Continued from here. Table of contents for ease of navigation here.
(The Story so far: After shooting a lot of people, Alan (and not Bernie) has fled the scene back to his car. Officer Oberman, meanwhile, has been stopping traffic in a completely different place.)
25.
The southbound lane was completely backed up. Anyone coming off I-81 could take the onramp back onto 81 once they spied the jam, but it took a patrolman to get some cars to back up, one by one, until they were level with the onramp. No one was coming towards Oberman now; and then a patrol car approached. Oberman nodded in satisfaction.
“It’s got to be one of these guys,” Oberman told Lepage when Lepage rolled down his window. “There’s no other way out.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Lepage. “We found a coupe in the woods. Suicide.”
Oberman borrowed Campbell’s phone to take pictures of the plates, everyone along the side.
“Don’t know how to use the camera; just never learned,” Campbell monologued while Oberman finished up.
Then they let the cars go, and the two of them piled back in their black and white, and followed Lepage, wrong way down Blande northbound, to a pair of tire tracks leaving the road.
Down a curving trail, behind some trees, there was the perp dead in his car.
“Alfred E. Neuman, confirmed,” said Lepage.
“Should we check to see if he’s alive, like under the mask?” Oberman asked.
“Fuck him,” said Campbell.
“He’s not alive,” Davis said. She had the passenger door open and was trying to look around without touching anything. “Look, he got the AR under his chin, pulled the trigger with his thumb. It shot him and kept firing auto-style. He’s got at least a half dozen bullets in his face and head. He’s a goner.”
“That’s weird,” said Oberman. “It’s got a bumpstock. How’d he shoot it on auto with the bumpstock facing away from him”
Davis shrugged. “Must’ve braced it against the seat. Probably thought he was just putting one bullet in him. Must’ve been a surprise!”
“Surprise my Aunt Fanny,” Campbell snorted, which is what he’d say to anything.
“Jee-zus, look at all the shells. How many shots did he fire?” Oberman said.
“I’d say that confirms that this is the shooter’s car,” Lepage said.
Campbell said, “You had to ask? Just smell it in there.”
“They say it’s like an abattoir back on the road,” Davis said. “Poor dumb bastards.”
Oberman started to look around. The tire tracks trailed behind the car, through the churned-up leaves toward the road. Not all the way to the road, of course, because two patrol cars had pulled up behind it. It was hard to tell one set of tire tracks from the other.
“Not sure I’d call this shitpile a coupe,” Campbell said.
As Oberman started to circle the vehicle, a third car pulled up. It was Chief Wanamaker. “Oberman, are you fucking up the crime scene?” he bellowed unnecessarily.
“No, chief.”
“You and Campbell get out of here. You’re on traffic detail. Go relieve Hope and Sanchez at the foot of Blande,” he gestured with his cigarette. “Anyone trying to come north on Blande, send ’em down Maple to turn around. They’ll tell you. Hey!” Now he was talking to Davis. “Leave it for the detectives.”
Oberman with an exceptionally sullen Campbell maneuvered the car gingerly, on the narrow path, around the chief’s. As they were pulling onto Blande some paramedics were coming up.
“Heard there was a deader,” one said. He had to say it twice. At first Oberman assumed the man had a strange foreign accent, but then he noticed the horrible malignant growth on his jaw.
“Good Lord!” Oberman said.
“Yeah, I know. ‘Kids, don’t do drugs.’ Don’t be an asshole. Are we going up there of what?”
“Go take care of the civilians,” Campbell said, leaning across Oberman. “Go on, kid,” he added to Oberman. “Get us in position.” They drove down Blande, southbound on the northbound side.
26.
The traffic static from Ridgemont Road wafted across the parking lot. Closer was the peculiar rattling sound a shopping cart, one wheel frozen and rattling, made on the asphalt. A low murmur of customers counting their change, of supermarket employees standing around holding cigarettes with their plastic deli gloves.
At the bottom of the trash can, in the pocket of a canvas jumpsuit, half-buried now beneath discarded circulars and vegetable bags, its battery critically low, Colin Lang’s burner phone passively took in all these sounds.
The colloquialism butt-dial refers to an event, to which certain cell phones are prone: Pressure from one’s body or the folds of one’s pocket unwittingly depresses a button or two and dials a number, generally the last one called.
Carol Wernick’s voice mail had been slowly filling up with a lengthy message that started with muffled voices discussing where to drive, and then how to drive, and then a green Volvo, and then everything is lost in the percussion of gunfire. Then the squeaking of a bicycle through traffic, and now the musique concrète of a supermarket parking lot, abruptly cut off with the battery’s death.
27.
Colin turned off 434, taking the long, looping route back to Blande. He wondered if he should pull over and change into his “good clothes,” his spare work clothes from the trunk, now; he wanted to get these boots off him and into a garbage can; but he decided he’d better wait till he was on the highway. It would be less suspicious to change at a rest stop than some Cottinend side street.
As he got closer to Blande, Colin was disappointed to see that there was very little of the anticipated traffic snarl. All the reporters and rubberneckers were pulled over to the sides. Ambulances were coming by, from the other direction. There were the walking wounded, or the sell-shocked, looking for a reporter to talk to, looking for their few moments of fame. Colin wondered if he recognized any faces, but he couldn’t be sure.
But that was all parked cars and foot traffic. No traffic jam, though. Instead, Colin could see ahead one cop car parked athwart the road, a cop telling everyone, as they approached with windows down, to turn off. The cop used big, sweeping cop hand gestures.
Colin wondered if he should just turn around now, himself. He could say Blande was closed, and it was the finding an alternate route that made him late. But he worried that pulling off now would look suspicious. Never turn around once the cops see you; that’s what they say, right?
“What’s the deal, officer?” he practiced saying. He pulled ahead slowly and rolled down his window.