Marcia Talley: In Death's Shadow

"It's coming off, Naddie!" A peephole began to take shape. I scraped some more, enlarging the opening until it became a nickel, a quarter, a silver dollar. I put my eye to the window.

Traffic was light, but then, it was Sunday. I counted three cars behind us, and then four. Chet was traveling fast, passing everyone in his path. We sped past a highway sign, but I could see only its back side.

We were on an expressway, though. I shifted my gaze to the right, across the median to the other side of the divided highway. A green sign announcing the Route 50 split for Annapolis and Washington, D.C., was receding into the distance. "We're heading north on I-97," I told Naddie.

I started in again with the trowel. I'd made a hole about six inches in diameter when Naddie said, "Listen!"

It was the first of the sirens.

The van slowed. Chet must have heard it, too.

I cupped my face and put it to the window, searching the road behind us for any sign of a police car. The siren grew louder. The van slowed again, but I couldn't see any flashing lights.

"Come on! Come on!" I chanted. "Where the hell are you?"

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. A two-tone blue cruiser pulling a U-ey, pitching and yawing over the median strip, siren whoop-whoop-whooping and blue lights flashing.

"Naddie! They're coming! Oh, thank God, thank God!"

But Chet wasn't planning to wait around for the Anne Arundel County police. The van lurched and I was thrown against the cargo door. As the van sped up, I crawled forward, pounding with my trowel on the Plexiglas partition that separated us from the driver's compartment. "Slow down, you idiots! You're going to get us all killed!"

As if they cared. They had seat belts, after all.

I turned to check on Mrs. Bromley. "You okay, Naddie?"

Looking small and frightened between the seed sacks, Mrs. Bromley nodded.

I crawled back to my peephole. The cop car was still behind, easing into the fast lane. He was going to force Chet over.

Then the cop drifted back. In a moment I saw why. A funeral procession, headlights blazing, had been crawling up the slow lane. Model citizens all, they tried to get out of the way, but some had pulled to the shoulder, some to the median, others, in confusion, still clogged the slow lane. Chet barely slowed. Like a stunt car driver gone berserk, he threaded his way between the mourners, horn blaring.

We passed the exit for BWI Airport. In a few minutes, I knew, we'd reach the Baltimore beltway. The cop was still behind, but his lights were receding. Had he determined that the chase was an unreasonable risk to innocent bystanders? Had he given up? Damn! If he didn't catch us before the beltway, Chet could go east on I-695. He could go west. He could drive north through the Harbor Tunnel. Unless the cops called in a helicopter, we might never be found.

I needed to stop Chet. But how?

Still holding the trowel, I crawled around the van, searching desperately for a weapon. I banged into buckets and flower pots, muddy work gloves and boots, a compost pail and a rusty wheelbarrow. It was like crawling through a minefield. Then I saw it, like a beacon in the night: a yellow canister strapped to the wall with a bungee cord. I tucked the trowel into my waistband and, pitching and weaving drunkenly, made my way toward the canister, thinking it would make an excellent bludgeon. Bracing myself against the wall, I unhooked the bungee cords and pulled the canister down. I checked the label. Insecticide. Oh, ho, ho, better yet , I thought as I tucked the canister under my arm. Some painters' masks hung on a peg nearby. I snatched them as I passed and staggered forward.

"Here, Naddie, put this on."

I fastened a mask to my own face, then, dragging the canister, made my way clumsily toward the front of the van.

I studied the sliding window. It had a lock, like on a jewelry display case. It didn't look too sturdy.

I pulled the trowel out of my pants, rammed it into the space between the sliding panels and pulled back, hard.

"What the hell?" Pottorff was pounding on the window with his fist. "Get back there!"

I pulled even harder. The lock turned out to be sturdier than the Plexiglas it was attached to. The Plexiglas crackled, then cracked, then split in two.

Pottorff's hand shot through the opening, but I whacked it with my trowel. "God damn!" he yelled, hastily retracting his paw.

I picked up the insecticide, aimed the nozzle into the cab, pulled the trigger and sprayed. I sprayed right and left, up and down, I sprayed until the canister was empty.

Pottorff coughed, he gagged, he tore at his eyes.

Chet stared straight ahead, but his eyes were streaming; he swiped at them with his shirtsleeve. The van swerved, hit the rumble strip, then pulled back onto the highway.

"Stop!" I screamed. "Stop now!"

Chet was aiming for the exit to I-695 when the cop car appeared outside his window. Chet swerved, accelerated and tore up the ramp, but was going too fast to make the turn. The van hit the Jersey wall, scraped along it, gradually slowing. Just when I thought we'd be okay, my head crashed into the ceiling as the van jumped over an object on the shoulder and shot across the ramp to bounce off the Jersey wall on the opposite side.

In the cab, Chet was wrestling with the steering wheel, struggling for control. With the cop crowding him on the right, Chet kept to the shoulder, still driving like a madman. Up ahead, a disabled vehicle blocked his way. "Look out!" I screamed, and ducked, covering my head with my arms. By the time Chet saw it, though, it was too late. He slammed on the brakes, sending the van into a slow skid. It screamed along, teetering on its right-hand tires, tipped and toppled on its side with a sound of breaking glass and shredding metal.

Suddenly everything was quiet.

I opened my eyes. I was lying on what had been the right side of the van, and I had the headache from hell.

I struggled to my knees. "Naddie! Where are you?"

"I'm over here."

Wiping at my eyes, I crawled to her. Secure in her corner, cushioned by seed sacks, she had survived the crash fairly well, but she was pinned in by the lawn mower, which had become unattached from its moorings.

"Are you okay?"

Naddie clutched her arm to her chest. "I think I've broken my arm."

"Anything else?"

She sucked in her lips against the pain and shook her head. A tear rolled down her cheek. "I don't think so, but the arm hurts like the devil."

"I'll have you out in a minute."

I'll have you out? That was a laugh. I poked my head through the window. There was no one in the cab. What I saw in the side view mirror was the backside of Chet and a brown blob that was Pottorff, crawling over the guardrail and hightailing it off into the underbrush, heading, I presumed, for nearby Arundel Hills Park.

"Help!" I screamed to anyone who might be listening. "Help! Get us out of here!"

There was the wail of more sirens. "Reinforcements!" I cheered. I crawled back to the cargo door and began flailing at it with my feet.

Suddenly the door was wrenched open. With "Thank God!" on my lips, I launched myself forward, falling into the arms of a very surprised Anne Arundel County cop.

"My friend," I muttered into his uniform. "Her arm's broken."

The officer held me at arm's length. He looked puzzled, as if I'd been speaking Greek. Where had all that blood on his uniform come from?

"Ma'am?" he said. "Are you all right, ma'am?"

The next thing I remember was sitting in the backseat of the police cruiser holding a compress to a gash on my forehead, watching as Chet and Pottorff, handcuffed, shuffling and staring at their shoes, were assisted into the backseat of a second cruiser.

"Please, check out my friend in there. I think she needs an ambulance."