Time to Steal by John Gilstrap Page A

are. We tried to save him. Brad and I. We tried to stop the bleeding in his neck, but we couldn’t.”
    â€œThere’s an eyewitness, Nicki.”
    â€œThere can’t be! Oh, wait. That old man? He didn’t walk out till way after the shooting. He saw us trying to help, and then pointed a gun at us. That’s when we ran.”
    Carter felt the air escaping from his lungs. This sounded like a very well-rehearsed alibi, one he’d love to buy, but his bullshit-o-meter was pinging. “Nicki, you’re not making any sense. If you didn’t do anything, why would you run away?” He heard himself cross-examining her and he hated himself for it. “Look, none of that matters—”
    â€œIt does matter, Daddy. We didn’t do anything. They think we did.”
    â€œIt’s not his first time, Nicki.” There. He put it right out there for her to see. “He’s committed this same crime before.”
    â€œHe only drove the car before. He never shot anybody. He’s never killed anybody .”
    Carter couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You know about his record? You know about the robbery and his escape from prison, and you’re still with him?”
    â€œI love him, Daddy.”
    Carter was ready to do battle. She did not love him. She was seventeen years old. She wouldn’t know what love was if it hit her with a rock.
    But he restrained himself. This was neither the time nor the place. “I know you do,” he said. The words tasted like sour milk. “And I know that you’re trying to run away from the life you think is awful, but honey, you can’t do it this way. It’s too dangerous. Every moment you’re on the run makes it that much more difficult to prove your innocence.”
    â€œThere was supposed to be a video,” Nicki said. “There are cameras all over the store, and we thought that the video would show that we didn’t do anything but try to help.”
    â€œYou thought wrong, Nicki. The cameras are there, but the man who owns the place has a drinking problem. He forgot to load the machines with videotape. Which to me is a good thing under the circumstances, because he swears that he saw your friend Brad shoot the clerk.”
    â€œThat’s a lie!” He could tell that Nicki was in a place where she could be overheard by the way she dialed down her tone. “He couldn’t have seen that.”
    Carter was growing impatient. “Nicki, he’s an eyewitness. He knows what he saw.”
    â€œThat’s just the point,” Nicki said. “Even if we’d done the shooting—which we didn’t—he couldn’t have seen it because he wasn’t there. He was in the back room. He didn’t come out until Brad and I were on the floor behind the counter trying to help Chas.”
    Carter drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He was beginning to see an early ray of light here. “Maybe he saw it on the monitor in the back,” he offered, testing the strength of Nicki’s argument.
    â€œThen why did he stay back so long? Why didn’t he come out shooting earlier?”
    â€œMaybe he was frightened.”
    â€œThen why did he come out at all? Why didn’t he wait till we were gone? Or call the police from back in the back room? Come on, Daddy, that doesn’t make sense.”
    Carter started to say something, but stopped. She asked a very good question, one that was not adequately answered by what old Ben Maestri was saying. “But why would he lie?” he wondered aloud.
    â€œWhy would I?” Nicki responded. The question knocked him off balance. It was perhaps the most important question of all, and it hadn’t even passed through his head. “I’m not a murderer, Daddy.”
    â€œI know that—”
    â€œAnd I wouldn’t stay with someone who is. You have to know that.”
    Up ahead, through the rain, Carter