“You’re not the first to want to get out of here but it’s not easy outside. They’ll have everyone looking for you. You prepared for that?”
“I’ll manage.”
Edgar was making his way back to the table.
“Mack. Come on.”
“Forget the tools. Tonight, after medication. Meet me in my room.”
With that said he went back to singing and Edgar sat down. He sighed. “Man, would you stop with the singing? It’s driving me nuts.”
Jack chuckled.
“Hey Winchester. Come over here. I need an extra hand,” Charlie said lifting a bike up onto a rack. Jack tapped the table and looked at Mack. A wave of hope came over him. This was it. He was getting out. All he needed was one chance. One way or another he was getting out. As soon as he escaped he would find Angelo and settle the score.
14
Back at the Evergreen Motel, Kelly and Zach were seeing what they could dig up on the number Sanders had given them. While they were doing that, Dalton had placed a call to Pastor Boone to see if he could get in and see Jack one last time.
“I don’t know what to say, Dalton, it’s out of my hands.”
“But you’re the pastor. You have access to them.”
“Only on Sundays, and occasionally under special circumstances. What I managed before was a one-off. I could have got in a lot of trouble for that. It won’t happen again, especially after what happened.” Dalton didn’t say anything so Boone continued. “You don’t know, do you?”
“About what?”
“Your friend Jack tried to escape not long after we left. He beat a guard and fled the hospital. Fortunately he didn’t get far. They got him but still, any chance of getting close to him now is zero.”
On one hand hearing that was bad but on the other, it meant Jack was up and moving again. Seeing him in Saranac Hospital had worried him. For a while he thought he might never come around. Dalton sighed. “Look, do you think you can at least get a letter to him through one of your contacts?”
“I can try but I can’t guarantee anything. Winchester is under some serious scrutiny right now.” He took a deep breath. “Drop it off later and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Mark. I appreciate that.”
After hanging up, he brought a hand to the bridge of his nose and squeezed it. He could feel a tension headache coming on. As much as he wanted to stick around he knew he was limited on what he could do and his concern was now for Karen. “Things okay?” Kelly asked.
“Not exactly. Any luck with that number?”
“Oh yeah, plenty,” Zach said with a smirk. “If you want an extra-large pizza for ten bucks.” He snorted. “It’s for a pizza joint in New Jersey. That asshole screwed us over.”
“A pizzeria?”
Kelly turned in the chair. “Seems so.”
“I told you we shouldn’t have trusted him,” Zach said.
“I dunno, I would expect this Angelo character might be inclined to use such a place to cover his tracks. He obviously doesn’t want to be found and in the event Sanders was pulled in for questioning, all he’d have was a number for a pizza joint. Might not be any use to us but it might mean something to Jack.” He reached over and scribbled a short message to Jack on a pad of paper by the phone and then tore the piece off.
“Anyway, I did some digging into lakes around Apalachin and there really is only one large body of water and that is Mutton Hill Pond. There are a few other smaller ones, though I would be more inclined to think they dumped the vehicle in the Susquehanna River,” Kelly said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Dalton added. “It’s not like finding her would help. Sanders was right. It would all be brushed under the rug by the cops.”
“They might do something.”
Zach laughed. “Please. Dalton’s right. You think they would want to lose face for bungling an investigation and sending an innocent man away to a forensic hospital?” He laughed again and walked over to the drapes and pushed one back ever so slightly. He was nervous that the same men who’d run them off the road might return. “I say we head back to San Francisco with what we’ve got and publish that. The courts might need proof, but the public doesn’t. We’ll give them the dirty truth and let them run with it.” He turned. “That’s what we’ve always been good at. Agreed?”
“Well that would be an option if I had recorded Sanders.”
Zach’s eyes widened. “But you told me you had it.”
“No, you asked did I get it all. I didn’t reply.”
“You are shitting me!?” He stared at her and Kelly shook her head. “Well that’s great. Really great. So you mean I went in there and risked life and limb for nothing?”
“Well it wasn’t for nothing,” Dalton said. “We learned a lot.”
“You can’t send to print second-hand information.”
“Of course you can, tabloids do it all the time,” Dalton said.
“You know what I mean!” Zach pounded the wall with his fist and walked into the bathroom. They heard the toilet seat and then a steady trickle of piss before he flushed. “Of all people vying for a promotion I would have thought you would have got it, Kelly.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I was a little busy trying to avoid getting shot. You could have recorded it.”
“What the fuck do you think I was doing? Oh that’s right, saving your asses!” He exhaled heavily making it clear that he was pissed.
“I don’t think this is getting us anywhere,” Dalton said rising from the bed and heading towards the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To drop off a message.”
“Why not just tell him over the phone?”
“Because I’m old-fashioned,” Dalton said as he went out and slammed the door behind him. It wasn’t because of that. He could have told Boone over
