The Third Hill North of Town (8 page)

Why the fuck didn’t I wait for backup?
he thought.

For some reason he was beginning to feel like a little boy who’d gotten into something way over his head. This sudden drop in confidence made him mad, and his jaw stiffened with resolve.

“Don’t be a weenie, Lloyd,” he whispered to himself. “Just do your job.”

His arm steadied against the door frame and he took another breath to yell one last time.

 

Jon Tate was young enough that he still didn’t know a lot about himself. For instance, he had no idea he was the kind of person who might risk his own life for a stranger. Yet as he stared across the seat at the stricken Elijah, it occurred to him that the kid’s head was visible through the rear window, and the cop, for whatever reason, had threatened to shoot him on the count of three.

And several long seconds had now passed since the trooper had yelled out, “Two!”

“Jesus Christ, Elijah, get down!” Jon howled.

He flung himself over the front seat, banging his head on the ceiling light en route, and grabbed Elijah around the neck, pulling him out of the line of fire just as the trooper’s first gunshot punched a quarter-sized hole through the rear window, turning the safety glass white with a thousand tiny cracks.

 

Lloyd Eagleton very nearly soiled his neatly pressed pants when he saw Jon Tate pop up out of nowhere and fly over the front seat of the Edsel. This unwelcome manifestation stunned him so much that his arm jerked as he squeezed the trigger on his gun, and his shot went high. The Edsel’s rear window seemed to frost over all at once as the bullet pierced it, and Lloyd, panicking as he realized he’d not only missed his target but now had to contend with two kidnappers instead of one, snatched up the microphone in the seat next to him.

“SON OF A BITCH!” he wailed to the dispatcher. “There’s TWO of them! I need help right now, goddammit!”

He fired another wild shot at the Edsel and the woman in the driver’s seat began to scream.

 

“Sheriff Burns has gone insane!” Julianna cried as Lloyd’s second shot took out the side mirror on her door. The first bullet had embedded itself in the car’s ceiling less than a foot from her head. “He’s trying to kill us!

Most of the safety glass in the rear window was still clinging to its frame, but a small piece had flown through the air and cut her forearm, close to the elbow. She had blood on the sleeve of her green dress. She stared at the sticky red mess for a moment, then without hesitation she turned the key in the ignition.

“Hold on, boys!” she cried.

Crazy or not, Julianna Dapper was a warrior.

As Edgar Reilly’s magnificent, souped-up engine roared to life, she popped the car in reverse and stomped on the accelerator.

 

Lloyd had expected the kidnappers to flee in the opposite direction, and he watched in stupefaction as the Edsel came straight at him, charging backward in a spray of gravel. He couldn’t decide whether to run or shoot, and his irresolution proved to be his undoing.

In the final moment—as he squatted, frozen, behind his open door—a dispassionate voice spoke in his head. What it told him was clearly untrue, yet still comforting.

There’s no way in hell they can be moving that fast,
the voice said.
It’s just a fucking Edsel.

The last thing he heard was an apocalyptic crash.

Chapter 4

O
tto “Red” Kiley of Prescott, Maine, liked to think of himself as a great sheriff. True enough, he was not fond of working and did everything he could to avoid it. But he’d kept the peace in Prescott day in and day out for thirty-plus years, and he’d never once shirked his responsibilities. If he had to investigate a crime he was thorough and honest, even if it meant putting in extra hours and dealing with stupid assholes who didn’t deserve his help. He’d broken up hundreds of bar fights and domestic brawls, yet he’d only had to draw his gun once, when an eggnog-crazed Irma Flederman threatened a group of Baptist carolers with a shotgun on Christmas Eve in ’49.

Red had sympathized with Irma (who had passed out before things got out of hand). He disliked Christmas carols, too, and even though eggnog wasn’t for him, he had a weakness for Budweiser beer, and a history of doing questionable things while drinking it.

For example, he was fond of chugging a Bud or two in his squad car on the way home from work each day. If the beer was too warm he’d reach out the window as he drove along and set a can in the gap between the hood and the windshield, so the wind could chill it for him. What aided this ingenious cooling process even more, he’d found, was to go very fast and make the can slide back and forth across the hood by swerving left or right every few seconds or so. It was just a bit of harmless fun, and he’d never even come close to having a wreck while doing it. But he knew some people might nonetheless object to this unique method of refrigeration.

As far as he was concerned, though, they could all go fuck themselves.

Red—who got his nickname from his ruddy complexion and a thick red beard—had a similar attitude about a lot of things. He had little patience for the nervous Nellie types in town who fussed about every little thing and wasted his time by coming into his office to badger him with their silly-ass problems day after day. It made him irritable, and it was a wonder he’d been reelected so many times when he’d told much of the voting public to “stop being a burr in my butt crack.”

But Samuel Hunter wasn’t a whiner. Not by a long shot.

Fifteen years ago, shortly after the Hunters moved to Prescott, some anonymous little dickhead had tried to make life unpleasant for the young black couple from Alabama by painting the words “Whites Only” on the
Welcome to Prescott!
sign, posted on the main highway into town. The sign was less than a mile from the Hunters’ farm, and Red had figured Sam and Mary would be pretty bent out of shape by something ugly like that. But when he talked to them about it, Mary hadn’t even blinked, and Sam had just shrugged and said, “Could be a lot worse.”

In other words, the Hunters weren’t whiners, and Red had approved of them ever since. More than that, he’d even grown to
like
them over the years, and for Red that was really saying something, because Red didn’t like most people. But Samuel Hunter never kissed ass, nor asked anyone else to kiss his, though he was always friendly and respectful. And if someone in town took exception now and then to Mary Hunter—who scared people shitless—and her “stuck-up” ways, it tickled Red to tell Samuel all about it, because Samuel’s only reaction was to hide a proud grin behind his hand. Sam Hunter didn’t give a crap what anybody else thought of his bitch-on-wheels wife, and Red loved that about him.

So when Samuel showed up in Red’s office late Saturday afternoon, Red didn’t mind sticking around to talk to him, though it was getting close to the end of his shift and he was looking forward to the warm six-pack waiting for him out in his squad car.

“Something’s happened to Elijah,” Samuel said, shaking Red’s hand and taking a seat in front of his desk.

Apparently Samuel had been searching for his son for the last three hours, and the kid had been missing for two hours before that. Samuel had stopped in at the public library, the drugstore, and everywhere else he could think to look, but the only person he’d spoken to who’d even laid eyes on the boy that day was Bill Keenan, the pharmacist. Bill told Samuel that Elijah left the drugstore sometime before noon, but he hadn’t seen him go. “He was rooting through the magazines, frowning and talking to himself,” Bill had related, smiling. “But he always does that, so I didn’t pay him any mind.”

Samuel told Red he’d called Mary once every half an hour from the pay phone outside the drugstore, in hopes Elijah had returned home. But Mary had answered the phone so fast each time it told him everything he needed to know without asking. She was going out of her head with worry.

Red didn’t say so to Samuel, but he thought Mary had cause to be alarmed.

Prescott was not much bigger than a pimple. It had a handful of stores, a school, a city hall, a park, a bank, and a couple of churches, but that was about it. It was unusual for a kid to go missing in such a small place, and Red could normally find just about anybody he was looking for in a matter of minutes. Still, if it were any other boy in town, a five-hour absence wouldn’t have alarmed him, and he likely would have told the father to go home and stop pestering him.

But Elijah Hunter wasn’t any other boy. Considering that every single soul who lived and worked in the area was white except for Samuel and his family, a kid with dark skin stuck out like a black olive in a bag of marshmallows.

No sooner had this thought flitted through his brain than Sally Shepherd, his dispatcher, began caterwauling in the next room.

“Dammit, Otto!” Sally was the only person that called Red by his given name. “Who let all the paper run out on the teletype machine again?”

He hated it when Sally got worked up about something. Her voice went high and tight and reminded him of a model airplane engine.

Red rolled his eyes for Samuel’s benefit and yelled back through the open door. “It’s not my job to keep your machines up and running, Sally.”

“Well, it’s been out of paper all afternoon,” she huffed. “The whole world could have blown up and we wouldn’t have known about it.”

A few seconds later the clackety-clack of the teletype started up.

Red apologized to Samuel for the interruption. “Did you try the pool, Sam? Maybe he went for a swim.”

Samuel shook his head. “He only swims in our pond. He hates public pools.”

Sally shrieked again and both men jumped. An instant later she appeared in the doorway, clutching a teletype report to her bosom.

Red waved her away. “Go away, Sally. I’m busy.” The sun coming through the blinds was making him hot and irritable, and the ceiling fan wasn’t doing a damn thing to cool him down.

She ignored him and galloped over to his desk. “You need to look at this right now,” she said, thrusting the paper at him.

Red glowered up at her but took the report. After two sentences he started craving the Budweiser in the trunk of his squad car.

“What is it?” Samuel demanded, noticing the consternation in Red’s beefy face.

The teletype report was from the Maine State Police, warning to be on the lookout for an Edsel, a white woman, and “a tall, thin, Negro male, approximately eighteen years of age” who was being sought for kidnapping, assault, and theft. The crime had occurred less than twenty miles south of Prescott, Maine, but the suspect was now being hunted all over New England. Red scanned the teletype message again, wordlessly, then held it out to Samuel.

Samuel’s dark eyes studied Red’s face before he reached for the paper. As he read it his long black fingers began to tremble.

“No, Red,” Samuel said, furiously shaking his head. “There’s no way in
hell
that’s my boy.” He read the paper again, desperate for reassurance. “For one thing, Elijah’s only
fifteen.
This is just a dumb coincidence.”

Red nodded to make the man feel better, but he felt sick with dread. Coincidence or not, Elijah was missing, and three felonies had been committed that very day in the vicinity of Prescott by a teenaged Negro matching the boy’s description. The age discrepancy didn’t really matter; Elijah had grown a lot recently and from a distance he could easily pass for eighteen. Everything Red knew about the Hunters told him this was some sort of mistake, but his gut was telling him otherwise. It didn’t bode well for the Hunter family, and Red almost couldn’t bear to look at Samuel. Elijah had somehow gotten mixed up in something bad, and that was all there was to it, like it or not.

Red looked up at Sally, who was staring at him with poorly concealed excitement. She was chomping on a piece of gum as if it were a wad of caffeinated cud.

“Get me the state police on the phone,” he ordered, feeling tired. He held up a hand to head off Samuel’s protest until she left the office to make the call.

“You’ve got to be joking,” Samuel snapped as soon as they were alone again.

“Sorry, Sam. I don’t like this any better than you, but if Elijah’s in trouble—”

“It’s not Elijah,” Samuel insisted.

Red talked over him. “If Elijah’s in trouble, then we need to make sure everybody knows he’s just a kid, okay?”

He didn’t say the rest of what he was thinking:
Because if they know how young he is, the cowboys in the state patrol might be less likely to get trigger-happy.

The idea that somebody might actually shoot Elijah Hunter before the day was done made him want to puke. There were a ton of people Red wouldn’t mind seeing shot, but Samuel Hunter’s boy wasn’t one of them.

He had no way of knowing he would soon feel much worse. Within an hour, another teletype message would arrive, reporting the attempted murder of a New Hampshire state trooper named Lloyd Eagleton.

 

Edgar Reilly’s stolen Edsel plowed into the squad car and drove it backward nearly three feet on the shoulder of the road. The open door Lloyd Eagleton was cowering behind was prevented from slamming shut, however, because Lloyd’s stocky body—or more specifically, his ribcage—got in the way. Lloyd’s gun and Smokey Bear hat went flying as five of his ribs snapped and the back of his skull bounced off the side of the car; he passed out an instant later, facedown on the gravel.

Julianna didn’t even glance in the rearview mirror before throwing the Ranger into drive once more and flooring the accelerator. The Edsel spun out again and lunged forward, detaching itself with a squeal from the demolished front bumper of Lloyd’s cruiser. Within seconds the scene of the collision was well behind them on the highway, but Julianna didn’t ease up on the gas pedal.

“Are you boys hurt?” she cried over the noise of the engine. “Ben? Steve?”

There was no response at first and she risked taking her eyes from the road to assess the situation in the rear of the car.

“Oh, thank heaven,” she breathed a moment later. “I thought Sheriff Burns had killed you.”

Jon and Elijah peered up at her with twin looks of shock. They were on the floor of the backseat, where they had landed in a jumble of limbs and junk food. Both had minor cuts here and there, but otherwise appeared unhurt. Julianna, relieved, returned her attention to her driving.

“Wait till I tell Daddy about this,” she said. She was trembling from the violence of the last few minutes and had to struggle to keep her voice cheerful. “Sheriff Burns is completely
demented.
”

“Jesus Christ,” Jon groaned, stirring.

He slowly lifted his chin off Elijah’s ear and looked around. He was on top of the younger boy; Elijah was on his side, wedged between the seat and the floor, and Jon was sprawled across him. Jon’s face was full of horror as he stared down into Elijah’s stunned eyes.

“Please, please tell me she didn’t just kill a cop,” Jon begged.

Both boys were sweating profusely from fright, and neither smelled very good. Jon’s clothes were also still wet from the rainstorm, and he was dizzy from the heat in the car.

Elijah’s lower lip quivered as he tried not to cry. “Can you get off me, please?” The makeshift bandage around his head had fallen off and the bump on his head was throbbing. “I can’t breathe.”

Elijah felt he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
THAT COP ALMOST KILLED ME!
he kept thinking.
My BRAINS were almost SPLATTERED all over this car!

Jon rolled onto the seat with care, trying to avoid more glass. It was only then he noticed a more serious gash above his left knee. It was three inches long and looked deep.

“Shit!” He probed at the wound and grimaced. “I’m bleeding bad!”

The Edsel swerved as Julianna shot another glance over the seat. “You’ll be fine,” she said, recovering control of the wheel. “Apply pressure to it. Ben, get a tourniquet ready for Steve, just in case the bleeding doesn’t slow down.”

Elijah clambered off the crushed grocery bags on the floor and gaped at the wound on Jon’s leg.

“A tourniquet?” He looked around, dazed. “How do I do that?”

She sighed. “Tear off another piece of that silly cape you’re wearing, and twist it into a rope.”

Elijah and Jon shared a despairing look.

“I think she means your shirt,” Jon whispered.

“I
know
what she means,” Elijah snapped. He didn’t want to sacrifice any more of his shirt; he was positive he was going to be killed soon and he didn’t want to die half-naked. He spotted the checkered headscarf on the floor next to a bag of potato chips and held it up. “Can’t I just use this instead?”

Julianna inspected it in the mirror and shook her head. “Absolutely not! That scarf belongs to my mother, and she’ll be furious if I ruin it.”

“I want out of this car,” Elijah moaned. “I want out right now.”

Julianna was calming down. She lightened her foot on the accelerator and the needle on the speedometer gradually fell into a more reasonable range. “Don’t be ridiculous, Ben,” she said. “We’re almost home.”

This was the last straw for Elijah.