It was Roy Surratt against the world.
By now the people who had come out of the supermarket had gone back in, or had drifted away. I stood there in the doorway wondering what the hell I was going to do. I had to get out of this neighborhood somehow, and fast, but I had no idea how I was going to manage it until I saw the young punk, the kid in the white apron, come out of the supermarket loaded down with two paper bags full of groceries. There was a Ford sedan at the curb in front of the supermarket, and that's where he was heading.
“Just a minute, Joe, I'll get that door for you.”
I looked around to see where the voice was coming from, and saw the woman coming out of the market carrying another, smaller, bag. She was about forty years old and looked like a typical middleclass housewife. She opened the luggage compartment and the kid dumped the groceries inside.
“Thanks, Mrs. Rider. That canned stuff sure is heavy.”
The woman said something and the kid went back to the supermarket. Mrs. Rider stood there for a minute, frowning and listening to the sirens, then she closed the trunk lid that the punk had forgotten and went around to the driver's side of the car. I stepped out of the doorway and walked over to the Ford.
“There's been no accident, Mrs. Rider,” I said.
Startled, she snapped her head around and stared at me. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said there's been no accident. Those police cars you hear, they're looking for me, Mrs. Rider.” I didn't have a gun to freeze her into silence, and I didn't want her to start screaming... not until I was close enough to choke it off, at least. So I spoke gently, quietly, hoping that she would understand her position and be sensible about it.
I opened the door on the driver's side and said, “I don't want to hurt you, Mrs. Rider. That's the last thing in the world I want....” But it was no use. I could see the scream coming up in her throat.
I had to act fast. I jumped inside and hit her. I knocked the scream out of her before it ever became a sound. Her head snapped back and she fell against the door on the other side of the car. I grabbed her and stuffed her down to the floorboards.
She was out cold.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IN THE GLOVE compartment I found an eight inch crescent wrench and a state road map. The wrench I slipped into my right hand pocket, the map I spread out on my lap and studied for four or five minutes trying to decide on the best escape route out of Lake City.
There were several ways to get out of the city, but the best and quickest way was a superhighway leading south of the city. Just outside the city limits there was an elaborate traffic circle that would take you off in about any direction you wanted, and I decided this would be my best bet. My big problem was getting to that traffic circle before the cops set up a roadblock.
I stuffed the road map back into the glove compartment and then pulled Mrs. Rider up onto the seat and slapped her a couple of times to bring her out of it. She wasn't really hurt, although she might have trouble chewing on the left side of her jaw for a few days. She was suffering from shock more than anything. The slapping took care of that.
“... Stop that!”
“That's more like it,” I grinned. I had slipped over on the passenger's side of the car and put her under the wheel, and now I had my hand in my coat pocket, holding the crescent wrench like a gun.
“Mrs. Rider,” I said quietly, “I don't want to be forced to use this gun. Now you're not going to make me use the gun, are you?”
That scared her plenty, and I knew I had her in the palm of my hand. “Please... please put it away!”
“It's just a precaution, Mrs. Rider; a man in my position can't afford to take chances.”
“What... are you going to do!”
“I've got to get out of Lake City, and I've got to do it fast. You're going to help me, Mrs. Rider. You are going to drive just where I tell you to drive, and as long as you do that you won't be hurt.”
“I'm... I'm so nervous... I don't think I can drive.”
“Sure you can, Mrs. Rider. All you have to do is keep thinking about this gun in my pocket. You keep thinking about this gun, and what will happen to you if anything goes wrong, and I'm sure everything will be fine. Now start the car.”
She was nervous, all right, but she started the car. She was thoroughly convinced that I had a gun on her, and would kill her, and she was more than eager to do anything I said.
I directed her west, through the outskirts of Lake City, and then we hit the four lane highway and headed south and I stopped worrying about Mrs. Rider. But I worried about those cops, plenty.
Those cops with their short wave radios, and their teletype machines, and their identification experts. What I needed was a short wave radio, one like Dorris Venci had had in her Lincoln. If I had a radio like that, I'd know if the cops were already busy setting up roadblocks or if they were still fooling around that apartment house trying to flush me out of some hole.
But I didn't have a radio and I didn't know a damn thing. All I could do was hope.
Then I glanced at the Ford's speedometer and it was nosing up toward 60, and I said sharply, “Watch your speed!”
She winced as though I had slapped her again, but she jumped off that accelerator. “Please!” she said, almost sobbing. “You know how nervous I am!”
“And you know how cops are about speed laws. If we get jumped for speeding, Mrs. Rider, I'll be forced to conclude that you did it on purpose and act accordingly. That's something you might think over whenever you see that speedometer indicate more than 45.”
“I just didn't notice!” she whined. “I had no idea of attracting the police!”
“I assure you,” I told her, “that such an idea would be a most dangerous one.”
Several minutes went by. We said nothing. There wasn't a cop in sight, anywhere. After a while I got to thinking, maybe it's going to work! Maybe I got the jump on them enough to make it work!
Then, at that moment when I should have been thinking “cops” and nothing but “cops,” I found myself thinking about Pat.
That's all over now, I thought. Even before it got started, it's over. And I felt a kind of emptiness that I had never known before. By now she probably knew all about me. By now she would know that I had killed Alex Burton, and she was probably hating my guts like she had never hated anything before.
Strangely, that was my only regret at that moment. All around me were the cops, I was just a short jump ahead of violent death and I knew it... what's more, I had just seen my beautiful million dollar blackmail scheme go down the sewer... still, all I could think of was that Pat was hating my guts.
I didn't know if I loved her... or even if I was capable of love; but all the same the emptiness was there, cold and swollen inside me. Then I caught myself toying with a dangerous idea, much more dangerous than the one I had warned Mrs. Rider about. I caught myself thinking: If I could just see her and talk to her maybe I could get it straightened out. After all, she has nothing to go on but Dorris's letter; so it's my word against Dorris's word. And Dorris Venci, I reminded myself, had never given her a Balmain coat, and I had. That should make a difference about whose word she would take, if I knew anything at all about women.
I had seen Pat's eyes, that night when she had stood staring at herself in my mirror, all wrapped up in the fantastic luxury of that coat. I remembered that night and seriously doubted that my past, my prison record, would bother her a great deal.
Then Mrs. Rider made a small surprised sound and the car began to slow down.
I snapped out of it. I slammed the door on my subconscious.
“What are you doing!”
“... Up ahead,” she said shakily, licking her lips nervously. “The traffic...”