Eleven Hours

by Paullina Simons

  “It’s all right,” Scott replied. “I’m pretty good-natured. Otherwise, you’d have a serious rap sheet for your behavior. What was it?—threatening to kill a federal officer, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm—”

  “Not grievous,” said Rich lightly.

  “I’d better not give you a gun. You’re a little trigger-happy today.”

  “About the gun,” Rich said. “If this Glock you have is standard-issue, why didn’t you carry it in Dallas? How come it was in your bag in the trunk of the car?”

  Scott shrugged. “I prefer the more traditional approach to firearms. I say if you shoot well, you don’t have to shoot so frequently. So I carry a Colt forty-five.”

  “Ahh. Is that the gun you guys carried till this ten-millimeter Glock came along?”

  “No, just till the nine-millimeter Glock came along. That was a good gun. But the Bureau says it doesn’t do enough damage.”

  Rich found that ironic. “What? The holes aren’t big enough?”

  “Exactly right,” deadpanned Scott.

  * * *

  In a few minutes they were east of Goldthwaite on US 84, near Center City, not a city, really, just a burp on the map. Scott had asked the local police to close off the road a mile west and a mile east of the Toyota truck. The helicopter landed on the highway next to a patrol car with two officers in it.

  “Jesus! Where are my men?” Scott was yelling from the chopper door. “I called fifteen minutes ago. Where are they?”

  One of the police officers shrugged. “They’re probably on their way. In the meantime, we’ll help.”

  Scott motioned for the pilot to kill the engine.

  When he could talk normally, Scott looked the police officer over and asked, “Are you wearing a vest?”

  The officer shook his head.

  “Is your partner wearing a vest?”

  Again no.

  “So what are you going to do?” Scott yelled. “Stop the bullets with your chest? Rich, give me your vest.”

  Handing it to one of the officers, Scott said, “You can fight about who gets it later. Now I want you to come with me.” The officers seemed to have barely heard him.

  Rich found himself unable to get out of the helicopter. “Come on!” Scott yelled. Rich shook his head and withdrew from Scott’s hand. He waited in the helicopter. He didn’t want to look inside the truck that was parked at an angle off the road. He was too afraid of what he might find in there. He turned away and faced the other direction.

  Scott came back.

  “Come on!” he yelled again. “They’re not there.” Rich got out and ran toward the truck.

  “Stop!” Scott said. “There’s blood on the road.”

  The policemen looked closer. “Not blood,” one of them said. Rich saw stains that a number of cars had passed through near the white line of the shoulder. “Not blood, sir. Just a stain.”

  “Just a stain?” Scott asked. “No, not a stain. Blood.” The two officers looked closer. One of them shook his head.

  Scott said, “See, let me explain. We have a dangerous criminal on the road. He has already killed an old man in cold blood. The truck he was driving is right here.” He pointed. “When I see something that looks like blood in these circumstances, I let my good sense tell me it’s blood. After all, this is not a spill in the middle of my kitchen.”

  In the meantime, Rich went over to the truck.

  Scott looked along the road. “Not only is it blood,” he said, “but look, there’s a whole trail of it disappearing into the field. Why don’t you two go—no, wait,” he said, staring off into the distance.

  Rich looked up from the windows of the truck. “What is it?”

  “Better not go there,” Scott said. “There aren’t enough of us. God, where are my men? What if he’s in the fields with your wife?”

  Rich paled. “That’s not my wife’s blood on the road,” he said.

  “How do you know?” asked Scott.

  Rich had no answer, but he said no. No. His Didi hadn’t died in Center City in the field, on a road. She wasn’t roadkill, she hadn’t been dragged into the field. Not his wife.

  “Let’s go,” Rich said. “Let’s go right now. I’m not waiting another minute. He could be there with her.”

  Shaking his head, Scott said, “Hold on, hold on. I’m going to radio in for help. I don’t care if I get sent a whole bunch of incompetents. We need help. His truck is here but he’s not. Where is he? He’s probably running with her into those woods at the end over there. That’s where he is. That’s where I’d go—to the woods. Away from this open space.”

  Rich felt his legs buckling, but he straightened out and said, “I’m not waiting. Now, are you coming with me?”

  Scott held him back by grabbing his shoulder. “It’ll be all right, Rich. Please. Let me do my job,” he said gently. “Stay here.”

  “No,” Rich said, twisting out from Scott’s arm. He jumped down the embankment and ran along the trail of blood.

  Scott ran after him, calling the police officers to come. “Wait!” Scott yelled after Rich. “Wait, goddammit! What are you, crazy?”

  Rich didn’t answer. He wasn’t listening anymore. He heard Scott running after him. The two policemen followed. The four raced by the side of the trampled grass.

  Rich followed the path through the grass, and then suddenly he stopped and groaned. He thought he felt shock, but it wasn’t shock. It was relief. The half-naked body lying face-up in a ditch wasn’t Didi. Rich asked God for forgiveness, but the feeling of relief did not leave him. Half of the man’s head had been blasted by a gunshot wound, and glassy eyes stared blankly up at the cloudless summer sky. He was dead.

  Coming up behind Rich, Scott looked down at the ground and said, “Bastard. Oh, goddamn bastard.”

  The other officers followed. One of them looked down at the dead policeman and cried out, “That’s Ernie. God, that’s Ernie.”

  The four stared vacantly into the ditch. Scott placed his hand on the patrolman’s back. “I’m sorry, man. Let’s go back and call EMS. He’s dead, though. Wife?”

  “Yes, Jesus, I went to their wedding a year ago. Ernie and Eileen were expecting a baby in a few months. What am I going to tell her?”

  The policemen remained by the body of their fellow officer. Rich and Scott slowly walked back to the road.

  “Why was he naked?” Rich asked quietly.

  “Because the bastard took his clothes.”

  “You don’t think he’s around here?”

  “Nah. Ernie’s patrol car is gone. Luft switched cars again.”

  When they reached the highway, Scott went to the patrolmen’s car to call headquarters. Meantime Rich opened the door of the Toyota. He was stunned by his weakness. He had to hold on to the truck. He had just felt a moment of relief and the hot air almost cooled him in his fear, but now as he opened the door and saw the inside of the truck, nausea overwhelmed him.

  The truck smelled of Didi.

  It smelled of other things too. It smelled of sweat and vomit and something even more acrid. It was filthy and oily. But through it all, Rich Wood smelled his wife. Her perfumed lotion smell redeemed the foulness in the Toyota.

  There was blood on the passenger seat and the passenger door, and on the door handle. Rich touched it; the blood was not yet dry. It soiled his fingers. Recoiling, Rich stepped away from the car and saw the rag on the grass. He picked it up. It was still moist with blood. Is this my wife’s? he thought. He pressed it to his face, rubbed his own face in it, this oily bloody rag, a rag with her life on it. “Didi,” he whispered, trying not to scream, “where are you, where?”

  The field was empty and burnt. The grass was short, the sagebrush silver-green and flowerless. Nothing moved in the heat and the sun except Rich’s hands pressing the rag to his face and to his chest.

  Scott came to the truck. “What is this?” he said, looking at the cloth and then at Rich’s face. “What are you doing?”
r />   Rich didn’t answer him. “Where’s my wife?” he whispered. “What am I going to tell my children if she dies, if he kills her? What?”

  Gently, Scott pulled at Rich’s arm. “Come on, man, we’ve got to go. We’ll talk in the air.”

  Rich followed slowly. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know,” said Scott. “West of here.”

  The pilot asked where to; Scott in turn asked him what the next big city west of here was.

  The pilot told him it was either San Angelo or Abilene. Both were more than a hundred miles away.

  “Okay,” Scott said. “We’re going to San Angelo.”

  * * *

  Aloft, Scott said, “This is what happened. The cop must have pulled them over, and Luft shot him and dragged his body into the fields, changed into his uniform. Took his patrol car. He’s now disguised and better armed.”

  Rich said nothing, still feeling thick guilt about feeling comfort at a man’s death. He was anxious. What about the blood on the rag? Could it have been the dead cop’s? But how could that be? Luft had probably shot him when he was standing near the driver’s window, and Rich had found the rag on Didi’s side of the car. The rag was Didi’s. Still clutching it, Rich thought, that’s an awful lot of blood. Did he shoot her? Is she having the baby? Both thoughts were terrible. He could find no comfort.

  Scott was on the phone, barking orders, yelling at the Waco cops for not sending the SWAT team when he needed them. He was now calling the field office in Abilene—for there was none in San Angelo—and ordering as many SWAT men as possible to remain on standby. He also called Raul and asked him to send Dallas men to Abilene. Then he called San Angelo police headquarters. And Waco again, requisitioning all the available helicopters in the area to fly over every major road from Center City to El Paso looking for the missing patrol car.

  Rich asked how the SWAT team were getting to San Angelo. Were they flying?

  “Flying? No, only the President flies. They have their equipment in the trunk of their cars. Like I did. They’re driving.”

  “Oh my God, driving!” Rich exclaimed. “Why don’t they just take a bike or jog? They’re never going to get there in time.”

  “Rich, they’ll be in San Angelo in an hour.”

  Rich waited until Scott was finished, and then said, “Don’t you guys have a jet or something?”

  “Yeah, in Quantico. The hostage rescue team is there, and they’re ready to help us instantly. But frankly … if we can’t do it with the three hundred or so SWAT guys we have here in Texas, then I just don’t know. To apprehend one man … I mean, really.”

  They flew in relative silence under the numbing din of the helicopter.

  After ten minutes in the air, Rich said, “What are we going to do, Scott?”

  Scott said nothing.

  Rich’s head fell back against the seat.

  “We are so ignorant,” he said. “We know nothing. If we knew more about him, we would know more about what he’s planning, where he’s going. It’s getting dark soon. We’ll never find them in the dark.” He knew he sounded desperate. “If this man has a plan, he will have a whole night to execute it. If he has no plan, he will have nine hours of night to drive. Six hundred miles. He’ll be in Arizona in that police car.”

  “No,” Scott said. “Not in that police car. It’s a patrol car. He won’t get out of Texas in it. And if he does, he’ll be easier to spot than a palm tree in Canada.”

  Rich fell silent. Scott opened his mouth to speak and then stopped. “What?” Rich said. “What is it?”

  Scott was quiet.

  “You don’t think he’s planning to leave the state?”

  Slowly, Scott shook his head. “I don’t think he’s planning to leave the state in that car.”

  “Is that good or bad?” Rich turned to Scott and studied his face. He didn’t like what he saw and turned away.

  Scott didn’t answer, and Rich didn’t press further.

  After another noisy ten minutes, Rich said, “We have to find out more about him. What do we know about this man? That he lived in Garland and at the time of the kidnapping was unemployed? That’s not a hell of a lot. Where is he from? Has he been to prison—”

  “We don’t think so. He has no criminal record. There are no fingerprints in our archives. He has never filed his taxes.”

  “Never?” That was unbelievable to Rich.

  “The IRS had no information on him. He was a transient worker, I think. Working for cash. Never filed a return.”

  “Maybe,” said Rich, “he mistook my wife for someone else. Someone rich.”

  “Could be,” said Scott tentatively. “But we know he’s not acting like a man out for ransom. He’s not in hiding. He’s on the road as if he’s on a mission. Think about it. If he wanted money, he could have stopped at any motel after he shot the gas station attendant. Called us from a pay phone, or from your cell phone. He wouldn’t have tried to sell the phone. He would have used it to demand money.”

  “So if it’s not money, what is it?” Rich asked. “We can try to give him anything he wants.” His voice shattered against the noise of the helicopter.

  Scott stared straight into the crimson sun. “I think,” he said thoughtfully, “he already has what he wants.”

  7:15 P.M.

  Didi and Lyle rode silently in the police car. Didi’s brow throbbed. She felt her face swelling. Pretty soon my eye will close up, she thought. The pain blurred her vision. The bleeding had stopped, but that hardly made her feel better. Earlier, when the gash had been pouring blood, it hadn’t hurt. Now the blood clotted, and it felt as if a hundred needles were sending sharp electric currents into her eyebrow. She couldn’t keep her eye open. Placing the palm of her right hand above the eye, she tried to relieve the pressure, but it was no use.

  The shadows grew longer. The sun burned deeper crimson. After driving north, Lyle made a U-turn and headed south until he reached Highway 84 again. He made a right and stayed on it until the road seemingly ended in a T, but Lyle didn’t go left or right but straight across onto a barely paved, unmarked farm road. Open, flat fields, deserted road. Didi had no idea where they were. She couldn’t place where they were in the state of Texas. The ground was dirt, not sand, so they couldn’t have been very far west. They were somewhere on the Great Plains. The colors of Texas were sepia as the sun beat on the still countryside. Didi opened her mouth to catch some air, hoping for a water molecule to drift in and settle on her tongue.

  They were still heading west. Once the sun was down, Didi knew she would have an even harder time figuring out her whereabouts. She didn’t see any road signs.

  The baby kicked.

  I’m going to hell, she thought.

  I was going to hell in a beat-up Ford station wagon. That was bad.

  Then I was going to hell in a beat-up Toyota truck, and that was bad.

  Now I’m speeding straight to hell in a brand-spanking-new police car. It doesn’t really matter. Except this car has AC.

  It’s been a lifetime since I drank. That will be my hell—having a parched mouth for eternity. She touched her lips with the tips of the fingers of her right hand. Her mouth was swollen. Dried blood streaked her cracked lips. The corners and crevices were now raw wounds. She licked them, but she had no saliva left. She tried to swallow but swallowed nothing. If only she could ease the aching in her throat, the thirst aching, the fear aching, the end of life aching. Nothing.

  At home it would have been almost time to start getting the girls ready for bed. She couldn’t stop thinking of sitting in Reenie’s big cream chair, reading her books, and at the end of every book, putting a cup of milk to her mouth and saying, “Milk?” and Irene saying, “No milk. No way. Not me.”

  Now Didi was saying, yes milk, yes way, yes me.

  She glanced over at Lyle. He wasn’t spacing out, his eyes weren’t glazed over. He had a determined look on his face. Both hands gripped the wheel. In a loosely fitting police unif
orm, he had never looked more sinister.

  I wonder what his hell will be. What for him represents horror? What represents pain?

  What does he want from me? What can I give him? Maybe if I knew—then I’d be dead. And my baby dead, too.

  Her left hand rubbed the tight belly. There were too many other pains all over her body for Didi to pay attention to minor cramping. But she noticed it now, and thought, my poor belly. It needs some water and a cool shower just like the rest of me.

  “Where are we going, Lyle?”

  “Let’s not talk anymore,” he said. “The talking part is over for now. I have to get to where we’re going. I have to concentrate.”

  “Lyle,” Didi said carefully. “We haven’t eaten. Couldn’t we stop for something?”

  He laughed then. “You’ve got to be joking, missy,” he said.

  “Maybe a drink for me, Lyle? I haven’t had anything all afternoon, and I’m so thirsty.”

  “You should have thought about that when you were playing all cutesy with the cop back there. ‘Oh, officer,’” he said, mimicking Didi’s high voice, “‘I just cut myself, it’s nothing,’ and ‘oh, honey, maybe the insurance is in the car we traded.’ Well, thanks to you, he’s dead, and you’re not getting your water.”

  She turned forward to face the road.

  “We can’t stop anywhere,” Lyle said. “We could’ve before. But look at you. Look what you’ve made me do.” He glanced at her face. “We can’t stop. It’s okay. We’ll be there soon.”

  Didi fell quiet, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “There? Wherever ‘there’ is, do you think there’ll be a drink for me there?”

  “I didn’t think of a drink,” he said gruffly. “I didn’t think our trip would take so long. Things haven’t gone as smooth as I hoped.”

  “Anything,” she whispered. “A sip of anything.”

  “White lightning?” He smiled.

  “Even that,” she said.

  “Come on,” he said. “Be strong.” He reached over and patted her belly. She didn’t move a muscle. “You’ve got to be strong for the baby.”

  “You’re right. Then help me. Get me some water. I’ll feel so much better then.”