onramp.
Trujillo looked like he was in his mid-fifties, which made him ten to twelve years older than Larson. He had a round head, cauliflower ears, pudgy cheeks, and didn’t resemble any of the Trujillos that Larson had known in his youth. But he’d been away from his hometown for almost twenty-five years and how people looked back then was pretty much a dim memory.
Larson decided to probe. “Are you from Springer, Officer Trujillo?”
Trujillo shot him a hard glance in the rearview mirror. “I don’t need you trying to make small talk with me.”
Larson shrugged, smiled pleasantly, and looked out the window. In a few minutes, they would be on the outskirts of Albuquerque heading north. Assuming the identity mix-up at the jail stayed undiscovered, what could he do to get free?
He’d lied about getting carsick, but that ploy hadn’t worked. Getting Trujillo to cuff his hands in front gave him more use of his hands and arms. But that would be of no advantage unless he got unshackled and out of the cage. Other than the puking idea, nothing came to him.
He turned away from the window to find Trujillo checking up on him in the rearview mirror, and the thought hit him that the man couldn’t possibly be from Springer, a town of no more than thirteen hundred people. Unless he’d only just moved there, he would have seen the resemblance to Larson’s identical twin brother, Kerry, who lived on a ranch five miles outside of town.
Larson smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Trujillo asked.
“I just bet you’re not from Springer,” Larson said.
Trujillo grunted in reply.
“Come on,” Larson prodded with a easy smile. “Am I right or am I wrong?”
Trujillo sighed. “I’m from Raton, okay? Now just shut up and let me drive.”
“Whatever you say,” Larson replied as he turned his head to look back out the window. Trujillo kept the van in the right-hand lane of the interstate, and a steady flow of vehicles, including big-rig trucks, passed them by. Larson leaned forward and glanced through the cage at the dashboard speedometer. Trujillo had the van cruising along at a safe and sane seventy miles per hour.
They reached a long stretch of open road and Larson told Trujillo he was getting really sick to his stomach.
“Like I said before,” Trujillo replied, “go ahead and puke all over yourself. I ain’t stopping.”
Larson made a couple of gagging sounds, tried to look sour, which wasn’t all that difficult, leaned back, and closed his eyes. Unless lady luck dealt him a couple more good cards, he was doomed to ride all the way to Springer only to be sent right back to Albuquerque and then on to the super-max with the hard-core badasses after sentencing. The thought made him shudder.
Beyond Santa Fe the traffic thinned out considerably. In an attempt to wear Trujillo down, Larson complained again about being sick, but got no response. He stared at his shackled feet and wondered if he could yank his legs free, kick the cage apart, and wrap his cuffed hands around Trujillo’s neck and strangle him without getting himself killed in a car wreck.
He pulled hard at a shackle with his leg. The steel ring bit into his ankle and made him wince.
Halfway between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, the van blew a rear tire and slewed wildly. Trujillo steered into a spin, got the van straightened out, and braked gradually as he pulled to the shoulder of the highway. He got out to inspect the damage, then called dispatch, gave his location, and reported the tire failure.
“Do you need assistance and backup at your twenty?” the dispatcher asked.
“Negative,” Trujillo replied. He clipped the microphone to the dash and opened his door.
“Since we’re stopped, will you let me out so I can throw up behind a tree?” Larson asked.
Trujillo eyed Larson through the cage. He would much rather not have the vehicle smelling of puke. “Okay.”
He stepped out of the van, opened the sliding passenger door, unlocked the leg shackles, unbuckled Larson’s seat belt, and motioned him out of the van. “Let’s go. I’m right behind you.”
Trujillo prodded Larson toward a big cedar tree near a wire fence twenty feet from the shoulder of the roadway. “Get it over with,” he said, his hand resting on the butt of his holstered sidearm.
Larson dropped to his knees under the branch of the tree. He brought some bile up and spit it out as his hand reached for a small stick lying in the duff.
“Is that it?” Trujillo asked derisively, leaning over Larson’s shoulder.
“Give me a minute,” Larson said. He grasped the stick so that the end protruded from his closed palm, and with his head lowered, he gagged some more for effect and faked throwing up. He shivered, coughed, spit, and waited until he couldn’t hear the sound of any cars on the interstate.
“Are you done?” Trujillo asked.
Larson nodded but stayed put, hoping Trujillo would step closer and look down to see whether or not he’d been faking it. Just as he lifted his head, Trujillo came closer, within striking distance. Larson uncoiled and sprang, jamming the stick into Trujillo’s left eye. The stick protruding from his eyeball snapped off and Trujillo screamed as he hit the dirt.
Larson stepped back, kicked him hard in the balls, leaned down, and drove an elbow into Trujillo’s left eye. He straddled Trujillo, snatched his semiautomatic from the holster, slapped the barrel against his head, and pulled the limp body out of sight of the roadway, just before a car whizzed by. He fished a key ring out of Trujillo’s pants pocket, undid the handcuffs, and looked down. Blood poured from Trujillo’s mangled eye but he was still alive.
Larson thought about finishing Trujillo off and decided against adding a murder charge to his sheet. He shed his orange jail jumpsuit, pulled Trujillo’s pants off, then rolled him on his stomach and cuffed his hands behind his back.
The pants were way too big around the waist and about three inches too short. Larson cinched them tight with Trujillo’s belt, tapped the officer one more time on the head with the semiautomatic to keep him unconscious, and set to work changing the flat tire on the van.
As Larson tightened the last lug nut on the spare, a voice over the radio inside the van asked Trujillo to report in. Larson got behind the wheel and keyed the microphone several times to make static noises, hoping it would sound like a radio transmission failure. Then he floored the accelerator and drove away.
There was an undeveloped rest stop a few miles farther up. Larson knew he needed to ditch the Department of Corrections vehicle as soon as possible and find new wheels. Hopefully, a trucker would be parked there for a mandatory rest break or some motorist who couldn’t hold his water would be making a quick pit stop behind a tree.
The only vehicle at the rest stop was a Honda SUV. A young, good-looking woman in shorts and a halter top stood at the open tailgate at the back of the vehicle, changing a baby’s diaper. Nearby, a young man walked a small dog on a leash near a tree.
Larson pulled in next to the Honda to shield it as much as possible from motorists passing by, ripped the microphone cord off the radio in the van, and jumped out. The young woman turned. The startled look on her pretty face turned to anger when he grabbed her around the neck, pressed the semiautomatic against her head, and told her not to move. The man walking the dog froze.
“Don’t be stupid if you want this pretty lady to live,” Larson called out. “Walk toward me.”
The young man had dark, curly hair; scared eyes; and a face that looked like it hadn’t been used yet. He dropped the leash and the yappy dog took off after a rabbit on the other side of the fence.
Larson cocked the hammer for effect. “Now,” he ordered.
The man took a few cautious steps and stopped. “Don’t hurt my wife and baby,” he said anxiously, his voice cracking.
“Do as I say and you all might live.” Larson backed up to the van, pulling the woman with him, and told her to open the side door. “Pick up your baby and bring it over here,” he ordered the man.
Larson glanced at the naked infant. It was a girl, maybe six months old, lying on a dirty diaper that was soaked in gooey, mustard-colored, stinky shit.
