Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

area. Then she felt the tires spin as if they were in mud. She held her breath as he drove a short distance and stopped.
    She heard a woman scream, “Get out of here! Don’t kill my baby!” My God, she thought, where were they and what was he doing? She heard a horn honking frantically. The screaming and honking continued until she heard his feet running back to the car and he started the engine again. He must have been trying to steal another vehicle and take another hostage.
    They drove on over bumpy roads for a while, and then the car stopped again. This time he opened the trunk and she could see cars and lights, but again she had no idea where she was.
    “You make any goddamn noise and you’ve had it,” he growled. And then he slammed the trunk lid shut.
    Martha tried to think. She knew she was in a fairly well-populated area. She could hear cars stopping, doors slamming, people moving about, but she didn’t dare call out for help because she was afraid for her family. Anderson had told her one phone call would be their death sentence.
    She waited, shivering from the cold and shock, for what she felt was about an hour. She listened to people coming and going so close to her car. But she was too afraid to scream for help.
     
    They were in the parking lot of the Giant T department store in Kennewick, but Martha didn’t know that. Nor did she know what was going on inside the store as she waited in the locked trunk.
    Mike Anderson entered the store through a rear entrance and walked into an area marked “Employees Only.” He knew he had to get another car as the Carelli car was probably on police hot sheets by now. They had spent three hours driving in circles around the Tri-Cities area, and he figured that the man back in the house had managed to untie himself and call the cops.
    Mike Anderson needed another car, and he needed money, too—a lot of money—to help him get away. During the times when he’d stopped and parked along the way, he’d tried to figure out what he should do. He’d considered holding up a bowling alley, but there’d been too many people there. So he’d decided to rob the Giant T.
    A stock boy walked into the storage area at the rear of the store and surprised Anderson before he’d fully formulated his plan. He held his gun on the kid and the two stood staring at each other as the voice of the store manager, twenty-eight-year-old Edward “Doug” Parry, sounded over the intercom. Three times Parry called for the stock boy, and three times Anderson shook his head.
    The store was about to close and a customer was waiting. Exasperated, Parry walked into the storeroom, looking for the stock boy. He spotted Anderson holding the gun barrel to the frightened kid’s ear. Parry knew at once who the gunman was. Not only had he seen the TV news with Anderson’s picture, he had lived just around the corner from Anderson before the fugitive’s arrest in February.
    Parry was remarkably cool; before coming into management training for the Giant T stores he had been an ambulance driver, an EMT in San Francisco and Florida, trained to handle emergency situations. In fact, he’d been involved in so many bizarre incidents as an ambulance driver he had finally decided to get out of that field.
    He saw the irony in his situation when he realized he was right back in danger—in the storeroom of the Giant T.
    Parry was used to dealing with unstable individuals and he recognized that Anderson was on the ragged edge. He followed his orders carefully. Anderson slipped the gun into his pocket and walked Parry and the stock boy in front of him until they reached the only cash register that was still open. The female clerk at the counter was checking out the last customers of the night.
    Anderson carried on a conversation with Parry, talking as if they were old friends. None of the few straggling customers realized what was going on. That was fine with Parry; he didn’t want anyone to get shot.
    As the last customer walked out the door, he locked it. Some regular customers appeared and knocked to be let in. They were surprised when the usually obliging Parry shrugged and shook his head.
    They walked away, grumbling, unaware that he was trying to protect them.
    “Have you called the police?” Anderson demanded.
    “No,” Parry said. “Why would I have done that? I didn’t know you were back there.”
    Satisfied, Anderson said, “Okay, let’s open the safe.”
    Doug Parry opened the large