Once the knot was loose, Karen untied her hands and went over the backrest into the rear seat, dragging her legs, which were still bound. The shooting had stopped. She could hear a siren somewhere in the distance. She slid over the console between the front seats. Her.357 Smith & Wesson Airweight was on the floor in front of the passenger seat. She leaned over and picked it up. The keys were in the ignition. She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the Arabs moving toward the police car. She turned the key and shifted into drive and pushed down on the accelerator. Her bound feet felt big and clumsy on the pedal, but the Escalade took off and she could see the Arabs turn and start firing, trying to blow out the tires.
Karen swerved around a Ford F-150 backing out of a parking space. She sped across the lot, slammed on the brakes and just missed a Honda minivan. Now a police car entered the strip mall lot, flying past her, lights flashing. She heard speed bursts of machine gun fire behind her.
Karen drove out of the lot and took a left on Middlebelt Road and took a right into a neighborhood subdivision. She wound her way back to her mother's house, taking an intersecting series of dark side streets. She parked the Escalade on Windsor, the scene at her mom's was still playing out: police cars were still parked, lights were still flashing, and the neighbors were still gawking, standing behind the yellow crime scene tape.
Tariq watched Omar fire a long burst at the oncoming police car, first shooting off the flashing lights on top and then shooting out the windshield. The police car swerved off course, and slammed broadside into a parked car with impact, moving it out of its fixed position.
Omar ejected the spent magazine and reloaded, removing a new one from a satchel he wore over his shoulder. The asphalt around him was littered with shell casings. Omar turned as another police car approached from a different direction, speeding toward him. Omar raised the AK-47 to his shoulder and fired five-shot bursts. The second police car made contact with a row of shopping carts, sending carts airborne, carts in motion.
Tariq could see people emerging from stores in the shopping center, looking over at them and running back inside. He could see people in the parking lot disappearing behind their cars. He could hear more sirens in the distance, the sound of the sirens here much different from the sirens in Iraq.
He saw Omar fire at the storefronts, shooting out windows. People were running, scattering, afraid. Tariq shot a man with silver hair as he was opening the door of a Jaguar. He shot him at close range in the back of the head and the man dropped on the asphalt next to the car.
Tariq sat behind the wheel of the Jag. He turned the ignition switch and heard the engine start. He backed out of the parking space and picked up Omar, and drove slowly out of the parking lot, not wanting to attract further attention. He pushed the turn signal indicator in the upright position, turning right onto Middlebelt Road. In the side mirror, he could see more flashing lights approaching.
Karen drove to Schreiner's and parked in the driveway. She could hear laughter hang in the air, and music as she moved along the side of the house to the patio. There was a party in full swing two houses away. She could hear snippets of conversation, and then the music got louder and she could identify the singer, Shania Twain, and the song "Man! I Feel Like a Woman," sung by a chorus of buzzed partiers, mostly girls, by the sounds of their voices.
Although the weather had cooled down, Karen could feel herself sweating under her tee shirt. The back of Schreiner's house was lit up. She went through the family room into the kitchen and turned off the bright ceiling lights. There were empty beer bottles and bottle caps, and an ashtray with a roach in it on the counter. She could hear the TV on in the family room, the announcer said: "It took five years to build the five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge, making it a modern marvel."
With the kitchen lights off, Karen could see outside and three people appear on the patio. They were laughing as they came in the house. She heard Schreiner say who wants to catch a buzz?
She went into the pantry and closed the door.
A girl's voice said, "Nice place. What do you do, anyway?"
"I'm a lawyer," Schreiner said.
"And you smoke weed?" the girl said.
Karen wanted to open the door and say by the truckload.
Another voice, a guy's, said, "Got any beer?"
Schreiner said, "I'll fix you right up."
Then they were in the kitchen. Karen could see them, dark shapes through the slats in the door.
"How about some music?" The girl said, "I feel like dancing." She started to mambo, showing some moves, grooving to some tune in her head.
The ceiling lights went back on. Karen could see Schreiner. He was wearing his Make Love Not Law Review tee shirt again, the shirt saying, hey, I'm an attorney, but I'm fun. The refrigerator opened and closed, she heard the clinking of bottles, Schreiner put three Coronas on the counter and popped the tops and let the caps fly, pinging off the counter onto the floor. Schreiner picked the roach up out of the ashtray and lit it with a plastic lighter. He took a long hit, held it in for ten seconds and blew out a cloud of smoke. He handed the roach to the girl. She was wearing a short black skirt and a pink top, and looked about twenty-five.
The girl said, "Is this stuff any good?"
Schreiner said, "Remember Helen Keller? Two tokes, you can't walk, talk or hear."
The guy laughed.
The girl said, "I don't want to get blown away."
Schreiner said, "It's really polio pot, one hit you need a walker."
The guy laughed again, pinched the roach between his thumb and index finger and took a long dramatic pull, sucking in air.
The girl said, "I'm going back to the party."
She walked past the door, heading toward the family room. Schreiner and the guy picked up their beers and went after her. Schreiner said wait, we're coming with you. She heard them walk out of the house and close the door.
Karen stood in the center of Schreiner's two-car garage. There were no cars so it looked big and almost empty. There was a built-in worktable with shelves over it against the south wall. Underneath, a cord of dry aged wood was stacked in rows. On the other side, lawn and gardening tools hung from hooks on a Peg-Board. There were three green trash cans lined in a row next to the door leading to the house. Schreiner had a big green and yellow John Deere riding mower and a red Honda track-drive snowblower and a black Schwinn mountain bike.
Karen, on her knees, cleared a row of stacked aged oak logs, tossing them on the garage floor behind her. She cleared another row and could see the molding around the crawl space. She'd had one just like it at her place down the street. That's where she got the idea. Karen reached in and felt the strap of the Eddie Bauer duffel. She dragged it out and zipped it open on the garage floor, staring at over a million six in banded packs of bills.
Chapter Thirty-two
O'Clair said, "Know where your sister is?"
"If anybody did I would," Virginia said. "We're close. She'd tell me, but she didn't."
"Ricky hired a couple Iraqi hit men to find her and they will," O'Clair said.
"If you took money from someone like Samir, what would you do?"
"Run like hell," O'Clair said. They were cruising south on Woodward in light traffic, passing storefronts in Ferndale, neon lights ablaze.
"Exactly. That's what Karen's probably doing. I can't help you though."
"You wouldn't be helping me," O'Clair said. "You'd be helping her."