Джон Макдональд - More Good Old Stuff

The investigation seemed to be going nicely. Jay Kelso sat at one of the round tables near the soda fountain.

The two police cars were parked out by the gas pumps. The men in charge were up in Cabin 11, investigating.

“Why haven’t they picked Lawton up?” Kelso demanded angrily of a man in the doorway.

“If they haven’t, they will,” the man said grimly.

Finally he heard the crunch of steps on the gravel. The tall man in charge half turned and said loudly, “There’s nothing more to see. All you people go on back to your cabins.”

“Have you got him yet?” Kelso demanded.

“We know where he is. I just want to check the identification again with you. You say you came back to the cabin after a short walk and you saw the door open.”

“That’s right,” Jay said. “It surprised me, so I stopped. I was in the shadows. The moonlight hit the door. Lawton came out, sort of crouched. I saw his face as plain as day. He was wearing those ragged old work shorts of his.

“He stood for a minute as though he was listening for something. Then he went off into the darkness. It worried me. I knew he’d been acting funny lately. Mumbling to himself. In fact, I mentioned it to Mr. Bright a week or so ago. Lawton was a mental case. There’s no getting around that.”

The officer yawned cavernously, said, “Well, Mr. Kelso, we can sure wrap this up like a Christmas package if you can stand back of that identification.”

Jay pretended annoyance. “I tell you I saw him like I’m seeing you. No possible doubt about it.” Secret glee replaced the fear he had felt before.

The officer turned in his chair, looked back at the old man and said, “Jonas, let me have that thing you showed me a little while back.”

Without looking at Kelso, Jonas Bright shuffled over and handed the officer a small folded slip of yellow paper.

The officer opened it, read it, his lips moving with each word. Then he slid it across the table to Jay Kelso. “Yes, sir, I guess that positive identification sews this case right up.”

Jay felt sudden coldness as he read the telegram.

DON’T BE ANGRY, DAD. THIS WAS MY IDEA AND NOT BEN’S. THE CABINS CAN TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES FOR A FEW DAYS. I’LL BE MRS. LAWTON WHEN I GET BACK. WE ARRIVED HERE IN DAYTONA AT MIDNIGHT. ALL MY LOVE, SERENA.

Jay tried to speak and his voice was a pitiful squeak. “Dark. Just moonlight. He must have looked like Lawton. You can’t think that I... that I—”

The officer opened a big brown hand and put a scrap of khaki on the top of the table.

Jay Kelso almost reached his car before the slug smashed his knee.

In the first gray of dawn he came awake with the alertness of an animal. He was on his stomach in a sandy notch between two rocks and the revolver was a hard lump against his body.

They might have seen him there and they might be watching. His hand closed around the chill metal, and he thumbed back the hammer. Only then did he move, so explosively that nearby birds squawked in alarm and winged off.

He drank from the creek at the foot of the slope and then went back up to the crest. As he neared the crest he dropped to hands and knees, writhed the last few feet on his belly, reaching forward with caution to part the dried grass.

He froze in that position, his pale eyes squinting against sunrise, staring down toward the distant ribbon of highway. His face held all the cunning of a man who skirts the narrow border of death and means to survive it.

It was a narrow face, with a pulled-down petulance about the oddly thickened lips. His body looked flaccid and too thin, but it had a coiled-steel efficiency about it, an animal’s economy of movement. A prison number was stenciled across the back of his torn gray cotton shirt. The stubble of beard along the thin line of his jaw was flecked with gray, though he didn’t look much over thirty.

At last, when the sun was high enough, it glinted on the white enamel of the trooper cars. The roadblock was established at the place he had expected to find it. With half a break he would have been out of the area before they could have set up the block. The distant cars stopped to be checked, went on again, seeming from that distance to move with incredible slowness.

But the escape siren had gone off too quickly and he had been cut off, had been forced to make his way through the swamp. The black mud had caked to a sick gray on his pants.

He watched the roadblock for a time and his eyes suddenly narrowed as he saw movement halfway between his position and the distant highway. The slant of the sun made vision difficult but he finally saw a thin line of men beating their way toward the hill.

Cursing, he slid slowly back, crawled a dozen feet, ran in a crouch for a time and then began to walk back toward the swamp at a ground-covering pace. Yet there was indecision in his manner. He was a bug in a bottle and they were putting the cork in the bottle.

Then he stopped, thinking that maybe he could ambush the line when they got to the brush, shoot his way through into the clear. But there were flats in the valley and he had seen the long gleam of rifle barrels. The thought of a rifle slug tearing his flesh made him feel ill. It made him forget the hunger that had gnawed at him for twenty-four hours. No choice. The date set for his execution was but a month and three days away. The state wanted that date kept.

Though he knew it was dangerous, some hunch he only half understood turned his steps toward the edge of the swamp where the highway cut close to it.

Soon he heard the roar of cars and, after forty more yards, he could see the flash of sun on chrome as they swept by. With a car he might be able to bluff his way past the roadblock.

But what chance of stopping one of them, when every driver had probably been told an escaped murderer was hiding somewhere along that stretch of road?

He wondered if he could make one of the cars stop. If only they didn’t go so fast. A hill might slow them down a bit. He began to move more rapidly, on the alert for any sound of crashing brush that would indicate the nearness of the posse.

A half mile further the road cut away from the swamp, went up a long steep hill. He crouched in the brush and listened until he could hear no drone of cars approaching from any direction. He ran across the road, dived into the brush on the other side, rolled to a stop and held his breath while he listened. There was no shout of discovery, no sound of pursuit.

Twice he heard faraway yells and guessed that it was the men of the posse shouting instructions to each other. Working his way up the hill was slow and laborious. The brush was thin and twice he had to run across open spaces. Once, moments after he found cover, the search plane circled lazily overhead. He cursed it quietly until it was gone — heading back over the swamp.

Fortunately, the steepest part of the hill was a place where the brush grew close to the road. The morning was growing hotter and the sweat made the thin shirt cling to his shoulders and chest. Deerflies began to bother him.

He flattened out on his belly and watched the road. Looking down, the hill did not seem to be as steep. It did not appear to slow down the cars. A red trailer truck ground up the hill and he tensed, then saw the helper sitting beside the driver. Too much risk. Two girls came up the hill in an ancient convertible and it began to labor. But as he shifted the gun to a more comfortable grip, the girl behind the wheel dropped it into second and began to pick up speed.