He considered the back gate and the alley beyond, then rejected the idea. For all he knew there was another squad car out there waiting for him. He listened for an idling engine, but heard nothing. He forced himself to trot to the fence separating his yard from the Trumbles and vaulted it. He would have had trouble getting over the five-foot tall fence any other day, but tonight adrenalin was dribbling into his bloodstream at top output. He knew the Trumbles didn’t have a dog and rarely ventured into the backyard except to keep it immaculately well-trimmed. His own was an overgrown jungle by comparison. He trotted across the lawn and moved to their side gate. Their house was on the corner, so they had easy access to the street. The gate clicked and stuck for a maddening moment, then squealed open on unoiled hinges. Irrationally, he cursed the Trumbles for shoddy maintenance, although the lord only knew the last time he had oiled anything on his property.
Once on the street, he headed across to the other side and walked swiftly into the nearest open alleyway. He knew the neighborhood well and it only took him minutes to get to an all-night gas station and used his wife’s cell phone. He hoped they weren’t tracing that one yet, but he knew it was only a matter of time. He called Brenda’s cell phone, got no answer, then called her house.
While he was waiting for her to call back, he saw two squad cars pull up to the stop sign fifty feet away. He tried to shrink into the shadows. Fortunately, the closest streetlight was out and left him a comforting pool of shadow to stand in.
It took long seconds for the squad cars to move on. Immediately after them, a featureless blue sedan pulled up that had government plates. Agent Vasquez sat at the wheel. She crashed the stop sign and headed for the I-80 onramp.
Soon after they were gone, the phone rang in his hand.
“Brenda?” he asked.
“Who’s this?” she barked back suspiciously. Ray felt a wave of relief to hear her voice.
“Brenda, I need your help.”
“Ray?”
“Dammit, Brenda,” he said.
“Oh, sorry. Right. Well, Nameless One, no shit you need my help.”
Ray smiled and frowned at the same time. “Do you believe I’m innocent, Brenda?”
“Of course I do!” she exclaimed, sounding offended that he should ask. “Fucking feds are wasting precious resources on you while they could be solving two serious crimes.”
“Can you pick me up?”
“Name it.”
“The Wendy’s on-the one we hate to go to.”
“Right. Give me twenty minutes. Make it fifteen.”
“Brenda?”
“What?”
“Thanks.”
“Remember me at Christmas,” she said.
Ray took the time to buy a new prepaid phone at the first shop he passed. The whole shock of the idea that he was a fugitive from the law and on the run began to set in. He looked at everyone in the store as if they were about to perform a citizen’s arrest. Wasting no more time, he headed for Wendy’s-the one on Burgandy Avenue that sold burgers which Brenda always complained weren’t ‘fresh enough’.
… 69 Hours and Counting…
Between Stockton and Fresno I-5 was one of the loneliest stretches of highway in California. Signs read things like 40 MILES TO NEXT GAS and REST AREA 17 MILES. The moonless night was broken only by the neon shimmer of a mega-truck stop. The truck stop was a great, black island of tarmac surrounded by a gently rolling sea of foxtails. Spurlock’s van sat in a deserted corner of this dark continent. An electric glare of pink and green hues filtered through the windshield and past the dirty curtains to illuminate Spurlock’s hand. His silver thumb ring shone in the alien light.
Spurlock fed the kid another hotdog out of a plastic pack. Faintly pink, watery hotdog-juice ran down his hand and felt cold on his track marks. His hand trembled a bit as he pushed another hotdog between the bars of the cage, and he knew he was going to have to have a fix soon. He forced the thought away so he could enjoy himself.
“Here boy,” he chuckled, waggling the hotdog at the kid. “Come on, eat it!”
The kid had his hands tied behind his back now, but Spurlock had pulled his gag down so he could eat. The gag hung around his neck like a scarf. Tears rolled down the kid’s face as he came up and took a bite from the waggling hotdog.
“There we go!” Spurlock exclaimed. He laughed happily. “Good dog! Hungry doggie!”
Spurlock had always enjoyed this game with the runaways he had picked up before. He felt that it prepared them for their futures, that it was a preliminary to the training they would receive from the pros in L.A. Of course, then they wouldn’t be allowed to bite. He chuckled to himself at the thought and felt just a bit of arousal, which surprised him, because he rarely became aroused without a great deal of chemical help.
This chicken was younger than usual, but it all seemed like the same game to Spurlock. Usually, they had been hitch-hiking boys and girls in the twelve to fifteen year-old range. Occasionally, Spurlock had let them out of the cage and had popped them right there, when the mood had struck him, on the rusted metal ribs of the van’s floor. He had to have a fix for that sort of thing to occur, of course.
After the kid had finished two-thirds of the dangling hotdogs, Spurlock opened the top of the cage and reseated the gag. He gave the kid all the usual threats about making a sound, then resealed the top and climbed out of the van. After locking up he headed toward the truck stop diner. It was quite a trip, as he had parked way out on the very outer edge of the giant tarmac parking lot, where even the sleepy truckers rarely ventured. Spurlock walked at least fifty yards before he passed the first dark semi. The odds were that some cowboy trucker slept off the beer and the road in there, but Spurlock wasn’t really worried. It was rare that a chicken made any noise. He was always surprised that they didn’t just kick the side of the van and make whatever sound they could, but generally, they didn’t. Fear paralyzed most of them, and the few who did try something, he quickly straightened out with what his stepdaddy would have called: ‘a good, ole time, whuppin ’.
Whistling to himself, Spurlock ignored the tremors in his arms as he stepped into the diner and sat down at the counter. He pulled a ten from his grime-coated jeans and stretched it out beside a forgotten water glass. The enormous waitress soon sailed up to him. She was a fiftyish bleached-blonde with an ass wider than Mack truck’s grille. She gave Spurlock a quick, up-down glance and frowned in disapproval.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
Spurlock chuckled. “You don’t want to know, mamma,” he said, “you don’t want to know.”
She put her hands on her swollen hips and glared at him. “Just order up, punk.”
At the edge of his vision, Spurlock noted that a few cowboy hats had already turned in his direction. Without looking around, he locked gazes with the glaring waitress and slowly licked his lips. She snorted and pulled out her order pad.
Spurlock smiled and indicated the crinkled ten on the counter. “Bring me as much coffee and biscuits with sausage gravy that this will buy. I don’t want nuthin’ else, missy.”
She shoved the notepad back into her voluminous apron and sailed away. Soon the coffee and a plate of biscuits with milky gray gravy appeared. It was just the way he liked it, with chunks of unidentifiable meat and soggy biscuits sopping up the grease. Spurlock dug in, but was soon distracted by the TV that was suspended at an angle over the far end of the counter. A CNN live report had just begun. A dark red line ran across the bottom of the screen, below it was the caption: Internet Virus Investigation. A woman’s face came into view. Spurlock stopped chewing when he recognized the scene in the background. It was Vance’s house.