getting louder now, much louder, and others were beginning to join the screeching chorus. I only knew that I had to keep running until I could no longer hear the sirens, and then maybe I could stop for a moment and think.
I darted across the alley and plowed through another hedge fence, and there on the other side of the fence was another string of second rate apartment buildings, much like the one I had lived in. I ran blindly, headed nowhere in particular, just running in panic. It was like a nightmare, the harder I ran the closer the sirens got. I circled the apartment buildings and crossed the street which placed me a block away from where I had started. A woman coming out of a drugstore stopped to watch, but I ducked behind another building at the end of the block and didn't see her again.
I began to thing about Dorris Venci as I ran. Goddamn that warped brain of hers!
But it was too late for regrets. Too late for anything but running, so I ran.
I stopped in a doorway and tried to get my breath, but the sound of those sirens wouldn't let me rest. Every goddamned car on the force must be answering this call! I thought. Well, who could blame them? It's not every day that you get a chance to pick up Roy Surratt, defenseless and alone, the way he is now!
But I kept telling myself: You've got to stop this running! It's idiotic, all this running when you don't even know where you're going! It only attracts attention.
When the prowl car went past, sirens screaming, four or five people came out of a supermarket to see what was going on. I joined them.
“Land sakes!” a woman was saying. “Where are the fire trucks?”
“It's not a fire,” a young guy in a white apron said. “It's a police car, I just saw it go by.”
“Well, I never heard the likes! What do you suppose...”
I was afraid they would notice how out of breath I was. I eased to the edge of the group and into another doorway.
That little pep talk did me more good than anything that could possibly have happened; it stilled the panic; it gave me time to think.
All right, I thought savagely, I'll get out of this yet! How about that little business with Calvart? I'd never be in a spot tighter than that one if I lived to be a thousand!
I felt a little better. I didn't feel so much like a pile of quivering mush. What I needed right now was a friend. A good, strong friend like John Venci... but Venci was dead. I didn't have a friend, I didn't even have an acquaintance that I could go to for help.
It was Roy Surratt against the world.
By now the people who had come out of the supermarket had gone back in, or had drifted away. I stood there in the doorway wondering what the hell I was going to do. I had to get out of this neighborhood somehow, and fast, but I had no idea how I was going to manage it until I saw the young punk, the kid in the white apron, come out of the supermarket loaded down with two paper bags full of groceries. There was a Ford sedan at the curb in front of the supermarket, and that's where he was heading.
“Just a minute, Joe, I'll get that door for you.”
I looked around to see where the voice was coming from, and saw the woman coming out of the market carrying another, smaller, bag. She was about forty years old and looked like a typical middleclass housewife. She opened the luggage compartment and the kid dumped the groceries inside.
“Thanks, Mrs. Rider. That canned stuff sure is heavy.”
The woman said something and the kid went back to the supermarket. Mrs. Rider stood there for a minute, frowning and listening to the sirens, then she closed the trunk lid that the punk had forgotten and went around to the driver's side of the car. I stepped out of the doorway and walked over to the Ford.
“There's been no accident, Mrs. Rider,” I said.
Startled, she snapped her head around and stared at me. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said there's been no accident. Those police cars you hear, they're looking for me, Mrs. Rider.” I didn't have a gun to freeze her into silence, and I didn't want her to start screaming... not until I was close enough to choke it off, at least. So I spoke gently, quietly, hoping that she would understand her position and be sensible about it.
I opened the door on the driver's side and said, “I don't want to hurt you, Mrs. Rider. That's the last thing in the world I want....” But it was no use. I could see the scream coming up in her throat.
I had to act fast. I jumped inside and hit her. I knocked the scream out of her before it ever became a sound. Her head snapped back and she fell against the door on the other side of the car. I grabbed her and stuffed her down to the floorboards.
She was out cold.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IN THE GLOVE compartment I found an eight inch crescent wrench and a state road map. The wrench I slipped into my right hand pocket, the map I spread out on my lap and studied for four or five minutes trying to decide on the best escape route out of Lake City.
There were several ways to get out of the city, but the best and quickest way was a superhighway leading south of the city. Just outside the city limits there was an elaborate traffic circle that would take you off in about any direction you wanted, and I decided this would be my best bet. My big problem was getting to that traffic circle before the cops set up a roadblock.
I stuffed the road map back into the glove compartment and then pulled Mrs. Rider up onto the seat and slapped her a couple of times to bring her out of it. She wasn't really hurt, although she might have trouble chewing on the left side of her jaw for a few days. She was suffering from shock more than anything. The slapping took care of that.
“... Stop that!”
“That's more like it,” I grinned. I had slipped over on the passenger's side of the car and put her under the wheel, and now I had my hand in my coat pocket, holding the crescent wrench like a gun.
“Mrs. Rider,” I said quietly, “I don't want to be forced to use this gun. Now you're not going to make me use the gun, are you?”
That scared her plenty, and I knew I had her in the palm of my hand. “Please... please put it away!”
“It's just a precaution, Mrs. Rider; a man in my position can't afford to take chances.”
“What... are you going to do!”
“I've got to get out of Lake City, and I've got to do it fast. You're going to help me, Mrs. Rider. You are going to drive just where I tell you to drive, and as long as you do that you won't be hurt.”
“I'm... I'm so nervous... I don't think I can drive.”
“Sure you can, Mrs. Rider. All you have to do is keep thinking about this gun in my pocket. You keep thinking about this gun, and what will happen to you if anything goes wrong, and I'm sure everything will be fine. Now start the car.”
She was nervous, all right, but she started the car. She was thoroughly convinced that I had a gun on her, and would kill her, and she was more than eager to do anything I said.
I directed her west, through the outskirts of Lake City, and then we hit the four lane highway and headed south and I stopped worrying about Mrs. Rider. But I worried about those cops, plenty.
Those cops with their short wave radios, and their teletype machines, and their identification experts. What I needed was a short wave radio, one like Dorris Venci had had in her Lincoln. If I had a radio like that, I'd know if the cops were already busy setting up roadblocks or if they were still fooling around that apartment house trying to flush me out of some hole.
But I didn't have a radio and I didn't know a damn thing. All I could do was hope.
Then I glanced at the Ford's speedometer and it was nosing up toward 60, and I said sharply, “Watch your speed!”
She winced as though I had slapped her again, but she jumped off that accelerator. “Please!” she said, almost sobbing. “You know how nervous I am!”
“And you know how cops are about speed laws. If we get jumped for speeding, Mrs. Rider, I'll be forced to conclude that you did it on purpose and act accordingly. That's something you might think over whenever you see that speedometer indicate more than 45.”
