The following is an excerpt from Confusion.
A novel by Eric Dalen.
© 1999 by Eric Dalen, all rights reserved.
And then the strangest thing happened.
Something caught his eye and he turned to see what it was. A woman in a waitress uniform was running toward the car, in the crosswalk, traffic light in her favor, her uniform torn and filthy, her face bloody and streaked with dirt, blood running down her left arm.
He sat frozen, staring, wondering what in the world was going on. At 3 in the morning anything was possible, but this was crossing a line.
The Waitress looked at him -- glanced, really -- and he saw two things in that brief moment: Fear and determination. Then she just kept running, right on down the street. Late twenties with long, dark hair that had apparently been tied up in a bun at one point but had since unraveled and now stuck out, bouncing wildly around her head like a furry aura.
Aaron Montaine looked back to his left to see what she was running away from, and saw a guy in a three-piece suit and granny glasses coming toward the intersection. He looked just like a banker. What he was doing chasing a waitress was anybody’s guess, but when Aaron saw the gun in the Banker’s hand, he knew the guy wasn’t upset over the way his omelet turned out.
Aaron knew he had to do something. Fast.
Stop the guy, his mind told him, so he eased his foot off the brake and allowed the car to move forward, blocking the man’s path.
And it worked. Sort of.
The Banker crashed into the side of the Honda, then sprawled across the hood for a moment before sliding off the other side and disappearing from view.
Aaron waited, wondering if he had just done the absolutely dumbest thing possible. The guy, after all, had a gun and would not appreciate being tackled by the front end of a car. He might just feel inclined to stand up and unload his firearm through the windshield.
Aaron watched expectantly, imagining the headline:
Motorist
Found Shot to Death at Intersection,
Motive Unknown; Engine was Still Running.
But instead of his worst fears, the Banker got up and began running again, heading south in the direction of the Waitress without so much as an acknowledgment that anything had happened. Not even a limp. Aaron’s attempt to slow the man only managed to add maybe five seconds to the Waitress’ lead.
Now he really had to do something.
He made the right turn to follow, thinking for the first time that the Banker might be the good guy. What if he was a police officer or a federal agent?
Yet Aaron had trouble picturing the Waitress as a fugitive, especially one bloody and beaten. Had she been beaten, then had somehow got away?
Aaron sped past the Banker, past some parked cars, then past the Waitress before slamming on the brakes and squealing to a stop. He reached over, opened the passenger door and -- waiting for her to catch up -- checked the rearview mirror. Both the Waitress and the Banker had been on the sidewalk, but now the Banker was in the street, and the Waitress was nowhere to be seen.
Aaron began to wonder if the woman was going to take him up on his offer of a ride, or just keep running and leave him parked in the middle of the street for the Banker to take potshots at -- when she jumped into the car and slammed the door.
Slightly surprised for some reason, Aaron stomped on the gas pedal just as the sound of gunfire began popping behind them. He hunched his neck, supposedly to avoid the bullets, then dared a glance into the rearview mirror just in time to see what looked like a van racing up toward the Banker.
Whatever trouble he had involved himself in had now escalated.
Could his Honda out-race a van? He really did not want to find out.
He sped down to the next stoplight, slowed enough to make the right turn, turned again at the very next right a block down, then another immediate right, now inside a housing tract with no idea if there was a way out. He saw up ahead that there was -- straight to Jefferson Boulevard, where he had just picked up the woman.
Had the van already gone by? Or was it still coming?
Instinctively, he turned off the headlights while coasting, trying to decide what to do, when the van shot by and out of sight, down Jefferson, probably making a right at the very same light he had taken.
He went quickly to the corner and stopped, checking to the right -- the van was gone -- before making the left back onto Jefferson. He flicked the headlights back on as they darted to the intersection where all this had started for him. He made another right.
He had no idea what they were going to do.
The woman had been hyperventilating, huffing and puffing like a runaway freight train going downhill too quickly, but she seemed to be easing out of the danger zone.
"Are you okay?"
He knew it was a dumb question, but one he had to ask in case there was something worse than what was obvious.
She was sitting back in the seat, face toward the roof, eyes closed, hands clutching the edge of her seat, breathing hard. She only nodded forcefully to answer his question.
At the next light, he made a left, heading for the freeway, and dared another look at his passenger. Her left arm was not the only limb with blood, it just had the most. Both of her knees as well as her forehead and nose were obscured by a combination of blood and dirt, and he saw she was physically shaking.
He knew next to nothing about medicine or First Aid, but he did know that shaking wasn’t good. It could mean she was cold, or she was going into shock.
"I’ll take you to a hospital to get you some help, and--"
"No!" she barked harshly, sounding just like Linda Blair in The Exorcist with a strange, angry, almost disembodied voice.
"Okay," he said, doubtfully, stealing another glance at her, wondering again if the Banker was the good guy. "Why not?"
She was still breathing too hard to make decent conversation but managed to answer in a fitful burst of syllables. Linda Blair was gone, replaced by a breathy, if loud, Kathleen Turner. "They’ll -- find -- me."
"Okay," he said again, trying to think. "No police?"
"Oh, no -- please -- no."
"Alright. Then . . . we’ll go to my place. I guess."
She nodded, agreeing.
He checked the rearview mirror again before making the turn onto the freeway, heading north, riding in silence for a while as her breathing came into a normal range, her body relaxing, hands no longer gripping the seat, the shaking spell seemingly over, or at least subsided.
"Thank you," she said in a pleasant voice that might have been her real one.
"No problem." That wasn’t really what he wanted to say, but Don’t mention it was too off-handed. "Was the Banker a cop?"
Peripherally he could see her turn her head to look at him, and the question What does that mean? was very clear.
Of course, she was right. Was the Banker a cop? Was the dog a cat? Was the sunshine an airplane?
He glanced at her and tried again. "Was the guy chasing you a cop?"
"No."
"And you don’t want to go to the police?"
"No," she said curtly, closing the subject.
He wanted to help, but there was a point when people get so overwhelmed that they shut everybody off, and he sensed she had reached that edge.
"I’m Aaron Montaine, by the way." He paused. "You don’t have to tell me who you are if you don’t want to. I just don’t want you to think I’m some flake who happened along. I am a flake, I just don’t want you to think that."
There were several seconds before she said anything. "Well, that’s good to know." She might have smiled, but he didn’t check.
"I’m Jenny."
"Nice to meet you, Jenny."
They fell into silence again as the lights of downtown Los Angeles sparkled up ahead, still ten miles away, and Aaron Montaine wondered what he had gotten himself into.
© 1999 by Eric Dalen, all rights reserved.
