A Special Relationship (39 page)

 
“She won’t come,” Mona told him but he would not take no for an answer.
 
He ran over to Carrie, grabbed her by the waist and carried her, kicking and screaming and yelling, to his car.
 
He threw her into the backseat with Mona, got in himself, and took off.
 
Mona held Carrie down as she fought to get out.
 
When that failed, she turned around and looked at Robert, her heart pounding in despair.
 
“We’ve got to call rescue,” she said.
 
“We’ve got to call 911.”

 
“Can’t
no
911 help him,” Dooney said as he fled.

 
Carrie kept staring at Robert as they left, as he lay lifeless, like a dead dog on the side of Simms nightclub, the place he kept warning her would bring her nothing but grief.

***

They ended up in Yulee, just outside of Jacksonville, at Dooney’s cousin’s shack of a house.
 
Carrie was no longer hysterical, but was now nearly catatonic in the corner, refusing to eat or talk or do anything but think about Robert.
 
She couldn’t forget it.
 
His body lying on that pavement.
 
All alone.
 
After coming to see about her.
 
Why didn’t he stay where he was?
 
Why didn’t he go home to his invalid ex-wife and leave her life alone?
 
Now he was dead.
 
And just the thought of it, that his relationship with her caused him to die, was eating her alive.

 
She looked at Dooney and Mona.
 
They were actually eating and talking and strategizing as if nothing as earth shattering as a cold bloodied murder had ever occurred.
 
She watched her big sister.
 
Mona was bothered at first, Carrie could see it in her eyes, but she wasn’t bothered anymore.
 
Somehow she’d made her choice.
 
And she chose the devil.

 
“What we got to do,” Dooney kept saying, “is to get our stories straight.”
 
He kept saying that, over and over, and they kept coming up with all kinds of stories.
 
Carrie listened to them.
 
She listened as they tried with all they had to justify murder.
 
She was their captive now. She had witnessed that murder and they knew she couldn’t be released to tell what she saw.
 
She was so upset, so angry with this
world, that
she didn’t even care.
 
They could kill her too for all she cared.
 
But she thought about Robert.
 
And she knew, deep down, that his death couldn’t be in vain.
 
Dooney and, yes, her own sister, had to be stopped.

 
“He stalked me,” she said so absently that everybody in the room, including Dooney’s husky cousin, turned and looked at her.

 
“What?” Mona said.

 
“He stalked me.”

 
“Who stalked you?”

 
Carrie swallowed hard.
 
“Robert.”

 
Mona and Dooney looked at each other.
 
Was she serious?
 
Was she about to give them the alibi they’d been trying to conceive?
 
  

 
“What you trying to say, girl?” Dooney asked her.

 
“I told him to leave me alone.
 
I told him he made his choice, and that I didn’t want to have nothing to do with him.
 
But he kept coming around.
 
He kept following me everywhere I went.
 
He kept trying to call me.”
 
She paused.
 
“That’s why you had to shoot him, Dooney.
 
He was trying to kidnap me.”

 
“That’s right,” Dooney said, smiling like a Cheshire cat.
 
“That’s why I had to shoot him.
 
Only he had a gun, too.
 
Didn’t he Mo?”

 
“Hell yeah he had one.
 
Seen it with my own two eyes.”

 
Dooney cousin laughed.
 
“Y’all out of y’all mind,” he said.
 
“Them police ain’t gonna believe y’all broke butts over no rich white man.”

 
“They’ll believe us,” Dooney said.
 
“If innocent Carrie
tell
the story.
 
Besides, they gotta catch us first.
 
And that ain’t gonna happen.
 
Is it, Carrie?”

 
“What we gonna do, Dooney?” she asked him.

 
“What you think?
 
We gonna lay low and then get the hell away from J-ville.
 
They probably think we still in town, anyway.
 
They
probably tearing
up that place looking for the killers.
 
They
won’t never
dream of coming to no Yulee.
 
Nobody
know
I got people in Yulee.
 
I’m too ashamed to tell anybody he kin to me.”
 
Dooney and his cousin laughed.

 
“Back at you, bro,” his cousin said.

 
“So we fine.
 
Don’t sweat that.
 
But if, by chance, we ever did get caught, we got to get our stories straight.
 
No matter what deals they try to cut with us.
 
You understand that, Carrie?” he asked.
 

 
“You better understand it,” Mona said.
 
“Because those police gonna be lying to you.
 
You committed a murder tonight.”

 
Carrie was astounded.
 
“Me?”

 
“Yeah, you!
 
And me, too.
 
If somebody dies in the commission of a crime, you just as guilty as the shooter.
 
You know that.”

 
Carrie knew a lot of things.
 
But she had to play along.
 
“So I can go to prison too?”

 
“If you fall for their song and dance you can,” Dooney said.
 
“That’s why you got to tell it like you told us just now.
 
He was stalking you and tried to kidnap you and I had no choice but to shoot him.
 
We
was
terrified of him.
 
Wasn’t we?”
  

 
Carrie looked at the man she could hardly stomach.
 
“Yeah,” she said and Mona smiled.

 
“He brought that white bitch back into that house of his and kicked you out and you hate him now.
 
Don’t you?”

 
Carrie exhaled.
 
“He made his choice.”

 
Dooney laughed.
 
“A woman scorned.
 
I like it!”

 
Carrie tried to relax too.
 
Because she knew, as soon as they let their guard down, she was running.

***

They let their guard down sooner than she thought they would.
 
She could not believe how easily they bought her tales.
 
They actually thought she hated Robert because he decided to help his invalid wife.
 
She never dreamed they’d be that stupid.
 
Or gullible.
 

 
But whatever they were, they all went to sleep with her in a room with Mona.
 
And if anybody knew Mona, they knew she slept like a rock.
 
Carrie therefore was able to get out of bed, slip on her jeans, and head for the front door before Mona even stirred.
 
She was out of that door before Mona even turned over.
 
By the time Mona was awake, Carrie Banks was sitting in the Yulee police station, telling her tale to anybody that would listen.
 
Only the tale she told this time didn’t do anything for Dooney and Mona but get them both arrested, along with Dooney’s cousin, as an accessory after the fact.

 
Carrie, however, was placed under arrest too.

TWENTY-SEVEN

He opened his eyes for the first time in a month and his best friend, Bill Johnson, jumped from the chair he had been camped in every day during that month and hurried to his bedside.
 

 
“Robert?” he said, staring at his friend.
 
“It’s me, man.
 
It’s Bill.”

 
Robert, who was hooked up to I-V and was very groggy, nonetheless was able to look over to where he heard the voice.
 
And as soon as he saw that familiar, relieved face, he remembered everything.
 
Everything.
His eyes widened.

 
“Take it easy, Robbie.”

 
“Where’s Carrie?”
 
Robert asked him, his voice a mere whisper.

 
“You scared us.”

 
“Where’s Carrie?”

 
Bill frowned.
 
“Man, don’t worry about that woman.”

 
Robert touched Bill on his arm.
 
The terror in Robert’s eyes made it clear to Bill that he was dead serious.
 
“
She’s.
. . with the others,” Bill said.

 
“What others?”

 
“She’s with the other criminals, with that sister and that Dooney person.
 
She was picked up with the others.
 
But man it’s great to have you back, I declare it is.
 
I’d better go and get the doctor.”

 
Robert grabbed Bill by the coat lapel, lifting up from his pillow.
  
“Picked up for what?” he asked him.

 
“Robert
take
it easy,” Bill said, confused, as he helped Robert lay back down.
 
“Are you okay?”

 
“Where’s Carrie, Billy?” There was a plea in Robert’s voice that stunned his friend.
 
He had it bad, Bill thought.
 
Then he exhaled.

 
“She was arrested,” he finally said.

 
“Arrested?” Robert said, astounded.

 
“Let me get the doctor, Rob—”

 
“But she didn’t do anything.
 
It was that
guy,
Carrie didn’t have anything to do with it.
  
Why did they arrest her?”

 
“She didn’t have anything to do with it?”

 
“No!”
 
Robert said and then began coughing.
 
Bill immediately pressed the panic button, calling for the nurse.

 
“It’s all right, man.”

 
“Get an officer here now.
 
I want to make a statement. I want to tell them what happened.
 
You hear me, Billy?”

 
“Yeah, Robert, I hear you.
 
I’ll do it.”