Джон Макдональд - The End of the Night

“Hell, Mase. Some very bright people are doing this same job of studying this thing out, maps and all.”

“And any ideas they get, they got to go through channels and committees. They’re big for staff work, Gus.”

Gus sighed again. Spring had finished and checked his work. “I got me a couple of ideas. I could check ’em out with you, Mase.”

“I’ll listen and try to confuse you.”

Gus got up and latched his belt and went over to the map. Roily Spring had drawn a red line, following specific highways, from Uvalde to Monroe.

Gus studied it in silence for a few moments. “I’m just guessing, now. There’s a make on one of them. Hernandez. From the record, he’s got just enough upstairs so he can feed himself. And he isn’t what you’d call a playful type. Those kids in the barn heard all that smart talk, that wise-guy talk from the one with glasses. He’s bright. So let’s say he’s running things. And he’s playful. He does things on impulse. He was driving when they stopped to kill Crown and take the Wister girl. There’s something playful about killing the salesman, like they toyed around with him some. I say they’re using drugs. It smells that way. But not something to make them crazy enough and reckless enough to get caught easy. Okay so far?”

“You haven’t said a hell of a lot yet.”

“I’m guessing on some of these roads but from the places they hit, these roads are pretty good guesses. They were picked smart. They’re fast secondary roads. All traffic patrol is spread so thin these days, about all they can cover is the main highways. You take the little roads, the only trouble you can have is in the towns and small cities. And if you take it easy in those places, you can stay safe, even with the hottest plate in the country.”

“If you say so, Sheriff.”

“What I’m doing out loud, Mase, is building up a half-ass M.O. on this bunch. What they’ve had luck with, they’ll keep doing. Keep switching cars, keep taking secondary roads, hole up in the daytime. It’s my guess they won’t split up, and that’s only a guess.”

“I have that hunch too, Gus. Particularly hopped up. They won’t want to change the dice.”

“Now let’s put some of this stuff together and see where we get. Extend the rough line and its aims at New York. We got to make some assumptions if we’re going to come up with anything, so let’s just say it’s New York. Why the hell not? If you want to lose yourself, get in the middle of the biggest crowd you can find. Okay?”

“Unless one of them is from someplace else and they have a good place to hole up, and how the hell can you tell that?”

Kurby stepped over to his desk and picked up a soft pencil and a ruler. He went to the map, made a measurement against the scale, and then drew a black arc, one third of a circle, northeast by east of Monroe.

“That’s four hundred miles,” he said. “So let’s say they went about that far and holed up Sunday morning. They could have dumped the girl, dead, or kept her with them. Last night they got on the road again. They’d be in Pennsylvania, the way it looks. They’d stick to the M.O, and change cars. So they’ve got Pennsylvania plates, and we don’t know what kind of car, but it won’t be a junker. They’d stick to secondary roads last night, heading across the state. And there’s one thing that state hasn’t got, it’s a good fast way to get across it without you take the turnpike.”

“I remember the days before the pike,” Mase said. “It was a life work crossing that state.”

“So let’s say they got maybe to this area by daylight this morning, and holed up again.” Gus Kurby drew an elongated oval on the map, the long dimension of the oval north and south, fairly close to the Jersey border. “Let’s just say they’re somewhere inside this area right here, sacked out this minute.”

“You make it sound real, Gus,” Mase said with a grin that pulled the corners of his mouth down.

“Let’s say they haven’t pulled anything since killing Crown except one auto theft. We know they had the use of a car radio in the Buick. They know, even hopped up and crazy confident, they’re the hottest thing in twenty years. What they don’t know is they’re so hot that it makes confusions that work to their advantage.”

“Where is this heading, Gus?”

“Now I got to contradict myself. If they stick to the M.O., I’m licked. If they take secondary roads across Jersey, I’m in deep left field. They want to get to New York. They’re close. They’re hot. They’re pooped. Three in the morning is no time to hit New York City. It stays light until damn near nine. They’re close to the Pennsy Pike that feeds into the Jersey Pike. Evening traffic in the summer is heavy. Put yourself in their place, Mase. What would you do?”

Mase chewed his lip and then nodded. “I might chance it, Gus. I might get rolling earlier, take a chance on the pike, and get to the city before midnight. But, on the other hand, instead of holing up, once I got so close, I might have pushed all the way on through and be in New York already.”

“There’s that chance. But they’ve been a long, long way, and maybe the girl used up some time, and getting their hands on a car used up some time, and they had to fight those Pennsylvania roads all night. Maybe they didn’t make it any further than the Harrisburg area.”

“What we’re talking about, Gus, is whether you’re going to stick your neck out, and how you’re going to do it.”

“You take those big pikes, you got a problem. You got two places to check. One is from the entrance booths. They’ve got phone communication to the control towers where you’ve got the short wave to the cars on patrol. The other place is the cars on patrol. You’ve got normal traffic loads, plus the vacation load. At least it’s not a weekend. You get three abreast, bumper to bumper traffic, wheeling at sixty-five — if you’re looking for something, you got to be looking for something simple.”

“I can see that.”

“So suppose the toll-booth boys in the twelve entrances from Harrisburg to the Jersey Pike are alerted to watch for three men and a woman in a pretty good car with Pennsylvania plates. Or, on the off chance, three men and two women.”

“Wouldn’t there be hundreds of those?”

“A hell of a lot less than you’d think. It isn’t a normal traveling group. The cars with one, two and three people in them account, I’d guess for ninety-nine out of a hundred cars. When there’s four, it’s two couples or four women or four men. I’m leaving kids out of this. I’d give orders to suspend normal traffic control procedures so your road patrols would be looking too, and I’d put the best guys available on the logical exits from the Jersey Pike.”

Mason Ives thought for a few moments. “Have you got time to sell this?”

“Not direct. But I think Dunnigan would buy it, and he could sure as hell sell it. Maybe it’s all set up already.”

“Somehow I doubt that, Gus. What worries you? You’ve stuck your neck out further than this many times.”

Gus sat down again and grinned like a pirate. “You got this one backwards, Mase. If it doesn’t work, who ever knows or cares? But if it does work, there should be some horn blowing going on.”

Ives looked startled for a moment. He grinned. “Okay, you big ambitious bastard. That’s why you got me up here. I’ll go over to the shop and set it up, all ready to file. Kurby devises traffic trap that tonight snapped shut on the Wolf Pack and so forth.”

“And you could sort of set it up with Peterson over at the station?” Gus asked humbly.

“And make sure he gets a network tie-in too, for God’s sake. I’ll go pick fresh laurel and make a wreath. Now it’s safe to call Dunnigan.”