Magdalena and I heard the cars approaching before we saw them. The sound of the engines, the rev of the motors. We were riding in single file when the cars rounded the curve. We saw the blue light, and we both braked with nowhere to go. I ran into the back of Magdalena's bike as the lead car swerved in front of us and incredibly, and in slow motion, braked and turned all at the same time.
We wrecked in a pile of tangled bikes and legs and arms and helmets. We did not see the second car, but we watched from the ground as the first car flipped and flipped again in a haze and maze of translucent smoke and dirt and kicked up gravel. All this happened in slow motion and "holy shits" coming from our teenage potty mouths.
When it was over, all deathly silence and then - are you ok's? I was blooded up and scrapped but alive. Ruined bikes and dented helmets, but no broken bones. Magdalena was the same. She looked up and said in a soft, calmer voice than I am sure she felt. "I think that is my dad's car."
"I believe it is," I said. "Looks like he was by himself". I was glad my mom wasn't still with him. A blue light on the top of the other car we just noticed was still going round and round. "Was the police officer chasing him?"
"I don't know, " said Magdalena with a low-key, unhurried cadence that was probably more shock than unruffledness. "I'll go check on my dad, you go check on the officer."
I ran to the officer and stayed with him. He was not initially awake but came to cussing. I knew him from the nursing center. It was Deputy Honeycutt and he was stuck, stuck behind the steering wheel. He was cussing up a storm. I was afraid to leave him until help came.
Help came in what seemed like hours but was probably a few minutes. A local farmer heard the wreck and came over from his field riding his tractor. I let him stay with the Deputy while I went to check on my friend and her dad.
Randall Michael Wall looked like he was crying. His eyes were all red, and he had tears streaming down his face. I knew this was impossible because he was too mean to cry. He musta got something in his eye.He smelled funny, and he was covered in blood from head to probably his toes we could not see because he was squished and crumpled up underneath the dashboard. He looked stunned. He was awake but not awake. He was talking out of his head, and Magdalena, who was patting his shoulder through the open window trying to calm him, told me later that he said some strange things even before I got there.
This is what he said to me when I got there: I never liked you. You are going in the trunk and your mama too. She is a bitch, a crazy ass brave bitch, but a bitch. Brave and stupid. You are a friend to my Magdalena. My Magdalena who once fought a pit bull for a turkey and won. I saw her do this. She is brave too. She is like her father. But for me, it is over. I am a dead man.
Magdalena was crying for the meanest man on earth. He was her daddy after all. "No daddy." We could see Sheriff Nichols as he arrived at the deputy's car. "Help is here."
"No matter what you done, Sheriff Nichols will help you. He's a fair man. He will listen to your side," I said even though I was pissed at what he said about me and my mama. I wasn't trying to help him, but Magdalena.
"No, no he won't, but it is not him I worry about. The boss. He will be mad, so mad. I need your help Magdalena."
That rotten snake of a man suddenly had an idea. An idea to get out of there and escape. He could fix this. He knew stuff, he had valuable information that could be traded for his freedom - information on people that maybe someone was looking for, but first he had to get out of here before they found the body in the trunk. Or so his thoughts and intentions could be speculated upon or guessed at based on his past selfish and rotten behavior, or maybe based on what happened next.
"Have your friend get in the car on the other side and together you can pull and get me out of here." Then, he bold-faced lied straight up to two girls, one his daughter who still believed he could change. "Help me get out. I'm going to turn myself in."
I climbed through the broken window on the other side by first pushing the glass out with a nearby rock. As soon as I was in, Randall Michael Wall grabbed me with his right hand by the hair and pulled me so close that I could smell his rotten breath and something else that was making my own eyes water.
"Now girls, it's time to get out of here, but first, Magdalena I need you to do something. I cannot reach it, but there is a knife in my leg. Can you see it?"
Magdalena peered inside the car and craned her neck to see. She could see the end of the knife stuck up to the handle in her dad's thigh. It looked like it would hurt bad, she said later.
"It is hurting me pretty badly. Will you pull it out?"
"I don't know, daddy. I don't want to touch it. I'm afraid. Help is coming. We can wait. They will help you."
Randall Michael Wall, who was bleeding out slowly, spoke to his daughter with a tenderness he never used when he was completely alive. "My beautiful, brave daughter, I only ask one thing of you - pull it out. It will make things all better."
Magdalena took a deep breath and reached over her dad and pulled the knife out slowly. She had it out only an inch when a spray of blood erupted over her face and hair and hit the windshield. It was hard to guess who was more shocked.
"Well, shit," said Randall Michael Wall. He pushed the knife back in.
Magdalena tried to push the blood back in with her hands. "Oh my God, help me" she screamed as she crawled in through the window "Grab that coat and tie it around his leg. Tight," Magdalena screamed.
And I tried. I did.
As much as we wanted him gone, plotted his demise, prayed him to drop dead, wished him away, and thought of ways to Dexter him, nothing prepared us for the meanest man on earth meeting his end, leaving earth, finally getting his comeuppance. Just when I was sure he was about to meet the devil, Randall Michael Wall grabbed my hair and pulled me closer. "Open the door on your side. We're leaving."
When Sheriff Nichols got to the car, both Magdalena and I were crying hysterically, blubbering incoherently like babies, and drenched in blood.
"Let them go," said Sheriff Nichols just like you thought he would in a crisis situation. All cool and calm, like the sheriff before the gunfight, but with just a hint of how deadly he could be if pushed.
"Not just yet, Boss, "said Randall Michael Wall who still had me by the hair. He did not have Magdalena at all, but amazingly she was standing between him and the Sheriff as if to protect her dad. She would not budge. She backed when he backed. Her dad looked around the chaos and spotted his escape. Randall Michael Wall backed up to the farmer's tractor, dragged me up with him, as my heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. He said, "I'll let her go as soon as I'm clear." He was a man of his word on this because as soon as he was on the road at the edge of the woods, he threw me off and not so gently either. I ran to the Sheriff and Magdalena bawling in jagged breath-stealing cries.
The out of town reporter got the photograph that won him a promotion and a huge payday later when he sold it and it ended up on the news. The two girls in the photograph looked like victims in a horror movie, one, mouth agape staring off at something unseen, the other head in hands with both framing her tear streaked face, both girls with blood squirted on them like ketchup out of a squirty bottle in a food fight. Normally minors are not featured on the front page, but it was too good a shot to pass up, especially when Darrell's body was discovered in the trunk and the story got weirder. The photo of the small town sheriff with his arms draped around two kneeling, crying, bloody girls in obvious shock and distress, trying to comfort them was a picture that spoke a thousand words. The Headline Read:
Killer and Kidnapper Escapes: Leaves Death and Destruction
The caption to the photo read:
Two unidentified girls are comforted at the scene of a wreck where killer and kidnapper, Randall Michael Wall, was captured, then escaped. The manhunt continues. Both girls are expected to recover from their injuries.
There was no mention that the killer was somebody's daddy, somebody in the picture.
And, not only that but, he killed somebody else's only daddy she ever knew, who was the other girl in the picture.
Sheriff Nichol's was quoted as saying, "Don't worry. He won't get far. He was hurt pretty bad."
Randall Michael Wall got farther than the Sheriff thought he would. It took authorities three days to find him. By then his bloated body had floated down the Ararat River from Mount Airy to Siloam. His body turned up snagged in an overhanging tree right below the Atkinson-Needham Memorial bridge. The knife was still stuck in his thigh and the coat was still tied around his leg. The coroner ruled Randall Michael Wall bled out before he ever had the chance to drown.
Randall Michael Wall met the devil, and the devil decided to keep him.