Take One With You (20 page)

Thane turned back around and went to find Anita.

***

Sarah raced towards Brad’s house, hoping against hope that Charlie had gotten her message.

***

Brad was barely a quarter block away when he saw her striding towards his front door. He froze, unsure what to do. It seemed like her knock echoed throughout the quiet neighborhood. He stepped behind his neighbor’s oak and watched her turn and walk away. He thought he’d missed his chance, but then she stopped in the driveway and peered inside the garage window.

Good thing I parked down the street.

But he was late. His plan was to make it appear as if he wasn’t home, so that if Sarah showed up for the box of junk, he could drag her in the house quickly. It looked as if everything had gone perfectly, except he’d forgotten about the car until it was too late, having to now stalk his prey from outside.

Goddamnit.

But then the stupid bitch went back to the porch and knocked again. She barely even looked at the box, which he thought was strange, but it was enough time for him to run up the walk and hit her with the gun.

She fell forward, stunned, but she wasn’t unconscious. Not at all like it happened in the movies. Brad opened the door and practically threw her inside, immediately binding her hands. Good thing he hadn’t just stuck the gun in her back. She was a lot heavier than he thought she’d be. Could have put up a hell of a fight.

Brad was in such a hurry and the porch was so dark that he never noticed the gun now resting just outside his front door, like an ominous welcome mat.

***

Charlie walked towards the house, tired but purposeful. He didn’t see Sarah’s car, out front, which he considered a good sign.

***

Anita’s husband nearly had a heart attack when he opened the door and Thane was standing there, but the stunned man let him in and even allowed him to search the house. Once Thane was sure he wasn’t lying, he left without saying another word, leaving him speechless.

***

Brad stared at Anita, who was now tied to a chair at his kitchen table with a gag in her mouth. She looked really angry and really bloody. The back of her head seemed fine, but her nose was like a faucet, for some reason. When he’d tried to wipe it with a paper towel, she lunged at him like a crazy person, and so he’d tied her up.

How is this not Sarah? Who the fuck is she?

“Do you know Charlie?” he asked, and though she couldn’t speak, he saw in her eyes that she recognized the name. “What about Sarah?”

Anita just looked at him. Charlie and Sarah were the two names in Thane’s computer she figured were his top suspects, and this asshole was the one she thought he’d come to see first.

Too bad she’d been only half right.

Brad could tell she knew them both by the way she reacted. He decided it would be better if he just looked for her ID instead of taking out the gag and asking her, but she looked as mean and angry as anyone he’d ever seen.

He’d have to be careful.

***

Charlie walked around to the side of the house. Most of the lights were off, so he didn’t know if Brad was home or not, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He went to the shed, grabbed an axe, and made his way to the breaker box by the light of the Hunter’s moon.

***

Brad managed to remove Anita’s wallet, but just as he flipped it open, the kitchen light went off, throwing them into an eerie gray darkness. He nearly fainted when he looked down and saw the glint of her badge.

What woke him from his stupor was the sound of the back door creaking open, which meant only one thing. Grateful he’d left it unlocked, he moved behind Anita and pointed his gun towards the kitchen doorway.

***

As Charlie was sneaking in the back door, Sarah was rifling through the cardboard box on the front porch. There was no envelope, which was what she was most interested in, but at least Charlie hadn’t been here. She stood up and was about to shut off her phone light when the beam found Anita’s .38 special a couple of feet away.

“What the fuck?” she said to herself, but before the words were completely spoken, she heard a gunshot from inside the house. “Charlie!” she screamed, and picked up the gun.

***

Charlie was sneaking towards the kitchen when the shot rang out. He instinctively dropped to the floor and probably would have remained there but for the sound of his name being called from the front of the darkened house.

***

Thane pulled up just as the second shot was fired. He leapt out of his car and ran up the driveway to the door with his weapon drawn, peering into the darkness.

“Police!”

Anita, who had caused the first shot when she lunged at Brad, fell to the floor and was unable to prevent him from shooting Charlie with the second round as he ran through the kitchen towards the sound of Sarah’s voice.

She was, however, able to slip free of her ties and tackle Brad. As they struggled on the floor of the kitchen, another shot rang out, and Anita rolled off.

Sarah entered, saw Charlie on the floor, and pointed her gun at Brad, who had dropped his weapon. He rose to his feet and raised his hands.

“Don’t shoot,” he said.

Sarah licked her lips and tried to pull the trigger, but Thane pushed her aside and shot Brad, who dropped like a stone.

Sarah ran to Charlie and Thane ran to Anita, but there was no hope for either of them. Thane collected the guns and walked over to Sarah, who was whispering something over and over in Charlie’s ear. It sounded to Thane like ‘fuck you chickless’, but he couldn’t be sure.

He knelt beside them and checked Charlie’s pulse, just as he had done for Anita, with the same result. Whatever words left unsaid between them would remain forever so, and now Thane was running on pure instinct.

As the sound of sirens rose in the distance, Thane finally tore Sarah from Charlie’s body and put his keys in her hand.

“My car’s out front. Take it around back, in the alley. Wait for me there.”

“What?” Sarah mumbled, confused.

Thane took her face in his hands and forced her to focus. “I know about you and Charlie,” he said. “Leave the motor running. We have a lot to talk about. Go!”

She nodded dumbly and started to leave when there was a moan behind them. Brad was sitting up, leaning against the refrigerator.

Thane raised his gun to finish him off, but this time it was Sarah who pushed him aside, wrenching the gun from his hand in a rage. Before Thane could stop her, she put the muzzle against Brad’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

She turned around and held out the weapon, her blood spattered face shining eerily in the moonlight streaming through the windows.

He took the gun from her and she walked towards the front of the house without another word.

Thane leaned down and kissed Anita, whose lips were still soft and warm.

He stood up and started to tell her how much he loved her, but the sirens, which were now very loud, pulled him from his reverie.

Thane began to leave through the back door, but as he turned for one last look at the grisly scene, he had a thought and walked towards the front of the house, looking for the interior door to the garage. 

***

Thane sprinted through the back yard, which was almost a quarter acre, and easily hopped the chain link fence at the rear of the property as the house burst into flames behind him.

Sarah was there, just as he knew she would be, and they drove away in silence as police responders waited out front for the fire department to arrive, guns drawn.

2 YEARS, 3 MONTHS AFTER TOWY WEBSITE

Most Pirated Album of the Year

Freddie Flowers, the nom-de guerre of the literary sensation behind the New York Times bestseller detailing the inside story of the TOWY phenomenon, waited patiently at each book signing, eager to talk to his fans and reveling in their adulation. He loved to talk and the buyers of the book never tired of listening, unlike some people he could name at his previous job.

At a bookstore in Santa Barbara, not all that far from one of the earliest and most notorious murder-suicides, he had just finished chatting amiably with some of the last stragglers in line and was beginning to pack up when a father and daughter appeared and plopped down an open book, the final passage highlighted.

No one knows where Sarah ended up and Detective Parks hasn’t spoken a word on the subject since the Grand Jury cleared him to return to work. It has been theorized that Sarah, like so many of her followers, left this mortal coil and ‘took one with her’, as they say. Suicide might seem to many a fitting ending to the strange saga of the grizzled cop and the naïve criminal who crossed paths at such an intimate yet explosive moment of their lives; the perfect coda to the global phenomenon called TOWY.  

I, for one, hope not. Were I ever to speak to Sarah, I would tell her where she went wrong, and perhaps advise how she might actually accomplish the original goal; to clean up the filth of society and allow the rest of us to breathe easier for having known the Towys were out there somewhere, acting as judge, jury, and executioner.

I might even have some advice on how to use a guy like Detective Parks.

The man formerly known as Fred Dean looked up. Thane and Sarah weren’t smiling, but neither did they appear threatening.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” Thane said.

Sarah nodded. “Lots.”