William Brown - The Undertaker

Speaking of clothes, my pants leg was torn. The shirt was badly soiled from crawling across the floor of the ambulance, and there were fresh bloodstains from the cut Tinkerton made on my lower abdomen with his scalpel. Hardly the appearance of a solid citizen, I concluded. I pulled over to the road shoulder and stopped so I could open the glove compartment and take a quick look inside. Unfortunately, I found very little of use — maps, car manuals, some spare flashlight batteries, an extra book of traffic tickets, a couple of Hershey's chocolate bars, and a pint of cheap bourbon. With a sleaze-ball like Dannmeyer, the Hershey bars were probably for the little girls and the bourbon was for their mothers. Seeing the Hershey bars reminded me, I was hungry. I hadn't had anything to eat since the corned beef sandwich in Tinkerton's office at lunch. Was that really today? It seemed like a year ago. I pulled out the two chocolate bars, tore the first one open with my teeth, and devoured it. Dry, stale, and hard as a rock, but I couldn't recall anything ever tasting better, as I washed it down with a swallow of Dannmeyer's bourbon to clear my head.

Squirreled away in the back of the glove compartment I saw a tin Band-aid box with “Sheriff's Coffee Fund” hand-written on the outside. I shook it and popped the top open. Inside was a big wad of twenty, fifty, and a couple of one-hundred dollar bills wrapped with a rubber band. I figured there had to be eight or nine hundred dollars in there, not counting the loose change. You could OD on Starbucks with that much cash.

That was when I heard the first calls on the Bearcat scanner. It was a fire call to the Peterborough Fire Department. Then another. Finally came the calls for assistance from other police units in the area. More fire units. Campbell County, Westchester, Dalton, and even Columbus. County and state cops, too. I was at least five miles away now, heading west and south, so I doubted I'd run into any of them. However, with all those flashing lights and sirens racing around out there, I had to be even more careful.

First, I had to ditch the police cruiser. Maybe I could steal a car or a pick-up truck from one of the farms I passed. However, country people usually had big dogs and shotguns, and what would that gain me? They'd see it was gone all too soon, and when they saw the brown sheriff's cruiser nearby, they'd immediately come looking for the new car. No, it would be better to dump the sheriff's car in a built-up area of Columbus, out at some suburban shopping mall, or maybe at a truck stop on the Interstate. Then what? Hitch a ride? Maybe a bus or airplane? Somehow, I needed to push east toward Boston.

Doug was the owner of a growing business there. He was established. He was somebody. Once I got out of this hick town and out of this hick state, even if nobody believed me here, in Boston they'd have to listen to Doug. Not that I wanted to drag him into this thing; I had already gotten three people killed and I didn't want to add a friend to the list, but I was out of options. Besides, Tinkerton already knew about Doug. What was it he said? Doug was a “loose end,” something he would take care of “later.” It looked like I had gotten Doug involved, and I had to warn him.

What other choice was there? Head back to LA? They might not be expecting that, but it was a long way to go. Maybe I should try something closer, like Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, or even Indianapolis. They were only a few hours away and big enough for me to get lost in for a while. Not a bad choice, all things considered.

One of my favorite math classes in college was “Non-Linear Dynamics”, more popularly known as the theory of random events and regular chaos. What it said was that the best pattern was no pattern at all. If you want to remain unpredictable in a mathematical sense, then always do the illogical and the totally unexpected. Yeah, that was what I needed if I wanted to stay free — a little unpredictability and a dose of regular chaos to jam into Ralph Tinkerton's spokes.

It did beg the question. What was I doing trying to outrun the police in the first place? I hadn't done anything wrong. Those guys had kidnapped me, drugged me, and would have killed me if I hadn't broken free. True, a couple of people died and a funeral home was totaled, but none of that was my fault. It was Tinkerton's. Maybe I shouldn't shy away from the police at all. Maybe I should do exactly what I told Varner I was going to do: take it to the State Police, lay the whole thing in front of them and let them sort it out. That was my best choice, no doubt about it, provided I got rid of Dannmeyer's car. If they caught me in it, I'd never get a chance to explain anything.

That was when I heard the second set of radio calls. “All units, an APB has been issued for a brown Campbell County sheriff's cruiser, license plate DEL-O23. Observe and report. Do not attempt to apprehend. The driver is an escaped mental patient wanted in the disappearance of Sheriff Virgil Dannmeyer. Suspect is believed to be armed and dangerous. Repeat. Armed and Dangerous. Observe and report only. Do not apprehend.”

“Escaped mental patient?” Nice touch, Ralph. “Observe and report?” To whom? Ralph Tinkerton, Esq.? You bastard! Too bad Ernie didn't hit you harder. It had to be him. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I had it figured all wrong. They couldn't have found Dannmeyer's body so soon, but Tinkerton saw me drive away. Maybe old Ralph was trying a new angle to box me in. Very clever. Label me as a psycho who kidnapped a county sheriff. Soon it would be “cop killer” and there would be no hope of turning myself in. Every cop in Ohio knew that was cop-speak for “shoot on sight for resisting arrest.”

There were two highway maps in the glove compartment. One was for Greater Columbus and the other was for the State of Ohio. I turned on the dome light and unfolded the Ohio map. Ditching the car way down in the city was out. There was too little traffic at this hour and the sheriff's car would stand out. Where then? Leave it at a truck stop on the Interstate and hitch a ride out of town? No, too exposed, and a dead give away that I'd left town that way. My best bet was to dump it near office building or a shopping center near the Interstate. That would leave Tinkerton with a whole lot more guesses than answers.

I looked at the map more closely. I wasn't sure which road I was on, but if I kept driving west it looked like I'd hit Route 42 fairly soon. I could take that south to Route 33 and back into Columbus. I remembered from my earlier trips that the expressway interchanges were full of shopping centers and big office and warehouse buildings. Maybe I could ditch the car and find a friendly trucker or thumb a ride out of town. Yeah, that was my best shot.

Then I heard the third radio call. Short, sweet, and to the point, it made my blood run cold to hear the pleasant female dispatcher say, “Mister Talbott, we would appreciate it if you'd call the office. You can pick up the microphone hanging on the dashboard and push the little red button, or you could get out of the car and use a pay phone. No big deal, someone here would like to talk to you before things get any further out of hand.”

To anyone else who happened to be listening, it sounded like she was calling the typewriter repairman or the plumber, but she wasn't. She was calling me. I pictured the hulking frame of Ralph Tinkerton standing behind her, breathing down her neck as he listened. That meant that Tinkerton wanted to keep this whole business quiet, and that meant something. But me talk to Ralph Tinkerton? Go in and give myself up? After the embalming table and the scalpel, that didn't sound too appealing, so I ignored the radio call and pushed the pedal to the metal. The next time I talked to old Ralph, it was going to be on my terms, not his.