John Sandford - The Fool's Run

"Yes."

"I'm looking at a road atlas. I would recommend that you take Highway Fifty east through Annapolis, cross the bay, then head north through Wilmington and into New Jersey. I'm not up-to-speed on police procedure, but as I understand it, watch bulletins usually go out on a state-by-state basis. That's the shortest distance that will get you out of all the states surrounding Maryland-Virginia. You can be in New Jersey in less than three hours."

"That sounds good," I said. "We'll call you when we find a place." Dillon had pulled himself together. He sounded like an intelligence officer giving a briefing: calm, detached, certain. But then, he wasn't being hunted. And he hadn't known Dace.

"Get as far away as you can. The closer you get to New York, the less attention the local police should pay to routine watch bulletins. They've got other problems."

"Okay."

"Call back here in six hours. I should know something then."

LuEllen was lying in the backseat of the car. She wasn't weeping; she was absolutely still, her arm thrown across her eyes, her breathing shallow and quick, as though she had been injured.

"You okay?"

"I'm fucked," she said. "Just drive."

I went back into the 7-Eleven, bought a map, a pack of donuts, and a Styrofoam cooler that I stocked with ice and two six-packs of Coke. In the car, I traced out the course Dillon had recommended, and five minutes later we were on the way.

We caught the evening rush going out of town; the trip was a nightmare of stop-and-go. We saw state troopers twice; both times they were involved in clearing fender-benders. LuEllen lay in the backseat for an hour before climbing into the front. Her eyes were red and sunken, but there were no tears.

"There's no chance he's alive, is there?"

"No. They shot him three times going in. If he was still alive, they would have shot him again before they left."

"Who were they?"

"We don't know. Dillon's trying to figure it out. We'll call him from Camden."

"Think they'll come after us?" she asked.

"Probably. I'll be the main target, but you've seen their faces. We'd better stick together until we find out. If they haven't made you, you'd best get on a plane to Duluth and lie low for a while."

We stopped once at a fast-food place in Delaware. LuEllen said she had to call Duluth, and she used a phone on the wall of the restaurant while I sat in the car and ate a soggy cheeseburger.

"I got the name of a guy in Philadelphia," she said.

"For what?"

"In case you want to buy a gun. No questions."

A few minutes after eight o'clock, going north out of Wilmington, I spotted a chain electronics store in a strip shopping center and pulled in.

"Supplies," I told LuEllen. I ransacked the store's telephone and home-furnishings departments, bought a few general electronics tools, a power drill, drill bits, and a stapler, paid $160, and threw the sack in the backseat of the car.

"Now. Where's this guy with the gun?" I asked.

The guy with the gun lived in a suburb of Philadelphia, a place with small lawns and aluminum-sided ramblers and a maple tree in the center of each front yard. We found his house after twenty minutes of searching. He met us at the door.

"Mr. Drexel?" asked LuEllen.

"Yes. You must be Miss Carlson?"

"Yes. Weenie called about us. This is a friend."

"Come in," he said. He was a solemn type, tall and bespectacled, with a ruddy outdoorsman's complexion. He was dressed from the L. L. Bean catalog, with a blue pin-striped oxford cloth shirt and cotton slacks with cargo pockets on the sides. His wife and teenage daughter were watching a movie on television in the living room. The woman said "Hello," but the girl ignored us. We followed Drexel down a short flight of stairs into the basement.

The basement contained a neat, well-equipped woodworking shop and a couple of metal-cutting machines. A full-size unfinished airplane wing hung on one wall.

"Building a plane," Drexel said laconically. "Finish it in a year or so." He led the way to an upright cabinet in one corner.

"Now. What exactly did you have in mind?" he asked.

"I haven't handled a handgun since I was in the Army," I said.

He arched one eyebrow and opened the cabinet. The top was filled with long weapons, M16s and AK47s. The bottom contained drawers filled with shorter arms. He opened a drawer and pulled out two bundles wrapped in oiled paper.

"In that case, and depending on your requirements, I would suggest one of these two weapons," he said. The first looked like it had been made in a high school metal shop, all rough edges and bent, black steel.

"This is a MAC- 10. A great favorite with drug smugglers, I understand." He handed it to me. "It's simple to operate, and this model is fully automatic. A submachine gun, if you will." He turned to LuEllen. "You pull the trigger, and a stream of bullets comes out for as long as you hold down the trigger, or until you run out of ammo. I have sixteen- and thirty-shot custom clips for it."

The gun felt big and awkward in my hand. I held it up and sighted down the length of the shop. The front sight wavered in front of me.

"You really wouldn't want to shoot it like that," he said. "Hold it closer to the body, so you can brace your elbow." He showed me.

"What else do you have?"

"Ah. This one. You may be more familiar with it." He unwrapped the second bundle and showed me a.45 Colt, identical to the one I'd qualified with in the Army.

"What do you think?" I asked LuEllen.

She shook her head. "I don't know about guns."

"If I might recommend." Drexel sounded like a wine waiter dealing with a couple of first-time drinkers. "If you need something for immediate self-protection, and don't have time for practice-I got the impression from Mr. Weenie that this was the case-then I'd recommend the MAC-10. Even the rankest amateur can do amazing damage with it, though it is a bit more expensive."

I took it, and he ran me through its operation. He also sold me one thirty- and two sixteen-round clips for the gun, already loaded.

"And for the lady?" he asked.

"Uh, I don't think I want anything," LuEllen said, looking at me anxiously.

"Let me show you this one," he said. He reached back into one of his drawers and pulled out a hand-sized, double-barreled derringer.

"A.32 H amp;R magnum. Very safe, and very simple to operate. You should use it only in the most extreme circumstances, of course. In this caliber, at five yards, you could actually miss your target. At two yards, or two feet, it's quite effective."

LuEllen looked at the tiny gun for a moment, glanced at me, looked back at Drexel, and nodded. "I'll take it," she said.

"Make sure you pull the trigger with your index finger. It's so small that there's a temptation to use your middle finger and lay your index finger along the barrel. But if your finger overlaps, it's going to catch a lot of muzzle blast. Okay?"

LuEllen nodded uncertainly.

"Just pull the trigger with your trigger finger," he said, smiling.

The two guns cost us twenty-five hundred dollars. We rewrapped them in the oiled paper and went back out to the car, the wife nodding pleasantly as we tramped through the living room again.

"If you need anything else," Drexel said as we got in the car, "don't hesitate to call."

The next stop was the airport. I left the car in the long-term parking lot, rented a nondescript Dodge, and transferred the luggage. We were an hour north of Philadelphia before I spotted the right kind of hotel-a long, low, L-shaped place, inexpensive, with two dozen cars distributed up and down its length. I told the desk clerk that my secretary and I wanted adjoining rooms, but without connecting doors.

"I've got divorce proceedings going," I said, trying out a sheepish grin. "I don't want people to think, you know."