The Undertaker (17 page)

The ambulance's bright headlight beams cut across the front of the funeral home and caught the sheriff in their glare. He dropped into a professional, bent-kneed, two-handed crouch with the Glock extended out in front of him, but the bright headlights suddenly blinded him. He raised his off hand to screen his eyes from the glare, trying desperately to aim at the front of the ambulance as it bore down on him.

“Ernie, no!” I lunged across the seat and grabbed for the steering wheel again, but it was too late. Dannmeyer began shooting. I shot a forty-five automatic in the Army, but I had never had the pleasure of having a big-caliber handgun fired
at me
before. I ducked below the dash as three nine-millimeter slugs punched holes through the center of the windshield, ripping through the upholstery precisely where my chest had been only moments before and filling the front seat with shards of flying glass. With the ambulance's headlight beams in his eyes, Dannmeyer must have aimed where he thought I was, or where he thought I should be. Whatever, he missed, and that was when I knew that the good sheriff wasn't trying to stop the ambulance, he was trying to kill me.

As the distance closed and the ambulance bore down on him, Dannmeyer finally realized he was the one with the problem and turned his attention to the driver. “Ernie, get down!” I screamed, but it was too late. Three more nine-millimeter slugs shattered the windshield on the driver's side. At least two caught Ernie in the upper chest and punched him backward, bouncing him off the front seat. His body flexed stiff as a board. As it did, his leg straightened and pressed the gas pedal flat to the floor.

Dannmeyer didn't expect that. The ambulance's engine roared and the ex-Marine discovered he wasn't quite as quick as he once was. I caught a glimpse of him over the top of the hood as he squinted into the bright headlights and unloaded his last three rounds into the ambulance's front grill. Typical jarhead. He'd watched too many John Wayne movies and thought his gun and three ounces of lead could stop two tons of onrushing steel. They were too little and way too late.

The ambulance must have been going thirty miles an hour when it slammed into Dannmeyer with its front bumper and grill, crushing him like a bug against the side of the funeral home and caving in the wall. The rear end jumped off the ground and the side doors popped open. The ambulance hung there in mid-air as the bricks began to fall. The top half of the wall wobbled and then it collapsed onto the ambulance's hood, bringing part of the roof with it, burying the sheriff and the front half of the ambulance under a pile of brick and mortar. The last brick bounced off on the hood and other than the sputter and hiss of the radiator, there was nothing left but silence. The engine was dead. So was Dannmeyer. So was poor Ernie. There was no more shouting and no more gunshots, only a cloud of dust and the groan of twisted metal as the ambulance settled down and died.

The crash had pinned Ernie upright in the front seat behind the steering wheel and I found myself lying on the floor, wedged between the dashboard and the seat, covered with broken glass. Every inch of me ached. As my head cleared, I smelled raw gasoline and I knew I had to get out of the cab quickly. Straining, I pushed and crawled my way along the floor of the cab and out the side door until I fell out on the ground.

I rose to my feet and stumbled away, but my ribs and my lower back were screaming in pain. I hoped nothing was broken, but I didn't care. My mind focused on getting the hell out of there and back to Boston. These people were crazy. I had no further interest in Columbus or whole State of Ohio for that matter. I didn't care about Greene, Dannmeyer, or Tinkerton. All I wanted was to forget today, forget yesterday, and forget everything that happened after Gino Parini climbed into the front seat of my Bronco.

I turned my head and looked back at the funeral home. A fifteen-foot section of the sidewall had collapsed on top of the ambulance, bringing part of the roof down with it. I could even see into one of the chapels. It had been laid out for a funeral in the morning, complete with chairs, flowers, and a casket at the far end. Some wake. If it all wasn't so damned real, I'd have fallen down laughing.

Good thing I didn't. It was the smell of gasoline that brought me back to reality. The ambulance's gas tank must have ruptured and a dull, orange glow spread beneath the ambulance. In seconds, the flames raced along the length of the vehicle. That was when I forgot the pain and began to run.

There was a Mercedes parked at the rear of the lot. Probably Tinkerton's. I ran around it trying all the doors, but they were locked. On the other side of the lot, Dannmeyer's police cruiser was still sitting across the entrance, its headlights on and engine running. The driver's side door was hanging open, just as the sheriff left it, and it didn't require a whole lot of thought to realize it was my only way out. I jumped inside and slammed the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man in a bloody white smock stumble out through the rear service door and fall on the loading dock. He got to his knees and wobbled back and forth. It was Tinkerton. Like Rasputin, somehow that big bastard was alive and still coming after me.

I wasn't about to wait. I dropped the sheriff's car into drive and pushed the pedal to the floor. The big cruiser did a donut in the funeral home's front lawn, kicking up grass and dirt until I got it pointed in the general direction of the highway. Behind me, the dark night erupted in a ball of bright orange flames as the ambulance's gas tank exploded. I spun the steering wheel to the right. The car bounced over the curb, through a ditch, and shot out onto the highway.

Forget today? Forget yesterday? Forget the whole thing? Not very damned likely, not anymore.

Big boys need lots ‘a toys…

M
y
mind was exploding. I kept hearing the words of that song, “I would walk five-hundred miles, and walk five-hundred more.” Walk? I'd run that far to get away from that funeral home, I thought, as the lyrics kept ringing in my ears. Two days before, I had been a software engineer and rock music aficionado minding my own business in my new job in Boston. Now I was a soon-to-be-very-much-wanted cop killer racing down the dark, country roads of central Ohio in a stolen sheriff's cruiser. I drove on into the night, heading west and south through the cornfields. My back ached, my ribs ached, and my head ached in two places. I took several deep breaths to relax and clear my head, trying to turn my mind loose on the problem, knowing I needed to come up with a plan. I had to get rid of Dannmeyer's car and I had to get away from Columbus as fast as I could. It no longer mattered whether I was guilty or innocent, or that I had barged into the Varner Clinic with the very best of intentions. I left three bodies back there in the flames and rubble and I was the one they would be after.

The digital clock on the dashboard read 10:15, which meant I had eight, maybe nine hours of darkness left. Even at night, the big, brown cop car would stick out like a sore thumb. After the sun came up? Forget it. The Bronco was probably toast. When Dannmeyer drove back into Greene's parking lot a few minutes ago, I had a sneaking suspicion he was coming back from dumping it off on the East Side. It was already in some chop shop or on its way to Cleveland, and I needed to find a new set of wheels.

That bastard Tinkerton. How much time did I have before the alarm bells went off, I wondered? With the side wall and the roof of the building collapsing like it did and the ambulance going up in flames, the funeral home had taken some serious hits. It should be a couple of hours at least before they figure out what happened, even if Tinkerton talks. Dannmeyer's body was buried deep under the bricks and I doubted anyone else even knew he was there, so why would they come looking for his car?

When they finally put the out flames and dug into the rubble, they'd discover George lying in the basement with his throat slit and blood all over the place, Ernie wedged in the front seat of the burnt ambulance with two nine millimeter slugs in his chest, and one slightly crushed sheriff lying under a pile of bricks with a smoking Glock in his hand. All in all, this would be the damnedest collection of bodies Campbell County had seen in a long time, and that didn't count one badly dented and bruised Ralph Tinkerton, Esq. lying on the loading dock. Those were four good reasons not to be caught in Dannmeyer's car. But who else besides Tinkerton, Dannmeyer, Greene, and Varner even knew about me to begin with? That was the problem with a tight little conspiracy. They'd have as much problem explaining it to the real cops as I would.

Tinkerton and his pals may be super-patriots with badges, working for what they thought was some greater good, but they were wrong. Besides, what could he do? Call in his buddies from Washington? Maybe. Even if old Ralph had that kind of clout, which I doubted, help wouldn't come overnight. Without local police support, even the FBI would have a lot of ground to cover once they get here.

With one eye on the dark, country road, I looked quickly around inside Dannmeyer's car. He must have just come back from a cop convention. God, but they do like their toys. He'd outfitted the cruiser like the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, with doo-dads all over the dashboard and console. To my right sat a big two-way police radio, a bracket-mounted portable computer, a mobile Bearcat scanner, lights, switches, buttons, and even a writing pad. That was a stretch. A jarhead? I was surprised there wasn't a pad for his comic books and a holder for some crayons.

The radio and the scanner had been quiet since I jumped in, other than some routine police chatter. The voices were calm and the language pure, boring cop-speak straight out of Rescue 911 on TV. I'd have traded them all for one good FM radio station and some back-to-back REM. Even some Twisted Sister belting out, “We're Not Going To Take It Anymore,” would do.

A dashboard bracket held a sleek Vascar radar unit that was pointed out the front windshield, a video camera, an extra-long flashlight, and a can of Mace. With a collection of toys like those, I could only imagine what he had at home in his basement. There was a steel rack welded to the hump in the middle of the floor that held a 12-gauge shotgun and a high-power hunting rifle with a scope. I shook the barrel. Californians must be out of season, because Dannmeyer had them locked-up tighter than Fort Knox. The key was probably one of the dozen or so on the big ring in the car's ignition, but I didn't know what I would do with a shotgun or a rifle to begin with, so I let it be. He also had a big, round ”Smokey the Bear” sheriff's hat hanging from the headrest on the passenger side of the car, where nothing would dent its lovely round crown. They were great for election posters, parades, and cop conventions. Too bad he wasn't wearing it a few minutes ago, I thought. The brick wall would have crushed that sucker flat.

The quick inventory reminded me, what did I have? I had thrown on my clothes so fast I hadn't even looked. I felt my hip pocket and realized my wallet was missing. I patted down my front pocket. My cell phone was gone too. Tinkerton had taken them, which meant I had no money, no credit cards, no phone, and no ID. That would make things damned inconvenient. What else did I have to work with? I felt my shirt pocket. The obituaries and stories I had taken from the library were still there, which was a relief. Tinkerton must not have noticed the shirt, so at least I had something.

Speaking of clothes, my pants leg was torn. The shirt was badly soiled from crawling across the floor of the ambulance, and there were fresh bloodstains from the cut Tinkerton made on my lower abdomen with his scalpel. Hardly the appearance of a solid citizen, I concluded. I pulled over to the road shoulder and stopped so I could open the glove compartment and take a quick look inside. Unfortunately, I found very little of use — maps, car manuals, some spare flashlight batteries, an extra book of traffic tickets, a couple of Hershey's chocolate bars, and a pint of cheap bourbon. With a sleaze-ball like Dannmeyer, the Hershey bars were probably for the little girls and the bourbon was for their mothers. Seeing the Hershey bars reminded me, I was hungry. I hadn't had anything to eat since the corned beef sandwich in Tinkerton's office at lunch. Was that really today? It seemed like a year ago. I pulled out the two chocolate bars, tore the first one open with my teeth, and devoured it. Dry, stale, and hard as a rock, but I couldn't recall anything ever tasting better, as I washed it down with a swallow of Dannmeyer's bourbon to clear my head.

Squirreled away in the back of the glove compartment I saw a tin Band-aid box with “Sheriff's Coffee Fund” hand-written on the outside. I shook it and popped the top open. Inside was a big wad of twenty, fifty, and a couple of one-hundred dollar bills wrapped with a rubber band. I figured there had to be eight or nine hundred dollars in there, not counting the loose change. You could OD on Starbucks with that much cash.

That was when I heard the first calls on the Bearcat scanner. It was a fire call to the Peterborough Fire Department. Then another. Finally came the calls for assistance from other police units in the area. More fire units. Campbell County, Westchester, Dalton, and even Columbus. County and state cops, too. I was at least five miles away now, heading west and south, so I doubted I'd run into any of them. However, with all those flashing lights and sirens racing around out there, I had to be even more careful.

First, I had to ditch the police cruiser. Maybe I could steal a car or a pick-up truck from one of the farms I passed. However, country people usually had big dogs and shotguns, and what would that gain me? They'd see it was gone all too soon, and when they saw the brown sheriff's cruiser nearby, they'd immediately come looking for the new car. No, it would be better to dump the sheriff's car in a built-up area of Columbus, out at some suburban shopping mall, or maybe at a truck stop on the Interstate. Then what? Hitch a ride? Maybe a bus or airplane? Somehow, I needed to push east toward Boston.