Mind + Body by Aaron Dunlap (free books to read TXT) 📖

The absurd clairvoyance and imperviousness of adrenaline was starting to wear off and pain was creeping in through my body. My head started a slow throb; the rest of my body was starting to burn. The old guy in the trunk probably felt worse, though.

I wanted to go find a hole and crawl in and go to sleep. The night was thick around me, insects buzzed around my ears. Two cars had merged into one, and two men were dead inside. My shirt was soaked in milk, both 2% and whole, everything smelled like paprika, it hurt to blink, I had no idea where I was, someone had tried to shoot me, my car was destroyed, and I had a gun in my hand. There’s got to be a point where your brain just bids your body good luck and powers down, but I apparently wasn’t there yet.

I closed the trunk, wiped my prints off the lid. All I cared about was getting home; everything else — the bodies, the auto carnage — was just peripheral to that.

The plastic shopping bag was still in the back of my used-to-be-a-car, under my canvas jacket. I slipped the jacket on and dropped the USP into the plastic bag after flicking the safety. The airbags in the front seat were still inflated, so I fished the pocketknife I’d bought from the plastic bag, flicked it open, and punched a hole in the passenger side airbag. I took all the documents from the glove box and stuffed them into the plastic bag. I ignored Amy’s questions, so she took a few steps back and sat down on the dirt road and wrapped her arms around her knees.

I used the knife to unscrew the license plate from my car. It wouldn’t fit in the bag, so I slid it inside my belt under my jacket on my back. In my trunk was a small AAA emergency kit, from which I took a small package of first aid supplies and a handheld crank-powered LED flashlight. I appraised my car one last time, said a silent goodbye to my trusty ride of the past year, and started walking.

When I got my license shortly after my sixteenth birthday, my dad had bought me the car used from a friend’s used car lot. It had a ton of miles on it and was in pretty bad shape, but the Japanese safety record is what my dad was interested in for my first car. He gave it to me on condition that I not do anything to not deserve it, and said I should drive it until it falls apart or until I can buy myself another. Looks like both are the case now.

“Man, your car,” Amy said as I pulled her to her feet. She nearly pulled me to the ground when my faulty muscles took the force, but I managed it.

“I can afford it,” I said.

I hadn’t told her about the guy in the trunk. I squeezed the grip of the flashlight a few times, and a white light soon shot from the three small bulbs at the end. I looked around for a bit, trying to find some landmark for baring, and started walking in the direction we’d come.

It took about an hour to get back to civilization, off the dirt road, past the lone house sunk behind trees, onto the main road, and to a gas station that was still open. My cell phone told me it was just after eleven when we’d hit the canopy of light and illuminated signs proclaiming the low prices of beer and cigarettes.

During the mostly silent walk, I tried to imagine the information flow leading to me once somebody found the wreck. I took the license plate and all the papers that would lead to me, but there was still the VIN number. They could look that up and see that the car was last registered to Daniel Baker, deceased. It wouldn’t take longer than a minute to connect that to me, since I’m at the same address. Casual glance might make it look like a genuine accident, that I’d just crashed into this police car that was split around a tree and blocking the road. Don’t know how to explain my headlights being off, but teenage stupidity is better than vehicular homicide. Well, vehicular self-defense, but that would be hard to explain.

I decided I’d call the state police in the morning, that I’d figure out what I was going to say over the night and if I couldn’t think of a way to not involve Amy, I’d let her know our version of the story before I contacted the police. I thought about calling a lawyer, too. The guy who handled my dad’s will seemed nice enough, but I had no idea if he was a regular lawyer or some specialized will-handling lawyer or what. Would I need a criminal defense attorney? Johnnie Cochran? What would I say? Do I tell him or the police about the shooting range or buying a gun illegally? I didn’t need to, since I never used the gun, but how would I explain being in Lorton?

It kept eating at me, between the throbs in my aching head and the shoots of pain from my feet up through my sore legs and seatbelt-bruised chest. Some guy killed a cop, took his clothes and car, then tried to — what, kill me? If he wanted to kill me he wouldn’t have used the pepper spray. Maybe he wanted to kidnap me, try to get my money. How would he know about the money? How would anybody, except the handful of bank tellers whose eyes always slowly widened as they eyed their computer screens after accessing my account? They’d go home from work that day and tell someone about the kid on a joint account with his mother that had over half a million dollars in it. They’d tell someone, and that someone would tell someone else. Then somewhere down the line someone would hire some mercenary to follow and kidnap me?

Does that make sense? If so, I would have to think about protection. If people know there’s a lowly seventeen-year-old kid walking around the planet with a piece of plastic and a four-digit number between him and half a million bucks, I am in danger. My mom’s name was on the account too, since I couldn’t have my own bank account as a minor, so she could be in danger too. We’d have to move the money somewhere safer, maybe in bonds locked in a deposit box, or maybe in an account outside of the country. Swiss bank account; that sounds nice, but I’d probably have to wait a