The Toyota’s headlights were visible on the blacktop now, laying down a whitish sheen that extended to the fence posts and lengths of wire separating the road’s edge from the pumpkin field.
I ran away from the car, back toward the trees so the Toyota’s lights wouldn’t pick me out when Latimer made the turn. Something on the .38 snagged in my pocket as I tried to free the weapon; I cursed and yanked hard, heard the faint ripping of cloth as it tore loose. Then it was out and tight in my fingers and I was in a half crouch in the grass and shadows a few yards off the road, a dozen yards from my car.
The engine whine grew louder; the headlamp beams began their sweep as he drove into the curve. The instant I saw the Toyota’s nose I knew he wouldn’t be able to stop in time straight on. I was up and already starting forward when the lights threw the shape of my car into bright relief.
Latimer stood on the brakes, cramping the wheel to the left to protect his side from impact — the instinctive reaction I’d counted on. Tires and stressed brake linings screeched; the station wagon slid sideways into my car in a three-quarters broadside. Not hard enough to raise much noise or do much damage to either one, but with sufficient force to stall the Toyota’s engine, knock something off one or the other’s body. There was a metallic clatter on the pavement as I ran up on Latimer’s side with the gun extended. The driver’s door wasn’t locked. I yanked it open with my left hand, my mouth coming open at the same time to yell at him to freeze where he sat.
He should’ve been confused, if not stunned or hurt; I should’ve been able to get him under the gun and keep him there. But it didn’t work that way. He was already moving when I opened the door, lunging straight up at me, his face twisted and shining masklike in the dome light. I did not have enough time to set myself or to pull the .38 back out of the way; he plowed into me and one hand struck my arm above the wrist, dislodged the piece and sent it flying. He wedged his shoulder into my sternum, wrapped his arms around my body, and drove me backward and then down under his weight.
If he’d been bigger, if I had landed on the blacktop, it might have been over then and there — for me. The back of my head banged into the ground, but it was mostly thick grass there on the verge, and that cushioned the impact. Still, my vision went out of whack; light and dark images danced and collided and swam apart. He was still on top of me, spitting and snarling in my face, one of his hands groping for my crotch. I bucked him off. But he was back before I could roll over and lever myself up into some kind of fighting position. Pinning me down with torso and legs, swinging with both hands.
Even flat on my back I was able to fend off most of the blows. You can’t get much leverage or power behind a punch at close quarters. But I still couldn’t see very well; he was just a dark blur in front of my face. I blocked two more swings, but the one after that got through and slammed into my Adam’s apple. Pain erupted; I thought in that first instant that he’d crushed something in there. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t move my head.
His big mistake was in not following up, because in those first few seconds after the blow landed I was pretty much helpless. Only he didn’t know that, didn’t realize where or how hard he’d hit me, and in the darkness and sweaty heat of battle he couldn’t see me pawing at my throat. All he knew was that I was flopping around, kicking my legs, and that I was bigger and stronger than him, even if he did have fifteen years on me; he wanted no more of this kind of give-and-take. The punches stopped coming. He was off me then, and through the blood-pound in my ears I could hear him scrambling away, then beating frantically at something nearby.
The fence. Trying to get over the fence.
I rolled over, shoved onto my knees. My vision was no longer cockeyed, but ghosts kept fluttering at the edges and I was trying to look through them and through a haze of sweat; it took a few seconds to get a bead on Latimer. He was over the fence by then, stumbling off among the pumpkin vines. Ex-military man, ex-con, vicious murderer — fleeing across a pumpkin field like a frightened rabbit.
It took two tries to get on my feet. I could breathe all right through my nose, but my throat was on fire; pain pulsed up into my skull with the first step I took, kept on pulsing in harsher surges as I staggered to the fence. I could not climb the thing — my body wouldn’t respond that way. Latimer had bent the fence inward making his climb, so I went through it at the same point, bending wire and uprooting posts, knocking it flat the way a tractor or a tank would. Ahead, Latimer was looking back and he saw me coming; it must have been a hell of a fearful sight because he tripped in his haste and fell and then scuttled like a crab before he was able to regain his feet.
The field was mostly plowed earth and vines and developing fruit. The going wasn’t too bad as long as you stayed in between the rows. I had a head of steam up, and when Latimer stopped and then bent and groped along the ground for something to use as a weapon, I knew I had him. Panic had taken him over, and panic loses a two-man confrontation — most other confrontations — nearly every time.
He came up with a rock or dirt clod, flung it at me as I barreled in on him. It missed wide, but I would not have slowed unless it had struck me square in the face; I didn’t even turn my head aside.
That was the last straw for Latimer. He broke and ran again, this time in a veer toward the bluffs, as if his terror was driving him to seek escape by a plunge into the sea.
I caught him before he’d gone another twenty yards.
The rest of it was anticlimactic. He threw obscenities along with a few punches, but fighting with your hands and your mouth at the same time is a loser’s game. I hit him twice in the face and once over the heart, and the heart shot put him down on all fours. He crawled around in a confused way, like a wounded animal, until I put a foot in the middle of his back and flattened him. Then he quit moving and just lay there, sucking air in gasps louder than mine, while I straddled him and hauled out the handcuffs and snapped them over his wrists.
The next few seconds were lost time, a blackout period induced by intense stress and its sudden release. When I came out of it, I was on my feet and dragging Latimer back toward the fence, one hand bunched in the material of his jacket. We were almost there before I grew aware of the headlights fast approaching on Bluffside Drive.
Dixon, I thought. Better be. I’m in no shape to deal with strangers.
It was Dixon. Whatever he was driving bucked to a halt with the headlights shining close on my car and the Toyota. Not that he had any other choice; the way the impact had left the two machines jammed together, there was no room to drive around on either side. He came out in a hurry. He must’ve seen me — I was at the fence by then, the section of it that I’d knocked down — but he went straight to the station wagon, leaned his body inside. Looking for his son. I’d have done the same thing if the boy were mine.
Once he’d convinced himself Chuck wasn’t there, he backed out and headed my way. I was half dragging, half lifting Latimer’s limp form over the wire when he reached us. He looked at me, looked at Latimer, and said in anguished tones, “What happened, what’s Latimer doing here? Where’s Chuck?”
I tried to tell him, but my voice box wouldn’t work; all that came out of the burning in my throat was a barely audible croak. I touched my Adam’s apple to let him know I was hurt and he nodded jerkily. Then I gestured at Latimer, semiconscious and groaning; gestured at the cars, saying mutely that Dixon should help me haul the prisoner over there.