Halfway out the lane Annie jammed both feet on the brake pedal slamming the truck into a gravelly skid that succeeded only in throwing Growler farther into the truck bed … and there he held on one-handed to a side rail, crouching like an evil troll naked and wild-eyed and bloody-footed.
When he started crabbing forward, Annie locked her door and hit the accelerator again, knocking Growler off his good foot and onto his bare ass. She weaved violently side to side, rolling him around back there, smearing blood, the determined bastard managing to get up and crawl forward until he was at the cab’s back window, pounding on it with the butt of his palm.
Annie sped out of the lane hitting one of the brick pillars a glancing blow as she made a screeching right turn that again rolled Growler but failed to eject him from the truck.
She was on a county road, no traffic, when she checked the rearview mirror again and didn’t see him … then, Christ, there he was right at the driver’s window, standing one-footed on the running board, holding one-handed to the side mirror, demented face pressing against the glass, black hair blowing in the airstream. Annie had neglected to lock the triangular vent window, Growler pushed it open and reached in with his left arm.
He was trying to grab her, she screamed and slapped at his hand, he went for the steering wheel … and that’s when Annie once again used both feet to lock the brakes.
Growler flew forward, his arm catching in the vent window. Annie heard the bone break like cracking a green stick wrapped in a blanket and she saw the unnatural way that arm bent when it was pulled from the vent window by Growler’s forward momentum … as if the arm had two elbows, one bending toward his body, one bending away.
He lay on the road, he could’ve been dead was how quietly he lay on the road. Annie drove away checking repeatedly to make sure that Growler was still back there in the road, then she picked up speed and headed for civilization. She was shaking from adrenaline and relief and the cold, Annie’s hand so trembly she could barely work the truck’s heater controls … the day that had once been filled with so much sun and sky was cloudy now and cold.
When she began encountering traffic Annie didn’t know exactly what to do, should she just stop and flag someone down or wait until she sees a police car? In a crazy way she almost wished Growler was still back there in the truck bed because then she wouldn’t have to explain why she didn’t have a blouse on, what she was running from … Growler would be all the explanation she needed, no one would doubt he’d been trying to kill her. But now, without Growler, she’d have to tell the whole complicated story.
Because the truck’s cab rode high, people in cars couldn’t see the extent of Annie’s predicament, but when two young men in another pickup started to pass, the passenger did a double take and their truck slowed to keep pace with hers.
Annie rolled down her window, the passenger in the other truck did the same. He was grinning, twenty years old … blond hair and a sunburnt face.
“I need help!” Annie shouted. “I need to get to the police!”
“Nice tits!” he shouted back.
Furious, Annie accelerated and lost the other truck in traffic. She kept searching for a patrol car, didn’t know where the nearest police station was, didn’t want to get out of the truck to make a phone call. She considered alternatives, a church, a fire station, a hospital, but didn’t see any of those and continued driving aimlessly, numbed by what she’d been through, until she began recognizing certain landmarks and realized she was only a few miles from the shopping center where Teddy had his office … that’s where she’d go. Teddy might still be in jail but Eddie Neffering would be at his bar, The Ground Floor … Eddie would help her.
Annie turned into the shopping center’s vast parking lot, while she was looking up trying to remember which high-rise was Teddy’s her pickup broadsided a late model Lincoln.
She hadn’t been traveling more than five or six miles an hour but the collision threw her forward, bumping her head on the windshield which didn’t break. She sat there trembling.
The driver of the Lincoln emerged, reached back into the car to help his wife out, then slammed the door with both hands. The couple were in their late fifties, well-to-do.
He came over to Annie’s truck, the man holding his peace only to make sure she wasn’t injured then he intended to release a tirade, irresponsibility would be its theme … but when he saw she was naked from the waist up he forgot everything he was going to say.
Annie leaned back in the seat and touched her forehead. Her fingers came away sooty but no blood on them. She looked curiously at the man’s very white face.
His wife came hurrying up to the truck just as the man was opening Annie’s door. “Good God,” the woman said. “What’s going on here!”
The husband stammered as if he and Annie had been caught in a compromising position.
“I’ve been …” Annie started to say. But she decided not to launch any explanations, she simply told the astonished couple, “I need help, get the police.”
They continued standing at the open door, other drivers were getting out of their cars and coming over for a look.
Aware of an audience the woman suddenly demanded of Annie, “What are you, some kind of … freak?”
This moved her husband toward sympathy. “Are you hurt?” he asked, reaching out to Annie.
“Phillip!”
He withdrew his hand.
The growing crowd pushed in closer as word spread about a topless woman in a pickup truck, the front ranks exchanging angry looks with those who were pressing them from the back, those who hadn’t had a peek yet.
Annie felt powerless to do anything except sit with her hands over her breasts and wait for deliverance … when it finally came in form of a large black man wearing the uniform of a private security firm she could’ve wept with relief.
He had no trouble pushing his way through the crowd and when he saw Annie he asked an old question, “What’s going on here?”
First to speak were the Republicans from the Lincoln, they’d held tenaciously to their front-rank positions repeatedly telling others in the crowd, “It was our car she hit.”
Which is exactly what they told the shopping mall’s security guard.
“She was driving around topless,” the wife said, then added extravagantly, “Look at her filthy face, I think she’s on drugs.”
The guard stood in the truck’s open doorway, his bulk effectively blocking the view, sorely disappointing those in the crowd who had just worked their way to the front and now felt cheated out of seeing a topless woman.
“Ma’am, are you hurt?”
Annie searched his broad round face for sympathy. “I was attacked by a man, I just got away from him.”
“Near here?” The guard looked around as if the assailant might still be in the crowd.
“No, I drove here because I didn’t know where else to go, I couldn’t find a police car, a friend of mine works in one of these office buildings.”
The guard removed a radio from his belt. “We’ll get you fixed up in just a minute.”
“Thank you.”
Not until the arrival of four more security guards were the gawkers dispersed. The big black man had returned to his car for a jacket, which he put around Annie’s shoulders. Closing the large jacket over her bare breasts, she looked at the ID plate on his shirt and said, “Thank you Mr. Kempis.”
“Not a problem ma’am. What’s your name?”
“Annie Milton.”
“And who were you coming here to see?”
“Teddy Camel. Actually his friend Eddie Neffering who owns a bar in one of these office buildings.” When she saw Kempis’s troubled expression Annie asked, “Do you know them?”
“I don’t … hold on a minute, will you?” He stepped away from the truck and was on his radio a long time, coming back to Annie and telling her, “Maybe you should come wait in my car.”
She followed him to the private patrol car and asked if she should get in the backseat or front. He said it was up to her and Annie got in front.
Kempis drove to a far corner of the lot where no other cars were parked, Annie becoming suspicious and then telling herself don’t be silly. “Will the ambulance be able to find us over here?”
“How bad are you hurt?”
“I guess I don’t need to go to the hospital, mainly I want a long hot shower, get some clothes on, find out if Growler is—”
“Who?”
“The man who attacked me. I injured his foot, I think I broke his arm too.”
“Sounds like he got the worst of it, tangling with you.”
“I would’ve killed him if I could.”
“And who is this guy Growler?”
Annie didn’t know where to begin that long story, she was huddling in Kempis’s big blue jacket, shivering as if the cold originated from inside her. “Do you think we could have some heat.”
“Sure.” He started the car, turned on the heater. “What’s he look like, this Growler?”
“He didn’t have any clothes on, his right foot is bleeding, his left arm is broken, he’s got a tattoo of the devil on his belly and down to his groin.”
Kempis laughed a little, said something about how the man shouldn’t be hard to find. “And what’s Teddy Camel got to do with all this?”
“You do know him?”
Kempis looked embarrassed. “Teddy’s been getting a lot of attention lately … there was a man killed in his office yesterday.”
Annie’s turn to be embarrassed. She decided not to mention that the man who shot himself in Teddy’s office was her husband.
Kempis fielded a few radio calls but other than that they sat there in silence. Annie looked at her dirty palms, the first two fingers and thumb of her left hand were red and swollen from where she’d hit them with the hammer while punching out those rivets. In her mind Annie replayed what she’d done to Growler, it seemed impossible now that she’d driven a nail through his foot but she did … and was proud of it too. She turned to Kempis. “Are we waiting for an ambulance or what?”
He replied without looking at her. “I thought the state police should be involved, I called them.”
“I wish you’d told me that, I could’ve given them directions to where I left Growler. I don’t even know if he’s still alive, he’s the one who needs an ambulance, Jesus I should’ve … can you send someone out there now, I don’t want to be responsible for that man dying.”
“I thought you said you would’ve killed him if—”
“Yes … but the idea that he’s lying on the road—”
“The state police will handle it.”
“Yes but—”
“Here he is now.”
Annie looked up to see an unmarked patrol car pulling in next to where they were parked. The man who got out was wearing a suit, not a uniform.
“That’s Parker Gray,” Kempis said. “He’s associate superintendent—”
“I know who he is.”