Chapter 10

The streets surrounding Wither’s Music Store were on the edge of town, and thus, deserted at this pre-dawn hour. Closer to town, maybe a mile or two down the road Joe could hear the wail of law enforcement vehicles undoubtedly looking for him. He went around to the alley behind the store and walked directly to the rear door before realizing the cops had taken his keys. He went to the sole rear window of the store that belonged to the stockroom.

It was locked. He took off his shirt, wrapped it around his hand and smashed a hole through the glass of the center pane above the lock and ripped his shirt to useless tatters.

Once in the store he immediately headed for his repairoom, found the tapeplayer and tried to eject the tape. The machine was plugged in and the Play/Record button was still pressed in. He tried several times to get the tape out, but the mechanism was hopelessly frozen and the recording head had the tape securely locked in place.

“Damn,” was Joe’s quiet, sole verbal reaction to this new development.

His other reaction was much stronger and purposeful: He smashed the tape player down on the bench and it splintered into about fifty pieces.

The cassttee inside came disloged from it’s previously confining machinery and wound up in only about twenty pieces, the tape freed from the cassette shell flowered out like Christmas tree garland. “Great,” was his next quiet verbal comment as he carefully gathered the tape and shell fragments in order to begin putting it back together.

Once he had rewound the tape on it’s two small hubs, he got some masking tape and started to reassemble the shell. Careful as he was, it was impossible to avoid getting dirt, grease, grime and, of course, blood all over the whole thing, inside and out. He worked quickly and decided when he had it all put back together he would call the police and tell them if Mary Gulder’s confession had not convinced them of his innocence, then, they could come down to Wither’s Music Store and hear the truth for themselves on a cheap, three-for-a-dollar, bloody, masking-taped-over, reassembled cassettee tape.