Part 12 (1/2)

We tried the radio.

It crooned, and gave away thousands of dollars, and told jokes cleaned up with kissing, and groaned as private eyes were hit on the head, and poured sirup on us, and after a long time there was some news. Big Three, it said, and investigation, and tax cut, and budget, and Senator Frammis in a statement this morning, but nothing about Butler.

It was too soon.

We were pounding over a rough road in a vacuum of dead silence and blackness while all around us the sirens were screaming and teletypes were chattering and police cars were taking stations on highways intersecting a circle they had drawn on the map like a proposition in plane geometry, but it was too soon for anybody to know about it except the hunters and the hunted.

I cursed and turned the radio off.

She lit a cigarette and leaned back in the seat. ”Don't be so intense, Mr. Scarborough,” she said with amus.e.m.e.nt. ”We'll get through. Cyclops is feeling only the backs of the sheep.”

”What?”

”Never mind. I guess they haven't made a comic book of it yet.”

”Go choke yourself,” I said.

”A month. One whole, enchanting month.”

”Don't worry. If I can stand it for a hundred and twenty grand, you should be able to put up with it to stay out of the electric chair.”

”It would seem so, wouldn't it?”

I shrugged her off and concentrated on driving. We came out at last on the intersecting east-west road and turned right, watching for the one that crossed going south. I looked at the time. It was nearly eleven. The few farmhouses we pa.s.sed were dark. I began to watch the gasoline gauge. It was dropping faster than I had expected. It must be nearly thirty miles to that small town on the map. And if we got there too late, everything might be closed.

It was a race between the gas gauge and the clock. When we saw the lights of the little town ahead it was ten minutes till midnight and the gauge had been on empty for two miles.

”Get down out of sight while we go through,” I said.

”Aren't we going to get gasoline?” she asked.

”Not with you in the car.”

She got down, squatting on the floor with her head and shoulders on the seat. I drove through without stopping, looking for an open gas station and knowing that if we didn't find one we were sunk. It was a one-street town two blocks long, with half a dozen cars parked in the puddle of light in front of the lone cafe. There was a garage at the end of the street, on a corner.

It was open.

The attendant in white coveralls stood in the empty drive between the pumps and watched us go past. I'd been afraid of that. But it couldn't be helped. Anything moving at all in a town like this would be seen.

I drove on, past the scattered dark houses at the edge of town, hoping there would be enough left in the tank to get back. We went around a curve and the lights were gone, swallowed up in the night behind us. I slowed. We crossed a wooden bridge where willows grew out over the roadside ditch. I slid to a stop.

”Wait right here,” I said. ”I'll be back in a few minutes. And don't show yourself on the road until you're sure it's me. I'll flip the lights up and down before I stop.”

”All right,” she said. She got out of the car.

There were no cars in sight. I made a fast U turn and headed back.

I stopped in the pool of light in the driveway. The attendant came over. He was a big black-headed kid with a grin. ”Fill 'er up?” he asked, looking at me with faint curiosity. He knew it was the same car he'd just seen going past headed south.

”Yeah,” I said. ”It's empty. Just lucky I noticed it before I got clear out of town.”

He shoved the nozzle in the tank. It was the automatic type that shuts itself off. He went around in front and checked the oil and water and started cleaning the winds.h.i.+eld while the bell on the pump tinkled away the gallons. I could hear a radio yammering in the office. It sounded funny, like a cab dispatcher's radio, cutting off, coming on, going off again. I couldn't tell what it was saying.

The kid jerked his head toward the car's license tags and said, ”Lot of excitement up your way tonight.”

I could feel my mouth dry up. ”How's that?”

”Mrs. Butler again. You don't happen to know her, do you?”

”No,” I said. ”Why?”

”Just thought maybe you did, seeing as you're from the same county. She's got this whole end of the state in an uproar. With all the cops looking for her, she comes right back to her own house. Or at least they figure it must have been her. Some man with her, too, from the looks of it. They slugged a deputy sheriff and shackled him with his own handcuffs, and the house got afire some way”

”All this on the radio?” I asked. ”I didn't hear anything about it.”

He grinned. ”You might say on the radio.” He jerked his head toward the office. ”Police bands. Not supposed to have it, but back here off the highway they don't say anything. Boy, the air's really burnin' tonight.”

”You say there's a man with her?” I asked.

”Almost has to be, the way they figure it. Somebody slugged that deputy so hard he may not live. Broken skull. He's still unconscious.”

I turned my face away in the pool of light and cupped my hands as I lit a cigarette. ”That's too bad,” I said.

”Yeah. They're just hoping he comes out of it. Maybe he'll be able to tell 'em what happened. Somebody said they heard shots, too.”

”Sounds like a wild night,” I said.

”They'll catch 'em. They're stopping everything on the highways. Roadblocks. Course, they don't know what the man looks like, but they got a good description of her. They say she's a dish. A real pin-up. You ever see her?”

”Not that I know of,” I said.

”I thought maybe, being from the same county-”

If he said that once more, my head would blow up like a hand grenade. ”I don't belong to the country club set,” I said. ”I run a one-lung sawmill, and the only time I ever see any bankers is when they tell me my notes are overdue. How much I owe you?”

”Four-sixty,” he said.

I took a five out of my wallet, feeling the wonderful, hard outlines of the three keys through the leather. They were something you could touch. They were no dream you were chasing; you had them in your hand and could feel them.

A man lying unconscious somewhere with a broken skull-a man you didn't know and had never seen except as a block of shadow a little darker than the night-didn't really exist as long as you didn't think about him. I felt the keys through the limp leather.

I thought of the cafe up the street. I hadn't eaten anything for thirty-six hours; I was dead on my feet and needed coffee to keep going. I heard the cash register ring in the office, and then the radio cut in again with some coded signal that was like a finger pointing. There he is, it seemed to say.

He's standing there in the night. We're in the dark, watching him.

Eat?

Run. Keep going.

n.o.body could eat with them looking at his back. When we were safe in the apartment, that feeling of always being watched from behind would go away. Wouldn't it?