amber glass spread over the asphalt. He turned to his buddies and grinned. “I gotta dash, boys. Gonna take me a little joyride,” he yelled as he popped the clutch, leaving behind two strips of rubber and a haze of white smoke. Before Cloyd could exit the cruiser, the taillights of the Chevy disappeared over the knoll onto Wilhelm Avenue. Cloyd closed his door, hit the lights, backed into the driveway, and took off after Travis.

There was little chance that the cruiser could catch the Chevy. Travis drove away, and he was already heading south on Labelle Street before the police cruiser cleared the knoll onto Wilhelm. Urb watched from the knoll and said Travis downshifted and fishtailed through the bend in the road as Labelle crossed Steuben Street. That’s where he lost sight of him.

He stomped on the gas, burned rubber, and slid broadside onto Ohio Avenue, nearly clipping a car driven by Margaret Simcox. She later said that pieces of gravel pinged the side of her car as he passed. A trail of white smoke followed the Chevy. It was several seconds later before she spotted Cloyd in pursuit. “Travis was just running away from him,” she said.

When he drove past my house, Mom heard the car and said it sounded like a fighter jet going down the street. She looked out the window, but only saw the taillights and didn’t realize it was Travis driving.

He turned the corner at the Coffee Pot, and in seconds, Travis had the Chevy squealing through the soft left turn in front of Rudy Tarbaker’s house. He passed the high school and stayed on Third Street, following it toward the south edge of town. He passed two southbound cars and whizzed by three others heading north. All five cars parted as the cruiser gave chase.

At the south end of Brilliant, Travis continued under the Route 7 overpass and past Ohio Ferro Alloy, turning right toward Riddle’s Run Road, a four-mile gravel and pitch strip that connected with Ohio Route 151 just beyond New Alexandria. Travis slowed when he hit Riddle’s Run Road. Cloyd would later say that he never lost sight of his target, but he couldn’t catch the Chevy. When the cruiser turned onto Riddle’s Run Road, nearly sliding off the asphalt and into the ditch, Travis floored the Chevy. He easily distanced himself from Cloyd, who was fighting darkness and the dust clouds the Chevy left behind. The final mile of Riddle’s Run Road was a straight, uphill climb. Travis hit Route 151 just as Cloyd reached the bottom of the hill.

Travis continued through New Alexandria, jumping off 151 onto Jefferson County Road 19, known to the locals as New Alexandria Road. It is a winding, five-mile strip of asphalt that entered Brilliant at its northernmost tip, intersecting with Steel Road just north of Hunter’s Ridge Park. The park was owned and maintained by Ohio Valley Steel and had once been the grounds of the Thorneapple estate. There were no turnoffs or other intersecting streets between New Alexandria and Steel Road. Cloyd had radioed the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department for help. A sheriff’s cruiser was southbound on Route 7 and would set up a roadblock at Steel Road.

Travis again opened a huge gap between the Chevy and the cruiser as he homed in on the entrance to Hunter’s Ridge Park. He hit the high beams and pointed the nose of the Chevy toward the wooden gate that extended across the main entrance to the park. The gate exploded into kindling when Travis rammed it. He spun through the gravel road, which cut under the railroad and highway overpass. The car slid on the gravel and clipped the concrete abutment of the highway overpass, but Travis continued on for a quarter mile to the main parking lot, which sat on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the valley far above the Ohio River. He brought the car to a halt. The siren behind him was closing in.

Cloyd locked up his brakes when he saw what was left of the splintered gate to the park. He jerked the wheel hard and pulled into the park, realizing it was the only exit. He drove slowly down the road, shining his spotlight along the berm, certain the Chevy was lurking in the shadows, like a caged animal looking for his path of escape. But there was nothing but silence; the path was clear except for the last flecks of dust raised by the Chevy. Cloyd put the car in park and stood beside the open driver’s door, covering the parking lot with his spotlight. He feared he had somehow lost his quarry and was ready to leave when he saw the gaping hole in the white fence that rimmed the parking lot. On the asphalt before him were two thick strips of rubber. In the grass between the support posts were the rutted grooves that had been carved out by two hot-running tires.

Cloyd ran through the opening and carefully scooted down the sixty feet of grass that ended at the cliffs, a towering precipice that ran more than one hundred feet up from the river. At the bottom of the cliffs, rising out of the water, was a mound of jagged boulders that over the years had freed themselves from the rock wall. And just beyond that were the taillights of Frank Baron’s 1957 Chevy, sinking into the dark waters of the Ohio River.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

From the picnic area of Hunter’s Ridge, located at the top of the hill, across New Alexandria Road and behind the cliffs, it had looked surreal. I watched the car stop, its headlights shining off into the darkness over the Ohio River. A few seconds later, the familiar roar of the 283-cubic inch V-8 echoed off the hills. It sat for a moment, quaking, like an angry bull waiting for the gate to open so it could rid itself of the cowboy on its back. And when the gate opened, the beast erupted forth, and a plume of blue-white smoke grew from under the tires and the squeal of rubber pierced the night. The car broke through the fence, darkening a headlight, and lurched down the embankment, launching itself from the cliffs with all the high drama of a Hollywood death scene. It became a dart in the Ohio night, its lone headlight shining a cycloptic beam on the black target below. It hit the water and slowly bobbed as it filled with water, pulling it under only seconds after I spotted Cloyd with his flashlight on the edge of the embankment.

Within minutes, the emergency siren blasted throughout Brilliant. One of the two emergency squad vans pulled into the parking lot. There was another at the Brilliant Boat Club, where the firemen were taking pleasure crafts up the river in search of Travis.

The siren blasted longer than usual. Firetrucks and other cars pulled into the parking lot. Flashlight beams were everywhere. Panic arrested Brilliant.

It was a full twenty minutes after the car hit the water before Travis emerged from the line of pine trees behind me. He had taken the precaution of walking around the access road at the rear of the park. “What’s all the commotion about?” he asked.

“Buster, you’ve just caused more hell than you could imagine.” I pointed out toward the river. “They’ve already got the boats out searching for you.” We watched in silence for a long moment. “Anyone see you come up here?” Travis asked.

“Nope.” After leaving the party at the Robinsons’, I had pretended to be heading to another graduation party, but cut back on the gravel lover’s lane that led to the picnic area at the park. I was seated on the bench overlooking the cliffs, our prearranged meeting place, before Travis pulled the Chevy out of the garage.

“We’d better take advantage of the confusion,” he said, looking at his watch. It was eleven-fifty p.m. “We’ll never make it by midnight.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The duffle bag and two suitcases had been wrapped in plastic dry cleaner bags and stashed in the brush early that morning. We threw them in the trunk of my car and drove down the service road and back onto New Alexandria Road, a half-mile west of the park’s main entrance. Travis wore a Pittsburgh Pirates cap low on his brow, but that was his only attempt to conceal his identity. We were near New Alexandria in minutes and were passed by an emergency squad from the New Alexandria Volunteer Fire Department that was headed toward the park.

“Maybe you should lie down in the back,” I offered.

He waved off the suggestion. “No one is looking for me in this car. I’ll be fine.”

We were silent for most of the trip. There was little to say. I was an accomplice in an unbelievable con, and my job was simple: Deliver Travis safely and keep my mouth shut forever after.

“I really don’t want to know too much, Travis, but how’d you get it in the river?”

“Stood outside the door with my foot on the clutch, put it into gear and wedged the gas pedal down with a case of Big Frank’s beer. Popped the clutch and let ’er go.”

“You drive pretty well for a drunk.”

“I kept going in the bathroom and dumping my beers down the sink all night. I only drank enough tonight to get it on my breath. How’s your nose?”

It was swollen and sore. “I’ll live. I can’t believe I agreed to that.”

“Nice touch dumping me in the peony bush.”

We went north out of New Alexandria and jumped onto Gould’s Road, following its namesake creek for several miles. It was all back-road driving until we connected with Fernwood Road near Wintersville. It was a quick jog to US Route 22, which we followed past Belvedere to the E-Z Winks Motel in Bloomingdale. The green Chevrolet—a rental with Pennsylvania plates—was backed into a corner. I pulled around, and my headlights shone briefly on the older couple sitting in the front seat. I backed up next to the Chevrolet and quickly handed the bag and suitcases to his grandfather, who shook my hand and loaded the luggage in the trunk. Tears were already running down my cheeks.

“We don’t have time for a long goodbye, Mitch.”

I shook my head. “I know.”

“Look, Mitch, you know you can’t . . .”

“I know, Trav. We’ve been over it before. I can’t say anything to anyone, ever. I’ll handle it.”

“Okay. You know, I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

“And don’t ever forget that,” I said. “You owe me.” I extended my right hand. “Someday, figure out a way to track me down.”

He squeezed my hand and nodded, then left without another word.

I drove straight to the party at the Hatchers’ house on Dago Ridge. The Hatcher twins, Gerald and Harold, were a wild pair of wrestlers who would entertain us at lunchtime by running two steps up the gymnasium wall and doing backflips. The celebration at their place, as I had known it would be, was particularly riotous. There had been serious doubt, for roughly the entire twelve years of their formal education, that they would ever graduate.

The twins lived at the end of Dago Ridge Road, a two-story house covered in brown asbestos shingles. In their front yard was one of the finest personal junkyards in eastern Ohio. There were no fewer than thirty cars on their property, most sans tires, that would never again see a paved road. Mr. Hatcher made his living with a myriad of odd jobs that included doing auto body work in the barn behind the house, which was where the graduation party seemed to be centered.

I parked behind a pickup truck that was on blocks in the side yard and killed the lights. Gerald and Harold could be heard arguing above the din, and I deduced the twins, neither of whom were strangers to alcohol, were both quite drunk. While the party raged, I slipped by a growling mutt on the front porch and into the house, where I sat down in front of the television in the living room, waiting there until I was spotted by Harold on his way to the bathroom. “Malone, you sonofabitch!” He slurred and squinted. “When’d you get here?”

“Been here, dude.”

“No shit? I ain’t seen you all night.”

“Harold? You got me a beer an hour ago.”

He looked at me, then at the floor, then at me. “I don’t fuckin’ remember that.”

I stood up and threw my arm around his shoulder. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

He laughed. “Wait’ll I take me a piss and we’ll go get another one, you sonofabitch.”

We went out to the barn and Gerald, the less drunk of the two, asked the same question. “He’s been here all goddamn night, you sonofabitch,” Harold yelled. “Where the hell you been?”

Gerald shrugged. “Drinkin’, I guess.”

I laughed a forced laugh, then joined the Hatchers on the fender of a primer gray 1961 Caddy for a toast to the Brilliant High class of 1971. It was half an hour later that Spuds Hassler and Mindy Weems ran into the barn with the news of the death of Travis Baron. Mindy was near hysterics. Spuds seemed happy to be the one with the information. “He was runnin’ from the cops and drove over the cliffs at Hunter’s Ridge in his old man’s fifty-seven Chevy,” Spuds said.