John Gilstrap - Nathan’s Run

“Get out of the car!” someone yelled. “Get out of the fucking car!”

“I can’t!” Nathan protested. The gun barrel was pushing him in exactly the opposite direction, making it impossible for him to obey. “I said get the fuck out!”

“Gun!” a second voice shouted. “There’s a gun on the seat! Watch his hands!”

Two sets of hands descended on him, grabbing fistfuls of his T-shirt and his hair. Using these as handles, they dragged him out of the car through the shattered side window. “Ow!” Nathan yelled. “You’re hurting me! I’ll do whatever you want!” He felt the rounded shards of glass embedding themselves into the flesh of his arms and his legs and his belly.

When he was free of the window, they slammed him to the pavement, driving the breath from his lungs, and making purple spots explode behind his eyes. They continued to shout conflicting orders to him, but he could no longer hear what they were saying. A booted foot on his jaw pressed his face into the pavement, while a knee drove deeply into the small of his back. Nathan pleaded for mercy while the police officers bent his arms back at impossible angles to handcuff him. Another inch, and he swore that his shoulder would come completely free of the socket.

“Who the fuck do you think you are running from me, motherfucker?” one of the cops hissed in his ear, just before the bracelets went from tight to excruciating.

“Please don’t hurt me anymore,” Nathan begged. “I promise I’ll do what you say.”

“You already blew that chance, asshole,” the cop replied.

Using the chain between the handcuffs as their handle, the cops lifted Nathan first to his knees, then used his throbbing shoulders to bring him to his feet. His nose was bleeding freely from both nostrils, like a steadily dripping faucet. With no hands to divert the flow, the two streams converged just below his lower lip, and then fell in heavy drops Qnto his shirt and his Reeboks.

Nathan blinked rapidly to clear his vision, and got a good look at his captors. They looked just like every other cop in the world, clean-cut and mean as hell. A third officer approached them as Nathan was steadied on his feet against one of the cruisers. The new officer looked more than mean; he was mad and mean, and he wore a gold badge over his breast pocket, different from the silver badges of the other two. Over the other pocket, the gold cop wore a gold name tag that read WATTS.

Watts walked up to within three feet of the boy. “You Nathan Bailey?” he asked.

Nathan nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, drooling blood.

Watts was older than the others, and despite a considerable paunch, looked enormously strong. His biceps strained his shirt sleeves, and no collar could possibly contain his neck. He had the eyes of a wolf, piercing and threatening. It was the same look Nathan had seen from Ricky Harris.

“Is it true you killed a prison guard?” Watts asked.

Nathan nodded again. “Yes, sir, but…”

Before he could answer, Watts drove an unseen nightstick into the boy’s testicles. Nathan cried out in agony and collapsed like a marionette onto the street. Unable to cradle his balls, he brought his knees up protectively, and fought for breath.

“Some judge is probably gonna let you off,” Watts said, his face forming a satisfied grin, “but I wanted you to know there’s a price for killing a cop.” Turning to his subordinates, he added, “Get this dog turd out of here.”

Steadman gave a mock salute and yanked Nathan up by his arms, dumping him in the back seat of his cruiser like a bag of dog food.

During the twelve-mile trip to the police station, Nathan never moved. He just lay on his side, knees up, waiting for hope to return.

Lady Luck was a strange old broad. Pointer had planned to mingle with the cops around Jenkins Township, masquerading as a police officer from Braddock County, assigned to follow the case as it progressed in Pennsylvania. Sooner or later, he’d hear something, and he’d make his plans from there. It would have worked, too. The uniform and ID card were authentic, obtained as partial payment for a debt owed by a midlevel civilian bureaucrat attached to the Braddock County PD. Even his badge number was legit, assigned to a fictitious character named Terry Robertson, who supposedly worked out of the Bankston substation. In the unlikely event that anyone might have checked, they would have found that Terry had been temporarily attached to the Drug Enforcement Administration in Houston. The hoax would be discovered, probably during the October budget cycle, but the prank would be untraceable, and no doubt written off as a computer hacker getting his jollies.

That was the plan, anyway. The reality proved to be much simpler. As he was checking into the Spear and Musket Motor Lodge—the only hotel in Jenkins Township with an available room that rented for an entire night—Pointer’s attention was drawn to the Special Report graphic on the desk clerk’s ten-inch TV. He wondered what could possibly be so important as to interrupt the all-night movie channel at 3:00 A. M. The enormously fat fingers of the enormously fat clerk stopped in midword as she, too, zeroed in on the report.

The woman—her name tag read ABIGAIL—swiveled in her chair to turn up the volume on the set. Pointer suppressed a smile as he likened the clerk to a living snowman, gelatinous inner tubes stacked one on top of another.

All traces of amusement disappeared, however, when the screen filled with Nathan Bailey’s picture, overlaid with the words, “IN CUSTODY?’ A delighted announcer reported that those residents of Pennsylvania who were still awake (both of them) could sleep peacefully for the balance of the night, comfortable in the knowledge that the nation’s most famous fugitive had been apprehended by police in Pitcairn County, New York.

“I’ll be damned?’ Pointer said softly—to himself really, but Abigail heard him and shook her head pitifully, the skin of her second and third chins swinging in counterpoint to her head.

“That poor little boy,” she clucked. “I think they should just leave him alone.”

Under normal conditions, Pointer would have said nothing, but in tribute to his disguise, he offered a protest. “That poor boy killed a cop,” he said.

Clearly, the badge and the uniform meant little to Abigail. “Only after the cop was trying to kill him. What else could he have done? I mean, look at him. That boy’s no murderer.”

Pointer’s head had already left their little conversation. He remembered from his Rand MacNally Road Atlas that Pitcairn County was in the southernmost part of New York, well off the interstate routes that had seemed attractive to the kid the day before. If he hustled, he could be there in a couple of hours.

Without a word, Pointer turned on his heel and left, just as Abigail was spinning the registration card around on the counter for his signature.

“I meant no offense!” she called after him as the glass door swung shut.

By the time they arrived at the station, the agony in Nathan’s groin had dulled to a throb, and his nose had stopped bleeding, though the coppery taste remained in his mouth. The various cuts and bruises had somehow melded together into a single body ache. The handcuffs had long since made his fingers numb.

During the endless ride in the cruiser, Nathan eavesdropped on the radio conversations between the cops involved in his arrest and capture. The way they talked, you’d think he was Butch Cassidy. He nearly reminded his driver—a cop named Steadman—that he was only twelve, and that it had taken three of them to beat him up. He wanted to tell them how his dad had told him that bigger guys who gang up on little guys are called bullies. He wanted to say a lot of things, but decided that silence would reap greater and longer-lasting rewards.