The murder charge resulted from someone being hit by one of the bullets the police unleashed on Nikki and Chris in their aborted escape attempt. The way the cops had been spraying their weapons all over the place, Chris was frankly surprised only one person had been hit. Thank God the streets had been almost deserted.
In addition to the murder rap, Nikki’s father made sure Chris went down for kidnapping, too. That was total bullshit, Nikki had been driving the getaway car for chrissakes, but her dad was a circuit court judge, one of the highest rollers in town, and Chris’s dad was a drunken bum, one of the lowest scumbags in the same town, so it was going to be whatever her father said it was, and he said it was a kidnapping.
That day had been Chris’s last as a free man. July 3, 1968. The day before Independence Day.
Chris spoke just a few words in front of the parole board. He assured the members of the board that he had no intention of causing anyone any trouble, ever again. “I was young and stupid back then, and I’ve regretted my actions of that day ever since. All I want to do is be with my girl again, and if I get that, I’ll have everything I’ve ever needed.”
The board approved Chris’s parole, and a few weeks later, forty years to the day after the disastrous robbery attempt, he walked out Concord’s front gate a free man. July 3, 2008. Chris Milton’s Independence Day.
Chris was scheduled to start his new job as automotive technician at Caulfield’s Garage after the Fourth of July holiday, but that was the furthest thing from his mind as he contemplated life on the outside after forty long years. He had been telling the truth when he told the parole board all he wanted was to be with his girl, and that was what he was going to do. Tonight.
The Barracuda still ran like a top, even though it was now nearly half a century old. Chris had left the car in the care of his brother, who was nearly as good a mechanic as he had been. He had known it would run like a Swiss watch and it did.
He sat in the driver’s seat, hands on the molded plastic steering wheel, and listened to the steady burbling of the big V8. He couldn’t wait to be with Nikki again after so many years, and was glad the reunion was going to take place at Reservoir Road. That mile-long stretch of blacktop was the scene of his happiest memories in a childhood that hadn’t had many.
Chris passed the time by driving over to Coatesville and moving slowly through town, marveling at the fast-food joints, the mammoth houses people lived in now, and the banks; all the banks! When he had been a kid, there was just the one he had tried to rob, the Coatesville Trust. Now it seemed a bank was on practically every corner. Was there really that much more money in the world now than there had been forty years ago?
When he turned back toward Compton, making the familiar left on to Reservoir Road, Chris felt all the memories rushing back—the thrill of illegal street-racing, the excitement he had felt the night Nikki blew the doors off Jake Vaillancourt and his tricked-out Charger. She had earned the grudging respect that night of all the old-time racers in the area, who felt that a girl, especially a sixteen year-old girl with the ink barely dry on her license, had no place in street racing.
Chris knew he was early for his reunion with Nikki, but he had nowhere else to go and was so excited to finally see her again that he would have gone stir-crazy just sitting around his hot, tiny apartment above Caulfield’s Garage anyway, so what was the harm?
The cicadas chirped languidly in the muggy July night as the sun disappeared behind the trees, sliding slowly toward the horizon. Reservoir Road was deserted, which was unusual, but Chris supposed everyone was down by the lake waiting for the fireworks to start. Chris didn’t care about fireworks; he had seen enough of them when the police were shooting at him and Nikki, forty years earlier.
It was time. Nikki would be waiting for him at the end of Reservoir Road, where the high chain-link fence separated the road from the brick reservoir maintenance building. He gunned the engine, listening to the throaty roar he loved so much. Joe had done a great job keeping the car drivable.
Suddenly three cruisers screeched around the corner behind the Coatesville Trust at nearly full speed, sirens blaring and red lights flashing. They were gaining steadily, but as Nikki performed her automobile magic, turning sharply onto Main Street, they began to fall back. She knew she could outrun them, even in the piece of shit Plymouth.
Chris began to laugh raucously and Nikki joined in. “Independence Day!” he shouted at the top of his lungs as the cops opened fire thirty feet behind them.
Nikki risked a quick glance across the front seat at Chris, her eyes shining with excitement. The Plymouth was approaching eighty miles per, rocketing out of Coatesville. “I love you!” she screamed. The roar of the wind buffeting them through the open windows was deafening.
Chris opened his mouth to answer her; to tell her that he loved her too, that he would always love her, and as he did a bullet smashed through the rear window and Nikki’s head exploded in a stew of bright red blood and grey brain matter, splattering all over the windshield and he screamed and the now driverless car careened out of control, crossing Main Street, slowing but still moving at a high rate of speed. The Plymouth mowed down a row of rhododendrons and then came to a gentle stop in front of a dentist’s office.
Chris continued to scream as the cops surrounded the stalled Fury III with their guns drawn. There was blood everywhere; so much blood; and Nikki was gone, her lifeless body thrown up against the dashboard, wedged between the steering wheel and the driver’s side door. The relentless July heat poured through the open windows and Chris raised his hands in surrender.
He slammed the transmission into first gear and laid rubber in all four, screaming down Reservoir Road like he had done it every night for the past forty years, instead of just dreaming about it. Nikki had been a much better driver, no doubt about that, she had been the best, which was why he had enlisted her to drive for him on that long-ago day, but he was no slouch either.
A hundred yards from the chain-link, exactly the spot where it was time to begin braking. He could wait another twenty and screech to a stop with the nose of the car kissing the fence if he chose; he knew he could, he had done exactly that many times.
The engine whined, the trees whipped past in a blur, the hot July wind ruffled Chris’s hair as it sang a song of redemption to him through the open windows. He hit the chain-link fence doing one-forty, metal screeching on metal for the barest fraction of a second, then he was through. The car bucked and rocked on its frame but barely slowed. “Detroit steel, baby,” he thought, as the Barracuda slammed into the faded red brick maintenance building still doing one-thirty-five.
The car exploded in a ball of flame, blowing a ten-foot hole in the old building. Chris had never meant for Nikki to be killed by the damned cops as she drove the car away from that bank; he had wished himself into her place every single day since. She was just a kid when she died, sixteen years old and newly licensed, but she could drive like no other, and she loved Chris, so he had had no problem whatsoever convincing her to be his wheelman that day.
The cops said she never knew what hit her when the bullet had come in through the rear window and splattered her brains all over Chris, but he had wondered about that for forty years. How did they know? Who knew what it felt like to die?
Now he would find out. He would be with Nikki forever, just like he told the parole board geezers he wanted to be. Stillness descended over the crash scene as thick black smoke billowed up out of the ruined building, rising over the ancient pine trees surrounding Reservoir Road, reaching for the sky and freedom. It was July 3. Independence Day.