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Illustration by Steve Vance
31
The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man
After I had trudged halfway up the hill I thought of something and reversed course, dashing back to the tow truck, the steep declivity turning my gait into ridiculous, Superman-sized leaps. The problem with walking into the trailer and grabbing the rifle was that Wexler might not like it. He’d already tried to kill me twice and I doubted there was much I could say to dissuade him from taking another shot at it. I needed an edge, something to turn the tables my way.
I slipped on gloves and released the brake on the winch, so that I could stand behind the truck and pull the tow hook off the spool with no resistance. Working frantically, I yanked steel cable off in big loops, trying to estimate how much I’d need. A lot, I’d need a lot. It pooled at my feet, gleaming like dozens of coiled snakes. Finally I figured it had to be good enough, and as quietly as I could I flipped the lever. The electric motor obliged by humming and slowly winding the tow cable back onto the spool.
I grabbed the tow hook and scrambled back up the hill, working my legs against the gravity, dragging the heavy cable behind me.
The travel trailer’s thick, heavy tow tongue rested on a stack of cinder blocks in a reasonably stable arrangement. Without the blocks, the whole trailer would tilt forward like the deck of a sinking ship. If it happened suddenly, it might give me time to lunge across the inside of that trailer and get my hands on the rifle. The winch would pull the trailer off the blocks and it would drop hard.
As I affixed the tow hook to the trailer hitch tongue I despaired to see far too much slack in the cable. I had way overestimated how much I would need. My diversion would be awfully late in coming.
I’d have to think of something to say to keep Wexler from shooting me until the cable snapped taut and the trailer was yanked off the blocks.
I could hear them quite clearly through the open window. “We just need to know what you said,” Burby was saying in his unctuous voice, funeral- director nice.
“Honey, like to Dwight, did you tell him anything about what’s going on?” came a female voice. That would be Marget, Nathan’s wife.
Wait, why was she asking that question?
“Think, Katie,” Marget urged.
“Anything McCann might have said,” Wexler interjected impatiently.
When I opened the door, everyone turned and gaped at me. I suppose I must have made for quite a sight—oil-smudged face, dried blood trailing down my neck, plus, of course, the fact that two of the people in the trailer assumed I had been blown into pieces by Nathan’s bomb.
Nathan himself looked more shocked than anyone, ready to crumple into a dead faint. His pistol was still tucked in his rear waistband, though, so he was far from being a neutral threat. He was closest to me, on my right, standing in an odd little space created by folding the dining table up against the wall. Marget was sitting on the bench seat just inches from him, while Wexler leaned against the sink to the left and Katie stood at the far end. It was all pretty close quarters. The rifle was leaning butt-down against the sink counter next to Wexler, as if people came over with weapons all the time and said, “Oh, let me just set my deer rifle here in the kitchen while we have a friendly chat.”
“You were in on it, weren’t you, Mrs. Burby,” I said to Marget.
Katie looked as if she had been getting ready to rush to me but my flat, hard tone halted her in her tracks. Confusion flickered in her gaze—but not in Marget’s. I didn’t know the woman at all but the cold glare in her blue eyes let me know I was right on target.
“Was it your idea?” I asked her. “I mean, Nathan calls Alan, asks to meet him out by the Jordan River, the same place where Nathan suggested he and Frank have their little meeting? You thought that one up, didn’t you? A divorce is expensive and takes a long time. Murder is more messy, but with all the bodies you three were planning to stack up, what’s one more?”
Ah, that one got to Wexler, who had shifted his gaze from me to the married couple, calculating.
How much longer before the cable yanked us off the blocks?
“Mom?” Katie asked.
Burby licked his lips nervously, looking in obvious panic at his wife, who was staring intently back. I knew what Marget was thinking, so I said it.
“You probably don’t have more than a few seconds to use that pistol in your belt, Nathan,” I advised quietly.
Everyone froze. Katie’s eyes were huge.
“You want to die? Shoot Frank, Nathan,” I shouted. “Shoot!”
Burby took a breath and his arm twitched and Wexler reached down and swung his rifle up and pointed it at Burby in one motion. We all heard the click as the safety went off.
There were ten feet between me and Wexler. I wouldn’t have a chance. My diversion was too late.
“Hey, Frank,” Burby whined.
Wexler fired, the percussion lashing my ears, and Burby’s head flew back and he went down with a crash. Katie and Marget both screamed. Wexler’s face hadn’t changed expression. He turned the smoking eye of the rifle toward me, and that’s when a shudder went through the trailer, unsteadying all of us.
Now.
I leaped forward just as the trailer tongue dropped off the blocks. The shock of it was everything I could have hoped for, completely disorienting everyone. The rifle dipped and fired again and then I was there, falling on Wexler, using my weight to bring him to the ground. He thrashed beneath me while a hot pain spread through my left shoulder. I’d been hit.
“Katie, run! Get out of here!” I shouted. My right hand was on the lethal end of the rifle, pushing it away from me, but my left arm was flopping uselessly, blood leaking from my shoulder. I tucked my chin to my chest and put my head to Wexler’s chin and tried to keep him pinned, sucking in my breath when he got his right hand free and punched me right where the bullet had gone in.
I was aware of Katie screaming and Marget dragging her up the pitched floor to the door, and then the abrupt change in sound when they plunged outside. “Ruddy!” she cried.
Now it was just Wexler and me, and I knew I wasn’t going to win. I could keep the rifle pointed away from me but that’s all I could manage, and Wexler hit me again in the shoulder and I pulled in air to stay conscious. The floor seemed to be dropping away beneath me.
The pain was so dizzying it took me a moment to realize the floor was dropping, that the trailer was in motion. The cable had done its job and then continued to do its job, dragging us relentlessly toward the spool. Once it had pulled the trailer off the flats the steep hill took over and we were bouncing and careening and picking up speed, outrunning the cable as we headed toward the lake.
The cupboard doors flew open and plates and glasses tumbled out and the body of Nathan Burby somersaulted over to where Wexler and I were still clutching the rifle and then in one awful, seasick motion the trailer hit the stairs down to the lake and flipped.
The sum total of the strength in a travel trailer comes from the heavy steel frame underneath it all. The walls and ceiling are relatively flimsy, designed to withstand nothing more than highway-speed wind. Once we rolled over, the walls collapsed, the ceiling came down, and I lost track of Wexler and rifle and of everything else. I saw the night sky and was hit by flying debris as I ducked my head.
With a final, momentum-ending impact we were upside down in the lake. Water rushed to fill the space where the trailer had once been, cold, cold water that extinguished all sound. I barely had time to take a breath and then I was under, a searing pain in my leg.
Bubbles streamed all around me. I blinked, trying to get my bearings. Debris was everywhere. Oddly, the ceiling lights, which were directly beneath me, hadn’t shorted out, and I could see what was causing all the pain in my leg: the heavy trailer frame, which had been overhead when we hit the water, had crashed down and was jammed against my shin, holding me helplessly in place.
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