“We better start getting ready,” Martin said.
As Ann rose, Melanie traipsed into the kitchen. “What time are we—” She stopped, looked at them, hesitated. “What’s wrong?”
Ann and Martin hesitated in return. Ann looked up at Martin in panic. The look said, Please tell her, Martin. I can’t. I just can’t.
Martin understood at once. “Melanie, we’re not going to be able to go to Paris this time,” he began. “Something bad happened yesterday…”
«« — »»
“Tharp’s escaped. Erik Tharp—remember him?”
Sergeant Tom Byron just stood there, mouth open.
Chief Bard sipped coffee from a spider cracked NRA mug. “Fucker busted out of the Rubber Ramada yesterday. Can you believe it?”
“Erik Tharp,” Byron said. “Escaped.”
“That’s right, boy. State’s saturated the whole area with their units, and they want all municipal departments on watch. He busted out with a rapist, killed four people already, two hospital people, old Farley from the Qwik Stop out on 154, and some redneck broad from Luntville. Raped the stuffing out of the broad before they killed her. And they got a piece. State M.E. says he pulled a .455 out of the girl’s ass, Farley’s Webley.”
“Erik…Tharp,” Byron repeated. The name put him in a daze. He remembered, all right. The pit full of tiny charred skeletons, and Tharp himself poised in moonlight with the shovel.
At last Sergeant Byron regained his ability to speak polysyllabically. “You figure he’s comin’ back here, Chief?”
“State says there’s no way in hell. Probably headed north, they said.”
“Tharp ain’t got a set brass enough to come back here.”
Bard frowned. What could he say to Byron? He was pretty much just a kid.
“I should’ve killed him five years ago,” Byron muttered.
Yeah, you should have, Bard thought. Instead, he said, “Don’t wanna hear no talk like that, boy. We’re professionals.”
With that, Bard scratched his belly and spat in the waste can.
“Lemme go lookin’, Chief. I’ll drive my own car. Just lemme—”
“Forget it. You mind your manners unless you wanna take old Farley’s place for five bucks an hour at the Qwik Stop, ya hear?”
Byron, reluctantly, nodded.
“LW One,” squawked the base station. “Citizen report of signal 5F two miles south of junction 154 and Old Dunwich. M.E. en route. Check for possible relation to state signal fifty five slash twelve in progress.”
“LW One, ten four,” Bard groaned into the mike.
Byron stared.
“Get on it, boy”, Bard said, and stood up exertedly. “Maybe Tharp’s closer than the state thinks.”
«« — »»
We look like idiots, Erik thought, glaring at the mirror.
“Jesus,” Duke murmured, standing aside.
They’d cut their hair short, in efforts to get with the times. Instead, they looked like they’d stuck their heads in blenders. The hair bleach hadn’t worked very well either. Erik had followed the instructions, or at least he thought he had. It turned their hair almost snow white.
Duke slapped the back of Erik’s head. “Ya a hole, look whatcha done.”
“It’s not that bad,” Erik tried to commiserate.
“Not that bad? Man, we can’t walk the street like this. We look like a couple of rejects from some California homo farm.” Duke glared at Erik, then stomped out of the bathroom.
At least we don’t look like our file pictures, Erik thought. That much was correct. The hospital updated their ward residence photos every year. The police probably wouldn’t be looking for two guys with white hair.
Duke slouched on the bed. He was watching the Three Stooges: Shemp was pumping Larry up with a fireplace bellows stuck in his mouth. Erik changed the channel.
“Hey, man! Whatdaya think you’re doin? It’s a Shemp!”
Shemp, Erik thought. We’re two killers trying to outrun the entire state, and all he cares about is Shemp. “We have to monitor the news as much as we can,” his voice creaked. He flipped through late morning cartoons, then—froze. Suddenly, he was looking at himself on the TV screen, and a newscaster was saying, “…have killed four in less than twenty four hours. Erik Tharp and Richard ‘Duke’ Belluxi escaped the state mental facility near Luntville yesterday morning at eleven thirty, overpowering two employees and murdering two more. They fled the grounds in a lawn contractor’s vehicle which was later found abandoned at a nearby convenience store, where they murdered a clerk and abducted a twenty year old Luntville woman only minutes after their escape. The woman, whose name is being withheld, was found dead later that afternoon in a ditch off State Route 154. She’d been shot, beaten, and raped, police say.”
Duke chortled laughter, pointing. “Looky! It’s us!”
Indeed it was. Both their faces filled the screen. Duke was grinning in his picture. Erik stared.
“Yeah, my mama, I’ll bet she’s proud!” Duke laughed. “Can tell all her friends her son’s a TV star!”
“Come on!” Erik shouted. “We gotta get out of—”
“What are you shittin’ a brick about?”
“They found the girl’s body, Duke. That means they know what kind of car we’re driving!”
The station wagon was parked right out in front of the motel, in full view from the main road. The first cop car that drove by would see it and then…
“Get our stuff together,” Erik commanded. “I’m gonna move the car around back so no one can see it from the road. We’ll have to leave on foot, get a new car somewhere else.”
“Right,” Duke said.
Erik slipped out the front door and got in the station wagon. How long had the police known what they were driving? It was incredible that the car hadn’t been seen yet.
Too incredible.
Something clicked behind his ear.
“Right there, fella,” a voice whispered.
Erik’s whole body seized.
The female cop had sneaked up alongside the car. She leaned over, pressing the barrel of a Ruger .357 to his temple. “You blink and your brains go out the other side of your head. Understand?’
“Uh, yes,” Erik croaked. His eyes darted right. A police cruiser was parked on the side of the last room. “Luntville Police Department,” a seal read.
The woman had dark red hair tied in a bun behind her hat. She wore mirrored sunglasses in which Erik could see twins of his own face. “You and me,” she whispered, “we’re gonna walk over to that squad car nice and quiet, right?”
“Uh, yes,” Erik croaked.
“You get out real slow and keep your hands up.”
The woman opened the station wagon door. She kept her gun trained on him. It was a big gun, but then Erik thought of Duke’s, which was even bigger. Right now, Duke was doing one of two things. He’d either crawled out the bathroom window and was heading for the hills, or he was standing behind that tacky louvered motel room door and lining up the sights of the gun he’d taken off the old man at the Qwik Stop.
Erik stood straight, his hands in the air. He whispered, “Lady, the other guy’s in the room right in front of us and he’s got a—”
It was a strange collision of sounds and sights crammed into a single second. The woman’s police hat shot up in the air, and suddenly she was standing before Erik with no head. It simply…disappeared. Only then did Erik hear the loud bang! The woman, headless now, seemed to stand for a moment, her pistol still thrust out. Then the body collapsed.
Erik’s expression collapsed as well. He lowered his arms. More blood on my hands, he thought.