to Kent Street, no problem. I looked behind me, but Giovanni must have still been on the floor, wine-soaked and all, trying to regain his breath. Nobody came barging out the door in pursuit.
I turned the corner and saw Ziggy parked where I expected. I pulled on the trunk, and it popped right open. I climbed inside, shaking off the last remnants of the adrenaline rush, feeling like my heart could burst from exertion. Reaching above me, I grabbed hold of a hook and pulled the trunk closed.
Enveloped in darkness, I didn’t know how many minutes had passed before I heard the sound of police sirens, but they came, all right, seemingly from all directions. It wasn’t too long after that that I heard the squawking sound of a police radio. It was coming from directly outside the car where I was hiding.
CHAPTER 24
Life in fast-forward—that was what the next few moments felt like, anyway. Press the button on the remote, the one with the two sideways triangles, and watch everything zoom along, herky-jerky, quick and nonsensical until it’s over. Only this scenario zipped right along with me locked inside the trunk of a car, cocooned in absolute darkness. Radios crackled. Sirens wailed. Footsteps fell. I heard Ruby’s voice. It made me ache for this nightmare to be over, to return to our apartment on the other side of town, lie half naked on our futon, scratch Ginger’s belly, watch Design on a Dime, and quiz Ruby until I begged her go to bed.
I sensed Ruby was standing alongside Ziggy’s trunk—with me stuffed inside it—because I could hear her engaging with the police. She asked questions: “What’s going on? Is everybody all right? Was anybody hurt?” She couldn’t have known if I was inside the trunk or not, but I heard her say, “Thank goodness.” She rapped her knuckles on Ziggy’s backside, but I didn’t rap back.
“I hope you find him,” I heard her say.
A door opened. Ziggy’s weight shifted. An engine fired up. The car lurched forward. The wheels turned. The car lurched some more. It jostled me about. We inched along. Eventually, I felt we’d traveled far enough from the police that I rapped my knuckles against the trunk, just to let Ruby know I was safe inside.
The car stopped. I swallowed down a lump of dread. Had I signaled her too soon? Did someone hear me?
Ziggy moved again, quicker this time, the wheels picking up speed.
And we were gone.
Not much happened after I climbed out of the trunk. Ruby and I hugged, we kissed, and we both got a little teary-eyed. Okay, a lot teary-eyed. We went up to the apartment, walking past the yellow caution tape that designated Rhonda Jennings’s home a crime scene. Back inside our apartment, I flopped down on the futon, wearing only my jeans. Ginger took up roost in my lap. Ruby stuffed the ski mask, green army jacket, and the white T-shirt I wore into a black plastic garbage bag.
“We’ll have to get rid of these,” she said. She tied the bag after filling it with rubbish from the kitchen and the bathroom wastebaskets. “What are you going to do with the gun?”
“We’ll drive out to Concord and toss it into the river,” I said. Ruby and I knew a secluded spot in the Great Meadows sanctuary, where we both liked to hike. It would be perfect place for getting rid of the gun unseen.
Ruby returned to the living room and sat beside me on the futon. She rested her head on my shoulder, which in turn caused Ginger to rev up her purring. As a threesome, we were family, and the family was together once again. Everyone was safe.
“I was so freaking scared, John. I don’t ever want to feel that scared again.”
“Yeah, me neither. But I don’t think that’s going to happen,” I said.
Ruby gave me a fractured look, one that recognized our predicament : her cancer, Rhonda Jennings’s death, Dr. Adams’s kidnapping, Giovanni, Uretsky, and his game. Until further notice, fear would be our norm, not the exception.
“What do you think will happen now?” Ruby asked.
“I think we’re going to hear from Uretsky,” I said.
“Could he have been watching the liquor store?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.”
Could he have been the old woman in disguise? I kept that a private thought, though it seemed to me that Uretsky was the sort who would have enjoyed playing that kind of game.