An Eye for Death Page 10

  He assumed that one of the struggling men on the ground was a police officer, but there was so much blood and the two men were wrapped so closely around each other as they struggled that he had difficulty telling which one it was.

  Barry Broomfield was no hero. He was a salesman, a helluva good salesman, but he was not at all confrontational, preferring compromise and negotiation to resolve disagreements. He looked at disputes as a puzzle. There was always a key, some accommodation that could satisfy the disputants and turn a profit for everyone. He was good at finding the key to those puzzles. But this was no disagreement over the price of microchips. The shock of what he saw caused his foot to tense on the accelerator and almost made him drive on to look for help. He was no fighter, and this was a fight, a life and death struggle.

  One of the heads on the ground, the one on the bottom, turned towards the truck. The eyes were desperate. Those eyes forced him to stop the truck completely, open the door and step into the roadway. It was a life changing moment, the quintessential crossroads moment. Stay in the truck, leave, find help, the man on the bottom would die, but Barry would live and would be the same Barry he had always been, unchanged.

  Descending to the pavement changed all of that. He was different now, involved, part of whatever was happening there in the dirt beside the road. And he was scared shitless.

  Standing in the road, immobilized, he had no idea what to do. Not a man of physical action he was paralyzed as the life and death struggle continued in front of him. An agonizing hesitating moment passed before he took an uncertain step towards the struggling figures on the ground. The head on the bottom spoke to him.

  “The girl…” Paul was barely able to get it out between gasps. “In the car…the girl…get her out…”

  It was all he could say as he tried to hold onto the knife arm of his attacker. The presence of the truck and its driver gave him hope. Hold on just a little longer. Just hold on.

  Blinking as if the movement of his eyelids processed the words he had just heard, Barry realized that the man on the bottom, speaking to him was the police officer. He could make out the badge through the blood covering his uniform. Like a computer that has finished processing data, Barry moved into shocked action.

  He looked across the roadway to the old Toyota parked in front of the trooper’s car. Sure enough, he could see the form of a girl in the seat. She was sitting with her head turned, as if watching the struggle on the ground.

  Running across the road to the Toyota, he heard the two men struggling on the ground. He tried not to look at them. Something inside said he should help the officer, but he was relieved that he had been given instructions to help the girl. As he crossed in front of the car he could see her clearly through the windshield. Her head lifted and their eyes met. It seemed that he had never seen eyes so clear and blue. Even through the spotted glass, they shone brightly. It startled him. He expected fear, terror, tears. The eyes were expectant, excited, reasoning. The girl seemed much more in control than Barry.

  Reaching her side of the car, he flung the door open. He reached to grab her and pull her out, but she was already exiting the car, standing to survey the scene.

  “Come on! Let’s go! We need to get some help.” This was not good, he thought. This was scary. The girl wasn’t coming, she was walking to the two men on the ground. No, no, no. His mind screamed the words. This was like something out of a bad slasher film.

  “Let’s go!” he said to the girl trying to get her to move in the direction of the rental truck. “Hurry!”

  Barry pulled at her arm, but she jerked it free and moved quickly, deliberately, to the two men on the ground. She stood for a moment scanning the ground by the front of the police car. Bending down, she picked something up and then trotted towards Barry at the front of the Toyota.

  The cop’s strength was fading. Luther could feel his growing. Moving the knife to the side, he worked at getting the blade between the seam where the front and back panels of the protective vest came together, trying to push the blade into the officer’s side.

  Realizing what he was doing Paul, gathered what strength he had remaining and twisted to fight off the attempt to penetrate the vest. He could smell the grunting man on top, feel the drops of sweat fall from the man’s face onto his own.

  Behind them, Luther could hear the driver of the truck that had pulled up tell the girl to hurry. He knew he had only seconds to end the struggle. There were now two witnesses to eliminate. In the distance he could hear sirens.

  The girl walked briskly past Barry. “Now let’s go.” Her words were crisp and short as if giving instructions to a child.

  Not needing to be invited to flee to the truck more than once, Barry turned, stumbling as his foot caught on the edge of the pavement and ran panting back to the truck. Clambering into the driver’s seat, he looked over at the girl who had already made it around to the passenger side and was seated, waiting, looking for all the world like an impatient teenager for a slow, dimwitted parent to start the car.

  “What the fuck…” The words were cut off. The girl had picked up the police officer’s handgun from the ground by the cars. It was pointed directly at Barry’s face from a distance of no more than three feet.

  “Drive.”

  “What?”

  “Drive, or I’ll shoot you and drive myself.” The girl smiled, her blue eyes shining at him as if she had just told him to pick up the laundry on the way home. It wasn’t so much a threat as a bargaining position.

  Barry understood bargaining completely. The gun pointed in his face made her the winner of the negotiation. He started the truck and began moving forward. Giving a sidelong glance at the two figures struggling on the ground, he could not see the officer’s face. He could only tell that the officer was losing the fight for his life.

  Ahead, another police car roared towards them, lights flashing, siren wailing. The girl motioned with the gun, pointing down the road. “Keep driving. Let’s get away from here, okay.”

  Realizing that it was not a suggestion, Barry accelerated putting distance between them and the two cars on the side of the road. They had gone about three hundred yards when the second police car roared by. The big, blond police officer driving turned his head to look at them for a second as he passed. Was it a question, or scorn Barry saw in his eyes? It didn’t matter. The girl had the gun. The gun was pointed at Barry. Barry was going to drive.

  36. Officer Down

  Sliding his car to a stop inches from Paul Sorensen’s, Stan Knudsen pushed the door open and jumped from his vehicle, unholstering his pistol as he ran. Coming to the front of Paul’s car, he saw the two men struggling. Blood smeared the ground and pavement around them. Paul was bleeding badly.

  Saying nothing as he ran to his friend, Knudsen reached out with his big hand and pulled Sorensen’s assailant upward to his feet with one violent jerk. As he came up, Luther, swung out with the hunting knife, in a move similar to the one he had used on Sorensen. Expecting an attack, Stan bobbed backwards like a boxer evading a right hook while his own right hand punched forward. The nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson in Knudsen’s hand threw two rounds rapidly into Luther’s chest from less than a foot.

  The roar of the rounds going off was deafening. The thump of Luther’s body hitting the ground along with the almost simultaneous thud of his head smacking into the asphalt could barely be heard after the gunshots.

  Taking the knife from the man he had just shot, Knudsen knelt by Paul’s side. Holding one hand on the wound pumping blood from Paul’s arm, he spoke into his portable radio.

  “Fifty-one Alpha, Officer down! Officer down! Start paramedics immediately and air ambulance. Severe bleeding, right arm, possibly arterial, numerous other injuries.” He paused trying to calm himself before continuing.

  “10-4, Fifty-one Alpha.” The dispatcher, was brisk, getting it done as she acknowledged Knudsen.

  “Suspect down also. Probable DOA. Gunshot. Advise county and state hom
icide investigations and start a separate ambulance for the suspect.”

  “10-4, Fifty-one Alpha.” The dispatcher’s voice was professional, but sounded unhurried at this news. “Will advise investigations and start second ambulance.”

  Maintaining pressure on Sorensen’s wounds, Knudsen was nearly as bloody as his friend when the paramedics arrived. He helped load Paul into the air ambulance.

  Afterward, checking the scene with the other arriving units, Knudsen could not locate Paul’s sidearm which had apparently been knocked loose during his struggle with the man in the Toyota. Also missing was the second occupant of the vehicle, assumed by those at the scene to be the female Paul had advised was in the Toyota as he stopped it.

  Knudsen, mentioned the rental van that had passed him as he pulled up to the scene. The driver, a white male, had looked frightened and in a hurry to get away from the area. Typical, Knudsen thought. Unable to get any identifying information off of the rental truck as he passed, Stan did remember that it was towing a vehicle, some kind of smaller foreign car, possibly Japanese.

  Drifting in and out of consciousness, Paul had been unable to provide any details before being air lifted to Methodist Medical Center’s Emergency Trauma Unit in Des Moines. Close to having bled out by the time the ambulance arrived at the scene, Paul clung to life with the assistance of the IV units started by the paramedics.

  The fate of the girl the man in the Toyota was suspected of abducting was unknown, but the investigation continued.

  37. An Eye for Death and An Empty Tree

  Slowing at the interstate entrance ramp, Barry looked at the girl with the gun. “Which way?”

  “Straight.”

  He did not argue. If confrontation was not in his make-up, disagreeing with a stern, hard-eyed woman with a big gun was flat out against his religion.

  After ten miles or so on the county road the girl spoke. “Turn right up here.”

  Scanning ahead, Barry saw a dirt road that ran off between two corn fields. The road and the fields seemed to go on for miles. The drove for what seemed like an eternity. The girl spoke again. “Left there.”

  “Where?” Barry slowed the rental truck.

  “There.” The girl pointed with the pistol. “Turn in there at the barbed wire fence.”

  Slowing, he started to make the turn. “You know, you can’t back this thing with that car carrier on the back. I know. I tried once. It gets all turned around and…”

  His words were cut off by the girl motioning with the pistol for him to make the turn and the hard look on her face that said, shut the fuck up.

  He pulled onto a dirt road, not much more than a trail between two barbed wire fences. Probably somebody’s property lines, he thought as he leaned forward peering through the window, not wanting to get bogged down in the dirt.

  “Stop.”

  They had gone about a hundred yards up the dirt trail. Not having allowed the truck to move more than a few miles per hour, Barry let it to roll to a stop without braking under a grove of cottonwoods, their leaves fallen and blown away by the autumn breezes. Wondering what was next, he turned to face the girl. She sat regarding him curiously, her elbow resting in her lap, the gun held comfortably, pointed at his chest.

  “Get out.”

  Barry did as he was told. He thought of running. There was nowhere to run to that she couldn’t catch him within a few paces, if not with her feet, then with a bullet. Besides, she followed him out of the driver’s door keeping the pistol trained on him.

  Standing on the black dirt, under an eighty-foot cottonwood, Barry wondered what it was going to be like, to die. He didn’t beg, although he clearly wanted to, and he didn’t wet his pants, probably because he had relieved himself just minutes before encountering the two men fighting by the road and the girl in the car.

  The old farmhouse in South Dakota that Barry was buying flashed through his mind. He wanted to live. He could be there in another three hours. The blue sky and farm fields beyond the cottonwoods and barbed wire filled him with the desire to live, not to give up. But the girl had kept the gun pointed at him since leaving the men struggling on the ground. There was nothing he could do, so he spoke. It was all he could do.

  “Look, I…we don’t want any trouble,” Barry said, his voice cracking, the fear breaking through.

  “Well, I’m afraid you’ve got trouble…” She looked at him with the curiosity of a scientist studying a squirming specimen under a microscope. “What’s’ your name?”

  “Barry. Barry Broomfield.”

  “Well, Barry Broomfield, we have a problem.”

  “We d-do?” His chubby face paled even more causing her to laugh. It came out as a girlish giggle, but there was nothing girlish about the pistol in her hand, pointing steadily at him. As she moved with her laughter, the muzzle of the pistol waved back in forth in front of his eyes. The nine-millimeter bore looked about three feet wide. He was hypnotized by it as it waved in front of his face.

  Laughing even harder at his eyes, wide, following the movements of the pistol, she finally gathered her composure and spoke. “Relax. I’m not going to kill you.”

  “Y-you’re not?” Barry thought he might piss himself just for the hell of it now. The emotional rollercoaster was upsetting his mental equilibrium along with his kidneys and bladder.

  “No.” She was enjoying this. “Not unless you give me a reason to.”

  Barry’s head shook back and forth emphatically. “No reason here.” The back and forth movement of his head emphasizing that it was completely unnecessary to kill him.

  “Good.” She motioned him to the car carrier at the rear of the truck. “Get the car unhitched.”

  “Unhitched?”

  “Yeah, off the car trailer thing.”

  “You’re taking my car?”

  “Very good, Barry. I am taking your car.” The curious look came across her face again. “Is that okay with you, Barry?”

  His head nodded empathically while his lips soundlessly mouthed the word, yes.

  She smiled. “Good, now get moving.”

  It took five minutes for him to loosen the straps holding the car’s tires to the carrier. Backing it slowly down the little ramps at the rear, he was aware of the pistol’s muzzle pointed at his face just inches away through the window.

  Standing by the car, he placed his wallet and items in his pockets on the hood and then watched as she went through everything. Emptying his wallet of cash credit cards and driver’s license, she left him the pictures of his children. The pictures were old, the kids still in school when they were taken.

  She looked at the driver’s license. “Georgia, huh?”

  He nodded.

  “What are you doing all the way out here in Iowa, alone, Barry? Where’s your wife, your kids?”

  He looked down, feeling a little ashamed to have to tell this woman the story, but she had the gun. “They’re in Georgia.”

  “Divorce?”

  He nodded again.

  “Uh huh, divorce is tough,” she said softly, the change in her tone causing him to look up.

  “Yeah, it is.” He shrugged. “They hate me.”

  “Sorry Barry.” She smiled a real smile, as a friend might. “I really am.”

  Gathering the cash and credit cards, she motioned Barry to the cottonwood overhanging the truck.

  “Okay, Barry. Here’s the deal.” Barry’s eyebrows narrowed in concentration. He knew deals. Deals were good, and right now, he would take any deal the girl offered. “I’m gonna leave in your car. You’re gonna stay here.”

  Barry nodded.

  “You’re gonna sit under that tree and not move for twenty-four hours.”

  Barry nodded.

  “You will remember nothing about me.”

  Barry nodded.

  “If I find out you didn’t do exactly what I have said I will come back and find you. It doesn’t matter where you are, where you try to hide, I will find you.

  Barry
nodded.

  “You should believe that I am very good at this.” She smiled. “Don’t let this pretty young face fool you. Do you believe that I am good at this Barry?”

  Barry nodded.

  “Good, because if I do have to come back and find you, you know what I am going to do?”

  Barry didn’t nod. He didn’t want to know the answer.

  “I will kill you, Barry. Do you believe I will come back and kill you?”

  Barry nodded.

  “Good. Now go sit under the tree.”

  Walking to the tree, Barry heard the car’s engine start. He turned to rest his back against the trunk while she backed the Nissan and turned around. With a little wave flip of her hand, like a girl off to see her friends, she smiled and drove down the dirt trail. For the first time since pulling up beside the men fighting along the road, Barry felt his body start to relax, his mind think of something besides the possibility of death in the next few seconds.

  Somewhere a crow cawed. He looked up. The bird sat high in the tree, watching. They watched each other for several seconds. He wondered what he looked like to a crow, high in the tree. Stretching its wings wide, the crow lifted from the bare branches and circled away from the cottonwood.

  The sound of the hard packed dirt under tires pulled Barry’s eyes down. Backing through the grass lining the dirt trail the Nissan pulled even with him. The girl smiled and motioned him towards her as she rolled down the passenger window.

  “Is there a problem?” Barry spoke through the passenger window, apprehension showing on his face.

  Giving her girlish giggle again, she said, “No, Barry. No problem. I was just thinking.”

  “Thinking?”

  She nodded with a soft smile. “Yes, thinking.”

  “What about?”

  “I was thinking I can’t leave you. Not like this, not here, in the middle of nowhere, no food no water, waiting for someone to come along and help you.”

  “You can’t?”