Reluctant Witness (32 page)

Chapter Twenty
Nine

In my coatless state, with my back to the
passenger compartment, I soon realized something important. There
was heat seeping through from the back seat, heat that I
desperately needed to stay alive. Carefully pressing myself against
the adjoining wall, I found enough warmth that I could bear the
cold that rushed in from outside.

I tried not to think about poor Tovar, or the
horrified look on his face as the bullets cut him down. That was
the moment I decided I had no choice but to flee. I knew the hit
man was bleeding and that made him unlikely to follow me. Should I
have stayed to help Tovar? That seemed rather foolish given that I
had no gun. Would that have prevented this kidnapping? Probably
not. That wretched woman would have just come into the Gilded Nest
to abduct me. Still, I felt guilty.

Time seemed endless as I lay curled up in the
trunk of that Corolla. Every time my mind replayed those last ten
minutes of action inside the Gilded Nest, I found myself still
baffled by the turn of events. Why had Tovar showed up like that?
Why hadn’t he called to tell me he was on his way? It was a
five-hour drive from Rhode Island. How did he even know I would be
there in that place, at that time?

Thank heaven for my Citizen Chronograph
watch, a gift from Jared. I pushed the button on its illuminated
dial in those moments I felt panic taking control of me. As long as
I had that tiny glow to penetrate the darkness, I could bear this
isolation. I tried to conserve power, not knowing how long I would
be stuck in my moving hell on wheels.

We had traveled three bone-rattling hours
when I sensed something was very wrong. The hit woman suddenly
pushed the gas pedal to the limit and demanded instant speed from
the car. With a high-pitched whine of protest, the Toyota responded
as quickly as it could, which was not quick enough for the driver;
it shuddered painfully under the unexpected acceleration while the
gears of the automatic transmission hurried to catch up. The car
swerved wildly, from side to side and tipped up onto the left set
of tires. Where we about to become airborne? The Corolla rode for
several hundred feet on two wheels before it thumped back down onto
the pavement; the shock absorbers were no match for the jostling we
took. I lurched across the trunk floor like a sack of potatoes. But
I had barely enough time to recover my equilibrium before all hell
broke loose.

It came unexpectedly as I lay there, a
tremendously violent jolt from out of nowhere. The Toyota Corolla
screeched to a halt. I was slammed so hard against the trunk wall
that I saw stars; big splotches of light danced through my head
briefly before they disappeared and I was in darkness once
more.

Stunned by the violent turn of events, I was
afraid to move. I gingerly ran my tongue over my now-split lip and
tasted blood. The furious hit woman cursed aloud in the front seat
just seconds before I heard glass shatter. That must have been when
she was shot, I decided. The car started moving again, this time
slower. It took me a moment to realize we were going downhill. The
Toyota continued to gain momentum right up to the second that the
tires rolled over a small bump of sorts, and then it crawled to a
halt on level ground. I waited breathlessly as the seconds ticked
on, wondering what had happened.

The only sound I heard from the front of the
car was a gasp of muffled agony as the final bit of life flowed out
of my kidnapper. And then there was silence -- a long,
uninterrupted, eerie silence. Alone and blinded by the blackness of
my confinement, I understood my worst fear had come true. I was
trapped in the trunk of this car with no chance of rescue.

That’s when panic shook me like a
well-intentioned friend, jerking me out of my victimized state. I
quickly realized my only hope of survival was to exit the car, but
how? I forced myself to think. Rifling through my memory bank, I
was willing to try just about anything to get out of there. Using
my illuminated watch dial as a tiny flashlight, I sought the trunk
latch I had heard about on one of those emergency rescue shows. I
yanked it as hard as I could and up popped the trunk lid. Relief
flooded over me as I gazed up at the starlit sky.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, God!” I
exclaimed to the heavens, feeling immense gratitude for my
unexpected fortune, eager to climb out of my forced confinement. On
my knees, with my hands on the lip of the trunk, I took stock of my
surroundings in the pale glow of the full moon. That’s when the
reality hit me hard and my heart sank. The Toyota was now parked,
not on a road, but on top of a frozen pond, the shore some twenty
feet away. “Crap! Now what am I going to do?”

My attention was drawn to a flicker of light
in the distance. Was it a house or a street, I wondered, thinking
that it was a sign of civilization; but then the light moved and I
realized it was attached to a vehicle. Could I flag the driver
down?

A dreadful thought occurred to me. Just
before we bumped down that incline, just before the car rolled to a
stop, there had been loud, bone-bruising impact. Had we been struck
by another car? What if that maniacal driver was now on his way
back to finish the job? I needed to get help. I had to call the
police.

Carefully easing my body out of the trunk and
onto the frozen surface of the pond, I planted my feet on the ice
and remembered. I was in the middle of nowhere. What if I couldn’t
find a phone?

My kidnapper might have one on her, I
decided. Retrieving it meant I would have to view the body up
close, possibly even touch her corpse, but I convinced myself I
could handle that. It was better than perishing here from
hypothermia. It was better than being shot by some unknown
assailant.

As I shut the trunk lid with a firm hand, I
steeled myself for the task ahead. Hands trembling, knees knocking,
I slid along the ice towards the front of the Corolla, inching my
way along the driver’s side in the silver glow of moonlight. I
could see a huge door-to-door dent ripped into the metal carcass,
like an angry goring by a belligerent bull. The bloodied head of
the dead hit woman rested on the ledge of the side window; I could
see her face through a gaping hole punched through the
now-fractured safety glass. There was a bloody smear on the
windshield, probably where she struck her head. On the dashboard, a
plastic mount held an iPhone, just beyond my reach. I just had to
figure out a way to get my hands on it.

All of the doors were locked. I had no choice
but to snake my arm through the shattered window, careful to avoid
touching that bony arm clutching the steering wheel, and pop the
lock. With a shudder, I averted my eyes and got it done. Now I just
had to open the other door.

Feeling the still-warm metal of the car hood
under my fingertips, I carefully inched my way around the vehicle;
I was all too aware of the precious seconds slipping away as I
tentatively circumnavigated the ice. A moment later, my fingers
gripped the handle on the passenger door and lifted the latch; it
yield to my touch, and a moment later, the door swung open to admit
me. Reaching in, I tried to remove the iPhone from the dashboard
holder, but my frigid fingers couldn’t quite grasp it from this
standing position. My only option was to climb into the passenger
seat beside my dead tormentor. Shaking from the cold, I did just
that, and a few seconds later, I managed to knock the cell phone
out of its holder and catch it before it tumbled to the floor. I
clutched it to my chest with relief, believing the worst was over,
and that’s when the unthinkable happened.

Reflecting on the event from the safety of my
hotel room in Kansas City, with plenty of time and distance to
separate me from that awful moment, I realized I must have tipped
the precarious balance of heavy car on fragile ice when I climbed
into that passenger seat and reached for the phone. There was a
long, low groan as the ice began to buckle under the weight of the
Toyota; it turned into a great rumble as the frozen pond began to
break apart, ready to swallow the car in its icy grip.

“No!” I cried out, scrambling to escape as
chunks of ice jammed against the car door, pinning me inside. The
Toyota began its descent into that winter tomb, ready to take me
along with it. Water was quickly seeping in through the cracks. I
panicked, knowing I had only another minute or two before what air
remaining inside the compartment of the sedan would be replaced by
water.

My gaze came to rest on a tiny hole at the
top of the passenger window; a spider’s web of concentric circles
radiated out from a missing circle of glass. Rolling over on my
back and lifting up my feet, I steadied myself by gripping the
steering wheel with my left hand and then I used my feet to kick at
the damaged glass. The window shattered into hundreds of pieces,
leaving a gaping hole through which I might exit. I tucked the
phone into my skirt pocket, pulled myself out through the opening,
and climbed onto the top of the Corolla. From my vantage point, I
calculated the distance between the car and what appeared to be
solid ice; my best bet was to climb down onto the rear fender. With
a deep breath, I eased myself onto the trunk of the car and
carefully made a risky leap to safety. Seconds later, the Toyota
took a nose dive and disappeared for a few moments. The roof of the
car popped up once or twice, and then slowly sunk, disappearing
from sight as the water rushed into the open windows. All that
remained was the hole, now crowded with chunks of ice that bobbed
up and down in moonlight.

Creeping across the fragile ice like a
furtive thief in the night, I fished the phone out of my pocket and
frantically pushed the little green call icon on the illuminated
screen. I punched in those three important digits with fingers that
trembled as much from my terror as from January’s chill. It rang
three times.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” a
disembodied voice asked me.

“I...I need help. There’s been a terrible
accident.”

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know,” I sobbed. “I don’t know where
I am or what happened to me!”

“Are you in a safe location?”

“No! I’m on a pond and the ice broke...and
the car went into the water! I’m so cold and wet!” Hot tears
splashed down my cheeks and vaporized as the frigid air met
them.

“Do you know where this pond is located? Can
you describe it...or see any kind of road sign?”

“Um....” I looked up at the hill the Toyota
had traveled down. What could I see? As I struggled to find the
words, the dark figure of a man unexpectedly appeared at the top of
the rise. “Oh, dear God!”

“What’s going on? I need you to stay calm and
talk to me,” the dispatcher insisted, but it was too late for that.
I sprinted several yards and threw myself across the pond, sliding
the last few yards on my belly, and then scurried out of sight
behind an evergreen. I couldn’t let the overly bright screen of the
iPhone give me away, so I held it upside down, near to the
ground.

The man carefully sidestepped his way down
the slippery slope all the way to the shore and strode across the
ice with the confidence of an experienced hockey player. He stopped
about six feet from the hole in the thick ice, gazing down for a
few moments, and then carefully retraced his steps, all the way
back up the hill. In the distance, I heard the first of many
sirens, as emergency responders rushed to the scene. He heard it,
too. I watched him scurry out of sight before they arrived. That
didn’t strike me as something an honest man would do. Maybe that’s
why, when that man later grabbed me, claiming to be a cop, I didn’t
believe him. My instincts told me he was lying.

“Marigold?” I heard my name called. A hand on
my arm brought me back to reality. “Are you okay?”

It was Nancy, still in her pajamas, hair
disheveled, kneeling at my side. I blinked a few times and focused
on her face. She seemed concerned about me.

“Are you okay?” she asked again.

“Sorry,” I shook myself, trying to recover my
emotional equilibrium. “I was remembering.”

“Well, in my experience, one of the best
things you can do is to tell someone what happened to you. If you
try to keep it in, it just comes back to bite you in the ass.”

“It’s just so complicated.”

“So, go slowly. Don’t rush it. Let it come
out naturally.”

There was something about Nancy that made me
want to tell her everything. Somehow I knew she would take me
seriously and try to understand why I did what I did.

The words poured out of me as I recalled
event after event. Nancy let me tell my story, occasionally
interrupting with a question or two. She told me fleeing the scene
after Tovar was shot probably kept me alive. “The hit man would
have killed you, to clean up loose ends, even if he was dying. It’s
like a code of honor with a lot of those guys.”

That simple acknowledgment of my no-win
situation was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I thought about my
anguish over Tovar’s shooting and the guilt that haunted me because
I left him behind. “I didn’t know what else I could do under the
circumstances.”

“If you ask me, there really wasn’t much you
could do. It was a case of damned if you did, damned if you didn’t.
You can’t beat yourself up for what happened to that marshal,
Marigold. He was the one with the gun and the training. It was his
job to protect you, not the other way around.”

She rose from her perch on the corner of her
bed, patted me on the knee, and smiled. “You’ve really been through
some tough times, haven’t you? The important thing is you lived to
tell about it. I’d love to know who that guy was.”

“Me too,” I admitted. “But most of all, I’d
like to know why he and the hit woman wanted to kidnap me. Why
didn’t they just kill me?”