Stumbling now, totally exhausted...
Stink of sweat... no time for a shower this morning...
Stumbling ahead...
The back door handle starting to grow large and larger in his vision...
Please, oh please.
Stumbling...
Hand reaching out for the door. Taking the silver handle in his right hand... turning it to the left and... locked!
Falling to his knees now.
Please, oh please.
Wanting to cry... still in disbelief that any of this is actually happening to him.
Please, oh please.
And then turning the handle to the right and...
The handle turns!
Yanks the door open!
Sirens louder now.
Footsteps slapping somewhere nearby.
Once again — shouts.
Only one place to go.
Inside...
The womb-dark interior of the truck.
Hiding...
He climbs inside and there in the front of the truck sits Jimmy, who smiles and says, “Hey, hi, Richie!”
Part 3
Fourteen
1
It didn’t take long for the news of Richie’s escape to reach all corners of the county.
They came by truck, car, motorcycle, even tractor, came right to the town square where Chief Hadley was hastily organizing a posse.
Thirty years ago, the local newspaper editor had written a piece about manhunts, and his words very much applied to what was happening this afternoon.
Unless you’ve been in a war, you haven’t really had the opportunity to feel the constraints of civilization be removed. Unless, that is, you were involved in the recent manhunt that took place here in the county. A full day and night of the manhunt yielded two dead cows, one dead collie, a dozen or more smashed windows, and several drunken brawls. And what of the criminal being sought? Why, he escaped to our sister state of Missouri, where he was quietly apprehended by a rookie deputy. Before the local lawmen responsible for our well-being organize another manhunt, they’d better make sure that the posse they collect is comprised of reasonable, sane, and most importantly sober members of this community. The posse wrought far more damage than the man they were chasing. After all, all he’d done was rob a bank. He didn’t get trigger-happy and kill cows and dogs. These are some things that the city council should discuss at the next open meeting.
Not that anybody remembered these words. Or would have heeded them even if they had.
It was just too damned exciting a place, the Crystal Falls town square, to remember those kind of cautionary words at this moment...
...because at this moment men with rifles and shotguns and hunting dogs filled the sidewalk in front of the bandstand and the venerable Civil War memorial that time and pigeon shit had given a bronzed patina...
A number of the men were Steve Arnette’s drinking buddies. These were the most impressively got up. They wore camouflage outfits and spoke to each other in paramilitary parlance. Their leader, a chunky man with a bandito mustache and a Pat Buchanan bumper sticker on his Range Rover, kept patting his shotgun and saying, “I see that sumbitch first, he’s gonna be one sorry mother, let me tell ya. Poor little innocent gal like that.” He carried a Steyr-Aug rifle, which cost more than most people around here earned in a month.
“Yeah,” one of the others said, “Richie never did think his shit would draw flies.”
This was one contingent of the posse.
The second largest group was the younger farmers. Their clothes ran to green John Deere caps, flannel shirts, Sears jeans, and black boots, which were long enough to get you through snowdrifts but not so long that they’d sweat your feet the way cowboy boots did.
These were the men with the hunting dogs sitting in the bed of their Chevrolets and Fords. The dogs ran to Labs and Springers and German shorthairs. Bloodhounds were pretty much left to the South.
There was a third group, too, the retirees. These were the older folk you saw in the library and the Wal-Mart and the Recreation Hall. People looking for something to do. They had convinced their wives that they were desperately needed on this particular mission, and so the missuses gave them permission. One of the guys tried to sneak his old army pistol out of the house. But his wife put out a flat palm and he obediently placed the pistol on it.
Then there were the lawmen, Sam and Chief Hadley and the other officers. All in uniform, all heavily armed.
Sam was surprised that Steve Arnette wasn’t here. If ever there was an event made for a bully like Arnette, it was a manhunt.
Chief Hadley instructed the men in the ways of the law. Steve Arnette’s buddies mostly smirked when Hadley talked. They wanted to kick some ass, and all Hadley wanted to do was talk about legal crap.
The farmers, however, were very attentive, noting every word the Chief had to say. A few of them were old enough to remember the last manhunt. They didn’t want to see a repeat of that.
The Chief then said, “Anybody here got a flask of booze on him?”
The farmers all shook their heads.
Two of Arnette’s buddies looked guilty.
“You guys got flasks?”
“It’s our constitutional right to carry flasks,” one of the men said sullenly.
“Give it to me,” Chief Hadley said.
“I can carry a goddamned flask if I want to,” the man said.
“All right,” Hadley said, his toughness surprising some of the men who thought of him as a fussy old fart. “You get to keep your flask — and I get to kick your ass out of this group here.”
“That’s bullshit,” the man said.
“Ah, hell, Harry, give him the friggin’ flask,” said his friend.
“Shit,” Harry said.
“You, too, Ralph,” Hadley said.
“Me, too? What’re we gonna use for booze?” he said.
“There won’t be any booze,” Hadley said. “That’s the point, you dumb bastard. Now hand over those flasks.”
They handed them over.
They didn’t look happy.
Hadley then went over to the old guys and told them all to make sure they were wearing bright shirts and jackets. Didn’t want somebody mistaking them for a cow in the bushes... and opening fire.
When he said that, a few of the men looked a little nervous, as if real danger was something they hadn’t considered before.
Sam was watching all this, and talking to the other lawmen, when he saw Amy crossing the town square.
Even from here, he could see that she planned to go along on the manhunt. She wore jeans, a buff blue sweater, and a red windbreaker.
The closer she got, the sadder she looked.
She’d had to deal with the unthinkable. First her brother had been accused of murder. Now, he’d escaped.
As a smart prosecutor, Amy knew all about manhunts. They’d hunt her brother like an animal. There’d be dogs, and state helicopters overhead, and reckless men walking the farm fields and forests. At least a few of them would be eager to be the man who brought down the killer.
Sam was sure Amy had heard a lot of the gossip already making the rounds. That Richie was armed and in a psychotic state. That he had a hostage. That he had seriously wounded a woman who saw him running away. That he had stolen two shotguns from a hardware store. He’d also been sighted in six or seven different places. Nothing coined misinformation faster than an escaping killer.
Small town like this, it didn’t take long for such fables to be accepted as fact.
Sam looked up at the fiery trees of autumn, and the perfectly blue sky, and the crisp white dignity of the three different church spires the town was so proud of.