The arm hung limply. Hy dropped the pipe, grabbed him, and drew back his knife.
Lightning flashed, impaling Hy and several bushes beyond him. Hy crumpled; the two dark figures slipped away into the night.
The handyman must have screamed. Yard lights came on. Only seconds passed before a police car turned in at DuRosche court and came quickly up the drive. Mr. Kernley came from the house armed with a flashlight and probed about the grounds with it. The beam came to rest on Hy’s still body.
Egarn said brokenly, “Now they really must leave Rochester—and quickly. Whatever it is they have found, they will have to leave it. It won’t be safe for them to be seen there again—not for sikes. The girl’s death could be written off as an accident, but this time they were trespassing, and the handyman was guarding his employer’s property. They are certain to get a long prison sentence. They can’t finish their mission now. They don’t dare.”
20. ROSZT AND KAYNOR
Roszt and Kaynor also realized their time had run out, but they knew better than to leave Rochester immediately. Egarn had taught them more thoroughly than he realized. To leave a motel room without checking out would attract attention. To check out in the middle of the night would attract attention. Whatever the cost, they must avoid attracting attention.
Inskel, having seen them park their car four blocks from the DuRosche mansion, had no difficulty in picking them up there with the large len and following them to their new motel, and a terse order from Egarn arrived at their room almost as soon as they did. They ignored it. They were certain they had escaped cleanly. No one could have noticed them or their car in the dark, and just to be certain, they had driven several blocks with their lights off before they took a circuitous route to the motel. They saw no point in altering a routine they had complete confidence in.
And they were exhausted. They awoke at six the next morning and quickly packed their suitcases. Kaynor walked Val while Roszt went to the office to check out. When Kaynor returned, he put dog and suitcases in the back seat and drove the car to the office at the front of the motel to wait for Roszt.
It was almost seven o’clock by then, a popular time for checking out, and Roszt had to wait in line. He exchanged pleasantries with the clerk—they had enjoyed their stay, he murmured, and hoped to return soon— pocketed his change and the receipt, and strolled out to the waiting car like a man without a worry to his name, not to mention a possible murder or two.
The car rolled down the motel’s drive to the street, waited for traffic to clear, and then drove off. In the new workroom, Egarn finally felt able to relax. He had acquired enough of a feel for the city to know the two scouts would soon be on the network of expressways that ringed and bisected Rochester, and these would take them away from the city as rapidly as they cared to drive. Inskel made the necessary adjustments and followed their flight with the len.
A far more dramatic scene was occurring in the restaurant adjoining the office of the motel they’d just left. Alida’s friend Connie, the petite brunette, was a waitress there, and she passed the door just as Roszt strolled out to the car. She had read every description of the fugitives she could find, and somehow this character seemed to
She hurried back inside. The restaurant’s hostess, appalled by this breach of discipline, raised her voice a full fifty decibels above the husky whisper with which she greeted guests. “Connie!”
Connie murmured something about an emergency and dashed to the pay telephones in the lobby. When she returned, the manager was waiting for her in a towering fury. If the food was refused because it was too cold to eat, he thundered, she would pay for it herself.
Connie smiled, a martyr to a noble cause, and went to apologize to her customers.
Bob had been living and sleeping by the telephone ever since Janie’s funeral. He sat in a daze for a moment, staring at the license number and car description he had scribbled, and then he got out a list of numbers and began to make calls.
So it was that cab drivers’ radios all over Rochester suddenly received Code J reports with a license number and a description of the car just seen leaving the Fortley Motel with the two wanted men and a large black dog. Vehicles with citizen band radios heard something similar. So did truckers.
It was a motorcyclist with a CB radio who first spotted the car. He had just exited Interstate 490. The car was a short distance behind him, and when he glanced back at the highway, he saw it. He couldn’t verify the license number, but it was the correct make and year with two men in front and a large, black dog hanging its head out of a rear window. He passed on the information, which was immediately relayed on all the networks.
The driver of a semi-trailer picked up the car next as it took the interchange to Interstate 590 and headed south. “Do tell!” he breathed. “My very first Christmas present of the year!” He reached for his microphone.
Roszt and Kaynor were astute observers—they had to be, to accustom themselves to an utterly strange civilization—and they knew how traffic normally moved. As 590 threaded its way through pleasant, open country, they suddenly decided they didn’t like the behavior of the large truck that was following them. It moved out as though to pass, and Kaynor was conscious of the driver’s scrutiny as the truck’s cab pulled even with them. Then, for no reason at all, it dropped back again. Now it was following far more closely than normal in scattered traffic.
After a few seconds of that, Kaynor began watching for an exit. A sign ahead of them announced East Henrietta Road, Highway 15A, and he flipped his turn signal. Then he scowled. The driver of the truck had turned on his signal the moment he saw Kaynor’s. They exited onto East Henrietta and drove slowly to give the truck a chance to pass—it was a five-lane road, and traffic was scattered.
The truck remained close behind them.
Kaynor flipped on his turn signal again as they approached Highway 252, Jefferson Road. The truck’s signal came on at once. Kaynor slowed until the intersection traffic light was about to change; then he made his turn. The big truck slipped through behind them on the red light, ignoring horn blasts from outraged drivers on Jefferson. Before it could gather speed, Kaynor mashed his accelerator, and the car shot ahead.
They quickly left the truck far behind. Jefferson Road spanned a long stretch of suburbs south of Rochester. They passed commercial buildings with a scattering of motels; then neat modern structures used for light industry intermixed with a variety of restaurants.
The nosy trucker was no longer in sight by the time they reached the shopping malls and plazas that clustered around the intersection of Jefferson Road and West Henrietta, Highway 15. The overpass took them over West Henrietta, and then, leaving the shopping plazas behind, they emerged in open country with occasional old houses that had shoddy commercial enterprises cluttered around them. Traffic continued light. They passed another semitrailer plodding along in the right lane— and it pulled out and followed them.
Roszt had noticed a look of startled recognition on the driver’s face as they passed. It suddenly dawned on him that such vehicles might have radios, just as police cars did, and the enormity of their predicament became clear to him at once. They should have avoided heavily traveled roads where trucks were to be found. He spoke to Kaynor, who swung into the left turn lane. They made the turn, and an impressive complex of buildings loomed ahead of them. Roszt caught the name of the road, Lowenthal, and took their map of Rochester from the glove compartment.
The semitrailer followed them, but Kaynor quickly outdistanced it. They reached the buildings, which were
