"I didn't hear about that."
"I hope it makes it on American's Most Wanted. You ever watch that show?"
"No. I don't watch much TV," Sloan said.
"I do," the tow driver offered. "Can be educational."
"Who is this guy?"
"Sort of a psycho killer, one of those sorts. Like in Silence of the Lambs. How 'bout movies, you like movies?"
"Yeah," Sloan responded. "That was a good flick."
"Guy was in the state prison about twenty miles west of here."
"How'd he escape? That's a pretty high-security place, isn't it?"
"Sure is. My brother . . . uhm, my brother had a friend did time there for grand theft auto. Hard place. What they said on the news was that this killer was in the yard of that prison and, what with the heat, there was a power failure. I guess the backup didn't go on either or something and the lights and the electrified fence were down for, I dunno, almost an hour. But by the time they got it going again, he was gone."
Sloan shivered as the freezing air chilled his sweat-soaked clothes. He asked, "Say, you know that family where you picked me up? The Willises?"
"No sir. I don't get out this way much."
They continued driving for twenty minutes. Ahead, Sloan saw a band of flashing lights.
The driver said, "Roadblock. Probably searching for that escapee."
Sloan could see two police cars. Two uniformed officers were pulling people over.
The salesman said to the tow driver, "When you get up there, pull off to the side. I want to talk to one of the cops."
"Sure thing, mister."
When they pulled over, Sloan got out and told the driver, "I'll just be a minute." Sloan inhaled deeply but no air seemed to get into his lungs. His chest began to hurt again.
One of the officers glanced at Sloan. The big man, his tan shirt dark with sweat, approached. "Hold up there, sir. Can I help you?" He held his flashlight defensively as he walked toward Sloan, who introduced himself and handed over a business card. Sloan observed the man's name badge. Sheriff Mills. The law enforcer looked over the card and then Sloan's suit and, satisfied that he wasn't the man they were looking for, asked, "What can I do for you?"
"Is this about that fellow who escaped from the prison?" He nodded at the squad car.
"Yessir, it is. You seen anything that might help us find him?"
"Well, it might be nothing. But I thought I should mention it."
"Go ahead."
"What's the prisoner look like?"
"Just escaped about two hours ago. We don't have a picture yet. But he's in his mid-thirties, beard. Six feet, muscular build. Like yours, more or less."
"Shaved head?"
"No. But if I was him I mighta shaved it the minute I got out. Lost the beard too."
"Tattoo?"
"Don't know. Probably."
Sloan explained about his car's breaking down and about his stop at the Willises' house. "You think that prisoner would come this way?"
"If he had his wits about him, he would. To go west'd take him fifty miles through forest. This way, he's got a crack at stealing a car in town or hitching a ride on the interstate."
"And that'd take him right past the Willises'?"
"Yep. If he took Route 202. What're you getting at, Mr. Sloan?"
"I think that fellow might be at the Willises' house."
"What?"
"Do you know if they have a nephew?"
"I don't think they ever mentioned one."
"Well, there's a man there now--sort of fits the description of the killer. He claimed he was Bill's nephew, visiting them. But something didn't seem right. I mean, first of all, it was suppertime but they hadn't eaten and they weren't cooking anything and there were no dirty dishes in the kitchen. And anything Greg told them to do, they did. Like they were afraid to upset him."
The sheriff found a wad of paper towel in his pocket and wiped his face and head. "Anything else?"
"He was saying weird stuff--talking about death and about this experience he had that made him look at dying differently. Like it wasn't that bad a thing . . . . Spooked me. Oh, and another thing--he said he didn't want to mention something in front of strangers. He might've meant me but then why'd he say 'strangers,' not 'a stranger'? It was like he meant Bill and Agnes too."
"Good point."
"He also had some bad scars. Like he'd been in a knife fight. And he mentioned somebody who died--a woman, who gave him as much grief after she was dead as before. I was thinking he meant trouble with the law for killing her."
"What'd their daughter say?"
"Daughter?"
"The Willises have a daughter. Sandy. Didn't you see her? She's home from college now. And she works the day shift at Taco Bell. She should've been home by now."
"Jesus," Sloan muttered. "I didn't see her . . . . But I remember something else. The door to one of the bedrooms was closed and there was a sound coming from inside it. Everybody there was real upset about it. You don't think she was, I don't know, tied up inside there?"
"Lord," the sheriff said, wiping his face, "that escapee--he was arrested for raping and murdering girls. College girls." He pulled out his radio, "All Hatfield police units. This's Mills. I have a lead on that prisoner. The perpetrator might be out at Bill Willis's place off 202. Leave one car each on the roadblocks but everybody else respond immediately. Silent roll up, with lights out. Stop on the road near the driveway but don't go in. Wait for me."
Replies came back.
The sheriff turned to Sloan. "We might need you as a witness, Mr. Sloan."
"Sure, whatever I can do."
The sheriff said, "Have the driver take you to the police station--it's on Elm Street. My girl's there, Clara's her name. Just tell her the same thing you told me. I'll call her and tell her to take your statement."
"Be happy to, Sheriff."
The sheriff ran back to his car and jumped in. His deputy climbed into the passenger seat and they skidded 180 degrees and sped off toward the Willises' house.
Sloan watched them vanish and climbed back in the truck, then said to the driver, "Never thought I'd end up in the middle of this."
"Most exciting call I've ever had," the man replied, "I'll tell you that."
The driver pulled back into the highway and the flatbed clattered down the asphalt toward a faint band of light radiated by the heat-soaked town of Hatfield, Michigan.
"I don't see anybody but the Willises," the deputy whispered.
He'd made some fast reconnaissance of the bungalow through a side window. "They're just sitting there talking, Bill and Agnes."
Three male officers and two women--five-eighths of the Hatfield constabulary--surrounded the house.
"He might be in the john. Let's go in fast."
"We knock?"
"No," the sheriff muttered, "we don't knock."
They burst through the front door so fast that Agnes dropped her soda on the couch and Bill made it two steps to the gun rack before he recognized the sheriff and his deputies.
"Lord of mercy, you scared us, Hal."
"What a fright," Agnes muttered. Then: "Don't blaspheme, Bill."
"Are you okay?"
"Sure, we're okay. Why?"
"And your daughter?"
"She's out with her friends. Is this about her? Is she all right?"
"No, it's not about her," Sheriff Mills slipped his gun away. "Where is he, Bill?"
"Who?"
"That fellow who was here?"
"The guy whose car broke down?" Agnes asked. "He left in the tow truck."
"No, not him. The guy calling himself Greg."
"Greg?" Agnes asked. "Well, he's gone too. What's this all about?"
"Who is he?" the sheriff asked.
"He's my late brother's son," Bill said.
"He really is your nephew?"
"Much as I hate to say it, yeah."
The sheriff put the gun away. "That Sloan, the man who called the to
w truck from here--he had this idea that maybe Greg was that escapee. We thought he'd held you hostage."
"What escapee?"
"A killer from that prison west of here. A psychopath. He escaped a couple of hours ago."
"No!" Agnes said breathlessly. "We didn't have the news on tonight."
The sheriff told them what Sloan had mentioned about how odd Greg had behaved--and how the Willises clearly didn't want him there, were even afraid of him.
Agnes nodded. "See, we . . ."
Her voice faded and she glanced at her husband, who said, "It's okay, honey, you can tell him."
"When Bill lost his job last year, we didn't know what we were going to do. We only had a little savings and my job at the library, well, that wasn't bringing in much money. So we had to borrow some. The bank wouldn't even talk to us so we called Greg."
Clearly ashamed, Bill shook his head. "He's the richest one in the family."
"Him?" Sheriff Mills asked.
Agnes said, "Yep. He's a plumber . . . no, sorry, a 'plumbing contractor.' Makes money hand over fist. Has eight trucks. He inherited the business when Bill's brother died."
Her husband: "Well, he made me a loan. Insisted on a second mortgage on the house, of course. And plenty of interest too. More'n the banks woulda charged. Was real obnoxious about it, since we never really had him and his dad over when he was growing up--my brother and me didn't get along too good. But he wrote us a check and nobody else would. I thought I'd have another job by now but nothing came up. And unemployment ran out. When I couldn't make the payments to him I stopped returning his phone calls. I was so embarrassed. He finally drove over here tonight and stopped by unannounced. He gave us hell. Threatening to foreclose, drive us out in the street."
"That's when Mr. Sloan showed up. We were hoping he'd stay. It was a nightmare sitting here listening to him go on and on."
"Sloan said he was scarred. Like knife wounds."
"Accidents on the job, I guess," Bill said.
"What'd he mean about a woman who died a few years ago?"
Nodding, Bill said, "He wouldn't tell us exactly what he meant." He looked at Agnes. "I'd guess that must've been his girlfriend. She died in a car wreck and Greg sort of inherited her son for a few months. It was a mess--Greg's not the best father, as you can imagine. Finally, her sister took the boy."
The sheriff remembered something else that Sloan had said. "He said he heard something in the other room. It seemed suspicious to him."
Agnes blushed fiercely. "That was Sandy."
"Your daughter?"
A nod. The woman couldn't continue. Bill said, "She came home with her boyfriend. They went into her room so she could change out of her uniform before they went out. The next thing you know--well, you can figure it out . . . . I told her to respect us. I told her not to be with him when we were home. She doesn't care."
So it was all a misunderstanding, Sheriff Mills reflected.
Bill laughed faintly. "And you thought Greg was the killer? That's wild."
"Wasn't that far-fetched," the sheriff said. "Think about it. The guy escaped at five tonight. That'd be just enough time to steal a car and get to your place from Durrant in early evening."
"Guess that's right," Bill said.
The sheriff returned to the door and started to open it.
Bill said, "Wait a minute, Hal. You said Durrant?"
"Right. That's where the prison is that guy escaped from."
Bill looked at Agnes. "Didn't that fellow Sloan say he'd just come here from Durrant?"
"Yeah, he did. I'm sure."
"Really?" the sheriff asked. He returned to the Willises. Then asked, "What else did you know about him?"
"Nothing much really. Just that he said he sold computers."
"Computers?" The sheriff frowned. "Around here?"
"That's what he said."
This was odd; Hatfield was hardly a high-tech area of the state. The closest retail computer store was fifteen miles south of here. "Anything else?"
"He was pretty evasive, now that I think about it. Didn't say much of anything. Except he did say his parents were dead."
"And he didn't seem very upset about it," Agnes offered.
The sheriff reflected: And Sloan was about the same age and build as the killer. Dark hair too.
Damn, he thought to himself: I didn't even look at his driver's license, only his business card. He might've killed the real Sloan and stolen his car.
"And that was another thing. He said his car overheated," Bill pointed out. "You'd think a salesman'd be in a new car. And you ever hear about cars overheating nowadays? Hardly ever happens. And at night?"
"Mary, Mother of God," Agnes said, crossing herself, apparently finding an exception to the rule about blasphemy. "He was right here, in our house."
But the sheriff's mind continued further along this troubling path. Sloan, he now understood, had known there'd be a roadblock. So he'd disabled his car himself, called Triple A and waltzed right through the roadblock. Hell, he even walked right up to me, ballsy as could be and spun that story about Greg--to lead the law off.
And we let him get away. He could be--
No!
And then he felt the punch in his gut. He'd sent Sloan to police headquarters. Where there was only one other person at the moment. Clara. Twenty-one years old. Beautiful.
And whom the sheriff referred to as "his girl" not out of any vestigial chauvinism but because she was, in fact, his daughter, working for him on summer vacation from college.
He grabbed the Willises' phone and called the station. There was no answer.
Sheriff Mills ran from the house, climbed into his car. "Oh, Lord, please no . . ."
The deputy with him offered a prayer too. But the sheriff didn't hear it. He dropped into the seat and slammed the door. Ten seconds later the Crown Vic hit sixty as it cut through the night air, hot as soup and dotted with the lights from a thousand edgy fireflies.
No reconnaissance this time.
On Elm Street downtown the sheriff skidded to a stop against a trash can, knocking it over and scattering the street with empty soda bottles and Good Humor sticks and wrappers.
His deputy was beside him, carting the stubby scattergun, a shell chambered and the safety off.
"What's the plan?" the deputy asked.
"This," Sheriff Mills snapped and slammed into the door with his shoulder, leveling the gun as he rushed inside, the deputy on his heels.
Both men stopped fast, staring at the two people in the room, caught in the act of sipping Arizona iced teas. Dave Sloan and the sheriff's daughter, both blinking in shock at the hostile entrance.
The officers lowered their weapons.
"Dad!"
"What's the matter, Sheriff?" Sloan asked.
"I--" he stammered. "Mr. Sloan, could I see some ID?"
Sloan showed his driver's license to the sheriff, who examined the picture--it was clearly Sloan. Then Mills shamefacedly told them what he'd suspected after his conversation with the Willises.
Sloan took the news good-naturedly. "Probably should've asked for that license up front, Sheriff."
"I probably should have. Right you are. It was just that things seemed a little suspicious. Like you told them that you'd just come from Durrant--"
"My company installs and services the prison computers. It's one of my big accounts." He fished in his jacket pocket and showed the sheriff a work order. "These blackouts from the heat are hell on computers. If you don't shut them down properly it causes all kinds of problems."
"Oh. I'm sorry, sir. You have to understand--"
"That you got a killer on the loose." Sloan laughed again. "So they thought I was the killer . . . . Only fair, I suppose, since I thought Greg was."
"I called before," the sheriff said to his daughter. "There was no answer. Where were you?"
"Oh, the AC went out. Mr. Sloan here and I went out back to see if we could get it going."
A mome
nt later the fax machine began churning out a piece of paper. It contained a picture of a young man, bearded, with trim, dark hair: the two-angle mug shot of the escapee.
The sheriff showed it to Sloan and Clara. He read from the prison's bulletin. "Name's Tony Windham. Rich kid from Ann Arbor. Worth millions, trust funds, prep school. Honors grad. But he's got something loose somewhere. Killed six women and never showed a gnat of regret at the trial. Well, he's not getting through Hatfield. Route 202 and 17're the only ways to the interstate and we're checking every car." He then said to the deputy, "Let's spell the boys on the roadblocks."
Outside, Sheriff Mills pointed Dave Sloan to the garage where his Chevy was being fixed and climbed into his squad car with his deputy. He wiped the sweat with a soggy paper towel and said good night to the salesman. "Stay cool."
Sloan laughed. "Like a snowball in hell. 'Night, Sheriff."
In Earl's Automotive, Sloan wandered up to the mechanic, who was as stained from sweat as he was from grease.
"Okay, she's fixed," the man told Sloan.
"What was wrong with it?"
"The cap'd come loose and your coolant shot out is all. Feel bad charging you."
"But you're going to anyway."
The man pulled his soggy baseball cap off and wiped his forehead with the crown. Replaced it. "I'd be home in a cold bath right now, it wasn't for your wheels."
"Fair enough."
"Only charged you twenty. Plus the tow, of course."
Any other time Sloan would have negotiated but he wanted to get back on the road. He paid and climbed into the car, fired it up and turned the AC on full. He pulled onto the main street and headed out of town.
Ten miles east of Hatfield, near the interstate, he turned into the parking lot of a Greyhound bus station. He stopped the car in a deserted part of the lot. He climbed out and popped the trunk.
Looking inside, he nodded to the young bearded man in prison overalls. The man blinked painfully at the brilliant light above them and gasped for air. He was curled up fetally.
"How you doing?" Sloan asked.
"Jesus," Tony Windham muttered, gasping, his head lolling around alarmingly. "Heat . . . dizzy. Cramps."
"Climb out slow."
Sloan helped the prisoner out of the car. Even with the beard and sweat-drenched hair he looked much more like a preppy banker than a serial killer--though those two activities weren't mutually exclusive, Sloan supposed.
"Sorry," the salesman said. "It took longer than I'd thought for the tow to come. Then I got stuck in the sheriff's office waiting for them to come back."