Hadley & Grace(63)
“Come on, Champ,” Mattie urges. “I Don’t Know’s on third . . .”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“It’s why I told you to go,” Hadley says. “It’s over. There’s no way we’re not going to get caught.”
“Look, Miles is smiling,” Mattie says.
The thumping stops.
“See, everyone’s okay,” Mattie goes on. “Miles has never heard us do this. Let’s do it for him. I Don’t Know’s on third . . .”
Skipper’s voice, thick with emotion, says, “That’s what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellas on the Saint Louis team.”
Hadley sighs in relief, and Grace exhales as well.
They both listen as Mattie and Skipper continue the routine; then Grace turns back to Hadley and says, “So much for laying low and not drawing attention to ourselves.”
“Yeah, so much for that.” Hadley looks up through her brow. “Did you really run over those guys’ motorcycles?”
A small twitch of a smile as Grace says, “I believe I did.”
“I love you,” Hadley says as fresh tears spring to her eyes.
“Jiminy Crickets,” Grace says, clearly not sharing the sentiment; then she pivots and marches away.
“Where are you going?”
“To get us out of this mess.”
43
MARK
Mark is sitting by himself at a tiny table in the front window of Café Bean, an imitation Starbucks on the outskirts of Las Vegas. He stares at the newspaper. The half-page photo on the front page shows a blurry shot taken through the window of a barbeque joint in Salt Lake City called Pat’s. In it, Hadley is firing a gun. The photo actually caught the flash from the muzzle, a white splotch that looks almost like a blemish on the dark image. In the background is Grace, four men, and Mattie. Grace and one of the bikers are closest, the others behind them. It’s hard to make out the details, but one of the men has his arm around Mattie, presumably the reason Hadley was shooting.
The headline reads, Real-Life Thelma and Louise Blaze through Salt Lake City.
He sighs, sets the paper down, rubs his eyes.
Blinking them open, he takes a sip of his coffee, then reads the article for the fourth time, stunned each time with how almost accurate it is:
Like the fictional characters Thelma and Louise, two women have abandoned their suburban lives, hit the road, and found themselves on what appears to be an inadvertent crime spree that has them running from the law. But unlike the movie, these women are not on the run alone; with them are their three children, ages fourteen, eight, and four months.
Hadley Torelli, 38, and Grace Herrick, 26, left their Orange County, California, homes on Friday. It is not clear what prompted the women to leave, but on Saturday, the two eluded officials who attempted to detain them first at a hospital in Mission Viejo, where Torelli was being treated for a sprained ankle, then in Barstow. Why the FBI was pursuing the women is unclear, and the FBI has refused to comment.
Both women left behind husbands. Torelli has been married fifteen years to prominent Orange County businessman Frank Torelli, and Herrick has been married six years to US Army corporal James Herrick, who is currently serving in Afghanistan.
Early Sunday morning, Senior Special Agent Mark Wilkes tracked the women to a motel in Baker, a small city outside of Las Vegas, but before he could apprehend them, the women abducted him at gunpoint, stole his car, and drove him to a closed archaeological site, where they left him bound but with food, water, and supplies. The agent managed to escape late Sunday evening and was unharmed.
If this story sounds stranger than fiction, it is, and it gets stranger. Last night, the women, who had not been seen since leaving the agent, showed up at Pat’s Barbeque, a restaurant in Salt Lake City, where the evening ended in a shoot-out in the parking lot with a group of motorcyclists, followed by Herrick using the truck they were traveling in to run over the motorcyclists’ motorcycles.
Witnesses say the women appear to be traveling with a substantial amount of money, and everyone interviewed has described the women as friendly, polite, and generous. Nancy Carron, an 85-year-old woman from Mission Viejo who loaned her car to the women so they could drive to Barstow, said this about Torelli: “She was lovely. Poor thing. I could see she was in pain. And that little boy of hers was darling, eyes so light they reminded me of sea glass.”
Carron loaned her car to the women in exchange for ten thousand dollars. “They left Pujols, that’s what I call my car, right where they said they would,” Carron says. “They even left a lovely note. Of course then the FBI got involved. Took the note and the money. Thieves.”
Carron is not the only one Torelli and Herrick have been charitable with. The women also gave ten thousand dollars to Hunter Schwarz, a 23-year-old motel clerk who was working at the Wills Fargo Motel in Baker the night the women stayed there. The note penned on the top bill of the bundle of hundreds they left beneath his pillow read, “Get yourself a new smile and a new girl.” Hunter explained he has been saving to have two teeth that were knocked out in a fight replaced. He had no idea the women had left the money until the FBI showed up and went through his things.
Unfortunately, neither Carron nor Schwarz will get to keep their gifts. The money has been seized as “evidence,” and again the FBI has refused to comment.