Tommy, hunched over the wheel of the Dodge, grinned and said, “Right on time.”
Parker nodded, but kept his eye on the back seat, where both troopers were tensing up a little, particularly the one without a name. They would finally be understanding what was happening now, and one or the other of them just might decide to be moronic. While the radio kept talking in two voices, saying idle things while the switch of responsibility was being made, Parker said over it, “Bob, why don’t you talk to your partner? Explain to him how it would be better to stay alive and hope to be a witness at my trial.”
“Neither one of us is stupid,” Trooper Jarvis said coldly. “We know when to bide our time.” And beside him, the anonymous trooper could be seen to relax and give up his dreams of kicking Tommy in the head, opening the door with his teeth, and dashing to the nearest headquarters for help.
“That’s good,” Parker said, being careful to talk exclusively to Jarvis. There was no point tensing the other one up again.
“The only question is,” Jarvis said, “how stupid you people are.”
“We won’t kill you unless you push it,” Parker said. “That answer the question?”
“Partly.”
The radio had stopped talking; the switch had been made, and Mackey and Devers were now out front of the convoy, leading it down the road.
Grinning, Tommy said, “I like things neat. Neat and sweet and organized.”
“Then you won’t mind jail,” the anonymous trooper said.
Nobody reacted. His remark just sat there, being ignored by everybody, even Trooper Jarvis. Slowly, the anonymous trooper blushed. He blinked, he stared defiantly out the window, he pretended he wasn’t blushing, he even bit the insides of his cheeks to make it stop, but he was blushing.
It was another several miles to the exit for U.S. 51. Vandalia was to the south, but they turned north, following in the wake of Noelle, who would be taking 51 and 29 up to Springfield. But the people in the Dodge weren’t going that far. They weren’t going even as far as Ramsey; a few miles short of that town they turned off on a small road to the right, toward the Kaskaskia River.
Just about now, Mackey and Devers would be stopping the convoy and explaining to everybody that they’d just received word on their radio about a bad accident up ahead, short of the Hamburg exit, blocking the entire road. They would have to make a detour, around through Ramsey and Hillsboro, rejoining the Interstate again at Greenville. If anybody in the convoy had a road map to follow, it would all look sensible, and not too much of a delay.
If there was trouble, Devers would get on the radio and say, “Is this Tobin?” Then Parker and Tommy and Lou Sternberg would get out of this part of the country as quickly as they could, leaving Devers and Mackey to work things out as best they could for themselves.
About half a mile in the side road, a small dirt track led off to the right. Tommy nosed the car in there, and stopped, leaving the engine and lights on.
“We get out here,” Parker said. “But we’re very slow and careful about it.”
Jarvis would be getting out on Tommy’s side, leaving Parker to take care of the excitable one. But there wasn’t any trouble, and when both troopers were out they were marched into the woods to the right of the car, put in seated position with their backs against trees, and then tied there with their belts through both elbows and around behind the tree.
“I’ll see you two again,” the anonymous trooper said. He sounded grim and dangerous, but it was just to soothe his ego.
Tommy laughed at him. “You wouldn’t know me if you fell over me. How can you tell one hippie from another?”
“That hair’s all a disguise,” the trooper said, loud and angry. “Don’t you think I figured that out? I know what you really look like, I’ve been studying your face.”
Tommy roared with laughter, clutching a tree to hold himself up. Parker looked at the other trooper, Jarvis, and saw him being expressionless and aloof. He would know, as Parker did, that his partner had just said something incredibly stupid, whether he was right or wrong. If he was wrong, he’d made a fool of himself, and if he was right, he’d just asked to be killed.
Still laughing, Tommy said to the trooper, “Man, you are something else. You’re a trip and a half. I’d like to keep you around in a cage, poke you with a stick every once in a while, and just listen to you talk.”
Quietly, Jarvis said, “But that’s what we’re going to do to you.” Said without his partner’s bluster, it was an effective remark.
Tommy lost all his humor. He stood glaring at Jarvis, and even in the dim shine from the car headlights Parker could see him thinking about doing some kicking. There was no point in that, and no need for it; Parker said, “Come on, it’s time.”
Tommy looked over at him, his eyes glinting slightly. “Right,” he said, his voice flat, and followed Parker through the trees back to the car.
They switched roles now, Parker getting behind the wheel to do the driving, and Tommy sliding in on the passenger side. They’d left the motor running, and Parker shifted into reverse, made a tight U-turn, and drove back out to the two-lane main road. Instead of turning either left or right when he got there, he angled almost directly across the blacktop, moving slowly, and steering to the left for the last few feet so as to put the right front wheel in the ditch. Now the rear of the car jutted out diagonally into the road, its headlights visible in the direction the convoy would be coming from.
Tommy said, “Can we get it back out of the ditch later?”
“Yes,” Parker said. He switched off the motor but left the lights on, and got out of the car. Tommy also got out, and they walked back across the road and then down along the shoulder southbound, their way illuminated by the Dodge’s headlights. They walked about two hundred feet, and then Parker stopped and looked back, judging the distance. “This should do it,” he said, and led the way off the road and in among the trees.
The two of them went ten or twelve feet in from the road, and then stopped and waited, leaning against tree trunks and looking out toward the road. Tommy said, “Just so no Good Samaritan shows up before they get here.”
“We checked it out well enough,” Parker said. “There’s no traffic on this road before seven, seven-thirty.”
”You never know,” Tommy said. “You never know who’s gonna get drunk and go visit Aunt Tillie.”
Parker said nothing to that. It was true, and it was the variable in any situation, the unexpected civilian walking into the middle of somebody else’s plan. But there was never any way to prepare for it, so all you could do was hope it wouldn’t happen. Or, if it did happen, hope you could absorb it without lousing things up.
They waited about five minutes, neither saying anything more, and the first they knew of the convoy’s arrival was when a dim red light began to flicker on the branches over their heads. Mackey and Devers, having seen the apparent accident ahead of them, had switched on their overhead flasher, would now accelerate away from the rest of the convoy, and come to a stop next to the Dodge, finishing at a slight angle so that the two vehicles, the patrol car and the Dodge, would completely block the road.
Headlights, out through the trees. Parker felt Tommy tense up beside him; the boy was surprisingly good and cool for his age, but everybody tenses.
The police car went by, red light turning. Tommy whispered, “Come on, come on.”
And here came the rest. The first Plymouth went by, and then the truck, slowing down, and finally the second Plymouth; its brake lights made a red pool on the road surface, to match the turning red light sliding along the tree branches up above.
Now Parker and Tommy moved out closer to the road. The second Plymouth had come to a stop just beyond where they’d been waiting, and in the Christmas-tree array of rear lights on the truck the four men inside the Plymouth could be seen in silhouette, their heads turning as they talked to one another, undoubtedly about the accident up ahead.