“But I better get to a hospital pretty soon,” Runyer said.
She leveled her blue-gray eyes at him. “That’s right.”
“How much time do I have?”
The lie died in her throat, and she decided to tell him the truth. “Two hours, three,” shooting a prickly injection into his arm. In a few murky seconds the pain was floating out the window, along with the horror of what she’d just told him. He expected the dope would make him groggy and it did a little, but mostly with the pain gone he found he could think straighten
And what he thought was, once again: What’m I gonna do here? I’m willing, I’ve still got some strength left. But I don’t have a clue. Ten years of law enforcing in Andover doesn’t prepare you for this sort of thing.
He looked over the couple as they gazed miserably across the room at their captors. Runyer’d seen plenty of sorrow on his job, pain, too. Most of it as a result of car wrecks and domestic violence. But he didn’t think he’d ever seen two more sorrowful people than these two. On the table, by the wineglasses, were a few unopened gift packages and a cake. Written on it: “Happy Birthday, Martin.” They’d come up here from Boston or Hartford for the celebration and to spend the weekend looking at leaves and hiking. And now this had happened.
“How much of that dope you have left?” he asked, whispering.
She looked his way. “The painkiller? Isn’t it working?”
“I don’t mean that,” he said. “Any chance we could stick him with one of those needles?”
“But he’s got a gun,” the husband said quickly. “They both do.” He reminded Runyer of the young professors from UV, whose gift of smarts didn’t quite make up for their paltry self-confidence.
She shook her head and said to Runyer, “Not much. A couple more shots like the one I just gave you. Not enough to knock anybody out.”
“Please,” the husband gasped suddenly, lifting his tied hands.
“Please what?” Gare whirled around, snapping.
“Just, can’t you just take our car and let us be?”
“ ‘Let us be’?” he growled. “Listen, mister, I didn’t want to come here. This isn’t my fault. If that asshole hadn’t stopped us, we’d be long gone by now. And that fellow on the highway’d still be alive.”
“What?” the husband whispered.
Runyer answered, “They shot a man who stopped when I was trying to arrest them.”
The husband fell silent and stared at the floor. His wife muttered, “My God, my God.”
Runyer was looking at her. He saw a long, handsome face whose attractiveness was partly that she didn’t pretend to be young. The skin was matte, free of makeup except for a sheen of pink on her lips. She wore a white cashmere sweater and black slacks.
She wiped the sweat from Runyer’s forehead with her sleeve and he didn’t think he’d ever felt anything so soft as that fuzzy cloth. It reminded him of Pete’s baby comforter, a shabby blue thing the boy had carried with him everywhere till the age of five — when balsa wood suddenly took the place of wool and satin as his youthful obsession.
Gare glanced at the birthday cake and presents. “Lookit.”
Earl called, “Hey, we’re crashing a party, looks like.”
“That you, Martin?”
The husband nodded.
Gare asked, “So, Marty, how old?”
“I... uh.” His voice faded as he grew flustered, staring at the black barrel of the gun.
Gare laughed. “It’s not that tough a question.”
“I’m fifty,” the man finally answered.
“Whoa, that old?” Gare mused. “And you, what’s your name?”
“Jude,” the wife answered.
“Come on, Jude. We’re going to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Marty. Hey, Earl, this’ll be a kick.”
“Stop it!” she gasped. “Please.”
“You better sing, too, Sheriff. That’s one of the rules.”
“You can go straight to hell.” Runyer said this before thinking and he fully expected Gare to shoot him again. But the young man was enjoying his game too much to pay the sheriff much mind. He sat down in between the couple and made a show of arranging the cake in front of Martin, who sat with his hands in front of him, nearly paralyzed. He put his arms around the couple. Rubbing the gun over the poor man’s cheek, Gare started singing in an eerie, off-pitch voice. “Happy birthday to you... Come on, Earl, let’s hear you!”
Earl kept a smile on his face but beneath it the fear and distaste were clear. “Gare...”
“Sing!” Gare raged. “You, too, goddamn it,” he barked at Jude. “Sing! Happy birthday to you... happy birthday to you...”
Their ragged voices grunted, or whispered, the words to the song. Martin’s eyes were closed and Jude’s hands quivered in her terror. Runyer watched the piteous spectacle: the gun caressing Martin’s face, Jude’s glazed expression, Gare’s mad smile as he boomed the lyrics, then called for everyone to take it from the top. The sheriff would’ve traded his house and land to have his pistol back in his hand for ten seconds.
The singing faded, replaced by another sound — sirens again.
Gare was suddenly all business. “Check it out,” he commanded Earl, who scurried over to the front window. Gare rose and stepped into the shadows near the door, the gun ready.
Runyer saw clearly that these two weren’t really partners at all. Gare was smart — he’d’ve been the mastermind behind the robbery — and in the end he wouldn’t have a lot of patience for people like Earl. And as for that boy... he kept looking at his friend every half minute, like a puppy. Earl, Runyer decided, was their key to freedom.
“Who are they?” Martin whispered.
“They robbed a bank downtown today. Nearly killed a guard. There’s another one, too.”
“Another one?”
“A partner. He took off in a different car. They do that sometimes. To fool us — ’cause we’d be looking for three men together.” Runyer didn’t add that he knew “they” did this because he saw it on a Barnaby Jones rerun, with his son sitting on his lap and popcorn stuttering madly in the microwave.
Runyer closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Man, I’m sweating. Why’m I sweating so much?
Jude wiped his forehead again. She didn’t seem like a nurse, not a hospital nurse anyway. With her dangling Indian earrings and her thin figure — from yoga or dancing, he guessed — she reminded him of Lisa Lee’s sister. A charmer but the family wacko, into herbs and crystals.
Thinking of his wife, he gave a distant laugh. Jude looked at him with a smile of curiosity.
“I was remembering something... Last week Lisa Lee and I were at this Autumnfest? In Andover?”
“That’s your wife? Lisa Lee?”
Runyer nodded. “We were leaving and I couldn’t find our truck. I thought, hell, I hope nobody stole it — we’ve had a bunch of car thefts up here lately. Turned out it wasn’t, I just forgot where I parked. But I remember saying to Lisa Lee, ‘You know, stealing cars is about the worst we get here in Andover. Makes me feel like I’m just playing at my job. Like I’m not a real cop. Sometimes I wouldn’t mind a little more action.’ ”
Jude laughed softly. Martin didn’t. He seemed to be counting his own heartbeats.
“Boy, mis-take!” Runyer concluded. “Never ever ask for something you might get. I’d make that a rule of life.”
He looked at Jude’s hand. She wore a gold ring with a blue stone in it. “That’s pretty.” He reached up to touch it. Then he realized his finger was bloody and he pulled back. “S’the color of Lisa Lee’s eyes. What kind of stone is it?”
“Topaz.”
“Thought they were yellow.”
“They come in blue, too.”
The glitchy pain spread a little farther. He gasped. “Oh... oh...”