TEN
Detective Franny reached into the backseat and emerged with a black backpack in his hand. He set it on the ground. The top of the bag was unzipped—piles and stacks of money were inside, more money than Karen had ever seen in her life.
“Oh my God,” she said. She stared at the backpack. Amber had thrown it into the backseat earlier, in the forest. In the chaos of everything that had happened, Karen had forgotten about that.
“I found this in the backseat,” Franny said. “Looks like the zipper’s broken, and I glanced inside. Saw the money. What is going on?”
“Amber—she had it with her when I found her.”
“She did? Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”
“I completely forgot. I’m sorry.”
Franny silently stared at her. Seemed like there was a slightly different look in his eyes, a change in his demeanor.
“Everything was so frantic,” Karen said. “But, yes. She was definitely wearing this bag when I found her. Strapped to her back. She must’ve taken it off when she was in the backseat.”
“You didn’t see her do that? Or notice that it was filled with money?”
“I was barely paying attention to anything. I was focused on getting to the hospital.” She looked down at the open bag. “I had no idea this money was inside. . . . I can’t believe it.”
Franny kept his eyes on her, then leaned down and sifted through the money in the bag. He grabbed two items that were crumpled in the corner of the bag. He held the items in the air—one green, one brown.
“Masks,” he said. “Looks like . . . Yoda and Chewbacca. From Star Wars. Something else in there, too.”
He pointed at a dark metallic object in the corner of the bag.
“Is that . . .”
“A gun,” Franny said. “Looks like our friend has some explaining to do.”
Franny told her he was going to call in and report everything. He stepped a few feet away and started talking on his phone. Karen stared down at the open backpack, at all of that money. The masks. The gun. She took a few deep, slow breaths, tried to calm herself.
After talking into the phone for a few moments, Franny ended the call.
“Turns out there was a bank robbery, people in Star Wars masks, over in Nebraska the other day. Made off with a pretty nice haul, sounds like. Reports say there were three people who pulled off the robbery.”
He looked back down at the backpack.
“So what happened to the other two?” he said. “If this woman Amber was one of the robbers, where are the other two right now?”
Joshua gripped the steering wheel with both hands and stared out his car’s cracked windshield. Ross was in the backseat, behind him.
“The gun’s pointed right at you, big man,” Ross said. “Don’t try nothing. Just drive.”
Joshua drove on, back through the forest. He caught Ross’s reflection in the rearview mirror. He was just as restless and jumpy as he’d been in the forest. His head was on a swivel, constantly scanning the road, glancing out the window, looking at Joshua. His loud, heavy breathing was the only sound in the car.
“House better be empty,” Ross said.
“It will be.”
“Could get ugly if it ain’t.”
The car’s dashboard clock read just after six, which meant not even an hour had passed since the gunshots in the forest. It felt like another lifetime.
“The phone in the cup holder, that yours?”
Joshua glanced down. His phone was still in the center console cup holder, where he’d put it when he arrived at the forest.
“Yeah. It’s mine.”
“Throw it back here.”
Joshua grabbed the phone and tossed it over his shoulder. Ross grabbed it off the seat and put it in his pocket.
When they reached the house, Joshua slowed and pulled into the driveway. He parked the car outside the garage. He exited the car and walked across the front lawn, Ross a few feet behind him with the gun. They walked through the front door into the living room.
“Where’s the kitchen?” Ross said.
“The kitchen?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Just answer the damn question. Where is it?”
“Next room over.”
“Stay here. Don’t talk. Don’t move. Don’t do nothing but breathe.”
Ross hurried past the doorway. Joshua heard a few drawers being opened in the kitchen. A moment later, Ross returned carrying a box of plastic zip ties.
“That door right there,” he said, gesturing to a door just off the hallway. “Where’s it lead?”
“A storage room.”
“Any chairs in there?”
“A few.”
“Okay. Go in there.”
They walked down the hallway, past the door, into the storage room. Shelving racks lining the walls held a variety of items, mostly Joshua’s old toys and school projects. There were stacks of Tupperware containers with different labels on the outside: FIFTH GRADE, DRAWINGS, LEGOS. A plastic set of Fisher-Price golf clubs was balanced against the wall, underneath a shelf with all of his old Transformers figures lined up.
“Where the chairs at?”
“In the closet.”
Ross threw open the closet door and grabbed a metal folding chair. He set it up in the middle of the room.
“Sit down,” he said.
Joshua sat down. Ross zip-tied his hands behind him, secured them to a support beam on the back side of the chair, then zip-tied his ankles to the chair legs. Joshua could barely move.
Ross set the gun on a table to the side and pulled a phone from his pocket.
“Your phone,” Ross said to him. “What’s the code to unlock it?”
Joshua told him. Ross tapped the screen a few times. He was biting his lower lip, chewing it like it was a piece of gum, his jaw clenching and unclenching.
“Your mom, what’s her cell number?” Ross asked.
“It’s saved in there. Under ‘Mom.’”
Ross tapped the screen.
“Want you to call her, see how Amber’s doing,” he said.
He held the phone to Joshua’s ear and the line rang.
A police cruiser pulled into the ER parking lot and two uniformed officers stepped out. Karen had gone back inside the hospital to escape the cold while she waited, and she watched through the window as the officers approached Franny and began talking. The three of them walked to her car and looked at the backpack filled with money on the ground, then examined the exterior of her car, leaned in, and looked inside. Franny gestured in her direction and the officers glanced over. There was more talking, a few more glances toward her. One of the officers made a call. The other scribbled in a notepad.
They suspected something. She was positive they knew there was more to the story she’d told earlier. It only made sense. She figured Franny could tell she was lying just by looking at her eyes or listening to the tone of her voice when she answered his questions. He probably had special training on how to spot when people weren’t telling the truth, something like that. Right now, she figured he was talking to the two officers about—
Her phone rang, startling her. She grabbed it from her purse.
Joshua’s name was displayed. All of the air left her body in a rush.
“Are you fine?” she answered.
“Yeah. We’re at the house now. He—”
“What? Our house?”
“He made me come here. We—”
“How is she?” Ross’s gruff voice interrupted Joshua.
“What—”
“Answer me. How is she? Is she gonna live?”
“She’ll be fine,” Karen said.
Earlier, a nurse had told Karen that doctors had removed the bullet from Amber. It was still early, but the outlook was good. They’d soon transfer her to the ICU ward—Karen’s own floor. At noon, they’d take her in for additional scans to learn more.
“She’s going to be fine?” Ross said into the phone. “You’re sure?”
“It sounds like it.”
“Okay, get back here.”
“I’m still at the hospital. I will as soon as I can. Just, please, don’t do anything.”
The line went dead. Karen put her phone back in her purse. They were at the house. She couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. It wasn’t as secluded as the forest, but it was still so far out in the country. Anything could happen.
“Who was on the phone?”
She turned around. Franny stood behind her.
“My son was calling,” she said. “He’s not feeling well. Could I head home and check on him?”
“In a minute,” he said. “First, I need you to show me where you found the woman. The exact location. We’ll need to examine the scene. See if she dropped an item, left something behind, that sort of thing.”
“It was by the turnoff for Atkins, on—”
“Yeah, you said that. But that’s a pretty big area. Be much easier if you show us. Won’t take long. Then you can drive back home.”
“That’s fine,” Karen said. Get this over with and get back home; that was all she cared about.
“We’re finished with your car, so you can drive there yourself,” Franny said. “I’ll follow you.”
Twenty minutes later, Karen stood on the gravel shoulder next to Highway 30, hands buried in her coat pockets, lightly shivering, her breath fogging the air. A few feet away, Franny stood in front of his parked black Crown Victoria, near a small green sign that read MILE 242. The two uniformed officers stood off to the side. Occasionally, a car would pass, but the highway was mostly empty.
“Could you take me through it again?” Franny asked. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I was driving on the highway,” Karen said. “I saw a huddled object on the side of the road. I slowed down and realized it was a person. She was injured. I helped her into my car and took her straight to the hospital.”
“And she had a backpack with her?”
“Right.”
Franny stared at the ground. “So where’s the blood? If this lady was lying on the edge of the road after getting shot, there should be blood everywhere out here. But there’s nothing. It’s not raining or snowing. Wouldn’t have been washed away.”
“I don’t know,” Karen said. “Maybe she was shot right before I found her. Maybe there wasn’t time for her to bleed everywhere.”
“Could be.” He looked around—nothing in any direction but trees and flatland. “You’re sure you didn’t see anyone in the area, maybe running from the scene? No car or vehicle, anything like that?”
“No. Not that I noticed.”
“And you’re sure this is the correct area?”
“Yes. I remember passing the turnoff for Atkins. And that tree—I remember that, too.”
She pointed to a somewhat distinctive twisted tree on the side of the road. Franny glanced at the tree. He paced around the side of the highway, head down.
“Whole thing is weird,” he said. “The money. That’s what really bothers me. Whoever shot her, why would they leave the money behind? I bet there was at least twenty, thirty thousand dollars in that backpack. Probably more.”
Karen shrugged. “Maybe the person who shot her didn’t know the money was in there. Or maybe I scared off whoever shot her. They saw my car approaching and disappeared before I could see them. There wasn’t time for them to grab the backpack.”
“There’s a chance.” Franny paced some more, occasionally kicking at the ground and scattering rocks on the shoulder. He walked over to the two uniformed officers and they briefly talked, low voices, out of her earshot. The conversation seemed to last forever. They looked over at her, looked at her car, looked at the ground.
Finally, Franny broke away and slowly walked back over to her.
“This is a weird one; that’s for sure,” he said. “Anything else we should know?”
This was her chance, maybe her final chance, to involve the police . . . but she just couldn’t bring herself to say anything. There were too many uncertainties. If the police showed up and surprised Ross, there was no telling what might happen. Maybe there’d be a negotiation, a standoff, a shoot-out. There were a million ways something like that could end.
“No, I’ve told you everything,” she said.
Franny said he’d contact her with further questions. Told her she was free to go. She returned to her car and drove away.
Once she was a few miles from the scene, she pulled onto a gravel road and drove until she was far from the highway. No houses nearby. No other cars around. Just flat, bare farmland. She stopped her car and gripped the steering wheel with both hands, leaning forward and lightly tapping her forehead against it, resisting the urge to scream at the top of her lungs.
She still couldn’t believe she’d survived everything. So many close calls. Maybe she’d made a mistake, not telling the truth to the police, but there was no time to dwell on that. She needed to get back home, back to Joshua, back to whatever awaited her.
She kept her eyes closed, forehead leaning against the steering wheel, for a brief moment. Just to calm herself. To slow everything down. It felt like she was being buried under a million things at once and she needed to pause before it became too overwhelming.
She opened her eyes and sat up in her seat. She had to get back to Joshua.
She pulled back onto the highway and headed for home.