The reporter let the special run and it went quickly to 85 miles an hour, but no faster because it was a car for city traffic. A long powerful state-police car began to crawl up bigger and bigger in the rear-view mirror, and finally pulled up alongside. It was there only an instant because the officer in it was alone, on the wrong side to shoot, and before he could pull far enough ahead to push them off the road, Numbers pushed his gun through the window and the trooper dropped back instantly, to follow them instead, almost bumper to bumper, where Numbers could not get a clear shot at him.
They were still a mile or so ahead of the other police cars when they went around one of the sweeping banked express-highway curves and a yellow sign flickered up on the right side, warning of a side road.
“There’s a turn,” Numbers said.
“We’re going too fast,” said the reporter.
“So turn anyway,” Numbers shouted. The side road was suddenly there, and a billboard that said Three Miles to Centerville. “I don’t feel like leading no parade into Centerville.”
Numbers lunged forward at the wheel and they turned in a shrieking rubber-burning gravel-spraying curve that did not quite come out at the same angle as the side road. They went through a guard rail in an explosion of splinters, across a ditch, and then through a fence and into standing corn where the ground was soft and clung to the tires so that it was like a carrier landing, slowing up too soon but not killing anyone.
The reporter put his head down on the wheel feeling very cold and stiff, and meanwhile the state-police car that had not tried to follow them on the turn made a tight precarious swing on the highway and came into the side road. They were behind the billboard and almost hidden in the corn, and the officer came running from his car, trying to get the sling of a machine gun over his head. When he got to the corn, a cock pheasant began cackling in alarm.
Numbers was out of the car and the officer was running awkwardly down the corn row toward them when Numbers suddenly squeezed off a shot with the .357. He missed and the officer stopped short, an expression on his face as though he had forgotten what he was hunting, and while he fumbled desperately for the bolt on the machine gun, Numbers fired again. This time he did not miss. At 30 feet the bullet struck the trooper in the chest as though he had been slugged with a maul, with everything in him breaking and while not exactly flying into pieces, still clearly not being fastened together any more.
The reporter got out of the car with a love for far cornfields in his face, but Numbers jabbed the big ugly revolver at him and they were running for the long powerful state-police car up on the side road. Numbers stopped only for a moment, then came on with the little black-leather ammunition case from the trooper’s belt.
Just as they pulled away in the new car, the first of the remaining pursuers roared past on the highway, not seeing the smashed fence in time. Numbers was putting the little semicircular clips of revolver cartridges in his pocket.
“My other cop friend didn’t have any spares,” he said, and when the reporter didn’t comment he added, “my cop friend in the back seat, I mean, the dead one. All my cop friends are dead cops.”
This was sheer bravado. The reporter did not turn his head but something in his expression must have been visible to Numbers who said in an entirely different tone, “You’re supposed to be keeping track, you know.”
“Yeah.” The reporter did not recognize his own voice, but he did not like the sound of it. “Yeah. It looks as though you’re two ahead.”
“That’s the hell of it,” said Numbers. “Everything would come out even if people wouldn’t screw it up. The figures alone are nice and clean. Say,” he said, “maybe we ain’t got everything figured in. Maybe they owed me one for the old lady, too. That’s one more.”
“Old lady,” the reporter said. “Who?”
“You ought to read your own newspaper,” Numbers said. “Last week, back there just ahead of the want ads. Sixth from the top, my missus, in Other Deaths.”
“Maybe it was the sergeant’s fault.” The reporter heard emotion in his own voice for the first time.
“Cut it out,” said Numbers. “You’re a reporter, you ain’t people. The cops, when they’re working at it, they ain’t people either, any more than I am when I’m working at being a killer. Only difference, a killer don’t have no eight hour day so he can quit being a killer after the whistle blows and go home and take off the shoes. Once he’s got the job as a killer he ain’t ever people any more.”
They took another side road to the left, this one narrower and more rutted and rocky, and Numbers said, “My missus got sick in the railroad station. It was raining and she waited all night. Nobody’s fault, when you get right down to it. Anyway,” he said, “she was married to some other guy by then.”
After a while the reporter figured something out for himself.
“That was the day you were supposed to get out?”
“Yeah,” said Numbers. “I guess nobody remembered to tell her a cop-killer never gets out.” Then after a moment he said, “It must have been tough on the new guy she married. She was a good kid. But it wasn’t as tough as it would’ve been if he knew why she was there.”
There was a pause and finally Numbers asked again, “Do you think maybe they owed me a cop for her?”
The reporter said, “If you had a slide rule, maybe you could figure it out.”
Numbers did not seem to hear; he was lost in some thought of his own.
Outside, the afternoon sunlight was gone from the slopes, and in the hollows it was getting dark. The radio in this car was adjusted so they could hear the state police, and about the time the first red light showed up through the trail of dust behind them, the voice on the radio announced coldly to all cars that units were approaching the fugitive from both ends of the road.
Numbers pointed up ahead with the revolver barrel.
“There’s a nice stone farmhouse up on that hill,” he said, “and there ain’t many trees in the way. Maybe we ought to see do they take in tourists.”
The reporter swerved into the long climbing lane, hoping no one would be at home — please, there should not be anyone! — because from here on it was going to be rough.
“Nobody home,” Numbers called out.
They got out of the car beside the old stone house as the first of the police cars pulled up at the bottom of the lane. There was no idle shooting now. The police were too far away for the short gun and they were no longer in any hurry. In a little while the first cars came in from the other end of the road.