I wondered just how many witnesses there were to Merker’s misdeeds, other than myself. Sarah and Katie, the customers at the Burger Crisp, the other drivers out in Oakwood who’d seen him bulldoze another car out of the way with his pickup truck. And that was just today. The evidence and eyewitness testimony that could be used against Merker and Leo-clearly not a couple of rocket scientists-had to be overwhelming. You didn’t have to be a genius to bring misery to a great many people. The question was how many more people’s lives they’d ruin before it all caught up with them.
“What are we gonna do with all this money?” Leo asked.
“Retire,” Merker said, reaching down into the console for Trixie’s yellow wooden pencil. “We’re going to retire.” He turned the pencil around so the eraser end was pointed away from him. An extraction aid. I couldn’t look.
“I like the sound of that,” Leo said. “I don’t have much of a pension, you know.”
The sirens were getting louder. Merker glanced into the rearview mirror. “Leo, I can’t take my eyes off the road. Whaddya see behind us?”
“Nothing much,” Leo said. “Nobody’s coming after-hang on.”
“What?”
“I can see a flashing light way back there.”
Merker turned abruptly down a side street. The car was made to corner. He’d only gone a block when he turned again. The belt cut into my neck as the tires squealed. I made a hacking noise.
We’d been having coffee, Trixie and I, in one of those joints where if you order just a regular coffee they look at you like you just got off the boat. She’d just picked up her mail. Said something about how, in her line of work, a post office box was the way to go. The less mail coming to your actual house, the better.
“I think you lost him,” Leo said. “Nice going.”
But Merker wasn’t slowing down. We’d wandered into a residential area, and he was taking a left and then a right and then a left. I don’t think he had any idea where he was-I certainly had no idea where we were-but as long as he wasn’t being followed, that was all that mattered.
There were a number of envelopes Trixie had dumped onto the table. One of them, I remembered, was from a car company. The words “Recall Notice” had been stamped on the front.
German cars, Trixie had said derisively. Great to drive, but they were always having little things going wrong with them. Fuel injection, power seats-
The sirens, having faded briefly, were getting louder again. It almost sounded as though they were ahead of, instead of behind, us.
“Hear that?” Leo said.
“Shit!” Merker said, wheeling the car down another quiet residential street. “I don’t even know where the fuck we are.”
I’ve never been a very good passenger. Not with Sarah, not with friends, certainly not with Angie when she was learning to drive. I spend a lot of time pressing my right foot into the firewall, thinking that maybe, if I press hard enough, a brake pedal will miraculously appear, the car will slow down.
Riding with Merker, the belt around my neck, whizzing past other cars at high speed, pedestrians jumping out of our way, I thought I’d break my ankle, I was pressing so hard. A van backed out of a drive into our path, and I slipped my hands up between my neck and the belt, seeking to mitigate its strangling effect when we collided.
I closed my eyes.
When another two seconds went by without an impact, I opened them.
“Close, eh?” Merker said, twirling the pencil in the air.
Trixie had mentioned something else about her car. Another problem, something she’d been notified about in the mail.
Air bags. That was it. Something about the air bags. That they were extra sensitive, that the slightest bump on the front bumper could set them off.
If Merker hit something, even nudged it, and if that set off the air bags, maybe that would provide enough of a distraction that I could turn the belt around, bring the buckle to the front, loosen it enough to get my head out, and bail out of the car. Merker didn’t have the gun, Leo did, and I wasn’t convinced he’d be as quick to use it. And it would take a few seconds to hand it to Merker in the front seat.
Merker made another turn, slammed on the brakes. He’d taken us into a dead end. He threw the car into reverse, backed up so quickly he couldn’t control the steering, and the front end of the car whipped around so that we were facing the other way immediately. Back into drive, and we were off again.
“Just like Jim Rockford,” Merker cackled.
“Hey, Gary, this isn’t very good for my stomach,” Leo said. “I was just starting to feel better, like I could eat something.”
“Jesus, Leo, enough.”
Up ahead, at the next cross street, a police car went screaming past from left to right.
“Yikes!” Merker shouted, and slammed on the brakes. I didn’t have time to get my fingers in between my neck and the belt and I lost my breath, gagged, as the belt cut into my windpipe. I closed my eyes a moment, wondering whether I’d pass out.
Maybe, I thought, keeping them closed was a smart idea. If we did have an accident, there might be flying glass.
But curiosity prevailed, and I opened them. We were approaching a stop sign. A small car-it looked like another Civic, not unlike the one Merker had rammed with the truck on our way to the prison-was waiting to make a right turn.
Merker might ordinarily have driven around the car, to the left, but there was a brown UPS truck there. Not enough room to get through. On the right, our path was blocked by a metal pole supporting a stop sign.
Our car screeched to a halt behind the Civic. “Jesus Christ, lady, let’s go!”
This time, his prejudice against lady drivers was at least accurate. The person behind the wheel of the Civic was an elderly woman, her hair tinted a light shade of blue.
Behind us, we could all hear the approaching sirens.
The lady’s right turn signal continued to blink while she waited for a break in traffic.
“Maybe,” I said, wanting to sound as helpful as I could, “you need to give her a bit of a nudge.”
“Fucking right,” Merker said.
And again, I closed my eyes and waited for the impact.
The car bolted forward, but we only had to go a foot or two before the bumper of the GF300 would connect with the rear bumper of the Civic. Merker wouldn’t be able to get the car up to much speed.
But it was enough.
I scrunched my eyes shut as hard as I could, threw my hands up to my neck to get them around the belt, and then we hit.
There was a soft explosion as I was jerked forward. Not that I could go that far, with Leo’s belt and all. The explosion was loud, but muffled at the same time. I felt the fabric of the passenger-side air bag brush, only momentarily, against my face.
For the few milliseconds my eyes were closed, I plotted out my moves. Move the belt back to front. Hunt for the buckle. Slip out. Open the door.
Run like hell before Merker could grasp what had happened and tried to grab me, or worse, shoot me.
I opened my eyes. My air bag, and the one that had exploded out of the steering wheel, had already deflated. I started twisting around the belt, my heart pounding, but fingers fumbling for the buckle.
But the sense of urgency seemed to have passed.
Merker was not moving.
His head was tilted forward, and there was blood dripping from his face onto his shirt and pants.
His eyes were still open, but they seemed lifeless.
Then I noticed something silver and pink and rubbery under his nose.
It was the yellow wooden pencil. The force of the airbag had driven it clear up Gary Merker’s right nostril.
The only thing left sticking out was the eraser. He had six inches of pencil in his brain.
