Rhodes shoved the Chevy’s accelerator right down to the worn rubber floor mat. He didn’t know what else to do. He might not have much of a chance, but he was going to make a race of it, at least for a while. He had to get Kathy back, had to get her before Johnny killed her, too.
Chapter 16
The road on which Rhodes and Sherman were traveling was what is called a “farm-to-market” road. That meant that while it was straight for short distances, it was never straight for very long. Such roads often followed old farm routes and wound through the country without much regard to the principle of the straight line. In a way this was an advantage for Rhodes, in that Johnny couldn’t use his speed as he could have done on a highway, and the pickup, with its short turning radius, was fairly maneuverable. On the other hand, the pickup was not loaded. The rear end was very light and tended to drift on the curves. It would be easy to lose control.
The pickup had side vent windows which Rhodes would have liked to open to direct some air on his sweating body, but he didn’t want to lower the wind resistance any more than he had to. He decided to sweat. He wondered if Johnny had on the air conditioner in the county car and figured that he probably did. It wouldn’t cut down the power too much, certainly not enough to allow Rhodes to catch him. Rhodes was in fact already losing ground, but he was trying to stay in the chase.
The irony of the situation struck Rhodes, and he almost laughed. He had been in car chases before, but he had always been driving the powerful county cruiser. He tried to imagine a movie in which a policeman was being pursued by an old pickup truck, but he couldn’t do it. He knew that in real life the situation was ridiculous. He would need a miracle to catch Johnny Sherman.
The miracle came sooner than he expected. He lost sight of the county car for a few seconds as it went around a curve. When he saw it again, the bar lights were off and the brake lights were on. Johnny was slowing down. Rhodes looked at the road ahead and saw why.
About a mile away, just over the crest of a hill on the Clearview side, sat a DPS car. The trooper was positioned so that he could be out of sight of anyone approaching the hill while he tracked them with his radar gun. Johnny Sherman had no desire to go speeding by a highway patrolman with his bar lights on and his siren going. In fact, he probably had no desire to pass him at all.
A highway patrol car on that road, on a Monday morning, was an occurrence so rare as to be invisible on a scale of probability. It might not happen again for a year or more, but Rhodes was certainly glad that it was happening now.
In front of him, Johnny Sherman’s car took a sharp left turn onto an unpaved county road. The recent rain had helped a little, but the Plymouth still raised a rooster tail of white dust from the crushed gravel of the road’s surface.
Rhodes turned after him, choking a little as the dust sifted in the windows of the pickup. He was very pleased with the turn of events. He had traveled these roads all his life. There wasn’t a turn that Johnny Sherman could make that Rhodes couldn’t anticipate. It was like Brer Rabbit in the briar patch. And if the other road had been filled with curves, this one was positively snakey. There was no way that either vehicle was going to get much above fifty miles an hour. Even better, in less than two miles the gravel surface gave way to just plain dirt and clay and sand. If the road had been traveled enough since the rain, and if the ground had gotten wet enough, there would be treacherous ruts and maybe even very slick surfaces, both of which would put the Plymouth at a distinct disadvantage. The pickup was made for rough conditions and would be much easier to handle.
When Johnny Sherman hit the clay surface, Rhodes was less than a half mile behind. He could see the rear end of the county car slewing around, so he knew that the road was slick and tricky. He slowed his own speed a bit. Better to be careful than to make a mistake.
Neither man was driving much over forty now, and Rhodes had to keep a firm grip on the steering wheel to hold the car in the ruts. The bar ditches off to the side of the road had very little water in them, but the weeds were bent in the direction of its flow. Apparently it had rained quite hard in the vicinity, and the water had run off fast.
The road twisted and turned past terraced fields and pasture, with neither man able to gain much ground on the other. Twice Johnny turned off onto side roads, and Rhodes realized that Johnny knew the country pretty well himself. And then he realized where Johnny was headed.
There was one portion of the county that most residents referred to as Big Woods. Blacklin County was not a major population center, had no industry to speak of, and was unknown to tourists. A minor oil boom had livened things up around Clearview for a time, but it was very quiet now. There were parts of the county that remained much as they had been a hundred years before, or longer. Big Woods was one of those areas.
Big Woods covered only about six square miles, but it was a place that could be very dangerous. People avoided it, even the people who owned the land the woods covered. The trees grew thick and tall, and the underbrush was almost impenetrable. Three years earlier a child had wandered off from a family reunion being held on a nearby farm and had gotten into the trees. Rhodes had headed the search party. They had searched officially for nearly a week, and unofficially for days afterward. No one had ever seen the child again.
There were deer in Big Woods, but there were rumors of other things less pleasant. Hogs that wandered off farms sometimes found their way there and raised litters that returned to their wild state, and no one doubted that there were wolves there. Nearby cattlemen lost large numbers of calves every year to them.
Johnny Sherman had been a member of the search party three years before, and Rhodes thought he must have remembered the woods. A hundred yards inside, it was dark even at midday. Let a man get settled in the brush, and someone could walk within inches of him and never know that he was there. If Johnny got in there with two pistols, it was going to be very tricky getting him out.
They hit another stretch of graveled road. Rhodes could see the trees in the distance. Johnny Sherman put his pedal to the floor and the county car jumped ahead. Rhodes did the same, but with less than spectacular results. The pickup rocked and bounced along, sending jolts of pain zinging from one side of Rhodes’s chest to the other, but he could make up little ground on the car he was chasing.
The weeds in the fence rows grew high here, and Rhodes lost sight of Johnny every time there was the slightest curve in the road. He knew that Johnny would get to the trees before he could be stopped.
Rounding a last turn, Rhodes saw the Plymouth stopped dead in the middle of the road. He threw on his brakes and managed to avoid hitting it by inches. Johnny was already out of the car and across the barbed-wire fence, prodding Kathy along in front of him with the pistol barrel.
Rhodes got out of the pickup and moved as fast as he could to the car. Just as he’d expected, the radio was smashed. There was no way to call for help, and there was no need to look for weapons. Johnny would have taken care of that, too. Then Johnny called out. “Just stay right there, Sheriff. As soon as I get to the woods, I’ll let Kathy go. Don’t try to come after me before I get there. I don’t want to hurt her.”
Rhodes didn’t believe him, but he said nothing. He went back to the pickup and jerked the seat forward. There was a Zebco 33 spincast reel attached to a cheap rod under there, along with a few tools: pliers, a screwdriver, a wooden-handled hammer with only part of the handle. There was also a walking cane. Rhodes took the cane and headed for the fence. Johnny was more than halfway to the trees by then.