James Ellroy - Silent Terror

That was when I saw the roadblock.

It was sixty yards up, and I knew it couldn’t be for me — I had killed the fat man clean, an hour and a half earlier, and if I was identified as the killer, the police would have made a moving approach. Drawing myself drum-tight inside, I scrubbed the windshield clean with my sleeve, got back in the cab and tore the death pictures into pieces and dropped them into the snow outside my passenger door. Remembering the spent shells and credit cards in my pocket, I flung them out, then dropped the Deathmobile into gear and eased up to the barricade.

State troopers holding shotguns were lined up against the strung-together sawhorses, and there were a half-dozen blue-and-white cruisers behind them. As I braked, two cops approached the Deathmobile in a flanking motion, shotgun muzzles pointed straight at me. From behind the roadblock, an electrically amplified voice barked: “Man in the silver van! Open the door of your vehicle, get out with your hands above your head and walk to the middle of the pavement! Do it slow!”

I obeyed, very slowly, snow raining down on me, the two troopers continuing to hold their beads, the eyes of their 12-gauges huge and black against the snowfall. When I reached the middle of the asphalt, a third cop grabbed my arms from behind, drew them behind my back and handcuffed my wrists. Once I was immobilized, a swarm of troopers leaped over the sawhorses and descended on the Deathmobile, and the two shotgun cops lowered their weapons and approached. The handcuff cop frisked me from behind and said, “Clean,” and the other two pointed me to my van. Troopers were over, under and in Deathmobile II; it made me angry, and I sensed that indignant was the way to play my first hard interrogation since Eversall/Sifakis four years earlier. “What the fuck is this?” I said.

The shotgun cops pressed me into the side of my van, and leaned into it themselves. It gave all three of us a break from the wind and snow, and the older cop, who had a lieutenant’s bar pinned to the front of his Smokey the Bear hat, said, “Your name?”

“Martin Plunkett,” I said.

“Address?”

“I don’t have an address. I’m going to Lake Geneva to look for work.”

“What kind of work?”

I sighed angrily. “Lift operator or bartender in the winter, maybe caddy during the golf season.”

The other cop took over. “You a professional transient, Plunkey?”

“Call me by my correct name,” I said.

The lieutenant plucked my wallet from my back pocket and handed it to a trooper inside the Deathmobile’s cab. “Run him all-points,” he said. Turning to face me, he said, “Mr. Plunkett, you have the right to remain silent. You have the right to have legal counsel present during questioning. If you cannot afford counsel, an attorney will be appointed to you free of charge.”

I breathed the pitch in. In the background I could hear my name and driver’s-license stats being spoken into a radio mike, and the van shakedown looked to be just about over. The wise-guy cop said, “You got a statement to make, Plunkey?”

I sneered à la Bogart. “You suck cock, dick breath?” The trooper balled his fists, and the lieutenant grabbed me and led me a few yards away. I heard a voice yell, “Vehicle looks clean, Skipper!” and the lieutenant said, “Don’t affect an attitude, young man. It’s not the time or the place.”

I affected a hurt look. “I don’t like being rousted.”

“Rousted, eh? Been ‘rousted’ before?”

“I was arrested for burglary about ten years ago. I haven’t been in trouble since.”

The lieutenant smiled and brushed snow from his lips. “That’s the kind of story I like to hear, especially if it gets corroborated by the warrant check we’re running on you.”

“It will be.”

“I sincerely hope so, because three young ladies have been raped and murdered around here lately — one this morning back near the Illinois line — which is what this is all about. What type blood you got, Martin?”

I didn’t know how to react to the coincidence, and the shocked look on my face must have been convincing, because the lieutenant shook his head and said, “Ain’t that the worst possible? What’s your blood type, boy?”

“O negative,” I said.

“That’s mighty fine, and I tell you what we’re gonna do. First, assuming you haven’t got any outstanding warrants, you’re gonna drive your van to the next town, Huyserville, and you’re gonna hang out in a nice clean cell at the jail and get a blood test, and if it comes back O negative, you’re a free man, because we typed the rape-o sonuvabitch we’re looking for from his semen, and he’s O positive. Thank mom and dad for their genes, boy, ’cause any O positive stranger in my stretch of Southern Wisconsin is in for some rousting.”

A trooper stuck his head out the van’s driver’s window. “The sleds squeaky, and daddy-o’s got no wants or warrants. One burglary conviction back in ’69, that’s it.”

The lieutenant unlocked my handcuffs and removed them, then said, “Greer, you ride shotgun with Mr. Plunkett here to Huyserville, find him a cozy cell and get Doc Hirsh over to administer a blood test. Martin, you drive carefully, and resign yourself to a night in a hick burg, because these roads ain’t fit for man or beast. Now get going.”

I got in the Deathmobile and nodded at my copilot, who had his service revolver on his lap, his finger inside the trigger guard. The roadblock was pulled apart, and I accelerated into a blinding wall of snow. Concentrating on my driving kept me reasonably calm, but I felt cut down the middle: half of me proud of my performance; half of me frightened that the dead man’s Cadillac would be discovered while I was stuck in Huyserville — or that after I left and the corpse was found, my presence would be remembered and I would become a murder suspect. The fears seemed insoluble, futile to speculate on. I cleared my throat and said to the trooper, “Is there a hotel in Huyserville?”

He snickered. “Cockroach palace. If you have to stay overnight, stick to the jail. You’re a transient, right? Three hots and a cot’s all you guys want, and you get that at the slam — if you’re innocent and we let you go.”

I nodded. The trooper had an unpleasant conversational style, and I remained silent and let him fondle his gun. The storm was raging now, and it took me an hour to drive the ten miles to Huyserville, a town consisting of one business block and the Wisconsin State Police Substation where I was to be held. Pulling into the station lot, the trooper said, “Sure hope you ain’t guilty, pal. Two of the dead girls were from here.”

The station’s interior was spotless and surprisingly modern, and I was placed in a cell by myself. Only moments later, an old man carrying an archetypal black satchel showed up, and the cell door was racked by remote control. I rolled up my sleeve automatically, and the doctor removed swabs and a syringe with a plastic tube at the end from the bag. He said, “Make a fist,” and when I did, he swathed the crook of my right arm and inserted the needle. When blood filled the tube, he said, “An hour for the results.” and left me alone. When the cell door was racked shut, I got very frightened.

The doctor’s hour stretched interminably, as did my fear, which was not fear of being uncovered as a long-term mass murderer — but fear of being contained, not held in custody, but in the captivity of all the small moments of my past four years — the long, small moments not spent stalking, stealing, killing and thinking — but the time spent working at tedious jobs, cultivating invisibility, being cautious when I wanted to act boldly. The fear was that, inexplicably, these hick-town cops knew who I was, and knew further — inexplicably and preternaturally — that the most vicious way to punish me was to turn me loose, never to scheme/stalk/steal/kill again — my sentence a life made up of all the long, small in-between moments that used to allow me my freedom.