Strangled - Brian McGrory [101]
“I’m going to run in,” I said.
He opened the driver’s door and said, “Not without me you’re not.”
The navy blue Record delivery truck was just pulling away as we stepped through the front door of the CVS. I can’t vow that this was the most upbeat place in the world at five after midnight. An Arab-looking clerk stood behind the counter reading that month’s Cosmopolitan — the one with the “Seven Sexual Secrets That Men Want to Tell” on the cover. And yes, he was a man, undoubtedly with secrets of his own. There was an elderly woman with a kerchief in her hair checking the use-by dates on every six-pack of Pepsi at a display near the front of the store. Otherwise, the place looked barren.
The Record s were still in a stack near the door, bound by plastic wire. As I leaned down and pulled the plastic apart, Edgar said, “You know what I want? A Hershey’s bar with almonds.”
I replied, “You know what I want? I want to catch the Boston Strangler, I want to save any number of women from their miserable deaths, and then I want to win the Pulitzer Prize.”
Actually, that’s not what I said. What I said was, “Shit, you know what else I need? Some aspirin.”
A more inane conversation had never taken place among two people not married to each other.
Edgar lumbered up to the candy counter in search of his chosen bar. I grabbed a paper and scanned the front page on the very off chance that Justine Steele had changed her mind or that Peter Martin had grown a set of brass balls. Neither appeared to have happened. So I wandered the aisle where the sign said FIRST AID AND PAINKILLERS for something to quell the headache that their inaction, among other things, had caused.
That’s where I was when the killer came into the store, in Aisle 2b, looking for a goddamned bottle of extra-strength Excedrin.
I didn’t hear the door open. I didn’t see what the security camera would later show, which is that once inside the store, he pulled a ski mask over his head. I didn’t see him pull the gun out from the shin-length black trench coat he was wearing. I didn’t see it because I was shopping for a bottle of Excedrin. If so much of being a great reporter is just making sure you’re at the right place at the right time, then I failed miserably here. Or maybe I didn’t, because I’m at least alive to tell about it; it’s all a matter of perspective.
The first inkling of trouble I got was the loud voice calling out, “Don’t do nothin’ stupid.”
I looked up from the aforementioned Aisle 2b and saw the similarly aforementioned man in the black trench coat waving what looked like a semiautomatic pistol. He was talking to the counter clerk. Edgar was standing near a magazine rack off to the side, watching the situation unfold and remaining very calm.
If it was a robbery, I was perfectly willing to let it happen, and I suspect Edgar Sullivan was as well. Let the guy get his $280 or whatever from the till, make off into the night, and buy another week’s worth of heroin to make his miserable life remotely bearable.
But oddly enough, rather than tell the clerk to give him all his cash, he scanned the store, his gaze seeming to pass over Edgar and the older woman in the kerchief, and settling on me, still standing, appropriately enough, in the painkiller section.
“Everyone up here,” he barked. “I need people up here — now.”
His voice was shallower than a robber’s should probably be, and his build was slighter than he probably would have preferred — though his gun was undoubtedly every bit as powerful as the next one.
I didn’t move, or at least not quickly enough. He hollered, “Get up here, now.”
I began moving slowly up the aisle toward the front of the store, sans the Excedrin I came in for. I figured my headache was the least of my problems right now.
As I walked up, I noticed Edgar drifting farther off to the side, away from the cash registers. I saw out of the corner of my eyes the older woman slipping toward the door, and then out. The assailant heard the door open, whirled around, saw her leave, and did nothing but say