2 The Escape
A few hours later, I pulled into the parking lot of a Quiki-Mart for a cup of coffee. The urns were at the back of the store. I grabbed a 12-ounce cup and stepped to the rear of a slow-moving check-out line.
Two men wearing ski masks and waving pistols charged in. “Everyone back,” one of them ordered. “Move to the back of the store,”
The other one pointed a pistol at the cashier and handed her a sack. “Empty the register.”
The line in front of me started backing away from the gunman. As soon as I took a step back, I bumped into the guy behind me. I turned my head to see a tall, rangy dude. He took a step back.
There were seven or eight rows of goods. Everything from canned beans to chips to packaged breakfasts and sandwiches for lunch. I was looking down an aisle of doughnuts, cupcakes, and chips when the robbers burst into the store. People in front of me kept pushing into me as they backed away from the gun. I kept bumping against the guy behind me. We moved along the aisle between the check-out counter and rows of food and knick-knacks. When we reached the end, we rounded the corner into a lane between microwaveable meals and freezers housing ice cream and bags of ice. I pushed the guy behind me all the way to the end of that row. Another step and he would have been in a second aisle that led to the front of the store.
We waited next to the freezers, certain we were about to die. The gangster pointed his gun ominously, his thoughts hidden by a ski mask.
His partner marched the clerk to the back of the store and then off to a storage area. Minutes later, he came out without her and walked to the man at the head of the line. “Valuables.”
The guy emptied his pockets and dropped a wristwatch into the bag. Then he was taken back to the storage area. The gunman returned without him and approached the woman at the front of our line. She obediently deposited her purse and jewelry in his swag bag before marching off to the storage area with the gunman right behind her.
I bumped against the guy behind me and whispered, “We’ve got to get out now.”
“Yeah. But they’ve got a clean shot at the door.”
“We could go through the window.”
“How you gonna break the glass?”
“There are cases of drinks at the front. That might do it.”
“Shut up,” a gruff voice ordered.
We stopped talking. The guy with the sack came back out to collect his next victim. As the man began putting his things into the bag, I turned and shoved my accomplice. He stepped back and around the end of the shelves. I turned to follow. My partner was a kid. Probably still in high school. He was swift and quiet. I followed as best I could. One of the gunmen yelled, “Hey.”
He fired a shot, but I was already around the corner. The kid was at the end of the shelves. He scooped up a 12-pack of colas, stepped past the last shelf, and fired the carton at the plate glass window. He threw it side-arm like a basketball pass. A bullet buzzed past my head. The storefront window shattered. Alarms went off. All hell broke loose. Something hit my shoulder and spun me around. I fell backward against a shelf full of cans and blacked out.
I must have been out for a couple of minutes because police were on the scene by the time I tried to get up. An officer grabbed my elbow to help me to my feet. White-hot pain shot through my shoulder. She stared at my shoulder. There was a hole in my jacket and some blood. She said, “You’ve been shot.”
I made a fist, flexed my muscles, and moved my arm up and down. It hurt like hell, but I scrunched my nose and shook my head. “It’s nothing.”
The cop led me to an ambulance in the parking lot. An EMT removed my shirt and examined the wound. It was a little more than a flesh wound, but none of the bones, blood vessels, or nerves was damaged. She wanted to take me to the hospital for treatment. I refused. I promised I would see a doctor when I got to my cousin’s house in St. Louis. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she climbed into the back of the ambulance.
The kid was standing near the front of a police cruiser just out of earshot. Two cops had him hemmed in. It looked like they had cuffed him and were hassling him. He was stoic. Staring up toward the sky. I got up and started toward the group. “Hey. What’s going on?”
“Stay back, sir.”
I kept moving closer. “What’s going on?”
“Stay back, Sir. This is police business.”
“Are you arresting this man?”
“This is an arrest, and you need to stay back.”
“On what grounds?”
One of them sporting a PFC stripe on his left sleeve turned to glare at me. I was getting hot. “I’ll have your badges if you don’t release him immediately.”
For some reason, the cop responded, “We caught him fleeing the scene of the crime.”
I almost said ‘fuck.’ But I managed to keep my cool, somewhat professional demeanor. “He was going for help. We fled the scene because the robbers were armed and getting ready to shoot us.”
“He broke that window out and sprinted across the parking lot.”
“Because I told him to.”
The other cop demanded, “Who the hell are you?”
“Release this man immediately.”
“We have him for destruction of property and fleeing the scene of a crime.”
“You’ve got yourself a career-ending lawsuit. Racial profiling and other violations of his civil rights.”
“You a lawyer?”
“A damn good one with connections. Let him go.”
The PFC looked tentative. Some citizens had pulled out their cellphones and started recording. One of them stepped forward. “Ed Turner, Channel 5 News.”
The cops clearly had a problem and needed a way out. I said, “Why don’t you let him go before we have to sue for ten million or so?”
The PFC and Turner came over to me. The cop told Turner to step back and turn off his recording. He turned to me. We were toe-to-toe, but he was three or four inches taller, so he was looking down at me. “What’s your version?”
“I was in line waiting to pay for my coffee when two guys with guns walked in and forced us to the back of the store. They lined us up against the back wall and then started taking us one-by-one into the rear. The kid and I decided we had to get out of there, so we took off.”
He studied me with a poker-faced stare. “Go on.”
“You’ll have to ask somebody else. I was racing to the front. They were shooting. One of the bullets hit me and knocked me down. I couldn’t see what was going on after that.”
“Were you heading for the door or the window?”
“The window. They had a clean shot at the door.”
“How did you plan to get out the window?”
“He was going to break it. We talked about that before we took off.”
“Can I see some identification?”
I handed him my driver’s license. He had me hold it against my chest while he snapped a picture.
He stared at me like he was trying to read my mind or, more likely, intimidate me. He turned and walked back to his partner. They removed the cuffs and retreated to the entrance of the Quiki-Mart. Turner reached the kid before I did, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him aside. He was fuming. “Don’t expect me to thank you for rescuing my black ass.”
“I just wanted to thank you for getting us out of that store.”
“I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t pushed me.”
“You did it. That’s the important thing. You deserve a medal.”
“I’ll be lucky if they don’t try to pin the robbery on me.”
“That won’t work. There are plenty of witnesses, and Turner will take your side on the news.”
“What about you?”
“I have to get to St. Louis.”
“You’re the only witness who can back me up.”
“What’s your name?”
“Tim Johnson.”
“Okay, Tim. I’m Don MacGregor. There is a tumor on my brain. It’s killing me. You can’t depend on me because I probably won’t be alive if and when this goes to trial.”
The young man’s eyes widened in shock. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Don’t be. Everybody dies. What counts is how you live.”
We bumped fists. I said, “Take care.”
The EMT was waiting at the ambulance. “Are you allergic to ampicillin?”
“I’m not allergic to anything.”
She gave me a pill and a cup of water. I swallowed them. She handed me four packages. “These will tide you over until you can get in to see a doctor. You need to take one every 12 hours.”
I asked her if I could go lay down in my RV. She wasn’t happy about the idea but nodded in the affirmative.
It looked like 5 or 6 police cars were jammed into the small parking area. I walked past them to my camper. It was three o’clock as I climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the parking lot. I was pissed about the cup of coffee. I had a long drive ahead of me. It would take another 4 or 5 hours to reach St. Louis, but I wasn’t going to chance another stop until I crossed the Mississippi.