Chapter 9
The Last Halloween
Two weeks later.
Rose entered the police station at nine o’clock on Halloween night. She asked the man behind the desk what cell block Sid Tanaka was held in, and if he had spoken since the night of his arrest. The answer was Cell Block A, the same as his buddies, and no, he hadn’t spoken a sentence. Rose walked away without so much as a goodbye. She wondered if the guy behind the counter could smell the alcohol on her.
You’d better not chicken out this time, Rose told herself. This is your last chance to apologize, so you’d better do something right for a change.
Rose hadn’t been to work since the night she had been kidnapped, and already she thought of the police station as “her old workplace.” Rose opened a door and walked down a long hallway, not unlike the one at the back end of Lisa Desaler’s Food and Drug. Halloween decorations hung from the walls—paper skeletons with laughing faces. Rose fought the urge to tear them down. At the other end of the hallway was another door with a small table beside it. There was a Jack-o-lantern on the table. Its eyes glowed in the dark like hot coals.
The people of Pilot Rock put him here, thought Rose. We put him here.
She plunged deeper into the territory of her old workplace, where Sid was held captive.
Rose reached the end of the hallway and opened the door. There were no other cops on Cell Block A at the moment, and entering a prisoner’s cell without an accompanying officer was against the rules. “You could lose your job,” Sheriff Porterfield once told her. “Not to mention your life.” Rose dismissed this warning as she walked past cell after cell, most of them empty—except for the two containing Butch and Duncan, of course.
Simon “Butch” Francis stared apprehensively at Rose from his bunk, his knees pulled up to his chest, his eyes unblinking beneath a nest of black hair. Apparently he wasn’t so tough around authority figures without his rifle. Duncan Putnam, on the other hand, walked right up to the bars of his door. Without his mask, Rose thought Duncan was actually a pretty handsome fella. He had a strange, concerned expression on his face, as if he had some urgent piece of news to report.
Rose approached Duncan’s cell, but before he could speak, Rose asked him, “Who’s here? Who’s here besides us?”
“Besides Butch and Sid? Nobody. Why, what do you—?”
Rose looked around.
Cell Block A was dim and forbidding… although if places like these didn’t exist, then Rose wouldn’t have a job, would she? Rose didn’t like to think about things like that; not here and especially not now, on this cold October night when she was about to apologize to a man whose life she had ruined.
But I’m going to help you, Sid, thought Rose as she scanned cell after empty cell. I had to get myself drunk to work up the nerve, but I’m not going to let it end this way.
Rose asked, “Where are the guards?”
“There was only one guard, and he left a few minutes ago. To use the bathroom, for all I know.”
“That means I have little or no time,” said Rose. Meanwhile, in the cell behind her, Butch gave her an evil look. He quietly leaned forward in his bunk, an eavesdropper who was curious in spite of himself. He tightened his hands into fists as he listened to their conversation.
“Where’s Sid?” asked Rose.
Duncan paled. “In the padded room. His first night in jail, Sid made it clear that he was going to be a problem. I guess the sight of those dead people must have done something to his sanity.”
Rose didn’t think that was quite accurate. Her heart pounded in her temples.
“You’re not planning on talking to him, are you?” asked Duncan. “I think one glimpse of you might set him off like a ticking time bomb. He might try to hurt you, and once Sid sets his mind to something, he’s as relentless as a psycho-killer in a cheap horror flick.” Duncan paused. “While we’re on the subject, you picked a funny night for a visit. Considering this is the night when everyone who died during the past year is supposed to come back from their graves.”
“I came to talk to Sid,” said Rose defiantly. “And I chose tonight for a reason.”
“Why would you do that?”
From behind Rose, Butch silently crept up to the door of his cell. His mischievous expression had grown more prominent—Butch had never had a good poker face—but he kept his lips pursed together. He looked down the hall at the door Rose had just entered through… the same door the guard had disappeared through only a short time ago.
“I can’t tell you,” said Rose. “But I’ll show you in a minute.”
Rose resumed her journey through Cell Block A, where at the distant end, the padded room waited.
Once she arrived at the door, Rose moved as quickly as she could. She typed in the combination on the digital keypad and swiped her I.D. card, but before she opened the door, Butch started yelling at her, and what he said made her blood run cold and her muscles freeze up.
“He dreams about you, you know!” Butch yelled at her. “He doesn’t talk during the day, but he screams in his sleep! He blames you for him being here! All you had to do was let him pass at the barricade! Now he’s on death row for saving a person’s life, which was supposed to be your job!”
Butch laughed, and Rose thought, He’s just trying to get under your skin. You know for a fact that Sid isn’t on death row, none of them are, he’s just trying to provoke a fight. Still, Rose’s heart had always had a mind of its own, and as Butch’s laughter echoed down the corridor, Rose had to wipe the tears from her bloodshot eyes.
She opened the door and entered the padded room.
Sid Tanaka sat in the far right corner. His head was bowed, and he did not look up when Rose said his name—in fact, he wasn’t moving at all. His blond hair was plastered to his face with sweat. Rose thought he looked like someone who had overdosed on sleeping pills.
Better wake him up, she told herself. We don’t have all night, and if he’s less than happy to see you, then you’ll have a heck of a time getting him out of here.
“Sid. It’s me, Rose. Look at me.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her. His scarred face was carefully set. He did not attack her, but then again, he was also wearing a straight jacket. He looked at Rose’s hand, and she realized she had unconsciously reached for her gun.
“Get up, Sid. I’m taking you to see your sister.”
Sid didn’t move. He only looked at her. Stared at her. Meanwhile, Rose heard more laughter—not Butch’s—echoing down the corridor, accompanied by the sounds of light-hearted conversation. She recognized one of the voices as belonging to Deputy Andre Smith.
“Come on, Sid. Start moving.”
He jumped to his feet, his face burning with anger. “What are you doing here? You’ve got some nerve showing your face in my cell.”
“I work here, for starters. Second of all, I’m trying to help you.”
“Help me? Nobody helps me. At least not until the damage is irreparable.”
The voices were coming closer. Soon they would see that the padded room door was open, and then Rose’s plan would be foiled and the game would be lost.
“Hold still while I get that straight jacket off you.”
“Are you trying to break me out of here?”
“Of course. Is it so hard to believe that I care about doing the just thing?”
Rose went to work untying the jacket, frustrated because her trembling fingers couldn’t loosen the knots. She listened closely to the good-humored voices that had just entered Cell Block A. By all rights, Deputy Smith and the others should have seen the door to this room—which Rose couldn’t close without locking herself inside—was open.
“Wow,” Sid whispered thoughtfully, but not without anger. “This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
“I can’t get this knot untied.”
“Close the door. It’s mealtime. They’ll open the door in a few minutes, but it’ll buy us a little time. And I’m sure Duncan will keep them distracted for us.”
“Either that, or Butch will blow our cover.”
Sid had no answer.
But Rose closed the door anyway, with a soft click. Did the deputy hear that, she wondered? She went back to work on the knots, not knowing if she had earned herself more time or lost what little she had.
“What are you going to do once you get me out of this jacket? Aren’t you scared to be locked inside this room with me?”
“No,” said Rose as she undid the last knot. Sid aggressively pulled the jacket off and threw it in the corner. Rose saw his face and realized his rage had not subsided, but had actually worsened.
“Well, you should be,” he growled. “I’m a criminal, after all.”
“You’re the best man I’ve ever met. I just couldn’t see it before. Do you know what tonight is?”
Voices outside the door. Rose drew a gun and handed it to Sid, who looked at her as if she was crazy. “You must be drunk,” he said with disgust.
“I’ve been drunk every night for the past two weeks!” Rose whispered as she drew her own gun. “We thought the whole town was evacuated. How was I supposed to know that someone had secretly kidnapped your sister? If I had ever thought that your sister was actually alive and trapped in that store, or that there were innocent children with her, I would have helped you. How was I supposed to know someone was using them as bait to plot a revenge?”
“You can’t break me out of here. People will recognize me as soon as I step onto the street.”
“Just get behind the door.”
Sid stared at her, dumbfounded. Then, perhaps figuring he had nothing to lose, he took his position against the wall. “Is someone waiting outside to help us, or is your plan something more than that?”
“It’s something more than that.” She pulled something out of her pocket and tossed it to Sid.
“What’s this?”
“My plan to get you out of town. If we can break out of this building without causing too big of a scene, then we’ll be set.”
Sid laughed. “Your plan is to sneak me out of town in a Halloween mask?”
“Why not? No one will recognize you if they can’t see your scars. Once we get you on the street, you’ll have no trouble merging into the flow of people.”
He laughed again. “I understand that, but Rose… why did you pick out a zombie mask?”
Rose looked at the mask, startled.
It was just something she had grabbed off the shelf at the grocery store, the mask of a dead guy with bulging eyes… but yeah, she supposed it was a zombie mask.
Rose said: “Once you put it on, you’ll pass for one of the townspeople.”
Sid looked at the mask thoughtfully. “Butch and Duncan both had masks. I thought I was so stupid for not bringing my own mask. I guess I was too caught up in my emotions to reason things through logically.”
“Well, we’re thinking logically now, and you have the mask. Even Carrie has seen the light. She told me she stopped writing you because she was afraid prison had changed you. Now she knows she was wrong, and she’s prepared to do whatever she can to help you.” Rose looked at Sid. “And so am I.”
They heard the beep-beep-beep of the cell door’s keypad. Rose steadied herself.
“Rose,” Sid whispered solemnly. “Before we go through with this, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t think of you as a friend. You’re family to me now. Once we make it out of here, I will set my mind to doing everything I can to help you.”
As the cell door opened, Sid and Rose stared at each other. A deep feeling of compassionate love passed between them, and their faces softened for the first time in what felt like weeks.
“Officer King?” said a voice at the door. “What are you doing here?”
Sid put the mask on, and then he and Rose charged out the exit together.