Deadline

18

The criminal conspiracy — the school board — called an emergency rump session at Jennifer 1’s house, attended by Randy Kerns, the three Jennifers, Vike Laughton, and Henry Hetfield, the school superintendent.

They immediately fell into a screaming brawl.

Kerns started it: “… so I know that fucking Bacon was up to something. He came into the meeting, which he never does, and he did something with his hand, which I didn’t know what it was, but I thought he might have took a picture or a remote control or something, I couldn’t tell what. Anyway, I hung around afterward, when everybody was gone, and he brings this ladder over and he climbs up into the lights and takes down a movie camera — I think he filmed the whole thing, the whole meeting after the meeting.”

He was carrying a gym bag. He put it by his feet, dipped inside and came up with the camera. “I don’t know how to work it, but it’s got a tag that says, ‘Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’ on the side of it. That goddamned Flowers must have gotten Bacon to put it up there in the rafters. To do that, he had to get a warrant. To get a warrant, he had to have some evidence, and pretty good evidence, too.”

“Well, what’d you do?” Jennifer Gedney asked. “If Will wants money, we could all chip in…”

Kerns shook his head. “Couldn’t take the chance.”

They all looked at him aghast. Jennifer 2 said, “You didn’t…”

“I had to,” he said. “But that’s not the worst of it.”

Vike had launched himself from his chair and shouted, “Well, Jesus Christ, what could be worse?”

Kerns said, “The BCA guy, Virgil Flowers, showed up. I thought our only chance—”

Henry Hetfield said, “Oh, no, no, no no… you didn’t kill a police officer.”

Kerns said, “I tried, but the problem is, I didn’t. And if he doesn’t know who I am tonight, he will in a week.”

He told them about following Flowers up into the school attic, to some kind of hideout. “I don’t know what’s up there, but there’s a room, and there are lights. I think Bacon built himself some kind of hidey-hole, or maybe even a whole private room up there, because Flowers went straight up there. We got in a gunfight. I couldn’t get at him, he was barricaded in, he’d called nine-one-one so I had to run for it. He never saw me, but…”

He rolled up the sleeve of his long-sleeved shirt and showed a large bandage. “He shot through the walls and I got hit by a big splinter. The thing is, I was bleeding pretty hard, and I think I probably left some blood behind. If I did… they’ll get the DNA, and I’m cooked.”

Vike had stumbled back into his chair, where he said, “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus, Oh, Jesus…”

Jennifer Barns recovered first: “What do you want from us?”

Kerns said, “It takes time to do DNA — a few days, anyway. I’ve got cash stuck away in a safe-deposit box in the Cities, and I can get to that. I’ve got a few thousand in my truck. You all know I used most of the money to buy a place up on Lake of the Woods. I can make it across the border, all right, I’ve got a new name up there. But I gotta leave everything behind, even my truck. So what I want from you all is money. I know you all got cash, we talked about it. What I want is, I want fifty grand from every one of you. One of you can get it all together, next month, and I’ll meet you someplace up north and come get it.”

Gedney asked, “You’re gonna leave tonight?”

“I got to,” Kerns said. He rolled his sleeve down, fumbling with the cuff button. “I’m afraid they’re all looking for me right now. I can sneak up to the Cities, I think, back roads, get to the bank tomorrow morning, get the money, unless they already got me on TV. I’m going to have to leave the truck there, and go north in a fuckin’ bus. My problem is, they might have my blood, and they sure as hell know I’ve been cut up — and that would be enough to hold me until the DNA comes back. I gotta go. I gotta run.”

They argued about the necessity for flight, and Kerns convinced them: no other way out. He had a Canadian ID and passport with a different name, he said, so crossing the border wouldn’t be a problem. “I can ditch myself up in Kenora, grow a beard, stay close to the cabin, and in a year or so, sell out and go far away. But I need the money. I need the cash, until I can establish myself up there.”

Henry Hetfield said, “Leaves the rest of us in the lurch.”

“That depends,” Kerns said. “We burned all the records. You can afford good attorneys — and you can blame the killings all on me. I’m done anyway, if they’ve got that blood. And they will find Bacon’s body, sooner or later — if not right away, when he starts to… smell.”

Jennifer Houser: “I can’t believe this. I can’t.”

Kerns: “Where’d you put your money?”

She shook her head: “I’d never tell you that. But it’s safe. And I’ll chip in fifty thousand, that’s not a problem.”

“If any of you run, they’ll know for sure you’re guilty,” Kerns said.

Another argument flared: Jennifer Houser and Kerns and they thought Del Cray, the finance officer, who wasn’t there, might be able to run. The others, for one reason or another, were anchored by their money. Couldn’t run with it, if it was all in stocks and bonds or real estate, but couldn’t run without it, either.

“All they’ve got now is Randy,” Houser said. “The fire took out most of the other evidence. And Randy did most of the talking to outsiders, like that bus driver. We can still blame this all on him… that he set up a ring. But if I were you, I’d start cashing in stocks and bonds. If Flowers gets any closer, we might have to run ourselves.”

To Kerns, she said, “I’m willing to pay you the money — but you’ve got to swear, right here, that you’ll take the blame for all these crazy killings if you do get caught. And the money, too. You won’t try to spread the blame around. You’ll get a half million dollars from us, and you’ll get a chance… but you can’t turn on us, if you get caught.”

“If I get caught, there’s no profit in trying to spread the blame,” Kerns said. “You get me the cash, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

They argued about that some more, and Vike said he had twenty thousand stashed at his house, but he couldn’t get more for quite a while—“I put all the money in Tucson real estate after the bust.”

Jennifer Houser said, “From what Randy says, this roof isn’t likely to fall in for at least a few days. That gives us some time. Let’s just stay calm, but prepare.”

Kerns said that he would be in touch with all of them, in a week, to set up a meeting. “Your lives are hanging by my thread,” Kerns said. “If you get me that money, I’ve got a real good chance of getting away. If not, that cuts my chances way down. You don’t get it to me, and I get caught, I’ll drag every one of you motherfuckers into the shit with me.”

They all swore they would.

Jennifer Houser looked UP at the sky as she walked out to her car, a clear night, lots of stars, a good night for driving. A thrill ran through her, raising goose bumps down her arms. The whole scheme was coming down around their ears. It had worked well, for a long time — longer than she had originally expected it to. But she had always known this day would come, and she was ready for it.

Like Kerns, she had an alternative identity, one that had once belonged to her late sister-in-law. She could be in Chicago by early morning, in Belize City by midday.

Belize was a good place for an American to hang out, because English was the official language, and for people with money, Belize was extremely slow to extradite. A logical place for her to go, if anyone managed to trace her that far.

But the best thing was, it was a great red herring. Getting across the Mexican border from Belize was not a huge problem. She knew that, because she’d done it, on a practice run.

After several tiring bus rides, Jennifer 2, in less than a week, would be settling into her apartment in Gringo Gulch in Puerto Vallarta, where everybody knew her as that nice middle-aged Lucy lady, from Virginia, who wore wide-brimmed straw hats and liked to sail and bicycle and get giddy on daiquiris and fuck younger Mexican men.

Houser had some other ideas. Uneaten toast in a toaster, uneaten egg in a skillet, undrunk milk in a glass, a smear of her blood on the kitchen floor…

Kerns wouldn’t see a dime from her. She was gone.

Kerns left. He looked up at the sky and the stars as he walked down the driveway and got in his truck. He had to take it slow going up to the Cities, he thought. Hide the truck in a parking ramp in St. Paul, get some sleep, get up in the morning, go to the bank, never look back. He had a bag in the back of the truck with everything he needed to travel: he was leaving behind a house with a mortgage and some decent equity that he’d never see, but he wouldn’t see it in Stillwater Prison, either.

Vike walked out behind him, shook his hand. “You got enough cash?”

“I got some, as long as I can get to the bank box tomorrow. Most of it’s up in Canada. If I can just get up there, get out to my island, I’m okay.”

“I could give you a few thousand right now, if that would help.”

“That would help. If they put me on TV tonight, I’ll just have to keep going north.”

The others followed them out, at intervals of a half-minute or so. Nobody said good-bye to anyone else.

Jennifer Barns and Henry Hetfield walked out separately and separately looked at the sky and asked themselves,

“Is this the end?”