Storm Warning

Us Against The World

*Derek*

                     It was three hours later when Detective Marks finally rolled into the rest stop parking lot. I hope Arielle managed to ditch the truck because we are officially out of time. I hear the growl of a menacing foe that reverberates through the air from beside me. I look at Maddie in shock. She ducks her head embarrassed and crosses her arms in front of her stomach to keep it at bay. “Sorry. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

                     We turn back to the squad car as Detective Marks gets out and walks over to us as we sit on the curb. Out of respect, I stand up to greet him and tap Maddie on the arm to do the same. The longer she ignores me, the harder I tap on her arm. Within moments, I feel her exaggerated eye roll behind me and rises to stand next to me as Marks nears. I reach out my hand to shake his, and he responds in kind. A gentleman’s greeting, my dad called it. “Thanks for coming to get us.”

                     “Of course, but I must say that I am sorry that it proved to be necessary. I am guessing since you called me, that getting stuck out here wasn’t a personal choice.” I look to Derek but he remains calm at the insinuation and remains quietly aware of every move Marks makes. Marks reaches into the left side of his coat and comes away with a small notebook with a spiral at the top. As he flips the cover over his finger like something out of Blues Clues, he works quickly to find a blank page. “Before we head back, I need to know what happened here.” He points his pen to Maddie without looking up. “Why this one is a bright red? And why you both look completely beaten up?” Out of the corner of my eye, I can see as Maddie looks herself up and down and tries to straighten herself up at bit as she fidgets with the hem of her shirt.

                     “Where do I start? It was a very eventful night, and neither of us has been to sleep or eaten since yesterday.”

                     “Must have been a big night for you guys. Why don’t we start from when she left the police station.” Not a question.

                     Despite our exhaustion, I couldn’t help but question his motives. Why the hell would we start explaining from an event that happened days ago? That makes absolutely no sense; unless, he thought we had some information he needs. “The station? That was days ago.” Detective Marks’ face gives away nothing in terms of detail or emotion as he stares at me with his mouth set into a firm grim line. “I don’t understand how that relates to our current issue.”

                     “Arielle is wanted for murder.”

                     Maddie bursts forward from her position in the background until she stands before Marks. “WHAT?!”

                     “Arielle is wanted for murder.”

                     Maddie shakes in shock and outrage. “SHE WOULD NEVER. SHE COULDN’T.”

                     I have to stop this before Maddie blows up our plan. Placing a hand on her shoulder, I turn her to look at me. “Remember why we are here.”

                     Maddie rolls her eyes at me in frustration and confusion. Her eyes glisten with unshed tears, but she decided to play the role. “But Derek, no. There’s no way. This is murder. It is completely different than what she did to us.”   

                     I look at Maddie for what seems like hours. “I know, but she has been weird for the last week. Maybe… maybe he can help us figure it out.” I convey everything I feel and think through my eyes and wish that Maddie can read them. She must have because she gives me a slight nod before moving to stand behind me. I hate this, but I need her to shut up and let Arielle take the hit. I sigh deeply as if pained for Marks benefit. We can spin this in a way that benefits us.

                     Marks clears his throat at the quiet moment, and Maddie and I spin to face his once again. “I am afraid that this is the case. That day we came to your house, we took her in for questioning about her mom’s death. She mentioned a male body laying on top of her mom’s. But when we were there, there was no male body. Her sincerity was palpable, and I believed her when she said she didn’t hurt her mom and when she said she didn’t know why anyone else would either. My partner was a new recruit… young, naïve, and driven by passion. He saw her for what she was, and she killed him for it.”

                     Maddie shakes her head in shock but plays into his recounting of events. “In front of you?”

                     “No. He must have gone to the cell to apologize for his behavior and to make a show of good faith tried to put her in a separate room.”

                     “Why would that be a show of good faith?” I watch as Marks speaks his truth despite the number of errors in his retelling. After all, a dead man tells no tales. So, all of this can’t be proven. But a cop’s death? We should have seen this fallout coming. Cops’ deaths are taken hard, and most of the time, the killer is the one villainized... whether she deserved it or not. 

                     “She was in a cell with a drunk, a p********e, and a pimp. So, she wasn’t in the best of locations as she waited to be clear, which I never got a chance to do with my partner’s death and her escape. He was naïve but he didn’t DESERVE WHAT SHE DID TO HIM!” Marks grinds his teeth as he fights to put a lid back on his temper.

                     Maddie asks in a nervous whisper as she wrings her hands at Marks' yelling. “What did she do to him?” Damn. She should have been in the theatre program. She isn’t scared of him. She wasn’t scared of anybody.

                     Marks shakes his head. “Too gruesome to share with the public. I am sorry ... that is as much as I can tell you about that.”

                     I step forward as I shield Maddie. Marks looks at her hands bunching and unbunching the bottom of her shirt, and his eyes feel with grief at having frightened her. Great job, Maddie! We have him – hook, line, and sinker. At least, I think that is the saying. I don’t actually fish. “What about Sarah?”

                     “We are still looking into it, but we believe that she may have been Arielle’s first kill.”

                     Maddie visibly shakes in grief as she tries to keep up her side of the charade. “There is no way. Arielle loved Sarah. SHE NEVER would have hurt her. The cop. Maybe. But Sarah. She would never go there.”

                     Marks nods his head. “I know this may come as a shock to you. You guys were very close, right?” We nod. “Even if she didn’t commit the act, her actions have led me to believe she may, at least somewhat, be responsible for the death.”

                     Maddie squints her eyes in confusion. “What do you mean?”

                     “Well, sometimes, innocent people get hurt when a love one falls in with the wrong crowd or does something with some unsavory people. Examples include driving drunk because your friends told you to or borrowing money from a bookie type of thing. There are a lot of different scenarios that could have played a role, and unfortunately, Arielle is the only one who can answer them, and she isn’t here. Which leads me back to where we started. Tell me what happened since she left the station.”

                     I look to Maddie as she swallows. “Um… the day or so after fleeing the station was pretty ordinary. There wasn’t much going on, but we went out to Derek’s aunt’s old cabin and kind of hid out there. We didn’t know what to do. Arielle was withdrawn since she found Sarah and was becoming very cagey and anxious. She thought someone was after her. That they took out Sarah and that she was next. I wasn’t surprised she felt that way. Not with how she said two men came back to the house after she found Sarah and that man. She said that they chased her out of her own house and that she heard them mention that they couldn’t leave without the girl.”

                     Maddie rubs her arms as goosebumps appear. I pull her into my side as she nods for me to keep going. “She was becoming erratic.” As I absentmindedly rub Maddie’s shoulder, I stare off across the road at a set of trees. “I was starting to get really worried about her. We both were. We didn’t know what was happening. And we couldn’t get her to see us. She was here but not here at the same time.” Detective Marks nods for me to keeping going as he makes fast scribbles across the page.

                     “We shouldn’t have taken her outside of town, but she was so scared. We’ve never seen her like that before. She is always the calm one. For her to be the one that became so erratic, so frazzled, so deranged…” I look at Maddie as she looks up as me as she cries her fake tears. “We had to protect her. We had to help her. She needed us, and we were all she had left.”

                     Maddie murmurs. “I think losing Sarah broke her.”

                     Marks nods. “It sounds like a break with reality. It is very likely that she had a psychotic break.”

                     “But she’s not psychotic.”

                     “She wouldn’t necessarily need to be. A trauma could result in one. It happens a lot in the soldiers who are fighting wars overseas. It is possible she is stuck in her own war zone, but her ability to remain calm during questioning worries me. If she was already in her psychotic state, she wouldn’t have been so calm.”

                     “Something in the station could have triggered it.”

                     Marks looks at Maddie in shock. “Like what?”

                     She shakes her head and shrugs. “I have no clue, but it isn’t really my job to figure out. It’s yours.”

                     I can see Maddie losing grips with her role in the retelling; so, I quickly steer the conversation back to the story. “Anyway, she burned down my aunt’s cabin while we were out. My aunt died about ten years ago, but we kept her cabin… in somewhat working condition. It had sentimental value to me as a kid and now as an adult. We took her up there to help clear her head. I had been hoping the fresh air and nature would kind of bring her back to herself. We had gone into town to do something yesterday evening. When we came back, the place was in flames and the cabin was starting to fall in ruin. She hopped into the truck and told me to go to the nearest rest stop, which, unfortunately, was two hours away. She didn’t talk the entire drive. She just stared out of the window with eyes that were glazed over. We spent several hours trying to find out what happened and why the cabin was going up in flames, but we got nothing out of her. Maddie and I decided to use the bathroom and to figure out a game plan. We needed to know what happened. When we came back to talk to her, she was gone and so was my 2020 Dark Blue Toyota truck. Our only saving grace is that as teenagers, we always take our phones everywhere, which is now why you are here standing in front of us.”

                     Detective Marks spends the next couple of minutes in silence as he finishes writing his notes. With each second, Maddie and I grow more nervous, but hope it comes off as concern and grief for Arielle. “Detective Marks,” Maddie says softly as he closes his notebook with a soft scratching as paper meets paper. “What do you think she is doing?”

                     He looks up with strong, focused eyes and stares at Maddie with a placating sympathy. “Well, I think she is running.” I can tell that he believes our story but that he stills wants her head on a stick for killing his partner. A vendetta. I wonder if they had any proof of her killing him or just speculation because he is dead and she is not.

                     “So, what do we do now?”

                     Detective Marks walks to the squad car and opens the door. As he holds the door open, he looks back at us. “Now, we get you two home to rest and recover.”

                     Maddie and I stare at each other as he continues to hold the door. No matter what we hear about Arielle going forward, we alone know the actual truth. That’s going to make it tricky when we have to act as if we don’t care anymore, and frankly, I don’t think Maddie’s acting skills are able to go that far.

                     Arielle had to leave town to save her life. Arielle had to leave town to save our lives. She doesn’t deserve these accusations, but we need the group of people, who used her as a lab rat, made her into someone… or rather something else, and are now hunting her down to kill her in cold blood as they try to hide what they have done, to follow her. She is not a killer… not really. She did it out of self-defense. But she will need to become a killer with no soul if she hopes of surviving them, but there is no doubt that as she faces a kill without flinching and remorse, she will never unleash that onto an innocent. She knows what it feels like to be targeted and made weak. She won’t do that to another.

                     Detective Marks clears his throat, and my attention quickly shifts back to him. “Okay. Kids, get in the car. I will drop you off at each of your houses. But stay in town, I may have more questions later.” We nod as we get in the car. With the door firmly closed behind us, he gets in the front drivers’ seat. We watch as he dials and puts the phone to his ear.

                     “Hey good-lookin’.” Maddie curls her fingers into claws in response to his carefree, jovial tone… like what we went through wasn’t worth fretting about for so long. I grab her hand and intertwine my fingers with hers as I rub the back of her hand with my other. I was right. Maddie won't be able to keep up the ruse for long. She is too loyal to turn her back on Arielle for long.

                        The voice on the other lines chuckles seductively with a shrill ‘right back at ya’ breaking through the speaker and reaching our ears. “Jules, listen up. I need you to do something for me. I need you to put out an APB on a stolen truck: 2020 Dark Blue Toyota Truck.” With a hand over the speaker, he turns to look at Derek. “License Plate Number.”

                     “A-G-H.”

                     “A-G-H.”

                     “193.”

                     “193.” He nods his thanks before turning back around. “It may or may not be driven by an 18-year-old red-headed girl named Arielle Chapman.” He paused for a beat before saying, “Yes. Put an APB out for the girl too. Only local stations for now. She is armed and dangerous, and no one should approach her until I am on site, and even then, I am the only one with the clearance to intercept target.”

                     Maddie mouths to me ‘target’. I nod. Yeah. That sounds really bad in a shoot first, ask questions later sort of way.