Уильям Питер Макгиверн - Murder on the Turnpike

Trask completed his questioning of the man in the leather jacket, thanked him and excused him. When the man had gone. O’Leary told Trask of the conversation with the attendant at Howard Johnson’s No. 2.

“You get back there,” Trask said. “We’ve got to get a lead, and fast.”

“He’s got the girl in his car,” O’Leary said desperately. “That’s a lead, isn’t it? We can search every damn car on the pike.”

Trask looked away from O’Leary, pained by what he saw in the big trooper’s face. He gestured impatiently at the flash of the turnpike traffic which they could see through the windows of the manager’s office.

“There’s twenty-five or thirty thousand cars rolling out there tonight. Doctors on emergency calls, pregnant women, businessmen making plane and train connections, parents hurrying to sick kids. How can we tie up that traffic? And where would we get the men to search the cars? The pike would be stalled bumper to bumper in a matter of minutes. We’d block the highways coming in from three states Maybe we could stop all cars of a certain kind — like we stopped those Edsels. Or pick up men answering to a fairly general description. But we can’t bring that traffic to a halt without something to go on, Dan. Now you get back to Number Two. Maybe that attendant can give us the lead we need.”

O’Leary covered the twelve miles in eight minutes, with his beacon flashing and siren screaming. The attendant he had talked with earlier recalled the incident. “I was just coming out of the office, and a man standing there said something about it looking like you were in a hurry. Well, I told him you knew how to handle your car, that’s all.”

“Think hard.” O’Leary said. “Did you use my name?”

“Well, sure, I thought I told you. I said Trooper O’Leary or maybe Dan O’Leary, but I know I mentioned your name.”

“What did this man look like?”

“He was standing kind of in the shadows. I just glanced over my shoulder at him; you know, the way you do when something doesn’t mean much. He was pretty big. I’d say. And he was wearing glasses. I saw ’em flash when he turned his head.”

A big man with glasses, O’Leary thought with despair; a description that might tit half the men driving the pike tonight. He questioned the other attendants then, hoping someone might have seen the man leaving the shadows of the office. But he drew blanks; none of them had seen him or noticed any unusual activity around the pumps.

O’Leary returned to his patrol car and flashed Sergeant Tonelli at headquarters. He told him what he had learned, but his heart sank as he repealed the meager description — a big man with glasses.

“Check,” Tonelli said in his hard, impersonal voice, “You’ll proceed south now, O’Leary. Report to Sergeant Brannon at Interchange Five and take further orders from him. You’re going to be working the presidential convoy.”

O’Leary was filled with bitter guilt and despair; the plans being made to find the killer obviously didn’t include him. He wouldn’t have even the solace of trying to save Sheila. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Look, sergeant, just one thing. The killer isn’t in any hurry to get off the pike. Have you noticed that?”

O’Leary’s question was considerably out of line, but Sergeant Tonelli was a man who understood a number of things that weren’t spelled out in the department’s training manual and training directives. He said quietly, “We’ve noticed it. Dan. But we don’t know yet what’s behind it. You get moving now.”

“Check,” O’Leary said and turned his car into the curving approach to the dark turnpike. He felt helpless and miserable, consumed with a leaden fear.

Sheila had fought down her first panic, which had been like the fear or smothering she had known as a child. Once when she was very small her brother and his friends had locked her in a trunk during some game or other and had gone off and forgotten about her. For a long time afterward she couldn’t bear anything that threatened her breathing — swimming under water, a dentist’s wad or cotton in her mouth, even the slight pressure of a locket at the base of her throat was enough to make her heart pound with terror. But she had finally conquered that dread; she had faced the issue with hard common sense, refusing to pity herself, refusing to let herself be shackled by morbid fears.

Now, lying helpless in the rear of Bogan’s car, she tried to apply the same therapy to her straining nerves. So tar nothing had happened to her; her body was cold and cramped, and dust from the carpeting had made her eyes water, but that was all. She knew she was safe as long as they were on the turnpike. After that she would be completely helpless. He could take her anywhere, do anything he wanted with her. She faced that fact clearly. It meant she must get away from him before he drove off the pike. Somehow she must make him stop. Dan had told her any stopped car would be quickly checked by the police, with the trooper concealed by his own headlights and emerging from their brightness with a hand on his gun.

It seemed a hideous irony that she had been amused by his earnest discussion of the various methods used in policing the turnpike — and just a tiny bit bored by his enthusiasm for his work — when that skill and energy might be the only thing that could save her life. She tried to stop thinking about Dan O’Leary. It would make her cry, she knew, and there was no time now for that kind of self-pity. She could think of him later; of his tall, alert way of walking, and the fine, dark hair on the backs of his big clean hands, and the way he got a joke a split second after she did and grinned a bit sheepishly at her swifter understanding.

Now she must make this madman bring the car to a stop. “Please,” she said in a weak voice. “I’m going to be sick. I feel dizzy.”

“Well, that’s too bad. But it’s not much longer.” Bogan glanced at his watch and then at a numbered milepost that gleamed ahead of him in the darkness. He was a bit behind schedule, but not seriously so. The rain had made him lose time. He smiled.

“Please,” she said again. “I’m freezing. There’s no circulation in my arms and legs. Please stop and untie my ankles.”

“You’re Trooper O’Leary’s girl, I know,” he said. “I saw the way you smiled at each other, Are you going to marry him?” He was still smiling. “Answer me. Are you going to marry him?” he said coldly.

She was silent; the changed tone of his voice sent a chill through her cramped body. She tried to guess at his thoughts, to form some picture of his needs and compulsions; but it was as hopeless as attempting a jigsaw puzzle blindfolded. “I’m not sure,” she said at last.

“You’re not sure,” he said, mocking her in a high, petulant voice. The lying little beggar. They would get married, all right, and buy a little house and pull all the blinds down so no one could see them. And keep everyone outside their little circle of pleasure.

He remembered how it had been in his own home, the long nights that belonged only to his father and mother, and finally his guilty relief and happiness after his father’s death. There was just his mother and brother then, and it was very nice. She baked sweet cookies and told them stories. It went on for such a long and pleasant time. Until his brother brought home a girl. They had fought about that; Bogan had warned him of the terrible thing he was doing, but his brother had got married anyway, and then there was just his mother and himself, and that was the best time of all. He worked as a night watchman because the sunshine hurt his weak eyes. She kept their apartment shaded in the daytime, and they watched television together, and she made his meals and took care of his clothes. When she died he asked his brother if he could live with him, but there were children now and no room for him. That was when he had got the tiny place on Third Avenue and begun to watch the couple in the furniture shop.