though the entire school, like the parking lot, like the whole damn town, was completely empty by now, he had boxes and boxes of delicious doughnuts on his dolly.
Under the doughnuts, in the bottom of every box, was a little surprise. Just like Cracker Jacks, only much, much more surprising.
Paddy, still in his white Happy the Baker outfit, was not even slightly surprised to find one of the side doors to the school unlocked. Seemed like every door in town was open, half of the ones he’d tried, anyway. He was on his third elementary school and had only Central High School left to do before he, too, got out of town in a hurry. A busy baker is a happy baker. Busy, busy, busy.
Paddy had waited patiently all day, till the police had got everyone cleared out. Then he’d started driving around, making his doughnut deliveries. He’d been driving all night, all over town, lights out, of course. Office buildings, shopping malls, the town hall, the water works, you name it. It had been fun. He loved playing cat and mouse with the local cops. They were having a tough time, trying to do a murder investigation in the middle of an emergency evacuation. He’d counted on that, and he’d been right.
They had cruisers out patrolling the streets, mostly looking for stragglers, not coldblooded murderers, and Paddy had gotten really good at avoiding them. If he even saw headlights coming, he’d pull into a lot or just to the side of the road and slump down below the windows. He had his little snub-nose.38 handy in case anybody got nosy, but so far, nobody had.
Everybody had left town in pretty much of hurry when, twelve hours ago, the bodies had been found. And the cell he’d left on Monie’s body. Then the police had started cruising up and down the streets of Salina with loudspeakers blaring, giving the order to evacuate because of some unspecified threat to the town. He had his radio tuned to a local talk show. Rumors were flying. Some callers said it was a problem out at the fertilizer factory, some said it was a natural-gas problem, and a few even said it was bird flu. Everybody was busy packing up and getting the hell out of Dodge.
What nobody was saying was that it was terrorism. The police were mum on that subject. Besides, terrorism just didn’t seem to be on Salina’s radar, and you could see why. It was the most white-bread place Paddy had ever been to. Very few raisins in this batter. And the tallest building in town was, what, ten stories maybe, not exactly World Trade Center material. Who the hell would want to blow up Salina, take out a freaking Kmart? Puh-leeze, right?
These al-Qaeda creeps were crazy, you could tell the people of Salina thought, but they weren’t crazy enough to have Salina, Kansas, high on their priority target list.
By now, the police were busy looking into the Arm of God and Tehran connection, Paddy thought, laughing to himself as he drove his bakery truck west. He cruised under Interstate 135 on West Magnolia, headed for the deserted parking lot of the Salina Municipal Airport. It looked sad and empty, the airport did, like a spot that could use a few doughnuts.
I-135, the interstate that ran north and south, and I-70, the one that ran east and west, had immediately turned into parking lots as 40,000-plus people tried to blow out of town at once. Now the interstates, too, were empty. Highway Patrol had shut them down, ten miles outside the city limits. All roads leading into town had been closed when the evacuation warning went out.
As he wheeled his dolly down the school’s center hallway, rolling past all the empty classrooms, he liked the echo of his song off the linoleum tiles of the long, empty corridor. There were Christmas decorations everywhere, and he sort of got into the spirit. It was fun having an entire town all to yourself. Sort of like being invisible. He started whistling “Jingle Bell Rock,” getting into it.
He entered the principal’s office and saw that they’d all left their Wizard computers right on their desks, so no delivery there. He strolled next door to the science lab and saw that there were still a few computers at the workstations, but most of them seemed to have disappeared along with the kids. So, he placed a half-dozen doughnut boxes on the dissecting tables and moved on to the library, where he knew most of the computers would be-that is, if there were any left.
His deliveries complete, he headed back to the truck with an empty dolly. It was now just after five o’clock in the morning, and the sun was breaking over the little town of Salina. Paddy had been here, what, a week, staying at a Motel 6 on the outskirts of town, following the mayor around, scoping out her daily routine.
He’d also been watching the local news, keeping abreast of the situation so he could report in. Now that the country knew about what was going on, it was nonstop news on CNN and Fox. But they weren’t letting any new crews inside the barricades surrounding the town, so all you were left with was talking heads who didn’t know what the hell their heads were talking about.
He climbed up behind the wheel and cranked the engine. He was just pulling out of the lot, planning to hit the high school over on East Crawford Street, when the flashers lit up in his rearview, and he knew party time was over. He smiled, got the little snub-nose pistol out of the pocket in his baker’s jacket, and stamped on the go pedal. No way he could outrun the local PD’s Crown Vic, but he could get where he wanted to get to, at least. He didn’t speed, just kept going, acting like he didn’t know there was a squad car right on his ass, blinkers and sirens going.
“Pull over!” he heard from the loudspeaker. Pull over? Were they crazy? The whole town was going to go up in smoke in a nanosecond or so!
He hung a right on East Iron Street. It led all the way up a hill to a town park he’d staked out earlier. It was just some trees, a creek, and a baseball diamond, but it sat up high overlooking the little town, and he thought it would be a perfect place to bring his mission to an exciting conclusion. He slowed going up the hill, taking his time, watching the rosy dawn spread across the doomed village. The cops dropped back, content to follow him up the hill, see what the hell Happy the Baker was up to. They were probably running his plates, too. Which was good. They’d see the plates belonged on a 1973 Chevy truck, just like the one he was driving. The devil was in the details.
It was five-thirty A.M.
The deadline his guys in Iran had put in the cell phone he’d left at the mayor’s house was six A.M. Central Standard Time. Half an hour. Plenty of time to enjoy the moment.
He crested the hill and drove under the little arch that said “Hickory Hill Park,” his hideout. He wound around a little, cops right behind him, until he came to the spot he’d chosen that first evening, before he started stalking the mayor and her family. It was what they called a scenic overlook, and he parked right out at the edge of the little lot there. Then he killed the motor, slipped the snubbie into his pocket, and sat there waiting for the fuzz to come bust him.
41
He watched the cops exit the cruiser in his rearview. They got out with their guns drawn, approaching him from the rear on either side of the truck. When the guy on his side was abreast of the driver’s window, he rolled it down, gave the young cop a big smile, and said, “Was I going too fast?”
“Sir, I’d like your driver’s license and registration, please.”
“Absolutely, officer,” Paddy said, handing him the fake license and registration papers.
“Your real name is Happy? That right?”
“Yessir. Named after my old man. He was Happy, too.”
“Sir,” the cop said, looking from his license photo to him and back again, “are you aware that this town is under an evacuation order?”
“I was wondering where the hell everyone went. Evacuation, huh? What’s going on?”
“How did you get this vehicle past the police barricades, sir?”
“Weren’t any barricades up when I arrived.”
“And when was that?”
“Few days ago.”
“And in the meantime?”
“You mean since I arrived?”
“Correct.”
