She didn’t care. Now that she was moving, she was moving. She rolled across the floor, making herself dizzy, but at last bumping into that other chair. Her legs tied together with jumper cable made for a blunt instrument, but with them she could kick the chair away from the wall and around the edge of the desk and over toward Brian, who, astonishingly enough, was doing what he could do to help. That is, he kept shifting his body forward while pressing down and back on the floor with his white socked feet, inching the chair on its casters out away from the corner, where she would find him easier to reach.
Maneuvering them into position wasn’t hard, with his back turned to her and the other chair so that, if she were sitting sideways on it, Suzanne would be able to reach Brian’s wrists. No, the hard part was for her to get up onto the chair. She did manage to lunge herself up so she was lying facedown across the chair seat, but then could do no more, had no traction anywhere. At last, half-muffled in that position, she said, “Brian, I need your help.”
“Sure. What?”
“I have to put my foot in your lap, and you have to not let it get away. I can’t get up on this chair unless I can brace against something.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but all right. Let’s try it. Jesus, Suzanne, try to be a little careful.”
“This will be very fast,” she promised.
Well, it wasn’t, and she was sorry to have to hear him grit his teeth as her right heel bore into his crotch, but she needed that brace to be able to swivel around on the chair seat, first on her side, then faceup, so that then she could pull herself up with her bound hands behind her against the slats of the chair back.
“There!” she said.
“Jesus.”
“I’m sorry, Brian. Can you turn a little more away from me?”
“I certainly can.”
There was some fumbling involved, but then, behind her, she could feel his thick-fingered hands, and then the wrists, and then the thin strong shoelace.
Yes, those were the knots she’d made, good strong knots that could be slipped if you knew which part you were pulling. Here’s a loop, here’s an end, here’s—
He jumped as though he’d been electrocuted. “What’s that? Wait—wait a minute! My hands are loose!”
“Brian, please, please, untie my wrists, please, please—”
“Yeah, wait, let me see what I’m doing here. He didn’t make it easy, that sonofa— There!”
“Oh, thank God!” she said, and bent to tear off the jumper cable pinning her ankles.
He was still struggling with the duct tape on his socks. She jumped to her feet, patting the wall. “Lights.”
“We’ve got to be careful when we go out there, Suzanne, we don’t know what’s—”
“I don’t want to go out there,” she said, hurrying through the doorway into the dark interior room. “I want the ladies’!”
He called after her, “You’ll need the key!”
12
Where was Tom going? It didn’t make any sense.
Around seven-thirty, Tom Lindahl’s Ford SUV had driven away from the little converted garage he lived in and headed south out of Pooley, with Cory and Cal in the Volkswagen Jetta far behind, and an hour later they were all still driving, heading steadily southwest across New York State, away from Pooley and away from Massachusetts, the site of the bank robbery that Ed Smith’s money was supposed to be from.
Were Tom and Smith on their way to get the money? What else could they be doing? Cory had more and more questions in his mind about what was going on here, but he didn’t want to voice them, afraid Cal would insist on doing something rash, like ramming that vehicle up ahead just to see what would happen. So Cory kept his doubts to himself and just drove, hoping this journey would soon come to an end.
Cory’d had no trouble borrowing the Jetta from his sister. In fact, she’d been so happy at the idea that Cory might get himself a real job—by which she meant white collar, not the factory-floor stuff he and Cal usually did—that he felt guilty lying to her. But he assured himself it was all going to work out fine, and she wouldn’t ever have to know the truth, so he wasn’t going to worry about it.
What was a little worrying, at least at first, was that, when Cory went back to the diner, Cal had obviously not limited himself to coffee, the way he’d promised. The beer on his breath wasn’t as plain as if they’d been in the cab of the pickup together, but you could still smell it. Cory could have said something, but what was the point? Cal would just deny it, that’s all, just lie about it and wait for the question to go away.
That was how Cal always handled problems. It wasn’t that he was a good liar—in fact, he was a piss-poor liar, unlike Cory, who had a smooth plausibility about himself—but that once Cal took root in a lie, he would never move from it, so why waste your breath?
At first, when they set up in a driveway next to another of Pooley’s empty houses, having to keep well away from Tom’s place because it was still daylight, Cal had been tensed up and edgy, because of the beer, wanting something to happen right away. His left eye, covered by the black patch, was neutral, but his working eye was staring and agitated, straining to see through walls, around windows. “When are they gonna make their move?”
“We’ll just wait and see.”
“Maybe I oughta go peek in the window.”
“No, we’ll just wait here. We’ll know when they’re going somewhere.”
Cal had to get out and pee then, and that kept him calmed down for a while, but not for long. Three more times he wanted to go over and peek in Tom’s window to see what was going on over there, and three times Cory had to remind him there was nothing those people could do except, sooner or later, leave the house and come out to the road in this direction. Did Cal want to be halfway down their driveway, on foot, when they came out? Of course not. Did he want them to catch him peeking in the window? Definitely not.
As for what they thought was going on, they’d been over all of that more than once, but restless and bored in the car, waiting for something to happen, Cal had to rehash it just once more. “There’s money in it, we know that much for sure,” he said. “Only thing that makes sense. Tom wouldn’t be hanging out with that guy, giving him cover, pretending he used to work with him, if there wasn’t some sort of payoff in there someplace.”
Cory nodded. “That’s what we’re figuring on, anyway.”
“That’s what we’re counting on,” Cal said. “There’s got to be some of that bank robbery money still hid somewhere, or Tom just wouldn’t be fronting for that guy. I mean, that’s a hell of a risk, Cory.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“So that’s the only reason he’s gonna do it. For the money.” Cal laughed in a sudden burst. “I don’t know about you, Cory, but I could use that money. Better than a job over at that college, anyway.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind that, either,” Cory admitted.
Cal grinned at him and gave his arm a reassuring pat. “You’ll come through,” he said. “You’re the smart one.”
“And you’re the funny one.”
“Damn hysterical. Why don’t I find a phone somewhere and give them a call, just to see what they do?”
“Because,” Cory said, “I don’t want them thinking about us, or thinking there’s anybody at all interested in them, that would keep them from what they mean to do.”
“Well, maybe.”
“Remember, I’m the smart one.”
So Cal laughed at that and relaxed a little more, and they waited in companionable silence. Gradually evening came on, and then, just at that tricky twilight moment when it’s very hard to see because it’s neither day nor night, here came the Ford out of Tom Lindahl’s driveway and turned south, away from them.