Chapter 22: Showdown on Main Street
The next day, once again Clare left the shop in the hands of her trusty staff and before the store opened, jumped on I-77 to drive down to Charleston, West Virginia, and deposit the helmet in a bank there. If the bank thought it was odd that she’d be opening an account out of state, she could say that she often visited family there and it would be useful. She took the helmet out of the Greenline bank vault as soon as the bank opened, but retained the safe deposit box rental. It might come in handy for something. She put the helmet in a cardboard box, because a bag would reveal the shape of its contents too much, and put it in the cab of her truck. She didn’t want to drive the old Valiant, but the drawback of having a truck was that it had no trunk so she couldn’t lock anything up invisibly in the back, and she didn’t have, for instance, a locking toolbox in the back or even a truck cap. The best she could do was put the box in the back seat of the extended cab.
It was no surprise to her that Clench showed up. That man … well, it is sort of police business.
“You heading out of town?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m going to find another bank, like I said.”
“Could I ask where?”
“Charleston,” Clare whispered.
“Well, that’s closer than Cincinnati or Pittsburgh,” he whispered back.
“Yeah.”
“You want an escort?”
“If I thought Ali would show up, I’d say yes. But I’m sure his mother did not tell him where she went, and I don’t think he’d guess she came here.”
Clench looked up and down the street. “Maybe not. I guess you’ll be OK. What time do you think you’ll get back?”
“Oh, I’ll probably eat lunch in Charleston then drive back early afternoon.”
“Um, are you carrying?”
“Yes, sir. And I have my license.”
He thumped on her door after she got in and watched her drive away, then drove back to the farm. He was off duty that day. After lunch he drove back into town and stopped in The Rag and Bone Shop, but Clare wasn’t back yet. He wondered if she’d told her staff where she went.
“Hey Clench,” Sandy said when he came in.
“Hey Sandy. Clare in?”
“No, she hasn’t been in yet today.”
“You know where she is?” Clench asked Sandy.
“No, she called this morning and said she had some business out of town. I didn’t see her, she was gone before we opened up.”
So Clare hadn’t told anyone else where she went.
“So you know when she’ll be back?”
“She said early afternoon.”
“OK, I’ll go get some coffee and wait around for her.”
“Hot day for coffee.”
“So I’ll get iced tea.”
Sandy smiled as he left. Everyone knew that Clench looked out for Clare, and it wasn’t only because he was a conscientious officer of the law, even if just part-time.
After Clench went into the café, someone else came in, jingling the little bell that hung over the front door. Sandy recognized him as the kid who’d tried to snatch the helmet at the Memorial Day picnic. She hadn’t seen the incident but in follow-up stories, she’d seen his photo in the papers. Something about CAIR. She couldn’t very well tell him to get out. Could she? There were other customers in the store.
“May I help you?” she asked preemptively. She didn’t want him browsing around.
“Is Clare Bower here?”
“No, she’s not.”
“When will she be here?”
“I couldn’t say. She’s on a business trip.”
“I can wait.”
“You could be waiting a long time. She won’t be back today.”
Ali Ebrahim looked at her coldly.
“Maybe she’s just at home. Sick. Or working at home. I could go to her house.”
“Maybe you should get out of here.”
Maybe I should take one of those concealed carry classes, Sandy thought. She slowly reached under the counter as if to pull out a weapon, or push an alarm, but there really wasn’t anything there to help her.
Ali looked around the store, walked into the other rooms and looked around, and seeing that Clare wasn’t there, walked out, after shooting a squinty eyed, menacing glare at Sandy. She told the other clerk to hold the fort for a few minutes and ran across the street to the café, to tell Clench what had happened.
Clench jumped up and sped out of the café in time to see Ali get into his car. But he just got in to sit. He didn’t turn the engine on.
Clench approached the car and banged on the window. Ali rolled it down.
“We told you not to come back here. And if you’ll recall, when you were downtown Akron, you were also told that we’re running out of patience with you. Lots of little things are going to add up to one big enough to lock you down for a while.”
“It’s a free country,” he sneered.
“Not so much for you anymore, son. What are you doing here? This is the third time that I know of that you’ve come to Greenline.”
“Don’t call me son!” Ali screamed.
Clench might have felt a twinge of compassion at this, if he hadn’t learned how Ali’s father had died.
Just then Clare drove in and parked in front of the store. She used to park on the street behind the store, an alley that served a repair garage and a few other rag-tag businesses as well as the backs of some main street stores like hers, but she felt a little safer these days parking in front on the main drag.
When Clare got out of her car, Ali saw her and slid over to the passenger side of his car away from where Clench was leaning, jumped out, and ran over to her, yelling abuses much as he had done with his mother in Starbucks. Clare couldn’t make out what he was saying but she got the general gist. Did he know his mother had been there the day before, and if so, how did he know?
If she’d seen him in time she wouldn’t have gotten out of her truck.
Ali grabbed Clare’s arms, but Clench ran around Ali’s car to Clare, and threw Ali down to the ground. Ali put up a good fight, but so did Clench and he was bigger. Clench thought Ali must play sports or do some sort of training. Not a skilled martial art, but something that had built up his strength. What sort of training did suicide bombers have, he wondered. Probably none. It wasn’t as if they were real soldiers, or planned to have a fair fight with anyone, although the Tsarnaev brothers did some boxing and wrestling. But that had nothing to do with their bombing.
Clench called in to the sheriff’s office, and when Sheriff Matheson arrived in a couple of minutes they hustled Ali into the back of the sheriff’s car. Clench explained to the sheriff what happened, then turned to Clare.
“Are you OK? Did he hurt you?”
She felt her arms and looked at them.
“I might get some bruises. But I’m OK. Lucky you were there.”
“This time we’ve got an assault charge on him — you will press charges, won’t you?”
“Oh yeah.”
“So we’ll lock him up and call his mother.”
“Well, come on in so we can write up a report,” Sheriff Matheson said.
“Let me go in the store for a couple of minutes and I’ll be right there,” Clare said.
“OK. Sheriff, be careful, he likes to fight. I’ll go with you,” Clench said to Clare.
The sheriff drove off to the little jailhouse and office, which was just a couple of blocks down the street. He parked and turned around to Ali, seething in the back seat, and said, “We’ll just wait in the car till my deputy gets here and he can haul you into the lockup. I could do it myself but I just hate to pull out my gun if I don’t have to.” Then he pulled it out of his shoulder holster, showed it to Ali, and put it back. “You don’t have any weapons on you, do you?”
Ali didn’t answer.
“Well, we’ll check you out inside. I want your car keys anyway. An
d your phone. And whatever else you have on you.”
The sheriff’s tone was more like that of a methodical bureaucrat taking inventory than one a lawman taking in a prisoner, but that could be deceptive. He was methodical, and he never took chances with wild young men who had chips on their shoulders. The older he got, the fewer chances he took. That included any steps that might come up in court in a trial, as well as physical chances. Like the Mounties he always got his man, and he never let his man get away.