A String of Beads (35 page)

That night after dinner, Jane brought the guns into the apartment. She spread newspapers
on the kitchen table, then took each firearm apart, cleaned, and oiled it. When she
was nearly finished, Chelsea walked into the kitchen.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “What are you doing?”

Jane said, “Don’t worry. They’re just a precaution, like having a fire extinguisher
or a lifeboat. A lot of really bad things would have to happen before we needed these.”

“I thought you just helped people run away. That’s what you said.”

“True,” Jane said.

“Then what’s changed?”

Jane spoke quietly. “When this started, we thought that we were just hiding Jimmy
so he wouldn’t be arrested. I didn’t want any guns because we would never use one
on a policeman. Now there are other people looking for us. The main thing we’re doing
is still trying to avoid them, and staying out of sight.”

“So why do you have guns?”

Jane sighed. “Because what these people want is to kill us. Jimmy and you in particular.”

Chelsea stared at her for two breaths, and then turned away. She almost bumped into
Jimmy and Mattie, who had come to the doorway when they’d heard the distress in her
voice. She slipped past them, went to the bedroom she’d been sharing with Jane, and
closed the door.

Jimmy followed her. After a few minutes, he reappeared. “She’ll be okay.”

Jane said, “Do you know how to use one of these?”

Jimmy said, “I’ve fired a semiauto sort of like those. I fired a Beretta M90 a few
times when I was in the army.”

“Good. Mattie?”

“No.”

“Okay. Let me teach you. Any of these three handguns works about the same. You pull
back the slide to let the first round up out of the magazine into the chamber, and
release it. You push the safety off, and you can pull the trigger until the magazine
is empty. These .45s hold seven rounds. If you want to reload, you press the magazine
release right here, drop the magazine out, and push the bullets into it from the top.
Then you push the magazine back in like this until it clicks. You cycle in the first
round again. The man I got them from didn’t have extra magazines, but I’ll try to
get some.” She turned the gun around and handed it to Mattie. “It’s empty.”

Mattie picked it up gingerly and examined it.

Jane said, “Hold it in both hands and aim it. Get comfortable. Line things up with
the sights.”

Mattie and Jimmy both followed the instructions, getting as familiar as they could
with the two pistols while Jane finished cleaning the compact .380.

That night after the others went to bed, Jane began her watch. She knew that if the
killers found them, they would come at night.

Over the next three days Jane altered her routines. She took a nap after dinner that
lasted from around eight until midnight or one. When Chelsea came in to go to bed,
Jane got up. She would sit in the darkened apartment waiting and watching. Each night
she took out the computer and checked the sites of the Western New York newspapers
and television stations to see if anything had changed. In the tablet’s dim blue light
she sat and read the news. She kept the window open, listening through the screen
for any sound that was out of the ordinary. Sometimes she heard owls calling to one
another as they hunted above the deserted streets, or a dog bark in the distance,
but otherwise the night was quiet. It wasn’t until the fourth night that she found
the article on the
Buffalo
News
site.

COUNTY INMATE FOUND DEAD IN CELL
. She scanned the text until she came to the name Walter Slawicky.

“The Erie County Sheriff’s Department issued a statement today concerning the death
of a Caledonia man in Erie County jail on Thursday night. Walter Slawicky, age 46,
had been held in custody on suspicion of giving false evidence in a murder case, pending
a bail hearing scheduled for Monday. He was found dead in his cell by guards on Friday
morning.

“Slawicky had told police he had sold a rifle like the one that had killed Nicholas
Bauermeister of Avon, to James Sanders of Basom, New York, shortly before the murder.
Three days ago, police found the weapon buried in Mr. Slawicky’s yard. Ballistic tests
matched the weapon and the ammunition found with it to the bullet that killed Bauermeister.
The Sheriff’s Department spokesman would not speculate at this time whether the cause
of Slawicky’s death was suicide or homicide.”

Jane found herself standing. She had to stifle the impulse to wake the others. They
would want to get into the cars right away and drive toward home, but she needed time
to think about the implications of Slawicky’s death.

Slawicky was gone, and his claims about Jimmy discredited. That meant that the main
reason the police had thought Jimmy was involved had disappeared. But he was still
the one who had been in a fight with Nick Bauermeister, and he was still the one who
hadn’t shown up in court for the assault and battery hearing. There was almost certainly
a warrant out for his arrest. If he was caught, he would probably be locked up in
that same jail, if only temporarily. There was no sign yet that the men in jail waiting
for him had gone anywhere. And there was no reason to believe that Daniel Crane, or
the men protecting Daniel Crane, had stopped looking for him. And they were certainly
still looking for Chelsea.

Jane read every version of the story on the laptop, and then clicked on every link
to articles that might give her more details.

Hours later, when the others were all awake, Jane said, “I have news.” She explained
Slawicky’s death to them, and set the computer on the table where they could read
the story.

“Can we go home?” asked Mattie.

“Read the articles, and when I wake up again we can talk. There are still people looking
for you. They just aren’t people who want to bring anyone back home for a trial.”
She walked into the bedroom and closed the door.

28

L
ate the following night, Jane heard the sounds she had
been listening for through the open window. A car passed at 3:00
am
moving slowly along the residential street. It was unusual to hear the hiss of tires
at this hour on a weeknight in quiet Hanover. The Dartmouth undergraduates wouldn’t
be back until mid-September, and the local grown-ups weren’t much for carousing. The
road to the hospital was three blocks away, and the car was moving too slowly to be
heading for the emergency room at 3:00. Maybe it was a police patrol she had not noticed
on other nights.

Jane stepped to the wall beside the window to watch the car receding. In the moonlight
she could see it was a silver SUV, not a police car. The brake lights went on. The
driver didn’t signal, but went into a right turn. A second person, a man, was visible
in the passenger seat.

Jane picked up the laptop and looked up the state’s closing hours for bars. Last call
had been changed about a year ago from 1:00 to 2:00
am
. Maybe it had taken somebody a long time to drive home from a bar somewhere. Cops
often spotted drunk drivers because they drove more slowly than sober ones.

Jane put the laptop in her backpack and exchanged it for the CZ 97 pistol, then moved
her seat back from the window, where she could listen for more sounds from the street
but remain far enough back to be invisible in the darkened room.

Five minutes later she again heard the hiss of tires on the pavement coming toward
the apartment. It was the silver SUV again. The vehicle was going more slowly than
five miles an hour this time, and the man beside the driver stared steadily at the
apartment building. The driver nearly stopped as he leaned forward to see past his
friend’s head. Then he looked ahead again and sped up to the corner.

Jane stood, closed and locked the window, and went into the room she shared with Chelsea
and shook her. “Get up and get dressed and ready to move. No lights. We’re going to
have visitors. Bring the shotgun.”

She stepped to Mattie’s room and shook her awake, and then went to the alcove where
Jimmy slept on cushions from the couch. In about thirty seconds they had gathered
in the dark kitchen. Jimmy whispered, “Are we going to fight?”

“No,” said Jane as she slung her backpack over her shoulder. “We’re going to run.
Head for the house behind us, and make your way to my car.”

She quietly opened the kitchen door and beckoned. The others slipped out past her
and down the steps while Jane locked the kitchen door. Jane caught up with them and
moved ahead. They filed along the side of the backyard and into the kitchen garden
of the next yard. She directed the others past her and along the side of the next
house toward the street.

Jane stopped and crouched to watch the building they’d just left. First one, then
another, and then another silhouette, each of them bent over to keep from letting
his head rise to the level of the windows, ascended to the back porch.

Jane pivoted and moved quickly after her companions. When she emerged from the yard
she looked for the silver SUV she’d seen coming past the apartment, but it wasn’t
there. She had been hoping to find and sabotage it, but there must be a driver who
was still cruising the neighborhood waiting for a pickup call. She couldn’t afford
to watch any longer.

She ran to the spot where she’d parked the Volkswagen Passat, and started it while
the others got in. As soon as they were inside she pulled ahead, made a left turn
onto Wheelock Street, and headed toward Route 120 out of town. As she passed the corner
of Chambers Street where their apartment was, she saw the three men trotting out the
front door of the apartment toward the waiting SUV. They must have come in quickly,
seen that everyone was gone, and called for their getaway car.

“That’s bad news,” she muttered. She sped up and turned onto Route 120.

Jimmy said, “Where are we going?”

“I’m trying to get to Interstate 89. The main thing is to get out of sight before
they pull themselves together.”

“Who are they?” asked Chelsea.

Mattie said, “Could they have been the police?”

“No,” Jane said. “When the police come for someone they think might resist, there
are a whole bunch of them and they identify themselves.”

Chelsea said, “This is my fault. They’re after me.”

Jane said, “That train of thought doesn’t do anything for you right now. They were
after all of us.”

“This time it has to be about me. And—oh my God. I forgot the shotgun. You told me
to bring it, and I was half-asleep, and I saw it, leaning in the corner near your
side of the bed, and I just forgot.”

Jane said, “It’s okay. We don’t need a shotgun right now. And it doesn’t matter which
of us they want most. They have to get all of us or they risk getting caught. Now
calm down, but stay alert.”

Mattie said, “There’s a set of headlights way back there.”

“Let’s see if it’s them,” said Jane. She pushed down on the accelerator and added
speed steadily. She kept glancing in the mirror to judge the effect on the vehicle
behind them.

“They’re speeding up too,” said Jimmy.

Jane looked in the rearview mirror. “I see them. We’ll make it to I-Eighty-nine, but
we can’t lose them on a six-lane highway. The road Mattie and I took on Saturday—Route
Four—is the kind of road we need. That SUV has a higher center of gravity than we
have, and it’s far less maneuverable than this car. We’ve been on that road, and they
probably haven’t.”

Jane slowed to seventy, took the ramp to the interstate, and seemed to fly onto the
highway, taking a gradual swing and using the whole road to straighten out. She switched
off the headlights and Chelsea gave a little shriek. Jane drove by moonlight, trying
only to keep the car on the broad highway.

She saw that there was a sign ahead, so she turned the lights on again and made the
exit onto Route 4. She could see there were no other cars coming so she accelerated
into the left turn to the eastbound side and kept forcing the speed upward as much
as she dared.

They were now at the outer edge of Lebanon, flying through intersections with red
lights. Almost immediately they were past the big plazas and the darkened fast-food
restaurants, and into the country. They passed big fields, then farmhouses, and in
minutes they were driving through wooded areas. Through the trees to their right they
could see moonlight on water, and then just trees again. The road began to rise and
fall as they lost sight of the water.

Jane accelerated on curves and coasted into the straight sections, always hugging
the insides of the curves and moving to the center on straight stretches to straighten
the car’s trajectory. She was counting on the likelihood that if a vehicle approached
from the west she would see the glow of its headlights in time.

After a period, Jimmy said, “I see headlights behind us coming to that last turn,
moving really fast.”

Jane said, “All right. I’m going to try hard to stay ahead of them and turn off somewhere.
But I think we need to prepare in case that doesn’t work. Jimmy, the pistols you saw
last night are in my backpack. Chelsea, hand him my pack.”

Chelsea lifted the pack up from the floor to the top of her seat and Jimmy pulled
it over and set it between him and his mother.

“What’s next?” he said.

“Take out the .45 Colt. I’ve already loaded the magazine. Find it and click it into
place.”

“Done.”

“Okay. Keep your finger along the side of the trigger guard until you’re about to
fire. Don’t cycle the slide yet. There’s a box of extra ammunition. Put it in your
jacket. Mattie?”

“Yes?”

“There’s also a box of .380 rounds. Take out the box and the smaller pistol, the Cobra.
Do you remember how to load it?”

“Yes.”

“Then now is the time. It also holds seven rounds.”

“Okay.”

After a couple of minutes, Mattie said, “Ready.”

Jane said, “Okay. Mattie, hand me the Cobra.” She held her hand over her shoulder,
took the gun, and handed it, handgrips first, to Chelsea. “Hold this.”

Chelsea took the pistol. Jane leaned forward and took out the CZ 97 pistol she’d been
carrying and held it over her shoulder. “Mattie, take this one.”

Mattie took it. “What do I do with it?”

“Here’s the strategy,” said Jane. “You and Jimmy are each sitting by a window in the
backseat, and you each have a .45 caliber semiauto pistol. You do nothing unless the
people behind us fire a gun. If they do, you charge your weapon, roll down your window,
lean out just enough to aim, and fire. Try to hit the driver’s side of the windshield.
If you hit the car anywhere, they’ll probably drop back or stop. If you hit a person,
they’ll turn around and head for a hospital.”

“I can do that,” said Jimmy.

Mattie said, “I guess I can too, if I have to.”

“Let’s hope you don’t,” said Jane. “If you do have to fire, you’ll notice two problems.
A .45 round is very loud—­deafening in an enclosed space. It also kicks, so hold the
pistol tightly, and if you can, use both hands. If you drop the gun on the road, we
won’t get it back.”

“Okay,” said Jimmy.

Jane drove on. She reached a town going eighty-five. Her headlights illuminated the
sign that said
CANAAN
and it flashed past the window, then the restaurant on the right where she and Mattie
had parked the car on Saturday, and the little town park where people had sold their
food and crafts. In a few seconds they were past the town and in a few more they had
passed the outlying businesses and were in woods again. Jane concentrated on holding
the car on the curving, hilly road and not hitting anything.

“I see lights back there,” said Jimmy. “It looks like the SUV.”

“Don’t do anything yet,” said Jane.

They sped past a reflective sign so fast that reading it was an act of deciphering
an afterimage.
GRAFTON 5 MILES
. Another sign.
RUGGLES MINE 4 MILES
.

“Chelsea,” said Jane. “Take my phone.”

She took it.

“Go on the Internet and find out what Ruggles Mine is.”

“Okay.”

Jane drove faster while Chelsea was working at it. “It’s hard to get a signal,” Chelsea
muttered. Then, after a minute, she began to read. “Mica was first discovered in Grafton,
New Hampshire, by a man named Sam Ruggles.” She scanned. “The Ruggles Mine is unique
because of its enormous size. The crystal formations within the Ruggles pegmatite.
. . let’s see. One thousand six hundred forty feet long, three hundred thirty-five
feet wide, and two hundred and fifty deep.” She paused. “It’s also got tourmaline,
amethyst—”

“Fine. Where is it?”

“There’s a map, but it’s just a turnoff a mile before we get to Grafton. On the right.”

“Jimmy,” said Jane. “Are you absolutely positive that the headlights back there are
the SUV with the men who raided our apartment?”

“Yes. When it passed under the streetlights in Canaan I could see it pretty well.”

“So there’s zero chance it’s just some kid driving too fast?”

“Zero chance.”

“Then trade places with your mother so you can fire with your right hand.”

After a few seconds, Jimmy said, “I’m set.”

“Charge your pistol.”

Jane heard the distinctive slide-snap sound.

“Okay. We’ve got a straight stretch ahead of us. They’ll use it to try to catch up.
If they get close, remember what I said. Aim for the windshield, just above the headlights.
What we want to do is make them drop back and lose sight of us before we take the
turnoff for the mine. I know you can do this.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Good. Roll your window down, and fire one round when I tell you.”

Jimmy pushed the button to roll down the window, but the others only heard the first
part of it, because the wind rushed into the car, blowing past their ears.

Jane focused her attention on maintaining her speed, watching the headlights in the
rearview mirror, and keeping the car’s trajectory straight and level. But soon the
car behind them began to gain on them, its bigger, more powerful engine roaring to
propel it along the straight stretch.

Jane saw the sign that said
RUGGLES MINE 1
, and sped up, but the SUV was still coming. She shouted, “All right, Jimmy. Aim and
fire.”

Three or four seconds passed, the pistol flashed, and the report hammered their ears.

The headlights behind them dropped back, Jane reached a hill, and they all felt the
car rise into the air an inch or two, and then slam down and bounce. Jane feathered
the brakes, and moments later wrenched the steering wheel to the right, accelerating
into the turn. The rear wheels of the car squealed, the car trying to spin out of
control while centrifugal force threw the passengers toward the doors, their seat
belts tightening on their waists to jerk their bodies to a stop and across their chests
to choke their breathing. The sign for the mine road seemed to float by them as Jane
completed the turn. The car shot forward up the road and then veered into the bushes
on the right. Jane turned off the headlights and they were bathed in darkness.