The Coffin Maker

Chapter 25

Edmond Crowley was pressed for time. He took the turn into the old cottage lane too fast and the back end of the Chevy came around and nearly clipped the gate pillar. He regained control, urging the car faster, the long uncut summer grasses whipping noisily at the side panels. The old garage came into view. He wanted badly to finish it in the Chevy but realized it was not going to happen. He drove the Chevy past the garage down to the boathouse at the water's edge and parked it. He grabbed his supplies from the back seat and ran back to the garage, entered the side door and hurriedly jammed the flexible hose over the exhaust pipe of his Sedona van. How clever he had been to procure the same model van as Emiliano Velásquez, he thought. How convenient that he and Bunny occasionally cared for the grounds keeper's Brussels Griffon. He chuckled when he thought about the little dog that the young women found so irresistible. Crowley was proud he had fooled everyone for so long. He slipped the other end of the hose into the partially open passenger window and sealed the opening with cardboard and duct tape. He understood it to be painless; the carbon monoxide replacing the oxygen in the blood; maybe feeling a little dizzy. He sat in the driver's seat and started the engine. With his hands on the wheel, he started visualizing the soccer fields, the parks, the oval tracks, the young women on display, the excitement of awaiting the opportunities. A reminiscent vision of Debbie popped into his mind; his reigning queen until Ailsa dethroned her; his first encounter with Ailsa in the library. Suddenly, the sound of approaching police sirens invaded his fantasy. They have come too soon! He pressed on the accelerator to increase the engine revs. He heard a convoy of law enforcement vehicles speed beyond the garage to the boathouse where he had parked the Chevy. He heard shouting.

***

Sheriff Petersen drew his pistol and rested his arm on the roof of the patrol car. He waited in readiness while the FBI tactical team surrounded the boathouse. The leader gave the order to employ a buttonhook entry technique, two agents burst through the door at the same time but they quickly re-emerged signaling the structure was empty. Agents checked a small pontoon boat moored at the dock. Petersen called out and waved his gun toward the garage. The tactical squad reformed. Petersen yelled at an officer to turn off the engine of his patrol car and called for silence.

"I hear a motor running," said Petersen.

The FBI team rushed the structure. At that instant, in an explosive spectacle of flying boards and splintering wood, a white Sedona van came crashing out of the garage. The shattered double doors swung wildly on their hinges. One broke loose and caught the flexible exhaust hose that Crowley had inserted in the passenger window and ripped it free from its cardboard cowling. Before the dust and scatterings settled, the van was well down the lane. Law enforcement ran to their vehicles and two patrol cars collided in the frenzy to turn around. By the time Sheriff Petersen got to the road, the suspect vehicle was not in sight. A frustrated Sheriff Petersen consulted his GPS map. The road to the right led to cottage communities further down the lake but not to a major access road. He ordered one patrol car and two officers in that direction and led the remaining entourage back the way they came. He called Agent Wu on her cell phone.

"It's Petersen. He's headed back your way in a white van. He's got a good lead on us."

"Okay. We'll set up a roadblock," said Wu. "Don't let him out of your sight!"

"Right," answered Petersen who fired a glance at his deputy as he gazed at the empty road ahead.

***

Wu and Blackwood left Ailsa and Riley Pacocha in the care of the EMR crews and focused their attention on a roadblock. Wu ordered her team to improvise a rampart from the Bureau's SUVs when Blackwood shouted that he had an idea. He grabbed a key from Crowley's key rack and tossed it to Wu.

"Here Lily, drive the Edsel!" Blackwood pointed to it when he realized that Wu was clueless as to which car to take.

Blackwood hit a switch on the wall and the remaining garage doors opened simultaneously. He jumped into the '34 Packard Super Eight, lay across the front seat and hot-wired the engine. It roared into action. Wu and Blackwood weaved the Crowley classics through the myriad of law enforcement and emergency vehicles and down the estate laneway. They parked the Packard and the Edsel end-to-end across the narrow road. Wu ordered her SUVs into position to block the ditches. In the distance, they heard the sirens of Sheriff Petersen's patrol cars. They waited.

Despite the failed suicide attempt and the poor odds of escaping, Edmond Crowley contemplated a getaway. Thanks to his wife's riches, he had money in Mexico and in Europe for such an occasion. There was a chance; no pursuit vehicles in the rear view mirror. It was very encouraging. However, as he steered around the last turn before the estate, he spied the roadblock in the distance and his mind became a whirlwind. His thoughts skipped between escape and suicide. He took a deep breath and accelerated the Sedona van toward the barricade. It would be a fitting spectacle, a fiery crash at the entrance to the estate. No accountability, no questions to answer, no standing on the other side of a courtroom bench. It would be quick and easy. "Wait! What's this?" he cried aloud, "No...!"

Judge Edmond Crowley saw his beloved '34 Packard Super Eight parked across the roadway, bumper to bumper with the '58 Edsel. He recalled the hundreds of hours of painstaking work that went into their restoration; the hammering by hand of the Packard's body panels, the shaping, the sanding, the spray painting; the mail-order taillight lens gasket for the Edsel that needed to be installed.

"I can't hurt my girls!" shouted Crowley. "I can't do it! ...Not my girls!"

Blackwood and Wu watched the tires of the speeding van bite into the pavement and the smoke rise as the rubber squealed against the hot asphalt. The vehicle swerved but Crowley stopped it inches from the Packard Super Eight. Wu's team was on him in an instant, leading him handcuffed to the Bureau's paddy wagon when Bunny Crowley stepped forward to confront her husband. She stood before him, face to face, raised her arm and slapped him with every ounce of force her five foot five frame could muster.

"You bastard!" she screamed. "A lifetime is not enough to wash away the memory of your sickening deeds," she sobbed, collapsing into the arms of her friends.