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Connor laughs, immediately getting what Grace has in mind. “You heard the lady. Strip down!” Connor wriggles the rest of the way out of the burlap sack and begins stripping down too, exchanging his clothes for the deputy’s. While Connor had thought he’d be in charge of his own escape, he lets Grace take the lead. He’s awed by what she’s managed to accomplish up till now, and as the Admiral once told him, “a true leader never puts his ego ahead of his assets.” And Grace Skinner is an asset of the highest order.
“What’s the game, Grace?” Connor asks, as he puts on the deputy’s pants.
“The kind we win,” she says simply. Then to the deputy, “Go on—the shirt too.”
“Grace . . .”
“No backtalk or I’ll fill ya full a’ lead!”
Connor chuckles at the silver-screen gangland cliché. “Technically bullets aren’t made of lead anymore—and let’s not even mention the ceramic ones they use on clappers.”
“Yeah, yeah—no backtalk from you, either.”
Joey the deputy, Connor notes, wears plain gray boxers that have seen better days, sitting limply under a pale belly that has probably gone from six-pack to kegger since his high school days. If Grace really did have an interest in seeing him in his skivvies, she must be disappointed.
“Where d’ya think you’re gonna run, Gracie? You’ve never been out of Heartsdale. This guy’ll dump you at the first rest stop, and then what?”
“Why should you care?”
“Put your back against the pole, please,” Connor says. Connor ties him as tightly as he can, but then Grace grabs a jagged piece of the broken bong from the floor and puts it into the deputy’s bound hands so that he can eventually cut himself free.
“They’ll all be after you the second I get loose. You know that, don’t you?”
Grace shakes her head. “Nope. The second you get loose, you’re gonna scoot yourself upstairs and hide in the bushes.”
“What?”
“That’s right—you’ll hide there till everyone else is gone. Then you’re gonna stroll on over to the Publix parking lot and collect your car, because that’s where we’re gonna leave it, keys and all. Then you’re gonna go about the rest of your day like nothin’ ever happened, and when people ask where you were, you were out gettin’ lunch.”
“You’re crazy! Why would I do that?”
“Because,” says Grace, “if you don’t keep this a secret, everyone in Heartsdale is gonna know you were outsmarted by dumb old Grace Skinner, and you’ll be a laughingstock till the cows come home, and they ain’t comin’ home anytime soon!”
Connor just smiles, watching the deputy’s face get beet-red and his lips purse into angry slits. “You low-cortical bitch!” he growls.
“I should shoot you in the kneecap for that,” Grace says, “but I won’t because I’m not that kinda girl.”
Connor puts on the deputy’s hat. “Sorry, Joey,” he says. “It looks like you’ve been double-gammoned.”
9 • Lev
It’s only a hunch. And if he’s wrong, his actions will make things worse—but he foolishly acts on his gut, because he needs it to be true. Because if it’s not true, then Connor is done for.
There is a whole series of observations that are feeding into this hunch:
—The fact that the deputy comes from behind the house rather than walking out through the front door.
—The fact that he seems to intentionally avoid the other officers.
—The fact that his hat is pulled low on his forehead, shielding his face like a sombrero.
—The easy way he grips the arm of the woman he’s taking into custody—the same one who came to give Lev the message. The deputy escorts her to a police car by the curb, and Lev can tell that her behavior is off too. It’s as if she’s anxious to get to the car, rather than resistant.
And then there’s the way that officer walks—with one arm stiff and pressed to his side, as if he’s in pain. Maybe from a wound on his chest.
The two get in the police car and drive off—and although Lev can’t get a clear enough look at the deputy’s face, the hunch is pinging Lev’s brain on all frequencies. Only after the squad car has driven away does Lev convince himself that this is Connor in disguise, effecting a clever escape right beneath the noses of law enforcement.
Lev knows that when the car reaches the end of the street, it will have to turn right on Main, and now he’s thankful that he had spent most of the day searching the town, because he knows things he might not otherwise know. Such as the fact that Main is in the midst of heavy construction, and all traffic will be diverted down Cypress Street, two blocks away. If Lev can cut through a series of front and back yards, he can get there first. He takes off, knowing if he makes it there, it will only be by seconds.
