I’m so close now, so close to crossing that 50,000 word mark and being declared a winner that I can taste it. Fewer than 2000 words left to write before I cross that all important line, though I’ve probably got more like 30,000 to 40,000 words before the story will be over. Oh well, I’ll just have to keep writing through December (which some people refer to as National Novel Finishing Month), albeit at a more leisurely pace.
Winning NaNoWriMo tastes a bit like General Tsao’s Chicken, incidentally. A little nugget of trivia for you.
More big doin’s a happening here fairly rapidly. I got a bit bogged down in the chase scene, that seems to be a sticking point for me, but it’s all there and can be molded in editing. I actually stopped writing half way through this installment for a bit, wondering if the whole chase back into town was a good idea or not. Ultimately I stuck with my “just go with it” rule and just went with it. Besides, I had to get Nick back into town somehow.
I’ve had the thought of a chase through a Halloween event in my head since I started writing this story. The town of Westbrook actually does something similar to this, or at least they did when I worked in town there, and it really did bring traffic to a halt for miles around. A lot of action movies seem to involve chases on foot through random parades (usually Irish Pride parades, it seems), and this was my answer to that particular cliche.
Of course, I don’t think I’d bothered to mention the date prior to this, so the idea of a Halloween event kind of comes out of left field. Again, there’s the editing. In case you’re wondering, this story takes place on October 27th, 2006.
Speaking of editing, I’ve just realised that I mixed up something pretty major early on. In Maine, the local cops don’t do murder investigations. They leave it to the State Troopers. I was right to have the Maine State Police Crime Lab come in to work the scene, but I didn’t follow up on that with the rest of the investigation. Oh well, it’s not going to be too hard to fix that. Gunn seems like the type to perform his own investigation in a case like this, and once he’s been shot that’s the perfect excuse to keep the local cops off Nick’s back, whoever ends up in charge pulls them back so the Troopers can do their jobs. Nick will only have to watch out for them now. Cyr, depending on the direction I take him in (there are a few possibilities that I’m playing with) can either be what he is now, or he could be in charge of the state’s investigation.
It’ll take some replotting, but it doesn’t undermine the whole thing, so it’s no big deal, really. I’m mostly mentioning it here so I won’t forget about this later, and so it’s on record that I know it’s wrong, even thought I’m going to keep writing it the way it is for now.
For Idle Hands (working title) - Part 24
For lack of any better ideas, I continued towards Yadira’s house again. I hit the power-line run, turned left into it, and tore in without slowing down. I rode the throttle hard. The exhilaration of it was gone. I was just pushing the bike faster and faster, seeing what it, and I, could handle. As I vaulted peaks in the ground the engine roared, temporarily freed from the restraint of having to propel the bike and myself forward. As I touched down the tires tore wide swaths of dirt and plant life, throwing it high in the air around me. The messenger bag thumped me on the back a moment later, threatening to topple me. I skittered and drifted, fighting to maintain my tenuous grip on the earth as I pushed the bike even faster. I almost hoped I’d lose that fight, a fitting end to a miserable day.
The sun was sinking low in the sky as I yanked the bike to a stop. Carving a wide crescent I pulled around, leaning hard into it to keep from tumbling head over heels into the ground. Eventually, momentum spent, the bike came to a rest. I could see Yadira’s house from here.
Her house was in one of those small, cookie cutter housing developments that seemed to spring up wherever there was open space around here. Similar to Charlie Dyer’s house, but smaller and less pretentious. The kind of house a woman with no credit could afford on a local cop’s salary. This particular development was in a large rolling field that was bordered at the back by the power line run I was on, though the houses were some distance away from the lines. I was certain that one of the houses directly in front of me was Yadira’s. I remembered that the rear of the house faced the power lines.
In fact, her bedroom window had faced them squarely. I’d only seen the room a few times, when I had helped her move in, but I remembered that clearly.
I was on the up slope of a long gentle rise in the land. I could see most of the houses from here, but not all of them, and the rolling landscape hid the bottom halves of a few of the houses. I brought the bike back around the way I’d been heading and puttered up the hill. At the top I could see the whole development clearly, the houses closest to me would be easy to surveil given the proper equipment. The grass and brush here were three feet tall in places, so there was plenty of cover, and this was the highest point in the land for some distance around. If I were going to spy on Yadira’s house, this is where I’d do it.
I looked around. In front of me, towards the houses, was a matted down patch of grass that measured maybe eight by five feet. If I had to guess, I’d say that someone had laid a blanket down here recently. Very recently, within the last twenty four hours maybe.
Lili and her associates had nearly run me down not far from here this morning. Were they watching Yadira last night? Lili hadn’t said anything about that, but I knew how that conversation would go. I hadn’t asked her what she was doing out here.
That was quite a gig they had going. Local spies for hire who travel by night and by ATV. I could see the attraction for someone like Lili, it sounded awfully exciting.
I would have to talk to Lili again, ask her more questions. If I could face her that is. In the mean time, I’d come all the way out here, taking the scenic route by way of the scrap yard and Rosie’s, I might as well poke around a bit at Yadira’s house if I could. I didn’t see any cops on hand, odds are they’d already gone over the place thoroughly and left, so I didn’t see any harm in looking around myself.
I pointed the bike towards the small houses and gunned it, taking it more easy this time. I’d been traveling on fairly well worn trails up until now, but here I was cutting cross country, and these tall grasses could be tricky. There was no telling where you’d find a two foot dip or a wood chuck hole out here.
As I approached I could tell which house was Yadira’s even from behind. Halloween was only a few days off, and she’d decorated with pumpkin and ghost cut outs in the windows.
They were cut from construction paper I could tell as I pulled up and stopped in her back yard, Alyson had probably helped cut them out when she was here last weekend. It looked as if Yadira was the only one who’d bothered with any decorations. It was a shame, really, people didn’t seem to get into the holidays like they used to.
With a loud whump, most of the windows i Yadira’s house exploded outwards. The glass was followed a moment later by a wave of hot gas and flames that threw me from the bike and showered me with red hot embers and splintered wood. I looked up and the house was nearly engulfed in flames. They licked out of every first floor window, covered every internal surface I could see, and black, oily smoke had started to billow from the upstairs windows.
What the hell was going on? As I lay on my back in the short grass of Yadira’s back yard, I tried to take in what had just happened. Someone had firebombed Yadira’s house. Why? What the hell could warrant the risk and expense of that sort of thing?
I heard tires screech on the street in front of her house. I dragged myself to my feet, shaking the disorientation off as I righted the bike and climbed on. I opened the throttle and screamed around the house, wide enough to avoid falling debris, and burst onto the paved road at a dizzying speed. I quickly corrected direction, skittering sideways then taking off towards the main road.
I could see the person I was chasing, a mountainous man on a motorcycle, wearing a ski mast but no helmet. There were no plates, and a set of saddle bags strapped to the back of the bike bulged.
He must have seen me in his rear view, because he sped up as I approached, taking the winding turns of the development’s roads at dangerous speeds. I wasn’t sure if his bike was faster than mine, but I was probably more nimble, and I kept up with him easily. Finally, after a few minutes, he burst out onto the main road with me hot behind him. He headed towards town.
He turned on the speed, looping wide around cars that had the audacity closer to the speed limit, nearly colliding with cars coming the other way several times. I followed as best I could. As I’d imagined, his bike was faster than this one, but I could weave in and out of traffic more quickly, and I probably put significantly less strain on my engine with my comparatively svelte build, so I was able to keep up. If we hit open road though, I would probably lose him like I lost Wally’s Monte Carlo this morning.
Luckily for me he was heading into town, so the traffic only grew heavier.
As we approached the center of town traffic came to a stand still. Being the weekend before Halloween the streets around main street had been shut down at five to allow people to bring their kids out, in costume, and take them trick or treating in safety. Even though the Main Street itself was still open, routing all of the evening traffic down one street had brought everything to a halt.
The man on the motorcycle cut a sharp left, riding up onto the sidewalk and over an embankment and into the parking lot of UMI’s admissions office. His bike was strictly a road model and it slid around on the grass, slowing him nearly to a stop before he hit the pavement. I followed, gunning the throttle and launching myself over the embankment and into the parking lot, overtaking him easily.
I cut my bike hard to the side, slamming his bike behind his leg with the full weight of my bike and myself. He toppled, his motorcycle threw up sparks as it slid wildly on the tar. He rolled end over end, flopping onto his back. I skittered my bike to a stop twenty feet away and threw the kick stand down.
He was on his feet in seconds. Before I could get to him he’d grabbed the saddle bag and taken off across campus towards town.
Running with Derrick’s bag slung over my shoulder was, as you can imagine, difficult. Luckily he wasn’t having an easy time of it with those bulging saddle bags slung over his shoulder.
He chugged towards the Church Street entrance with me pounding after him. He hit the hedges separating the campus from the public sidewalk at a full run and crashed through, bowling over a couple of kids in costumes. I leapt through the hole he’d made after him, dancing awkwardly to avoid stepping on any of the kids he’d knocked over before following him again.
Church Street was a zoo. Hundreds of kids in costumes and their parents, not to mention dozens of high school and college kids out enjoying the evening, clogged the street right up to the barricades that closed it off from Main Street.
My subject waded through the crowd, shoving kids and parents aside, screaming at them to get out of his way. I picked through his wake as quickly as I could, zig zagging through the crowd, hopping over the occasional person who’d fallen over as the big man passed.
(note to self: this whole chase is decent, but needs to be punched up, it’s kind of boring)
He kept glancing back at me, seeing me pursuing him, getting closer by the second. He reached into his jacket and I prayed I was wrong about the reason. His had emerged holding a pistol, a Baretta 92M from the look of it. He stopped and started to turn around, the crush of people around him making it difficult.
He was actually going to shoot at me in the middle of a crowd of children. I couldn’t believe it. I also couldn’t let that happen. I fished my cell phone out of my pocket and threw it as hard as I could, baseball style, at his head. Just as he turned towards me and started to bring the gun around, the phone connected with his right eye. Like all modern cell phones it wasn’t very hefty, but it did the trick.
He yelped and jerked sharply, the pistol went off into the air. The people around him screamed and scattered, suddenly too aware that he wasn’t simply a costumed criminal with a prop gun.
As the crowd parted I covered the final fifteen feet between us in less that a second and tackled him full on, bringing my shoulder low, driving it up into his solar plexus and picking him up off his feet.
My momentum propelled us both forward and we crashed to the ground, me on top. He grunted loudly and tried to move. I slugged him in the face three times as hard as I could. My hand screamed in protest, but he’d stopped moving.
I snatched up his pistol before anyone else there could grab it and stuffed it into the pocket of my jeans. I straddled his chest, ready to slug him again if he moved, and yanked the ski mask off.
It was Andre, or Stephen, I wasn’t sure which any more. In any case it was one of Charlie Dyer’s goons. It looked like I would be hitting the club tonight.
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