Richard Unekis
Pursuit
1
Late July, in the black, flat farming country south of Chicago, brings eight-foot corn standing in marching rows; mile after mile for almost two hundred miles, broken only by the gravel roads which run along each section line.
These roads are a mile apart, running straight by the compass in all four directions. From the air, they make the countryside look like a giant checkerboard, running perfectly flat all the way to the horizon.
There are so many roads that, in any manhunt, it is impossible to block them all. The state police do not even try. They just block the major highways—and hope.
On this particular day, the sun broke swiftly across the flat, unbroken line of cornfields.
2
Evelyn Fairmount said into the phone: “Oh, there goes the doorbell, Madge. It’s probably the men for the TV. Let me call you back.”
She hung up and walked down the steps of the tri-level to the front door. As she opened it, a gust of 10 A.M. heat swept in.
Instead of the service driver she had been expecting, there stood a rather thin young man in a neat blue suit.
“Mrs. Fairmount?” he asked pleasantly. He was of medium height, with a hawkish nose and piercing gray eyes. Something about his eyes bothered her. They were veiled, somehow, and cold beneath the polite exterior. “Are you Mrs. Fairmount?” he said again, in the same pleasant voice.
She realized that she hadn’t answered his question, and said, with a little embarrassment: “Yes.”
He half-turned, casually, to the car in which he had arrived.
“Mrs. Fairmount, I’m with the customer relations department of the telephone company,” he said. “We’re conducting a customer survey of placement of phones in the home, to see whether people are satisfied with the arrangements they have—” He moved closer to her as he spoke, as if expecting her momentarily to invite him in. Finally, she yielded to the pressure and hesitantly moved half a step back.
Quickly he was inside, still talking without a pause. “Let’s see, you have, uh, how many extensions?” He started toward the kitchen.
“Two,” she said, following him, uneasy about having let him in, and now becoming suspicious. Surely he should know how many phones they had.
“What did you say your name was?” she said to his back. It was all she could think of to say. He ducked into the kitchen, then back out again. Still without replying, he brushed past her, went rapidly up the two half-stairs to the upper part of the house, and disappeared down the hall.
Alarmed now, she followed, clutching her housecoat around her. She caught up to him as he finished looking into the bedrooms and then the den on what was obviously becoming an inspection trip. In the den was a little girl about four years old, playing with a doll.
“Hi,” she said, looking up. “Are you going to fix our TV?”
He did not reply, but started to back out of the room as the aroused housewife accosted him in the hall.
“Now just a minute!” she said with all the indignation and force she could muster, hoping her voice did not tremble.
“Is there anybody else here?” His voice cracked like a whip. There was now not the slightest pretense of patience or deference in his tone. His eyes were hard as diamonds.
She gasped, putting one hand to her mouth. A wall of ice rose up in her, swept past her heart, finally settled in the pit of her stomach.
The emotionless, flat voice lashed out at her again. “Are you going to answer me?”
Unable to speak, she shook her head helplessly from side to side.
“You’d better be telling the truth.” His eyes never left her face. They seemed to bore in, relentlessly, pressing her, holding her prisoner. “Don’t lie to me if you don’t want the little girl to get hurt,” he said slowly.
At the reference to the child, her face went white. Still not able to talk, she shook her head more vigorously. She swallowed hard and started to stammer, “Wha—wha—”
Ignoring her, he said, “Are you expecting anybody—any calls?”
“No,” she managed to say in a small voice.
Deliberately he stepped closer and slapped her hard across the cheek, so that her head snapped back. She turned back to face him, her jaw slack in sheer amazement. No one had hit her in the face since she had been a child.
“Don’t lie to me, and do just as I say.” His voice was almost soft now. “Are you sure nobody’s supposed to come, and you’re not expecting any calls?”
“No, no,” she stammered, then added, “Yes, somebody. Wait, oh yes, the TV repairman.”
“Okay, get on the phone and tell him not to come, and make it good, ’cause if you don’t, something might happen to—”
He flicked his eyes toward the little girl, who, unnoticed, had come out of the hallway, and now crouched in the doorway, crying. At the sight of her, the mother rushed over and gathered her up, crooning and smoothing her hair.
The blow on the cheek had done something for her; it had stopped the first dizzying rush of panic that had been threatening to paralyze her. It had restored her brain to functioning. She was just as frightened as before—maybe more so—but now she could think again. She had experienced the same sort of shock as if she had been in a bad accident, and was not quite certain what had happened. Now, her sense of reality was returning. She realized clearly that she and the child were in mortal peril.
She determined to do anything in her power to avert the danger that threatened them both. She put the little girl down, but kept hold of her hand, then turned to face the stranger.
“What is it you want me to do?” she said calmly.
His head came up slightly at the calmness in her voice, and she saw relief in his eyes. It made her realize that he had been worried that she might panic, and now was glad she was in control.
“Call ’em,” he said.
She sat down at the desk in the den and in full self-possession called the repair shop and told them she did not want them to send a man out to fix the TV. She used just the right tone of voice so that they did not question her. She hung up. His glance told her that she had done it right.
“If you do as I say, nobody’ll get hurt. Now get the little girl and take her over to that chair.” He motioned to a leather armchair. “Both of you sit there and keep quiet.” His voice was still harsh, but without the hard, almost metallic quality it had had earlier, which had made her flesh creep. His voice was so totally unlike George’s. George! Oh, dear God, did George really exist? Where was her big, friendly husband, who seemed suddenly so remote, almost a part of a different life?
She felt a sudden intense yearning, almost a physical ache, for a return to the warm security she had enjoyed only a few hours ago, when her husband had left for work at the supermarket.
3
Earlier that morning, as George Fairmount had backed down his drive, two cars, each with a single driver, had entered town on the blacktop highway from Chicago. One of the drivers had on a business suit, the other a brown uniform such as plant guards wear. Under the uniform he wore casual slacks and a sport shirt. He did not wear the uniform cap. It was on the seat beside him.
The uniformed man owned the car he was driving. The other car had been stolen the night before in a Chicago suburb. The license plates on the two cars had cost fifty dollars each, the price paid to the auto wrecker for “forgetting” to take them from demolished autos.
The man in the stolen car was thin, with brown, crew-cut hair and a hawklike nose. He was in his middle twenties and might have passed for a college boy, except for his eyes. There was no innocence in them, or immaturity. They were gray and cold, and constantly alert.
He had a slight pallor, too, as if he had been ill, or confined away from
the sun.
His name was Floyd Rayder, but no one had called him Floyd for years. He did not travel in circles where men were called by their first names.
It was beginning to get hot now, a heavy, muggy heat that promised thundershowers. Rayder stuck his hand out the open window and pointed his finger toward the side, then swung swiftly in onto the broad asphalt apron of a drive-in restaurant. The place was not open yet.
He walked back to the other car, and said, “How’s it running?”
“Like a doll,” said the round-faced man in uniform. “Like a little doll. No cruiser in the country could touch her.”
“Let’s just hope none of ’em get a chance to try,” replied the hawk-nosed man. He walked around to the other side, opened the door and slid into the back seat.
“Let’s try the set,” he said, turning to a large, professional-looking radio in a metal cabinet resting on the back seat. He turned it on and began to adjust the knobs.
A voice came in: “… you have a fare at Chestnut and Main, Number Seventeen, a fare at Chestnut and Main…” He switched to the local police frequency: “… a complaint about a barking dog…” There were a couple of squawks, then very loudly: “Okay, give me that address again.”
The transmitter came in: “Okay. It’s a woman in an apartment.”
“That patrol car’s close around here somewhere,” Rayder said, turning down the volume and glancing around. There was no one in sight. He dialed to the frequency of the nearest State Police transmitter.
“… red over black, 1959 Edsel hardtop, two-door, license number five-eight-six-two-three-two-seven, Chicago; dark-green 1956 Hudson four-door, license number six-two-four-two-nine-four-six, Chicago; black 1957 Packard, two-door…”
Rayder, with a practiced hand, switched the dial again, this time to the other State Police station, farther down-state. The same voice was droning out car descriptions and license numbers.
“The morning line!” The young man in the front seat swung around sardonically. “Must have been a busy night.” He was swarthy, with gleaming, even teeth and carefully groomed straight black hair. He looked like the ladies’ man he was.
Rayder glanced up. He rarely exchanged banter. Switching back to the local police wave-length, he listened for a while longer. Finally he said, “They don’t sound very sharp. That dispatcher sounds like a nitwit to me.”
The dark-haired man, sitting sideways with one arm on the back of the seat, said nothing.
Abruptly switching off the set, Rayder turned and said, “Grozzo, are you sure you didn’t bring a piece?”
The other man slumped, then gestured expressively. “Look, like I told you before, no. It’s agreed. I’m going along with what you said. No guns. It makes sense. If we fall, it’s only for burglary. Fine, okay.”
The thinner man did not smile, but his eyes lit up just a little. “Okay, forget it,” he said.
He reached into a map case on the seat, thumbed for a minute, then pulled out a map about a foot square. “Tell me how to get from the caper to Bucola,” he said.
Without hesitation, the other replied, “The highway running in front of the store goes straight on down. Off the highway, the section line roads are a mile apart. Bucola is twenty-five miles south and three miles east. All you have to do is count the intersections—twenty-five down and three east.”
He paused a minute, then continued, “Rayder, why did you pick Bucola to leave this car in? It’s out of our way.”
Rayder looked at him with flat eyes. “Because I want it to be out of our way, just in case they connect the job with the Olds when they find it.” He jerked his thumb at the car he had driven. “They’ll think we’re headed for St. Louis. Also, the town’s too small to have a cop.” He thought for a minute, then added in the same tone: “Did you check the Olds over?”
Grozzo nodded without looking. He slid out. “Let’s get on down there. You follow me.”
He led the way out of town, past the shopping center with the big supermarket which ironically displayed the huge sign: “Help Yourself to Our Bargains.”
A mile south of town, he turned on to the country road, then right at the next one. About twenty miles down he pulled into the shade of the only clump of trees they had seen.
Rayder did not see, until too late, the remains of a barbed-wire cattle gate across the entrance to the little grove. As he went through it, the rusty wire and old lumber crumbled with a crash. Cursing, he hopped out to inspect the damage as Grozzo drove up.
“You just wrapped a few strands around this wheel,” said Grozzo, inspecting it. He walked back to his car and came back with a large pair of pliers. “No sweat,” he said with a grin to the tense-looking Rayder.
He squatted by the wheel and in a few minutes had worked the strands loose. “Okay,” he said as he arose, dusting his clothes.
“We’re late, let’s get on it,” Rayder said tersely while opening the door of Grozzo’s car and taking out the radio. He started to the other car with it, then wheeled quickly in mid-stride and returned. From the glove compartment he took a small box on which was mounted a little roll of magnetic tape. Putting both items in his car, he said, “Let’s go!” He jumped into the blue and white Olds, backed out of the grove, and the two cars headed for the small town of Bucola, a few miles farther south.
4
Back in the town through which the two men had driven, Sergeant Tilton of the State Highway Patrol stood in front of the headquarters radio building. He looked at the scattered clouds, then at his wrist watch. It was 8:33.
“I hope to God it rains soon,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head.
His Post was due for an inspection that morning at eleven by no less a personage than the governor’s hand-picked appointee, Lieutenant Preen.
Preen was a retired army colonel, who traveled by helicopter and lived by the book. Tilton knew that the helicopter would descend in back of the transmitter at precisely 11 A.M., barring only an act of God.
The entire force in Sergeant Tilton’s command had spent almost the whole previous week cleaning and tidying up the Post, and primping their bright blue cars.
Now the last of the cars was coming in for its final cleaning; a total of twelve would be in. Only one was left out on patrol. This was an irreducible minimum for their seventeen-county area.
The Sergeant stuck his head into the radio shack and told the operator to let him know when he was notified by downstate that the inspector had taken off. Then he turned his mind to the innumerable last-minute jobs remaining.
As he stepped out of the shack, he looked at the sky and muttered, “Please, just enough of a shower to throw that damned schedule of his off.”
5
He made a noise. She shook her head and looked up. He was looking at her as he said, “If anybody calls here, put ’em off. Use your head. That is, unless it’s your husband. If he calls, I want to talk to him.”
“What are you going to do to us?” she insisted.
“We came here to do a job,” he said, standing with one leg cocked on the chair by the desk, and his eyes cold on her. “It involves your husband. If he doesn’t do anything stupid—and if you don’t—then everybody will be all right. We won’t hurt anybody unless we have to.” He paused a minute, then said slowly: “So don’t make us have to.”
Her eyes on him were a study of emotion: fear, outrage, bewilderment. Nothing remotely like this had ever happened to her before. She didn’t know how much of what he said was true, but as time wore on and it became apparent that he planned no immediate harm to them, she relaxed, just a little.
Cindy, too, quieted down, but it was obvious she was still very much afraid of the intruder. She clung to her mother’s skirts and stared at the man. He seemed almost unaware of the child, as if she were only some remote distraction.
Presently, the woman laid the little girl down on the lounge at the side of the room, and said, “It’s about time for her nap. She—”
�
�No nap,” snapped Rayder. “Keep her awake.”
Again the feeling of fear flowed through the woman—fear mixed with resentment at this stranger who had invaded her home.
Rayder sat backwards on the desk chair, facing them. He loosened his tie, then glanced at his watch. He looked at it again after a few minutes, then held it out, as if intent on timing something to the second.
Abruptly, he stood, picked up the phone and dialed a number. After a few seconds’ pause while the number rang, he said, “Is this you?” Then, after listening for a few seconds, he said, “Yes, okay, let me know.” He hung up, sat down in the chair, and faced her.
“Sometime in the next two hours, a man is going to call here and ask for the ‘man of the house.’ Let me talk to him. I also want to talk to your husband if he calls. As I said, if anybody else calls, or if anybody comes to the door, put ’em off. Make it natural and don’t try anything. This isn’t TV. This is for real.”
6
Farther downstate, in the state capital, a grim, almost austere brick building fronted on a small lake. It was the headquarters building of the State Police Force.
An atmosphere of quiet discipline pervaded the place. Even as the day shift trickled in, and the baggy-eyed night force drifted out in ones and twos, it was apparent that this was a force with pride in itself. It was most noticeable in the younger men. They walked with the clear-eyed look of men who feel they are a part of a going concern.
A trim man in civilian clothes with red, crew-cut hair walked briskly in the front door.
“Hi, Bill,” he said to a uniformed man sitting at a communications desk. “Busy night?” he asked, sitting with one leg halfway across a desk and starting to thumb through a sheaf of reports on a clipboard.
“Quite a few car thefts, Chief,” the other man said casually. “Hot weather seems to stir the kids up, or something.”
“Yeah, I can remember,” the red-haired man said with a half-grin, putting down the reports and walking down the hall. He went in a door that said “Superintendent, State Police.”
Pursuit Page 1